August, Osage County (b-way tour in San Francisco)

{23 August 2009}

it was weird that i had never seen this play, since it was so much a part of the collective artistic consciousness of the chicago theatre community. but you know how it goes…there are plays you keep meaning to see, and meaning ot see, and your friends talk about how good they are so you think, “i should definitely see that one,” but when you spend all day devoted to the creation of theatre, and it’s summer in chicago and the evenings are warm and beautiful, it’s really hard to get around to seeing a play. then it’s closing week and neither love nor money nor calling up the production manager will get you a ticket. so i missed August, and off it went to Broadway, and London, and eventually out on tour, and it put Chicago theatre a little bit more on the national map.

so anyway, a free ticket came my way to see the tour, so I went on Tuesday. and it. was. amazing. i know i just wrote in my Equivocation review how i had no interest in kitchen sink drama. and this is, dangerously, close to being kitchen sink american family drama. (this was, in fact, a kitchen with sink on stage). but this was such a sweeping, excellently crafted piece. and the design was elegant, and the acting really tremendous, but at the end when i jumped out of my seat at curtain call, it was, for the second time this week, for the play. good plays are being written in this country right now. i just hope we can find ways to support the people who are writing them and producing them. (insert plug for the National New Plays Network here)

{21 August 2009}

last night i went out to Cal Shakes to see Happy Days (review of that and the other two plays i saw this week forthcoming), and since i was leaving straight from work, needed to pack a dinner i could eat on the festival grounds before the play.

thus i discovered yet another winner from 101 cookbooks:

Cherry Tomato Couscous (which really should be called couscous with cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, feta, basil, chickpeas and a citrus dressing, because, yum).

it assembled in about 10 minutes the night before, and as i am eating it for lunch today, i can say it keeps in the fridge pretty much indefinitely. just make the dressing separately and throw it on just before eating.

yay, california produce.

Equivocation, Oregon Shakespeare Festival

{20 August 2009}

okay, so the thing is, every time i start to have one of those crises of artistic faith (why am i giving up so much of my life to this career/art form?) is about the time i see or work on one of those plays that makes me go, “oh, right. this is why.” and i’m sucked back in. Equivocation was one of those. and i saw it on one of those days that i was have a crisis of faith. just like clockwork. any time i have thoughts of straying, it reels me back in.

of course, it was impeccably produced, because it was at OSF and, as non-profit theatres go, they have more money than god. the actors were excellent. some of the directing and pacing choices weren’t what i would have made, but i can hardly consider those flaws. but i really love is the sheer theatricality of this play. this is the kind of theatre i want to be doing. never mind kitchen-sink dramas, save those for the movies where you can have better sets and closeup camera work. the stage is for something else, it’s a different medium. you don’t feed every detail about every blade of grass to the audience the way HDTV does. it engages the audience’s imagination. and then a bare stage can become any location and every location, with addition of a piece of furniture, or maybe just light and sound. put on a new hat and a lisp, i’m a new character. do it well, and the audience will engage. by bringing the audience into the equation, you add new significance to the notion of collaborative art forms. it’s not longer just the actors and directors and designers collaborating — it’s the performers and the audience, nightly, communing in a way that can only happen in a live performance. a film can exist exclusive of its audience. but if a play falls in the forest, and there’s no one around to see it…well, then, it’s no longer a performance. its no longer art. the art needs the audience. needs it not just to witness, but to engage.

so…yeah. it’s not that it’s a perfect play, but its my favorite kind of play. the sort that embraces theatre for the medium it is, rather than trying to be something it is not. my company is producing this piece next spring, so no doubt readers will hear more about Equivocation as the season goes in. it’s a really good play. did i mention that?

also, there must be a patron saint of theatre-goers, because i left Marin at 1pm with 7 hours to drive to Ashland and drove like hell to get there before curtain. i blew through three speed traps going 80, and somehow got away with it, making it with just enough time to spare to sit down on a bench and appreciate the summer evening in Oregon for 10 minutes before going inside. still, i don’t recommend the Ashland-and-back in 28 hours trip if one can help it. it was a LOT of driving for one three-hour play.

the internets are for information…

{17 August 2009}

okay, i have three questions to pose to the internet tonight:

1. do spiders get chopped up inside my vacuum or are they colonizing inside the dirt cup?*

2. can anyone write me a bit of code that will take tweets and turn them into blog posts automatically (which basically means, a bit of code that will take my twitter feed and turn each tweet into an email, which blogger can accept as a blog post)?

