Mourning, Three Ways

We are just over halfway through the year, and there have been a stupid number of giant wrenches thrown into my life. And as I was crying this morning, I started thinking about how it all hurts, but somehow I feel completely different forms of grief for each of them.

FIRST:

In March, my dad died. He was 80, and not in good health (like most 80-year-olds), so I'd been trying to prepare myself for years. Each hospitalization, I found that I was bracing for the worst. But when he went to the hospital for the last time, a few days before he died, somehow I knew. I told a friend, "I don't think he'll be coming home." Unfortunately, I was right.

I took two days off work. Then it was the weekend, and I went back on Monday. A lot of people seemed surprised. For me, though, the question was: What's the alternative? Stay home and cry? And get further behind on the school play that we were rehearsing? I was calling my mom every day, and my brother was taking care of all the paperwork and legal stuff and the body donation, so for a bit, my felt my only real choice was to do something creative.

For me, rehearsal is something of a haven. I have a short period of time to get a certain amount of focused work done. There isn't time to think about much else that's outside of the space. For a couple of hours, I can maybe not cry. I can be productive. Creation can be deeply therapeutic.

Dad was here. Now he's not. That's a concrete thing that just IS. It sucks very, very much. It doesn't take a degree in rocket surgery to figure out why it's upsetting.

Hmm... This is harder than it looked...

Everyone who knew him is now experiencing the lack of him. Even those, who didn't know him, have had a loved one die. So lots of people understand.

Lots of things are working, but there's that one glaring missing piece,
and that takes all of my energy.

SECOND:

I have told very few people about this, because it is a deep and stabbing pain. My beloved school is having financial struggles, and as a result, they had to make the difficult decision to cut some positions completely. The theater teacher was one of those positions. That's me. I'm that position. Well, I was until mid-June.

I'm absolutely devastated.  I thought that would be the last job I ever had. 

I'm not seeking other teaching positions. I would be miserable anywhere else. So, I'm trying to figure out what my next phase is. 

My job is gone -- it's not like they really "fired" me and found someone else -- but the organization is still there. Maybe it's like a divorce? They told me, I'm keeping the kids, and you can visit if you want, but we are no longer together. You have to move out. 

Dad's death had nothing to do with me, personally. This does. For better or worse, I wrapped my job around me tightly and made it my identity. Now, I very suddenly don't have that identity anymore. I know it's for reasons that are not actually personal, but surely if I were a more popular teacher, or theater was as generally revered as art and music, that wouldn't have happened, right? If I had taken on more duties? Made more sacrifices? Been on more committees? Worked harder? Volunteered more?Surely, it's still my fault, even if it isn't. This is what my brain is yelling at me.

I am still going to be directing the school productions, so that's something. Something important. I am truly grateful for that. But I don't expect it to be emotionally easy.

It's not a clean break.

THIRD: 

This country, with this administration, is more blatantly "why the world hates Americans" than ever before. We are selfish, oafish, clumsy,  stupid, ignorant, a collective bully, and dangerous because not only do we think we have nothing to learn, we think that we can throw temper tantrums to get everyone else's lunch money, and they'll still bring presents to our birthday party. It's being run by people who clearly do not care about other people. We are Veruca Salt.

We the People want it NOW!

The well-being of every United States citizen is endangered. This administration has gutted every single thing that was evolving into the dream of "a more perfect union," an idea that we supposedly hold so dear. (I just now accidentally typed "hold so death," and considered not correcting it.)

I don't have enough time, or energy, to go into all the horrors of what living in the US has been turning into. It's easy to feel helpless and weak, but I know that only serves the oppressors. I've attended meetings and protests, I've called every politician I can, over and over, I try to be a safe person for the young people who need allies, I try to acknowledge my privilege and preconceived notions, I listen to people who experience the word differently than I, I try very hard to speak less than I listen, I try to see all sides of a story, I assume the best from others until proven otherwise, and I know that Occam and his razor are friends of mine. 

This means that when 100 women accuse one horrible man of doing horrible things,
the overwhelming odds are that each of his 100 alibis are BS.

I truly despise two specific historical truths to compare anything else to: slavery and WWII Germany. Even though I was very unsettled with how the country was being shaped by the numbskull currently residing at the House of White, I resisted comparing him and his administration to Mr. H and the Not-Cs. I'm over that now. It's clear that what's going on now is the answer to decades of Americans asking, "Why didn't anyone stand up to him?" 

Look it up your damn self. It's Dicktatorship 101.

To recap these current stages of mourning:

1. My dad has died. He was here, then he was gone. Lots of people are sad, albeit on differing levels.

2. I lost my dream job, due to circumstances beyond anyone's control (who is currently a part of that community). Others are upset, but I'm kind of alone on this one.

