Chance = Change

....is so good! And so deeply moving for an audience...today/s reading at The Chelsea Studios was packed to the walls...room 507 was packed....and it was an audience of some distinction and obvious mileage in our business...many wonderful and well-travelled theater people there...old friends and new...and to watch the room sort of melt from its social facade into a room full of humans all moved by the same dear story...it was wonderful...and i could not stop from laughing at one point, so many people were getting out hankies and kleenexes in the 2nd act...it tells a powerful story, and the music is heart-meltingly beautiful...the several kleenexes i had stuffed in my bra were sodden by the end of the reading...but of course i could use all that emotion in fleshing out my fun character of "Chayesal", the aging character actress of the Warsaw Gang Theater Troupe....we had such a good time telling the story and moving people emotionally....whew! the room gave our reading a total standing ovation when we were through and that is something I have not seen at a reading in a long time...people were genuinely moved...the way QUILTERS used to move people...this does that same thing...everyone has a mother and everyone at one time or another has been a child...so the piece gets right to each and every heart in one way or another by the end...all these crusty old Broadway producers dissolving in tears...it was great!!!!

We do it again tomorrow morning, at 11 for another group of folks, and again , it will be crowded...I feel honored to be part of this right now. I could sense a future for it as we brought it into the room so powerfully this afternoon...I love the cast...really love them...and am glad to add Megan Lawrence and Judy Nazmetz to my list of new friends...two incredibly powerfully talented women...and deeply warm and nice...they play mother and daughter...and can sing and act in ways that i wish all my students could see...if I had only thought ahead....i would have tried to get them there tomorrow....but they probably all have classes....in any event, something like this could teach them a thing or two...especially about full body involvement..watching Judy and Megan work, I learn new things every time....

It feels great to be part of something I like so much. It is an all too rare experience. My respect for Iris Dart, who wrote the book and lyrics, is limitless..I like her tremndously..and Mike Stoller and Artie Butler...I mean, what can you say about two men who literally raised me (though they of course never knew of my existence) through all the brilliant pop music they have written through the years.
Today I was able to tell Mike Stoller of my appreciation and admiration for his work. And his old pal Neil Sedaka was in the audience and he and I established a sweet rapport, as performer and audience member...he was wonderfully responsive to the piece...weeping with the best of them! What a nice man he seems....and because we sing the opening number BREAD AND THEATER right to the audience, i was able to personally attach to many who were there right away, from the top of the show...and that is fun, especially when the song itself says so much!

So, today was fun. I had to miss a Song Analysis class that I usually teach at NYU, but the wondrous James Cunningham, our usual Musical Director in the class, used the time for private coachings....and that is good. I hate missing class. But must when I must!

So, more to report on what goes on tomorrow at LAUGHING MATTERS, and I still want to transcrbe some of the Dalai Lama's weekend sessions....I cannot get him or the Blade Wheel Teachings out of my mind....more soon.

His Holiness the Dalai Lama...and how perfect that i sat with him for the past three days at a theater,, a huge theater, in Manhattan called The Beacon Theater! Because if there ever was a beacon of light in these stupid times, it is His Holiness, the Dalai Lama...I feel happy and deeply blessed to have experienced him and his way of teaching. So proud that there is such a human being on this planet....so proud to be a human being in the same race of man....he leads the way in showing us how we can be, and as flawed as we all are, as human as he is, his presence and his gracefullness, and his knowledge and his pure meditative self is inspiring. That is actually it: I feel inspired...I feel breathed into...lightened...enabled ...by his presence and his being. I feel, in short, so good!

I will transcribe the notes I took, in the special booklet we received that had to do with The Blade Wheel of Mind Reform Teachings that were his topic for this sitting...i took so many notes, as I always do when in the presence of these Buddhist masters I am fortunate enough to study with...right now, all I feel like doing is pouring out my heart with the love I left there feeling today. He is a great man.

