Living Simply/ Simply Living

Coriolanus

2012-01-28T12:40:00.000-08:00

Last week, I went to go see Seattle Shakespeare Company's production of Shakespeare's Coriolanus. My good friend Tom Dewey was in the cast, and I was hesitant to even write about it because I find it hard to even pretend to be objective. But my MoM specifically requested a review, so here it is.

I really didn't know anything about Coriolanus going into the show, which is some ways is really interesting. I only knew what Tom had told me, pictures I'd seen on facebook, and some vague images from the new movie version of Coriolanus that came out recently. I have studied and seen a fair percentage of Shakespeare's plays, and its not often that I get to see a Shakespeare play I don't know. However, seeing a unfamiliar Shakespeare play turned into an unexpected boon. The language, the format, the words all seem familiar, but the story was totally fresh and new and undiscovered. While every time I see a Shakespeare play, I learn new things, this time I got to learn everything, and that was an unexpected pleasure.

Coriolanus is not often produced, and one of the best compliments I can give this production is that after watching it, I wondered why this play is not performed more often. While I know a lot of this is the hard work of this cast and crew, there is something compelling and timeless about the themes in the play that is very relateable. I also understand that this production cut the play down from a nearly four hour run time, to just around two and a half hours. I'm sure this goes a long way to making the play more enjoyable and less unwieldy.

Coriolanus is set in Rome in a time of transition. Food is scarce and the common people are rebelling against the senate. The protagonist, Caius Martius (later sur-named Coriolanus after a city he takes down in battle) is a soldier who joins the senate because of the ambition of his mother and his mentor. Coriolanus is an interesting and somewhat unusual focal character in a Shakespeare play. He is a soldier, not someone with a easy way with words. Coriolanus is no Hamlet, manipulating those around him through words. Instead he is a warrior. The excellent fight choreography and costuming present a Coriolanus most comfortable in his military uniform, with a sword in his hand. The actor playing Coriolanus, David Drummond, towered over most of the rest of the cast, and carried himself like a soldier throughout all of his scenes.

This production was set and costumed in a way that I perceived as a cross between ancient Rome, and the Occupy Wall Street movement. The common people were wearing ragged coats and huddled up against the cold, while the politicians wore well cut gray suits, accented by red fabric draped in a roman style. I thought this added a very thought provoking element, while still staying grounded in something resembling our reality.

The supporting characters and actors were all excellent. This play boasts one of the fiercest women in Shakespeare, Coriolanus's mother, Volumina. the actress, Therese Diechans, hit all the right notes with this role. My friend Tom did a fantastic job, playing Titus Lartius, and a general on the other side of the war. Tom played both these characters with an ease that would suggest he could do some damage with the sword or spear he was constantly holding. Even in the scenes where he didn't speak, I could see his characters internal monologue, which was often the coiled awareness of a soldier ready to jump into action at any point. In the later part of the play, Titus Lartius was often the only character onstage in a military uniform during scenes involving the senate, and his presence added a gravity to the surroundings.

There is a tragedy at the root of the play Coriolanus that I find very compelling. I would argue that there is no true villain in this story, and Coriolanus as a man is pushed to make some very difficult moral decisions. Ultimately these decisions doom him, but its difficult to go back and pinpoint what he could have done differently. Instead, this very strong able man finds himself as a pawn in the machinations of others, and even when he tries to chart his own course he cannot escape this destiny.

While I have a lot of thoughts about this production, I'm having more trouble putting them into words than usual. Yet, even setting aside the feelings of a proud friend aside, this was the best Seattle Shakespeare Company production that I've seen and a very enjoyable way to spend an evening.

A Lovely Night...

2011-12-15T17:30:00.000-08:00

Last night, I went to see the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical "Cinderella" at the 5th Avenue Theatre in Seattle.

I have to admit that I had fairly low expectations for a number of reasons.
This version of Cinderella is a musical with an interesting history. It was written as a television musical event. It was literally written to be preformed live on television in 1957 with Julie Andrews (at her most luminous) as the star attraction. Since then it has been remade for television twice, and made the leap to the stage. This is all very unusual for a musical, and it sits in a category entirely its own.
The original television version of Cinderella clocked in at a crisp 90 minutes. To fill it out, subsequent versions added in songs from lesser known Rodgers and Heart musicals. While I don't usually love the act of changing shows 50 years later, the added songs help make the show much richer and full of depth. Whats more, the added songs were carefully selected and add to the feeling and shape of the show.

While I try to go into the theatre with an open mind, that is not always possible. I tend to look at shows like Cinderella as light weights. While I like Rodgers and Hammerstein enough, I don't like their candy coated musicals. I enjoy South Pacific for its difficult subject matter and social commentary. I applaud the stage version of the Sound of Music for its surprisingly complex look into human goodness, evil, and shades of gray. I'm not a huge fan of Oklahoma, I think Carousel is bizarre, and I didn't think that Cinderella held much of interest for me. RENT, Les Miserables, and Spring Awakenings rank among my favorite musicals. There are dramatic, sometimes gritty, and varying levels of tragic. Cinderella is none of these things. I expected this production of Cinderella to be enjoyable and forgettable.