3. i have a kitchen window. i have fabric. i have a sewing machine, matching thread and mad skills. i want to turn said fabric and skills into curtains, but am trying to avoid country-kitchen-cute. who has a favorite apartmenttherapy sort of link for window dressings they’d like to share?

*i have consulted a former vacuum-cleaner repairman, and even he didn’t know — his excuse being that vacuum cleaner technology has changed a lot in the past 10 years.

ramblings in the airport after a nearly perfect weekend

{11 August 2009}

So I was supposed to drive to Ashland and see a show at OSF, but I discovered that the Pothole that Nearly Ate My Car last week actually really did nearly eat my car, and I need two new tires and a NEW WHEEL (wtf?) before the car is road-trip worthy. So much for saving up for a new tv…but, I decided to take advantage of a non-ideal start to the trip. Instead of dropping money on the car w/out having time to shop estimates around, I decided that the repair could wait till Monday. So I played hooky with the rest of Friday, burned some frequent flier miles, and hopped a last minute flight to Chicago.

Saturday morning I played in the Ultimate Frisbee Collective’s Finale Game*. As teams sports go, we were a scrappy group of theatre geeks, most of whom have some innate athletic ability but little or no talent for team sports. But for the past two years, we have played nearly every Saturday, rain or shine (or snow), and the ultimate game has often been the best part of my week.

For my efforts, and in recognition of being the only non-carnivore (also the only girl) on the team, I received a trophy shaped like a piece of tofu with arms and legs,** aptly named the “Facon [Fakon?] Award”. The winning team received a trophy with a piece of bacon on it, also similarly anthropomorphized.

In the afternoon Shinjinkai held the fourth annual fall-a-thon fundraiser, raising money for the zendo (rural retreat center) we are building in Wisconsin. I had planned to drop in, cheer and generally be supportive, but a minor injury sustained by someone in an earlier round meant that i got to jump in as nage for one of the later rounds. In 15 minutes I threw a contestant 305 times! The impressive feat isn’t the throwing – it was the guy taking the falls. Last year I took 206 falls and was pretty sure I was going to barf by the end. Anyway, it was so so so good to see all of my fellow aikidoka. Just being back in the room, the scent of the incense, the polished wood floors and textured mat under bare feet – it all felt so comfortingly familiar. I’ve been short on familiar and comfort, lately.

As I was changing into my gi in the locker room I looked at myself in the mirror and remembered how at first I felt so awkward in my uniform, it felt too big, goofy, poorly fit. I felt too tall, long-limbed, my balance too high in my body, i moved like a dancer, not a martial artist — no grounding, my center of gravity up high in my chest rather than centered low in the abdomen. I know those feelings of impossible awkwardness weren’t just born of insecurity because I see that look in new students, in their faces, in the way their gi hangs on their body, in the way they move on and off the mat. I felt that way for a long time. And I’m not sure when I started feeling at home in my gi, in the dojo, in the martials arts. When i started taking newer students under my wing and helping them through the maze of confusing rituals, when to bow, where to leave your shoes, how to sweep the mat in a smooth, even rhythm in step with the student before and behind you.

I’m not saying I’m accomplished or anything. On the contrary, the point here is perhaps that it took me two and a half years of training just to be confident in the most basic of rituals. Any wonder, then, why aikido is a martial art that takes a life time of dedication and study to master.

Since I moved to California I haven’t made any effort to find a dojo yet – there’s just no time for training. And I know how frustrated I would be if I were training once or twice a week, never moving forward or improving, just see-sawing back and forth. Right now there is pretty much time for work, and running. But being back at Shinjinkai for the afternoon reminded me that this is not a part of my life that I want to leave behind in Chicago. I will need to be patient in order to find the time to resume a proper study of it, but I’ll also need to make the effort to find that time. My profession isn’t one that just hands over free time if I don’t make an effort to wrestle some away now and then.

