Tuesday, May 16, 2006
Rainy, and Wet, and Sloshy, and Gray....
...a cool,yet enjoyable Early Spring Day!!
Or is it that I am glad to have a day off from performing? Y'know, for someone who loves and has loved her work as an actress for so long, it amazes me how glad I am when i do not have to do it!!!! Is it the fatigue of aging? The boredom of familiarity? Dunno. But I am glad not to have to do this little show tonight...and I love doing this little show!
We have 7 more performances of it and they will be nice...people who come to see it really do get emotionally tugged by it and end up talking about how everyone should see this show, etc...that there is "an audience" for this one, and that it says things people need to hear,etc....of course, this is all true...with the right press and selling strategies, this little show could have a healthy off-Broadway run for those meant to see it....but, its Fate is other....
And so is mine.
I am deeply grateful to The York Theatre, Jim Morgan, Eric Haagensen, Richard Isen, for finally settling on casting me in the role and giving me the chance to do it again. It has been a fulfilling time, a time in which I have gotten back in touch with certain things inside my performing self and I am grateful...I am...thank you , guys...
Today I meet with our team for the New School Musical Theater Summer Intensive program I am teaching in for a short while in June...this should be interesting. Diane Wondisford is a smart and deeply sympatico woman, who I have liked since the moment I met her...,so I trust her taste, and she has shaped this new program into being with a certain vision in mind. Chuck Maryan, Nova Thomas and myself are the three who will be talking today with Diane and Keith Buhl, the leaders of the program...Keith is a regular on the Faculty at the New School /Drama School...and the night I met him at Diane's I liked him right away...such great energy. This short but intense program will have lots of good energy floating around, and today at Diane's office down on 26th Street we will determine how to shape all that energy into good teaching....should be interesting.
Peter's wonderful parents (Patty and Charles) have been here since Friday, and we have had a great time with them, as usual...yesterday, as a belated birthday gift to me, Patty arranged a gorgeous luncheon in the Delegates Dining Room at the United Nations!!! She remembers I once told her that my Momma used to take us there whenever we visited NYC as kids, so remembering that, she thought it would be nice to fulfill that memory...and so we did..and it was dear of her to do that. Everytime I enter the United Nations Nuilding over on the East Side of this City, I am filled with the sense that there are far more importatnt things to accomplish in the world than doing plays for a living.
I have been devoted to the show business most of my life, and i revere it for the power in its potential to change people....I have always felt a good play (with or without music)can so deeply affect an audience member, that the course of that person's oife could change for the better...I have felt my profession to be a calling, and I have felt this way for as long as I can remember thinking of such things....it has always felt like a privilege to be an actor. The Ego is so arrogant.
It manufactures its own importance....and yet, i know I have opened up lives...and this is no small thing to do, I realize.
But you walk into the Lobby of the UN, and see what is really going on in the world at large, see how many statistic prove that most of us live our lives NOT thinking of the sad plight of others, and I feel so useless. How can a child starving in Kenya stay alive? Certainly not by seeing THE DROWSY CHAPERONE on Broadway...though if we got that child here, fed it and clothed it, made it whole again, no doubt she or he woul dbe deoighted by all the colors and lights....but first things first! So I am filled with a renewed sense of mission after spending any time in the United Ntions Buiding....if only I knew what form that mission must take next in my life.
Studying Buddhism makes me understand that the world is much smaller, much more personal than I have taken it to be...that the "other" and I are the same...the exact same...studying this astonishing Buddhism has helped me feel and understand so much more...to , dare I say, know more than i did....so, now what? After learning what I have begun to learn, it seems odd to continue living in the same way I have been living. There are things to be done. I fluctuate daily between feeling powerful and powerless. I read of lovingkindness and discover more hatred in myself than I knew existed. I learn of courage and feel more fear. This has to be how learning is accomplished. I can only pray so.
But for now, I will teach. And in order to do so, I must shower and wash my hair!
