Daddy Long Legs and the HAZMAT Girls

It's not immediately apparent if he's having a private Pentecostal service or if I should seek protection from his projectile vomit. It could go either way.

It’s a red eye flight from LAX to JFK. My skin is telling the story of the 23 hour day; paper thin and dehydrated. I buckle myself into 4A, a Jet Blue Even More Space seat. My momentary hopes of the middle seat remaining open are dashed quickly as he approaches; a very LARGE man sits next to me, his knees barely fitting. At least I have a night mask?



The crew makes final checks and run through the cabin like a military coupe, shoving bags into too-small overhead spaces and hawk-eyeing unfastened seatbelts.

Then it starts.

My knee-y neighbor keeps nodding off into me, like the free-fall-and-catch number on repeat. He's lights-out, except there's clearly nowhere to lie down. Except on me. He begins the type of burping and breathing that makes the olfactorys keenly aware his organs are swimming in an ocean of rum. It violently swishes around inside him, like Jonah trying to backstroke his way out of the belly of the whale.

This guy is wasted.  
5 hours on a plane somehow just got much worse. 



"Ladies and gentlemen, we have closed the cabin door and are doing our final cross-check. We plan on having you out of here about 20 minutes early tonight, " says the captain.

The long legger suddenly bolts up like his seat is a faux leather electric chair. He shoots up the aisle and takes a hard left to the bathroom. 



Minutes pass. We're admonished repeatedly to turn off our cell phones. The overhead bins are triple checked. 


"Ladies and gentlemen, we can't leave the gate until everyone is in their seats with their seatbelt fastened," Captain says. 

The man bursts out as quickly as he entered.  He seems lighter, calmer as he sits. We settle.

--

My fool’s-gold relief vanishes. The red-headed flight attendant looks in the bathroom, cocks her head and barks,

"He puked in the sink. Get the HAZMAT team in."

Scattered groans create a cacophonous accompaniment track to the ringing that begins in my ears. Cabin door pressure is released. Air blasts through the overhead air valves. An incessant beeping. Our 20 minute head start just took a nose-dive into the ground of Murhpy’s Law. 

A pungent odor wafts my way.

I escape it all underneath my night mask.  White Noise iPhone app completes the escape as I choose beach waves and relive last night's Santa Monica trip. I wedge my head between the plastic plane wall and faux leather seat side. I’m dazed and confused, hearing the HAZMAT vacuums begin their sucking and spitting. Protective rubber gloves pop onto wrists, punctuating the roar of my mechanical waves.

Occasionally I feel the Puker, Daddy Long Legs, shift in his chair. I play a sleepy, contrapuntal breathing game with myself, lulling my senses and defying this wait; He inhales, I exhale. He quickens, I hold my breath. And keep holding it. I hold my breath for longer than I know.

I’m falling, feeling heavy.

I startle in a sputtering gasp and breathe deeply. I cough into space as the waves still roll in my ears and blackness surrounds me.

Stillness.

It’s then I notice the beeping and the ringing have stopped. HAZMAT suit crinkling has stopped.

Like an oven timer going off, I'm jarred in alarm by techno music and electric guitar riffs. Everyone’s Jet Blue TV screens are jarringly alit with the face of Olivia Newton-John singing the end of “Magic” from XANADU and the subsequent accompaniment. Her sexy legs are accented by a red, shimmering skort ensemble. 

Dated choice for the in-flight movie, I think. This a very bad sign for getting out of here any time soon.

Stasis evens into the serenade of XANADU.

I slink my head back, escaping the TV glare of Olivia gearing up for “Suspended in Time.”

Then: herding cattle noises start in the boarding terminal to the left.

Cue: roller skating HAZMAT girls in their crinkling suits. Three of them roll in looking much too happy for the task.

“Suspended in Time” swells from each TV screen as they dance, twirl and bucket out puke. The song’s duet begins. 

“… a miracle is what we neeeeeed…”

Daddy Long Legs bolts up, charging the isle again. He takes a determined hard right this time, going behind the flight attendant cubby hole, not the expected bathroom left.

Is Daddy puking into the Diet Coke stash?

Madness ensues.

He comes out from behind the cubby with a drink cart overflowing with pre-poured Bacardi rum and coke instead. He now wears a foam lobster hat and has a plastered teethy grin. The cabin lights simultaneously dim as he emerges and the floor strips burn a gentle pink. He’s passing out rum and coke with more charisma than Michael Jackson’s ‘Scarecrow’ prancing down the Yellow Brick Road.