3. The whole country/world is being all upheaved, and the majority of The People are angry, scared, and don't fully know what to do to even just keep our civil rights, as they're yanked away, one by one.

So, like a lot of people right now, I am treading water. I'm trying to mourn the past and live in the present and plan for the future, all at the same time. I don't have any brilliant solutions, or even insights, about how to get through it. The best I can do right now is speak firmly the truth of empathy; find small, simple packets of beauty, and make sure others notice too; dance in the aisles of the grocery store; sing loudly, and laugh louder than that; look people in the eye and tell them that I love them; and be okay with the tears that spontaneously jump out of my eyes. 

Even if that's all I can do, my dad would be proud.

I will finish this blog post.

I need you to know that I've been writing blog entries. I just haven't been finishing them. Because, as it turns out, there are only 24 hours in each day, and I have been diagnosed with ADHD, so I flit from beginning to beginning, rarely seeing a project though to the end, unless there's an actual deadline and/or people are depending on me. I am constantly surrounded by projects that are in various states of "done," but I can't seem to find the time/energy/inspiration to complete them.

No, don't look. It's terribly embarrassing.

I have a very understanding partner.

All of this has gotten so much worse since I had the hysterectomy, three years ago, which slammed me into menopause. Usually, it's a much more gradual transition. I guess, if it happened all at once, then maybe I wouldn't have finished that either. Ha. 

That's me, on the far right. (The only time you'll ever find me there.)

So my goal is to write this and post it. It may not be anything profound or insightful, but at this point, I just need to finish SOMETHING.

Life changes, and the universe continues. I find it comforting to remember that the universe doesn't care about my issues. The only meaning to anything is that which I attribute to it. That gives me a lot of leeway, because I can't fuck up the world too terribly much, given the grand scheme of the billions of years and infinite space that exist without me. 

Menopause isn't the only transition I'm dealing with, of course. I've been hit upside the head with a couple of really major life transitions in just the last three months. I won't go into them now. I just don't feel like it. I'm not ignoring them. I couldn't, even if I wanted to, and I don't want to. I'm accepting and trying to learn how to adapt and move on, holding on to what I've learned about myself, being open to learning more, and letting go of that which no longer serves me.

Growth can't happen if you become too comfortable. Growth has a way of ambushing you.

I have kept this quote in my back pocket for decades.
I just have to be reminded to look at it from time to time.

I do not like this phase of growth and change. It hurts. I want to retreat from everything. But goddamn it, I will learn to roll with these punches.

Meeting Students During COVID, or "Don't I know (part of) you?"

School started this week. We are back in the building, full-time, for the first time since COVID bit us in the butt in March of 2020. Seventeen months, almost to the day. Which makes this the third school year that has been butchered by the pandemic. 

I'm not going to go into the horrors of teaching via Zoom. That topic has been beaten to death, and even I can't handle another freaking article about 384 WAYS TO ENGAGE STUDENTS ONLINE or TEACHERS NEED TO PRACTICE SELF-CARE, EVEN THOUGH TEACHING ONLINE TAKES UP 30 HOURS EACH DAY, with a bunch of completely unrealistic, even infuriating, "tips" that really only give you even more to do between crying jags.

Just this graphic is enough to send me over the edge, even without the Comic Sans.

Neither am I going to broach the topic of teaching in Covidland, with the landmines of distancing and mask-policing, the differences between Delta symptoms and allergies, the uselessness of taking temperatures at the building entrance and of not sharing pencils.

So... I got vaccinated as soon as I could find an appointment, March 7, 2021. This turned out to be about a month before we returned to school.

One and done, baybee!

We returned to the building in April of 2021, just over a full year after we left. We'd spent August 2020 through March 2021 online. (Actually, some of us spent June through March online, offering fun and/or useful summer "classes" via Zoom, because we were trying to keep the kids in touch with other humans.) When we came back to the building, of course, school did not vaguely resemble normalcy. Some students did not, for various reasons, join us in the building, and we spent the rest of the school year navigating "synchronous" learning (some students in person and some online, at the same time), which was even more difficult than completely virtual.

Some students are in the room, some are Zooming in,
and teachers are holding fistfuls of their own hair while screaming into the void.

When Coterie Theatre classes moved online in 2020, with everyone else's,  I had already been teaching online for months. It was exhausting, emotionally and mentally, so I told my beloved Education Director, Amanda, that I simply couldn't face doing more of it. She was sympathetic, and I ended up taking the summer off, for the first time ever. Of course, we had no idea that online teaching would become the norm, into the fall and so far, far beyond. 

