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Archives For November 30, 1999

Sun’s Day

November 18, 2012 — Leave a comment

On Sun’s Day, it was the beginning of the end.

The semester ends in two weeks. November 30th is the last day of class, where I get to present a six-minute movement piece starring myself. Yesterday I finally got a clear idea of what to do with it, but it’s still been the assignment that I dread, and that I just want done. Hopefully it makes sense. There’s a nice bit of metatext (as we call it in the academic biz) where the piece’s theme is about a student pushing against the constraints of traditional schooling. Take that for what you will.

Today I did as I normally do on a Sunday: sleep late and read the news before getting on with my day. I usually buy a Sunday Observer and read that throughout the week, as I’m always being pulled back to my assignments. I think the quality of the newspapers is going to be one of the things I will miss the most, once I leave here. Ours have been gutted and trimmed back, but over here they’re still stuffed with great writing and lengthy articles.

And as usual, I had a hearty breakfast and helped further clog my arteries with Superquinn’s award-winning sausages. The eggs from Tesco come in this lovely bright green carton that I never get tired of seeing in my fridge. Seriously, how can you not enjoy looking at something like that? It’s almost a shame to crack ’em open.

Free-range eggs from Tesco’s, with mini-milk jug!

I cleaned up the place a bit, organizing some of the receipts and little bits that had collected on my desk and coffee table. I found my used train ticket from last month’s trip up north, and instead of throwing it away I tossed it into my desk. I can never throw away train tickets. If you’re lucky, the train ride itself can be as much fun as the place you’re traveling to, and it’s yet another one of those little objects that are unique to being “over here.” I miss having a car sometimes, but I never, ever get tired of taking a train somewhere, even if it’s just out to my friends’ place in the northern suburbs of Dublin.

 

I threw a load of laundry into my tiny washing machine and walked into the village to buy a few groceries. Talked to the butcher about a turkey breast for Thursday, and as I left the clerk, a young Polish girl, smiled and wished me a Happy Thanksgiving. It made me happier than I could properly describe.

The afternoon and early evening were spent writing another scene for a short play I’m writing for another class. While I grumble about the movement piece, and privately express some severe frustration with some of the other classes I’m taking, I’ve been rejuvenated by the one class I wasn’t expecting to take. (Remember, I’m auditing the course.) It probably helps that I’m not writing on a deadline, or that I’m trying to write for young actors. I’m free to put down whatever I want, and so far it’s going well. We’ll see where it winds up.

If my computer had eyes, it would see THIS for several hours every day.

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The Fjord of Carlinn

November 5, 2012 — 1 Comment

The Lovely Bleakness

It was time to put the books away, to step away from the seminar room and the rehearsal room, and to see some new places.

It was time to get on a train and stare out the window and watch the world pass by. It was time to get lost in thought, and perhaps discover a new story or two along the way.

It was time to see mountains.

Last Tuesday I woke up early, loaded up my backpack, and headed for the train station. Bought a cheap ticket (thanks to my student discount!) and went north.

I ended up in a small town named Carlingford, located on a fjord right on the border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. I’m not going to take the time (for now) to explain the history and reasons why there is an “Ireland” and a “Northern” Ireland. But you need to be aware of the fact that they are two separate countries, and “regular” Ireland is NOT part of the U.K., while Northern Ireland is.

I may try to explain this in a future post, but for now I recommend heading over to my favorite travel blogger, The Everywhereist, and allow her to explain the difference.

Carlingford is named for the fjord (or inlet) the town sits on, and has something to do with Viking settlers. Going further back, it’s name in Irish was Cuan Snámh-Aighneach, Snámh-Aighneach or Cuan Cairlinne. (Don’t ask me to pronounce that.)

Viking mural next to the primary school in Carlingford.

But I’m not here for a history lesson. I’m here to talk about the joys of wandering, of traveling to unknown parts, of being completely alone and having that be the best thing in the world.

Sometimes.

When I’m working on a new play, I like to get away from familiar places, from my shelves of books and DVDs, from the usual streets and faces I see every day. And now that I “live” in Dublin, I had to get away from my small Blackrock apartment as well. There’s something about going to a new place, the way your mind drifts while you watch the landscape rush by while you’re on the train, that has always been very helpful for me as a writer.

