Wilderness

"Be still!"

-- Max in Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are

--

And there, in that simple two-word command, Max gives some great advice to wild thing and gentle reader alike. Be still. Calm yourself. Take note. Take breaths. Give yourself a moment and reflect.

Or, as Dr. Jackson summed up Eastern Christianity's devotion to meditation: Don't just do something; stand there.

Okay.

--

So I was standing there, in a multi-purpose room with gray carpet, in front of a semi-circle of about thirty sixth-graders. They held in their laps 4x5 index cards upon which, I saw, were scribbled their questions for me. I introduced myself as someone from The Children's Theatre, an actor and a workshop teacher.

They had seen Beauty and the Beast, Jr., on Tuesday of last week, the morning performance when the Beast double had been clocked in the head by a flat set piece descending from above. (The actor was dazed but okay.) Originally, the class' teacher had arranged for Jen S., my co-worker and the actress who played Belle, to come and teach this post-show workshop--more of a Q&A, really--but Jen had come down with a bad cold and so I was asked to do it. I had agreed instantly, not knowing exactly what it was I was supposed to do.

As it turned out, no one knew. These show-themed workshops are new to TCTC, the result of a recent push to boost our repertoire of theatre-based classes. Deondra, another arts integration specialist at TCTC, told me that while he believed these workshops to be a good idea, he had not yet done one himself, and he is our main workshopper: over half of his worktime hours are spent on the road and in classrooms.

So: Here I was, doing a Beauty and the Beast workshop for the first time--both for me, and for this company.

I began with calling for volunteers and having each student wear a costume piece from various characters in the show. The girl wearing the Cogsworth headpiece had trouble hearing, and so I got to talk about that. And in a group of thirty sixth-graders, only one of them was a boy; in a classic moment of typecasting, he had to put on Gaston's boots as well as his muscle suit, which made the poor kid look like a hunter drowning in a big, beige marshmallow. The brown leather boots came halfway up his thighs and made him walk like the Tin Man.

After about ten minutes of this, a true hands-on icebreaker, I sat down and opened it up for questions. That filled the rest of the hour: telling backstage anecdotes, explaining technical positions, revealing acting tips, expounding upon the majesty of live theatre. And those kids just ate it up, smiling with big eyes at every joke, nodding at every truism, giggling at all my quirks and quips.

It was the best workshop ever. For the better part of an hour, I basically rattled on about myself to a captive, star-struck audience.

--

The evening before, I killed a rabbit with a prop pitchfork.

Jen (who played Belle) and I were sent out to the parking lot to investigate an odd sighting: our boss, who had just left for home, reported seeing a bunny that "looked like it was hurt" that was "out in front of someone's car." Our boss asked us to put a box over it, as it looked like it would rain any time soon.

We found the rabbit sitting upright, staring at us, not at all the wounded bunny we had heard about. The only curious thing about the rabbit was that it didn't start and bolt away from us as we got closer and closer to it. Finally, Jen stepped within two feet of the animal and it panicked, flopped on its side, and began convulsing in running-like motions. We realized with fascination and horror that both its front legs were broken.

Inside, I updated by Facebook status (how shallow I can be sometimes) while Jen called Animal Control (or whatever the agency is called). They said a van was on its way, and so I went home to rest and eat before returning in two hours for rehearsal.

When I came back, I checked to see if it was still there, and it wasn't. So I thought the van must have come and picked the rabbit up. But then, there it was, still sprawled awkwardly on its side, about ten feet from where I had seen it last. In two hours of cold, drizzling rain, the rabbit had dragged itself ten feet before stopping where it now lied, panting, waiting to die.

After some minutes of deliberation, I decided to do what had to be done. The animal control van was clearly not coming. I asked the stage manager if there was a shovel anywhere that I could use, and the closest object we found was a prop pitchfork used in the mob scene in Beauty and the Beast (oh, if only those sixth-graders could have seen me now). Pitchfork in hand, I exited The Children's Theatre building as a line of minivans arrived in the parking lot to drop off their kids for rehearsal. I realized there was no way I could bludgeon a small, immobile, woodland animal to death with half a dozen families watching. So I walked around as if I was looking for something, pretending with all my might that I didn't have a menacing piece of farm equipment in my hands. One car waited for several minutes, and I wondered why in the world they weren't leaving, before suddenly it dawned on me: What parent in their right mind would leave their child at a place where a disturbed young man was walking around the parking lot with a pitchfork? I waved and smiled, and the parent cautiously drove away. The entire world disappeared, and now it was just me and the bunny.

I can't say it was easy. I can't say it was the right thing to do. I can't even say that it was clean and humane, or that I felt anything but dirty afterwards. What I can say is this: it was harder than I thought it would be, psychologically and physically, and I don't think I ever want to have to do it again.