He doing the shimmy into the silicon breasts of a Jersey Shore wannabe. He clicks the lobster claws at her. “I’m gonna pinch you. I’m gonna piiiiiinch you, lady.” Three rows back is a Margaret Thatcher look alike. “You’re a tough hussy, aren’t you? CHUG CHUG CHUG!” He pours a rum and coke down her throat from midair.

A new team of roller skating HAZMAT girls burst through the back door of the plane with wide-mouthed, blue plastic tubes. The pink floor strips begin to flash, and the tubes spray fraternity party-style foam all over the back half of the plane.

People give in and start mingling in the isles. The crew couldn't care less at this point.

"Seatbelts are for sissies!" the red head attendant yells. She giggles maniacly. 

It’s a Daddy Long Legs HAZMAT Puke Party. I’ve seen everything. Except Taj Mahal.

Daddy is now mid-plane with one of the blue tubes blasting foam from the back half of the plane toward the boozed half. A man’s face is totally white with it. Rows of people’s hair is ruined, clothes soaked. TV’s are sticky. I watch in tranced shock at people’s utter compliance.  Next up: a camera crew yelling “YOU’VE BEEN PUNKED!”

But no camera crew materializes. Just Daddy and the HAZMATS. He stands very close to a Puerto Rican business man with a belly. He blows foam right into his face and mouth-breathe sings, “a miracle is what we neeeeeed.”

All I can think is, “His puke breath has got to be RANCID.”

---

A Charlie Brown-esque pilot announcement cuts in on the fun and, like XANADU magic, it’s pitch black again. White Noise waves return to me, and there’s a fade up on the beeping.

“Ladies and gentlemen, We appreciate your patience and WA WA WA so please WA WA WA…”

My neck is stiff and there is something RANCID hurling toward me. I reach up to feel my nightmask still strapped firmly in place. I peek out to see Daddy Long Legs quietly drooling and mouth breathing on me. His breath is swamp bottom nasty.

Oliva Newton-John is gone and the TVs are blank. People looked predictably strapped in and pissed. And the only foam I can see is around the corners of Daddy's mouth.

Shoe-wearing HAZMAT men finish the clean up task.

I turn around to see if the Margaret Thatcher look alike is there.

Gone. 

Nap dreams are the worst.

--

We’ve been in the air 47 minutes. So says my iPhone stopwatch I set when we took off. I'm delirous, but it's better than a bad acid trippy dream again. I read A PEOPLE’S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES out of one eye. The New York Times TV program Hot Chicks in Wheelchairs: Push Girls flickers as I my head bobs and catches. 

The red-headed flight attendant begins in-flight service in our section. 

"Coffee, please,” I whisper. “And Blue Terracotta chips." 

Daddy Long Legs sleeps soundly and doesn't order.

The woman on the other side of him asks for cranberry juice and hand wipes. She bemoans that her seat recline is jammed. 

A bald African American man in Aisle Three says, “I’ll take a Corona. Actually, no... I'll, yeah... I'll uh, I'll take a rum and coke."

Coincidence, of course. 

I dart my eyes back to Daddy. He doesn't stir; he just drools. Surely they have a travel toothbrush in all these bins and storage. Mouthwash, at least?

I check my own breath: NOT stellar. So, I eat my chips and incoherently flip channels, catching sounds bites of ESPN, MSNBC, Nickelodeon, Animal Planet, Food Network, XANADU, HGTV, CNN, National Geo...

Wait. I flip back and freeze. 

Olivia Newton-John sings:

"Goodbye is a crime

Suspend me in time. In Tiiiiime."

I scroll the Brightness all the way down until it goes off and snap my head toward Daddy. 

His eyes are open and he stares impishly toward me. "Do you know how long we've been in the air?" he asks.

I slowly nod my head and reach for my iphone as if it's a loaded weapon. The air has become suddenly palpably heavy and I can't inhale.

"47 minutes," I gasp out. "Wait. No... that can't be right. It was 47 minutes 10 minutes ago..." But the seconds still tick away, giving no indication that it has stopped or malfunctioned. 

