Here's a thing that happened to me during the Lab, that I meant to write about but didn't, because, you know, my life had been swallowed.
On the evening second day off, after nearly 13 days straight of Lab insanity, I made a curious and altogether uncharacteristic choice: I watched Boys Don't Cry. It's a movie I'd been meaning to watch for ages - essentially since the movie came out - because I felt it was an important movie. But it didn't seem like a fun movie; it certainly wasn't a movie I wanted to watch.
Boys Don't Cry is a pretty extreme film by anyone's standards, but for me? Let's just say I have exceedingly low-brow taste when it comes to movies. I don't like sad movies, or intellectual movies, or movies that are too deep or two slow. Oh, and I don't really like any of that mushy romantic stuff either. I used to, and I still make the occasional except for a supreme piece of cornball [crap], like the remake of Sabrina or Love Actually, but basically when it comes to movies, I like to watch people make jokes and blow stuff up.
So why, why on earth would I, in the middle of this blisteringly intense creative experience, want to drain myself even further by watching, OF ALL MOVIES, Boys Don't Cry?
Well, I can't quite explain it, but even so, I think from an artistic perspective it's worth noticing, and remembering:
During that time, I was so tightly wound up, so tense, so stressed from the Lab experience, that I needed a release. I needed, basically, to sob my guts out, and either couldn't or wasn't ready to do it in response to my own inner life.
That's fine; that need for catharsis is understandable and, as an artist, familiar territory. But what interests me is that, while I almost never go for a movie like Boys Don't Cry, I do crave release when I watch my low-brow stuff-blowing-up usual fare. But it's a different kind of release, in response to a different kind of emotional life: I want to get swept away in the adventure and the excitement of an experience that bears no resemblance whatsoever to my everyday life. In July, in the Lab, for some reason I craved the opposite - it's like I needed a sort of adrenaline drain.
So why is it that in one particular situation I craved a certain kind of catharsis, and in another I feel I need a different kind? I don't ask because I'm interested in parsing out the tangled layers of my psyche. I ask because, as a storyteller, I think it's interesting to take note of the different kinds of catharsis that a story can offer. And I wonder: If I can maybe understand better the kind of emotional release that is sparked by a Boys Don't Cry story, as opposed to a, say, a Die Hard story, if I could know more intimately why and when and how people crave release, maybe I could serve them better; maybe I could be a better artist.
About Me
- Leigh Hile
- I'm an NYC-based director, and this is an outlet for my various musings about theater and about the city of New York. Sometimes the subjects run together, sometimes they are entirely separate, but between the two they comprise the most fitful, most intense, most trying love affair of my few years. They fill my head, my heart, my mouth every hour of every day; they could fill a book.
Saturday, August 27, 2011
Saturday, August 13, 2011
Leaving on the Midnight Train. Or More Probably, an Early Morning Flight
This afternoon, I told my sister news which I've known to be true for almost a year, and still the telling of it made me want to double over and breathe into a paper bag.
Yes, I'm leaving New York.
That I am leaving New York has been common knowledge since I stepped foot on its concrete terrain; the idea of living indefinitely so far away from my family - especially my sisters, one of whom the self-same of the above conversation - was too difficult to even consider. I made never made any pretense about making New York my permanent home; I always knew eventually I would have to go back to the southwest, to them.
And that I am leaving soon - like SOON soon - is common knowledge among most of those close to me. Including - not that it mattered - my family:
And so, somehow, more than knowing the lease on my apartment is going to be up at the end of September, more than figuring out what to do with my cat, more than creating and systematically checking experiences off of a "New York bucket list," more talking frequently with friends and colleagues about what will happen "when I go back," this - giving my family if not an exact date then a fairly narrow range of when I'll return - makes it real.
Because, the thing is, everything else I can back out of. I can tell my friends here in New York that I changed my mind! I can find a new apartment on Craigslist! But I cannot, cannot tell my family I'm coming home and then not come home.
I've been avoiding talking about the move on this blog (and with many of my theater colleagues) for similar reasons. I want to pretend that all those shows that are coming up in the winter? I'll get to see them. And all those amazingly cool theater people I've met online and in real life? I'll get to work with them all.
But I won't. (At least not soon - there's nothing to say I won't ever come back for a project.)
I'm leaving the first week of October. It's time to make it real.
