Doing Is the Reality of Being

If you’ve been reading my blog for any length of time, you know that I work in the theatre. So when I started thinking about the idea of “doing,” I remembered one of my favorite quotes from one of my favorite theatre practitioners, a guy named Sanford Meisner.

Meisner was trying to explain his acting techniques to his students and this is what he said: “Acting is the reality of doing.” (What he actually said is “The foundation of acting is the reality of doing” but my way is catchier, Meisner.) Anyway, Meisner really wanted actors to stop trying to act and just start BEING on stage, being honest, being in the emotion, and responding however you do as you live and move and breathe in the world. It’s kind of the toughest acting assignment ever. Just be. Don’t act. Don’t show. Just exist in the space. I love the idea of it.

So when I ask myself, ‘what do I do?’, I can think of a hundred things that I do in a day. Study, write, grade, teach, check the mail, answer the phone, blog, watch television, open the refrigerator, close the refrigerator, walk the dog, update my Facebook, make lists, drink coffee, answer emails, worry about money, worry about time, worry, worry, worry, plan, plan, plan, do, do, do.

Sometimes I really wish I could bring more of that sense of BEING, not DOING, to my day, to my real, off-stage, honest-to-goodness life with all of its stresses and fears and discomfort and weariness. I would like to do more being. I would like to exist more. In this moment. Some moments are more built for than others. And maybe part of existing isn’t forcing myself not to worry or plan or stress. Maybe, in the end, all the doing is part of the being.  If “acting is the reality of doing,” maybe doing is the reality of being.

 

 

Here’s to more being, less doing.

love you guys,

elizabeth

6 Things You Maybe Didn’t Know About Theatre

So far, Jenni’s prompts are WAY harder than I thought they would be. I’m probably putting a lot of pressure on myself to say meaningful things. But, like the true university-addict that I am, I am loving the blogging homework. So here we go, day two of Blog Every Day in May…
Today we are supposed to “educate our readers on something we know a lot about or are good at.” I don’t know why it suddenly feels like I’m not good at anything.

My PhD (that I will hopefully finish by next May) is in theatre, specifically theatre history, literature, and criticism. You still awake? I thought I’d share a few of my favorite random pieces of theatre history with you. They make great party trivia…if you go to parties at my house, anyway. Here’s some fun factoids to geek out to:

1. Theatre comes from a Greek word, theatron, and it means “the seeing place.”

2. Musicals are principally an American invention. The first musical was rumored to be an accident during which a ballet company’s performance venue burned down and so they were asked to add their dance routines into a melodrama called, The Black Crook, in 1866. The combined effort was so popular with audiences that it was soon repeated and copied. You’re welcome, Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark. I’m sure this is exactly what the 19th century had in mind.

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3. The words theatre and theater are sometimes used interchangeably but they mean different things. We generally use the British spelling, theatre, to refer to the art form or practice. When we are talking about the building or specific performance venue, we spell it, theater (also when we talk about the movie theater). We don’t mean to be snobby freaks; it just comes naturally.

4. A light gets left on in theaters when no one is in them. It’s called a ghost light. There are lots of stories about why it’s called that. A lot of people say the light is left on for the ghosts to find their way. (On a more practical level, ghost lights help people walk around safely inside the theater on dark days – days when there isn’t a show playing).

The ghost light on one of the stages at school.

5. One of my favorite artists ever, Augusto Boal, started something called Forum Theatre. In Forum Theatre, the audience could interact with the actors and change the ending of the play. They could even step in and take over an actor’s role. Boal’s hope was that this new performance style would help people find solutions for problems and help empower the oppressed to change their communities.

