I should be driving to work right now. I should be getting ready for students. I should be meeting new staff, watching Important Blood-Borne Pathogen safety videos. I should be talking about changes to the Common Core, I should be wearing a staff t-shirt and khaki pants.
I am doing none of that today. And I will say this: it’s a bit weird. It’s not a lie to say that I love my job, and it’s also not a lie to say that I desperately needed to be doing something different this year.
So this is the song that’s running through my head right now.
Good luck on the first day back, people. Thinking of you today, but glad I’m not there.
The Cliffs of Moher, ten years ago. Photo taken by a very nice German girl who looked like Maura Tierney. I had lunch with her and a group of fellow students who were in Galway for the summer, taking English lessons….I think.
Salthill promenade, just a bit southwest of Galway city, mid-July 2012. The beard is obviously an attempt to compensate for the lack of hair on top. (See previous photo. Sigh.)
Oh, and for some reason there was a very large scale model of the Titanic set up along the promenade. I have no idea why it was there, but it was a pretty cool model.
EDIT: I believe that picture was taken at the cliffs, but now that I look at it, it seems like I’m nowhere near any high cliffs. So maybe it was taken somewhere else. I dunno.
One of the first things I did after arriving in Ireland was head out to Galway, one of my favorite cities. I first visited Ireland exactly ten years ago, and Galway was the city that made me fall in love with this place.
I had a ticket to see Sigur Ros play as part of the Galway Arts Fest, but unfortunately, they canceled at the last minute to continue work on their () album. I still had a fine time in Galway, and it’s a city I return to again and again. It’s a big “small town”, easily navigable, full of great restaurants and pubs, and you can waste a day just walking along the bay.
So after a miserable week in my (first) apartment in Dublin, I decided I needed to get out of town and be a tourist again. (I’ll tell the whole story of that disastrous first place another time.) I wanted to ride a train for a few hours, and I wanted a nice hotel room with decent wifi, and I wanted to catch some of the theatre going on at the 2012 Galway Arts Fest, to remind myself why I was here.
I also wanted to see Lisa Hannigan live.
My students may remember me playing her in class this past spring. A LOT. She’s been my latest musical obsession for the past nine months or so, and I had missed her three times up to this point.
So after wandering around Galway and Salthill for a few days, watching street performers and fringe theatre from college kids, and eating at my favorite restaurants, I caught the lovely Irish singer Lisa Hannigan on a warm summer evening in July. And the lyrics to “Passenger” once again gave me something to think about:
Walking round Chicago, I have smuggled you as cargo, though you are far away unknowing. By the time we get to Salt Lake I have packed you in my suitcase, ironed the creases from my own remembering.
It’s a song about the things you can’t leave behind as you move from one thing to another. And while it’s exciting and different and (most of the time) a lot of fun being here in Dublin, I haven’t left everything and everyone behind. My friends and family, my students and my performers. They are with me in spirit, and I keep them close. You were all passengers in my suitcase.
Friends, family, students, actors, and random people stumbling across this thing: Welcome, I says!
So…I’m living in Dublin now. Most of you knew that already, but for those that had no idea I had left my job teaching fifth grade (or the other one running a theatre company), um…yeah. Big changes, right?
I’ll spend some time detailing exactly how I came to the decision to pack up one life and start another in future posts. For now, the short answer is this: I’m taking a year’s leave from teaching and will be attending University College Dublin to get a Master of Arts in Directing for Theatre. I’m hoping to do more theatre education in my career, and I felt it was time to add some tools to the toolkit. And, you know, actually study theatre for once instead of just making it up as I go.
I’ll be writing about four main subjects on this site: teaching and theatre, travel and tech. In whatever order I want, when I want.
My students wanted a way to keep in touch with me and follow my travels, so that was the beginning of this site. Some of them will be reading this, some may even comment, so we’re keeping things nice and clean on here. No angst-ridden tales of sorrow, no political rants, no swearing. And that goes for the comments as well, so keep it nice and positive, people.
Students: remember your internet safety lessons: don’t put your full name OR your email address in the comments if you happen to leave one. “Liz H” or “Mike A” will suffice. I’ll know who you are.
The site is pretty bare-bones right now, so sit tight while I tinker and add some cool stuff. You can subscribe to it via email or RSS, depending on how tech-savvy you are. I don’t know how often I’ll be updating, but I promise I’ll do my best to be fairly regular about it.
For now, feel free to say hello in the comments, and stay tuned for the next post.
The first time Limelight tackled Shakespeare was in 2001. I ran a one-week workshop where we took The Tempest and cut it down into a faster, easier show for young actors to perform. I then turned it over to another director while I busied myself with getting The Hobbit ready for its debut.
The kids that were a part of that show always liked to laugh about how in the opening scene, during the “shipwreck,” they had to pretend to be working the ropes for the sails, shouting and pulling and grabbing at nothing. It was always told as part of the, “look how silly and low-budget our early shows were” conversations that would pop up from time to time.
Last Saturday I caught an open-air production of The Tempest in the Iveagh Gardens in Dublin. And during their version of the opening scene, they didn’t bother using actual “ropes” either. Just some guys yelling and a few simple set pieces to suggest a ship’s prow and the waves crashing over them.
It was very reassuring to see, actually. I’m over here to dig deeper into my theatrical knowledge, which has been an exciting and terrifying experience so far. I like knowing that even in a well-publicized production in Dublin, Ireland, they still have guys grasping at nothing. It reminds me that I might actually be able to do this thing.
BrianFauth.com 