I'm excited to move to a smaller community and start putting into action some of the ideas about local theater than I've been reading about and ruminating on for the past year or so. But I'm also devastated (and maybe terrified?) to be leaving a place where the mind-blowing theatrical experiences and brilliant theater-makers and collaborators are infinitely at hand.
I'm feeling an immense pressure to make the most, artistically speaking, of the time I have left here. Which is somewhat difficult and paradoxical, given that I don't actually have a show that I'm working on. But I am still trying to make the most of it.
What am I doing? Well, first (and foremost, I suppose) I'm trying to organize a sort of weekly space for experimentation where directors can bring scenes they've been working on or ideas they've been hatching for work, or observation, or commentary from the group. The idea is in structure a bit like Flux Sundays but geared more for directors than playwrights. The motivation for creating this group is almost entirely selfish: I'm itching to explore some of the ideas and techniques I learned in the Directors' Lab for one, and for another, I still have this hatchling of an idea for a production of Taming of the Shrew that I want to play around with and see where it goes without actually committing to a production. And I want to do both these things with collaboration and advice of some of the people I've met in New York - those amazing and insightful artists I was talking about earlier.
Secondly, but not unrelated to the first, I, along with some other Lab alumni, have been noodling around with the idea of creating some sort of collective, a little along the lines of 13P to basically confront the problem that the only way emerging directors have to do work in the city is to self-produce, and to find an efficient way of offering producing support to one another. This is obviously less selfishly motivated, as I won't be around to see the fruits of my labors, but for some reason I can't quite explain, even to myself, it's really important to me to do this. To feel I had some hand in creating a more sustainable way for young artists like me to do their work - to think that I might have had this support if I stayed.
And then, of course, just seeing LOTS and LOTS and LOTS of theater. I'm determined to be so diligent that I will consider any week that I didn't see at LEAST one show, preferably two or three, a wasted week. This past week I saw Purple Rep's Ampersand at the NYC Fringe and the Drilling Company's Hamlet at Shakespeare in the Parking Lot.
So there it is. Guess it's real now.
Yes, I'm leaving New York.
That I am leaving New York has been common knowledge since I stepped foot on its concrete terrain; the idea of living indefinitely so far away from my family - especially my sisters, one of whom the self-same of the above conversation - was too difficult to even consider. I made never made any pretense about making New York my permanent home; I always knew eventually I would have to go back to the southwest, to them.
And that I am leaving soon - like SOON soon - is common knowledge among most of those close to me. Including - not that it mattered - my family:
And so, somehow, more than knowing the lease on my apartment is going to be up at the end of September, more than figuring out what to do with my cat, more than creating and systematically checking experiences off of a "New York bucket list," more talking frequently with friends and colleagues about what will happen "when I go back," this - giving my family if not an exact date then a fairly narrow range of when I'll return - makes it real.
Because, the thing is, everything else I can back out of. I can tell my friends here in New York that I changed my mind! I can find a new apartment on Craigslist! But I cannot, cannot tell my family I'm coming home and then not come home.
I've been avoiding talking about the move on this blog (and with many of my theater colleagues) for similar reasons. I want to pretend that all those shows that are coming up in the winter? I'll get to see them. And all those amazingly cool theater people I've met online and in real life? I'll get to work with them all.
But I won't. (At least not soon - there's nothing to say I won't ever come back for a project.)
I'm leaving the first week of October. It's time to make it real.
I'm excited to move to a smaller community and start putting into action some of the ideas about local theater than I've been reading about and ruminating on for the past year or so. But I'm also devastated (and maybe terrified?) to be leaving a place where the mind-blowing theatrical experiences and brilliant theater-makers and collaborators are infinitely at hand.
I'm feeling an immense pressure to make the most, artistically speaking, of the time I have left here. Which is somewhat difficult and paradoxical, given that I don't actually have a show that I'm working on. But I am still trying to make the most of it.
What am I doing? Well, first (and foremost, I suppose) I'm trying to organize a sort of weekly space for experimentation where directors can bring scenes they've been working on or ideas they've been hatching for work, or observation, or commentary from the group. The idea is in structure a bit like Flux Sundays but geared more for directors than playwrights. The motivation for creating this group is almost entirely selfish: I'm itching to explore some of the ideas and techniques I learned in the Directors' Lab for one, and for another, I still have this hatchling of an idea for a production of Taming of the Shrew that I want to play around with and see where it goes without actually committing to a production. And I want to do both these things with collaboration and advice of some of the people I've met in New York - those amazing and insightful artists I was talking about earlier.
