In Blue review

Sometimes I use my blog to review theater that I see that interests me enough to write about it, and this is such a time. I was lucky enough to see In Blue, written and directed by Ran Xia at The Tank in NYC on Friday night (running through December 15), and wanted to share some thoughts on that.

The play does not reveal itself easily. The subjects are poet and playwright Else Lasker-Schuler and Blue Rider painter Franz Marc. I am on not an expert on either of them, and am not going to pretend to be for this review, though I am a fan of The Blue Rider (Der Blaue Reiter) school of painting, its most famous member being Kandinsky. I went to the play in part because of a memory of going to the museum in Munich devoted to this work back in 1984 and being blown away by the riot of colors and the sheer energy of the work.

Franz and Else's connection is not clearly factual or fictional, though according to the play there were postcards Franz sent to Else, and he illustrated one of her poems with his famous blue horses. But the sense of In Blue is that it is working much like abstract-expressionist paintings, vivid imagery that does not cohere to a specific story in the naturalistic sense of that word. What makes it hold together are the performances of Alyssa Simon and Finn Kilgore, who are grounded in each moment wherever it may go. Simon as Lasker-Schuler especially needs to move through multiple levels of presence, sometimes even within the same sentence, and does so with grace, ease, and humor, whereas Kilgore is an anchored fictional presence, seemingly evoked from Lasker-Schuler's memory and dreams. The direction and use of the beautiful set designed by Sarah Adkins and lights designed gorgeously by Becky Heisler McCarthy is imaginative and wonderful to watch unfold (sometimes literally). And, a special shout out to the costume designer Florence Lebas for sourcing the historically accurate and drop-dead gorgeous Lasker-Schuler shoes, which alone are worth the price of admission. The musician, Luke Santy, who is credited as performing a 'live score' is also a delight, and his presence and live music, including his interaction with Simon, adds a necessary present tense sense to the moment to moment flow of this multi-layered piece.

I am not attempting to be overly oblique here, but just wanting to evoke a sense of what it is like to watch this show. At first I became obsessed with dates (since many were mentioned) and where we were from moment to moment. Then I gave up and it got easier to follow. In the end, the bits, like in a Blue Rider painting, revealed themselves as a whole. The difference between theater and a painting being of course that the painting you see all at once whereas the play accumulates over time. So, I would counsel patience while watching, as it will all eventually come together, not in a linear whole but like a certain kind of painting or experimental music.

I do recommend going to see this play, as it gives insights into the early 20th Century, with some uncanny and uncomfortable parallels to our own tumultuous beginning of the 21st, and to a kind of love and connection via art and words that transcends—albeit in a troubled fashion—even such inconveniences as death and time.

Asking for help (aka Lessons in Humility)

I haven't written here for a while for a number of reasons. The batshit crazy state of the world being a big reason, but also I tripped on last step down to subway platform on June 14 and fell. I thought I had sprained my ankle and muscled through the Wesleyan Writers Conference for 4 days, then came home to take care of it. It didn't heal, went to urgent care twice, was x-rayed and at first no sign of fracture. When - a month later - I saw an orthopedist in a clinic (the fun never stops when you're on Medicaid), they took more X-rays and there was a fracture - a small fracture - on top of foot. I now have an air cast and feel saner, because there's a reason it wasn't healing. I'm not a wimp or whatever.

So, that is difficult because we live on the fifth floor of a walk-up. I am isolated much of the time, because: stairs. Lots of stairs. I do go out, because if I didn't I'd go insane, but can't walk for very long, etc.

OK, so there's that. And of course that has meant asking for a lot of help. I am not good at asking for help. Ask my husband. I either refuse to acknowledge I need the help and potentially hurt myself or decide I do need help - but when I do - I Need To Have The Help NOW. Fun times for both of us as you can imagine. I'm getting better at it. A little bit.

But...this has converged with a couple of editing jobs falling through for me while John has gotten work, so he's also had the motherlode of the paying work plus dealing with me limping around and not able to do much around the house. Thank Goddess we had fixed up the study before this happened, so he has a good place to work. And the living room is now a space for just being. So we can have some space to work and rest.

So, this is where I start to need asking for help from you. John and I have begun a small editing business, that I have announced here, but again here is that link: Barclay-Morton Editorial+Design
If you know anyone who could use writing, editing, proofing and/or design services, give us a shout. Or recommend us. or both!

I have also begun - after careful consideration - a Patreon. This is a different kind of crowd-funding platform that helps creators fund their creations, per month. I have chosen this model, because I have a number of projects on the go right now, including my book that is now complete and for which I am seeking representation and publication, beginning another book, a play-text that will be produced in September on Governor's Island, a photographic and video practice that documents daily life in small-form meditation, and of course this blog. I am also beginning to write essays for publication.

