Chance = Change

I am a seagull...no...no...I am an actress...no ..no ..I AM a seagull....especially after being at the amazing glorious SEA RANCH for the past week!!!

We drove up from San Fancisco last Monday....an entire caravan from the Paul Daniels Birthday Celebration: Steve C. , his marvelous parents Lucille and David, me, Peter, Paul, Rachel my niece and her gal Alison, Katy Cole, Mery Cole daughter and niece of Steve), Christina Cole (another daughter)... friend Michael and Nancy Truitt (Paul's cousin from New York), and I do believe that was it...we all more or less caravanned from THe lovely Redwood Inn in San Francisco....some of the folks stopped for groceries...we were in three separate cars...Peter,Nancy and I destined to be housemates at a glorious place called Pelican Cove, decided to shop for groceries once we got up North...each house was asked to provide dinner for all 14 of us for at least one night...we were to cook for Tuesday night....and so we did...Michael (Jantzen) ended up sharing our paradise of a house with us as well, so we had some good cooking going on in that lovely Pelican Cove...yes we did....but the food was the least of it...Sea Ranch is about so much else...

I've been away from the blog because life became about so much more than finding a way to plug in my computer to the Internet...as a result, I made a fair number of entries in the handwritten journal I brought with me, and shall copy a deal of those entries into this form soon...it was so important to carry that little volume with me as I walked the miles and miles of seaside paths daily, because the sheer nearness of the sky and astounding waters of the Pacific were enough to keep me constantly inspired...it was hard to think in terms other than poetry...there seemd no other way to express what i was feeling each day.

Because each day was a thoroughly astonishing thing to behold, experience, and live through...a privilege, every day, to be part of that landscape, part of that particularly heavenly terrain...no matter whether the day dawned foggy or crystal clear, the magnificent Pacific Ocean was always at its gorgeous best...there IS no bad weather in Paradise.

Y'now how you always have some sort of picture postcard in your mind of the ideal place for yourself? That special dream place you escape to in your mind? For some, it's a moutain retreat with a roaring fire and huge mugs of hot cocoa as the snow falls thickly outdoors..for others, it's smack dab in the middle of a Broadway stage, basking in the strongest spotlight possible....well...for me...it has ALWAYS been blue skies, huge expanses of blue blue water and gorgeous waves crashing while i soak up the sun and breathe the fresh ocean air...clean cotton sheets on a comfortable bed nearby...good food and friends in the nearby perfect house...but always, always, the Ocean, the sun, the sky, sky and more sky...throw in a couple of sea lions, a pelican or two, some fabulous sea anemones and craggy moon-scape boulders created by the pounding waves and you have Sea Ranch!!! SEA RANCH IS MY PERFECT PICTURE POSTCARD DREAM, and I was able to spend a week right in the middle of it all....I am content....at least for a while, until I can go back.

I found my place in the sun.

Thursday, July 20, 2006

Whew! So much to tell…such an enormous day yesterday…a day that started early and seemed to stretch on for ever and ever, every moment of that forever being sumptuously filled with such breath-restoring beauty and discovery, all along the way…though I needed desperately to sleep which we finally wonderfully did), I still did not want the day to end!

It started out at 4:30 AM , being awakened from three hours of excited sleep at Paul and Steve’s…Peter and I decided to spend the night before our journey at their place, so as not to wake the pups and Annie K. who is staying with them at our apartment while we are gone. So Annie arrived, late Tuesday night after her concessions-selling gig at BEAUTY AND THE BEAST), we hugged all goodbye, schlepped our many bags through the humid hot night air into a cab for 7 blocks and landed on P and S’s doorstep at around midnight or so….I don’t know what exhausted us more: the packing-tinged-with-sadness-at-leaving -the-pups- scurry of the last few hours or the actually heat and horrible rainy conditions we had to schlepp through to get to our resting place for the night, but we finally made it and we happily collapsed at their apartment, where I took a refreshing shower to officially put my self in a fresh, clean travel mode for the 6 hour flight ahead!