Secondly, but not unrelated to the first, I, along with some other Lab alumni, have been noodling around with the idea of creating some sort of collective, a little along the lines of 13P to basically confront the problem that the only way emerging directors have to do work in the city is to self-produce, and to find an efficient way of offering producing support to one another. This is obviously less selfishly motivated, as I won't be around to see the fruits of my labors, but for some reason I can't quite explain, even to myself, it's really important to me to do this. To feel I had some hand in creating a more sustainable way for young artists like me to do their work - to think that I might have had this support if I stayed.
And then, of course, just seeing LOTS and LOTS and LOTS of theater. I'm determined to be so diligent that I will consider any week that I didn't see at LEAST one show, preferably two or three, a wasted week. This past week I saw Purple Rep's Ampersand at the NYC Fringe and the Drilling Company's Hamlet at Shakespeare in the Parking Lot.
So there it is. Guess it's real now.
Monday, August 8, 2011
Cowboys and Aliens
I saw Cowboys and Aliens last week at the drive-in movies in New Jersey. It was my first drive-in movie experience, and despite the beautiful immensity of the movie projected in front of dark shadows of trees from the encroaching forest, the fireflies jumping in the field beneath the screen, the soft underscore of crickets and cicadas, the cool air smelling like the mountains and summer, and the thrilling novelty of hearing the movie through our radio in the privacy of our own car -
I have to say I was disappointed.
I'm sorry, but Cowboys and Aliens just did not hold up to the awesomeness of the title. During the climactic action sequence, my companion turned to me and said, "How are you not in total suspense right now? A kid just stabbed an alien! And you're texting?" (Um, I was tweeting, thankyouverymuch.)
But no, I was not particularly invested, even at the penultimate moment. Despite being called COWBOYS and ALIENS, a name that just screamed of imagination, there was not much original about this movie. The characters were stock characters and (the worser sin, in my opinion) the aliens were stock aliens. Nothing unique or inventive or dimensional or developed about any of them. And the sad thing is, I don't think you even need both to have a good movie. You can have stock characters and interesting, original aliens, OR you can have rich, highly developed characters and standard, run-of-the-mill aliens, and the movie would still work. You would simply get, respectively, an alien movie with cowboys or a Western with aliens. (I wanted the latter, which why I mourn the loss of the good aliens more.)
Sadly, Cowboys and Aliens had neither. And you know what the REALLY sad thing is? This movie, this unoriginal, formulaic waste of a great idea, was written by five - count 'em, FIVE - people.
Which makes me wonder: is this the Hollywood equivalent of a a play that's overdeveloped until it has no teeth? It kind of smacks of another face of the same beast. At the same time, I really, really want to believe that had this been a play, at SOME POINT in the development process (as flawed as it may be) somebody would have said, your characters are all stock characters, there is nothing about them that makes me understand or identify with them as individuals at all, and your aliens are equally by-the-numbers and uncompelling. Right?
I have to say I was disappointed.
I'm sorry, but Cowboys and Aliens just did not hold up to the awesomeness of the title. During the climactic action sequence, my companion turned to me and said, "How are you not in total suspense right now? A kid just stabbed an alien! And you're texting?" (Um, I was tweeting, thankyouverymuch.)
But no, I was not particularly invested, even at the penultimate moment. Despite being called COWBOYS and ALIENS, a name that just screamed of imagination, there was not much original about this movie. The characters were stock characters and (the worser sin, in my opinion) the aliens were stock aliens. Nothing unique or inventive or dimensional or developed about any of them. And the sad thing is, I don't think you even need both to have a good movie. You can have stock characters and interesting, original aliens, OR you can have rich, highly developed characters and standard, run-of-the-mill aliens, and the movie would still work. You would simply get, respectively, an alien movie with cowboys or a Western with aliens. (I wanted the latter, which why I mourn the loss of the good aliens more.)
Sadly, Cowboys and Aliens had neither. And you know what the REALLY sad thing is? This movie, this unoriginal, formulaic waste of a great idea, was written by five - count 'em, FIVE - people.
