Lies

"A director doesn't 'make' students perform. She creates a whole atmosphere that is conducive to humor, exploration, and taking risks. She is a benign gang leader. In fact, she has to be the most intense performer of all--and then be willing to disappear."

-- Elizabeth Swados, in At Play: Teaching Teenagers Theater

--

Performing, then disappearing--this is the way to lead an acting class. I read this and other punchy passages this morning, and tried to embody Swados's ideas. We played a game suggested by an exercise in her book, a game which I decided to call "True Lies."

I had noticed that during improv games the kids would start out strong and fizzle as they went along, usually as they started to doubt themselves. It's an odd trend. You'd think they would grow more confident, their movements more strident and their voices greater, but instead, the opposite was happening. I needed a way to get them consciously to gain confidence, to own their space, to self-create authority.

So with an idea from a book and a few whims, here's what I came up with. A pair of kids gets in front of the group. Their dialogue is comprised of one-sentence statements, all of which have to be false. They have to state things, though, as if they are gospel truth. They have to try to top the other person's last lie--the more extravagant, the more specific, the more bizarre, the better. Example:

ONE. I am Barack Obama's best friend.
TWO. I killed a chicken with my mind.
ONE. I cooked a chicken with my mind.
TWO. I ate that chicken and it sucked so much I threw up in your face.
ONE. Barack Obama ate that chicken and liked it so much he replaced the bald eagle with my chicken as the national motto.
TWO. I am Barack Obama.
ONE. I am a chicken.

And so on. Soon the contest would turn into almost a comedic routine, with a straight man setting up a joke and the other giving a funny punch line. So to keep them on the objective--topping each other's lie--I allowed the audience to respond in the same manner as a talk-show audience. They were allowed to cheer, boo, hiss, etc., depending on how well the person had convinced you that their lie was true.

It worked very well. To Swados' description of the improv director, I would add:

The director has to regard all ideas as potentially useful or useless. The worth is in the moment. Energetic games are great for pent-up days, but they will flop with an exhausted group. The director must see the use and use what he sees. Used ideas, now stale, must be left for the moment and replaced with new, fresh ideas; and once what is new and fresh becomes stale, forgotten ideas must be rejuvenated. This is the essence of the theatre: The give and take of ideas over a period of time, the stories that remind us of stories we all know but forgot. We are always visitors.

Trolls

"Keep your goals away from the trolls."

-- my latest fortune cookie fortune

--

A few days ago, I went to a Chinese restaurant to kill some time before my acting class (which gets better every day, by the way). In addition to receiving a fine plate of pineapple chicken, I got a smarmy fortune cookie. It's the best bit of advice I've ever gotten from a yellow piece of warped sugar, I'm convinced of it.

(It's not really a fortune, granted. But it's killer smarts.)

So I'm keeping my goals away from the trolls. Saving money from the spending of it. Fighting bad cases of morning apathy.

--

For the moment, I spy certain goals down the line: auditions, Stratford, Guster, Cincinnati Fringe.

Trolls: spreadsheets, whiskey-and-Cokes, playwrighter's block.

--

July is an up-month for work and travel, or so it seems. A down-month for reflection: No one's blogging. (At least, no one's blogging who doesn't have to blog--some corporate blogs on my list have served up daily vanilla posts for the last week or so.) It's the doldrums of summer, I guess.

Maybe this makes us wise. They say that a wise man only speaks when there is something to say, and a fool flaps his yap when he just has to say something.

Silence is golden; we grow rich by attrition. If you want something to gather interest, leave it alone. It will yield.

Comets

"Spell with patience
And care."

-- Mitch Mahoney in The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee

--

The best view of the city is not of the city but its reflection. At night, I drive across this bridge, a blue suspension bridge, and the reflections catch my eye. The river looks black and the night is dark, and the lights of the docked ships and shoreline streetlights hit each wave and ripple in advancing angles, the brightness fading as if into the depths. These lights are like comets, the reflections the tails. The comets sprout towards the stars. These tails, side by side, create a random spectrum of amber and red and blue, indicating the element of man.

I can never get a good look at it because I only see it while driving. The bridge is a beautiful spot for drive-by viewings, but it is forbidden to night walkers. Shadows on the sidewalk hide selfish, desperate people.

One exception to that rule. It being July, the horses and their buggies are out of stable, traversing the river every night. Cars slow behind carriages. Couples make lifelong discoveries behind a semi-blinded animal and a man in a top hat.

Safe in the vehicle, idling along at five miles per hour, I can turn glances to gazes, and the city is beautiful in the river at night.

--

Saw another kids' show tonight, a summer camp project. They took an obscure 1970's musical about drugged-up teens and performed it for their parents. It is precisely the kind of show that is more unsettling than it needs to be (for example, two girls sing a duet about how a two-year-old's death by rat attacks will benefit the family because the landlords finally have to renovate the building; maybe, they sing, they will get a toilet bowl). Shock for shock's sake is a quick bore, and it perverts serious subjects with patronizing cliches. It oversimplifies grief.