The trip at once was good for me to shake me out of my all-work-all-the-time routine here and remind me that I am more than the sum of my days and nights, that my life is bigger than the work I am doing here now. But I was confused all weekend that I was on vacation in Chicago and returning to San Francisco. I’d forget which airport I was coming from or going to, invert “back home” and “out here” when I was speaking about my new home or my old one. While waiting for my connecting flight in Denver, I had a moment of confusion when a Chicago-bound flight was directly across the hall from a San Francisco-bound flight. I’m headed home, but where is that? This weekend was restorative and troubling all at once. Restorative because it was a reminder that work is not me. I am not my job. I spend long hours at work, and when I’m there I work hard and care passionately about it. But it does not define me any more than any other single thing defines me. I am a sum of many parts, of preferences and fears and activities and plans for the future. I am martial arts and running marathons and making theatre and crafting things with my hands and wanting to explore the world. I am staying up too late and never getting enough sleep, hating to wear shoes and carrying around deep fears of vomit, spiders and mediocrity, a love for fireflies on Chicago summer nights and lingering over after-dinner coffee after a good meal. I am a terminally off-key singing voice and an aunt and someday maybe a parent, someday maybe a very good production manager. Right now I’m mostly working on the career part. But all in good time. My friend Callie handed me a bit of wisdom a few months ago when she pointed out that the great thing about getting to your thirties and facing big life-changing unrest like moving is knowing that you are not defined by your place. That you are still your same self no matter where you wake up in the morning. She’s right, and it’s a good feeling to realize that.

And it was troubling because being back in the community of Chicago makes me feel more sharply the lack of community in my new life. I’m new here, of course, and I know it takes time and work. But it’ll be an uphill battle, I think. Mill Valley is not a community where I am going to find like-minded artists or people my age. It’s an adorable and ritzy little Marin County hamlet that eschews chain stores and has polymillion*** dollar mansions in the hills where successful doctors and lawyers who commute to the city for their jobs raise their kids, disaffected spoiled teenagers who slump around downtown and congregate on the lawn in front of City Hall after it closes, looking as bored as one can possibly be in a town filled with the most spectacular weather and nature that one could ask for. I will have to go further afield to find my community.

* For some reason, the west coast is responsible for breaking up the band: at least four of the core players are in the midst of either executing or contemplating moves to various west coast cities.

** which seems to be working at cross-purposes, doesn’t it? Anthropomorphizing the thing that people eat who don’t like to eat things that have legs or eyes?

***I’ll make up words when I want to make up words. This is my blog. Bug off.

{05 August 2009}

i am slammed at work, and it’s going to be like this for a while. like, a yearish while, possibly.

in place of an actual blog post, i offer some links:

1) this makes me super totally happy: clowns defeat nazis.

2) i made these marathon cookies from 101cookbooks this past weekend. keeping in mind that they are not actually cookies but rather are healthy, cheaper-that-cliff-bars, make-big-batches-and-freeze post-run snacks, they are pretty darn good. i recommend them, and don’t be put off by the fact that the recipe calls for beans. seriously. recommended tweaks: double or even triple the amount of dates it calls for, don’t be shy with the lemon zest, and don’t forget the aniseed like i did.

3) had brunch this past sunday with newlyweds (yay!) P and J at the very excellent La Note in Berkeley. i know a thing or two about brunch.* and this was good brunch. i will definitely be back.

4) continuing on the subject of gastronomic orientation in my new home, i finally located a place to get thai takeout on my way home from where my running group meets in wednesdays. a little pricey, but yeah, i live in marin, so that’s part of the deal. but delicious delicious vegetable/tofu panang curry (slices of pumpkin!) and super nice people running the place. i’d link their website but…they don’t have one?! anyway, it’s R’Noh Thai in Larkspur. yum.

*brunch in food-destination cities can be a competitive sport (nyc, chicago, san fran, i’m looking at you). and i take it seriously as such. if the food is good enough i will out-wait you, no matter how long the wait for a table for five or how cold it is outside the restaurant where we cluster in little groups, hands wrapped around mini paper cups of free coffee. as long as the coffee keeps coming in the mean time, my brunch-table waiting stamina is quite impressive.

twelfth night, marin shakespeare festival

{30 July 2009}

the actor playing Sebastian fell off the front of the stage during his big dance number.

that might be all i need to say re: this particular production.

but i’m going to say a little more, i guess. oh, community theatre. you are the reason i went down this crazy-ass career path. when i was 19, and home from college for a summer, i attended the Boise Actors Guild’s (BAG) production of Three Penny Opera. it was so bad that, well, it was the moment i decided that if i was going to do theatre, i’d have to do it right, do it professionally. hobby theatre would be worse than not doing it at all.