As I picked the mud and fur off the pitchfork prongs (no, I didn't stab it, the fur just came off very easily), cleaning the tips with sanitizer from the storage room, some kids who were in the show came up to me, wanting to know what in the world I was doing. "Rehearsal's starting," I told them, "they're waiting specifically for you. You should go."

Only the last part of that was true.

--

Here's the irony of the whole thing, and maybe, lurking in there somewere, the moral. Literally as I walked away from the dumpster at the far end of the parking lot, trying to push the image of that damp, limp, broken bunny out of my mind, trying to think instead about the holiday show we were about to rehearse, the Animal Control van arrived. I realize only now that most of our conversation was asking each other questions.

The driver rolled down the window.

"Hi," I said, casually leaning against the pitchfork. "Are you here about the rabbit?"

"Yeah," he said, checking his clipboard. "Where is it?"

I pointed at the dumpster. "Just took care of it."

"Oh," he said, wincing sadly. "Did it die?"

"Well, it's dead now."

"I see. I'm sorry. I got stuck in traffic."

"I understand. No problem," I said, blinking in the rain. "What were you going to do?"

The driver looked at the pitchfork. "Both its back legs were broken?"

"Front legs. Would you have been able to save it?" I asked, dreading a "yes."

"Nah," he said, looking toward the dumpster. "I came out here to put it down."

"Gotcha." What a relief. Maybe he was just saying that, but I would have wanted him to lie to me anyway if the opposite were true, if there was bunny leg-repairing equipment in the back of his van. The difference between me and him, among other distinctions, is that he does this sort of thing for a living, his service consists of the removal of diseased or deceased creatures from public places, and he is paid sometimes to end animal lives; while I, on the other hand, am an actor who the next morning was supposed to talk to children about the joys of singing, dancing, and acting, who has never gone hunting, and who only twice has contributed roadkill to the sides of roads. Neither of us really operates in the sphere of "real life" as most people understand it, but only he regularly encounters real death, palpable and bizarre and haunting death.

"Sorry you had to do that. No one likes to do that."

"No problem," I said. "Sorry you had to drive all the way up here."

"Just part of the job," he said, and he rolled up the window and drove away.

Hamlet

"Ten thousand dancing girls kicking cans across the sky
No reason why
Why ask to pay yourself for the call of the wild?
You found this child
Now raise him."

-- "These Are the Fables," by The New Pornographers

--

Some Thoughts About the Staging of Hamlet:

(A play I would love to act in and perhaps, some day, direct)

A friend from an acting summer job some years ago was tagged in a Facebook album entitled, simply, “Hamlet.” The production appears legitimate--that is, professional--because the production value is high. Crisp costumes. Thought-provoking stage pictures. Bold lighting, very bold. And, though what is captured by a camera by no means bears exact resemblance to the actual happening on stage, clear acting. Clicking through the photos, I can usually tell what part of the play we’re in; for some photos, I can guess at the specific line.

So, props to the photographer. The photos make me want to see the show, which is exactly what production shots should do.

--

There's a specific photo that received no caption and as of yet no comment, probably because the captured image speaks for itself. The scene is obvious: Claudius, shaken from the play-within-the-play, is attempting to pray. Hamlet comes upon him and draws his sword, only to put it back up again. After Hamlet leaves for his mother's room, Claudius reveals that he is unable to pray earnestly.

Wonderful scene, right? It's fraught with tension, as critics like to say, and Hamlet's decision not to kill Claudius is a perfect example of dramatic irony. Tension and irony: two fantastic ingredients in any play.

But it's a puzzling scene, too, if you think about the play as a revenge tragedy (and nothing else). Until this point, there is no hard evidence that Claudius killed Hamlet's father, and so we can question Hamlet's motives until we hear Claudius incriminate himself. And at this point, Hamlet becomes more than a mere avenger. He assumes the role of judge, jury, executioner, and God. He will not just kill his uncle; he will damn him, as well.

No doubt, many college freshmen have written English essays on that very topic. The reason I mention it here is that the photos of that scene showed it to me in a way that I'd never encountered before.

The stage is dark. Claudius, praying, kneels at center stage. Behind him, we see a creepy, creeping Hamlet through a translucent veil that drops from above. Hamlet holds his blade in both hands, contemplating, but the gesture is one of offering rather than homicide. The veil is lit with golden light, so that it seems as if Hamlet has dropped here from heaven. That's the first picture.

Here's the second: Hamlet has gone, and Claudius is now behind the veil, still praying, looking upward. The lighting--the golden light that speaks of salvation, the divine right of kings, the very eye of God--has not changed. That impossible-to-stage idea of Hamlet's inclination to evil and Claudius' to goodness appears in two dynamic, beautiful stage pictures.