In general, I'm starting to loathe urban-themed shows. Maybe the depressing problems of city life are exotic to bumpkins, but not to me. How many times must I hear about coke going through someone's veins, or being called a nigger, or how cutting yourself makes you feel cool?

Not to mention, this all loses its potential punch when these monologues come from the mouths of babes--babes who, for all their imaginings and late-night movie watching, have not the slightest idea what being high or drunk or addicted or hopeless is like. Angst does not equal crisis. It's all a mystery to them, and it remains a mystery. As it should.

There is no mystery, however, in a person who simply wishes to be mysterious.

--

I don't think I'd ever want to be a star, a tiny blot that twinkles on and off with a million brothers and sisters. Not even a shooting star, which blazes in a streak and in an instant is gone. And certainly not a meteor, which is beautiful until it crashes and burns and kills the dinosaurs.

I think I'd rather be a comet, the magical thing that comes almost once a century, the occasion that demands the waiting, a symbol in the sky that lingers for its time and fades with dignity.

Duct

"This is the lower sling swivel. And this
Is the upper sling swivel, whose use you will see,
When you are given your slings. And this is the piling swivel,
Which in your case you have not got. The branches
Hold in the gardens their silent, eloquent gestures,
Which in our case we have not got."

-- second stanza of Henry Reed's "Naming of Parts"

--

It is called the air intake tube, or the intake duct, or boot; those are the names of the part. If you're looking into the engine, it is near you on the right side, beside the radiator, beside the compressor, down from the battery. To reach its clamps, you have to unplug a cord that clips to a stationary port, and stick the screwdriver over and under tubes and hot parts, like threading a needle except with the thread and needle reversed. It pops out and shimmies up and into your hands, steaming, the split in its rubber ribs like a dying fish's gaping mouth, like a useless puppet. It is hot--I hope you're wearing gloves.

My parents bought me the roadside safety/repair kit as a birthday gift. It's almost exactly two months since my birthday, and I've already used half of its contents: Band-Aids for self-repair, gloves for protection from a hot engine, and the entire roll of duct tape.

Because that's what the first mechanic did. He had me wait in the driver's seat and start and turn off the engine, and he removed the air intake tube and put some duct tape over the hole. And it held, through a month of city driving and a set of long drives up to Wisconsin.

But after a furious day of driving late, the high speeds caused the engine to grow so hot as to melt the duct tape--yes, melt it--until the old split split again, and so split a new one at the other end of the eight-inch tube. Yesterday, when I started the car, the old bitch screamed and revved again, upset at being awoken, and I knew duct tape could no longer suffice.

Still, I tried. I used a whole roll and still it roared.

See, the air coming into the engine has to be restricted with this kind of car. The engine's computer only factors for so much air, and if more is coming in--say, through a hole in the intake tube--the engine compensates by revving to use up the oxygen, and the computer scrambles, and you get what I got: 4500 RPMs in park, and shudders and stammers at 60 MPH.

--

So I bought the part, and learned its name in the process.

Brought the new tube home in plastic wrapping, like a gift. Peeled it out with a screwdriver, and needled that tool to the old tube, feeble in its gray duct repairs at both ends like an old man using two canes. I unscrewed the clamps. With gritty gloves on, I extracted the tube and tossed it. The new one popped on like it lived there.

I screwed it down, cranked the key, and it purred. A big quiet cat, tamed by amateur hands. Gloved hands.

Then I drove the quiet car to a Home Depot, where I bought another roll of duct tape. You never know when you'll need another temporary fix.

--

Like the narrator in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, I like this kind of fixing. The easy solution, I know, is to have someone else take care of it--it's tempting, too, when plans start to hound. I don't mean to sound pretentious. I am not a mechanic, but I like to fix things rather than get them fixed. I'd sooner install my own shower head than call the plumber, and I'd sooner brush my own damn teeth than go to the dentist.

Doing it yourself also saves money. Convenience costs.

Today I had the naming of parts.

Grist

"In approaching a part, an actor should really have begun his work years ahead of time. That is, he should start as soon as possible to train his voice and his body so that his instrument of expression will be as responsive as he can make it...

Everything will be grist for his mill."

-- Carl Allensworth, in his The Complete Play Production Handbook

--

Grist comes from Old English, and it sounds like it does. Ironically, this word which describes the action of grinding or the material which is ground, has survived in its original form, with no warping or respelling, and no real descendants. We have relatives, but no grandchildren, of this great word. And even the quality of its expression calls forth sounds of minuscule destruction, grains toppled, tiny fragments falling apart in grit.

Humans develop languages, and they survive longer than we do, sometimes better.