We managed to fall asleep after a while of chat and late-night snacking and were able to log those valuable three hours before alarms woke us up to get ready for the 5:00 AM arrival of the stretch limo Stephen had hired to take us to Newark. I prepped some food for us to eat on the plane (who knew, as little as I fly, that they no longer served meals on domestic flights??? I really have to get out and up in the air more!)…and we were ready for the car…the car that never came…..because the stupid car people lost the reservation!!! Steve was so busy prepping for everyone’s pickup (the Uptown group of Rachel and Alision, Kate and Nick were being picked up by another arranged car that did come), that somehow, even after confirming our car details, the silly place somehow lost them! And so there we were , with a 6:45 plane to catch, and so we hurriedly caught 2 separate cabs and at $90.00 a shot, made it to Newark in plenty of time….PAUL, of course, STILL TOTALLY IN THE DARK ABOUT THE SURPRISE OF OTHERS COMING WITH US…the birthday surprises had yet to begin being unveiled…!!!!

The four of us finqlly got checked in properly, bags stowed safely in their right places for boarding, and we took our stroll through Security, heading for Gate 14 , where thr rest of our departing group waited to hear from me...so I surreptitiously celled Rachel and told her we were on our way down to the Gate and she said they were all ready ....we rounded the gentle curved corner of the gate area and i was walking in front of our group and so was the first one to see what it took Paul a moment or two to register clearly: In a GROUP, Alison, Rachel, Michael, Katie and Nick all dressed up in paper party hats and blowers, holding a large HAPPY BIRTHDAY banner, smiling and yelling HAPPY BIRTHDAY PAUL!! SURPRISE!!!!...what a sight! I imagined all other passengers waiting at the gate thinking "Oh please God don't let those people be on MY flight!)...but it went beautifully: Paul was surprised and delighted...at first he wondered why all these friends had come out Newark just to see us off..then he realized they were all flying with us to begin his birthday celebration! He was deeply moved and once again, through this long birthday celebration that had already started a few days before, his eyes clouded with tears of happiness...SO, the STAGE ONE SURPRISE of Steve's plan worked beautifully!

Soon, we were all on board and settled snugly in our assigned seats, ready for take-off, and I poppeds ther Atavan prescribed for me into my mouth and began to meditate that the plane would flap its wings really strongly and get us to the West Coast safely.

I am not a great and happy flier.
But this 6 hours went by easily and un-eventfully...so before I could get really hysterical ,we were in San Francisco, heading for National Car Rental, to get our three vehicles....

Peter and I got a pretty deep blue something or other that is very comfortable...and pretty ..Steve and Paul rented a silver van with room for many people...and so did Alison and Rachel....our little party continued on to Lombard and Van Ness: THE REDWOOD INN! Comfy clean rooms with avocado green kitchenettes!!!! Perfectly charmingly kitsch! And as stated before: comfortable. Peter and i are in room 46...we like it very much.

Before we went to the Hotel though, Steve led us all out to the Cliff House, right ont he Pacific Ocean, where we ata a terrific lunch at the diner nearby and sat in breathless awe of tight by the old Sutro Baths...the vista that lay before us,.....right by the old Sutro Baths...so gorgeous, it was practically unbelievable: WE WERE REALLY HERE!!!! SAN FRANCISCO....WE HAD MADE IT... WE WERE THERE...THE BIRTHDAY ADVENTURE HAD BEGUN!!!

So much more to tell..so stay tuned....xxev

.....of New York City are burning at full tilt, and we all exist in pools of our own sweat, warmed by the 95 degree heat and inescapable humidity...we had it good there for a while, blithely accepting the comfortable 78 degrees that part of July granted us,due to rains , I suppose...we were soooo sure we would get away with a moderate Summer...since when did that ever happen? And so, as it happens, we were wrong:
it is hotter and hotter each day now, and we exist from one room to the other, turning air-conditioning on and off as we go, so as not to totally black out the City and its millions of other air conditioners! It is, to say the least, uncomfortable to be outside.

And of ocurse I had to be outside most of yesterday as i discovered the Queens College Campus over in Flushing....but, actually, despite the heat, or maybe partially because of it, it was an interesting adventure, on the whole. And I met such lovely people, all of whom helped me through the process of getting into the CUNY "system" as an Adjunt Professor, that I can hardly complain about having any sort of bad time...people were simply too nice.

