Chance = Change

...but, that being said,
Here's my wish for a sweet year ahead:

That all the world learns to live in amity,
That no one suffers from great calamity;
That all remember the power of loving,
So that (on the subways), people stop shoving!
That all guns magically turn into ipods,
So no matter the music, we'll stop asking "Why, gods",
Does every man need to kill his brother?
That person you hate now
Could have once been your mother
In another life!! There's no way of knowing,
So instead of hate, make it love that you're showing!
I know that I sound like a dumb "pollyanna",
Expecting mankind to stop its insani-
ty, but I can't help it: this world is too sad,
So therefore we all must make good from the bad!
No one else has the power.
No one else can dare do it!
So in 2007, let's put shoulders to it
And make the world better,
Make the world change its ways!
Let's insist that instead of dark nights there be days
Of sharing and goodness, of caring untold,
That no one be hungry, no one left in the cold.
That people stop killing, that people stop rage,
So that mankind can turn a new leaf, a new page:

(Please everyone reading this, in your comment to this blog entry, name a thing or two you would wish for a better world...thanks! and HAPPY NEW YEAR!) xxev

Labels: Holidays and Slings and Arrows

...well, not exactly "masked" but rather covered in flour and sugar, madly baking and baking and baking some more??? IT IS MOI!!! ME!! I!!! Overcome by the most amazing desire to BAKE!!! And so I have been baking! So many cookies i don't know where to put them all, and covered in so many shades of red and green (with various candy garnishes) that it rather looks like what I imagine Santa's workshop to look like all year round...the cookies look great with our new red dining room walls! It's all so red and elegant and deeply sweet...all that sugar! All that cheer!

And the entire place smells so great! Well, you can imagine...and today i am baking even more..I will start a batch of Paul's Mom's infamous Christmas Rum Balls soon, and even attempt a batch of cranberry scones~. Somebody STOP ME!!! I am a baker...no, no, I am a seagull....no,, no, I am an actress...no...a teacher...no....aaargh!

I even made a fabulously delicious lentil soup for dinner last night, and it was waiting, with fresh biscuits, for Peter to have the minute he got home from the office...all I need is an apron and a shirtwaist dress and i am a latter day Donna Reed...today i am a housewife! And having fun in the mysterious process! Maybe it is all this delicious leisure time i am having as a result of the NYU school term being over...the sudden rush of freedom and free time, filled with no obligations whatsoever...an occasional private student, but not many...and i love this space of time stretching before me..the emptiness delights and scares me, but mostly delights me...I used to not be able to be comfortable with such freedom, and always felt that if i was not booking a commercial or rehearsing a show or performing in one, I was at a loss...well, that has absolutely changed and , ever since returning from Barter a couple of years ago, the thought of an 8-show week still sends a dull chill through me....I would rather sit in my meditation room and stare at the altar, or, as this week proves, do something to delight my husband when he comes home from his long day's work...he does love cookies, so this baking spree of mine is a delight for him...and i will try to find his childhood favorite today: peppermint ice cream!...to go with the fresh baked cookies.

What is this time in my life? Why am I so very content? I feel as if I have found a safe harbor after a life of odd neurotic storming....sure, I have produced a body of work in my career that has some sort of label and I know that I have contributed to people's lives along the way, but when I was younger, and striving so hard to get somewhere other than where I was, I never thought I would know such peace as I am knowing now. A sort of knowing that seemed impossible when I was a younger woman. So BRAVA for aging! I would not go back a single second of time.

I have learned how to bake some sugar cookies without burning the edges. To me, for the very now of now, that is enough...that is plenty.

Labels: Holidays and Slings and Arrows

.....because it feels like Christmas in The Islands! Once, when I was down in Florida visiting my Aunt Evalyn and Uncle Ed at their retirement condo community, I went to a series of flea markets with them, and at one of the markets, I found and bought (for my then lover Chris, the British scientist) an LP entitled A Reggae Christmas, and it had all sorts of fabulous artists on it, like the Marleys,etc...and on the front was a cartoonish drawing of island folk singing and dancing under palm trees decorated with Christmas tinsel! No one had a coat or shoes on and it looked, as it was meant to, silly and incongruous....the music on the LP, by the way, was fabulously good! We not only got a kick out of it, we enjoyed listening to it.

