Homage to Joseph Chaikin

You may never have heard of him, but Joseph Chaikin was arguably one of the most important US theater creators of the 20th Century.  His book 'The Presence of the Actor' should be required reading for anyone who wants to even stand near a theater, though many people have not read it.  It is the core text for my Acting class at Hunter and is the book that changed my life back in 1983 when I directed The Serpent.

Chaikin was an actor making it in NYC, then got a job with the very political Living Theatre, which challenged his ideas about theater.  From that experience, which enlightened him politically but frustrated him artistically, he went on to found a lab that became The Open Theater.  That company created some of the first ensemble-created work in the US in the mid-late sixties.  He wanted to explore the presence of the actor as it could relate to the world in which the actor finds herself.  He was looking for ways to bring about new worlds within this one.  Quite utopian in some ways, but deeply practical in others.  If you don't know about Joe and you are interested in any type of theater that wants to be more than diversionary, check it out.

I don't have the time or energy to talk about all the reasons why he was so wonderful, but do suggest you read his book.  A few important quotations in it include "The question is not what do I want but what makes me want what I want."  Another favorite insight, slightly paraphrased, is that our self-hatred is a direct reflection of the success of the oppressiveness of the society in which we live.

The line yesterday that saved my life (the book somehow keeps doing that - it is the rare kind that you can read and re-read and find sentences you swore were inserted by elves the night before because it wasn't there before, was it?)  was about their work on the play Terminal, which was about the cheery subject of death and dying in America.  He writes about how a doctor has to have the discipline to move past his depression at losing his first patients and is also referring to the collaborators creating the new piece:

"If we stop where we are depressed, or even where we're satisfied with simply expressing our depression, we are dilettantes."

Amen and tell it.  This was Exactly what I needed to read, because as I have mentioned probably a tedious amount of times in this blog, working on my grandmothers book sometimes sinks me into a swamp of almost - but not quite - paralyzing depression.  I have begun to doubt my sanity in taking on this project, since this very depression I feel now is reminiscent of the depression I felt when focussing on my painting when I was a teenager and at times my writing - depressions that diverted me back to the theater - where I got the jolt of working with others.  When I've written my stage texts, I've never felt anything like this depression.  It is tempting to believe if doing something makes one feel this way, it may not be the right thing to do.

Then along comes Joe with the exact right words at the exact right time.  He's talking about a theater project and a doctor learning his trade, but no matter.  The fact remains, I need - as I thought at the outset - to walk through this depression because if I walk away from this project to avoid it, I am indeed a dilettante.  I'm not condemning my past work as dilettantism, but I can't keep playing the same old song.  Well, I guess I could, but I don't want to do that.

Yesterday I worked for 4 1/2 hours on the book, in the form of finalizing the transcription of grandmother Jani's 'obit' and today I worked on it in the form of getting cork board to tile a wall in my study so I can finally put up photos of Dick and Jani from when they were babies to their last days.  By grace and some crazed determination, I am in possession of photos of them from most all periods of their life.  I need to see them in all their ages in front of me.  Let that wash over and through and see what happens.

I am surrounded.  Even when prepping my acting class, Chaikin reminded me of what I am doing.  So I am incredibly grateful to him for that.  FYI, my students seem to love him, too.  This book written very specifically in the early 70s still resonates today.

Speaking of which, had a great class with my students on Tuesday.  I do love teaching acting - using Chaikin, some golden oldies and my own stuff.  This relatively new experience continues to astound.

New apartment beginning to feel like home....and teaching at Hunter rocks again

While the study is still filled with boxes and Ivar shelves are only half-way constructed (because books not all yet unpacked...etc.), the living room/bedroom/dining room is shaping up and Ugo the Cat and I are feeling at home...so all else seems possible.

A good friend showed up on Friday and helped me hang pictures, pictures I haven't had up on a wall since London.  She also suggested I start writing my book before study all the way done for 15 minutes a day.  This was genius, because 15 minutes isn't even real time, so it's of course do-able.  And I did it, yesterday.  Tonight, I plan to do the same.  Yesterday, the 15 minutes became 45 and then I had to leave for a meeting.

Another friend said I could contact her before and after I start and stop writing, because the material - about my grandmothers - is so fucking dark.  It's deep sea diving and it's nice to think there will be someone there at the surface aware I just went under.

I love my friends.