Or it could just be that you have nothing else to do BUT write. Most of my really good ideas came to me while sitting (alone) at dinner, or in my Bed and Breakfast, after a day spent walking the town and the hills, or up the Slieve Foy as far as I could go in my non-waterproof sneakers. (Really wish I had packed the hiking boots, but they’re sitting in my parents’ basement at the moment.) Sometimes you have to get to a certain point of loneliness and/or boredom for the words to start flowing.

The Slieve Foy Mountain. Highest peak in Co. Lough.

And so after a couple of days in Carlingford, I had the outlines for not just one but two new plays. One’s a dark satire about marriage (I think), and another’s about a fifth grade music prodigy. And I think they share some of the same characters, and even some of the same events, but I haven’t gotten that far with them. Sometimes when you write, the story leads you into directions you didn’t expect, so we’ll see where these end up.

Came back to Dublin in time for a friend’s 40th birthday, and it was wonderful to be among good friends in my temporary home.

Take THAT, 40! (Photo blatantly stolen by me from Elisa’s Facebook page.)

And today I read the opening scene from that new play to our guest professor, and he thought it was great stuff.

Ahh! I almost forgot the best part! I made a video, kids! It’s a little travelogue of my trip to Carlingford and back. Check it out!

You can also see a lot more photos of Carlingford and the rest of my trip here. It’s a public Facebook album. Hopefully I did it right.

Four weeks of classes left.

And whither then? I cannot say.

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Autumn Run

October 29, 2012 — Leave a comment

It’s “Reading Week”, which means I’m off class all this week. And it’s pretty sweet. It’s a time to get caught up on assignments, review what’s been studied, and prepare for the final four weeks of class. That’s right. I’ll be more or less done with this semester on November 30th.

(There’s a huge paper that I have to do that’s worth 70% of my grade for this Research class, and we haven’t been given any information about it yet, but it’s not due until December 4th or something like that. So I’m not sweating it right now.)

And that’s not even including the stuff I have saved on my computer…

Today I pored through all my notes and readings for the Movement class, trying to make heads or tails of it. It’s all that dance theory stuff I complained about earlier, so I won’t bother repeating myself, since all I seem to be doing lately is fret about that class. We don’t meet again until November 12th, so I have a nice long break from having to swoop around and write my name in the air.

After doing that all day I decided I needed to get out of the apartment a bit and stretch my legs. I’m finally getting over this cold I had, so I actually tried to run for a bit. My lungs weren’t really interested in doing that for very long, but it’s more than I’ve done lately. I’m hoping I keep up with it and don’t get too bogged down with work in November. (Exercise relieves stress, kids!)

We’re deep into fall here, although most people would say that it’s actually winter that has settled in. The sky is overcast a good amount of the time, and it rains a lot, and….wait…that’s kind of like what fall was like. And summer was pretty wet as well. Okay, so it’s still wet and overcast all the time, but now the temperature has gone down, too!

Where during the summer it was usually in the high 60s and low 70s, and fall meant temps in the 50s, winter means low 40s/high 30s. And that seems to be the extent of it. I know it’ll get colder, but nothing like we have in Illinois. Snow is fairly non-existent. The leaves are turning, but not in that dramatic all-at-once brilliance you have back home. The leaves reluctantly change to a dull brown or yellow, and take their time falling onto the ground. We moved the clocks back yesterday, so it was getting pretty dark outside when I went for that sort-of-run around 4:30.

My suburban-Dublin neighborhood, but here it feels like it’s the middle of the country.

Because I’m off this week, and because I’ve lived very frugally during October, I’m going to treat myself with a little excursion to the northern part of Ireland. I’ll be back soon with a report from the borderlands between the Republic of Ireland, where I live, and Northern Ireland, which is a separate country still part of the United Kingdom.