That being said: it is nearly 60 degrees outside and humid, because it looks like rain will pour from a grey glowering sky at any moment....shouldn't it be threatening snow instead of warmish rain? And shouldn't I have to bundle up to go to the Abrams Office (to re-sign contracts) instead of sweating under the thin coat I feel I have to wear as a nod to the Season? Is global warming finally catching up with us?

In any event, Paul, Steve, Peter and I had a nice couple of days Upstate this past weekend, and since Sally and Cyrano were with us they got a good running workout in the side meadow! Peter and I adore to see these little pups run like the wind over the acres, with their little ears flying behind them and their feet barely touching the ground! They look like they're flying! And there is such joy in their faces....Peter and i got to do some much-needed Christmas shopping and even Paul and I had some time together shopping for materials for the Jewel Tree we're making for our living room....instead of a Christmas tree, Peter suggested we try a Jewel Tree of Tibet, with photos of our various mentors floating around it and sitting in its branches...I have had a good time finding various forms of "jewels" to decorate it with, and i love the idea of giving the tree meaning, along with making it a bright and glittery thing to enjoy. I will keep you updated as to its progress...right now I have to run to Abrams and re-sign my commercial contracts! More soon in this blog...now that school is out, I have time to really write!

Oh: HAPPY CHANUKAH!!!!!

Labels: Holidays and Slings and Arrows

...to be jolly, and grateful, and thrilled about many things, but the thing that thrilled me most so far, this Holiday Season, was my ACTING SCENE STUDY CLASS!!! I could not have received a more wonderful gift than the presentation of scenes they did yesterday morning for whatever audience gathered! Shakespeare and Chekov words filled the room, and I am reasonably sure that , if the ghosts of those two geniuses did manage to make it to NYU Campus yesterday, they left much happier ghosts, realizing their works were alive and well in the hearts and mouths of young training actors ! We did pepper the presentation with monologues from more modern sources, side by side with monologues from the two masters, and the mix was a fortuitous one: the event rocked! I was deeply proud of the work displayed .Deeply proud. I wept tears of joy and every so often actually forgot i was watching my students....they really did the work!

The things that were most powerful were the longer, fuller scenes, most of which were from Chekov's THREE SISTERS and UNCLE VANYA and THE SEAGULL.....and the longer SHREW scene, the first meeting of Kate and Petruchio worked particularly well too...so next time, I may try more Shakespeare scenes in the program...we did work on a bunch. But every so often, a monolgue would display particular sensory work or cleverness and awareness of place, and it was a gem...and I don't want to single out work because it was all so damned good! So many steps forward were taken, and i am delighted...delighted...that most of the steps forward were not due to performance adrenaline but rather to the actual groundwork laid in their various rehearsals. So many of them wrote in the final exam about what they learned from the research work we did in class...and how it influenced their approach to the scenes...this specificity of ideas was evident in the scenes and mononlogues...when a fireplace was in the room, the audience knew it! When a mirror was on the wall, they knew just where and how high it was hung! I mean the kids really did their work!

AND I WAS ONCE MORE REMINDED OF THIS: for students of the singing voice, whose passions already run deeply and more connected to the body (because of their vocal training) , working on classical scenes from dramas and comedies written by masters is valuable because it teaches them the necessity of truth in the speaking of large emotions before the singing begins...and the geniuses I refer to (Shakespeare, Chekov, the Restoration guys like Sheridan, other verse dramatists like Marlowe, even the highly poetic Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller,...these men wrote language so beautiful it could be sung! More modern playwrights have also written poetry but the music is different, and for the development of the instrument, I can't help but feel the older writers are more useful. They force the young actor to inhabit a time and place and manner different from their own, and forces them, thereby, to stretch in many widening directions in the use of speaking voice and use of a more open fluid body language.

Again, I WAS SO SO SO HAPPY with yesterday's presentation, and I want my class to know it. We did go back into the dressing room and i did tearfully let them know how proud i was of them....and so many of them simply did not want to leave...they wanted to keep working...I know how they feel...I have felt that too, and it is a sign of growing passion for wht really matters: the work, the power of what the individual actor can do ...SO I SAY TO YOU ALL (if any of you happen to be reading) : We will work togetheer again, I promise. And, to you all, BRAVO!!!