--

So, props to the director and lighting designer, too.

Now, why not just post the pictures and spare the two thousand words? Copyright. That lusty, lusty wench.

Another--perhaps the most obvious--indication that this production was totally legit. Wish I was in New England to see it.

Lilies

"The arts is a life of faith. It's pure faith. People preach about faith...who have no idea what faith is. But artists know. Artists are the lilies of the field that Jesus talked about in the Sermon on the Mount: Consider the lilies. Don't worry about what you're going to eat, or what you're going to wear. Consider the lilies. They toil not, and they spin not, and yet I say unto you that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

The life of the artist is pure, pure faith."

-- Garrison Keillor, in a podcast of "The News from Lake Wobegon," Sept. 19, 2009

Cuff

"Every morning when the day begins,
I make up my mind but change it back again.
I'm a shifter of the shape I'm in.
Who did you think I was?"

-- John Mayer, "Who Did You Think I Was"

--

Before I go on, I have to say this: I don't listen to John Mayer. Personally, I'm not a fan of his solo stuff, so many oversimplification songs, prosaically produced. But the second section of the first disk of his live album, Where the Light Is, is fantastic. The John Mayer Trio (with Peter Palladino and Steve Jordan) lays down eight solid blues tracks, including the drippy-wonderful-slow "Out of My Mind," my favorite.

--

Been a while since I posted here, so a quick recap of the last week and a half (or so):

Hillsdale Homecoming. Came, saw, drove back through the night. Came back for a theatre alum party at George's house, after seeing Our Town performed by the Tower Players under James' direction. Wonderful show, one of the best I've ever seen at Hillsdale. And with so many mini-reunions at the after-party, it was worth the trip up. The trip down, however, was brutal. I started back at 3:15am because I had to be back for a rehearsal at 10. The first hour was fine, but in the second I felt myself drifting. With the help of an energy shot and the immediacy of an imminent sunrise, I made it back in time to get an hour-long nap before a six-hour rehearsal. Then I slept--no kidding--for sixteen hours.

Beauty and the Beast, Jr. We moved into the Taft Theatre in downtown Cincinnati and got our first look at a gorgeous and immense set. After a speedy two-day tech process, we hit the stage in front of an audience on our Friday opening. The show has only gotten better in the ensuing five performances, and today is a day off. We have morning shows all this week for school audiences and then two final public shows on Saturday.

After-school drama program. Because tech rehearsal overlapped with teaching time, I had to miss Wednesday's class, which had to be led by my assistant. We are in the play writing process, and today we must get final plot points nailed down: Why does the magic amulet destroy the Witch? Why do the cheerleader friends join the search for the kidnapped high-schooler? What exactly did you all mean when you said you wanted "spirit people" in the haunted house?

--

Been sick for about a week now. Laid up three days of last week, didn't go to work, but still went to rehearsals and performances. Never underestimate the power of rest and Vitamin C, or an actor's contract.

During that time, I had the chance to watch a bunch of movies, including Synecdoche, New York; The Queen; and The Wrestler. Enjoyed them all--though the first one is not the best choice if you're sick. It'll make you want to overdose on sleeping pills because of the depravity and absurdity of life.

--

Off the cuff, driving back from a show last night, I came up with an aphorism. A quick Google search assures me that no one else has published it online, so for the moment at least, I'll claim it as an original:

God gave you two eyes so you could see everything in perspective.

-- me

Trying

"Are these stories any good? I hope so...

I loved writing these, I know that. And I hope you like reading them, I know that, too. I hope they take you away. And as long as I remember how to do it, I'll keep at it.

And now, let me get out of your way. But before I go, I want to thank you for coming. Would I still do what I do if you didn't? Yes, indeed I would. Because it makes me happy when the words fall together and the picture comes and the make-believe people do things that delight me. But it's better with you, Constant Reader.

Always better with you."

-- from Stephen King's Introduction to Just After Sunset, his latest collection of short stories

--

I bought the book this morning, a rare purchase of reading material from a Wal-Mart. I needed something to pass the time while my car was getting its oil changed and its tires rotated.

Say what you will about Stephen King. He's one of my favorite living writers, precisely for passages like the one above. From a purely literary perspective, he's no match to McCarthy or Roth, but whatever respect I lose for him when his pop-horror duds hit the market (come on, no one read Cell, probably because of the cover illustration), I more than make up for with admiration when I read his addresses to Constant Readers.

And especially with a dynamite book like On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, you gotta respect the guy's passion for what he does. Pretension and bestsellers aside, at least he's a pop writer who's trying.

--

Today, at a Wendy's, I waited to order. A group of teenagers in front of me kept changing their long order, so I had lots of time to get bored and do some good ol' fashioned (slightly creepy, definitely geeky) people-watching.