But it was hot. And the campus, lovely even in the heat, and very very sunny, where not shaded by beautiful trees...so I walked a lot in the hot sun. Discovering various buildings I needed to get my process started of "getting into the System"...but since it was all so new to me, it felt adventurous and interesting.The melting into my clothing seemed like part of the deal, so I relaxed and let it happen.

Particularly helpful was Christina Stahl, the Theatre Department Admin Assistant, who really spoon-fed me through the various paper procedures, and who sent me over to another nice nice woman named Sue Georgian in the Human Resources Department, to whom I had to show my actual MFA Certification....since it is a City School, all sorts of deeply bureaucratic details and offical things have to be on file in order for a position to be legitimately filled...I also think my MFA status will help to determine my pay scale...so far, all the places I have taught (Steinhardt, The New School..) have paid me considerably more than CAP 21 ever did. Interesting.

And so, I shall teach two classes at Steinhardt and one class at Queens College in the Fall Semester, and that will be the most I have ever taught at once, so it will be challenging in an entire new way...on Wednesdays, I will go right out to Queens College after my morning Acting Scene Study Class at NYU...a long but interesting day. I'm excited about preparing for all this, which will begin as soon as we return from San Francisco.....and we leave for that lovely journey at 5:00 AM tomorrow morning!!!!!

...and deep gratefull thanks to the person who invented and perfected the in-window air-conditioner!!! In fact, HAIL to whoever thought of "conditioning" air in the first place......Thank you ,thank you, THANK you!

When I was a kid, I could never understand how my Uncle Ed had to make sure a restaurant or theater or anywhere was totally air-conditioned before we all agreed to go there...I remember thinking how old he must be and silly , to care about such things. And now I am exactly the same way I remember him being: concerned about heat stroke! Or at the very least, discomfort and sweat!

My young kid body clearly didn't experience the heat and humidity the way my body does now, and, even though I remember sweating, and the delicious feel of the swimming pool water against my sunburned young skin, it always seemed to me that Uncle Ed was nitpicking, and being his usual crotchety self to demand freezing cold temperatures while he ate or sat in a synagogue! But he did...and now, so do I!

Our little Sunday night dinner celebration for Paul and Steve is postponed until the cooler Fall because NYC is about to heat up to 96 degrees or more and our kitchen will be unbearable to cook in....this was actually Paul's suggestion, and after discussing it, Peter and i agreed he was right....The only place to be over the next few days in directly in front of our living room airconditioner...luckily our desks are right in line with a cool stream of air, and so we shall get much work done that needs doing before we leave for San Francisco.

We watched TRANSAMERICA last night on pay-per-view...what a sweet movie...and what a wonderful wonderful actress Felicity Huffman is. Brava to her.

Now, in an attempt to finish THE ACTORS TIMELINE, let me draw your attention back to where we were:

We were in the Age of Enduring...that time, inevitable in a long career , when it sometimes feels like Art, but mostly feels like one's weekends are dribbling away inside stuffy theaters, repeating shows that often are not as much fun as reading a good book! But, Actors are Actors, and, as with every profession,one must put up with the bad as well as enjoy the good...this is The Life, and performing is , nonetheless, a privilege enjoyed by few. Still....something begins to nag one's thinking around about this time on the Line:

I feel my power more than ever now...my personal creative power...surely there is more for me to do with it than the same thing I have been doing with it all these years....I have impressed enough audiences for my Ego to be satisfied...I have money in the bank and ways of earning it with ease...NOW: what DO I do next with all this "juice" iside me?

A valuable, potentially productive moment on The Actors TimeLine: the verb? To PUSH BOUNDARIES!!! TO EXPLORE and WIDEN THE HORIZON!!!

A scary, but wonderful time, when the idea of what is not only possible but imperative dances before a creative actors eyes: and the age-old question arises: "Am I my resume?" (with an accent over the final "e") comes up a lot!