Therefore, what I could use - as this platform is set up to provide - are patrons of my artistic life in general. As with a regular crowd-funding campaign, at different levels there are different perks, but you can become a patron for as low as $1/month. I figure this is as democratic as it gets.

Am I going to save the world with my work? No. Am I glad I - and my other wildly talented friends -can create works of beauty and contemplation in the middle of a world gone seemingly mad? You bet.

Last night, I accidentally put on the RNC. I saw Giuliani practically foaming at the mouth but in a relatively articulate way, and a crowd who adored him. I became afraid. I then went and looked at my little Patreon account with the short meditative videos, and I could breathe again. I then started to type up handwritten work for November that is the beginning of a new book. And I could breathe some more. Even with my gimp ankle, I did some gentle yoga and some breathing meditations. I did some more writing. I was able to breathe a little more.

My work cannot save the world, but as William Carlos Williams wrote:

It is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there.


So this is me asking for your help to do my part to put my kind of poetry into the world - in the form of play texts, performance events, prose, short videos, askew photos, reflective blog posts and essays. I will send you little bits of me and my work every month, so you will know what I am doing and why and something about the process of creation. You can partake in as much or as little of that as you want.

Any support - no matter how small or large - means the world to me. It holds me accountable to you and to my work. It means that I am creating for an audience, that there are people out there who believe in poetry - in the largest sense - and supporting living artists, specifically this living artist.

Here is the link.

Alternatively, if you would like to make a one-time contribution to the original crowd-funding campaign for The Amazing True Imaginary Autobiography of Dick & Jani, you can do so. The book, as mentioned, is now written, but not yet published. However, if you donate on this site (and on some levels of Patreon), you will receive a copy of the book as soon as it is available. I am in the midst of querying agents and publishers. This process - including revising the book (last revision this past month in response to excellent feedback at Wesleyan Writers Conference) has taken way longer than I imagined, so could use help completing this process as well.

Thank you all for reading these words. Thank you for letting me ask you for help. This is me now letting this go.

Women, voices, ownership...and not unpacking

After a marathon session yesterday (hence no blog post), I did no unpacking today, but instead went with a friend who had extra tickets to Relatively Speaking a Broadway show of one-acts by Ethan Cohen, Elaine May and Woody Allen.  The real writer of the three playwrights - by a mile - is Elaine May.  The other two pieces by Cohen and Allen were sophomoric (as in: if Cohen had written it at 14 it might be considered semi-precocious, clever comedy but for an adult - meh) and a series of one-liners justifying in retrospect his marrying of his step-daughter (Allen).  Ha ha ha.

OK, so...was glad to see the Elaine May play.  Also really glad the tickets were free and my friend Tamara and I agreed in our assessments of each piece.  Marlo Thomas, btw, can still act (she was in the May play).

The surprise was later tonight after watching Downton Abbey (don't hate me - it's just weirdly compelling watching it now that I've left the UK - has a whole other feel to it - but more on that whole thing later in another post), was a documentary called The Woodmans, about the photographer Francesca Woodman, who killed herself at age 22 in 1981 and her parents and brother who are also all well-known artists.

I was so struck by the documentary for a number of reasons - the honesty of her parents, the whole family's devotion to art, but more than that, the way people talked about Francesca's work as if she would inevitably become famous when one of the many reasons she killed herself by walking off the top of a building in Soho was that she didn't get a stupid NEA grant.  Obviously, that was not the only reason, but my point is it is obvious watching the film that her photos were/are amazing but that they are only Now being recognized, because what she was doing was so spectacularly ahead of her time.

The heartbreaking journal entries including her being harassed by her boyfriend late at night for not making real art ring so weirdly true to me (as I have had similar relationships with men at that age and even into my 20s and 30s - both romantic/partners and professors and so-called 'mentors'...).  Seeing her work, it is so obviously a female language - I am not one to use that term lightly and in general despise it when others do...but here it is important, because I think that's why it was overlooked.

Apparently in the early 80s photography was not as big of a deal as it is now, which could also be true. But if you go look at her stuff you may see what I mean.

So, I take her death personally, even if clearly she had her own reasons and obviously many people have had these issues and not killed themselves.

It just makes me angry how long - in general - female artists have to wait to be recognized, to be SEEN  or understood on the most basic level, because it's a different language, or can be.  Or maybe it's just the way we present ourselves.  The amount of conversations I have had recently with women about how we wish we had even a tiny ounce of male ego - the ability to easily justify one's own work and not take every criticism to heart or as gospel or to be defensive, etc. - is extraordinary.  The ability to self-promote without shame.  The ability to hold to a vision without the need to justify...etc., etc...