I am blessed with a number of unbelievably great friends.  Just a moment of gratitude for them all:

________________________________________ (that is a blank space of gratitude where no words can express what these folks mean to me - you all know who you are)

In terms of the shelves: I thought I had put all my theater books up and then thought the total looked smaller than I remembered, then found more books, so my clever shelving scheme was totally fucked.  I have too many options here: Ivar shelves are like Legos.  All those damn Scandinavian option-givers.  So, while I can make it "however I want it" I am in the Devo (80s band for anyone too young to know who the hell I'm talking about) dilemma of "Freedom of choice is what you've got, freedom from choice is what you want."

So my head almost explodes and I stare catatonic at boxes of half unpacked boxes that friends helped me pack (bless you each and every one...) but so I don't know what's in the them....

But....and this is the most important news: it is moving forward.  Not on MY schedule, but it's moving forward.  And because of my friend Katie's suggestion, I did indeed start writing on September 1, even if on the 'sub-optimal' dining table in a less than ergonomically correct set up because my desk and desk chair are now firmly established in the Room of Chaos.

Had a lovely walk today in the Park getting to know someone new, which was a delight.  I love sharing Inwood Park with folks and it is always a privilege to be allowed into a new person's universe, especially someone with whom I have a lot in common.  Long may it continue.

Ah and lest I forget to mention: started teaching acting again this week at Hunter and LOVE it, again.  I am so happy to see that - so far - it wasn't that last semester was a fluke.  The Hunter student body - at least the folks who decide to take theater in the early evening - are kind of great and it's like teaching a NYC subway car in terms of diversity - even if that subway car may be a little younger and smarter than the average.  So many students have never taken acting in their lives, so are curious and open.  The conversations about Chaikin's 'Present of the Actor' (the core text in my class) are great and if I've done nothing else, I've hipped them to this brilliant theater artist/philosopher who was wildly under-appreciated in life. I'm happy to do whatever I can to keep his good name alive.  That and teaching my own stuff, which is a privilege...Just so, so happy I get to teach this class.

OK, time to do my '15 minutes' of deep sea diving.  Wish me luck.  And let me say again: Inwood is the best.

Uplifted today by teaching at Hunter

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.

Un-Christmas stories

So, in line with the last post about the changing POV of movies, just watched Point Break (1991), which I saw back when it came out or soon after.  This was one of Kathryn Bigelow's early films, FYI...

The POV begins with surfers, goes to FBI and back and forth, and ends in a surfer-FBI stand-off, with the surfer mentality winning in the end.  Even though the surfers in question rob banks wearing masks of ex-presidents.

Before and during breaks, I am reading Just Kids, the book by Patti Smith about her friendship/love with Robert Mapplethorpe.

These are stories, in one case fictional, in one case non-fiction, of people going to passionate extremes.  The fictional story is of course Hollywood and therefore has all the familiar testosterone-induced tropes, seen - as done so effectively by Bigelow in The Hurt Locker - through a female director's POV.  But nonetheless is burdened with cliches.  So far the Patti Smith book is not, except of course for the fact she and Mapplethorpe met and happened upon NYC in the late 1960s, so the places, music, etc. do have a kind of familiar ring to them.  On the other hand, as someone who moved to NYC in the late 1980s (and lived in the city for a year in the early 80s), I too recognize the strange exhilaration of hitting the city broke and with 'that magic feeling, nowhere to go...nowhere to go...'

However, their companionship is inspiring even at the beginning of the book, and I look forward to reading more.

But the point here is that in the movie and the book, the POV is more 'criminal' (movie) and artist/outsider sometimes shoplifter (book).

I find it cheers me up, this POV, because the whole cop gets his/her guy thing feels tired and somewhat smugly self-satisfied.

I think as someone who is in her late 40s and newly single and essentially re-starting out in NYC (after 8 years in London), I feel a kinship to the status of outsider - not following the script...somewhere over the coloring lines and not generally fitting in to anyone's idea, including my own, of where I 'should' be right now...and guess what, after the tears and the sadness about the loss/es, what do I feel?  This same sense of exhilaration, of possibility...and a quiet knowledge that yes the book/s will get written, yes they will get published, yes it will all be OK.  There's a line in Smith's book, at the end, about recovering lost things when "We experience a moment of respite when all sense of bad luck vanishes."

I have been having these moments recently.  Then waves of inconsolable sadness.  Then these moments of respite.  It occurred to me this evening - perhaps this is the grace of getting older - you begin to understand - that is how it is.  These things follow one another.  There is no reason to fear the inconsolable sadness, because it will be followed by these moments of respite.  Rinse, repeat...