it’s like running. running is an all-inclusive sport. there’s room for super fast elite runners, and for middle-of-the-packers like me, and for joggers/trotters/run-walkers, and everyone else. and there’s room in this world for all kinds of theatre. even hokey community theatre. it’s just that me personally, i don’t want to get stuck in the start corral behind the women who are going to link arms and walk the entire marathon 4-abreast any more than as a theatre artist, i want to see plays that have awkward pacing and timing, a gaudy concept hung awkwardly on the framework of a play that, while perhaps not his best, is still shakespeare, sets painted by interns and design concepts clashing with one another, overall aesthetic abandoned in favor of each designer, each moment being served individually, equity actors with classical training struggling gamely through scenes with community players for whom shakespeare simply eludes their tongues and hearts.

uh, yeah. that’s how i really feel. i do love shakespeare under the stars. but my standards are high. i’m not a purist, by any means. put rollerskates on hamlet if you want, whatever. just create a concept that serves the play, rather than trying to force the play to serve your concept.

next weekend, oregon shakespeare festival, and the week after that cal shakes. i’m feeling more optimistic about those ventures.

4 weeks in: life in the tree house

{28 July 2009}

as i mentioned before, i live in a tree house, 142 stairs from the street to my front door. not surprisingly, UPS doesn’t deliver up here. neither does the pizza guy or the mail man. garbage and recycling must be packed down the hill to the cans at the bottom. moving men must be bribed with large cash tips. late night thai food must be sought out on foot.

on the other hand, i can see all the way to san francisco from my front porch. there are trees on every side of my ramshackle little house, blackberries growing out back, and baby deer in the front yard most mornings and again at twilight. spiders consider my house a modest inconvenience on their route from one side of the forest to the other, and make frequent appearances, but i am slowly adapting.

the thing about living alone is that there is the same answer to every “who used up all the….” question. who didn’t change the toilet paper roll? oh, right. who used up all the butter? ate all the cookies? forgot to wash the dishes again for three days in a row? ah, yes. me. i frequently quiz the cat as to why he hasn’t done the dishes when he’s home all day long and i’m at work earning us both a living, but he seems to feel no guilt. the upside to living alone in a tree house is that i can crank music up at any hour and make coffee in my underwear if i want to. i confess, internets, that i’m excited about finally getting a DDR game – no downstairs neighbors to torture with my awkward dancing and stomping.

it’s lonely, some nights, coming home to no one but the cat. chicago exists out there, 2 hours’ time difference but still only a phone call away. the light on the city fades while i make dinner, then a few hours of sleep, and miles to run in the morning. the trail running here is breath-taking. i don’t even have to drive to a trailhead; it’s right outside my front door. i wake to fog most mornings, but as i run up the side of mount tam, i run above to fog level and into the sunshine.

outside of marathon training, my job is taking everything i’ve got, so there hasn’t been a lot of energy left over for building up a new social life. it’ll come, in time, and i knew this first year was going to be like this. i’m doing good work. i believe in it. every day is a series of victories and insurmountable challenges that, the next day, i somehow figure out how to handle and move on to the next one. there’s some serious character building going on here.

but if i haven’t returned your call, or your email, or fb message, just know that i don’t have much left over at the end of the day right now. but your love is much appreciated, and much needed.

"things will be different when i learn how to breathe fire"

{19 July 2009}

day off! i’ve been working very very long hours at my new job, but i am trying to keep the weekends work-free as much as possible, for my sanity’s sake more than anything. today’s trip to the san francisco farmer’s market and Renegade craft fair(check it out tomorrow, july 19, too) yielded the following spoils:

1. free samples from tcho chocolate factory
2. orange and green heirloom tomatoes (courtesy of teresa‘s garden omg i’m so jealous i want to grow tomatoes too…next year i will)
3. bouquet of wildflowers (for the cat to eat, as soon as my back was turned)
4. a half pound bag of fresh string beans
5. this t-shirt
6. a new purse (the girly, tuck-under-the-arm sort of handbag is a new thing for me. i’m more a messenger bag kind of girl, but…i’m trying new things.)
7. a two-tone (red and black) woodblock print of three bicycles (i’m in nesting-mode at home, it’s hard to resist art right now). it was, however, due to the artist’s heavy quebecois accent, considerably more expensive than i thought it was going to be. damn that negotiating in non-compatible dialects!
8. a sunburn