“47 minutes,” he repeats without surprise. "47. Aisle 7. You know the XANADU revival was in 2007? Olivia will forgive us on that one. The 80's with Olivia were clearly superior in every way. Yeah... seems a good place to get stuck. You like her? No? You’ll grow to like her… Now, if you get cold during our very extended flight, I have a lobster hat in the overhead. Just let me know, lady."

He puts his head back and lets out a rancid, happy sigh of air. He hums "goodbye is a crime...'

---

I think I'm awake. And I think I’m going to puke.

Cellulite

The first time I realized I had cellulite was freshman year of college. I was sitting
in my dorm room floor listening to Deana Carter on a tape player, wearing
Girbaud jean shorts and eating cafeteria take out. I was sitting cross-legged and
reading Beowulf. Thankfully, my roommate Kellie wasn't there for this
cataclysmic moment. If she saw this alien, bubble like substance attached to the
inside of my legs and butt she would of freaked. No way she had this stuff.

Am I in an alter reality, I think? Cellulite happens to women who are in their 40's
or something, right? I feel my hair turning gray as I stew.

I begin pinching and prodding my skin, looking backward in the mirror to see
how bad this cottage cheese situation really is. In my estimation, it’s bad. I sit
down and press my legs together like text books smashed in a backpack. The
terrible truth: divots appear. On both legs. And cheeks.

How has this happened? I’m not overweight and I’ll hit the weights when there
are cute guys bench-pressing after a run. Ok, so cheesecake is my favorite food,
but NO ONE TOLD ME THIS WAS GOING TO HAPPEN.

I call my cousin, Lana. She’s a personal trainer, massage therapist and has great
boobs. Lana is not shocked amazingly. She says this is normal? And then the
other shoe drops: she tells me this stuff will probably never go away. “Be
confident,” she said, “you’re beautiful no matter what.”

I’ll never wear shorts again, I think. I see a Salvation Army drop off in my future.

--

That was ten years ago. The memory, however, is still fresh. It’s fresh because I
knew there was a freedom with and in my body I would no longer completely feel
again. There was an invincibility, a youthful sense of immortality that
evaporated. Ignorance had been bliss. Now, I needed Eve's garden coverings
because nakedness had been named.

Most women can point to such a slam-on-the-brakes moment where they
remember feeling physically less than, shamed. Compared. Often, it is infinitely
more traumatic than my silly cellulite discovery. Often it is a criminal act, blatant
misogyny or severe self-flagellation.

But we’re strong, and we bounce back smarter, wiser, more certain of whom we
are as women, even if we take the long road to get there. The challenge is to
continue rolling through the roadblocks as they come: injury, infertility, deep set
laugh lines, weight gain, health failings, and any myriad of issues we face as
women in a society that is obsessed with, in my opinion, all the wrong things.
This crazed pressure and obsession has lead us down the dark and villainous
path of glorifying anorexia and making 12-year-old girls wonder if they have
enough “thigh gap.” Airbrushing is no longer thought deceptive; it’s industry
mandatory. The long road feels longer still.

Despite these not-so-subtle coercions to indulge in near narcissism, I’m happy to
report a triumph: my love for shorts has been re-discovered in my maturation.
Well...Kickboxing in sweatpants just didn’t seem feasible, you know?

And if I had a blackboard I would write it down in colored chalk: Cellulite – 0 Me
– 1

---

But lest I get cocky about my triumph over societal pressures, I must confess
that cellulite woes in my life aren’t gone. No, they just seemed to have
mutated. It’s no longer bubble like butt indents or thigh-pressing that sends me
on a Brazil nut / pomegranate / ice cream stress-eating bonanza.

No, it’s much deeper.

That throat-clutching, divot-exposing moment that I had in my North Russell
dorm ten years ago is re-creating itself in the form of Life Cellulite. I look in the
mirror and see fear, anxiety, anger. This emotional ‘cottage cheese’ is all over my
identity, self worth, and I'm afraid to wear the Daisy Dukes of the Soul.
Every woman I know fights this ongoing battle in varying degrees. As of late, my
response is to throw out the old clothes of who I am just in case they're too
revealing and let people see too much of me. It feels like I can't run and play with
reckless abandon in my Self Confidence Shorts. Hiding and covering myself
seems a necessity for survival. I'm less than for a new reason and shamed into
silence, watching West Wing alone.

NO ONE TOLD ME THIS WAS GOING TO HAPPEN, I think.

Or did they?