About this time, an actor actually begins to understand the world around him better than before, and to seriously read other sections of the NY TIMES than the Arts and Leisure Section..one's place "in it all" comes into question...the idea of feeding one starving child actually becomes more important than scoring at the next audition, and spending time in one's life instead of on another theatrical stage seems far more important. It is a dis-orienting time, because , after all, an Actor's longitude and latitude have always been defined by the next role, the next great job...it's like one's self-concept starts to dissolve and something more iluminated takes its place, and by the light of that new self-concept, one can see more clearly.

Now, this is not to say the Actor disappears...no. Not at all. But along side the Actor may appear the Teacher, the Director, the Writer, the Meditator, the Friend of Others....but in order to have enough time to explore all these new facets, the Actor has to start making new sorts of choices, and this may define the actor from The Actor... The Time Line continues, but the stages along it? They become more personal, less predictable. More individual. ANd , most importantly, THE REASONS THE ACTOR USED TO HAVE FOR BEING AN ACTOR HAVE CHANGED RADICALLY,at least at first glance, and The Actor is amazed to find that the profession of Acting is, possibly, a noble one, after all.

Personally, I believe that the same selfless impulse to perform theater is in us from beginning to end: we want to give to an audience...give things they can get no where else..things that will alter their life perceptions in good ways...comfort that they are not alone...and this desire to give is with us from the very start...but our terrors obscures so much when we are young. We think we seek comfort by getting applause , when really we truly want to give it. But with age comes, not so much wisdom as realization through hard experience, and if we hang in there, it purifies our knowledge of self and we are blessed with understanding.

That is when THE ACTORS TIMELINE turns a wonderful punchline and we can laugh! Laugh at what used to make us cry: we care.

" LET US REMEMBER....that in the end we go to poetry for one reason, so that we might more fully inhabit our lives and the world in which we live them, and that if we more fully inhabit these things, we might be less apt to destroy both." A quote from Chirstian Wiman, Editor of POETRY MAGAZINE.

A dull, damp and terribly suffocating New York grey summer day....summed up best in one word: YUCK.... it is thoroughly vile outside, so that our living room , cool and creative, is an oasis. I will sit at my desk until i must go to an appointment at 3:00...and only leave this cool cocoon if i can get right onto a cool #104 bus...the air is terrible out there today.

Soon, Paul, Steve, Peter and I will leave for San Francisco....we are all very excited. But first, a few things must get done here, like the dinner party we have planned in honor of Paul and Steve's birthday (July 18th)...this will be on Sunday night, and the actual gift will be that Peter and I will cook them both a sumptuous vegetarian meal! Usually, Steve is so wondrously occupied cooking glorious meals for all of us, we decided we would treat him like royalty that evening and not allow him to lift a finger! He really is one of the most generous souls I have ever known...and we want to do this for them. And so we will! My niece Rachel and her gal Alison will come as well. A small family gathering. With food by Peter and Ev! (Keep all fingers crossed...Peter is a wonderful cook...I am a bit rusty...hope I don't poison anyone with my good intentions.)After all , it is the thought that counts, right?

NOW, BACK TO THE ACTORS TIMELINE:

So, we have spent years by now in the stage of SHOWING off what we have...and, to one degree or another, "success" has been the result...and the only true measure of that "success" is simply that the actor has chosen to actually stay on the TIMELINE, and not switch careers to something more satisfying, lucrative and sensible. So, in short, IF YOU ARE STILL ON THE ACTORS TIMELINE AT THIS POINT, YOU HAVE ACHIEVED SOME SUCCESS...one always wants more, but by this time, you have become relatively content with the recognition you have received and are still willing to call yourself an actor!

NOW WHAT? This is where is gets interesting because we're now somewhat experienced , both in the show business and in our lives generally, so we feel as if we are more in charge of the impulses that drive us, and an element of actual thought now goes into the choices we make. We do NOT TAKE EVERY JOB OFFERED US, nor do we go to every audition, since we have learned that most things are not worth our time, nor do they contribute to some sense we have developed that our lives are about more than our work! Romance has mellowed us, ridiculous people and bad artistry have disillusioned us, and we see more clearly, feel more honestly a larger part of what's going on in the world around us. BUT WE ARE STILL HABITUALLY FALLING INTO AN 8-SHOW-A WEEK schedule, because that is always how we have lived our lives: from show to show. This is a period on the TIMELINE I would call: the ERA OF ENDURING...the verb: TO KEEP ON KEEPIN' ON!! We do it because that is what we do. BUT with tht element of conscious choice in it. Sort of.