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When I Grow Up

October 24, 2012 — 1 Comment

When I was a kid, probably 10 or 11 years old, I started “production” on a film called The Search for Han Solo. It was adapted from the Marvel Star Wars comics my friend Scott and I read obsessively, and I typed up the script (or at least the first 10 pages or so) on an electric Smith-Corona typewriter. Written and Directed by Brian Fauth, it said on the front cover (along with an awesome drawing of the Millenium Falcon!) It took place between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. I imagine I worked on it sometime during my 5th grade year, trying to keep my mind busy while we waited for Jedi to come out the following May.

We designed costumes, cast our friends in the principal roles (I was Luke, Scott was Vader, Melody was Leia), and even held an initial rehearsal or two in my basement. Then we gave it up because A) we didn’t have a camera and B) we weren’t that motivated.*

(That was also the year we got a VCR, I think, so any thought of making a film was probably squashed by the delight in being able to watch The Wrath of Khan over and over again whenever we wanted.)

My childhood was spent staring up at movie posters of E.T., Raiders, The Empire Strikes Back, etc. Typical Generation-X cultural upbringing, but I know I paid more attention to the idea of “the director” than most. Behind-the-scenes documentaries introduced me to the idea that “Spielberg” was the person behind Jaws, Close Encounters, and getting Gertie to scream.

When I was in college I tended to focus more on studying classic film than I did my official “classes.” I don’t know if that’s because I was a bad student, or my mind was truly pulling me in a different direction. I could spend hours and hours learning about Hitchcock, Hawks, and Truffaut, but getting me to attend my science gen-eds regularly was another story. (Yes, kids, Mr. Fauth sometimes skipped class. It happens.) At one point I announced to my parents my intention to quit school and start learning how to be a film director, but like my previous attempt at being a filmmaker, it fizzled pretty quickly. The most I could show for it was a bunch of bad shorts made with my friends, with title like “Pete Gets Big!” and “Springtime for Butcher.” (One involved my dog Pete growing suddenly huge and destroying the town, while the other was a loving tease at a friend of mine.)

There was a point of course, where I realized that I was never going to start making real films of my own. Strangely, it happened around the time I got a job working on an actual Hollywood film that was being made in Illinois. I had a job as a stand-in for two weeks, and it was awesome, but I was also in the middle of starting a Masters degree in teaching.  At one point I was offered a chance to head out to Los Angeles to continue the stand-in work once they moved the shoot to sound stages to film the interior shots. And I said no.

Part of it could have been the simple practicality of it. Where would I live, how could I afford living out there, blah blah blah. Maybe I didn’t think someone like me, a small town Midwestern kid, would make it out in Hollywood. (That whole Lutheran “I’m nobody special” thing we tend to have.)

Oddly enough, I look back now and I realize how I was strangely motivated to get my education classes completed. I never really found them interesting or valuable, but I was actually working hard to get them done. Earlier that year I had started substitute teaching in Sandwich, my hometown, and I kind of liked it. I liked it a lot. I was good at it. Whatever it was that I was doing, kids were responding to it, positively.

That was 1996. By January of the following year, I had a job directing a musical at Sandwich High School. My first paid theatre gig. Directed by Brian Fauth. That spring I taught fifth grade for a couple of months at my former elementary school, and that was it.  The rest, as they say, is history. I finished up my degree in teaching a year later and got a job teaching in Oswego.

1999. The Wizard of Oz, with Leslie as Dorothy and my stage manager Heidi.

So after 30-odd shows with Sandwich, Limelight, and a couple of junior highs, I find myself in Dublin, Ireland working on another graduate degree, this time in directing theatre. And the classes are okay, but it’s a strange mix of “Hmm, that’s interesting” and “Hmm, I already knew that.” And I’m very rusty at writing papers. We’ve only a month left and I still don’t have any idea how I’m doing in class. I find myself easily distracted by classic film again. I get itchy to jump on a train and go somewhere, but the budget won’t permit that right now. We have a week off from class next week, so that’s a relief. A chance to clear the head and figure out the next steps in my life.

At this point in my life, I know I’m never going to be that big-time film director I dreamed about becoming in my younger years. I probably won’t become a famous Broadway director, either. And that’s okay, to be perfectly honest. The nice thing about getting a little older is that you get a sense of clarity about where you’re life’s at, and where it’s going, and what you want from it. You want to be doing something worthwhile, and if I can continue to be a good teacher, and maybe get a job running my own drama program again**, then that’s all I really ask out of life.