6. Celebrity-following is not a new thing. In 1850, one of the most popular American actors, Edwin Forrest (he was really famous for taking his shirt off in, like, all of his performances) had a much publicized divorce from his wife Catherine Sinclair. The press got involved, their fans followed the case closely, there were repeated reports of adultery and love letters from an actress named Josephine Clifton (read: Angelina Jolie) and public horse-whippings of alleged lovers. Fans brought signs showing their support for either Edwin or Catherine into the theater. In the end, the court sided with Catherine. If you are interested in the story, you can read the entire official divorce case document online here. It’s pretty juicy.

 

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Aaaaaand that’s it. Your life is forever altered. I know. What weird theatre thing would you share? 
Have a weird piece of theatre or performance trivia to share? Do you have a theatre/performance question? Comment below!

Can’t wait to read other people’s posts today…

love, elizabeth

love story: chapter 6

Here it is. Chapter 6. I had to confirm a lot of these details with Kyle. If you’ve missed any of the story, you can catch up here!

CHAPTER 6

It was a long week and I couldn’t stop thinking about Kyle and the letter. So when Friday rolled around, I hadthose kind of butterflies. The does he like me, does he not ones. Do you know hard it is to be cool when all you can think is OMG, I’M NOT MADE OF BRONZE, TAKE ME IN YOUR ARMS AND KISS ME, YOU SILLY FOOL??

Kyle likes to tell the story about his family and friends coming to see the show on Friday night. It was a big deal that they had come, at all, so soon after Orion’s death, but they were all there. He loves to tell people that after the show, when he informed his younger brother Aaron and his best friends, A and K, that he was going to ask out that girl who played the Stage Manager, that they almost laughed in his face. Apparently, Aaron said something like, “Yeah, right. She’s way too hot for you.” I have asked him to tell me this story many, many times (partly as an ego boost when I’m having a bad day and partly to find out if this actually happened). The story has never changed so…good job, Kyle, for telling such a consistent whopper. Little did his family know when they came to see the play that they’d be stuck with me forever.

Kyle also really likes to talk about that Saturday night. We’d wrapped up curtain call and people were leaving, calling their ‘good nights’ to one another across the dressing room, the lobby, the parking lot. We would be ending the run soon and the cast was getting nostalgic. And I was on my way to a birthday party. Kyle must have felt concerned about me attending a wild party that late at night and alone because he and his roommate R informed me that they would be following me to this party. It was my friend S’s 28th and let’s just say, parties at S’s house did usually involve cake or balloons. When we arrived sometime after 11, the entire house seemed to be on its 9th tequila shot. I walked up the stairs and into the kitchen, Kyle and R in tow, at which point, we were greeted by a large man in chainmail with a sword (S spent her summer weekends working at the Renaissance Festival and well…if your job is that cool, who wouldn’t want to bring it home with them?). In fact, it seemed like the majority of partiers were dressed to the sword hilt in various and assundry pieces of armor. This wasn’t so unusual for a party at S’s and I forgot that I had brought unsuspecting guests into the medieval realm until I turned to see a very surprised R and Kyle being embraced by a pirate and a knight. We sat in a corner of the room, near the drinks, and I perched on Kyle’s knee. (Yeah, okay, I was looking for ANY reason to get close to him!)

And there was that feeling again…that feeling that we had been doing this always, that when I woke up tomorrow, I might not be able to remember if we had sat like this once or 687,000 times. Someone who had possibly just taken their 10th tequila shot pushed past our chairs and my face pressed closer to Kyle’s. He looked at me and I just knew he was going to kiss me. “Not here,” I said brazenly, like he was Leonard Whiting and I was Olivia Hussey, because I really, really did not want to associate our first kiss with chainmail and booze. (Although, apparently, I have anyway). It’s another weird example of somehow knowing before we knew. Somehow…in the back of my mind, I thought, this is going somewhere long-term and I have to remember it. We said our goodbyes pretty quickly and as R headed for the pick-up, Kyle walked me to the door of my van. I opened it and climbed up onto the step. When I turned around, I was taller than he was. I put my arms around his neck. And he kissed me.