What could possibly come next?

...that is, The Actors Timeline....whereon we have been through, roughly, two stages:
The Age of Being and The Age of Discovery! Time now for the rough equivalent of The Dark Ages: the Actors' Adolescence: the verb is :To HIDE!

Yes, we know we are glorious, but then our bodies have to do all sorts of growing and changing , odd and troublesome juices have to flow whether we want them to or not, and so, all the most annoying and disturbing feelings begin to make themselves loudly, insistently known in us. As a result, we exist behind a self-made cloud of mystery, and we hide. Our hair is too long, our faces covered in strange things, clothes never feel right, and we are too damned EVERYTHING...even the best actor at this stage does everything WRONG, it's simply the way our lives are meant to feel...and so we SEARCH, WRITE, CRY, SWEAT FAR TOO MUCH AND GENERALLY are ugly a lot. No wonder we need and want to hide away from our fellows, all of whom seem to be the very worst judgemental audiences of critics...even if they are not, we think they are...we hate them and we just know they hate us. How we ever survive this stage of the ACTOR TIMELINE is a miracle!!!

But theater and the profession of acting is nothing if not filled with miracles, and so we do survive...in fact,damn! We even come out better than before, and all because we simply kept living and did not fling ourselves into the nearest rivers to drown like unwanted cats! Good for us! Some of us even find ways to let our fabulousness shine through anyway at this stage and we book TV series, usually on the WB network , and though the acting work is execreble, our stars shine brightly nonetheless. This stage could destroy us, if we are not serious about our work and determine to continue studying and growing. If we do, we move on to the next stage in the TimeLine: to SHOW!

This is when we begin to realize that those people out there, the ones we call audience, are important, really important.

And we want them to know, consequently, how important WE are, so all of our considerable energies are thrust outward and we do the classic "Career Hustle". This is a dance as old as the first actor ever, bred deep in the bones of those meant to perform on the worlds' stages....every single young actor asks: "HOW DO I DO IT? HOW DO I MAKE A CAREER?" And every single actor finds his or her own way: there is no certain path...there is no magic key...there is no one way...miraculously, like everything else in this crazy profession, it simply happens, by sheer dint of will and ambition and creativity and stick-to-it-tiveness, or it does not...one either has, finally , the heart for this stage of the TimeLine or one does not...but for a period of about 10 years or so, as a career is built from the ground up (and the young actor usually has to sweep that ground himself as part of his "dues paying"), nothing matters but "the work", the career is paramount....one plans one's vacations around the slightest agent call..one returns home early from flights to Mars to attend a callback for anything...a family funeral is blithely unattended if it gets in the way of even one important audition...because all that matters at this point of the Actor Time Line is: SHOW WHAT YOU HAVE AS MUCH AS YOU POSSIBLY CAN! SHOW IT! SHOW IT! SHOW IT! DON't QUESTION IT...JUST SHOW IT!

This is the stage on the Time Line roughly equivalent to the Late 19th-Early 20th Century, when wars were fought, national principles defended, blood shed, all in the name of territorial hedgemony.....staking one's claim on the world, no matter what it took to do so. SHOW TIME!

...more to come...because this is where the Actors Time Line begins to get really interesting!

Y'know, when you were a kid in school, that cardboard thing some teachers bought in a Teacher Store somewhere and they brought it to their classrooms to hang prominently above the blackboard in the front of class? (By the way, do classrooms today still have blackboards, or are all of them totally computerized now, with a screen at each little desk?).....

ANYWAY: remember those TIMELINE OF MAN thingies? A student can see the incremental progress made by the human animal as he or she dribbles his or her way up from the Primordial Ooze, until finally, there we are: inventing television (makes you wonder how far we have actually progressed, doesn't it...i mean with the sit-com being what it is,etc.) ANYWAY: remember the TIMELINE OF MAN?