I'm not blaming men here, by the way, in case any of you are feeling that - no, I'm Admiring that about you and wish I had some of it!  I do have some but not nearly enough...and certainly had none at age 19-20. There were so many things I was doing then artistically, theatrically and with writing (though some just needed to get better) but more importantly ideas and presentation...and directing...but I could not stand up for them.  I had enough guts/ego/whatever to make work but not to push it forward the way I should/could have done.  And if I had had any of those skills would be in a much better place today.

I know that probably sounds like self-pity, but I don't mean it that way - it's just a fact.  I can see all the lines of thought - ideas - art I did not go down out of fear and kind of now wish I had.

I also have gone down some roads and had some success with it, but I have not developed these things as far as they could go, and so watch others pick up where I left off and get well-known for doing so, which is both somewhat gratifying and then incredibly frustrating.

These people are usually men.

So my prayer is: please god/dess who/what/ever you are...please allow me to own my own voice/path/ way and stop waiting in some weird cosmic lobby for permission.  I have found my voice in many ways, but I need now to OWN it, which is different.  It is ownership itself that is part of the problem actually - one way I don't tend towards naturally...I share this with many other women (and some men).  So the language gets very confusing.  Is it possible to OWN non-ownership, e.g.?  You see where it can fall down...

However, seeing a documentary about someone who is now famous, but was not in her lifetime, because this weird machine basically killed her (that's how it appears in any case)...but then having eaten her alive decided to valorize her (no better artist than a dead one, naturally...), I am grateful for avoiding that fate, so far...

Not that I'm in any imminent danger of fame, mind you, but the eaten alive thing...I feel I've had some brushes with that...

I want to keep living, but along with that, I want to keep creating...I want to know before I die that I have put everything out on the table that I can and that I will have the guts to do that no matter what the reaction from others.  I've talked a good game on that one, but not sure I've walked the talk.  I don't think it's possible to not be affected at all, but I want to not be so easily influenced.

I think at least this is within my reach.  All the other stuff about recognition is out of my hands anyway. Wish me luck...with that and finding a place for the 17 or so boxes of books and papers in my Rubik's cube of a studio apartment.  I'm almost out of shelf space, so we're about to get down to nooks and crannies and shoving stuff into the closets.

Fun.

But then again putting my books where I want them and beginning to take ownership of this place is fun.  There's the 'o' word again and no I don't mean orgasm, I mean 'ownership' - way more radical for women I think...in the way I mean it anyway (clearly I'm not talking about products...)

G'night and blessings to you all.  I wish for you all ownership of your own voice in whatever form that may take, especially for the women, but including any men who need the encouragement - yes, I do believe gender is a construct, just like all the rest of reality, but it does not budge easily... inside or outside...

Occupation politics and art

There I said it: politics and art.  The phrase alone can be enough to make you want to hide under a pillow.

In these days of Occupy Wall Street and all manner of in your face politics, what is the relevance of artistic experimentation?

I ask this as someone who has a history of political activism (and who has been at the sympathy OWS marches in NYC) and who also creates theater (primarily) that is on the experimental edge of experimental, what some would uncharitably refer to as 'elitist' or if particularly miffed 'pretentious.'

I see the connection, but I can also understand if it's not crystal clear.  And there's the rub: does everything have to be Crystal Clear?  Am I being somehow self-indulgent or whatever by working in associative meanings, formal experimentation that creates new ways of seeing/creating?  I'd like to say no, of course I would.  And I do, and have, worked very hard to make these forms as accessible as possible without diminishing the quality of the artistic experiment.

But, I'm also aware now that I am teaching students who are in college who have a hard time writing even the most basic sentence, that to do what I do means having had access to a very good education, sets of ideas that are not generally disseminated and the concurrent sense of entitlement that comes with that.  I can - and do - tell myself all manner of post-structuralist stuff about how cool this work is and how it can disentangle fascistic molar meaning with molecular constructions that are liberating, etc.  And I do even believe all that.

However, does it matter?  Like at all?

My feeling on this now is: yes and no.

Yes in that at the far end of how we conceive of the world involves language and ways of framing our reality and any kind of active investigation into that is important.  But no in that the actions of a handful of people who started sleeping in a public-private park downtown has had more impact on shifting the way we see thing politically not only in this country, but in the whole world, than any number of artistic experiments combined.

But, that is also comparing apples and oranges to a degree, because for people to have the imagination to begin the occupation, they too must have been exposed to ideas - political and artistic - that led them to that action.