In an act of seeming colossal time waste, I read my old journals. I learn I’m totally
different and completely the same. The pages turn through years of life and I
read of painful struggles. Life Cellulite, I think. I read of great triumphs: the long
road was actually much more beautiful. My former self keeps reminding me of the
same thing through each page, though.

Who I am as a woman is never to be defined in total by what I do, accomplish,by what people think of me or what my body looks like.

I am to run with Glorious Freedom, recklessly wild down the brambled paths and
dirt roads and not care how my shorts fit; the real one or the metaphorical one,
even when they crawl up and give me a wicked wedgie. No, Life Cellulite is the
stuff that makes our character stronger, makes us people of enduring honesty,
peace, patience, kindness, and actually worth talking to at a dinner party. Real
cellulite makes us women, not girls.

We may be losing a battle today, whether it’s blowing our top with our children
or not fitting into our skinny jeans, but we have already won the war.

Let your divots show.

Fair Play to Ya: As written for NYSI

I gave two years of my life to the indie-folk, basement-created beauty of a play-with music, ONCE. If I may use the obvious turn of phrase, it was 'once in a lifetime,' as magical on the inside as it looked from the outside. It continues to change and shape my life; I write you these words tonight, on break from a rehearsal space on 46th with part of my original company as we prepare for a Joe's Pub concert. We sing and play in the rehearsal space we were all in when it was announced we won the Grammy for our cast album.   The Grammy, The Tony's, the newness... It was our Golden Age.   There is a golden age of any experience, and I was in the big middle of this very special show's Golden Age. Granted, ONCE will ebb and flow and be wonderfully special, re-born in many unique, gorgeous ways as it continues, but it is only truly born once. Yes...once. She was born in initial readings, a toddler at American Repertory Theatre, a feisty teenager at New York Theatre Workshop and then getting her driver's license when we moved to Broadway. Her glory days came as Tony voters flooded our doors, when she received 11 nominations and those special nights when Bono, the President of Ireland, Joe Biden, Vanessa Reggrave or Bryan Cranston showed up. I picked out a dress and went to prom with our fledgling ONCE at the Tonys. And then, like that, ONCE grew up. She had long, beautiful legs and we ran her with fierce passion.   After a long, healthy marathon, five of us decided that we had grown up with ONCE and ONCE was all grown up. So I / we left with tears and memories for the ages.   But here's the thing: it was my time to be aggressive, time for me to be the lead at a great theatre with a cutting edge project with new actors I respected as much as my current cast. I took a risk and it paid off in new ways; some ways I didn't see until after the show closed and some ways I'm still seeing come to fruition.  Do I miss the show at times? Of course. Do I take back the decision to make an investment in my future career? Never. Now is the time to continue being aggressive. And now is the time for you to make calculated risks in your future. It's never easy, but making a lifestyle of being a great risk taker creates the dynamic for great rewards to open up to you. No doubt many of you are knocking this out of the park already.  My husband, Jordan, recently found an article about that the Habits of Mentally Strong People that I quickly posted on our fridge as it ties in perfectly to this, (and I need some help getting better at most of them.) Some of my favorites are 1.) Don't waste time feeling sorry for yourself, 2.) Don't shy away from change, 3) Don't dwell on the past, 4.) Don't fear calculated risks, 5.) Don't give up after first failure, 6.) Don't expect immediate results.  ONCE is an achievement artistically and commercially I'm proud of, and it changed my life. BUT playing Grusha in Caucasian Chalk Circle immediately after was wildly fulfilling, challenging and did a lot for me ONCE hadn't. I'm looking forward to shooting an upcoming feature film and tackling a new show with Kathleen Chalfant.  My play JOE is also awaiting acceptance to Goodspeed Opera House's writing intensive and our new band FAIR PLAY will be playing at venue near you soon! There are lots of other live wires / irons in the fire that remain unnamed for various reasons, but growth is growth. Here's the juxtaposing kicker: people always trump projects, so as important as risk taking is and forward motion, chuck it all out the window when it comes to valuing the lives of those around you. Case and point, the musical ONCE is no longer in my daily life, but I'm in a room w three life friends and our assistant music director from the show, making music and being family. People and God are the only things that really last.