I propose: THE TIMELINE OF AN ACTOR!

The reasons a person becomes an actor are seemingly quite different from the reasons a person stays an actor throughout his life...I believe the impulse is always the same , but we shall tease that conclusion out later...first: the timeline itself:


The Primordial Ooze of the Baby Actor is that time when we are freshly out of the womb, "trailing clouds of Glory..." as Wordsworth poeticized, and the operative word there is "freshly" , because we have nothing to hold us back from being our best, most natural and fully expressive selves: we glow with life, everything is astonishing to us and therefore our responses to the world around us are thoroughly captivating. Our audiences are rapt, and all we do as baby actors is right: we make them laugh, smile and applaud effortlessly: we are thereby hooked: we like being the center of such delirious attention...we like making people happy. We are pure GIFT at that stage...our Primordial Ooze is effortless, nurturing, simple and wonderful. We would like to stay at that point of the Actor Timeline forever, but alas, we cannot. The verb here: To BE!

We are compelled to, as it were "go on tour" at just about the time we learn to crawl and walk! We discover we can take certain matters into our own hands (or little legs and feet) and go where WE want to go, not just where THEY put us! This feeling pf power, much akin to Man's Discovery of Fire in one of the early Stone Ages, is intoxicating, and along with mobility comes an entire new bag of performing tricks: if they thought we were cute before, wait'll they get a load of us now that we can cutely crawl!!!" So, we go on tour with the fervor of a young actor who has just gotten his Equity Card! Razzmatazz...watch out world...here we come! Ta-DA!!!

We stay committed to performing at this point of the TimeLine because of all the amazing things we're discovering about ourselves. The "audience" is almost incidental at this point, except of course, we need them to feed and clothe us. But we are our own best audience at this stage of the game. No one is more dazzled than we are by what we can do! The verb here: To DISCOVER!

So far, we are only up to what may be the equivalent of The Iron Age ....The Actors TimeLine has eons to go, so keep tuning in....we are a complex and enigmatic breed...this TimeLine may help explain us....later.

...Packing District....astonishing what creative people can do with sheer space, no matter what its karma ..no matter how bad its former smell!

I seem to have missed the enire evolution of this City's Lower West Side, below 23rd Street, so that by the time we got back from Barter Theatre, a whole new chic and fabulous neighborhood was born and toddling around on all fours!

My first clue was when I went to a commercial audition downtown on 15th Street at House Productions and discovered the astonishing Chelsea Market for the first time! Never has there been a more charmingly clever use of old warehouse/factory space: shops, food markets, restaurants and boits, cleverly tucked into corners, floors, curves, crooks and cul de sacs of what had been a very ugly building, but now is so terrifically interesting and appealing, I can never go down there and not go in for at least a coffee....the Chelsea Flower Market is there...The Food Network has its central studios there...the clunky, large , rusted metal components of the original building are also all there, incorporated into the new design in such a way that the eye is constantly entertained and delighted. I love it there.

AND, every chic fashionista from Stella McCartney to Diane Von Furstenberg have shops and showrooms down there now,though DVF's is still under what looks like massive construction....chic, chic, chic! Little Pie Company has a cunning place, half in the Market, half on 14th Street, and every hip bakery in town has an outlet there.

New York City does not let any of itself go to waste or ruin, and if it does, it simply incorporattes it into its new look!

Peter and I saw THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA, and it was such fun...how can one actress be so appealing, no matter what role she plays? Meryl Streep always has been and always will be my hero. She is yummy beyond yummy in this one. And looks utterly magnificent in her high fashion duds...as do all the women in the movie.It made me want to be rail thin and wear very very high Jimmy Choos...alas, those days are gone. But while watching this fun film, I was right there with them, and my feet did not hurt one bit!!!

So, DEVIL WEARS PRADA and The Meat Packing District of NYC! Somehow logically related in my thinking...it's all so chic and fashionable...so comfortably so.

One of the ways NYC has it over so many other imporant cities: it takes all its magnificence pretty much in its summer lazy stride and smiles while it prances...
i mean, really, what could be more insouciant than selling $2000.00 frocks in the same space where cows were once butchered and frozen for food?

