Dead Man's Cell Phone - The Redial

I've been in Marshall, MN since January, rehearsing another production of Dead Man's Cell Phone at Southwest Minnesota State University.  They had already chosen the play before I was hired, so it's a strange little experience to be tackling the same show again so close to my first time through (back in October at Wayne State).  But I'm having a good time here trying to make sense of this play with a new group of students and designers, so I wanted to share some photos from our rehearsals so far (courtesy of my rockin' SM, Turi).

Warming up, pretty early in the process

Gordon on the Subway (yeah... I'm definitely stealing a few bits from myself)

The Other Woman and Jean

Jean and the Other Woman

Jean and The Other Woman

Mrs. Gottlieb and Hermia...and apparently I make claws at my actors a lot

Jean & Dwight

Gordon and Jean

Almost everyone (poor Marissa is just out of the frame)

Jean and Dwight

This time we're just missing Gordon

The follies!

Punching each other is awesome

See...they're still friends after all the punching

I can also do the punching!

From Moscow to Marshall

Last night I taught the first in a series of three workshops about contemporary Russian actor training that I'm offering while I'm here at Southwest Minnesota State University. I've spent the last three summers studying this work at the Moscow Art Theatre, and I've used it myself in rehearsals - to varying degrees of success.  I even incorporated a little bit of it into my Acting 1 class after my first trip to Moscow.  But this was my first chance to take the work I've been doing and package it for delivery to new students in a concentrated way.  And I have to say, I was really surprised by how well it went.  First, I ended up with 16 students, which was basically the perfect size - with this size you can divide the group into two equally sized, still even-numbered, still big enough to be a challenge groups, which allows them the chance to watch and reflect on the work that's being done.  I was worried that I'd have to do a lot of referring to notes and whatnot, but it turned out that, once I got moving, I was in the zone.  I definitely wasn't on Sergei's level - I don't pretend I ever will be - but I did feel like I was maybe channeling him a little bit here and there.  We worked through a number of exercises focused on concentration, ensemble and focus - and they really went for it.  They laughed and made faces and got frustrated, but they also succeeded in a lot of ways, which was a lot of fun.  The big question will come next week, I think, when they have to bring in object etudes.  It's one thing to work together on these exercises, it's something else to create an imaginative illustration of an object and an event.  I'm very interested to see what they bring back to me next week - and I have to admit I'm wondering who will and won't come back.  But in general, I got a great vibe from the group.  I'm really looking forward to the work they're going to do next week, building off of our time together.  This is a small department, but boy is it energetic!  Go Mustangs!  And, on a personal note, I'm feeling pretty proud of myself!  Hooray team me! (Ура команда меня!)

White Out

Have you ever driven through a white out?  I haven't... until today.  I have definitely driven in some pretty crappy weather.  I have white-knuckled it past spun-out cars, crawling along between all-too-sparse street lights and making bargains with all kinds of deities to get where I'm going.  But I'll tell ya... all of that became a pleasant memory today when I got stuck driving through white out conditions.  I landed in Sioux Falls, SD around 2:00, and it was a beautiful day.  Sure, it was cold and windy, but it was sunny and clear, and the roads were completely dry - a great day for a drive.  I got a few miles into Minnesota and saw something strange ahead of me - it was sort of like a wall of snow, but there weren't any clouds in the sky per se.  I figured I was just driving into some snow, but then I discovered something new.  I wasn't just driving into the snow, I was swallowed by it.  Inside this cloud, there was nothing.  There was just me, and about two yellow lines in front of me if I was lucky.  I couldn't see ahead or behind or to the side... I just had me.  For a while, I also had the person behind me.  We trailed along at 15-20 miles per hour for about 20 miles, at times I could barely see his headlights, but knowing he was there made me feel a little less alive.  There's pretty much a whole lot of nothing out here anyway, and it felt extra lonely as I was enveloped in swirly grey and white - no sign of humanity on any side.  I was getting to a point where I was actually considering pulling into the next farm house I saw and begging for help.  Luckily, I came upon a gas station in the teensy weensy town of Jasper, where I pulled off to have a little panic attack.  When I got there there was the guy behind the counter, and two large old me hanging out at a tiny little booth at the front of the store.  They chatted with me for a while, I called folks to try to decide what to do, and eventually, I made the extremely scary decision to get back on the road - trying to make it to the slightly less teensy weensy town of Pipestone, where there was a hotel.  This last twelve miles of the drive turned out to be the weirdest of the entire drive.  Sometimes the road cleared enough for me to speed up a bit, but then it would swoop in around me again, so I mostly just rode the rumble strip in the shoulder of the road and gave myself an ongoing manic pep talk.  But the weirdest part was that, for most of this part of the drive, I could actually see blue sky.  I could see the clear blue sky, but I couldn't see the road in front of me.  And when I finally got to Pipestone (named, because this area was the source for the stone used in Native American pipes back in the day), I took a moment to look around.  The air had cleared a bit, so I could see where I sat in relation to the rest of the storm.  As I looked out to the horizon, I saw billowing clouds on most sides, but they were billowing from the ground, not from the sky.  Mostly the snow wasn't falling, it was just being blown around, and it made it look like the ground was spewing forth all manner of hell.  It kind of reminded me of photos of the Dust Bowl... or like that ridiculous sand storm scene in the last Mission Impossible movie.  I can't explain it.  It was horrifying and stressful and scary and alone, and when I got to the hotel, all I wanted to do was just fall down off my shaky knees and weep for a bit, but as I walked into the lobby, I discovered that a middle school basketball team and their parents had made the same stop I had - and they all had to check in before I did.  I and the two other lone travelers beside me stood there for 30 minutes, waiting for all of these people to check in, and silently praying to ourselves that there would be a room for us once we got to the front.  Luckily, there was, so I retired to my new room and proceeded to call parents and boyfriend again - this time without the hyperventilating and weeping while leaning up against a Land O Lakes cooler in the back corner of a gas station.  When I think about it, the white out is a pretty fascinating and weirdly beautiful phenomenon, but it's one that I would be happy not to experience ever again.  EVER.