First kisses can be terrible. They’re nervous, sweaty things with bad timing and ill-placed noses and awkward finishes. Not this one. This one, I can objectively say, was perfect. There was like a choir and bells and a twenty-four gun salute and it was awesome. He kissed me again and R honked his horn and began cat-calling loudly.

“See you tomorrow.”

“Yeah, see you tomorrow.”

“Good night.”

“Good night.”

Kiss.

“Night.”

“Night.”

TO BE CONTINUED

love, elizabeth

Happy Birthday, Shakespeare

William Shakespeare turns 448 today (at least, most scholars agree April 23rd is his birthday). He’s looking pretty good for his age, I’d say. So in honor of that, I’d thought I’d share one of my favorite things compiled by Bernard Levin. I often forget how much of my everyday speech I owe to Shakespeare! How many of these things do you say? Did you know all these sayings were from Shakespeare?



“If you cannot understand my argument, and declare ``It's Greek to me'', you are quoting Shakespeare; if you claim to be more sinned against than sinning, you are quoting Shakespeare; if you recall your salad days, you are quoting Shakespeare; if you act more in sorrow than in anger; if your wish is farther to the thought; if your lost property has vanished into thin air, you are quoting Shakespeare; if you have ever refused to budge an inch or suffered from green-eyed jealousy, if you have played fast and loose, if you have been tongue-tied, a tower of strength, hoodwinked or in a pickle, if you have knitted your brows, made a virtue of necessity, insisted on fair play, slept not one wink, stood on ceremony, danced attendance (on your lord and master), laughed yourself into stitches, had short shrift, cold comfort or too much of a good thing, if you have seen better days or lived in a fool's paradise -why, be that as it may, the more fool you, for it is a foregone conclusion that you are (as good luck would have it) quoting Shakespeare; if you think it is early days and clear out bag and baggage, if you think it is high time and that that is the long and short of it, if you believe that the game is up and that truth will out even if it involves your own flesh and blood, if you lie low till the crack of doom because you suspect foul play, if you have your teeth set on edge (at one fell swoop) without rhyme or reason, then - to give the devil his due - if the truth were known (for surely you have a tongue in your head) you are quoting Shakespeare; even if you bid me good riddance and send me packing, if you wish I was dead as a door-nail, if you think I am an eyesore, a laughing stock, the devil incarnate, a stony-hearted villain, bloody-minded or a blinking idiot, then - by Jove! O Lord! Tut tut! For goodness' sake! What the dickens! But me no buts! - it is all one to me, for you are quoting Shakespeare.”

-Bernard Levin

Also, Happy Wedding Anniversary to Mrs. Pancakes over at Adventures of Team Pancakes! Stop by and show her some love...

love, elizabeth

Our Love Story (Chapter 1)

 

Smithereens

Love is a piano dropped from a fourth story window, and you were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

- Ani Difranco

There’s a tiredness that comes after a good cry. Maybe it’s the way the sinuses feel like pinched, old sea-beds or your cheeks crack with salt or that impossible way your limbs fold inwards as if to wrap themselves around you again and again. And it had been a good cry. The kind of cry that makes you think 17 is the most brutal year to have your heart broken. I’m sure the other years suck, too, but at any rate, it was a January night. A January night and freezing, when the 15-passenger van began to spin out of control and directly into oncoming traffic. They warn you about black ice but until you experience it on a dark Idaho highway in the middle of the night…well, it’s hard to explain the sleepy, slow motion feeling of sitting up and staring out at the semi-truck that’s about to hit you. A wide-eyed second where you think if the van doesn’t move in the next 2 seconds, you will be dead. But that cry made you so good and tired that for a moment you actually think, go ahead and smash me into smithereens. I can’t possibly feel worse. By the way, I turned out to be very, very wrong. And no, that semi-truck did not hit the van. Metaphorically, though…Well, let’s just say until you’re almost hit by a semi-truck, you’ll go on thinking that little Chevy pick-up is the real deal. You’d be wrong.

