But What I Really (Didn't!) Want to Do ....

... is direct.

When actors whine that "what they really want to do is direct," they are talking about film -- where, in these days of the auteur, the film director is seen to exercise complete control in realizing his or her vision.

Indeed, an auteur -- as a director of signature-style films -- (Jim Jarmush, Woody Allen, Tim Burton, the Coen Brothers, etc.) can be more of a star than any given actor in his (yes his, more often than her) films.

Not so in the world of theatre directors.

"im in theatre class," [sic] pleaded a student on Yahoo's message board, "and i need a famous theatre director and i cant find anything......so please help me........."

Needless to say, the Wikipedia list of theatre directors provided by a thoughtful respondent yields very few recognizable names -- at least to those who aren't in theatre. And the few notables belong to directors who famously crossed over to film: Orson Welles, Mike Nichols, Laurence Olivier, Bob Fosse, and the like.

When I first joined a Manhattan theater company, in my early 20s, with little training and questionable talent, I had less of a clue about exactly what a director did than our young Yahoo poster. Like much of the average audience, I was quick to assign the finished product on the stage entirely to the actor and writer.

As far as I knew, the director made sure everyone knew their lines and didn't trip over the furniture.

And even in my first few one-acts, it didn't seem like the director did much -- other than the lines-and-furniture thing.

This, it turns out, was because those few directors just weren't very good.

This particular company did not actively seek directors; their bread-and-butter was young out-of-towners hungry for any -- and I do mean ANY -- NYC stage experience. So we all auditioned, paid $100 and were guaranteed a role.

If we wanted more roles, we had to do stuff for the company: stage manage, run lights and sound, build sets, clean the theater, run the box office, create flyers and programs -- and direct.

So many of the directors were just actors who were grudgingly putting in hours so they could get their butts back onstage.

And then I was cast in a sensitive, two-person drama about a jilted wife reuniting with her fanatical ex who had run off with a cult.

I was completely lost.

Thankfully, I had a director who had actually studied directing, and who wanted to pursue a career in directing. And she was brilliant!! She helped me understand the meaning and intention of each beat, to clarify and solidify my performance, and create a moving drama.

Slowly, it became clear to me how crucial good directing was -- and how very difficult it was, first to grasp the meaning of the play, and then to guide the actors towards the fullest, richest telling of the story.

About a year later, I was given my first one-act to direct. And, happily, I came across ACT director William Ball's outstanding book A Sense of Direction, which not only gave me essential tools for directing; it changed my understanding of acting as well.

It also seared into my brain the maxim that The Director is Always Responsible -- no matter what, with no excuses; the finished product is the director's responsibility. You can never, ever blame the actor. (Admittedly, a few times I've wanted to blame the writer, but even there, a badly written play can be directed into something worth watching... more on this in another entry).

This uncompromising acceptance of responsibility at first seemed daunting, but ultimately I embraced it as both a challenge and even an act of unconditional love.

I had once heard that to truly love a thing, you can fully -- without delusion or denial -- see it in its current and perhaps flawed state, and you can also see its most beautiful, most fully realized potential. In short, you can see what it wants to be. And through love (and more than a little sweat and tenacity), you can guide it to that fruition.

And I think that many of the actors understood this about me... that no matter how hopeless things sometimes seemed in rehearsal, they knew I had faith in them, in the play, and in the creative process itself, and so they had faith in me.

I soon began to love directing (though, diva that I was -- and still am -- still sought the spotlight when I could), and within a few months I was given my first full-length play.

To this day, the playwright -- who has been produced throughout the US -- considers that production among the best of his work.

He recently wrote, "Some things about that little production I’ll never forget -- some things you don’t even know about -- like my sister’s reaction. She’s passed away now. She came up from Florida to see it. She had no idea what I was up to. I can still see her leaning against the wall afterward, across the room from me, mouthing the words, wow, wow, wow -- blown away."

And many other playwrights have felt the same. Even after I left the company, I had been sought out to direct more work for satisfied playwrights.

And even though I know -- and they know -- exactly how much the director's hand is responsible for what the audience sees... sometimes I forget.

And so do they....

Sometimes, even as the audience cheers, and friends are slapping their castmember pals on the back... I can't help thinking, "Could this have been done without me....?"

To be continued...

Sailing, Synchronicity and Face Blindness

So I went to my sailing club's little tent this evening hoping to take out a sailboat.