But this year, I'd been vaccinated, and so I agreed to teach in person this summer. Maybe I had some idea, when I first accepted the class offers, months before they were to start, that we would be able to go sans masks. I'll chalk it up to being optimistic, I guess. Maybe naïve is closer to the truth. 

I'm not saying that elephants are the only ones, or that no elephants pay heed to scientists,
but there does seem to be a pattern.

Every week, a new class started, at a different satellite location, with different students, who were every age between 5 and 18. All of them, masked.

And this is the point of this post: I didn't know what my students looked like. When they took off their masks for a brief snack break, I was always a little surprised. I realized that I'd mentally filled in their appearance, above their necks and below their eyes, and they didn't actually look like what I'd imagined.

Oh, the lower half of your face is that of a wolf?
Well, that will help me when I run into you at the store, post-COVID

As I pondered this, I thought back to last fall, when we had new students at school, and I'd met them on Zoom. I only knew their faces. It didn't occur to me that this would pose any kind of problem, but then we had an outdoor, masked social gathering for the whole school. Suddenly, I knew no one, because the only thing I'd known them by, their faces, were the only things that I could no longer rely on for identification. What made it worse, of course, was that so many students were adverse to turning their cameras on during class, so they could identify me, but I could not reciprocate. It became a joke as we parted: "Nice seeing how tall you are!"

Other staff and faculty members were experiencing the same thing, and we were all asking each other who that student, over there, was. I had to rely on things like their taste in jewelry and their hair color - which, if you know anyone of this age, you know the likelihood of their hair remaining the same color for more than a week is pretty slim.

But you have to be Marnie, your hair is pink!

And now, here we are, at the beginning of the third COVID-smashed school year. We have many new students at school, and they are all masked. On Day One, I already had a hard time in one class, differentiating between three girls with straight, blonde hair.

This time, at least, I'll be able to use their height and mode of dress as identifiers. If we are ever able to be safe from COVID without masks - a possibility that seems more remote with each passing day - that will be helpful.

Are you sure you live here? Can you show me some identifying birthmarks or scars?

(Fill in the blank)ING IN THE TIME OF (fill in the blank)

"HERE IS GOOD": Social distancing in the theater

This is going to be one of those posts. I hope it will also be more than that.

In March of last year, my school was about halfway through rehearsals for It Can't Happen Here (which I thought was important to present before the election), when we went on Spring Break and never came back. The novel coronavirus, known as CoVID-19, hit this country, and everything shut down. 

At first, my school just extended Spring Break by a week. Then two. And teachers everywhere had to learn a new way of teaching, never being in the same room with our students, NOW. It was extremely stressful. I cried a lot.

Isolate at home. Social distance. Hand sanitizer. Face masks must cover both your nose and mouth. No bandanas or gaiters, those aren't the same as face masks. Hand sanitizer. Wear latex gloves when you go out. Wipe down your groceries with anti-bacterial spray when you get home from the store. Hand sanitizer shortages. Toilet paper shortages? Essential workers. No restaurants, bars, gyms, concerts, movie theaters, weddings, funerals. Sanitize your hands after getting the mail, then let the mail sit for 24 hours before you open it. At least six feet apart from anyone you don't live with. No handshakes, no hugs, no pats on the back. Hand sanitizer. Droplets. Aerosols. No shouting. No singing.

But shouting and singing are all I know how to do.

Then school didn't come back into the building. I emailed the students in the cast and crew, canceling the show. I cried.

Broadway shut down indefinitely.

Teaching online proved to be far more exhausting than any of us realized. It became routine that, within an hour of my final class on Fridays, I was crying, and/or asleep.

As difficult as it was for me, I know it was harder on the students. We have an awesome school counselor who really emphasized the need to focus on the mental and emotional health of our students, as well as ourselves. Of course, parents were struggling too. Our world changed, practically overnight, and we were all navigating territory that we hadn't even imagined.

I went back to the school building in May, to pick up some materials and clean a few things out before summer... And everything was frozen in time. The rehearsal calendar was still on the callboard. There were costumes that we'd started to pull, still laid out in piles onstage. The backdrop had been chalked out, but would never be painted.

Hm. Red and blue costumes. It's not Romeo and Juliet, 
so I wonder what the color scheme of this play about
a revolution against a demagogue President could possibly indicate?

I sat down in the empty theater and, as a surprise to absolutely no one, I cried.

Over the next few weeks, theaters closed down. Many, many friends, who were contracted for various summer shows, were suddenly out of work. We thought: hang on until fall. 

