The Snowbank Shakespeare Co.

The year I graduated from high school, May was warm and gorgeous.

I remember nights under the stars when we'd sit out in the park until after midnight talking about the future and all the plans we did or didn't have. After our all-night graduation party we watched the sunrise and then went for a morning swim in Brandon's pool. That's how warm it was.
It is once again that same time of May, but yesterday morning, everyone in the valley woke to a white slushy blanket of snow.
My first thoughts on looking out the window: 'How are we going to rehearse in this?'
This time last year, the Grassroots Shakespeare Company was just beginning it's brief but intensive rehearsal process--just eight days of evening rehearsals to stage an entire show.
This year we've gotten a head start and are nearly finished with an equally intensive process. But one that has been much, much colder as well.
We've rehearsed and performed in rain, wind, and some fairly chilly evenings, but never in the snow.
By the time evening rolled around, most of the snow had melted in an equally bizarre afternoon of shifting clouds and sunlight. We arrived at the park to find another bizarre scene. Most of the leafy, well-manicured trees in the park looked as though they'd been harrassed by Godzilla. Big chunks of elm and oak and maple were strewn in every direction, giant limbs ripped from their trunks by the weight of the late, heavy snow.
After we'd been rehearsing in the chilly night air, all of us freezing, I looked up, shivering, and said: 'Why aren't we burning the trees?!'
And there was no good answer. We collected a small pile of downed branches, stripped off their wet leaves, and then fed them slowly into a small fire we made in one of the barbecue units near the pavillion. It smoked and smoldered at first, but after serving the infant fire an appetizer of past term papers and last semester's handouts, it grew more hungry and able to consume the meaty twigs we gave it.
Our hands now warmed, we went back to our make-shift stage and finished blocking the epilogue of Romeo and Juliet.

Lunch with Clyde and Helen

The four of us, sitting down to lunch. My brother, my grandparents, myself.
Helen is blind now:
'Everything is blacker than black' she says. 'Except when there's some light. I can still see where the lights are'.
Clyde is more radically liberal than most of the twenty-somethings I know. He explains to us the history of racial oppression and then progress he's seen in his lifetime.
Helen talks about our microscopic size in the cosmos, and how beautiful our little sphere is.
Andrew responds: 'And wouldn't it be a shame, knowing that we are so rare in the universe, that this might be the only place in the vast expanses of space where such creatures speak to one another, and connect, and can even contemplate the fragility of their existence, if we were to destroy each other?

Praise whatever is there. Whatever is there is praiseworthy.

"The artist is a person whose business in life is to praise. Artists discover the wonders of nature and we call attention to those wonders. The theatre artist gathers people into a dark room and says to them, 'Look what we've discovered. Isn't this admirable? Isn't this wonderful? Isn't this awesome? Isn't this amazing?' An artist is someone who draws attention to what is praiseworthy in the Universe."     

--William Ball, A Sense of Direction

The 6 O'Clock News

I've made a decision and set a goal.
There are a lot of good things in the world that are worth talking about, and I'd like to make it my business to talk about them. There's this quote from William Ball in his book "A Sense of Direction" where he talks about the artist's whole purpose being to seek out the best things in life and champion them. He says the artist must find out what is good and worthwhile and share those things with the world. He goes on to say that this is especially the job of the director to attach himself to works that he can be passionate about, to share with actors the beauty and fragility of everything, and convey to the audience those wordless mysteries that can only be known through the catharsis of shared experience.
So if I am going to be an effective and passionate director, then I had better become pretty good at communicating beauty.
And so, I have set a goal: Every day at 6pm I will post about something in the world that I find interesting, thought-provoking, beautiful or otherwise worth sharing.
So I'll make a deal with you: you be my audience, and I'll do my best to make checking back here everyday worth your while. Deal? Alright.
Now go away and come back tomorrow.

Resolutions

I'm back! After four months of hopping state lines and living in roadside hotels, I'm finally home again.
I've actually been home for nearly a month now, but I'm only just beginning to feel like I'm back. Like I'm rooted and making connections again.
Touring was good for me. It taught me a lot about myself and what I'm capable of. It made me desperately anxious to finish college. Having an actual, honest-to-goodness, legitimate paying job in theatre put to rest a lot of fears and reservations I've had about going into the arts. Sure, it's a risk. Sure, not many people can make a living from it. But spending four months with nine other people that are actually making it work was really eye opening. And empowering. It's actually possible. You can actually make a living doing what you love. I don't know if I've ever believed that before because I know very few people that make it happen. Now that I've seen it, I can believe it. I feel I can move forward with confidence in the direction of my choosing. I will no longer wonder: "What am I going to do with a theatre degree?" Because the answer is simple: Theatre. I will use my theatre degree for what it was intended: working in theatre.

Glass Houses For Rent!

Just a stones' throw away.

Often Things Are Better Left Unsaid

I wonder if baby chicks ever decorate the insides of their shells before they realize it's all going to crumble around them?

I don't want to be back from tour. At least now I know that jobs exist out there that I could enjoy doing. I'm subbing as a tracker at Dixon this week, and while it's only a measly four hours a day, those four hours will feel at least twice as long as a full twelve-hour work day on tour. Turns out jobs don't always have to feel excruciatingly mind-numbing to be classified as work.
I'm looking for a car. A cheap one. Preferably a working one, though I will accept slightly busted.

Summer is coming, or already here, depending on which scale you use. According to the school scale, Summer has arrived for the cougars, and will arrive soon for the UVUers this week. My sister in High School will not see summer for another month. Of course the only true  measure of Summer commencement is the signal from a chorus of crickets that is yet to tune their instruments this year.

What goes around, comes around. Over and over again. And again and again.