--

Had a lazy morning which caused a crazy day. A deflating afternoon, and now, a remedial evening. I am the grist of my own grinding.

Casual

"I flew
With them in a plied exuberance of time,
My own malignance in their racy, beautiful gestures
Quick and lean: and in their riot too
I saw the stance of the artist's make,
The fixed form in the massive fluxion."

-- from Richard Eberhart's "The Cancer Cells"

--

Watched Ainadamar last night (for free). It's a new opera, only six years old, and it shows the passage of ideas and the passage of time. From the Spanish Civil War until now. It involves Lorca and the symbol of a statue, an actress swooning at memory in the wings of her final performance, and a pseudo-christic execution on a hill. Very moving. Innovative use of laptop sound effects synced with Flamenco patterns. An opera that was as much about theatre as it was about its story, which I was glad to see.

And it was only an hour and fifteen minutes long: shorter than most Disney films.

--

Learning their names is easy with pictures; hence, they smile for the camera before their monologues. Got through four today. Respectable progress, especially for a group of people whose time in theatre has mostly been spent watching.

I was so proud: Their criticisms were all constructive, their feedback pertinent. They do not know each other, but they have already grown enough with each other to give and take ideas with pleasure. They tied themselves in a knot today and had to unravel the blob of bodies. A girl on the tangle's edge kept trying to direct. It took a solid ten minutes of squealing at wrenching of twisting wrists, but they emerged, relieved, hand in hand, forming a giant circle, some facing in, some facing out, all smiling. I turned it into a living example of why performers need directors: because everyone is pulling in different directions, it helps to have an outside perspective.

They gazed into space and nodded. I'm going to assume it's because their paradigms were shifting.

--

I don't know what I would do in these sessions without college improv. What games we deemed inane and quickly abandoned they seize, and they enjoy the heck out of it.

There is an art to teaching, and a method. I feel the art comes naturally, and I know I do not know the method. But I learn as I go, as I hope they do, gleaning what lessons I can. Each session is a stairway and a single step at the same time.

--

Before I left, I was asked to go to the stage and watch another group while they waited for their instructor to return.

I went. They were settling into seats, gabbing about the cast list, giggling at unvoiced jokes. Some of them who did not know me came and asked who I was and what I was doing there, and when I told them, they lit up and asked, "Can you teach us a drama game?"

"Sure. Get up on stage and sit in a circle."

We played for fifteen minutes and when the teacher came back, I left with my head bowed, grateful. It's silly, but I feel like a professor half of the time.

Drama

"so much there to see
inside of a week they came looking for something
new try to press it flat inside of a few days..."

-- "The Earth Pressed Flat," by 10,000 Maniacs

--

Someone should have told them that sitting on laps at the first meeting does not make for a great first impression, nor does wearing lime green. Someone should have told them lots of things.

Alas. The one thing they've been told over and over for almost two decades of life is, "You're gonna be a star."

--

The summer camp began yesterday and continues today through several weeks. Taught my first "drama class," cropped by morning auditions running late. Most of the instructors are fierce, so I gave my class some fun, drilled zaniness. I just can't become Campbell, the cool teacher in high school, who grasped lightly and let the ropes slip easy, who patronized curriculum and decorum and other -um's, who swaggered down the hall with a train of smart rebel types like a moving barricade, whose vain grip tightened in spring when finals and reviews drew near like a drop-off, who ultimately lost control of the large group who loved him.

Time to twist the screws today, then.

--

I was the only instructor in jeans, a dress shirt and a suit jacket. I felt like a tool.

--

Recalled high school, too. Those who lived through it always talk about how awful it was, but the talk is touched with nostalgia. These kids don't know, they just don't know, and it's our job to remember what it was like not to know and think you did, and break that wall from the other side. We are locks trying to be doors.

Dependant

"This is why man will prevail, and why your kind will never dominate the earth. This is what you can do if you've got thumbs."

-- Turner & Hooch

--

My first July 4th with my family in years. I've always been working summerstock. We're in Wisconsin Dells, and for the Day we went to Mt. Olympus, a Hellenistic theme park. Poseidon's Rage, an unreal wave pool, was the highlight for me. Huge surges and leaps into white overtows, limbs slamming unheard beneath a pulling muscle of water.

Watched a TV special last night after the fireworks: Thrill Rides of America. Parks featured were Cedar Point, Hershey Park, Mt. Olympus and King's Island.

An odd quadrilateral on the map, and a casual coincidence. Cedar Point is in Sandusky, near where I worked those summers of summerstock. Hershey Park has been a family favorite for years. Mt. Olympus is where we are now.

And King's Island is in Cincinnati.

--

Dependent and dependant are homonyms, and I used to think they were interchangeable. They're not. The ending -ent is adjectival, the -ant nounal. So it would be right to say that most dependants are dependant upon others.

