Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Swimming In memory..
...both because of all the poetry I am reviewing, and for other reasons too....had a delightful breakfast with Marla Schaffel yesterday - talented, beautiful and smart as hell Marla, who I first met when she had just graduated Julliard and had come into Les Mis as a new Cossette...gorgeous talent...years pass, and we end up in the same rehearsal room for I MARRIED WYATT EARP, with her playing "Kate" and playing it marvelously, I might add....what a rich gift she has...ANYWAY:so we discover she is a neighbor here in our 'hood...has been for years! And we meet for tea....we talk and talk, as if it were meant to be..ends up: one of her constant employers over the past years has been the amazing Christopher Manos, Producer of Theater of the Stars (when I first worked for Chris it was Theater UNDER the Stars) Atlanta ...my home town...Marla and i share wonderful experiences of this astonishing, and long-lived (thank God!) theater person! She emails him, I email him (after she gives me his address) and poof! he calls! And later today i will return that call.....amazing.
I received my Actors Equity card from Chris Manos when he cast me in MAME with Anne Miller! How many years ago , already? But first, before that, I had served as a summer apprentice backstage at Theater Under the Stars when it was resident in Chastain Memorial Amphitheater in Atlanta....I scrubbed flats in the summer sun (when we used to re-use flats for production after production...we would scrub the used ones of all old paint and put a new show right on top of the old.....do they still do that anymore?) In any event, Chris was always there for me when I needed the next step up....I owe him a lot.
Small world...karma..fate...my meditations are leading me to take layer of perception off of layer after layer, and i keep seeing deeper in to so much...fascinated. Continually fascinated by what i am learning from the Dharma Path...hour after hour on the cushion, with me and my mind as the only company....Ego constantly badgering me to move on to the next subject, think of the next distraction....dwell on each story my nimble mind feels it necessary to tell...and there I sit, watching the story teller behind the story teller behind the story teller,etc.... I am enthralled....we are so clever, we humans.
Anyway: poetry is flooding me lately...old and new....gotta keep writing...most of it awful, some of it not so awful....one or two points of true inspiration and clarity. Here and there.But it is good to listen to that voice again, after so long. It seems fitting...feels like the glue in the cracks of my life story....the mortar...the running voice. Running.... never quiet......like the brook upstate at the house...trickling down no matter how little rain there has been...making noise over the stones and boulders, the tiniest of rocks...it's the friction witht the stone I hear, not the pure water itself...meditation allows me to hear the water itself....."lead me beside the still waters"...yikes.....does it all begin...has it all always begun...with Spirit? Which inevitably leads me to the subject of:
.......my old folks at 46-10 Village who did amazingly wonderful work yesterday, so that i rode home in the cab thinking about how I could write their story...the story of this very special Drama Club...i have decided it is best to work with them in the 3rd Floor Rec Room so i can form a large sitting circle, where they can all be comfortable before i make them actually rise up and walk to the center and work like real physical actors...they seem to love it...i use their physical disabilities to emphasize the characters they play in SPOON RIVER and it is amazing what shows up when they are awakened (often by my little "sermons" ) and let their inner selves overcome their perceived (outer physical) ideas of themselves....Life enters the room and everyone feels it...the room is always brighter and happier at the end of the two hours than it is at the beginning....Peggy K., a vibrant and full-voiced woman, crippled and permanently on a walker, using that walker to underscore her delicious work on "Mrs.Purkapile"...I mean, stuff like that...even the ones who can't walk at all well seem to walk better when playing another character.....now, that's miraculous to me....I guess the only way to write about them is to...well...write about them...just let it flow out of me as I remember it ....so much happens in each two-hour session...so many awakenings and moments that are in and of themselves discoveries of the moment....true creativity, in other words......I am fortunate to be there with them.
OH! Our pal Will Bigham is one of the three finalists on ON THE LOT....Fox Network..he may win! Woldn't that be wonderful? GO TEAM WILL!!!!
I received my Actors Equity card from Chris Manos when he cast me in MAME with Anne Miller! How many years ago , already? But first, before that, I had served as a summer apprentice backstage at Theater Under the Stars when it was resident in Chastain Memorial Amphitheater in Atlanta....I scrubbed flats in the summer sun (when we used to re-use flats for production after production...we would scrub the used ones of all old paint and put a new show right on top of the old.....do they still do that anymore?) In any event, Chris was always there for me when I needed the next step up....I owe him a lot.
Small world...karma..fate...my meditations are leading me to take layer of perception off of layer after layer, and i keep seeing deeper in to so much...fascinated. Continually fascinated by what i am learning from the Dharma Path...hour after hour on the cushion, with me and my mind as the only company....Ego constantly badgering me to move on to the next subject, think of the next distraction....dwell on each story my nimble mind feels it necessary to tell...and there I sit, watching the story teller behind the story teller behind the story teller,etc.... I am enthralled....we are so clever, we humans.
Anyway: poetry is flooding me lately...old and new....gotta keep writing...most of it awful, some of it not so awful....one or two points of true inspiration and clarity. Here and there.But it is good to listen to that voice again, after so long. It seems fitting...feels like the glue in the cracks of my life story....the mortar...the running voice. Running.... never quiet......like the brook upstate at the house...trickling down no matter how little rain there has been...making noise over the stones and boulders, the tiniest of rocks...it's the friction witht the stone I hear, not the pure water itself...meditation allows me to hear the water itself....."lead me beside the still waters"...yikes.....does it all begin...has it all always begun...with Spirit? Which inevitably leads me to the subject of:
.......my old folks at 46-10 Village who did amazingly wonderful work yesterday, so that i rode home in the cab thinking about how I could write their story...the story of this very special Drama Club...i have decided it is best to work with them in the 3rd Floor Rec Room so i can form a large sitting circle, where they can all be comfortable before i make them actually rise up and walk to the center and work like real physical actors...they seem to love it...i use their physical disabilities to emphasize the characters they play in SPOON RIVER and it is amazing what shows up when they are awakened (often by my little "sermons" ) and let their inner selves overcome their perceived (outer physical) ideas of themselves....Life enters the room and everyone feels it...the room is always brighter and happier at the end of the two hours than it is at the beginning....Peggy K., a vibrant and full-voiced woman, crippled and permanently on a walker, using that walker to underscore her delicious work on "Mrs.Purkapile"...I mean, stuff like that...even the ones who can't walk at all well seem to walk better when playing another character.....now, that's miraculous to me....I guess the only way to write about them is to...well...write about them...just let it flow out of me as I remember it ....so much happens in each two-hour session...so many awakenings and moments that are in and of themselves discoveries of the moment....true creativity, in other words......I am fortunate to be there with them.
OH! Our pal Will Bigham is one of the three finalists on ON THE LOT....Fox Network..he may win! Woldn't that be wonderful? GO TEAM WILL!!!!
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