Labels: Holidays and Slings and Arrows

...has officially begun!! The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade sort of kicks it off, I guess you'd say, with Santa Claus always being the last float in the Parade ... he symbolizes the entrance of the Christmas Spirit into this city so full of other sorts of spirit... like someone enormous sprinkles a thick layer of powedered sugar over a roiling mass of beef stew...somehow it all gets sweeter, even if it is not in the City's nature to be sweet.

But a palpable change comes over it all, no doubt about it. And I have always enjoyed that shift. The seismic shift from selfishness to an imperative sort of kindness: people actually smile more than they usually do. Perhaps it is the anticipation of the gifts they hope to receive around the tree on the Morning. Maybe all those extravagant windows at Saks Fifth Avenue actually do work some magic on the passers-by. Or it could be that childhood memories, insistant and strong, come back into even the most miserable of minds, and even if nothing is in the oven, we smell cinnamon and sugar everywhere we go...I dunno...but the City does begin to change into something nicer and funner at about this time every year. It all becomes like an enormous Yankee Candle Shoppe, and no matter how much it may give you a headache , you are forced to enter it and smile anyway!

The more Buddhism I read (I am reading a most amazing book right now by a Vietnamese Nun who has worked all her life with Thich Naht Han to help the people of her country...I am sharply aware of how my heart is opened by such selflessness)...anyway, the more I read, the less I need. And this simple fact is difficult to reconcile with how I have always lived. So, mountains of gifts under a festive sparkling tree, or sitting next to a glowing menorah...well...I do love prettiness, but I have learned that things are simply...well...things. There are these deeper and realler gifts I am uncovering lately. And the digging sometimes gets messy. I have, however, always liked to garden in the mud and rain, (easier to pull out old roots) ,so, I must remain patient and keep studying. And letting the earth of my being do what it will do.

I am having tea with Alex T. this morning before my afternoon class. A valued friend, Alex is also a private student of mine, and a gifted fine actor who can sing. More than that, he is a fine spirited man, and recently finished a run in HISTORY BOYS as the general understudy. I saw him in one of his five roles and he was wonderful...and he and his friend (who has also become mine) Caitlin F. have just returned from a good trip to London, and he has much to tell me. So we shall tea at a place new to me: Podunk, on 5th Street and 2nd Avenue....both Alex and Cait adore it, so to Podunk we shall go! I am looking forward to spending that time with Alex.

Over the Holiday, Peter and I got cught back up again in watching the 2nd Season of SLINGS AND ARROWS on the Sundance Channel...or is it Bravo?...in any event, wherever or whoever plays it, we will be watching! And we have learned that a 3rd season of it will be out sometime...can hardly wait. The show is about a fabulous and typically dysfunctional repertory theatre , this one in Canada, modeled on Stratford Festival no doubt, and it is so filled with inside theatrical references and personalities and dilemmas, it is irresistible!! We laugh and cry along with them , since we totally understand so much about what the people are going through. And the fact that the show is filled with genuinely fine Canadian actors, spouting off immortal Shakespeare lines as part of their "sit-com" journey,totally in story context as they rehearse and perform their regular season, is just the most wonderful icing on an already substantial cake! We adore this show. And appreciate that it even exists! Thank you Canada!

Labels: Holidays and Slings and Arrows

...at least on Thanksgiving Day, was clearly our place, specifically the new Red Dining Room... where 16 people (later 19), sat at two comfortable tables and ate the many delicious dishes we had prepared for them! The red walls, and the lovely table landscapes, shining with polished silver (I do seem to have a lot of that!) and gorgeous roses (thank you,dear Stephen for all those wonderful flowers and arrangements...such sumptuous beauty everywhere) seemed to create the perfect dining and talking atmosphere.

I have read somewhere that red stimulates the appetiite, which is why so many up-scale restaurants use the color on their walls,etc. Well, that certainly seemed true at our dinner party...people ate and ate and seemed to genuinely enjoy the food. Plates full , heaped high, with foods from the buffet we set up on the hallway bookshelves (also covered with silver serving pieces and vases of roses, as well as a turkey basket filled with colorful foil-wraqpped chocolates, some in the shape of turkeys, and chocolate kisses flavored with cherry and vanilla) Peter even published a prettily scripted menu for all to read,which I placed on the buffet so people could know what they were about to eat, another stimulus to the appetite, i think, because people were clearly very very hungry.