New York City has always had a lot of "noive!", right?

...and let's tell stories.

Stories of rain and the steamy City.....stories of irate cab drivers who don't speak English and must still find their way to Thompson Street in the heat of s summer day...stories of haridressers' assistants who fled persecution in Bosnia and now can go dancing in American clubs at night....

stories of inept bookeepers whose slightest ink smudge brings misery to others....stories of mighty bosses who bilked their stockholders of millions of dollars and who died instantly of heart attacks nonetheless...

stories of sad and stupid people who need power, and so they constantly and consistently belittle all who work with them...stories of glamorous, ungifted girls, who will insist that they can quit smoking any time they decide to...

stories of yearning boys who develope into brilliant and important artists...stories of war and killing...stories of a world that refuses to devalue life in any form..stories of paradise and stories of hell...stories of us all.

Every time I hear from a student who is gracious enough to express their gratitude and appreciation for what we have shared in a classroom, I am revived. I am grateful to them and want them to know it. I want to also rush to their sides and tell them: life matters more than show business...nurturing your friends is as important as nurturing your careers...absolutely do not forget to stop and smell every flower possible...and then, just to make sure you slow down enough to make a difference: meditate and write about it! Pleeeeeze: the world matters more than getting a job in a Broadway show...(though there was the time when my world was nothing but about getting that very job)...Please know this: gathering 'round the warm campfire is an impulse satisfied in a myriad of ways, so find as many ways as you can to do it, knowing that your gifts are far richer than you ever could now imagine them to be. Look for ways to tell the stories that will change lives.Forever. Not just for now.

Well, thank you Chase....your comment inspired me ...and so does your search of things Asian and Eastern, as a result of your weeklong stay in our Meditation Room.You never fail to amaze me, Chase. Keep reading and studying, there is so much to learn. So much to understand and be blown away by! Your journey is one that I will gladly make mine as well, so...onward for us both.

Which brings me to this:

I have never wanted to have a child of my own. When Paul D. and I would talk about it in our marriage, and when we finally went away to Italy to make one (Lake Como , as I recall, at just the right time in my cycle), we ended up fighting for the entire week we were there, and in fact barely talking to each other . I remember lots of gorgeous yet solitary walks around that Lake. To this day , Paul says: "If Evalyn and I had had kids, I would be in prison , she would be in an insane asylum, and the kids would have gone to foster homes!"

It's true: we neither of us wanted children of our own, and to this day are glad our instincts led us correctly.

But nothing deepens and shapes my life like helping young ones to learn and see what they had not seen before: watching the metaphorical lightbulbs go off above their heads thrills me. I feel it is something i am called to do: turn on those switches. So when i read of Chase's new interests, and how something in my life inspired them, I feel good.

Which brings me to topic of the day: FEAR.

Somehow, the world as we know it is set up so that we are born , live, and, if we are not careful, die with fear as a constant companion. A new baby is reluctant to come out of the womb, to enter the glare of new life, because it fears leaving what it has comfortably known for 9 months....we all fear that our days will be filled with all the things we do not want, rather than the things we do want...we fear noise, traffic, all those other folks around us...we put a good face on it , and we strive to not show it , but we do fear...and then, there is that thing about death: the great unknown. We live in dread of dying. I believe it is that fear that sets the world up in the form we know and live.

Fear is what makes war inevitable. Fear makes us feel "right" when we defend what makes us feel "safe". Fear, is of course, an illusion.

But it feels very real to most of us, most of the time.

And actors, those of us who have chosen to make our lives in the theater, get to increase the sheer number of fearful encounters every day. Each step an actor takes to put himself out into the world is a chance to be with fear. Each audition: soaked and edged in fear. Each Opening Night: fearful of what those critics will say. Each new agent meeting: fear: will they like me enough to help me? Each new encounter with a rehearsal process: am I good enough to be doing this?