Beef Jerk-y

BEEF JERK-Y

I’m saying too much again. As the words leave my mouth, cutting and jabbing, I swear to him they are just toothless dogs and it shouldn’t hurt; that this is my way to show love. A surprise to no one but me, this doesn’t fly and he calls my house-on-stilts princess complex on the rug. Tone of voice apparently means something even if your words are benign?

I’m in perpetual 101.

I rush out cause I’m late again. I notice my downstairs neighbor’s door slighted cracked. She’s heard most everything, I’m guessing.  “I fought every day with my husband. I was fighting with him the day before he died,” she says. This is salve only as I’ve never known two people with more passion and fierce love.

Besides us, that is. 

“Watch your tone of voice,” I write in my iPhone productivity folder. I imagine our future children watching us, even our dog watching and picking up tones, habits. I refuse to perpetuate iron clad stronghold habits.

3 Train. The mundane is a neutralizing anesthetic and we text about makeup sex.

As I board she immediately captures me: a wiry Asian woman with a knowing, lopsided, smirk on her face. She's wearing Naval Academy blue and is alarmingly pale. Her legs are crossed and gangily dangling over each other, as if they cling to the other for warmth on this day where New York City proper has received its first snow of the season. 

Her smirk: an enigma, full of knowing intrigue and paltry blandness. Hers is a smirk that seems afraid to freely move, as facial muscles tend to do, into anything but a Mona Lisa-esque mystery of mischief and marked vigilance. 

Why the plastic, embarrassed-laced smirk, I wonder as we lock eyes?



The answer lies uptown of these tracks, uptown from this 110th St station stop on Central Park North with the nameless-to-me New Yorkers whose days propelled them onto the train 13 or so minutes before me. The answer is with those who live on 145th St and have 2500 square foot living spaces, those who barter on 125th and sell incense sticks near the Apollo Theatre, but go down to Chinatown to restock.

 They know who left the lingering farts that cling to these plastic seats. Or what sticky, candy-handed children left germy residue on the pole I'm pretending is clean. 

And someone must know about her smirk. And this mess. 

This mess. 



Her pale, wiry fingers eat Beef Jerky out of a bright, friendly, green bag but there's nothing 'green' about it. Plastic, processed, intestinal. The grassy green bag isn't what catches my eye first as I enter the 3 Train, hoping my last text of “You are 10 feet tall to me." (Kissy lips emoticon) goes through.

No, it's this mess: randomly, widely discarded beef jerky strewn all over the subway floor. Some of it is smashed into gnarly bits on the grimy floor, resembling wet dog food. Some if it's cleft in twain, looking forlorn and forsaken. It's spread on all sides of her in such a way that it seems she would have had to throw it with force for it to cover such a wide surface area. It's impressive actually, but I can't track it to save my life. 

I try to piece it together as we eye each other cautiously.


Was there a turbulent fight with smashing, stomping mayhem, leaving this ninja-skilled waif of a woman feeling justified to let the jerky junk lie? 

Or is she lame? Have a slipped disc or previous broken back injury? Is she incapable from bending over to pick up her trail of naughty, literous, geometrically titillating trash? If that's the case she'd need a caretaker, and the young mom with a stroller doesn’t seem game.



The woman eats on with a quiet steadiness, catching my eye now and then with a glistening hint of mischief. I realize I'm staring and instinctively revert back to my phone. But she gives no indication that this was her doing. She's not owning up.  No matter, she's the axis of this salty circle. 

She and that glaring, green bag. 



We reach 72nd street and she's finished the remaining contents, packs the bag away, into another bag into another bag, like a Russian Doll, leaving the oncoming passengers no idea from where the mystery meat on the ground arrived. 

But I know. And the guy with the tats next to the mom with the stroller knows. 


The stroller. Inside a child: watching, soaking in every ounce of body language and tone of voice.

I lose myself more as we lurch from stop to stop and am distracted by reading someone's Kindle over their left forearm. Apparently, Iron deficiency is one of the leading causes of memory loss and accounts for a national IQ lowering of 4.8%? "Eat more kale," I write in my productivity Iphone folder. When I stir from evesdropping, I find the wiry enigma gone. She wasn't lame after all. I feel unexpected, acute sorrow. I wasn’t ready for her to be taken from me so quickly.