So, one step at a time. And on into the rain!
Or is it that I am glad to have a day off from performing? Y'know, for someone who loves and has loved her work as an actress for so long, it amazes me how glad I am when i do not have to do it!!!! Is it the fatigue of aging? The boredom of familiarity? Dunno. But I am glad not to have to do this little show tonight...and I love doing this little show!
We have 7 more performances of it and they will be nice...people who come to see it really do get emotionally tugged by it and end up talking about how everyone should see this show, etc...that there is "an audience" for this one, and that it says things people need to hear,etc....of course, this is all true...with the right press and selling strategies, this little show could have a healthy off-Broadway run for those meant to see it....but, its Fate is other....
And so is mine.
I am deeply grateful to The York Theatre, Jim Morgan, Eric Haagensen, Richard Isen, for finally settling on casting me in the role and giving me the chance to do it again. It has been a fulfilling time, a time in which I have gotten back in touch with certain things inside my performing self and I am grateful...I am...thank you , guys...
Today I meet with our team for the New School Musical Theater Summer Intensive program I am teaching in for a short while in June...this should be interesting. Diane Wondisford is a smart and deeply sympatico woman, who I have liked since the moment I met her...,so I trust her taste, and she has shaped this new program into being with a certain vision in mind. Chuck Maryan, Nova Thomas and myself are the three who will be talking today with Diane and Keith Buhl, the leaders of the program...Keith is a regular on the Faculty at the New School /Drama School...and the night I met him at Diane's I liked him right away...such great energy. This short but intense program will have lots of good energy floating around, and today at Diane's office down on 26th Street we will determine how to shape all that energy into good teaching....should be interesting.
Peter's wonderful parents (Patty and Charles) have been here since Friday, and we have had a great time with them, as usual...yesterday, as a belated birthday gift to me, Patty arranged a gorgeous luncheon in the Delegates Dining Room at the United Nations!!! She remembers I once told her that my Momma used to take us there whenever we visited NYC as kids, so remembering that, she thought it would be nice to fulfill that memory...and so we did..and it was dear of her to do that. Everytime I enter the United Nations Nuilding over on the East Side of this City, I am filled with the sense that there are far more importatnt things to accomplish in the world than doing plays for a living.
I have been devoted to the show business most of my life, and i revere it for the power in its potential to change people....I have always felt a good play (with or without music)can so deeply affect an audience member, that the course of that person's oife could change for the better...I have felt my profession to be a calling, and I have felt this way for as long as I can remember thinking of such things....it has always felt like a privilege to be an actor. The Ego is so arrogant.
It manufactures its own importance....and yet, i know I have opened up lives...and this is no small thing to do, I realize.
But you walk into the Lobby of the UN, and see what is really going on in the world at large, see how many statistic prove that most of us live our lives NOT thinking of the sad plight of others, and I feel so useless. How can a child starving in Kenya stay alive? Certainly not by seeing THE DROWSY CHAPERONE on Broadway...though if we got that child here, fed it and clothed it, made it whole again, no doubt she or he woul dbe deoighted by all the colors and lights....but first things first! So I am filled with a renewed sense of mission after spending any time in the United Ntions Buiding....if only I knew what form that mission must take next in my life.
Studying Buddhism makes me understand that the world is much smaller, much more personal than I have taken it to be...that the "other" and I are the same...the exact same...studying this astonishing Buddhism has helped me feel and understand so much more...to , dare I say, know more than i did....so, now what? After learning what I have begun to learn, it seems odd to continue living in the same way I have been living. There are things to be done. I fluctuate daily between feeling powerful and powerless. I read of lovingkindness and discover more hatred in myself than I knew existed. I learn of courage and feel more fear. This has to be how learning is accomplished. I can only pray so.
But for now, I will teach. And in order to do so, I must shower and wash my hair!
So, one step at a time. And on into the rain!
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