An Irish Blessing to Warm your Heart

My grandmother sent me this Irish blessing today, and it warmed my heart, so I thought I'd share it.

May the blessing of light be upon you. Light on the outside, light on the inside. With God's sunlight shining on you, may your heart glow with warmth like a turf fire that welcomes friends and strangers alike. May the light of the Lord shine from your eyes like a candle in the window, welcoming the weary traveler. May the blessing of God's soft rain be on you, falling gently on your head, refreshing your soul with the sweetness of little flowers newly blooming. May the strength of the winds of heaven bless you, carrying the rain to wash your spirit clean, sparkling after in the sunlight. May the blessing of God's earth be on you. And as you walk the roads, may you always have a kind word for those you meet. May you understand the strength and power of God in a thunderstorm in winter, and the quiet beauty of creation in the calm of a summer sunset. And may you come to realize that, insignificant as you may seem in this great universe, you are an important part of God's plan. May he watch over you, and keep you safe from harm.  

It's Not Fair

It's not fair. That's all I can think about sometimes when I come out of rehearsal.

Rehearsing a show is a long, complicated, tiring, and sometimes tedious process. It's intensive, and it takes a lot out of you. But sometimes I walk out of rehearsals and I can't shake how unfair it is.

Unfair that the audiences who come see the show will, in a sense, see only the tip of the iceberg.

Before you accuse me of not understanding my job, I do know that it IS my job to do all the legwork of rehearsal and do all the intricate, tedious, intensive work to bring the character to life so that the things that are latent in the text come to life and are apparent to the audience--I know that. But that's not exactly what I mean.

I mean the discoveries I make--both in rehearsal and in research. I don't know if there's a way for me to get everything that I'm discovering and understanding across to an audience. Some of it, sure. But there are moments and discoveries and little understandings that no one besides me (and sometimes my director) will ever know.

It's not fair!

I wish I could show people--bring them along with me. But usually that's pretty impossible. And they probably wouldn't be half as excited about it as I am anyway.

And then I start to wonder...

does this make me selfish?

That I want to do this for a living because of moments like that, because of how excited they make me? To want to do something for a living because of how much I love it and how much I get out of it? That's the nature of an acting career, right? Actors don't act for the money, most of the time. They act because they love it, because it makes them come to life. That's certainly true for me.

But is that where my life and my purpose are supposed to stop?

Every once in a while, the doubts creep back. And I reach to justify it again, and I do, and I'm satisfied.
For the moment.
Until I start reveling in those moments again and I wonder,

does this make me selfish?

Takasago

It's really late, and I should go to bed, but I just read a Noh play for the first time. (Sad that I only just read one my senior year of college.)

I haven't had a whole lot of exposure to Asian theatre. I did a research paper on Kabuki for Advanced Writing my freshman year (had no idea what it was or what I was doing, but it was good to start thinking outside of the box and explore new kinds of theatre all at once--I was in Intro to Theatre at the same time).

So tonight I read Takasago by Zeami, generally considered the greatest Noh playwright. I mean, the man wrote 100 of the 240 plays in the active Noh repertory today.

Noh is one of Japan's forms of classical theatre. It was very much influenced by Zen Buddhism, as well as the strict feudal system that emerged in the late 12th century.

I liked especially the poetic nature of Takasago. A quote that one of the translators included:

The principal Japanese word for 'poem' is uta, which more generally means song. Thus we are told that "each sound of beings feeling and non-feeling, every last one, is a song."

Takasago is referred to as the best-loved god play, and I think I know why. Here's the story line--

Takasago by Zeami is a god or deity play about the paired pines of Takasago and Suminoe (or Sumiyoshi). Two travelers, Sideman and Sideman Second undertake a journey to Miyako, and hope to see sights along the way. They stop at Takasago, or “dune,” and see Doer and Second, an old couple. Second sweeps pine needles from under the pine with a broom while Doer (holding a rake) talks to Sideman and Sideman Second. Sideman asks about the Takasago pine and how its soul is supposedly paired with the Suminoe pine and asks how that can be since they are so far away (in different provinces). Doer and Second also happen to be from those exact same provinces, and we discover that they are actually the spirits of the two pines. Second explains that, “Though ten thousand leagues of hill and streams divide them, for lovers' hearts finely attuned, the way is never long.” They talk awhile longer about the pines, and then Sideman and Sideman Second call over a Fool to tell them more. He tells them they should go on a pilgrimage to the Suminoe pine, but they say they don’t have a way to get there. The Fool lets them borrow his boat, and they make the journey to the Suminoe pine, where they encounter the god of Sumiyoshi.