And the Buddha's teachings are great. I learned this weekend that to do anything less than study the teachings of the Buddha and his subsequent masters,like Matreya, Shanti Deva, Darmasakahya, and so many others.....to do less than make a study of all the great writings, all the sutras,...well...there are brilliant minds that have been at work glorifying the Buddha's enlightenment since it happened centuries ago, and to not benefit from these brilliant minds and hearts would be a sad thing.To boil it all down to the chanting of one thing...to assume that, no matter how powerful a set of words can be, all can be experienced in simply chanting those words is simply not for me right now. There is too much else to strive for, and whereas we do all have the sweetest of Buddah natures within , and hearts that are capable of greatness, there are depths to plumb and horizons to travel toward before we can earn the true title of Buddha....Bodhisattva, yes...we can take that vow and proceed from there...but I am no Buddha...I feel humble enough to know that and use that knowledge to grow. And so I shall. I have never felt so honored as i felt in the presence of the Dalai Lama today. Such greatness. And I understood how, every day, my little mind, my vast ego, prevents me from seeing so much of the world around me. Such self-cherishing blindness is no crime....in fact, it is deeply human...but to experience a break in it is like breathing fresh air. And it was intoxicating. Like coming alive. My ego-driven self has given me many things, many wonderful things,,,,and there is so much more to gain than that...such a wider scope of vision.

I honor all the paths I have been on, and value them. They have led me here.
In two weeks , we go back to Menla for a 5-day sitting on Peace with Robert Thurman and Sharon Saltzburg...I can hardly wait. In the interim, I will meditate and read, then meditate and read some more.

Meanwhile, I am rehearsing this wonderful LAUGHING MATTERS with such terrific people...it is a show I could do with a full heart.Glorious music and comedy, with a story worth telling. And Lynn Ahrens called...She and Steve Flaherty want me work with them on some stuff they are doing...I told them I would be honored to do so. Wonderful writers. As long as people respect and can work around my NYU schedule, I feel great about working with them. And that is what Leonard Foglia , Mike Stoller, Iris Dart, Lynn and Steve and other nice people are doing and I am grateful for that.

So much more to tell about the Dalai Lama. I will . Stay tuned.

,,,starting with a 9:30 Scene Study Class, in the Black Box Theater right off Washington Square....always a nice way to wake up...the stroll from the 7th Avenue subway through Washington Square park is entirly interesting, ne matter the weather...so beautiful...so Edith Wharton and William James...so , even on a morning like this one, when I woke up too late to do anything but rush to get down town, I enjoyed that walk to my class in Pless...the cunning, ever-so-reminiscent-of college-days Black Box Theater...today was an especailly good class, as the students showed me that they actually have been learning some things from the moment we first met, a couple of weeks ago.....their initial monologues (of their own choice) reflected lots of useful growth and progress..I was, for the most part, so happy. Proud of them. Always touched by the young actor in the process of growing into a good actor.

Things have gotten a bit busy....Monday night I read Zach Udko's new little play called GRAVE SHOPPING WITH MOTHER, down at the Dramatists Guild...Zach is a gifted, nutty and rather brilliant playwright recently graduated from NYU MFA Writing, and I am his "mother" muse, useful right now for giving life to the various Mother characters he writes...in SCARY NATION I played "Carrie Nation" (definitely, through Zack's eyes) a maternal and judgemental creature...and for this short new play, deeply hilarious, I played another incarnation of the astonishing mama figure...we had so much fun...and the audience seemed grateful to be able to belly laugh!!!!

Yesterday, I had a morning rehearsal for LAUGHING MATTERS, a lovely new musical by Iris Dart and Mike Stoller...extraordinary and beautiful music and lyrics...David Loud is MD...it was soo good to see him again and to work with him...delightful...we will do several backers' auditions for this delightful new piece on the 28th and 29th....i deeply love what i have read of the book and now know of the music....more on that soon...

Then last evening , to work with my darling 4610 Village Actors...we have goten in Shakespeare in a big way...they love it and seem to thrive reading it...and who am I to complain...he is only the greatest playwright who ever lived!!!! So we are having tremndous fun each Tuesday night!!!

More soon, faithful readers...I promise...xxevalyn

.....five years ago this very day....September 11th....I was on an early morning subway, around 8:30 or so, on my way downtown to 42nd Street where i was expected at a 9:00 am radio booking for a couple of "spots" for The NY Daily News...Peter was snug at home in bed, and his Mom, Patty , staying with us as she always does while she was in attendance at the United Nations Montessori Peace Conference, was in fact, at the UN by that time of the morning as well ,so she and I were both on the East Side Midtown....it was a pretty day, with blue skies and sunshine. When....