Happy 2014!

Well, it seems that another year has ended, starting a whole new one, that will pass just as quickly as the last.  It's like it's a cycle or something.  And I'm looking ahead at a GIANT year.  So far I have a guest director slot at Southwest Minnesota State University (directing Dead Man's Cell Phone...again) in January and February (the best time to be in Minnesota, for sure); then I'm presenting two papers (that I also have to write) at the Mid-American Theatre Conference in Cleveland in March; this will be followed by presenting a paper at the Comparative Drama Conference in Baltimore in April; then I'll be back to Moscow for one last June; July has Brian's friend's wedding in California and my friend's wedding in New York; then the final week has not one, but TWO conferences to which I have submitted proposals: one in Scottsdale, AZ and one in Warwick, England.  During all of this, I'm searching for jobs and writing my dissertation, which does need to be in pretty close to done state by, oh, let's say Halloween...maybe Thanksgiving.

I think I'm going to throw up.

But because things are moving so fast, and are going to be so overwhelmingly busy, I think I'm going to make an effort to keep better records of my thoughts and experiences as they zoom by at breakneck speed... which means I'm going to try to keep up with my blog a bit more. I used to really like blogging.  And maybe getting myself on a regular trajectory of writing here will help me in writing the 3-5 conference papers (so far) and that pesky dissertation.

So here we go.  Not so much a resolution as just a, "hey... here's something that might help my brain."

Enjoy.

Or don't.

Whatever.

The Passion Conversation

Last week was a busy, crazy, nutso week for me here in grad-school-donia.  There were power outages and migraines and university bureaucracy galore.  But this is not a post about that.  This is a post about a little pick-me-up.  I am working on my PhD, which means that books are a pretty substantial part of my life.  It's a rare week that goes by without my receiving a book (or two... or more) in the mail.  So there was nothing immediately remarkable when I came home the other night to find a book in my mailbox.  But as I trudged up the three flights to my apartment, I noticed the return address: Brains on Fire.  It was a copy of their latest book, which I had had a hand in proofing.  How sweet of them to send me a copy!  I opened the box as I climbed - never one for delayed gratification - and flipped open the cover to find that it was also signed by all of the BoF crew.  And I'll tell ya, this made me smile.  I'm sure mine wasn't the only signed book that went out.  And as it's been about five years since I left, the people I know there are now pretty much outnumbered by the people I don't.  But still, I was moved.  It was a little long distance hug from this wacky family I got to spend a few years with, and it was a recognition that, no matter how many years or miles or degrees pass, I'm still a part of that family.  And that's really what The Passion Conversation is about, isn't it?  The myriad little things that a company can do to bring smiles to the faces of those who encounter them?  Because isn't a smile the spark of any passion?

Thanks, BoF!  Love you guys!

Monday, Tuesday... What Day Is It?