I lost work too, as a teaching artist for The Coterie, a job I've cherished for over a decade. There's no teaching in person, and I couldn't handle anymore Distance Learning. The education director was very understanding, and I can't even imagine the pressure she was under.

The Kansas City Fringe Festival voted to go completely online. Bryan and I had been writing a play about the 19th Amendment, which was turning 100 years old in August. The way the play was structured, we decided, would not communicate well if it wasn't onstage. So, for the first time since 2008, we sat out.

Equity told union actors and stage managers that they were not allowed to work until further notice. No theater in the foreseeable future.

George Floyd was murdered, on video, by a grinning police officer. Black Lives Matter. So much police brutality toward peaceful protestors, all over the country. My niece was one of the countless who found herself in a cloud of tear gas.

A senior at school organized a #BLM protest, with help and support from faculty. About 75 people from our school community showed up, having wanted to participate with the larger protests, but frightened by CoVID, as well as police with flashbangs and tactical gear and tear gas and guns.  

KCA students walk the walk.

My school tried many things to keep in contact with students and parents, to stay in touch with people who couldn't go anywhere, do anything, be with anyone. Some of us volunteered to teach online classes and one-off workshops through the rest of the summer. I taught History of the Marginalized, a class that I'd been proposing for years, a play-watching discussion group, and beginning crochet.

Bryan's grandmother died, but CoVID had already rendered funerals nearly impossible.

I spent the summer reading as many "monologue" plays as I could get my hands on, in an attempt to find one that we could do at school, with social distancing. 

I realized that, in all my years as a theater professional, the fear of not having work was never because there simply wasn't any.

I directed an online reading of the play Bryan and I had written for Fringe. It took way longer and was way more difficult than any of us realized when we started. Fortunately, the cast was brilliant and imaginative and brought so much to the project. But it was exhausting and it was not theater.

My mom got rushed to the emergency room, and admitted to the hospital. I couldn't visit her, because of CoVID. (She's okay now.)

School started again. Online. It's no easier than in the spring.

I submitted a document of seven possible scenarios for a theater production at school in the fall semester. Each scenario was exhaustively thought-out. The principal and I agreed on one, where there'd be no more than four actors, performing monologues, on any given night, and no more than 15 masked audience members. All actors would have their individual entrance/exit, so backstage would be distanced as well. For the first time, I insisted upon reservations, so we could separate groups by the minimum six feet. And so many other details. So many.

My mom had major surgery, but I couldn't visit her, because of CoVID. (She's recovered well.)

I held auditions for the school play. I made up a rehearsal schedule, so no more than three students were rehearsing at any given time. We all wore masks and distanced from each other.

My dad was taken to the emergency room, and admitted to the hospital, but I couldn't visit him, because of CoVID. (He's fine now.)

Rehearsals were only 60-90 minutes long; again, to limit our time together. Most people were only called to rehearse one a week, occasionally twice. It was incredibly hard to get any momentum going.

My god, how they tried, though!

I twice asked for help building the set, from one tech-knowledgeable student, whom I knew I could trust to focus and be safe. Another student and her mom came and started to organize the costume room, which desperately needed it. The rest of the time, it was me, alone. Often, crying. Because, as I tell my students, theater isn't meant to be done alone.

The presidential election. All elections, for me, are stressful. Presidential elections, almost overwhelmingly so. The anxiety surrounding this presidential election was nearly unbearable.

Then, it didn't end. The current President demanded recount after recount, and lawsuit after lawsuit, because he insisted, publicly and angrily, that he actually won. "By a landslide," in fact. The electoral college had voted 306 to 232, so there was no way. But still, he lied and shouted and insulted. Lawsuits were either lost or thrown out. He furiously claimed - "baselessly," as every news outlet agreed - that it was all a conspiracy against him, and he had been reelected. His followers got louder, and waved signs saying "Stop the Steal" of the election from their fearless (read: deranged and dangerous) leader.

Less than two weeks before we opened, a cast member's parent was diagnosed with CoVID. That meant, among other things, that student would have to quarantine for two weeks. So she couldn't do the show, and I had to rearrange the performances. That included checking with the other actors to make sure they could be there on different nights, and contacting folks with reservations to offer alternate performance nights.

But a few days later, we made the connection that second cast member had been to the first's house only two days before the diagnosis. (The parent has since recovered, by the way.) So she too had to quarantine for two weeks. What's more, she'd been to rehearsal twice since that visit, so everyone who had been to rehearsal with her had to quarantine, at least until she got her test results back. And that included me. Rehearsals had to be suspended.

It was less than a week before we were to open.  