Which makes me wonder: is this the Hollywood equivalent of a a play that's overdeveloped until it has no teeth? It kind of smacks of another face of the same beast. At the same time, I really, really want to believe that had this been a play, at SOME POINT in the development process (as flawed as it may be) somebody would have said, your characters are all stock characters, there is nothing about them that makes me understand or identify with them as individuals at all, and your aliens are equally by-the-numbers and uncompelling. Right?
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
That's Art For You (Richard Avedon, and Failure)
On Sunday afternoon a friend and I traveled out on a whim to the Nassau County Museum of Art. The museum is currently displaying the work of photographer Richard Avedon, much of which quite lovely and striking.
One particularly lovely and striking piece was this photograph:
Which, I think you'll agree, is pretty awesome.
Except that there was also a video presentation that provided information on Avedon's life and work. My friend and I happened to catch a portion of the video in which Avedon was recorded talking about this photograph:
"Every time I look at the photo," he said (I'm paraphrasing), "I don't know why I didn't pull the sash all the way out to the left to complete the line.
Because of that sash, to me, this photo will always be a failure."
To me, this photo will always be a failure. That's art for you, isn't it? You can create something as distinctive and beautiful as this picture is, and yet every time you look at it, to you, it's a failure.
***
(Oh, and, parenthetically -- the museum also featured a sculpture and photography exhibit by Robert Hite called "Imagined Histories," which had me completely capitivated - so creepy and haunting, like a memory from a childhood dream.)
One particularly lovely and striking piece was this photograph:
Which, I think you'll agree, is pretty awesome.
Except that there was also a video presentation that provided information on Avedon's life and work. My friend and I happened to catch a portion of the video in which Avedon was recorded talking about this photograph:
"Every time I look at the photo," he said (I'm paraphrasing), "I don't know why I didn't pull the sash all the way out to the left to complete the line.
Because of that sash, to me, this photo will always be a failure."
To me, this photo will always be a failure. That's art for you, isn't it? You can create something as distinctive and beautiful as this picture is, and yet every time you look at it, to you, it's a failure.
(Oh, and, parenthetically -- the museum also featured a sculpture and photography exhibit by Robert Hite called "Imagined Histories," which had me completely capitivated - so creepy and haunting, like a memory from a childhood dream.)
Saturday, July 30, 2011
My Favorite Urban Legend UPDATE
This happened a few months ago, and somehow slipped through the cracks, but I feel it's still significant enough to mention:
The dead-dog urban legend has once again been spotted!
That's right. A while back, I talked about a story involving a dead dog and the subway that I've heard repeatedly in my years in the city. And, while every time I hear it, the teller swears they know, or have a friend who knows, the person to whom it happened, the story keeps popping up in places and times and within circles of people who are wholly unconnected. Who is this girl who was mugged for her dead dog? I'd like to meet her? Where did this story start?
Well, no answers yet, but a short while after posting my obsession with the urban legend, a friend of mine texted me to tell me excitedly that someone had just told her the story. I immediately messaged her back: Who told her the story? Did he claim to know the girl it happened to? Who told it to him? But the trail went pretty immediately cold, "Um, he's British," she replied, "I don't think he completely gets what I'm asking."
All right. So, the mystery continues.
Oh hey, but in the meantime - here's another subway story. Not nearly as incredible, but nonetheless pretty hilarious. I'm pretty sure it's true, too, as it was told to me as a first-hand account by an old Starbucks co-worker.
Anyway, according to my friend, she was on the subway one morning when she saw a man on the platform frantically dashing toward the train, trying to make it on board before it pulled away. Well, the doors started closing and it was clear he wasn't going to make it, so, in desperation he hurled his briefcase towards train. So what happens? The briefcase lands inside the car, the doors close, and the train pulls away, leaving the man standing on the platform - not only late, but stranded and without his briefcase, which I'm guessing played an important role in wherever he was going in such a hurry.
In the words of my colleague, "What did he think was going to happen? His briefcase was gonna land in exactly the right spot to keep the doors from closing, buying him just enough time to make it to the train?" I guess if that HAD happened, THEN it would be the stuff of urban legend. But as it stands, that image - that stupendously bold desperate act, followed immediately by the realization, 'Wow. That was just... colossally stupid.' - is just really funny. "I mean," said my friend, "Who did he think he was, 007?"
The dead-dog urban legend has once again been spotted!
That's right. A while back, I talked about a story involving a dead dog and the subway that I've heard repeatedly in my years in the city. And, while every time I hear it, the teller swears they know, or have a friend who knows, the person to whom it happened, the story keeps popping up in places and times and within circles of people who are wholly unconnected. Who is this girl who was mugged for her dead dog? I'd like to meet her? Where did this story start?