*Seriously, hats off to these guys for making a shot-by-shot remake of Raiders of the Lost Ark when they were kids. If only I had their stamina and patience.

**Preferably where my full-time job also involves running a drama program, since trying to run the last one while also teaching full-time tended to make me a bit crazy and exhausted.

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Saturday

September 30, 2012 — Leave a comment

A bus.

Let’s head into town today, yeah? We’ve spent the last two days cooped up in the apartment and we need to get some air and be amongst people.

I live inside that.

I live about five miles out of Dublin city centre, and if I want to get anywhere, I usually take the bus. Luckily I live near a major highway, so buses run about every ten minutes and I can get into town within a half hour.

Typical suburban street.

When the weather’s nice the walk can be quite pleasant. I live in a fairly “posh” suburb, from what they tell me, so it’s safe and tree-lined and quiet.

If I want to take a shortcut to the bus stop I DO have to walk through this, though:

Creepy viaduct.

It’s not as bad as it looks. You’re through it in like, ten seconds.

Anyway, on Saturday I went into town to see another play (surprise!) There is a famous Dublin writer named James Joyce*, and recently his novels came out of copyright, so that means anyone can adapt them for plays or films and no one has to pay any royalties. Dublin is about to be hit by a huge wave of Joyce-based works, and the Corn Exchange’s adaptation of Dubliners is one of the first.

I met up with some friends at the Gaity Theatre, but I had to sit by myself because we had all bought our tickets separately. I was up “in the Gods”, as they say, which is a nice way of saying I was up in the cheap seats. (I’m going to a LOT of shows and have to budget accordingly.)

Top of the Gaity, Ma!

The show was very good, although being so far up meant that I wasn’t as engaged with the stories as I would have liked. (Dubliners is a series of short stories.) It didn’t help that I hadn’t read the book beforehand; I bought a copy last month, but I just couldn’t find the time to get to it, what with all the homework and all. So instead I tried to focus on the staging, the technical side of things, and Corn Exchange’s use of Commedia dell’Arte.

Afterwards we all gathered in Neary’s to dissect the show and have a bit of fun. (Oh, and we also saw this guy outside the theatre. McNulty!) After a few rounds we grabbed some pizza to fill our very-empty bellies. The rest of the party said their good-nights, but my friend Donal and I stayed out for more discussion and general catching-up. Donal and his wife are new parents, and so a night out for some fun is a rare occurrence in their lives. I, of course, was happy to stay out as long as possible, although I did go past the pumpkin hour.

What’s that, you ask? Well, those buses that get me here and there stop running around 11:00 or so, and you’re stuck with taxis after that. (There is some sort of Night Bus that runs, but I don’t know the routes or where to pick it up. And it’s not as cool as this, anyways.) By the time Donal and I wrapped up our night, the streets were filled with them; apparently there is a glut of taxis in Dublin at the moment.

A taxi home costs around 20 Euro, but since I’m spending so little money on transportation, the occasional cab isn’t going to kill me. (Except when I consider that I can buy a train ticket to the other side of Ireland for the same price. Student rates rule!)

And that was Saturday. A great day overall, and one of those I’m Really Loving Living Here kind of days. Gotta enjoy those while they last…

 

*I thought I should remind my readers that I’m writing this primarily for my students to read, lest people think I’m talking down to my audience. Most fifth graders haven’t heard of James Joyce, but if they watched closely during Hugo, they would have spotted him hanging around the train station.

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Thursday/Friday

September 28, 2012 — 3 Comments

I thought I’d cheat a bit, since the last two days have been spent doing work around the house, working on class assignments, and pondering concepts for an imaginary production of The Merchant of Venice.

But let’s talk breakfast first!

On the weekends, I allow myself to indulge in the spectacular breakfast food that can be found here and in the U.K. (Okay, so Thursday/Friday isn’t really the weekend, but this week I got a head start on the pork-centered goodness.)