Unfortunately, I arrived close to 8pm and the Dockmaster told me the wind had died down shortly before, so the boats were starting to head in -- at about a half-knot, so it could take an hour to reach the dock.

So, no sailing for me.

But the weather was nice, otherwise, and the sunset was luminous and pink. So I hung out chatting with another member.

We small-talked for a bit, and then I decided to ask about a member whom I'll call Nick Nevins, who had been on my mind a lot.

I'd met Nick a month or two before and we'd emailed over subsequent weeks.

And then Nick suffered a terrible personal tragedy.

There were email announcements and heartfelt words of sympathy on the club's message board. We took up a collection and sent love and good thoughts.

While I'd joined in the collection, I was nervous about emailing Nick as, after all, I didn't know him that well. But I had experienced a tragedy similar to what he'd gone through and hoped I could offer insight or encouragement that could be useful to him.

But mostly I was concerned about him. He hadn't posted to the board or sent any word to the club other than his gratitude for the support.

So, after a beat in the conversation, I asked my new friend, "Have you heard anything about Nick Nevins? Is he ok?"

And he said, "Uh... I AM Nick Nevins..."

The next thing I knew, he was giving ME sympathy for making such a fool of myself!

I told him how I'd been thinking about him but was unsure about reaching out. And he said it was strange that I'd come to the lake that very day since he had been away since the day of the Event.

And I had not been to the lake myself in all that time either...

Synchronicity.

Fast-forward to the train ride home and I start listening to a new podcast of one of my favorite shows, RadioLab.

The topic? FACE BLINDNESS! Yes, really!!

The blurb describes how the famous neuroscientist Oliver Sachs, and PORTRAIT ARTIST Chuck Close, were both born with a condition called face blindness.

"You can sit down with either man, talk to him for an hour, and if he sees you again just fifteen minutes later, he will have no idea who you are. (Unless you have a very squeaky voice or happen to be wearing the same odd purple hat.)"

Now, while my experiences are not quite as extreme as Sachs' -- who recalls stroking his beard in a diner mirror, only to realize his reflection was not! It was, in fact, a bewildered bearded gentleman wondering why Sachs was making faces at him -- for most of my life I have been unable to remember new faces.

Like Sachs and Close, I've come up with techniques to help myself recall details of a face which I try to connect to a name -- though I suck at remembering names, too -- (e.g. Mary has the mole, Joe has the big schnoz), but my circuits overload quickly, the system crashes and I end up remembering useless fragments of faces and names.

I have a few kind friends who help me negotiate parties; throughout the evening, I'll run up to them asking, "Who did I just talk to? Was that the person who poured my drink when we arrived?" And they patiently answer and calm me down without making me feel like an idiot or a lunatic.
It usually takes several focused meetings for me to be able to recall, reassemble and/or recognize a face. But once a face is in, it's there for good.

Thinking about it now, I can't quite say what it is that I recognize when a face finally sinks in. Sometimes I think it has more to do with mannerisms than physiognomy -- though I'm good at recognizing actors in very different roles.

But I NEVER recognize celebrities on the street.

For some reason, they read differently when they are not performing.

I'm also good at remembering voices and I have excellent episodic memory. So if I've met you once and you told me your life story, I can guarantee I won't recognize you the next time I see you (even if it's the next day). BUT, once you start talking, I will remember every detail of your story, as well as where and how you stood or sat during the tale.

Go figure.

It's a frustrating way to live -- especially since people often remember ME, and I feel like a schmuck for not being able to return the favor -- but it's nice to know that there are many others who go through this as well.

Perhaps that is why Nick was so understanding...

Strange -- thinking about him even now, I can't quite recall what his face looks like, but I have a few details.

Mostly, though, I recall how he carried himself, where there was tension in his body, and the way that he walked. So that should be enough to recognize him next time. As long as he is not sitting down.....
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

May-June Events Archive

Sunday, May 2nd @ 2pm
Dancing with the Rising Sirens
with Bellyqueen at
Spring Caravan
Ukrainian Cultural Center
135 Davidson Ave
Somerset, New Jersey 08873
$18

Wednesday, May 8th @ 8pm
Dancing with the Rising Sirens at
Bellyqueen's
Djam at Je'Bon
15 St. Mark's Place, NYC
212-388-1313
$10 cover/$5 minimum