Monday Steps: 5132
Monday Miles: 1.62

Well... yesterday was the first day of the conference... and it was a little overwhelming, as these things always are.  It started out at 9:00 sharp with FIVE HOURS of my feminist research working group, which meant EIGHT presentations by crazy intimidating scholars from around the world.  And as I sat there listening to their research and feeling bad about the fact that I'm so ethnocentric to be writing about American theatre... something occurred to me: they're all writing about their own countries.  So just because mine happens to be all crazy and empire-esque doesn't mean I shouldn't write about what we're doing.  Right?  <shrug>  So I guess that was good.
Then, after five hours in the same non-air-conditioned room, I came out into the hallway to discover that the new scholars lunch workshop was in the same room.  So I grabbed my little brown bag lunch and sat right back down in that same stuffy room... but this time with more people.  By the end, I had been in that room for almost six and a half hours.  And I was on the verge of losing consciousness.
But I soldiered through and headed across the courtyard to the Teatre Lliure for our opening ceremony and our first keynote address.  The opening was basically a lot of talky-talk from a lot of mucky mucks.  We heard from the entire executive committee - most of whom were absolutely charming...especially the president!  So that's good to know.  And then we heard from the directors of the theatres that are cooperating with the conference... and this is when things started to get tough.  You see, this is an international organization, so it has two official languages: English and French.  So a couple of these theatre guys chose French instead of English.  And yeah... I definitely do not speak French.  And then some government guys came out and spoke some French... which I still did not speak.  It got a little rough there for a bit.

Then out came the adorable grandpa of theatre theory, Marvin Carlson, whose job it was to introduce our keynote speak Patrice Pavis - he made a name for himself as a rock star of semiotics.  Oh yeah.  His speech was LOOOOOONG and not particularly earth-shattering, but it was interesting, and it gave me some things to think about and some things to read, so that's good.  And I met a couple people, which was also good.  I'm such a terrible introvert...these things tend to be really difficult for me.
So one of my new conference buddies (a PhD student at University of Pittsburgh) and I grabbed some appetizers and then skedaddled.  I decided to take myself out to dinner at a restaurant down the street from my hotel.  I figured, when in Spain - order paella!  So I ordered the paella off of the vegetarian menu... but when it arrived, it had giant chunks of meat in it.  So I explained to the waiter that this was not, in fact, vegetarian. He argued that vegetable paella has chicken in it.  Umm... there are two separate items on the menu, buddy.  So he brought me new paella, which was okay... except I'm pretty sure it was prepared with some sort of meat broth, because I spent the rest of the night pretty uncomfortable in my hotel room.  And boy did I have a hard time sleeping.  But I'm pretty sure that's more about the nerves than about the animal products.

Tuesday Steps: 12939
Tuesday Miles: 4.08

So, when my alarm went off in the morning, after about three hours of sleep... I snoozed 'til I couldn't snooze no more... and then I made the executive decision to skip this morning's keynote and go ahead and snooze a little more.  It was much needed, and I don't feel bad about missing a speech about opera, that I'm sure was fine... but... I don't really worry that much about opera.  So once I finally got up, I grabbed breakfast downstairs and headed to the conference where I went to a weird little panel called Cyborg and Second Life Theatre.  I ran into my German conference buddy there, and we were just not sure what to make of it.  The first paper was about a couple of performance artists who got a bunch of surgeries to look like each other - it was actually a very interesting and well researched piece.  Then the second presentation was a performance artist who basically just described a bunch of his shows... it went on for a very long time... and didn't really seem to go anywhere.  He's doing some interesting stuff, but I would say he's one of those folks who maybe shouldn't present on his own work.  After that I headed to a new scholars panel (featuring my U Pitt conference buddy) on Performance Politics: Identity, Rights, Freedom.  It was a good set of papers - all of them were very interesting.
At this point, it was time for lunch (at 2:00)... so I headed to the New Scholars reception.  Unfortunately there were a gazillion people there, but none of them were my conference buddies, so I grabbed some food, stood around awkwardly while I ate it, and then snuck out to go to the nap room.  Yes, lunch is also our siesta break, and they have set up a nap room for anyone to just pop in for a little snooze (the word of the day, apparently).  I took myself a little power nap and felt fresh as a daisy!  (Plus, I discovered that the conference has free espresso... which didn't hurt with that whole staying alert thing either.)

Do NOT get between an academic and free coffee.