Like I said, I loved the poetry, and I really liked the romantic symbolism of the pines. I want to visit Japan and see some Noh plays.

Here's an excerpt from the beginning, when Sideman and Sideman Second are traveling:

Travel wear 
unfolding long
Miyako Way
cut out for us 
now waves touch shore 
and ship lanes lie
calm the spring breeze 
how many days 
stretch on, ahead
behind, all's vague 
white clouds trail away

And here are a couple of pictures. There's something about that image of the old couple, one with a broom and one with a rake, tending to the pine trees that is time- and culture-transcendent. Which is probably why they call it the "best-loved" one.

So, there you have it. My Theatre History homework. I should probably sleep now.

I Love My Senior Project: (in which I vent optimism and excitement)

I love working on My Name is Rachel Corrie. I love that this is my senior project.

Unfortunately, while I love working on it and talking about it, I don't want to talk about it all the time, nor do I feel like I can talk about it with everyone. Therefore I'll just vent all my excitement here. So. If you're reading this, yay for you. ILOVETHISPROJECT.

We did a full run-through on Thursday that ran an hour and twenty minutes (EXACTLY my target run-time!), shaving an entire twenty minutes off my previous run-time.

I mean, I'll take it.

In the run-through, I was present with the text--very much in the moment. My energy stayed up, and my director said she could feel it driving the run. I did call for line once, and there were a handful of times when I got stuck because of lines--I still can't get through the whole thing without getting stuck in a couple of places. My stage manager, Honey, and my media-tech designer, Daniel, both saw it for the first time, and perhaps MOST encouraging to me was that they both came out of it saying that I held their attention and kept them engaged the entire time. Which is more than I could have hoped for in an hour-twenty-minute performance of a one-woman show. Maybe there's hope yet.

I'm now in the middle of working on acquiring costume and some final props. Which, when you're budgetless, can be merciless to college student pockets. But I really love this project, and so I don't mind paying for things at all. It's just difficult.

I still need:
An ash try (note to self: check props closet)
Fake stage cigarettes
3 to 4 1990s fashion magazines
A package or two of black ballpoint pens

Khaki cargo pants
Black or charcoal rib-knit tank top
Hiking boots (I'm currently highest bidder for a pair on Ebay--guess we'll see. I've never bid for anything on Ebay before. I'm thinking of it as an adventure.)

I found some of these recently. These first two are from the very first staging of My Name is Rachel Corrie--directed by Alan Rickman and starring Megan Dodds--at the Playhouse Theatre in London, April 2005. I really liked them.

And the rest of these images are from other productions of the show.

Senior Jitters?

Remember that time the little missionary kid became a working professional actor?

Unfortunately, I haven't heard that story yet. I mean, maybe it's happened, but if it has I haven't heard about it yet. 

I'm not sure if it's because the first day of my senior year of college starts the day after tomorrow or if I'm just going nuts, but this weekend I suddenly got really scared. 

I don't know what comes next.

I don't know how to get work as a professional actor.

I don't know how to get that first gig--that first job where I would get paid to act--that I could put on my resume that would announce to the world, "Look! Someone actually thought I had enough talent and skill and chutzpah to hire me and pay me to do my favorite thing in the entire world!"

Scarier yet: at this moment in time I can't envision myself doing anything else right after I graduate. I think this is what I'm supposed to do.

I'm compiling a list of theatres and auditions to look into this year and trying to keep calm. And I know I still have a year of school to go and that plenty of people (not just theatre majors) don't have a job lined up right after they graduate. 

But so far that hasn't stopped me from shaking in my boots.

Music Musings

FREUD: You like music.
LEWIS: Very much so.
FREUD: Sacred music, no doubt?
LEWIS: Actually, I hate hymns.
FREUD: Really?
LEWIS: They're like dipping a chocolate bar in sugar. Unbearably cloying. Hymns drive me out of church early every Sunday. I leave after communion and head across the street for a pint. There, I'm happy to listen to any music playing... My objection to church music is that it trivializes emotions I already feel.

This fun little piece of dialogue between Sigmund Freud and C.S. Lewis is from a play by Mark St. Germain called Freud's Last Session. I haven't seen the play but, shoot, I want to. The play, according to Dramatists Play Service, "centers on legendary psychoanalyst Dr. Sigmund Freud who invites the young, rising Oxford Don C.S. Lewis to his home in London. On the day England enters World War Two, Freud and Lewis clash about love, sex, the existence of God, and the meaning of life, just weeks before Freud took his own life." 