So, on Monday of production week, before test results were back for the second cast member, I made the horrible decision to cancel the show. Again. 

I cried. A lot. I'm starting to cry right now, in fact, just thinking about it.

My dad had major surgery, but I couldn't visit him, because of CoVID. 

I was so scared. At this point, it was most likely a cumulative effect. I mean, yeah, it was his heart, but also, just everything. It was only a couple of days before Thanksgiving. He was, incredibly, released the next day, feeling great.

Two of the cast members were moving out of state over winter break, so I hurriedly scheduled time with them to video their monologues. They had a hard time grasping why we had to do so many takes. I was suddenly teaching acting for the camera, but without time to actually teach it.

The CoVID vaccine was released. An unbelievable scientific achievement.... that the President has decided to take credit for.

Christmas was virtual. And with all families' Christmases being virtual, Christmas was also very short. 

Despite over 300,000 American people dead of CoVID, many people still followed the President's early claim that it's a "Democratic hoax" that's "no worse than the flu." Wearing a protective face mask in public is an infringement of their personal rights, they continue to say.

New Year's Eve was virtual. The general feeling is 2020 was obviously cursed, so 2021 had to be better, right?

The Georgia run-off election. Control of the Senate was riding on it. The President continued to insult and lie about that too. 

It was finalized the next day: both Democrats won. Before we could fully take it in, the outgoing President, who was holding a rally at the White House, again proclaimed, with absolute certainty, based in nothing that resembles reality, that reelection had been "stolen" from him, and set his vitriolic followers on a march to the Capitol Building. 

Insurrection. Violence. Destruction. Attempted coup.

Impeachment #2. A new record. Congratulations.

Pictured: Sick and tired of winning.

And there's so much more, always. Every second of every day, it seems there's more to worry about.  My worry cup is overflowing, and so I put myself on a news diet, but then I feel guilty because I know it's my privilege to be able to do that at all.

The point is: A (whole, real, amazing amount of) lot has hit all of us, at the same time, for an unbelievably long time. I can't stand the term "unprecedented times" anymore. That it's true only makes me more sick of it. The hits just keep on coming.

But I'm an adult. I have a lifetime of figuring out various coping mechanisms. Even though we're ten months into a pandemic that's just getting worse, and affects more facets of daily life than I ever would have imagined, I can hold on. I can figure out how to muddle my way through, hide when I need to, kick myself in the ass when I need to. In a depressive valley, I know that I will, at some point, find the sun again. 

You're welcome for the earworm.

My students haven't entirely figured that out yet. They're amazing people - smart and kind and caring - but they don't have the life experience to know about the sun. Because sometimes it's dark for way longer than you ever knew it could be. It's hard to remember that the ice will melt and flowers will bloom. 

As I get older, the Dark Times take up a smaller percentage of my life. For young people, though, the same length of time is actually far longer, in comparison to how much life they've lived. Yet, I hear so many adults crabbing on them about being lazy. They're not lazy, they're just spending all their energy trying to survive without any tools.

I have tools. I still have income. I have a house. I have a support network, health insurance, food, clothes. I have agency. I am extremely lucky. I have all of this, but I'm still struggling, daily. 

Young people don't have any tools, but they're somehow expected to bounce back better, sooner, higher than the rest of us? That's not fair to saddle them with that. 

So if they learn nothing academic from me this year, but are still able to periodically find joy and hope, maybe even optimism, I'm going to call it a win for us all.

Pictured: Sick and tired and winning.

Learning the Language of a New Production

Language fascinates me.

I will never tired of etymology.

I've said many times that dissecting words was one of the most important things I've ever learned. And it's something that my interest in language led me to do on my own. No one taught me, and that's a damn shame.

I have many multi-lingual friends. I have a friend who speaks five languages, including one I'd never even heard of, which happened to be her first. I have another friend who, over the course of her life, has practically collected languages: Armenian, Arabic, Russian, Turkish... I can't remember them all. I have friends who are ASL interpreters. Friends who teach French, Spanish, Chinese. And, although I have no scientific research to back this up, my guess is that most non-Americans in the world speak at least two languages.

Then there are languages of vocation that are complete mysteries to me. I have a friend who's a midwife. Sometimes I send her screengrabs of my medical test results, so she can explain them to me. Another friend is a neurologist. Another has a PhD in geology. I mean, jeez, I barely passed my geology class in college, and do you know why? Because they're ROCKS, man. I can't tell the difference. But Adam is a DOCTOR, of ROCKS. Totally different language there.

Pictured: How I learned that showing up, every morning, to an 8:00 am college science class can 

earn you a grade that your test scores would deem completely impossible.