Yesterday was my first Independence Day as a non-dependant. When I turned 23, my military ID went bad, expired. And I'm on my own as far as insurance goes. That was the date of my independance.

This is on my mind because of the holiday. I wonder when was the moment or period in my life when I became independent. And then I wonder if you can really count yourself independent if you still consider your hometown home, if you're tethered to the same folks for vacations, if you still split the hotel room with siblings and parents.

--

Woke this morning to Turner & Hooch, some childhood glee. I couldn't see the screen from my spot on the blue inflatable mattress near the window, but how can you mistake a young Tom Hanks screaming about barking and dog food and how "this is not your room"? You can't.

For the scene where he and the woman (was it Mare Winningham?) start to make out in the kitchen while they're wearing bathrobes and underwear, my mom changed the channel. She skipped over CNN and stopped at the Cartoon Network. "There you go," she said.

Sharon looked at me. I looked at Sharon. We both covered our eyes in a mock gesture of seeing no evil.

--

I guess the answer to the riddle is that you can be independent and still get a dependant's treatment. It's a matter of realizing you are a subject and an object always, that all your furious pushing is someone else's pull.

If the knots are tight enough, you can never escape the ties that bind.

In fact, there can be joy in bondage. Dependants don't pay admission to theme parks, and they don't pick up the dinner bill.

Happy Independance Day.

Benchmarks

"I hear in my mind all of these voices
I hear in my mind all of these words
I hear in my mind all of this music
And it breaks my heart,
It breaks my heart."

-- Regina Spektor, "Fidelity"

--

Used to blog from my desk at the publishing company. With nothing really to talk about, I would report on the state's educational standards as they changed and came to our office. Changes in education legislation meant rewrites of textbooks, and it was always more complex than a simple switching of words. We had to reconceive whole sections, often breaking chapters apart and piecing them back together in a different order, which meant page layouts, graphic specs, and blocks of text kept changing.

From my part-time position, I could see how one new state requirement could spoil an entire textbook. The company is still failing. It's like playing a game where the rules keep changing.

--

Now, I'm copy editing a study guide to be used in conjunction with the workshops we offer. And I'm double-thinking again:

Skills of persuasion include "bandwagon, testimonial, glittering generalities, emotional word repetition, and bait and switch."

Let's try...

Bandwagon: Everyone's doing it; therefore, you should do it, too.

Testimonial: I did it; therefore, you should do it, too.

Glittering Generality: Your life is empty. Do this and be filled.

Emotional Word Repetition.: Zig Heil! Zig Heil! Zig Heil!

Bait and Switch: This is the best rhetorical skill, the Bait and Switch. Wouldn't we all agree? Don't we all believe in Bait and Switch? Yes? Bait and Switch. BS. We all have to believe the BS.

Sweetness

"For I feel like an experiment, I feel exactly like an experiment; it would be impossible for a person to feel more like an experiment than I do, and so I am coming to feel convinced that that is what I AM--an experiment; just an experiment, and nothing more."

-- Eve, in Papers from the Adams Family, by Mark Twain

--

This morning, I went back to the high school where I have my "residency" (instead of a single workshop, I revisit every week with the same kids, in this case, for eight weeks). The program takes place on the stage in the cafeteria, and only children who sign up are allowed in the workshop. The rest, along with bored-looking parents and jaded teachers, sit on the lower level at the lunch tables, fiddling with cell phones or doodling.

On the stage, we play.

It lasts two hours every Wednesday morning. About twelve of the kids are staples, and the rest come and go at random. It's unusual to lead any kind of activity when the children themselves get to decide when they need to leave, but those are the house rules. And we play by the house rules.

I've been trying to build their theatre savvy, starting with simple warm-ups and progressing into advanced games. Lately, this has meant variations on Charades, including the following:

- Props (Charades with a prop, where we have to guess not what you're doing but what the prop has become)
- Animals (guess by physicality and voice the animal being portrayed)
- Dance Moves (guess what kind of music a person is listening to based on how they're moving)
- Machines (guess what kind of machine a group of people are representing, again based on movement and sound)

They may see the connection, but they have fun anyway. And given that the summer program is so loose, "having fun" is really the only goal.

--

We were playing Zip-Zap-Zop. Clapping and sending "it" around the circle, making eye contact, keeping up the pace.

For those who aren't familiar: Zips keep it going, Zaps reverse direction, and Zops can go anywhere in the circle.

At times, I would break from my spot and instruct the group, advising on all kinds of situations: can you zop after a zap, is a zip the only response to a zop, etc. And then this happened:

GIRL. Mr. Chris!

MR. CHRIS. Yes.

GIRL. If she zops to him (points) and he zips to her (points) but then she zops across to me, can I make it go back?

MR. CHRIS. Yes. You can zap a zop.

ALL. Ooooohhh....

GIRL. (nodding with eyes closed) Sweetness.