...on the crowded subway, commuters packed elbow to elbow, I heard a young business man say something to the people next to him, like, "Did you hear about that guy that flew his plane into the World Trade Center?" "When?, someone asked. "Just now, this morning" the first man answered...and someone made a joke about how blind the pilot of this supposedly private little plane must have been to have crashed into so obviously large a building....there were chuckles in the crowded car. And I thought " lucky it wasn't intentional...that would be bad."
A few others had also seen the news story on the tv before leaving home to board the subway cars....

By the time we got to 42nd Street, someone else had proposed that maybe it was intentional, not an accident...someone else had said "why would anyone want to do that?", etc...and floating in the air was the vague possibility that it could have been a small futile attack of some sad sort, but weren't we lucky that no one can really harm the USA??? Stuff like that...it was already a weird vibe in the air, however, as we all trudged our ways up to surface and hurried towards our various office buildings...weird feelings laced with laughter at the stupidity of the woe-begone pilot....

By the time i got to the Daily News Building on 42nd Street between Lexington and Third, word was pretty much around the street that it had been an intentional crash into the building though no one knew why...only that by the time we got into the building lobby, they had already set up checkpoints to check ID's before we could even get on an elevator...that was weird...i had never had to do that before.

By the time I got to the floor where I was to record the commercials, news was bad. And tv's were turned on all over the news room...clearly something awful was happening,because the World Trade Center Building was in sad shape and in fact looked like it maybe could fall...and then the 2nd plane crashed into the 2nd building, and our world was never the same afterwards...our session never did get started...we watched as the first tower crumpled to the ground...i got sick to my stomach...and finally said to all who were stunned and silent...."I gotta go home now..call me if the session is re-scheduled".. (which it eventually was)...i was sadder than I can ever recall being, out in public at least...a sad sick sadness, gently pervaded my whole body...it seemed to be happening to someone else.

The vision on the newsroom television of that building crumbling like so much waste paper...i remember thinking how I had been watching too much television and that it was actually happening in the city I was walking in...not a camera trick but real..I did not even think of the people burning alive in it yet...or the people flying out the windows to save themselves...flying through the air on fire...i was fixed on the odd image of the building gracefully floating through time and air to reach its hard final place....lots of papers seemed to float with it...and we all saw it....small airplane...large building...

I went down in the elevator, alone....through the lobby with its slow moving line of ID- checked folks who new little of what was happening....i had already seen an image of it...they had not...I knew the ending of the movie they were about to see...and i went out onto 42nd Street...I had tried to call Peter from the newsroom but was unable to get a call through the busy and frantic lines...i had tried to call Paul too...no luck...i have a vague memory of Peter reaching me somehow and of my telling him i would be home as soon as I could...i may be making that up...

I walked West on 42nd Street, not being absolutely sure that other buildings would not begin falling around me...people had begun to park their cars by the curbs and opening their doors, with their radios turned on full blast listening to the news as it was happening...the street was one long radio broadcast...people's legs sticking out of the cars, resting on the curbs...listening...something about the Pentagon under attack, etc..I kept walking West...

All the way to Times Square...where tens of thousands of people had to come to a complete and utter standstill, all cars stock still , all busses with their doors open, empty standing in the Square...people as far as the eye could see...a carpet of humanity...still, quiet with faces all upturned to the news ribbon flashing around #1 Times Square...looking at the news of what was going on mere blocks away, downtown of where we all stood...we could smell smoke and see ash as it floated gently north...there wasn't much of it, but there it was...and we all stood there...they looked up...I looked at the people, sure that i would never see another sight like it in my lifetime: Times Square at a quiet standstill. People looked stricken. Scared. Sad. Angry. Expectant. Stunned. I just looked at the empty busses and the thousands of people. Looking up, not at God, but at the news. At that moment, news was God. And we looked up for answers. The business men in their expensive suits looked so helpless.