I speak Theater. It's a language spoken by most of my friends, at least conversationally. We all understand "flies" and "upstage" and "FOH" and "call times." We know "Thank you, five" and "Q2Q" and "curtain speech" and "call board." We understand what someone means when they describe something as "Brechtian" and we know that "absurd" is not the equivalent of "weird." Some will converse at length about Artaud and Boal and Heathcote.

I get frustrated when people who don't speak Theater assume they understand anyway.  Kind of like when Archie Bunker put an "o" at the end of words so Spanish-speaking people could "understand" him.

ARCHIE BUNKER: Hey, good boy, Pedro. HECTOR ELIZONDO: I am not a boy. I am a man. And my name is Carlos. ARCHIE BUNKER: "Carlos" it is, Pedro.

I was in my first play when I was ten years old. I directed my first play when I was 24. I started teaching acting in the early 2000s. Since 2012 (when I thought to start counting), I have had 1,345 theater students. I cannot even begin to remember, let alone count, the hundreds (thousands?) of productions that I've been involved in, as an actor, playwright, director, assistant director, acting coach, props or costumes or set or lighting or sound designer/crew. That's a lot of experience, and yet I am still so far from knowing even one one-jillionth of All Theater Stuffs that I can't even perceive of ever being close to regarded as any kind of expert.

Case in point: Last year, at school, I decided that our spring production would be two one-acts. Because directing two one-act plays would be the time/effort-equivalent of directing one two-act play, right?

Sooooo not right.

Kind of like how four warm-weather American cities are equal to one frozen continent...?

It's directing two plays, at the same time. As it turs out, the length of the material doesn't matter, because each play is completely different in every way except length: directorial concept, tech (props, costume, set, lighting, sound) design, cast, pacing, genre... everything. Including, I discovered, language.

Each play, each production, each cast, and each cast member has a different language. I've recently discovered this, and that if I'm not open to learning the new language of each new set of circumstances, it leads to misunderstanding, frustration, and resentment.

At school this past spring, I directed The Laramie Project. I knew it would be tough, emotionally, physically, and every other way. I was right about that.

But I didn't expect the language barrier. Not with the cast, but with the process.

The Laramie Project has about 80 characters in it. It's written for eight actors. We had eleven in our production. (Kansas City Academy is a very small school.) That means everyone played 6-8 characters. Tricky for them. What was unexpected for me, as I was blocking (writing down where everyone moves onstage) it, was keeping track of 80-ish characters at all times. Writing blocking for eleven actors? No problem. Writing blocking for 80 characters, most of which are invisible at any given time? Lots of problems.

I had to figure out ways to record "where we left the character" onstage, as most of them are recurring, and so had different costume pieces or props, which would be left behind as the actor crossed the stage to "pick up" a different character.

  

How much sense does this make?

Is it at least better than this? 

Because they say the same thing.

For instance, if Jeffrey (there's no Jeffrey at my school) entered downstage left as McCool (there's no McCool in Laramie Project), then crossed upstage right, and entered next as Petunia (don't look for Petunia either), we had to remember that "McCool" was last seen UR, so when we needed McCool again later, Jeffrey had to make it back there to put McCool's hat back on before his next entrance. At the same time, if Petunia exited the stage up left, before Jeffrey portrayed Golfer #4 (there's no golf), we had to make sure Golfer #4's stuff was UL, and that Jeffrey had to return there to get Petunia's eyeglasses and scarf. Right? And since there's a Golfer #4 (no, there's not), that indicates that there are at least three other Golfers that aren't Jeffrey, and they need to know where their golf clubs/characters are too.

And so on. But that example was just Jeffrey, and three of his characters. Now multiply that by eleven actors and 80 characters. (That math doesn't actually work out, but you get the point.)

So, I had to develop an entirely new language, for me at least, to figure out where actors were, which was different from where characters were, how to move them all around the theater, and how to communicate all this to the cast, many of whom had never been onstage before.

I won't go into details, just know that the whole thing gave me a brain ache.

But wait! There's more! Because this was basically all for me. What about the actors themselves?

First, not all actors were in the habit of actually coming to every rehearsal that they were called to. (Responsibility and accountability are things a lot of adults haven't even learned.) So I had to use place-keepers, so everyone who actually showed up to rehearsal could keep track of where a missing actor was supposed to be.

So, stuffed animals with actors' initials. Yup.

Seen here: My prayer that fewer than five actors would be gone at any given time.

So, that takes care of the actors. But what about all of those characters? They're invisible, until we have costumes and props, and that makes them very difficult to keep track of. Enter recyclables.

The role of "Jen" in tonight's rehearsal will be played by Creamcheese Containerlid.