Two days after I survived near-oblivion by way of semi, I walked into the theatre building at my college. It was a first read-through for a play called Our Town. I am not even kind of exaggerating when I say that Thornton Wilder is responsible for all of this. It was at that read-through that I first saw Kyle.

Sometimes I imagine there were fireworks or explosions or dancing beams of light haloing around his head while The Bangles sang “Eternal Flame” and  a choir of heavenly angels announced, ELIZABETH, BEHOLD, YOUR SOULMATE DOTH ARRIVE AND LO, HE IS WEARING A GREEN BEANIE!

That did not happen.

In fact, it was days, weeks even, before I would really notice the shy skateboarder with the long green hair who hadn’t really wanted to be an actor but was there, all the same. It would take longer than that even to know what I know now. That I was a goner the second I walked into that first rehearsal. I didn’t need a semi-truck to smash me to smithereens. I was about to go humpty-dumpty all over the place. And if you think comparing falling in love to being hit by a truck is a little melodramatic…you ain’t seen nothing yet.

To Be Continued

Studying is the New Partying

Sometimes I look at my blog and think…this is not really representative of my day-to-day. Yeah, I like to take pictures of the dog and clean the apartment and take Kyle on whimsical dates but honestly, the majority of my time is spent studying. And for as much as I sometimes long for nights without homework, I really, really love grad school. Especially when I get to read about people I really love like the playwright/journalist/novelist Djuna Barnes. I’ve spent so much time reading about Djuna, that I’ve stopped using her last name. We’re that close. On that nerdy note, if you want to read an amazing expose, a spunky young journalist wrote in 1914, go here. She is so crazy-brave in her writing and her work. Here’s a picture of her. You can just tell how sassy she is…

 

Source: google.com via Elizabeth on Pinterest

 

So my point is…what was my point again? Oh, yeah, I love studying.

 

 

I’m settling in for another few hours of work and as you can see…I am prepared.

Kyle even bought me my drink of choice with his sexy, sexy partner discount. There is seriously nothing more charming than my husband holding a venti Café Misto with a shot of espresso…sigh.

Lady Starbucks isn’t bad-looking either but that’s probably just the copious amounts of caffeine talking.

Okay, back to my books…

Anything you feel nerdy about?

love, elizabeth

5 Books I Want to Read Instead of Futurist Manifestos

Still battling a head cold that’s creeping slowly into my lungs. Being sick sucks but I’m using it as an excuse to eat a cheeseburger and go to bed early. I’m pretty sure that’s allowed.

Not that I have time to read any of these right now…but hey, a girl can dream…

 

Click on any of the books to read an Amazon review…

What about you? What’s on your reading list?

love, elizabeth

The Versatile Blogger Award

One of my regular reads is Struggling Happiness and this morning, I got a surprise from the author herself, Sara. Look what she sent me! I love Sara’s blog and I find her absolutely inspiring (oh, and PS: she works in the ER which is my secret fantasy job…I’m sure Sara is laughing her butt off at me for that but whatever). The point is, Sara is awesome and you should go read her blog. The end.

Here are the rules of accepting this prestigious award:

Thank the person. THANK YOU, SARA!!!

Share 7 things about yourself.

1. I love Green Day. It doesn’t matter what I’m doing…If “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” comes on the radio, I turn into an hysterical teenage girl again. I’ve seen them live. Twice. Next time I have vowed to actually make it on stage. To this end, I have memorized “Longview” and “Basket Case'” in case I am called upon to sing because the girls that go up there always SAY they know the lyrics but then NEVER know the lyrics and just end up screaming and jumping up and down and flashing Billie Joe and well…it’s embarrassing to watch.

I will, instead, be like this girl.

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2. Kyle has tried to teach me to skateboard. It began with me stepping onto his board and ended about 8 seconds later when I fell off and received the nastiest, purplest looking bruise of all time. You win again, Tony Hawk.