I need her today. It’s was as if we were having an eye-to-eye, meeting of the minds across the aisle. My eyes were saying, “I know you left this mess and are too embarrassed to clean it up, but I’m not gonna call you out. I’m gonna keep quiet.” And her cutting, knowing eyes are saying, “I see you, too. I know you probably yelled at your mother earlier and threw an entitlement hissy fit over wanting to sing better than you can, that you are looking at grassy green fields across the way, grab bagging at any excuse to feel sorry for yourself. Or maybe you just raised your voice to you husband. But I’m gonna keep your secret, too.”

But here’s the thing: the secret is, the secret’s out.

Someone is always watching.

Still I’m thankful for our mutual extension of grace or at least our imaginary made up doing of such. “She who has been forgiven little, loves little,” I think.

I swim in the mental soup of iron deficiency, IQ loss, beef jerky and grace. It pours out pungently in my mind as 28th St flies by us: People are always watching. Somebody is always on your trail. Even if it's just you leaving beef jerky on the subway floor. Or being unnesscarily carless with words and tone.

I think of my other careless looks to strangers, or pushing through a turnstile instead of letting that ELDERLY man go ahead of me, yelling at the grocer lady who didn't do anything but land on the bad end of my attitude. I think of more devious acts of lethargy and meanness. I think of what a small island this is and how you never get a second chance to let a stranger know you think they are worth the effort to show kindness, to pick up your trash trail. Someone is always watching. Not in the creepy, stalker way; but constantly receiving information about us. It may be the beginning, follow through or end of an attitude or action, good or bad, but there's not much with which we really get away. We wear it on sleeves and shoulders and in glances and huffs, puffs and raised voices. OR in smiles, easiness, thankfulness and peace.

I get out at the Grand St. Station and head down to Chrystie St. Casting in Chinatown. The open air markets greet me, as does a replied text alert that make the pleasure sensors in my brain beam.

“To me, you will always be my radiant bride." (dancing lady, kissy face, thumbs up emotions)

We text like teenagers and I finish my audition. I question my shoe choice.

Walking back to the subway I text, “What's your honest opinion of beef jerky?” 

I enter a market I never knew existed. Nothing is in English. No one speaks English, but I can’t shake the grassy green bag, her dangling legs and knowing side eyes.

I get back on the uptown B train with the only thing I wanted: a bright, friendly green bag of beef jerky. I eat in silence as the passengers board and imagine how much Iron I’m ingesting. I'll forget the likely ground up intestines and alarming sodium content.

I people watch.

“Eat more bok choy,” I write in my iPhone productivity folder. 

17 Things. Yeah... 17. Why Not?

I was recently back at my grad program's Alma Mater: CASE / Cleveland Play House MFA and saw the incredible Woody Sez with such performers as David Lutken, Leenya Rideout, David Finch and Helen Russell. Being with them was wonderful, as was visiting old haunts and talking to the current 1st and 3rd year grad students. Below are some notes I took before speaking with them. Maybe a thing or two will stick.

1. This is a long career, not American Idol. You will give up and start over in your mind 20 times a year. Or more. Brace for the long haul.

2. Set realistic expectations, enormous goals, live in the tension of the juxtuposition, and know that deep disappointment is a given. But... You probably will surprise yourself. Everything is possible!

3. Treat others as you want to be treated. Kindness can not be overrated.  This is a business of being talented and being well liked. Sometimes being well liked trumps being talented. Nepotism will be fought at every turn.

4. Nothing is wasted. Everything is used, even if takes years to loop back around. 

5. Do not give into cynicism and negativity. It is the temptation of the age, cynicism. It's sexy. But it slowly erodes your hope. Cynicism is actually a mask for hoplessness in others becuase it's a lot easier to condescend then to admit you have no hope. Dare to be the gentle Light of hope.

6. Failure is never final unless you let it be and you can NOT take it personally despite how personal it feels. Failure is where you find your character, lessons for the next endeavor and the tenacity to endure. Success can't build character, unfortunately, the way failure can.  

The person of true success is just the one who has failed the most the fastest without losing enthusiasm.

7. Create structure for yourself if you don't have it already built into your day. It is essential for productivity and mental stability.

8. Find community: theatre, church, circles of friends. New York can be insufferably lonely. It can also be the most enriching feast for the soul if you find a nourishing family of people. 

9. Network, network, network and stretch yourself socially.

10. Simultaneously, forget those people. Create work for yourself instead of waiting for others to cast you. Work harder than you think you can. Leave room for the Holy Ghost.