The actor could pick up, say a Triscuit box, which represented their current character, and would know exactly where that character was "left" at all times, and so could know where they had to be onstage before that character appeared again. Oy.

So that's my phrasebook for Laramiese.

The language of The Man in My Beard (AKA The Ballad of Frank Allen, by Shane Adamczak), the show we presented at this year's KC Fringe Festival, was completely different. Because duh. Different show, different language.

J. Will Fritz and Bob Linebarger

Photo: Crawford

Bob Linebarger and J. Will Fritz

Photo: Crawford

Did I mention that there were songs too? Yeah, songs too.

Photo: Crawford

Part of the necessity for the invention of a new language here was the fact that I cast four people in a two-man show. The play was written for a bare stage, but I had this awesome (?) idea that we could enhance the story with the use of projections and shadow-play. So I cast two people to pretty much live behind an onstage screen for the entire show.

You know what they say: Three hands, warm heart.

"This won't be confusing at all," or anything remotely similar to this, is not even close to any thought I ever had, before actually starting rehearsal.

First, in addition to Bob and J. Will, who were seen during the whole play, I had to block people who weren't actually onstage, and yet, they were an integral part of the production and had to do stuff to keep the show moving. But I couldn't see behind the screen to know who would be doing what, so I couldn't write that "Jill does this" and "Natalee does that" with any knowledge of that actually being possible. So, I ended up writing "SFX" (how the kids these days spell "special effects") does this and that. Easy enough. Except...

There were many different types of effects: transparencies for the Olde Tyme overhead projector, shadow acting, and sound effects. So, the titles "SFX: TRANS," "SFX: SHADOWS," and "SFX: SOUND" started appearing all over my copy of the script.

SFX: TRANS + SFX: SHADOWS: 

Bob and Jill Gillespie's shadow, out to dinner. Also, slight political barb.

SFX: TRANS + SFX: SHADOWS: 

Bob, Natalee Merola as "Old Lady in Hat at the Bakery," J. Will 

So, yay. That's taken care of. Now, back to directing...

These. Two. Simultaneous. Shows.

They're onstage at the same time, but the show in front of the screen and the show behind the screen are very, very different. They're dependent on each other. They interact with each other. They cue each other. But they're not the same play. They're two halves of a whole. But they're still separate, with very disparate needs and I had to figure out how to talk to them both, at the same time, in two distinct languages.

How, at this stage of my career, do I still not realize what I'm getting myself into? Me and my bright ideas. Rushing headlong into a potential theatrical imbroglio.

And then, figuring it out. Or at least, trying to. Maybe that's the whole point. If I really knew what I was getting into, I might avoid doing it.

I don't feel like I dream big. I do, at times, dream weird. I dream in color. I dream in language.

The DeVos Debacle, Part 2

Introduction to Part 2

If you're new here, I would recommend reading the intro to Part 1, and save us both a bunch of time. In fact, read all of Part 1, otherwise, you'll probably be very, very lost. I know I was, and I was there.

If you're continuing on this journey, here are the next installments to my DeVos diary. The dates are when I originally posted them on Facebook.

***

Thurs, 9-21-17

Episode Five: Saved by the Betsy

In our last episode, Tara was talking to US Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos. With no one else speaking up, Tara started the roundtable discussion by asking DeVos' about her plans for Title IX, referring to the a appalling announcement she'd made in a 30-minute speech one week before. Tara asked the question twice, and DeVos continued to give non-answers, so Tara decided to be direct:

"Okay, so, do you know you're not answering the question?"

***

"When the person I'm looking at stops moving their mouth,

that's when I say the memorized sound bites, right?"

DeVos paused slightly. "Well, I... I think I am," she stammered. "I think that, very broadly, every student needs to be in a - "

Oh, not this shit again. I once more interrupted her.

"Well, very broadly, but that includes, you know, being able to report when they're not safe and making sure that that's taken seriously. It's already difficult enough - for people who have been harassed and abused, et cetera, it's already difficult enough to be taken seriously because we are undeniably living in a rape culture, and by making it more difficult to make those complaints heard, and take those complaints seriously, then the children that you say deserve to be safe, are no longer safe. I shouldn't say 'children,' I should say 'young people.' Really, it's all of us, actually."

There. Dodge it again. I dare you.

As if this was an entirely new spin on my previous four attempts, DeVos started, "But if your question with regards to Title IX is specifically with regard to sexual assault - "

Un-freaking-believable.

"Well, that's what you've been talking about recently." ... you spineless little...