Actors must learn to joyfully dance with their fears early on, or a career will never happen.To proceed as an actor in life is an exercise in fearlessness. Or rather: an exercise in how to make friends with that thing that could otherwise defeat us: we must learn to use it or else it will use us....unless we journey deeply into the process of knowing that energy we label fear, we will not be fully able to give all we have to give. Fear laughs at us: so we must learn to laugh right back in its face. Fear has a sense of humor. We must never forget that. Fear is a comedian. It invites us to get the joke.

...to all who read this blog regularly, or at least try to...I just have not felt at all like writing...and in fact have felt like doing little else but teach at The New School (that program is done with now, and I shall write of it soon), lay in the cool of our wonderful apartment, read as much about Buddhism as I could manage, and watch all the junk television in the world...the settling in of hotter weather seems to have dampened all my other energies! So, rather than fight it, I have succumbed to the laziness of June and simply laid back and enjoyed it...and so I actually have!

Except for a sporadic but nonetheless intense shredding of old papers and tons and tons of old files, all within the cool comfort mentioned above. Both Peter and i have been cleaning our home office space, and as a result, taking out bags and bags and bags of shredded papers, old files and even older notebooks full of past plays, readings and music. We have actually thrown away one entire file cabinet! And all of this cleaning feels so good. So necesary.

THE NEW SCHOOL SUMMER MUSICAL THEATRE IMMERSION: 15 power-packed days of classes, coachings, rehearsals, Master Classes, more coachings, music sessions, more Master Classes...I have to laugh a little: the New School kept advertising it as three weeks of intense workshopping, and it actually was only 15, maybe 16 days...so when some of the kids mentioned this to me, that it really was not as advertised, I mentioned it to Keith Buehl, who headed up the program, and he had this explanation: "well"...he stammered...."it IS three weeks if you count it as 3 Five-Day Workweeks, like, you know, in the busness world!!!" I just did not know how to reply to that amazing discursive thought process....especially since the program was working the kids a solid 6 days in a row anyway, with Broadway shows booked for them on both Sundays to see...so where they had the odd idea that it was actually 3 weeks worth of Immersion... any way you count it, June 12-27 is fifteen days! Not three weeks. BUT, that being said:

The people who enrolled in Immersion did indeed get wonderful special strong exposure to terrific artists and lots of actual hard working hours of practical stuff....Nova Thomas is a great teacher...passionate and deeply caring of the kids she teaches...Diana Wondisford, Co-Head of the Immersion is a deeply caring and articulate woman, with miles of good experience in the world of musical theater...and Chuck Maryan is a man with mileage incomparable, and much to offer the students in many ways....and the advertised Master Class teachers (Judy Kuhn, Donna McKecknie, Don Green, Denis O'Hare, Bill Erwin, to mention just a few), are wonderful teachers and spirits...the 19 Immersionites were fortunate indeed to be with them....I deeply enjoyed teaching each and every one of them as well.

And the final day, during the final 3 hours of what we loosely called Showcase, all 19 of them showed us how they did grow and strengthen in their abilities in the short time we had them to train. It was fun. The scenes I assigned were good...and the final songs were in some cases really wonderful. A couple of them who could hardly stand on a stage came through strongly and we were all so proud.

We all made good use of the 15, maybe 16, days we had together.

I was able to work with the kids deeply on relaxation, how to put the words of a script and song into their bodies, (we used short Shakespeare scenes to do that), and we worked a lot on the personal life histories I had them write, and the songs they chose to go with them, to bring home the feeling of personalization and genuine "showing up" required in all the work. This seemed to open them all up a lot and make for a stronger sort of self-trust. It was great to work that swift, deep way.

I need to think about how and what I wish to blog in the near future. There is alot going on in our lives ,Peter's and mine...and I want to write about that. I'd like to think that those particular topics are interesting to whoever wishes to read this Chance>Change blog.....BUT the initial impulse to write this, after leaving Barter Theatre, was to let people know what theater news was occuring in our lives.....the fact is: not much is happening in the ways we thought it might, and so I wonder what i want the blog to be now that that is so.

What have i ever had to write about except theater?...which leads me to this question: who have i ever thought i was except a woman of the theater. why would anyone be interested in reading about anything else I would have to say?

Perhaps this why Ihave not felt much like writing lately.

I feeo like I am a work in progtress. And there is nothing yet to unveil.