And then sometimes, even, moments of intense connection to what could be called a higher power or God or whatever, like the time I was standing at the bus stop in San Francisco and was rocketed out of the universe somehow past all the stars to I cannot tell you where, but it was past everything there is that we know and then just as quickly shot back to where I was. My feet of course never left the ground, but I have never forgotten that moment, have written about it a number of times, especially what followed - seeing a mother yelling at her son and knowing even that, too, was OK.  OK is not the right word, 'as it was meant to be' is also not the right phrase.  There is no word for this feeling, sensation...no, not feeling, not sensation - knowledge...a knowledge of something that has never left me - though I often forget it just when one would wish one would remember such a thing.  But then - no.  No, I don't.  I know it.

Life since then - I was 24 - has been all about allowing that moment to be followed through on in some profound way.  I have failed utterly at this most of the time, but it's worth it, so so worth it.  It's like the wonderful Joseph Chaikin line "To express the extreme joy of being alive at a certain moment is practically impossible and really worth trying."  But joy - even that word - doesn't cut it.  Words simply don't cut it.  They feel so partial, like the 'failures' T.S. Eliot refers to as each attempt...to describe this.....

So I will leave it there.  I call these un-Christmas stories, because they are not about following anyone or any rituals laid down by others.  If there was a Jesus, I'm not entirely sure Christmas would be his or her thing.

I've had a lovely day, except for one dip into inconsolable sadness, so this is not some adolescent snit about consumerism or the hypocrisy of religion or whatever.  It's just reaching toward something else that may not be contained in this story, the one we mostly ignore on the day anyway...or maybe it is a way of attempting to reach it as well.  I don't know.

But I will say this, if you haven't yet, and you are an artist or have ever felt called to plunge into things outside of all reason, and if you were ever/are now young and finding your way through a place as crazy-loving-strange-beautiful-unforgiving-graceful as NYC, give yourself the pleasure of reading Just Kids.  Patti Smith has always been a favorite artist/musician/lyricist/human of mine, but this is spectacular.

It was 31 years ago today...

well almost, by the time this post publishes, probably 31 years and a day...though also about this time of night I imagine...no pun intended, that John Lennon was killed.  As if Reagan winning the presidency wasn't bad enough, a month later a guy who just talked about peace was killed.

I remember reading somewhere that Hunter Thompson was talking to Ken Kesey about this and saying: "why him? Why not me? I'm the asshole" and Kesey saying "you never promised anyone anything, that's why."  I think he had a point.

I woke up the next morning (dec. 9, 1980) to my radio alarm blaring out the voice of a DJ saying "-n was shot last night" and then a Beatles or Lennon song playing - was it Yesterday?  Imagine?  Honestly, I don't remember.  I just remember knowing as soon as I heard the song that something terrible happened, the person's name ended with 'n', the Beatles were playing, so there was a good chance it was John Lennon.

I was 17 and in love with all thing Lennon at that time, which made me incredibly unhip in 1980.  I think I may have written about this earlier in the blog, but this was when I was at boarding school on scholarship and my similarity with most people there was slim to none.  I of course thought this meant something was deeply wrong with me and didn't realize until years later it might have had something to do with the gaping chasm of a class divide between us wherein most of them were raised to rule the world or at the very least (some female students) to marry a ruler of the world.  Many of them, for the record, now do rule the world.  No, I don't know how to contact any of them now, though I probably could through the miracle of social networking, but then again I'd probably have about as much to say to them now as I did then, i.e., not much.

The students I liked and admired were into things like punk and new wave and went to CBGBs on the weekends.  They seemed like they orbited a different social stratosphere than I did.  I listened to the Beatles, Abbey Road mostly, sometimes the Doors and the Who - living in some 60s la-la land that probably never existed and certainly bore zero resemblance to reality in 1980.

But to those of us who lived in that world, and there were a few true believers at Choate, mostly other smarty-pants scholarship students like me who were pale and serious looking and clung to each other in un-hip-smarty-pants-ness, Lennon's assassination was brutal.  We were depressed for days, some even wore black arm bands.  I don't think I went that far, either because I thought it was odd or because I lived in a whole house of people who didn't really care, were Way too cool for school and which I had somehow ended up in because I got along with the Dean of the Girls, Francelle, and her husband Ken because of my growing interest radical left-wing politics.  I used to spend weekends in their living room drinking tea and talking Marxism and Latin - you know, the usual way one spends Saturdays when one is 17.