I resumed walking. Word was spreading that all subways were at a standstill, and there were no cabs that felt like running either, so I knew I would have to walk home. I still could not call through on my cell, and as I walked I heard about how the World Trade Center was receptacle of so many of the City's cell phone towers,etc...there were many of us who were walking....and we walked North...I bought a huge bottle of water and kept walking....up 8th Avenue, I walked...up and up...or was it 9th? I think 9th...seemed better odds at maybe getting a cab over there...but there were none...only people parked and listening to their car radios...we were all in this odd movie...I walked and walked...finally called through to Paul and to Peter...told them I was on the way...Peter was sitting in our living room, in his underwear and tee shirt, watching everything the tv had to offer about what was going on in our world as it crumbled. He had not heard from his momma. (Nobody on the streets was really talking much to each other at all.)
I was worried about her. We were all worried about each other...get home..that was the main thing to do...get home...and so finally, after catching and sharing a cab with like 5 other people, I did get home....and the vigil began...the vigil and the cooking.

Everyone cooked. Cooking seemed to matter...Food to comfort and to keep us safe.
Peter's Mom as it happened, was kept securely under lock and key at the UN Building, as officials made sure they were all safe...they were evacuated from the building...and pretty immediately started walking DOWNTOWN! To see if she could help...she went with her colleagues down to Union Square to see if there was any way to help people stumbling up from the Trade Center...like so many emergency rooms in the city, everyone wanted to help! But it soon became tragically clear that human bodies were being incinerated and pulverized, leaving very few whole humans to actually give any help or aid to....the ones who needed the help were the people wandering around and waiting to see if their loved ones had any hope of escaping the two flaming towers alive...so few did actually get out alive. SO many died. Such sad waste and evil loss. But Patty stayed out ,and down at the Union Square as long as she could, just in case.

Our apartment became the gsthering place for our friends,and we all huddled together and watched and listened. Paul and Steve came over and cooked and Peter cooked and i cooked and when she got home Patty cooked...we listened. We understood. We heard of the brave people on the airplanes who tried to stop further tragic things from happening...of the men and women who phoned home to say "I love you" one last time to those who knew they were losing their loved ones even as they spoke to them, and we wept with them. Walking out onto West End Avenue at one point during the otherise beautiful day, I was so deeply shocked to realize that the sky was still blue, and the sun still shone.....was that my imagination or was that ash in the air? All the way up at 103rd Street....mainly , it seemed as if nothing at all had occurred....it was time and space separating us from the tragedy of the world...Uptown from the fire and blood...blue sky protected us, it seemed. Nothing had truly reached us...we were only as close as our televisions let us be...but if we had gone a mere hundred blocks south....a few miles down the road...and, you know what? I never did.

I left town to go to the Barter for 3 years and never did visit Ground Zero...could not even bear the thought of it. Did not want to see it. Until I came home and saw it all cleaned up and ready to rebuild...I still cried like it was yesterday.

This morning in my Scene Study Class, I put the students through a relaxation meditation and asked them to put themselves at Ground Zero on the day five years ago...I needed them to feel it...and they did. I made the connection between the sort of hate that produces that kind of human destruction and pain, and the love they have to cultivate in order to be the most powerful and generous sort of artist . I asked them to go through their day today and chart their feelings of anger and love. See how they felt and manifested both. I honored to day in the only way i knew how to: pass it on to the young ones who may be able to make a difference, and I hope they do.

A shiny, red, crisp, delicious, sweet-tart apple...because you are all so wonderful. And i mean wonderful, in the sense I often use it: filled with wonders...and being able to teach you downtown at Steinhardt/NYU , either in the Acting Scene Study Class in the Black Box Theater, or in the Song Analysis Class in whatever room we are in that day...well...being able to be with you in those class times is such a privilege for me. It's like reading 32 of the most interesting short stories in the world...16 at a time...Each of you is like a book...i say that and i mean it...a book I have never read...and even if I have taught you before, still, your stories change so enchantingly as time passes, it is like reading you anew...

I feel grateful for the chance to do this....Bill W. at Steinhardt has been so generous in trusting me and giving me these opportunities to explore and grow. I owe him a debt of gratitude and hope to be able to repay it in some delightful way one day. The odd thing is I never expected to be burgeoning in these teaching discoveries at Steinhardt.I thought I would be making this journey at another place in NYU, and was, therefore, shocked when, after putting in major time building that particular studio, I was denied entry into their classrooms in any substantive way. People and their fears.