Well, no answers yet, but a short while after posting my obsession with the urban legend, a friend of mine texted me to tell me excitedly that someone had just told her the story. I immediately messaged her back: Who told her the story? Did he claim to know the girl it happened to? Who told it to him? But the trail went pretty immediately cold, "Um, he's British," she replied, "I don't think he completely gets what I'm asking."
All right. So, the mystery continues.
Oh hey, but in the meantime - here's another subway story. Not nearly as incredible, but nonetheless pretty hilarious. I'm pretty sure it's true, too, as it was told to me as a first-hand account by an old Starbucks co-worker.
Anyway, according to my friend, she was on the subway one morning when she saw a man on the platform frantically dashing toward the train, trying to make it on board before it pulled away. Well, the doors started closing and it was clear he wasn't going to make it, so, in desperation he hurled his briefcase towards train. So what happens? The briefcase lands inside the car, the doors close, and the train pulls away, leaving the man standing on the platform - not only late, but stranded and without his briefcase, which I'm guessing played an important role in wherever he was going in such a hurry.
In the words of my colleague, "What did he think was going to happen? His briefcase was gonna land in exactly the right spot to keep the doors from closing, buying him just enough time to make it to the train?" I guess if that HAD happened, THEN it would be the stuff of urban legend. But as it stands, that image - that stupendously bold desperate act, followed immediately by the realization, 'Wow. That was just... colossally stupid.' - is just really funny. "I mean," said my friend, "Who did he think he was, 007?"
Friday, July 29, 2011
Tales From an Ex-Waitress
With my waitressing days behind me, as I stumble into the next phase of my life, I'm beginning to suspect that the name of this transition time is: Babysitting. In fact, as I type, I have one eye on my computer screen and the other on a baby monitor in the home of a perfectly nice-seeming family in the financial district.
Babysitting. How odd. I ordered sushi from a nearby restaurant and am basking in the extravagance of their fancy cable TV while the baby sleeps in the next room. The whole thing has rocketed me violently back to age 13. Is this my summer break? Will my parents come pick me up at the end of the night?
Funny thing is, I never really minded being 13, or being on break and - as I'm currently making about treble what I charged as a teenager - the whole thing seems like not such a bad way to make a buck. True, I don't have any aspirations of becoming a full-time nanny, and also true that this whole venture was borne out of the frustration and desperation from the fact that I have apparently Zero Marketable Skills and literally no one wants to hire me. For anything. (Kids, don't graduate from college with a BS liberal arts degree, screw around waiting tables for five years and then try and get a "real job" in the middle of a recession.)
But one thing I will say: it's better than waiting tables.
A few weeks before the Directors Lab started, back when I was in the thick of Captain Moonbeam (Lord, that seems like a million years ago), I got fired from not my first, not my second, not even my third, but MY FOURTH waitressing job. And, mind-bogglingly enough, I got fired for the fourth time for the same vague and inexplicable reason: I'm just not... very good?
That's right. I've never spilled a drink, or dropped a dish, stolen product or money, or undercharged or over-charged or done anything else at any of these jobs that might warrant termination. Just: "You're not that great"; "You're kind of slow"; "You don't smile enough".
Yup, it's about time I owned it. I am not a good waitress. In fact, the next opportunity I have to use a pull quote, it's definitely going to be this one, courtesy of James Comtois: Word on the street is she's a shitty waitress, but I can attest she's a freakin dream to work with in the theatre world.
So, it's time to throw in the towel. No more waitressing for Leigh. Hence, the futile search for a "real" job, hence the desperately turning to babysitting.
Here's something I've been thinking about, though. Despite the fact that I'm making an solid amount of money right now, it's still nothing compared to what I made waiting tables. How crazy is that? I think even on my slowest days I made more, by a very wide margin, waiting tables than I have doing any other job in my entire life. In fact, if you broke it down to its simplest average-dollars-to-minutes-worked ratio, I probably made more money waiting tables than most of my friends have with their "real" jobs.
So... have I always been so poor?
My theory is this: for every hour of wages earned for waiting tables, you actually have to count it as two hours, because that's how long it takes you to recover. For example, say I work a six hour shift and make $120 on top of my $5 hourly wage. That breaks down to $25 an hour. Except it's REALLY $12.50 an hour, because for the next six hours, I will be utterly and completely useless, so drained from the experience.