And listening. Behind me, an old woman and her brother (father? son? husband?) stood side by side, dressed in almost identical torn jeans and checkered shirts. It was raining heavily outside, still is, and these folks looked like they had walked through the thickest of the shit: drenched, their long gray hairs tawnied and twisted down their cheeks and across their foreheads. They had a conversation about books:

Man: "Went to the library again."
Woman: "Why?"
"Got books. What else?"
"Didn't you already?"
"Yep. Had about ten out. Now I have ten, plus some."
"Pay those fines?"
"What fines?"
"Got a notice at the house."
"Damn. How much?"
"I didn't look."
"Damn."
"What books?"
"That I got? A few I've wanted to read for a while. One of them's in Russian. Can't read it."
"Why'd you get a book you can't read?"
"It's fun."
"But you can't read it."
"Yeah, but I look at the pages and I try to read it."
"Whatever. Waste your time..."
"I imagine I know what's going on. I look for names."
"How do you know what's a name and what's just words in Russian?"
"That's what makes it fun. Trying."
"Are all of the books you got in Russian?"
"No."
"Do you actually read the ones in English?"
"Sometimes."
"Idiot."
"Hey, at least I read."
"I read."
"No you don't."

And then it was my turn to order.

Owning

"Some, out of pride, try to hide their feelings, but their clumsy assumption of bravado does not deceive their companions. Everybody knows what the matter is and keeps his thoughts to himself, out of humanity."

--Dostoevsky, in The House of the Dead

--

Driving home in the rain tonight, I came around a bend on the highway heading south. It's the last gradual curve before the insanity of downtown. Ahead, a semi merged into the rightmost lane and reflected the red and blue flashes of a cop car hidden around beneath an overpass. The red and blue melded into a sort of hot purple, a magenta, on the side of the semi's load, and I saw it through the streaks of a drizzle-dappled windshield. It wasn't anything amazing, but it was a little psychedelic.

After successive nights of unsuccessful sleep, I'm on NyQuil for the first time in years. I've been horizontal now for thirty minutes and I'm starting to feel the undertow.

--

Bad days can have good endings, and vice-versa, or there are confusing days when the good and bad alternate. The sun shines on your labor; the rain falls on your rest.

We emptied the trailer in the parking lot and it began to rain after an hour of lifting. It continued throughout the day. Unexpected camaraderie with the jaded movers was a boost, though. Something about a man grinning maniacally as he straps a pile of boxes to his back and runs down a rainy asphalt slope makes you wonder why you bothered with college.

My colleague wants to shift job responsibilities so that it lessens my paperwork load and increases the time I spend teaching workshops. I'm okay with it. I just hope this doesn't render my office time pointless...there's something for making yourself useful, of course, and because most of our costumes are still in storage, naturally I see myself unpacking for hours on end in the near future.

--

The after-school drama program at the theatre across town started yesterday afternoon. It went well--a total of seventeen kids attended, and this is the group for the next nine classes and, of course, the final show. By the end of class, we had a better idea of how to run the rest of this month's sessions.

My assistant, Allison, had them play a game in which they tell a story one person at a time, one sentence at a time. Although every story ended with the world ending and all the characters dying--clearly we need to devote some time to plot structure and creativity--the stories they came up with had a surprising amount of depth in them. I'd like to use that impulse, harness it, so that the script we use for the final show can be derived from these classroom exercises. My hope is that once they realize they have to play the characters that die sudden and un-fulfilling deaths, they will curb the killing instinct...if that makes sense.

In other words, I want to do as little writing as possible. I'd rather record what they come up with in an improv game.

--

There are plenty of ways to approach the making of theatre. At The Children's Theatre, the mainstage rehearsal process is very choreography-based, understandable since the co-directors both come from dance backgrounds. So the characters come from movement, the personalities from blocking, and all creativity in a role--the true creation of your own part--takes place within very rigid confines. And that's not necessarily a bad thing (co-workers commonly say that we don't reinvent the wheel when we do shows for kids), but it is definitely one way of doing theatre.

This other program, the after-school program, gives me an opportunity to make theatre happen in a different way. For me, it's more fun. I want to let the performers really play, to take hold of the story and tell it the way they want to and not the way I want them to--or worse, the way I would tell it. They can build it as they find it most interesting to build it, and in the end, it will have made sense to them.

Sometimes, the hardest part about learning choreography is figuring out where you stand (or sit, or lean, or hop) in the big picture, the staged image. When you come up with it yourself, it's much more involving, at least in my opinion.

We'll see. Tomorrow we'll have the second class, introduce some rules, and let them play, for goodness' sake. Ultimately, the more fun they have, the more they'll learn.

Right?