My favorite origin story to what is shaping up to be a global revolution, is that many of the activists in Egypt and I think Tunisia as well were exposed to the work of a very old, but still alive, American academic, Gene Sharp who wrote a treatise on non-violence as a means to democratic change called from Dictatorship to Democracy.  I downloaded it from the NYTimes site when they posted it.  It's an excellent read.  And can you imagine that this fellow, 92 when Arab Spring began, could have imagined the impact his writing would have?

So I go back to my original hope that is: if experimenting with ideas and forms and if you have a political bent to begin with, which I do (as do many others), this can have some value.  The value is in opening up spaces for new possibilities, ways of conceiving other than what is given.  Everything happening now - that has been happening since the Arab Spring - is turning 'how it is' on its ear.  You have to know that's possible.  Certain kinds of artistic experiences can aid in that mind opening moment.

However, there are certain actions people can do in the world - sleeping in Zuccotti Park and not leaving - or setting oneself on fire in Tunisia - that - at the right moment (and timing is as key as action here) - can have a huge impact.  Action, bodies on the line, is what is most important.

And while it is not, nor meant to be 'theater' per se, these actions are highly theatrical (or in the academic parlance du jour - 'performative' - a parlance I use with somewhat gritted teeth having suffered enough getting a PhD and just wanting wanting wanting to go back to the old Strunk and White 2 cent words...)...And for all the social networking, which of course has had its place and been an incredibly valuable tool, without People on the Street, their Live Presence, Vulnerable Human Bodies on the Line, none of this would be happening.

This is the kind of action I dreamed of, this is the kind of action in my own little way I've tried to make openings for in my artistic work and of course all those seemingly futile political protest marches, sit-ins, teach-ins, articles, etc. I've engaged in, organized, written about...etc.

I am delighted that this generation of young people unlike my frankly sheep-like graze mindlessly to the slaughter generation (young in the 80s) is Awake and Fighting Back.  You guys Rock the House.  I would like to think/pray/hope those of us who kept the faith in the dark times kept open the stream for you, but no matter - you are doing it.  This is your time, and that's just great.

My little bit now is sending my kids from Bronx Community College downtown to check out Zuccotti Park, talk to people there and write about it.  They now see themselves as part of the 99% (not all of them but many - I'm not asking them to believe what I believe but simply to go see for themselves outside of the media filter what's up) and some are more engaged and enthused politically.

I also wrote a play in 2008 about the first financial collapse We live in financial times, Part 1: Blackberry Curve that resonates now more than ever.  I'd like to think this was my way of throwing into the ring some ideas that are now out there and having an effect.  We will be doing a reading of this play at The Brecht Forum in January, so stay tuned for that if you're interested.

This play, perhaps relevant to the subject of this post, is way more 'normal' in terms of form than my other work.  I did not decided to do it that way, it's just how it turned out.  The form falls apart by the end of course, but initially it looks like a recognizable play and story.  I wonder now if this was partially a desire, unconscious, to reach out to more people?  I don't know, but it's an interesting proposition.

I am, as the title of this blog indicates, in transition, so I want to take this valuable time to interrogate all my assumptions, including about what makes artistic creations relevant, vital, etc. and how that may or may not impact what I create.  I say may or may not because it's not always clear what will impact what.  I cannot make 'ideologically pure' art nor would I want to do that.  So, it's this balancing act that in my experience is worked out in the doing rather than the thinking.

I start writing a stage text and it comes out whatever way it comes out.  I start working in a rehearsal room or a lab space and bring in ideas to try but then they change.

Without this vitality art dies.

And I think, back to the Occupy movement, that they have remained so vital because they are not afraid to be in process, to Not know, to Not have an agenda, but be there anyway, saying: you know what: this isn't right.  We are the 99% and we are being screwed.  That's enough.  Yes, there will be calls to do this and that, and everyone and God with a half-baked progressive agenda will try to attach themselves to this movement, but at the core it's this: here we are.  We aren't going away.  Shit has got to change.

And it already Is changing.  News stories are being written that would never have been written a month ago, like the NYTimes article about how none of the presidential candidates are part of the 99% (except maybe one and they are not sure even about that one when savings are included).  That article does not get written in mid-September.  Bank of America backed off its debit card fees and now OWS even has port-a-potties.  Miracles do happen.  But not miracles, no, human action made this happen - real concerted action.

Rock on, 99%.  It's our time now.

I'm too old to sleep in the park with you all (plus teaching in the Bronx) but I will keep making my work, cheering you on at marches and fighting the good fight with my 'pen' (i.e. computer, blog, plays, etc...)