11. Always memorize your sides if you are going in for TV / Film. That is the bare minimum as far as preparation. If it's theatre, why not memorize as well? but it's not totally required. It will just make the audition better. Always keep your sides with you, though.

12. Develop a skill. Copywriting, temping, web design, real estate, writing, teaching, interior design. What would you do if you didn't do this? Also, do you play the guitar, piano, sing? GET AS GOOD AS YOU CAN.

13. This is not a race. For you to win, others don't have to lose. That is a poverty mentality and as F Murray Abraham said recently in the NY Times, Comparison Leads to Violence.

14. Work for the Win / Win via Collaboration. Compromise is good but it's not the best.

15. This is a numbers game. Each audition is a chance for you to practice your craft. If it's not you now, focus on doing excellent work and it will probably be you later.

16. Life is more than acting. Go live your life and trust that it will feed your craft when it's supposed to.

17.  Finding your identity and self worth in your work will ultimately be destructive. Make the separation. 

the unexpected, inevitable family (ies)

-Deb Radloff and I have lunch this week. We go to Amy’s Bread on 46t^h and 8^th and talk about vegetables, books and boys. It was good to see her. We part on 49^th and 7^th with plans for the next time, as if sisters.

-I see Alex Hurt the week before. He was performing in a five person Hamlet at NYU. It’s good to support him and see the nuances of a performer-friend from a different side of the stage. He suggest we all get together for a birthday party for his girlfriend, Devon.

-I see an episode of Orange is the New Black, along with most of the city. So, I see Lea DeLaria. I shoot her a text and remember her two put-in rehearsals to learn the part for Chalk Circle.

-I speak with Joel Grey about this and that, about the show, and it makes me miss Christopher Lloyd. Is Lloyd in Santa Fe or LA, I wonder? I flasback to closing night, us staring teary-eyed back at each other, not ready to say good-bye.

-I see Tom Riis Ferrel post on FB and I imagine the first day of rehearsal when I couldn’t tell if he was seriously pissed or seriously hilarious. Clearly the latter.

-Mary Testa's doing concerts in TX and I miss TX. And Mary. Her enormous, captivating voice onstage offstage and everything about all of this rings of home. Home and family. They are all home. 

Q: And how is this?

A: There’s family in the DNA of what we do.  I’m somehow related to these people now. It’s done. Wrapped up and sealed.

You see, who we end up being is a transient, make shift family of players that comes and goes. It’s every time, every show, but no less powerfully or poignantly than this time around with the Chalkies. It’s as if we make a collective footprint on the beach and then the waves wash us away, but the footprint was there, was us, for a time.

To say it less poetically perhaps, the art was made, but then the set is  ripped down, the costumes are whisked away and every remnant of the show is dissembled.

We toast. Then we part. But the heart of this bohemian family remains intact.

Strong and beating Strongly believeing.

It’s one of the beautiful mysteries of the theatre.

All these families running around the city; created and dispersed. But we are no less such for the diaspora.

I felt the familial strike when I visited the offices recently. I entered to see a couch with none other than my son, my beloved puppet, Michael. I gave him a knowing glance, but didn’t want to make a scene. It didn’t matter. He knew we’d been through battle together, and how many times I’d held him backstage, cried over him. The deal was done. Family. DNA. The theatrical pact upheld. If I run into Puppet Michael in a bodega or restaurant around the city, we will embrace and know: family.

Thematically, this is also the case for Caucasian Chalk Circle as a text, and for CSC’s first play of the new, upcoming season, Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Both these plays are rife with family issues and hot topics of whom should belong to whom.

So you can’t really escape the layers of belonging in this process.

As we all gather for Devon’s birthday party soon,  it will be just like it often is with our regular families: you don’t see each other for a while and there’s that awkward spell of catching up and ‘oh, how have you been?’ and ‘I’m sorry I never did such-and-such,’ but that all falls away and you just remember the trenches of time that brought you together. And you laugh and all become corporate oral story tellers, layering memories upon the next a little too loudly for the space you’re all in.

We are players. We are sisters. We are cousins. We are brothers.

Thank you, CSC, for another family. Here’s to the next one. Happy New Season!

Classic Stage Company: Brechti-Anne

I’ve been a little MIA…

I haven’t blogged in a hot minute. I deactivated my Facebook account, I deleted Twitter and Instagram from my phone. I dug in the dirt and planted an herb garden and am re-reading a book that feeds me. My hubby and I found a new restaurant. I’ve created space and hid away for a few weeks.