I especially like this little piece of dialogue from the play because Lewis' words describe exactly the way I feel. Not entirely about hymns, necessarily, but certainly about contemporary Christian music. It's been a while since I could honestly say "I like 'Christian' music." I'm fully aware of the fact that it's probably just me being the reactive, rebellious twenty-something I am. But seriously. If I'm on a road trip and I'm losing the radio station I was on and I start scanning for new ones, most of the time in about three seconds I can tell you if it's a Christian station or not. I listen to some Christian songs and facepalm at the theology and messages in some of them. I sit and genuinely wonder why the blazes Christian artists feel some inner need to "Na Na Na" and "La La La" for half the song. The songs do sometimes seem to "trivialize emotions I already feel." I'm just really usually not a fan.

So you can laugh with me at the irony that, for the last couple of weeks, I've been filling in part time as a temporary DJ for my college radio station, 94.3 FM or The Fortress, home of all your latest, greatest Christian hits. 

I know, I know, I'm whining. So I'll quit and tell you about what happened on my road trip a few weeks ago. 

I was coming back from Virginia to Indiana after the conclusion of my summer internship at the American Shakespeare Center, and I hadn't been able to find my GPS before I left. (To an utterly directionally challenged individual, this is terrifying.) I was instead trying to use my BlackBerry's Google Maps App, which completely drained the battery before I'd completed three of what ended up being a twelve hour trip. Fortunately I managed to stop and write out some directions, but had no way of anticipating the intense storms and long (barely marked) detours all along my chosen route home. Long story short, I ended up badly lost several times, stressed, frazzled, and exhausted. So when I began losing the radio station I'd been listening to as I drove down some back country road that I only hoped was going to get me somewhere relatively close to home, I flipped the stations hurriedly and frustrated, and landed on something random. It was a somewhat upbeat sound--a mandolin or ukelele maybe. And then I heard the words.

I had no way of knowing
Just how hard this journey could be
Cause the valleys are deeper
And the mountains are steeper than I ever would have dreamed 

But I know we're gonna make it
And I know we're gonna get there soon
And I know sometimes it feels like we're going the wrong way
But it's just the long way home

I think I laughed out loud. Here I was, very lost, tired of sitting, with my contacts getting fuzzy, and some guy with a mandolin on the radio was serenading me with the story of my trip. But it was comforting. Mandolin man had taken the time to write a song for me about the long way home. Obviously he was a Christian artist (didn't take me long to figure that out) and was figuratively talking about life while I was thinking about my literally long way home, but that didn't end up mattering. He reminded me that life was going to go on even if it took me all night to finally figure out how to get back to my house, and that my problems (dagnabbit--I missed a turn... again) are not at all as big as they seem when I'm sitting in the middle of them.

It wasn't until the next week or two that I looked up the lyrics and found out that mandolin man was actually Steven Curtis Chapman--go figure. I used to listen to some of Chapman's songs all the time growing up. The Christian music fixture actually came to Quito, Ecuador (of all places) during my growing up days and held a concert for some of us overseas people down there, and I met him in person.

So, for all the complaining I've done about contemporary Christian music, I guess I really shouldn't. Because, I guess, what if--even just that one time--some song really does do some good for a poor lost, frazzled twenty-something or a hurting forty-something or a melancholy tween? Life is a lot bigger than my occasional facepalms.

Charlotte Brontë Speaking Truth

"Having thus acknowledged what I owe those who have aided and approved me, I turn to another class: a small one, so far as I know, but not, therefore, to be overlooked. I mean the timorous or carping few who doubt the tendency of such books as 'Jane Eyre': in whose eyes whatever is unusual is wrong; whose ears detect in each protest against bigotry - that parent of crime - an insult to piety, that regent of God on earth. I would suggest to such doubters certain obvious distinctions; I would remind them of certain simple truths.

"Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last. To pluck the mask from the face of the Pharisee, is not to lift an impious hand to the Crown of Thorns. These things and deeds are diametrically opposed: they are as distinct as is vice from virtue. Men too often confound them: they should not be confounded; appearance should not be mistaken for truth; narrow human doctrines, that only tend to elate and magnify a few, should not be substituted for the world-redeeming creed of Christ. There is - I repeat it - a difference; and it is a good, and not a bad action to mark broadly and clearly the line of separation between them.

"The world may not like to see these ideas dissevered, for it has been accustomed to blend them; finding it convenient to make external show pass for sterling worth - to let white-washed walls vouch for clean shrines. It may hate who dares to scrutinize and expose, to raise the gilding and show base metal under it, to penetrate the sepulchre and reveal charnel relics; but hate as it will, it is indebted to him."

- Charlotte Brontë, Preface of Jane Eyre