Saturday, May 15th @ 8pm
Dancing in PURE's Groundbreaking
Dance-Theater Work
PURE Reflections: Beauty Reimagined
The Dragon's Egg
401 Shewville Rd, Ledyard CT (Near Mystic)
Note: We are also teaching a BodyLove workshop at 1pm.
$20 at the door
$15 advance

Saturday, June 5th @ 8pm
Dancing and Emceeing in Bellyqueen's
Tamalyn Dallal Showcase at
Je'Bon Noodle House
15 St. Mark's Place, NYC
212-388-1313
$15 Cover/$5 Minimum

Tuesday, June 8th @ 9pm
Performing Stand-Up Comedy at
Karma's Gay & Lesbian Night
51 First Avenue ( bet. 3rd and 4th sts,) NYC
212-677-3160
$10 Cover
No Minumum

Thursday thru Saturday, June 24th, 25th & 26th @ 8pm
and Saturday, June 26th @ 2pm
Dancing in Jehan's
Dance-Theatre Spectacular
Cirque Arabesque
at Manhattan Movemement & Arts Center
248 West 60th Street & West End Ave, NYC
646-385-8493
$35

Third Day Back in Civilization (and email updates)

Although I officially returned from Dunya's blissful Dancemeditation Retreat on Thursday, June 24th, I officially count my return to the mundane world from Sunday because I took a brief weekend sojourn through the magical land of Jehan-world.

In spite of my foot injury, and in spite of the fact that I'd be gone right up until a few hours before opening night, Jehan asked me to dance in her spectacular Cirque Arabesque -- which was a vote of confidence I couldn't refuse.

My mission: Choreograph a routine with fellow amazonian dancer Jaklina (who, at 6'2" and size 8, and makes me look short and round) to complement six other numbers where 1 to 10 other dancers will be performing. This was a vote of confidence I could not refuse.

And somehow, through the use of video, internet and blind faith, we got it together for four amazing shows.

Now... about the Dancemeditation Retreat...

This was my third, for three years in a row ... in a nutshell, we dance for seven hours a day (four hours in the morning, and three in the evening) with a four-hour break.

During the break we rest, meditate, walk, swim, sometimes shop the local fare, maybe hit the internet (although we couldn't pick up a signal this year, and it was a pain to trudge up to the library for wireless).

And we eat -- all ultra-healthy, ultra-vegan, raw food.

Or we don't eat.

Often people will elect to fast, usually eating only watermelon. (Last year I made it through three watermelon fast days.)

But for a reason I never learned there was no watermelon this year, so fasters were confined to a diet of coconut water -- which turned out to be a lot less painlful than I'd imagined

In fact, the only pain was that I was missing all the tasty meals being served, so I only fasted for a day.

But I kind of enjoyed the fast, so I may buy a case of Zico at some point and fast a few days here and there during the summer (it's always better to fast during warmer weather).

The weirdest thing about the Retreat is how time bends, compresses and expands. Things that happened that morning seemed like ancient history; yet the days flew by.

Many times I wanted to blog, but didn't make it to the library.

So I've enabled email updates.

More on the Retreat later.

And my next post will be emailed.... :-)

Writer's Block

When I was in school I wrote a lot of poetry.

I used to joke that this was because I was lazy and a terrible typist (back in the days of manual typewriters... yes, really), so whenever a writing assignment came up where we could choose between a short story or a poem, I went for the poem.

But the truth is I really liked poetry. I liked its precision and economy -- and that if you wrote in rhyme and meter, you could get away with all kinds of bizarre constructions and multiple meanings.

Verse became my specialty and when I started churning out sonnets in the 11th grade, our English teacher made me a poetry editor of the school magazine -- a privilege usually reserved for seniors.

Throughout grade school's 12 years, teachers entered my stuff in citywide contests, and I often got some kind of prize or "mention" but I never thought of myself as a "poet" -- and I never wrote anything for my own pleasure.

When I got to college, I found I was unable to produce anything without being compelled by an assignment, so I signed up for an advanced poetry class -- and was rejected.

I confronted the professor; he felt the work in my portfolio was "glib." But he was impressed by my tenacity and let me in the class anyway.

But he was right... something had been lost, maybe to self-consciousness, insecurity, vanity. I knew I could impress with verse, so I relied on it, even when I didn't have to because it forced me to choose words carefully in a way that blank verse did not. (I believe I know the reason, psychologically, that this happened -- that that is a subject for another essay.)