I moved back into my parents house for the Summer. Or at least for the part of the Summer that I'll be here. I moved back into my old bedroom that I haven't lived in since high school. It's a nice room, the only room that's ever really been my room.

Do you think chickens ever realize that they're never going to fly the coop? Or do they always keep hoping for something better? Do they know that anything out there is better?

Allergies in full swing. Nose versus Nature. Nature always wins.

Anna came back from India. She's really tan. I can't tell if it's from India, or from tanning since she's been back. She seems happier. She's moving to Salt Lake this week. I'm jealous.

Can chickens really run around with their heads cut-off? Could I run around with my head cut-off? Do chickens' heads realize they've become detached?

I think my brother was upset that I left him for four months on tour. I would feel the same way if he had left me with that apartment all to myself. I feel bad about that. I love my brother. I need to make it up to him.

Who are you? What are you doing here? Why are you reading this?

Do chickens know that they're chickens? If not, what do they know?

My grandmother's blindness has affected her memory. She's come unstuck in so many ways--she asked me twice what month it was. She used to tell me the same stories over and over again in detail, her eyes darting back and forth scanning the intricacies of her inner imagery. Now she tells the same stories, but without any detail. Her eyes are clouded with cataracts. At least she still knows who I am. I still love to be with her. Her soft, knobby, leather hands are still the same. Still hold mine just the way they did when I was four years old.

Do dreams happen in real time, or faster than real time? Up to one third of your life is spent sleeping. If I live to be 90 years old, I will sleep for 30 years.

Wouldn't it be great if you could program your dreams? Like popping a dvd into a dreamplayer that would let you live out an alternate reality in your sleep. Or at the very least a book on tape. There's a lot you could learn in 30 years of dreaming if you could remember any of it.

I wonder if my grandma remembers what I look like?

I watched part of a show on the Discovery channel with Stephen Hawking talking about different ways to time travel. If you orbit a black hole in a spaceship, time will move slower for you than for everyone else in the universe.

My sister tried to tell me that chai was herbal tea. "Well it's made out of plants, isn't it?" Yes, it is, along with Coca leaves and Hemlock, which also make excellent herbal teas I hear. Everything that's natural is good for you.

I ate leftover chicken for dinner. It was dry, but had buffalo sauce on the side, which made it more bearable. What is it about that sauce that makes it buffalo? Did people ever eat actual buffalo with that sauce? Wikipedia says that buffalo sauce is named after Buffalo, New York where it originated. Wikipedia answers so many questions and destroys so many beautiful mysteries.

I saw Dan and Liz on Sunday. Rocklyn is teething. That's one thing I'm glad we get out of the way before we start remembering things. Can you imagine how traumatizing it would be to experience that as an adult? Especially if you didn't expect it and had no idea what was happening to you. Although, I suppose that's really a lot what puberty is like.

Standing in line at the Hollywood Video going out of business sale:
 Cashier: You got some good ones. And a lot of them for almost nothing--nice work.
Guy: Yeah, I totally did. It's always good when video stores go out of business.
Cashier: Good for you, at least.
That would be really hard to be faced with the fact that your job was terminal. Especially right now.
Cashier: Oh man, I think our printer just died.
Other Cashier: I call breaking it.
Cashier: Yeah?
Other Cashier: Yeah. With a baseball bat.

And other times, the things you think you shouldn't say out loud are just the things that should be said.

Avoidance

The other day I was wasting time surfing the web and had the urge to check up on an old friend, but I couldn't remember what their blog address was. I jumped around on several other blogs I thought might link up, but still couldn't find it. While I was in the process of doing this, I remembered that I had a link to their page on my own blog, but some sort of gut reaction inside me jerked and I realized that I didn't want to visit my blog.
Then I thought: well, that's ridiculous--why would I not want to visit my own page?
But after being unable to find a link on any other pages, and giving in and visiting my own blog, I realized that it was true. I was, in fact, avoiding myself.
Why would I do that?
I feel like I'm someone who's pretty comfortable in their own skin. I do ridiculous things onstage every day on tour. Really embarrassing things, and they rarely ever even phase me anymore.
But I am an avoidist. (Yes. I did just make up that word)
If something makes me uncomfortable or creates the potential of adding stress to my life, I will go to lengths great and small to avoid it.
For most people, the definition of 'efficiency' has something to do with maximizing the amount of work you can accomplish in the least amount of time while exerting the least amount of effort.
For me, efficiency, is more about achieving the greatest amount of action while minimizing the duration and intensity of discomfort. And perhaps I just described Mill's concept of 'utility' in a twisted sort of way. Backwards.
Am I really uncomfortable with myself, and I just don't know it? Consciously, at least?
Maybe I'm just becoming less comfortable with disclosure, with the idea of putting myself out there on a digital platter for any cyber snoop to take a sniff of.
Or maybe I just don't have that same need to express myself that I used to, or maybe my expressive needs are already being met at the moment. I definitely don't write much when I'm involved in an ongoing creative endeavor.
Then why am I writing now? Sometimes I write when I'm lonely. These hotel rooms are starting to feel more and more like home. A strange home where the sheets magically change themselves everyday, where you never have to go grocery shopping or redecorate. A home where no one is ever waiting for you unless you lose your key and have to go down to the front desk to get a new one.
...
I just got off the phone and I'm lonlier now than I was before.
But really I don't think it's lonliness. I think I'm not ready for this to end. Tour has been hard, but it's been so rewarding and gratifying and met my wants and needs in so many ways. I'm not ready to go back to everything old--to my shitty overpriced apartment that is less home than this Best Western. To all the jockeying and cloying of the theatre department.
I shouldn't complain, I've got a lot of really fantastic opportunities lined up for this summer, but in some ways it all seems like a demotion. I'm not ready to come back to earth, to my old self.