After Siesta I went to a panel on Constructing the Female Body (again with my German conference buddy).  The first paper didn't really tell us much, the second paper was interesting, but it was full of jargon and the guy talked really fast... but the third paper... oh man... quite impressive.  Her work centered around operating theatres and wax anatomy models from the 17th and 18th century.  They were creepy as heck, but it was a fascinating presentation by a very skillful presenter, so I had fun and learned a lot from her.  Then I sat in on another panel about Engaging Spectators' Complicity, but it really ended up not being my cup of tea, so I headed back to the hotel to drop off my bag before my first excursion on the Barcelona metro.  Yay, metro!
I found my way to La Seca - the theatre for this evening's performance, and let me just say, it was delightful!  It was The Magic Flute performed A CAPELLA by six people in just over an hour.  And of course, it was in Spanish (not Catalan... one of the reasons I chose this performance).  It was energetic and clever and just a really pleasant way to spend an evening (but for the lack of AC... which they had to turn off so the singers could hear each other.  Selfish).
By the end of the show, my head was a little swimmy from the heat, so I headed back to the hotel, grabbed some chips and candy out of a vending machine, a Heineken out of the honor bar (2 euros well spent), and settled in for the evening.
I'm intimidated by this whole thing, but I think I might also be inspired.  And I think I'm already exhausted enough for it to be Thursday.  But it's only Tuesday.  Woof.

Barcelona Begins

Steps: 26107
Miles: 8.24
Km:13.06

That's right, folks, I found my pedometer!

To be honest, I don't have much to post about yet.  I had my impossibly long feeling day of travel, complete with four hour layover in Paris.  I must have walked around the little F terminal a zillion times just trying to stay awake... which I did successfully... mostly.  I'm fairly certain there were a few Zs caught in good ol' CDG.  But I finally arrived in Spain, claimed my luggage and found a cab... which is when I realized my big problem: I am used to speaking Russian to people in these sort of cursory exchanges.  The endless string of "thank you" and "please" and "good morning" and "excuse me"...it's all a knee-jerk reaction now.  So I'm Russianing the heck out of all these poor Spaniards, when I actually have the skills to have a full on conversation in Spanish.  And yet, the first thing that always springs to mind is a good Спасибо or Нет.  Then, for whatever reason, random French and German words pop in, like they're jealous or something.  And I just sound like a crazy person...and I definitely don't sound like someone who can function in Spanish.  It's really too bad... it would be exciting on my first excursion to a Spanish-speaking country to involve a little Spanish speaking on my part.  But we'll see...the week is still young!

My first night in the hotel was rough.  The hotel's not great - it's not bad, but it certainly does not live up to its website.  So that was a bit of a disappointment.  And then, when the fire alarm went off around 9:30 (which was, of course, about 2 and a half hours after my jet-lagged hiney had gone to bed), I sat bolt upright and fumbled my way down the stairs to find out what was going on.  It turns out, the desk person had accidentally set off the fire alarm while she was trying to figure out why the entire building had lost electricity.  Awesome.  So, I managed to fall asleep again, and the AC was working again by the time I woke up at 2:00 in the morning, so that's something.  So I sat up reading for a bit before falling back to sleep and sleeping really well, so I think I'm pretty much on Spanish Standard Time now.  Huzzah!

Today was a pretty full day.  I got up for some hotel breakfast, did some more reading, then headed down to find the Institut de Teatre so I could check in for the conference.  Then I walked back up to the hotel, grabbed a light lunch, and walked over to the Hard Rock Cafe in the Plaça de Catalunya, where I was to meet up with our tour group for a tour of the old part of the city.  It took some time to find the group, but eventually we managed to gather, and we headed out for a three hour tour (a three hour tour!).  We saw so many sights and wound around through so many little side streets, I would find the path entirely impossible to replicate, but we sure saw a lot.  I want to head back down to that area some time this week for a little gift shopping.  We'll see if that's in the cards.  I would really hate it if all my family gifts had to come from the shops at the airport.  But it's going to be a busy week... so we'll have to see how strong the shopping force is with me.  I chatted with a few people on the tour, but it's always so awkward at these things.  There was one young woman from Munich who I spent most of the day with, so hopefully I'll run into her again.

After the tour I walked back to the hotel (since I won't be doing much running this week, I'm taking every opportunity to walk instead of take the metro... so go me!), grabbed some dinner on the way, and just settled in for the night.  Tomorrow things get started in earnest... Right at 9:00 we dive into the first working group meeting.  <gulp>