They seemed to have an odd reaction to my return from those years at Barter Theater, and the dissolution of the friendships accompanying that sad discovery, hurt for a while, but not for long, as I realized it was for the best, and the energy of my pain led me to Steinhardt and therefore to the place I am supposed to be.

In other words as ever, things happen the way they are supposed to happen if only we can fathom and bear that fact. Sometimes, it is nigh onto impossible to do that: tolerate the harshness of life's lessons...but...well...what are our options?

I have never had such exciting classes as the ones I now am blessed with at Steinhardt/NYU....I have written a lot about the collaborative atmosphere at this school, and the wish on the part of the administration of the Musical Theater Program to make it a place where process matters more than product...armed with the wisdom that a good human voice takes time to cultivate, these people understand the virtues of passing time, and therefore patience. A benign sharing of ideas is encouraged among the faculty. This, in itself, is a rare and refreshing thing.

Anyway...you all get the point: the start of the Schoolyear 2006 this past week has been so much fun. And NYU, the part situated around Washington Square Park, has been bustling with so much student activity, it's been highly energizing. Such excitement ,and that feeling of the Fall, even though it has been quite warm. That rushing headlong into their futures...the feeling that , not only are their books and clothing new and fresh, but so are their lives...that crisp apple feeling.

Which brings me back to the gift i want to give my students: that apple. And my promise to do my best to help you find your best. Since you are the next ones to step up and at least try to save the world, I am here to help you figure out your most powerful ways of doing so....,because the power is yours and the promise lies waiting. Actors act! And singers like you can entice the world into knowing its own goodness. So, let's explore all that...shall we?

Last week during my relaxing stay at the Upstate House, Steve C.,brought a bag of just-perfect-ripe figs to do something wonderful with for our eatng pleasure, as he so often does....not only is he a thoughtful, generous and nurturing man who loves to cook meals that we all enjoy but he is also adventurous, inventive and daring willing to try new recipes with whatever fresh things he finds at various market places....So, there were these scrumptious figs (scrumptious is one word that sounds how it actually tastes and feels to eat something that is scrumptious)...what to do? So:

As he so often does, Steve C. went online, probably typed int he words "figs" and "dessert" amnd came up with something totally yummmy: a fig and orange-water cream tart! We shopped for the orange water ,settled for orange oil from Williams - Sonoma, and proceeded to make the crust from scratch, the custard cream from scratch,etc and placed the by now on-the-edge-of-over-ripe figs just so and baked what turned out to be a glorious thing....figs are a revalation to me...i am just discovering figs, really....they are amazing...so i saw this poem in an August NEW YORKER and it says what i would love to be able to say about figs...it's called
THE FIG TREE
and it is written by the poet Ruth Stone.....

Old as the world,
lithe and smooth,
her skin as cool as a python's,
she offers fat tongues of syrup
embedded with her seeds.
Through lobed waxed leaves,
she gathers light for the tiny ones,
the sheen of stoma,
the enzymic chlorophyll,
drawing up with her powerful veins
exact minerals for each cell.
How calm, like a lover waiting in a garden,
her pale trunk curving, sinuous,
dripping her raw smell in the carnal air.
She sways while a thousand beating wings
deflower her.

And of course the poet imagines the fig as female...what else could it be...?
That is one sexy poem. And the fig is one sexy ,sensual fruit....also, very beautiful. And it looks so,,,well....dirty and raw from the outside...again I think of the MOTHER COURAGE I just saw...it's on my mind a lot since I saw it two nights ago. Most theater i see never revisits me like that. I am so grateful for its company. Wendy W. and i had a long conversation about it over a fun Mexican dinner last night...so good to catchup with her, that busy ,gifted woman...her Juilliard students are so lucky to have her as a teacher. I simply worry that she drives herself to exhaustion, but she seems to know that taking care of herself is key, and she looks terrific, rested and beautiful...I was glad to see it last night. I like her so much, I hope we can see more of each other throughout this school year. We both tend to get far too nusy to find each other and chat over the tea we are always promising we will have! Last night was fun.

A word to Edie: please write me...don't be too timid to comment in any way you want to when you read this blog...I look forward to hearing from you. So, WRITE, girl!!!