Which wouldn't be bad if you're the type of person who does your job, comes home, fixes dinner, watches some TV and goes to bed. But the other thing about waiting tables is that you really can't be this type of person. For one, if you're making any money, you're working nights, and with that schedule the work-eat-sleep-watch-TV routine doesn't feel nearly as right. There's something profoundly less satisfying about not getting home till 1am (and not getting to sleep till 2:30), sleeping till 10:30, fixing breakfast and watching Netflix in your jammies till you have to go to work at 4.
For another thing, I've found that as a server, you've got to have something else to keep you busy while you're not waiting. Be it art, theater, music, school, whatever. You've got to have something - you simply have to, no exceptions. And if you don't choose that something else for yourself, it will get chosen for you, and it will probably be alcoholism.
So the 40-hour work week, which is actually an 80-hour work week in waiter hours, PLUS the something else that keeps you going minus regular interaction with non-waiter friends and family because of your wonky schedule equals not possible. So you either suck it up and die a little death of the soul, or you work part-time and you are poor.
...
And the fact that the math breaks down thusly for me might have something do with why I lost four waiting jobs in a row. And that, friends, is why I'm no longer a waitress.
Babysitting. How odd. I ordered sushi from a nearby restaurant and am basking in the extravagance of their fancy cable TV while the baby sleeps in the next room. The whole thing has rocketed me violently back to age 13. Is this my summer break? Will my parents come pick me up at the end of the night?
Funny thing is, I never really minded being 13, or being on break and - as I'm currently making about treble what I charged as a teenager - the whole thing seems like not such a bad way to make a buck. True, I don't have any aspirations of becoming a full-time nanny, and also true that this whole venture was borne out of the frustration and desperation from the fact that I have apparently Zero Marketable Skills and literally no one wants to hire me. For anything. (Kids, don't graduate from college with a BS liberal arts degree, screw around waiting tables for five years and then try and get a "real job" in the middle of a recession.)
But one thing I will say: it's better than waiting tables.
A few weeks before the Directors Lab started, back when I was in the thick of Captain Moonbeam (Lord, that seems like a million years ago), I got fired from not my first, not my second, not even my third, but MY FOURTH waitressing job. And, mind-bogglingly enough, I got fired for the fourth time for the same vague and inexplicable reason: I'm just not... very good?
That's right. I've never spilled a drink, or dropped a dish, stolen product or money, or undercharged or over-charged or done anything else at any of these jobs that might warrant termination. Just: "You're not that great"; "You're kind of slow"; "You don't smile enough".
Yup, it's about time I owned it. I am not a good waitress. In fact, the next opportunity I have to use a pull quote, it's definitely going to be this one, courtesy of James Comtois: Word on the street is she's a shitty waitress, but I can attest she's a freakin dream to work with in the theatre world.
So, it's time to throw in the towel. No more waitressing for Leigh. Hence, the futile search for a "real" job, hence the desperately turning to babysitting.
Here's something I've been thinking about, though. Despite the fact that I'm making an solid amount of money right now, it's still nothing compared to what I made waiting tables. How crazy is that? I think even on my slowest days I made more, by a very wide margin, waiting tables than I have doing any other job in my entire life. In fact, if you broke it down to its simplest average-dollars-to-minutes-worked ratio, I probably made more money waiting tables than most of my friends have with their "real" jobs.
So... have I always been so poor?
My theory is this: for every hour of wages earned for waiting tables, you actually have to count it as two hours, because that's how long it takes you to recover. For example, say I work a six hour shift and make $120 on top of my $5 hourly wage. That breaks down to $25 an hour. Except it's REALLY $12.50 an hour, because for the next six hours, I will be utterly and completely useless, so drained from the experience.
Which wouldn't be bad if you're the type of person who does your job, comes home, fixes dinner, watches some TV and goes to bed. But the other thing about waiting tables is that you really can't be this type of person. For one, if you're making any money, you're working nights, and with that schedule the work-eat-sleep-watch-TV routine doesn't feel nearly as right. There's something profoundly less satisfying about not getting home till 1am (and not getting to sleep till 2:30), sleeping till 10:30, fixing breakfast and watching Netflix in your jammies till you have to go to work at 4.
