Banking

"Mr. Banker, Mister, please,
How much does money mean?
Won't you reconsider, Mister?
Won't you do this thing for me?"

-- Lynyrd Skynyrd, "Mr. Banker"

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Opened a new account today at a regional bank. It's step #24 in my list of 3,000 things to do before I can feel secure again in my identity and finances.

My new Kentucky driver's license was a breeze to get. It's highlighter-green, and it won't expire for four years. When I'm carded and the other person can't find the birthdate, I may never again have to explain, "It's under the last A in Nebraska." Now, it's in red. At eye level. Below the other lines of red writing. Which is a harder explanation to give, but they're more used to the KY licenses around here, so it's kind of a moot point. I'm probably the only one who will have to look around the card until I find the information I want.

That's what I'm getting at: It's just a driver's license, not too different from the one I had but different enough, and as a result, it doesn't feel like mine. It feels like someone else's ID. I paid $20 for something that doesn't even belong to me.

Funny how one's self-image is affected by a piece of plastic.

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Had a meeting about music this morning. Met with the director of the holiday touring show and the musician who wrote the score, and we went through my adapted script cue by cue, song by song, making decisions about what stayed, what had to go. It took about one minute per page, and there are 43 pages. We sat and played tracks that were recorded probably over a decade ago. I noticed a lot of flaws in the script from a structural, nuts-and-bolts point of view: cues unnoted, lyrics miswritten, and even one troubling moment where all four actors were onstage and there was no one backstage to hit Play.

I have fixed said flaws. I think.

Tomorrow is the first read-through and rehearsal, and since I'm once again in charge of finding/making props, I've got a nice little project ahead of me. My biggest and most important task is to find two puppets: a teapot and a jack-in-the-box.

I have no idea where they are.

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My workshops have been going well. I've done the "Rough-Face Girl" workshop close to twenty times in the last two weeks, and I've got it down to a science. It's my favorite kind of workshop. We take an existing work of art--in this case, the book The Rough-Face Girl by Rafe Martin--and teach the children to duplicate it through some simple theatre exercises.

Here's how it breaks down. First, I read them the story of the Rough-Face Girl, an Algonquin Cinderella story. While I read, I ask them to act out certain moments while they remain seated. So for example, they pump their arms back and forth to simulate running. Then, we talk about the fairy tale and relate it back to the Cinderella story. (My favorite part about this discussion is when I write the name "Cinderella" on the board, and we dissect the word. The first part, "Cinder," refers to the soot that covered the girl's skin, and the "-ella" denotes beauty; quite literally, the name represents the character's journey from ugly to pretty.)

The second part of the workshop consists of the kids creating their own fairy tale using a madlib. They give three ideas for each category (good character's name, bad character's name, the setting, various verbs, a magical event, etc.) and then they vote. Once we have all the blanks filled, I read their fairy tale while they act it out, this time on their feet.

It's a huge hit (if I may say so myself). I certainly enjoy this one much more than the vague, social-conditioning workshops preferred by parochial schools in very rich or poor neighborhoods, the Bullying workshop, the Manners one, or the Self-Esteem one.

Give them something more concrete, and less vague, I say. Let's take works of art and imbue them with human life, through enacted experience. Theatre is the art that can combine all arts into itself; as such, we should use it whenever possible.

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Especially at a time when I need the release and escape that only theatre can provide, when I need to appreciate the value of real life through the vitality of fake life, these workshops can be a godsend.

At the bank this morning, the accounts manager sat behind his desk and I saw he had silver cuff links at the ends of his sleeves. They were the size of Superbowl rings.

"Are you employed, Mr. Stewart?" he asked.

"Yes. I work at the Children's Theatre."

"Oh? And what do you do for them?"

I told him. When I had the unsettling feeling that I had talked for too long, I stopped.

"Sounds fun. And interesting." He continued typing, those silver cuff links hovering over the plastic keys (so many letters and numbers and words) like chrome-plated angels sitting silent sentry over a dark city filled with depressing, depressed buildings and towers; and I told him that at the end of a really rough day how nice it is to remember that I get paid to share my talent. He said, "That is pretty cool."

"Yes," I said. "It's pretty cool."