So nearly everything I wrote in blank verse was unreadably bad and I didn't do well in the class, overall.

For a few years after college, I wrote maybe a half-dozen poems -- all sonnets -- usually dedicated to various friends.

But for the past 10 years I've written hardly anything.

One friend had a "poetry" birthday party a few years ago, so I wrote her a sonnet and recited it to the blank expressions of her DefJam-style poet pals.

And that was the end of that.

This past year I've told a few friends I'd "write a sonnet for them" but the well has felt dry, and even thinking about it made my brain hurt.

Last night, however, as I strained to will myself to sleep through a punishing headache, I found myself teeming with words about, of all things, writer's block.

Here is the result:

Words
packed incomphrehsibly
pressing impatiently
against the fragile pinhole portal
of articulation.
Single spies emerge
disoriented.
The battalion must wait.

Soulful Living: Why Is Cultivating the Soul So Painful?

How interesting that you posted those particular Oliver lines; they have been my polaris since I first saw them in Jungian analyst James Hollis' excellent book Creating a Life 10 years ago.



Hollis offers the useful concept of "resonance" when differentiating between "soul" goals and "ego" goals, cautioning against imposing our will to create resonance.



He writes: " When something is of us, is for us, it sets off the tuning fork inside us... The resonance within us cannot be willed; it happens... But resonance is the surest guide to finding our own right path. It constitutes an inner guide amid the imposing images of the outer world and the constant traffic of the intrapsychic world."



A soul goal may, in fact, coincide with an ego goal (and one of my persistant personal problems has been resisting those soul goals which also happen to be ego goals... what can I say, ego goals scare me...), but very often they do not.



If we are attentive to our feeling sensibility, however, we may be more inclined towards soul goals -- although actually choosing them, especially in the face of resistance of those around us, requires tremendous strength



And in those cases, soul choices are painful; their awareness alone can cause conflict and despair. But once that awareness has been awakened, the path of the ego can be equally painful as we know its rewards will ultimately be unsatisfying.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Foot Update

So... Last Saturday I was upstate and decided to go running that beautiful sunny morning.

About five minutes in, I realize I've gone the wrong way and make a sharp turn on my right heel. And then I feel -- and hear -- a sharp POP in my right heel. For a brief crazy moment I consider "running it off." And then the pain starts.

I limp back.

Fast foward a few days of clinc, ER and podiatrist visits and I learn that I have a heel spur -- a little "hook" of bone which can form at the bottom of the heel, where it connects to the plantar fascia, a tough tendon which helps maintain the arch of the foot.

The spur tore through the plantar fascia, which most likely was the "pop" I heard. Fortunatetly, the foot was not very discolored or swollen when I first saw a doctor later that evening, so it he concluded that the rupture was not disabling. But it was painful.

(Interestingly, the deep-tissue tear caused a pool of blood (hematoma) to well close to the ball of my foot a few days later, even though the injury itself is on the heel.)

Since the doctor I saw on Saturday evening at the Brooklyn DOCS clinic could not take an X-Ray, he advised me to return on Monday.

But, as I learned Monday morning, it turned out that the only DOCS radiologist who took my insurance was on vacation for the week. So that left the Brooklyn Hospital Emergency Room.

Six hours and a minor melt-down later, an X-ray revealed the offending spur.

The treating physician gave me crutches and stronger pain meds and set me up to see a podiatrist in their clinic the following morning (Tuesday)

I arrived a few minutes early to the clinic (a major achievement for me, especially in my state of limp-dom) to find an extremely long, slow registration line and an absent attendant.

Fortunately, I looked pathetic enough to get the attention of one of the medical staff. I showed her my discharge papers and gave her my insurance card. She led me to an administrator's office where he called my insurance company and, after a ridiculously long succession of voice mail prompts, learned the clinic didn't take my insurance anyway.

I had to go to a network podiatrist, but the one my primary care physician referred didn't even answer the phone.

I called another doctor friend who referred me to a pod in midtown -- who, thankfully gave me an appointment on Thursday.

And this doctor gave me good news and bad news.

The good news: Pain notwithstanding, he injury is not serious and should heal with rest -- AND I don't need crutches.

The bad news: Since the injury is on my heel, I need to keep pressure off that part of the foot. Which means wearing this ridiculous weight-distributing Stormtrooper boot for four weeks.

Ah well. Life could definitely be worse.