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To be fair, there has been a lot going on. We did go through tech, press week, opened a show and I’ve had lots of personal work demanding my time. I also thankfully had family in town for two weeks. I’ve tried to do dishes a time or two as well. But enough of my laundry list of excuses.

I’ve just felt very private and a low-humming, constant melancholy has been sitting with me for the past few weeks. Joy is mine regardless; there are innumerable things to be thankful for and rejoice over, but I think I’ve finally realized that I’ve been straight up METHOD about this Grusha stuff. She is staying with me and shaking her is proving to be easier said than done. More than that, I’m not sure I want to shake her.

Part of my Method madness includes my preshow routine: sitting next to my adopted child, Michael, played by a beautiful puppet that I’ve totally fallen in love with, and listening to my Chalk playlist. I don’t dare hold him as I can’t let myself get ahead of the story in my emotional prep but I will just touch his knee, his little leather shoe or sometimes hold his hand. It’s remarkable what power having that Michael Chekhovian ‘secret’ of touch can have as you venture onstage. Even though I can never get ahead of myself in this play, if there is not some sort of emotional rumblings of preparation that begin early, I feel I’m not doing my job to the best of my ability; I’ve entered the story without my proper framework. I also have pictures of my brother as a little boy on my dressing table. These little hints of attachment and belonging without having true motherhood ground me subconsciously. This is my brand of madness for Grusha prep.

In the converse, I find that if my emotional hooks are light that day, it doesn’t matter because the story still does all the work. The given circumstances are still there, it’s still a give and take with each actor and getting into that final court room scene with Christopher Lloyd and the gang is a Meisner game heaven.

Here’s the truth of it: in the past three weeks, I’ve found that being in the Caucasian Chalk Circle is like doing a gymnastics floor routine, then hopping over to the balance beam, then ending with the vault and praying I stick the landing. It’s an athletic and muscular demand. It requires engaging with the audience and feeling their energy, but always and forever focusing on the task at hand and never wavering until the last note is sung. It requires absolute trust in the other six actors playing 428 other characters (or is it 45?) and trusting that I can only play each moment as it comes. My job is reacting with honesty. I love my job.

Btw, I would tell you that all of Grusha’s physical action was Grotowski technique based, but then it may appear Gresham is grab bag, mash-up technique madness: diet method, Michael Chekhov, Meisner, Grotowski. Hey…I say, use whatever is in your toolbelt and go with it. It all comes out in the wash. Acting is reacting no matter how you slice it.

And to boil it down to brass tacks, I’ve compiled some flashes in the pan of the past few weeks.

Here’s…

A couple of things I’ve learned in Caucasian Chalk Circle

1. To not run my Russian lines on the train by myself out loud. People will think you have a couple screws loose. (not that I mind, but you may scare some children.)

2. To expect to sweat during Act 1 and get my pretty floral dress rancid stinky. Be very glad wardrobe keeps vodka and water on hand to spray down costumes repeatedly.

3. Pre show: One actor will always be trying to tune an instrument while another is trying to vocalize in another key. It’s inevitable, but surprisingly makes for interesting atonal music.

4. Suitcases: They are like 3 year olds. They have a mind of their own. They might just close on their own, they might fall over and have a tantrum. They might snap shut or fall open for no reason and embarrass you in front of a crowd.

5. Potatoes as props are a very cool idea. I like them. Beware they might go rogue however and an “I’ve fallen and can’t get up” moment could ensue.

6. More theatres should have a coffee shop like Everyman Coffee attached to their front of house. And they should all sell the potentially addictive ginger molasses cookies. Win / win, ya’ll. CSC does it right.

7. Operating on guts and listening to the still, small voice about taking a risk is right. Do not fear. The rewards from this process are innumerable, but I never would have known if I didn’t say yes. So thankful.

8. I’ve re-learned that Liquiteria on 11^th and 2nd is my jam. A pre-show PB & J, green juice and a Hot Shot with lemon, cayenne and ginger can’t be topped.

9. The actors in this show are wonderful. I’ve grown deeply attached to them. I miss the creative team now that I don’t see them everyday and we have a thumbs up stellar crew and management team.

10. Getting to act with Christopher Lloyd makes me want to say ‘Great Scott.’ His Azdak is like, ‘woah.’