3. I have entire conversations with my dog. And the way she cocks her head and gives you this knowing look…well, you’d have entire conversations with her, too.

4. On stage I have played a crazy mother, a nervous housewife, an autistic poet, an anarchist, an old woman, an unborn child, the wife of a Nazi, a kidnapper, the kidnapped, a school girl, an actress, a warrior, a peasant, a woman on the brink of suicide, and a man.

5. I can’t whistle. Gajillions have tried to teach me. To no avail. I remain whistleless.

6. In high school, I wore combat boots. All the time.

7. My favorite movie is Who Framed Roger Rabbit? I realize that film just oozes sophistication so I’ll say this, don’t be intimidated by the somewhat meta-cinematic interaction of live action actors and animated characters.

“Roger, darling. I want you to know I love you. I've loved you more than any woman's ever loved a rabbit.” – Jessica R.

So there’s seven things…and then…

Pass this award on to 5 other recently discovered blogs.

Seriously, if you haven’t visited these women…you need to!

First Comes Love, Then Comes Marriage, Then Comes Life

Karen in Progress

Jennifer March

The Best is Yet to Come

mrs. alana’s miscellany

love,

elizabeth

Backstage

I don’t post too much about theatre on the blog but I’ve been working backstage all summer and I kept noticing these great images from around the space. I thought you all might like to take a peek.

This is an old light body in storage. A light body is used to measure shadow and light on stage when a show is being designed.

There is nothing in the world that smells as wonderful as the backstage of a theatre. Like paint and sawdust and whispers. Whispers have a smell. I bet you didn’t know that.

The following images are of a ghost light. Supposedly, ghost lights were originally lit in theatres so that the ghosts could move around when the theatre was dark after a show. More practically, we use ghost lights in any unlit performance space so that people don’t trip on wires or fall into the orchestra pit in the dark.

I could be having the most confusing, depressing, difficult day but when I step into a theatre…it’s like it all falls away. Nothing seems so bad or hard or desperate there.

What about you? What spaces in your life make you feel safe?

love, elizabeth

Inspiration of the Month: Jill

Hey everyone! I’m back to blogging regularly and now that it’s June, it’s time to introduce another inspiration of the month!
I’d like you to meet Jill.

Jill is a current PhD student in the theatre department. I’m actually struggling to find a way to express how much I look up to Jill as a scholar, an artist, and a friend. Jill is not just a brilliant (and hilarious) writer and student, but she’s also an actress, a comedian, and one of the finest teachers I have ever known. As a scholar, Jill is passionate about comedy (“People should laugh with someone every single day,” she told me). She also researches the role of wheelchairs on stage, as well as actors with disabilities and accessibility in theatrical staging. “I stuck with performing because I am terribly afraid of it,” she said. “I’m much more interesting on stage than offstage.” (I totally disagree with her. Jill is never boring.)

I find myself especially inspired by her attitude towards her students. “They live in a world where no one communicates with them,” she said. “So if they can feel when you come into the room that that’s where you want to be, they’ll become different people.” I am so encouraged as a young teacher to hear Jill speak so highly of her students. It makes me want to be a better, more compassionate teacher.

Five Fast Jill Facts
- Jill is a trained fencer (and her only fencing injury was sustained in a stage combat class)!
- When she was 13, she won a Beatles trivia contest and beat two grown men who had seen The Beatles perform live.
- Her wheelchair is named Chitara and she’s awesome. (Funny story: Chitara is NOT motorized but the first time Jill used a motorized chair, she accidentally stole a lady’s purse that got caught on one of her canes. The lady started screaming that someone had stolen her purse and Jill realized what had happened!)
- She used to write a column for The Antioch Record. In one issue, she interviewed her mother’s one-eyed cat, Dante, about his experiences of living with a disability.
- Her stage name as a comedian is the Wood Nymph.

Alright, everybody! Stay tuned – Madigan is posting tomorrow!
Love, Elizabeth