For another thing, I've found that as a server, you've got to have something else to keep you busy while you're not waiting. Be it art, theater, music, school, whatever. You've got to have something - you simply have to, no exceptions. And if you don't choose that something else for yourself, it will get chosen for you, and it will probably be alcoholism.
So the 40-hour work week, which is actually an 80-hour work week in waiter hours, PLUS the something else that keeps you going minus regular interaction with non-waiter friends and family because of your wonky schedule equals not possible. So you either suck it up and die a little death of the soul, or you work part-time and you are poor.
...
And the fact that the math breaks down thusly for me might have something do with why I lost four waiting jobs in a row. And that, friends, is why I'm no longer a waitress.
Friday, July 22, 2011
"I'm Really Into Curation Lately."
I once heard this spoken by one of the members of the Women's Project labs (forgive me, I can't remember who). I was just out of college at that time, and happened to be lucky enough to briefly be in the same room with these people, these talented women on the rise within the profession, sharing some incredible ideas about theater. And when whoever it was that said, "I'm really into curation lately," I thought, Like a museum? What on earth does that have to do with theater? I don't get it. Hilariouly, five years later (I guess I have a slow learning curve), I am finding myself more and more compelled to say the exact same thing.
Not to belabor a play that I saw, at this point, almost a month ago, but I realized there's something else I wanted to say about The Shaggs. Something happened during the intermission which caught my attention: one of the women in the group seated in the row in front of me looked up The Shaggs on her iPhone, and managed to find a YouTube video which see then passed around to her friends. They all took turns listening to the band through her headphones saying, "Oh yes, they're pretty awful."
I actually tweeted about this when I saw it (YES, I tweeted at intermission, another phenomenon that's somewhat relevant within the context of this conversation); it struck me as interesting for a number of reasons.
The first is this: I was acutely aware of the lack of historical context provided by the theater about the band. No dramaturgical note, no time-line, nothing whatsoever printed about the family, the actual facts of their story, or any information about what happened before or after the events we saw on stage. There was such a dearth of contextual support, I HAD to assume it was a deliberate choice.
But was it a wise one? Or, more importantly, a feasible one? Look at me, for example: the only reason I was SEEING the show at all was because I had heard about the "true story" and my interest was piqued. And program note or no program note, nothing could stop me from returning home and Googling "The Shaggs" until my curiosity was sated. But, I'll grant you, there is a big difference between finding out the true story after you leave the theater and having the information while you watch. Happily for the creative team of The Shaggs (if this was indeed their desire), I don't own a smartphone. Unhappily for them, I'm in a dwindling minority. Now look at the group in front of me that night: you couldn't have stopped them from accessing that information, and what's more, these people were on the departing side of middle-age, not a particulary hip or cutting-edge demographic. Which is to say, you can't stop MOST of your audience from accessing information about your show, right in the middle of it. This is especially true for historical fiction and "based on a true-story"-style tales, but continues to be relevant for any kind of story. You audience can now be looking up information about the play, the playwright, the theater, previous productions, reviews, you name it, at any given moment. And if we can't stop our audience from accessing this information, shouldn't we embrace it? What if we tried to curate their experience and incorporate it into the larger experience of seeing the play?
That notion becomes Interesting Idea Number Two, and that's what really excites me. How fun would it be to sift through your program as you restlessly wait for the play to begin and instead of useless reviews of nearby restaurants, there were QR Codes or links to articles, pictures, videos or even music that relates to the show you're about to see?
And what if we could use this new technology to link the production to other related art? Paintings, songs, poems, short films, photographs, all somehow inspired by or related to the show itself, transforming it into a multidisciplinary experience.
I had a similar idea a few years back, although without the technological bent. I wanted to do a production of The Little Foxes and - well, I never quite worked out why and for whom I wanted to do the show, which is why it was never fully realized so I'll withhold the details, as they don't quite make sense. But, sufficed to say, I wanted to do The Little Foxes in a site-specific location, by and for members of a specific community. I wanted to involve the community in the show itself as actors, designers and collaborators, but I also wanted to extend beyond the play itself, encouraging the community to respond to the play through writing, pictures and other various multimedia which would be available for the audience to experience on-site both during the show, and on its own later.