"And I have applauded the last administration, " she said, "for really raising this issue and wanting to address it in a very comprehensive way, and continue to believe that sexual assault needs to be taken very, very seriously, and never again swept under the rug, and at the same time, it is also important that due process is taken seriously."

Hm. Sounds familiar. Oh, right. That's some of the exact phrasing she used in her speech last week.

"Do you feel it's not?" I asked. I mean, there are countless rapists out there, who actually got charges pressed against them (rare), were put on trial (very rare), found guilty (almost unheard of), only to be released because the court decided that such a conviction might ruin his future. It's absolutely sickening.

"It hasn't been, in a lot of circumstances," DeVos asserted, "and, in fact, a lot of students who have been victims and survivors become re-victimized because we have situations where due process has not been followed, and then they have to be re-adjudicated, and they become victims again. We really need to have a balanced approach where everybody's rights are taken very seriously and respected."

"Okay, but it seems - "

I was interrupted by a very worried-looking faculty member. "I think we need to give some other people a chance to ask some questions, and actually, Secretary, I have a question for you: Have you ever been in a school this small before?"

Later that night, at a bar with many KCA community members, a teacher who was sitting across from me during the meeting told me that this was the point at which my knees started jumping up and down in a furious tempo.

"Furious" is an excellent word for it.

Actual photo of a KCA classroom. Apparently.

Sat, 9-23-17

In our previous episode, Tara was asking US Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos about her plans for Title IX. DeVos gave long and involved non-answers, and Tara called her on the dodge. Tara continued to press and then...

"Okay, but it seems -"

I was interrupted by a very worried-looking faculty member. "I think we need to give some other people a chance to ask some questions, and actually, Secretary, I have a question for you: Have you ever been in a school this small before?"

Later that night, at a bar with many KCA community members, a teacher who was sitting across from me during the meeting told me that this was the point at which my knees started jumping up and down in a furious tempo.

"Furious" is an excellent word for it.

***

I was not angry at the suggestion that someone else should have a turn to speak. Not at all.

I was angry that progress finally seemed to be made, and she was "rescued" by the change of subject, apparently so she wouldn't feel too uncomfortable, or leave with some sort of bad feeling about KCA. She doesn't need protection from us; we need protection from her.

I was angry that the interruption was cloaked in the lie that  "other people" should have a chance to talk, and then this same person took that time for themselves.

But I was absolutely livid, beyond compare, that the interruption of a time-sensitive and dangerous conversation, like changing federal policies on dealing with campus sexual assault, came in the form of a question of astounding vapidity. "Have you ever been in a school this small before?"

How insipid. How denigrating.

And DeVos answered it. "Um... I have... Probably more in my hometown area, in Grand Rapids, in years past..."

Gross.

I'm totally not mentally pairing this image with an evil scientist laugh.

Another teacher then introduced herself as having a long career in public schools, and asked DeVos if she was planning on visiting any of those. DeVos named exactly one. The teacher went on to say that she implemented a lot of her observations of KCA, from when her child was a student here, in her public school classroom. She expressed confidence that some of these methods would work in a public school setting, and asked how DeVos planned on supporting that.

In her 30-second reply, DeVos twice used each of the following: "Rethink School," "community," "changes," and "embrace." I phrase it in this way because there wasn't really an answer in any of that.

So, the teacher asked, "But how will the United States Department of Education support that, those efforts?" She listed a number of requirements, such as time and money, to make this happen, and also slipped in the suggestion that we do away with some of this "onerous standardized testing." (This is when I would have turned on the APPLAUSE sign.)

Oh, don't mind me. I'm just sitting over here with my HELL, YES.

DeVos answered that the "Every Student Succeeds Act, which all of the states are putting plans together right now, takes an important step in that direction. Congress' goal was to return flexibility to the states and to, you know, undo a lot of the burdensome regulation" ...I admit to a snort of laughter at this, but no one seemed to notice... "oversight from the federal level. I'm very much aligned with that, and think that states and even all of the state commissioners and superintendents, and all of the leadership at the state level - I'm encouraging them to grant that same kind of flexibility to local districts and even local school buildings. I think the change is going to happen the most significantly at a grass roots, local level, where communities address the needs that they have, right there, and if they can do that, free of a lot of burden from higher up, it's going to allow it to happen much more quickly."

The count for that last answer:

"State"/"states": 5

"Local": 3

"Federal": 1

It seems pretty obvious the significance that the US Secretary of Education puts on the existence of the US Department of Education.

***

I've come to the end of what I wrote in the days following the visit. I will consult my detailed records of the visit, and be back with the rest of the story as soon as possible. Though I think it's really important to share the story, it's hard finding time for this; I'm a teacher, you know.