Today started in a miserable fashion emotionally. I was contemplating writing a whole post about the loneliness of loneliness. That kind of awful after a night of difficulty sleeping.
Two things turned around my day, one was going to a meeting of folks like me and remembering what I should feel grateful for in my life and talking with a good friend who re-grounded me back into my life and reminded me why some issues involving my separation in the past few days have been so difficult.
The other was teaching my acting class at Hunter. To be able to teach basic acting skills as I have discovered them over the Many years I have been directing and, more importantly, working with incredibly talented actors in labs, and see that this works in a college class, is an incredible high. To listen to their response to the first chapter of Joseph Chaikin's The Presence of the Actor and their understanding that the listening, tone and space exercises we had just done relate to that even better.
I began the class the way I had wanted to but was not sure I would be able to do properly, but it worked: with breathing. How to breathe. Basic yoga stuff, 3 part breath conflated with up and down the body register vocal work. Then I took them through a yoga sequence an actor taught a group of us ages ago when I had a theater company in NYC, which I have been doing myself for years.
Usually, when I teach this stuff it's in the context of a workshop or a class related but not just about this, so I have to teach it quickly. To be able to take it all apart in a leisurely way and relate it to the class-long discussion on Monday was just great.
This I could get used to doing for like a while.
The students are a great mix from teens to 30s, many races and backgrounds, and - delightfully - only 16 of them. This means I can give individual attention and we can play as a group without losing each other.
Also, much to my amazement, many of them had bought the book and done the reading. They are thoughtful and - again to my astonishment - care as much about the ideas as the acting. Jackpot!
So, a thank you to Hunter for hiring me, a prayer for more of this kind of the work in the future and a posthumous thank you to Joseph Chaikin who rocked my world. First in 1983 when I read his book after my friend Veronica handed me a copy of The Serpent telling me I had to direct it (so thank you Veronica for that - and so much more...), then in 1988 in person when I took his directing tragedy workshop, quitting a job, selling my bicycle and hitch-hiking from SF to Marin to do so (and never regretted it even though I was quite literally starving for lack of funds) - so I could listen to him speak in post-stroke aphasia (a precursor to 7 years communicating with my father before he died), thinking I had landed at the feet of the Oracle at Delphi. I directed a scene from Seneca's Oedipus, rehearsed in a corner of my room with the furniture (I mean milk crates and futon) pushed to the side - while we all smoked too many cigarettes. Not exactly Grotowski to be sure.
My work has of course moved on from then, and I'd like to think I've kicked the can up the road a bit in my own labs, but if it weren't for Joe's work with The Open Theater, his encouragement of me as a director in the workshop and taking the time outside the class to show me old tapes of the Open Theater's shows, I know I would not be the artist I am now.
Which answers the whole sorry tale of woe in my last post - yes of course teaching is worth it. I just hope and pray I can continue to find opportunities to teach not only what I love but what I have well over 30 years doing and close to 20 years doing in an original way. It is a revelation. While I have taught the workshops and loved that (I always love teaching my workshops), there is something special about having a whole college course to introduce young people to a fresh way of approaching one of the oldest and most deliciously impure art forms.
Finally, thank you, my lovely students today, for being open, receptive, ready to play. Many of them said the class reminded them of being children, that they noticed stuff they'd never noticed before or had forgotten since becoming adults and and the class allowed themselves to get lost, look silly, play. Music to my ears.
Hallelujah.
Welcome to my blog..
"We struggle with dream figures and our blows fall on living faces." Maurice Merleau-Ponty
I am now transitioning into being married again with a new surname (Barclay-Morton). John is transitioning from Canada to NYC and as of June 2014 has a green card. So transition continues, but now from sad to happy, from loss to love...from a sense of alienation to a sense of being at home in the world.
As of September 2013 I started teaching writing as an adjunct professor at Fordham University, which I have discovered I love with an almost irrational passion. While was blessed for the opportunity, after four years of being an adjunct, the lack of pay combined with heavy work load stopped working, so have transferred this teaching passion to private workshops in NYC and working with writers one on one, which I adore. I will die a happy person if I never have to grade an assignment ever again. As of 2018, I also started leading writing retreats to my beloved Orkney Islands. If you ever want two weeks that will restore your soul and give you time and space to write, get in touch. I am leading two retreats this year in July and September.
I worked full time on the book thanks to a successful crowd-funding campaign in May 2014 and completed it at two residencies at Vermont Studio Center and Wisdom House in summer 2015. I have done some revisions and am shopping it around to agents and publishers now, along with a new book recently completed.
I now work full-time as a freelance writer, writing workshop leader, coach, editor and writing retreat leader. Contact me if you are interested in any of these services.
Not sure when transition ends, if it ever does. As the saying goes, the only difference between a sad ending and a happy ending is where you stop rolling the film.
For professional information, publications, etc., go to my linked in profile and website for Barclay Morton Editorial & Design. My Twitter account is @wilhelminapitfa. You can find me on Facebook under my full name Julia Lee Barclay-Morton. More about my grandmothers' book: The Amazing True Imaginary Autobiography of Dick & Jani
In 2017, I launched a website Our Grandmothers, Our Selves, which has stories about many people's grandmothers. Please check it out. You can also contact me through that site.
In May, I directed my newest play, On the edge of/a cure, and have finally updated my publications list, which now includes an award-winning chapbook of my short-story White shoe lady, which you can find on the sidebar. I also have become a certified yoga instructor in the Kripalu lineage. What a year!
And FINALLY, I have created a website, which I hope you will visit, The Unadapted Ones. I will keep this blog site up, since it is a record of over 8 years of my life, but will eventually be blogging more at the website, so if you want to know what I am up to with my writing, teaching, retreats and so on, the site is the place to check (and to subscribe for updates). After eight years I realized, no, I'm never turning into One Thing. So The Unadapted Ones embraces the multiplicity that comprises whomever I am, which seems to always be shifting. That may in fact be reality for everyone, but will speak for myself here. So, do visit there and thanks for coming here, too. Glad to meet you on the journey...
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