And even though I couldn't figure out how to make it work for The Little Foxes, I'm still keen on this sort of curated community experience. Now I'm thinking of it in relationship to another, well, let's not call it an idea, but an inkling of an idea I'm excited to explore with another director I met in the LCT Lab this month. I'm very drawn to the possibility of using that kind of curated experience to bring a community together, and, through various disciplines, bring texture and dimension to an issue or idea that affects that community in a measurable way.
So that's what I'm thinking about right now. Is all of that cryptic enough for you? Unfortunately, I can't really elaborate, as beyond that the details are hazy even for myself. Anyway, after seeing The Shaggs, it makes me wonder if this idea that I've already been tossing around in my head could move to a whole new level with the inclusion of smartphone technology.
Or the technology it could totally detract from it, I don't know. What do you think?
Not to belabor a play that I saw, at this point, almost a month ago, but I realized there's something else I wanted to say about The Shaggs. Something happened during the intermission which caught my attention: one of the women in the group seated in the row in front of me looked up The Shaggs on her iPhone, and managed to find a YouTube video which see then passed around to her friends. They all took turns listening to the band through her headphones saying, "Oh yes, they're pretty awful."
I actually tweeted about this when I saw it (YES, I tweeted at intermission, another phenomenon that's somewhat relevant within the context of this conversation); it struck me as interesting for a number of reasons.
The first is this: I was acutely aware of the lack of historical context provided by the theater about the band. No dramaturgical note, no time-line, nothing whatsoever printed about the family, the actual facts of their story, or any information about what happened before or after the events we saw on stage. There was such a dearth of contextual support, I HAD to assume it was a deliberate choice.
But was it a wise one? Or, more importantly, a feasible one? Look at me, for example: the only reason I was SEEING the show at all was because I had heard about the "true story" and my interest was piqued. And program note or no program note, nothing could stop me from returning home and Googling "The Shaggs" until my curiosity was sated. But, I'll grant you, there is a big difference between finding out the true story after you leave the theater and having the information while you watch. Happily for the creative team of The Shaggs (if this was indeed their desire), I don't own a smartphone. Unhappily for them, I'm in a dwindling minority. Now look at the group in front of me that night: you couldn't have stopped them from accessing that information, and what's more, these people were on the departing side of middle-age, not a particulary hip or cutting-edge demographic. Which is to say, you can't stop MOST of your audience from accessing information about your show, right in the middle of it. This is especially true for historical fiction and "based on a true-story"-style tales, but continues to be relevant for any kind of story. You audience can now be looking up information about the play, the playwright, the theater, previous productions, reviews, you name it, at any given moment. And if we can't stop our audience from accessing this information, shouldn't we embrace it? What if we tried to curate their experience and incorporate it into the larger experience of seeing the play?
That notion becomes Interesting Idea Number Two, and that's what really excites me. How fun would it be to sift through your program as you restlessly wait for the play to begin and instead of useless reviews of nearby restaurants, there were QR Codes or links to articles, pictures, videos or even music that relates to the show you're about to see?
And what if we could use this new technology to link the production to other related art? Paintings, songs, poems, short films, photographs, all somehow inspired by or related to the show itself, transforming it into a multidisciplinary experience.
I had a similar idea a few years back, although without the technological bent. I wanted to do a production of The Little Foxes and - well, I never quite worked out why and for whom I wanted to do the show, which is why it was never fully realized so I'll withhold the details, as they don't quite make sense. But, sufficed to say, I wanted to do The Little Foxes in a site-specific location, by and for members of a specific community. I wanted to involve the community in the show itself as actors, designers and collaborators, but I also wanted to extend beyond the play itself, encouraging the community to respond to the play through writing, pictures and other various multimedia which would be available for the audience to experience on-site both during the show, and on its own later.
And even though I couldn't figure out how to make it work for The Little Foxes, I'm still keen on this sort of curated community experience. Now I'm thinking of it in relationship to another, well, let's not call it an idea, but an inkling of an idea I'm excited to explore with another director I met in the LCT Lab this month. I'm very drawn to the possibility of using that kind of curated experience to bring a community together, and, through various disciplines, bring texture and dimension to an issue or idea that affects that community in a measurable way.
So that's what I'm thinking about right now. Is all of that cryptic enough for you? Unfortunately, I can't really elaborate, as beyond that the details are hazy even for myself. Anyway, after seeing The Shaggs, it makes me wonder if this idea that I've already been tossing around in my head could move to a whole new level with the inclusion of smartphone technology.
Or the technology it could totally detract from it, I don't know. What do you think?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)