Two turkeys (one savory , one sweet), heaping bowls of mashed potatoe, sweet potato covered in marshmallow, roasted butternut squash, greenbeans with almonds, three different sorts of stuffings (one I invented with hazelnut and orange),and a gorgeous platter of vegetable lasagna brought by our pal Gabby (who is Italian , and who knows his way around lasagna preperation!).....a gorgeous and satisfying meal, covered in various gravies...and it all tasted so good! I firmly believe a Thanksgiving meal should actually taste good, not just look pretty, and this one was delicious! I now know, how to make a moist and tasty turkey! Thank you Food Channel! And thanks for the sweet onion tartlets and goatcheese -filled pears w/ prosciutto! YUM! And then of course, there were all those desserts! Especially the pumpkin rolls prepped and served by Steve's lovely daughter Katy, along with the turkey-shaped shortbreads made by his other girl Chris! Wonderful! And thanks to you both! As well as to Michael J. for the most luscious brownies! We had rich melted vanilla ice cream to cover all of it, including the pies! Urns of fresh coffee topped the dining experience, and bottles of red and white wines and champagne flowed throughout the evening. Very festive and relaxed. It was the relaxed part I liked the best...people really enjoyed each other and conversation flowed easily at both tables. We also set up our Purple Room as a "football" room, so it was often occupied with relaxed and chatting guests who used the televised games as an excuse to get to know each other...so easy. And I enjoyed my own party! That is an accomplishment in itself!

Peter and I discovered we can work very well together in our narrow kitchen. The night before the dinner party, Peter prepared a schedule (color-coded, no less) o allwehad left to do on that final day before guests arrived, and we followed the schedule to the minute (as best we could). The result was that we actually got everything done in a timely and relaxed manner, having fun in the kitchen while we cooked, and of all the things I enjoyed about the holiday, I believe that time with peter in the kitchen was my favorite. That and Paul sitting in the brown recliner knitting, while the party swirled around him. We did it so that Steve and Paul could relax (since they always are the holiday hosts for our family), and we seemd to accomplish our goal! I love those two so much. And, of course, as is our family pattern, whoever didn't do the cooking cleaned the kitchen, and boy did they ever! The best kitchen staff in town!!!

It was such fun!

Labels: Holidays and Slings and Arrows

....just in case I no longer have the chance to write Thanksgiving Greetings after today! Those two enormous feet sticking out from under that enormous hill of cookware, over-ready birds and mounds of fresh cranberry conserve? Those are my feet! Attached to my body that is overwhelmed by the amount of preparing that must soon begin on behalf of our dear 20 guests! It already has been enormous fun, getting all the groceries into the house and planning, planning ,planning....and I have been testing various Food Network recipes for the past two weeks, some of which are terrifically tasty and easy to prep ahead of time. But the serious cooking begins tomorrow, and we have the two 12-pound turkeys in the fridge to prove it! Of course, they will begin their slow journey to deliciousness on Thursday morning, bright and early, as I watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and sip coffee, but many of the side dishes will be done by tomorrow evening. The various stuffings, the potato and squash casseroles, more relishes, and appetizers....we are ready to cook! So my main concern remains: how to set up the tables and where to place 20 people so that they are comfortable and can enjoy their meal! I think several tables is the key: two in the dining room and one or two placed elsewhere in the apartment. All made to look lush and celebratory. Decorated prettily for the special day. Colorful and comfortable.

Also, how to set up the Buffet, and make all the food easy to get to again and again.
We are thinking of using the Main Hallway as the Food Buffet Court! So that people are greeted by delicious foods as soon as they enter, and perhaps platters of pretty drinks as well. To go with the Sweet Onion Tartlets and Pears w/ Goatcheese and Prosciutto (and vegetarian ham for Paul and others)...that is my plan at least...and I hope Peter agrees. There will also be an official Football Room set up in our Meditation Room, for people who like to watch those things. Food will be in there to munch on too, of course.

And so, we shall enjoy!
Menu and Guest List to follow. Meanwhile, enjoy your Day! And love from our house to yours!

Labels: Holidays and Slings and Arrows