When you travel to places like Britain and Ireland, it is pretty much impossible to avoid ordering what is referred to as “The Full Irish.” (Or a Full English Breakfast, or whatever it might be called in Wales or Scotland.) A typical full breakfast will include the following:

  • One egg.
  • Two sausages.
  • Two rashers, a.ka. bacon, a.ka. The Most Delicious Bacon I’ve Ever Eaten.
  • White pudding.
  • Black pudding. (An acquired taste.)
  • Fried tomato.
  • Mushrooms.
  • Baked Beans (only in Britain.)
  • Potato wedge (not all the time; it seems to pop up rather randomly.)
  • Toast.

While horrible for your heart and arteries, it’s great if you’re traveling on a budget, since a hearty breakfast like this will get you through most of the day, and it’s often included with a hotel stay (and of course a Bed & Breakfast.)

I limit my hearty breakfasts to eggs, toast, and either sausages or rashers, never both. Today it was sausages, because I stopped by the Superquinn grocery store on Wednesday and theirs are the best. (Superquinn is a bit pricy, like shopping at Dominick’s back home, and so I tend to get my food at either Tescos or Lidl.) And it was delicious. But since I’ve spent the last two days mostly puttering around the house working on assignments, I haven’t gotten much exercise. This is not good for the waistline.

Okay, enough about breakfast food. What else have I done with my time these past two days?

First I re-read a play called The Weir, for Monday’s writing class. I first picked this play up ten years ago and fell in love with it, and I’m glad to see that time has not diminished my feelings for it. Five people sitting around a pub in rural Ireland, telling ghost stories. Always wanted to direct it, but it being Irish, it has a lot of swearing and drinking in it, and I didn’t think Limelight would have been the right venue for it. Maybe someday…

I’ve also spent some time gathering information for that pretend-Merchant of Venice. Costumes and soundtrack ideas. Been listening to a lot of post-classical stuff, very minimalist. Just piano, some occasional strings. Watched a documentary called Jiro Dreams of Sushi (which is excellent) and that pushed me in the right direction, sound-wise. My Merchant is a very lonely version, and it emphasizes the more tragical elements of the play. So lots of Philip Glass and Max Richter.

Mug Shot! (One of the student-gifted mugs that came with me.)

Where the magic happens.

Other than that, it’s been laundry and haircut and going over my budget. (We won’t get into that now. But man…this is an expensive project I’ve got going on.) It’s almost 8 pm on Friday, the oven’s warming up, and I’m about ready to put away the schoolwork for a day or so. Heading into town to see Dubliners with some friends, and from what I hear, it’s supposed to be great.

A drying rack helps with the laundry. And the budget.

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Wednesday

September 27, 2012 — Leave a comment

Wednesday is like an easy Friday for me. Sort of.

It’s the last day of classes for me, so there’s the relief of knowing I don’t have to prepare for anything the next day. At the same time, it’s still the middle of the week, and I certainly don’t get to enjoy 4-day weekends over here. What usually happens is that I get some groceries after class winds up (we go until almost six on Wednesdays), relax a bit, but if I’m feeling focused, I try to get a bit of work done in the evening as well.

Today’s class, Research and Analysis in Drama and Performance, was a particularly “academic” session. We spent almost four hours discussing Michel Foucault’s ideas about discipline in schools and in the military, and philosophical concepts like phenomenology, i.e. understanding an object as just a pure object, not our concepts and ideas we project onto that object. All that existential philosophy I studied back in my undergraduate years really helped with today’s discussion, lemme tell you.

I also shared a story about lockdown drills and how they work in elementary schools. The mostly-Irish class was pretty astonished at what has become quite a regular feature at American schools: kids smashed into dark corners trying to “hide” from imaginary armed intruders. We take something scary and unimaginable and turn it into sometime practiced and “routine.” (This relates back to Foucault’s ideas about discipline, and I’ll just leave it at that, lest I bore you too much.)

What does this have to do with theatre, you might ask? Well, I ask myself that sometimes as well, but it has to do with how we perceive bodies and objects in space and time, and how arranging actors and props and set pieces on a stage can be seen and understood many different ways.