I loved her tea, though - Francelle's - and the ceramic handmade mugs, the honey that was fresh from some honeycomb somewhere, that you twisted around a wooden ridged stick thing.  It felt warm and safe in her kitchen and living room.  I met her many years later and told her she had saved my life that year.  She told me I had helped her a lot, too, which totally surprised me.  But in retrospect, she wasn't your usual person at Choate, especially not with her then-husband Ken, who was from Trinidad and had hair that went up straight, which always looked like he had just put his finger in an electric socket...seriously.  But he would talk and talk and talk about left-wing political theories and ideas and they would reminisce about Oxford and I would stare at them and think: wow.  I would then research lots of these ideas for various papers and teach-ins and like whatever...so I was their little protege I suppose.

So why, to this day I can't figure it out, was I alone in their little TV room watching Reagan bounce on to that stage with 'his Wife Nancy' to the tune of Happy Days Are Here Again?  I was crying and crying, thinking: things are going to be terrible...which they were/are still/as in we haven't recovered from the damage done - and it's only getting/gotten worse.  And I was ALONE.  Very, very alone. None of the other girls in the house gave a shit as far as I could tell and why would they?  They were safe and snug as bugs in a rug (oh except of course for the ones who would die of drug overdoses and stuff...yes it was an illusion, their safety, but they believed it is the point...I didn't know how to reach my parents half the time - this made things different - perhaps they didn't either, come to think of it - oh never mind - let's just say they had more money and leave it at that...)

Then a month later Lennon gets shot, right after putting out the Double Fantasy album and that haunting Rolling Stones cover with him naked in a fetal position next to Yoko, fully clothed.  I stared and stared at that photo - riveted by the possibilities inherent therein - not the least of which was the gender reversal that was Unheard of in 1980, even that late in the day - this was truly radical.  Now, probably not so much.  Then, truly shocking in a good way.

He was shot when he was what 42 maybe?  I'm 48, so I've already outlived John Lennon, which is depressing from both angles: i.e., he should not have died so young and I have accomplished only a teeny tiny shred of what he accomplished in his short life.  Both of these facts depress me, his death more so, because I can still rally (she said bravely).  At least I hope so.

I'm not going to even talk about the shooter or all that shit because it's sensationalist well shit.  The fact of his death is what matters and that it was violent and unnecessary but probably given our weird aversion to peace inevitable.

Is the Occupy movement the beginning of the pendulum swinging back...finally?  Too soon to tell I suppose but at least small things are changing in the way people talk - it seems to be rearranging certain politicians' spines back into left wing alignment where they were supposed to be according to their rhetoric...and so long may it continue.

It's heartening to see people so aware, awake and close to fearless - rallying here and there - defiantly remaining leaderless.  I can't help but think Lennon would have loved this rebellion/Happening.  It's part politics, part Fluxus (the group Ono was part of when they met - you can see home movie like footage of all of them Jonas Mekas took if you happen upon the right gallery one day...on the Staten Island Ferry as I recall...).  That's kind of great.

The students where I will be teaching next semester, Hunter, are already occupying their school.  My favorite tweet was from one of their professors saying "I'll join you guys when I've finished grading your papers."  I look forward to doing the same, except it'll be even more fun since I'm teaching acting. My base text will be Joseph Chaikin's ʼThe Presence of the Actor' - a great manifesto about theater and politics and what he refers to as 'the set up.'  That and my own stuff.  Should be pretty great.  And it will link in effortlessly with Occupy.  Not in a didactic way, and no my students don't have to sign up for political action, etc., but the theatricality of it will be made apparent...and the idea of how to create theatrical spaces in public places and the theatricality of political action...etc...

So here's hoping the great big gorgeous spirit that was John Lennon (and yes I know he had his dark side and yadeyadeya...but come on so does everybody - but not everybody sings Give Peace a Chance until they are hoarse...right?) is delighting in this new spin on the dance floor of possibilities opening up.  I hope the creaking sound is of the pendulum finally taking a swing back and not the damn thing just flying off its axis...always a possibility...but even then, something New would happen...

It's late now, I finished my last day of teaching for this term today.  Hurrah!  So I can stay up late again and sleep past 6:45am.  Anyone who knows me will know how important this is.  I am one of the 5% of truly night people.  I have decided I am descended genetically from the cave nightwatch shift, the ones who were supposed to keep their eyes peeled at 2am for marauding lions or whatever.  A small but proud minority.  For whom a 6:45am start is cruelty.

Back to watching the cave...but now, hopefully Ugo the cat can take charge of that so I - who did have a 6:45am start today, can toddle off to bed.