From my 2010 production of All These Will Be Worthless. Photo by the awesome Amy Weiland.

Still with me? Don’t worry: no more classes this week, so the rest of the week’s posts won’t get so intellectual.

Around 9 or 10 I usually put away the schoolwork and watch TV. (I don’t read for fun these days since I’m spending so much time reading the heavy stuff I mentioned earlier.) I’ve worked my way through most of Breaking Bad, and I’ve been revisiting some of the U.S. version of The Office, remembering when it was really, really good. I also try to absorb some of Irish pop culture as well, and that has mostly been through a series called Father Ted, which is very, very funny, and has aged well since it first aired in the mid-1990s.

There’s also a great BBC documentary series about Vikings that’s been running for the past few weeks. And if you think I’m going to skip Viking Day just because I’m not in a classroom, kids, well, think again! Stay tuned…

Tomorrow: laundry day!

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Tuesday

September 26, 2012 — Leave a comment

Like Monday, I woke around 8 am and made coffee in a cheap coffee maker I bought at Tescos for 12 Euro. It doesn’t keep the coffee very hot, so I drink it quickly in my mug before it gets cold. The rain continued to come down steadily; I don’t think it had stopped since Monday.

Tuesdays are devoted to Text Analysis and Performance. Currently we’re working with Frank McGuinness on Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. Identifying who drives the story, is it a comedy or a tragedy, how would we stage it, etc. It’s just myself and one other woman in the class (who also does youth theatre), so we get a lot of one-on-one instruction, and it’s pretty great. Frank suffers no fools, so you have to be on your game in that class.

After class finished at noon my classmate and I headed into town to see a show called The Boys of Foley Street. (By the way, heading “into town” means heading into the Dublin city centre. Back in the states I suppose we say “going downtown” instead.) The show was a site-specific show; that means that everything took place in an “actual” location. There were only four people in the audience per performance, and you went from alley to car to dingy apartment and experienced a rather uncomfortable story about inner-city poverty, drugs, and violence. (And that’s all we need to say about that, former students. Stay in school and make good choices, right?!)

After the show we grabbed a bus down to the main University College Dublin campus at Belfield to hold auditions for our fall semester director projects. I have to be evaluated on two projects: one where the professors watch me rehearse a couple of scenes, and another where they view a finished project. I’ve been assigned two “classic” pieces, and I’m not exactly happy about the choices, but ahh well, “Theirs not to reason why” and all that…

We had a nice turnout and moved through about twenty people rather quickly, doing some improv exercises and cold reads from Chekhov. I would have liked to have had more time with the actors, maybe run a callback session, but I was just working with what I was given. It’s all been pretty confusing and hazy, and half the time I’m not really sure what I’m supposed to be doing with a particular project or assignment.

And that’s probably the strangest thing about being a full-time student: the realization that I’m not in charge of the content or the process anymore. As a teacher and a director, I always ran the show, but now I’m back to just doing what’s assigned to me.

And to be honest? I kind of hate it.

The washing machine is IN the kitchen!

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Monday

September 24, 2012 — 1 Comment

I thought I would take this week to write a chronicle of a typical week for me here in Dublin, now that classes have started properly. So let’s start with everyone’s least favorite day…Monday…

Woke around 8:30 and made some coffee. This is the earliest I have to get up all week. I know, rough, isn’t it? Of course I stay up until well past 2 am every night, so it’s all relative. Cleaned up the place a bit, took a shower, and put on the “loose” clothes. The morning class is The Body in Performance, which is a movement class, so we’re supposed to wear something loose and comfortable. For me it’s a t-shirt and track pants.

It’s raining pretty heavily outside, so I make sure to remember my umbrella, and I walk to class. I only live 15 minutes from the campus, so getting there and back again is pretty painless, although on a cold, rainy morning like this all I want to do is go back to bed.

Class runs from 10 am until almost 1, and we spend most of it doing different exercises all relating to how actors use their bodies and their theatrical space. I’m a director, not a performer, so this stuff is a bit foreign to me, but I figure it has to have a point. We also have a ton of readings that go with the course, and that all gets a bit cluttered in my head, but again…it all should have a point…right?

Today we worked on tableaus (just click the link to find out what I’m talking about), and then I had to work on a bit where I write my name with a part of the body. I chose my wrist, and did it rather comedically, and I got a laugh out of everyone. The good kind of laugh. I hope.

Grabbed some lunch with another member of the group and then we headed to the second class of the day: Writing for the Stage.

Now, technically, this class wasn’t open to me, since I’m part of the Directing group, but I asked if I could audit it. That means I sit in and do all the work but don’t officially get credit for it. It’s a lot more work, but since I’ve written a few plays myself, I thought this class would be of great benefit to me.

Today I read an opening scene to a play I’ve been working on. Kitchen-family-type-thing. Wrote it just as an exercise, but who knows, maybe it’ll go somewhere.

We also spent a lot of time discussing The Hero’s Journey, which is something I have a deep background in, as I teach it in my classroom, and even wrote a play structured around Campbell’s myth cycle (while commenting on and critiquing it at the same time.) I found it odd that we didn’t delve into the most significant aspect of Campbell’s outline: the atonement with the father. To me at least, almost ALL stories are about dealing with your parents. But that could just be me.

The book-strewn living room! The couch serves as my filing cabinet.

After that I headed home and got fairly soaked. Warmed up in my bed a bit, watched an episode of The Simpsons, then back to work. Collected images and ideas for tomorrow’s class, which I’ll of course talk about tomorrow. Answered emails from prospective actors auditioning for some of my directorial projects/assignments, ate some fish, and now I’m writing this.

It’s now almost 10 pm on a Monday night, and it’s time for me to stop working for the day. Eyes are heavy, but it’ll be interesting to see how soon I fall asleep. I’m a natural night-owl, and I’ve had some stuff on my mind, so cross your fingers for me that I get some sleep. Tomorrow’s going to be even longer of a day…

(Oh, and I’m aware that the formatting on this blog has been messed up. Not sure what’s going on, but hopefully I’ll get it sorted before too long.)

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Catching Up

September 14, 2012 — Leave a comment

So, I haven’t been a “real” student since Bill Clinton was president.

If you’re one of my students reading this, that means its been a while. I did my undergraduate and first masters in the ’90s, but aside from a few classes here and there (that weren’t anything to write home about), I have spent the last 15 years calling the shots in a classroom or on a stage.

Now I’m back to having assignments given to me, and it’s a strange experience. The toughest part has been catching up on all of the “classic” works of theatre I had never gotten around to reading before. I’ve spoken of “the stack” in previous posts, and just when I think I’ve got it done, they assign more plays for me to read. Because my directorial career has strictly been in youth theatre, I never read much Chekhov or Ibsen or Brecht. Shakespeare was my exclusive go-to guy for the Big Stuff.

So now I’m brushing up, and being exposed to newer playwrights I had never come across before. I’m embarrassed to say that I never read any Frank McGuinness before, but he’s really something, and he’ll be teaching me how to analyze The Merchant of Venice for the next few weeks. I’m also participating in a Writing for Theatre course that’ll be co-taught by Conor McPherson. I read his play “The Weir”a long time ago, and that was the beginning of my interest in contemporary Irish theatre. Little did I know that I’d be learning how to write from him ten years later. (Technically the class isn’t open to the MA in Directing students, but they’re letting me participate in a not-for-credit capacity.)

So I’m pretty lucky, and I’m regretting not taking the literary side of theatre more seriously, since it’s been a month of heavy reading and contemplating. Reading plays is hard, man. When you think about it, it’s only half the story, in a sense. For me, it isn’t complete until actors get up on stage and perform it, and even then, you’re only watching one version of it. Another director, another production, another interpretation of the work. And I guess that’s what’s great about theatre, as opposed to film, where everything is fixed and permanent.

So…sorry for the lack of updates. I have plenty of stories to tell, but I just wrapped up the first week of classes, and I’ve been pretty focused on that. Hoping to get my homework done in a timely manner, though, so I can get back to writing the “forty tales” or so on here. (Hmm, 40 posts is a nice goal to set for myself…)

More soon…I’m going to see an opera about Ikea this weekend!

 

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