However, I'm more than willing to admit that I seriously undersold Cinderella. it was one of the most enjoyable few hours I've recently spent in a theatre. Cinderella embraces the story we are all familiar with, but builds it in delightfully complex ways.

Cinderella's prince Charming not only has a name, Christopher, he has 10 middle names listed gleefully in song. But beyond that he is a young man with loving parents who are indeed anxious to see him married, but willing to let him do it for love. Our prince and our Cinderella share a sense of life missing something, expressed by both in the song "The Sweetest Sounds" (which apparently was a 1997 addition the show). They share a melancholy feeling, singing, "The sweetest sounds I'll ever hear, are still inside my head, the kindest words I'll ever know, are waiting to be said." They sing this together, unaware of the other, watching a happy couple do a sweet waltz in the middle of a crowded market. For this Cinderella and her prince, when they do meet, this is not a simple love at first sight. They are not children overcome by each others beauty, but two people finding someone looking for the same thing they are missing.

Just like her prince, this Cinderella shows surprising depth. Unlike Disney's Cinderella, this Cinderella has a sense of agency. She is not waiting on a fairy godmother, but instead is willing to mend her dead mothers ball gown, and hitch a ride to the ball. Then and only then does the her fairy godmother turns the pumpkin to a coach, and creates a sparkling gold dress.

In the Disney cartoon, the fairy godmother demands that Cinderella return at midnight, to avoid being caught in rags. Here, when Cinderella returns home in her scullery maid dress, her fairy godmother put her on the hook. If the prince loves her in a gold dress, why would he not love her as a scullery maid? Finally, a feminist in a fairy tale! This is a much better message to send little girls in a world that is increasingly obsessed with physical beauty. Love is love, and circumstances should not matter as much as what is in your heart.

While I don't usually like spectacle for spectacles sake, this productions gorgeous costumes, rich set pieces and occasional pyrotechnics (!) created a world of magic, and an enchanted kingdom. In fact, I'm still not sure how they pulled off the seemingly instantaneous the change into Cinderella's ballgown without using real magic. As soon as I saw this, I wanted to know how it worked, but my friend was happy with the magic of it all.

This production was really something special. It was sweet, achingly romantic, with a message emphasizing goodness and kindness over beauty, and wrapped up in a few shiny gold ribbons. Songs I previously thought were overly simple, came off as sweetly poignant. The whole thing was injected with some comedy in the form of some discretely cross-dressing stepsisters and a fairy godmother seemingly plucked out of a production of "Wicked."

Possibly most importantly, the whole thing was incredibly kid friendly. I walked out of the theatre wondering if I knew anyone who needed to take their kids to go see it. Or have me take their kids!

Spring Awakening Revisited

2011-01-26T21:24:00.001-08:00

While I'm not sure what the future of this blog is, I have a play to review! Last night I went to see the Broadway tour of "Spring Awakening." I saw Spring Awakening when I lived in DC, and was regularly reviewing plays for this blog. So I came here looking to see what I had to say about Spring Awakening a year and a half ago, and was disappointed to see I had not written about it. So while it would have been great to see what I thought then and now, I can only offer up my thoughts about last night, possibly stacked up against my memories of the last performance.

Spring Awakening is a really interesting musical. Its a rock musical about teenagers in the 1800's Germany. Its lively and racy, poignant and rowdy, with a spirited sense of humor. The music is catchy and stays with you. Its really unlike a typical musical. The musical I would compare it to most in spirit is RENT, but even that is only sort of in spirit. I haven't seen as many new musicals as I would like, and Spring Awakening premiered in 2006. However, Spring Awakening is really something special.

The subject matter is not easy, it deals with a number of issues that wouldn't seem out of place on any teen drama on TV today. And this my be one of the most appealing things about Spring Awakening, the themes are timeless. Even though the characters of the show are living in 1800's Germany their problems are not outdated, but sometimes almost painfully timely.

The show has a number of well formed teenage characters. Interestingly, the adult characters are all played by the same two characters. The main characters are Wendla, a sheltered young girl, Melchior, a young man at odds with stifling smallness of his world, and Moritz, who is at in crisis from essentially the first scene. The play centers around these three young people and their hopes, dreams, and heartbreaks.

All three of these actors were very good in this touring cast. The actor who plays Melchior really has to carry the show, and the young actor here was more than up to the challenge. It's not an easy role, he has a lot of music to sing and his acting has to cover a lot of emotional range. I would say that the show really rests on Melchiors shoulders. So I was happy to find that he had a really powerful, pleasant voice, and a lot of acting range.

Both touring productions of Spring Awakening I've seen were costumed identically, and staged and choreographed very similarly. While both were touring cast the production I saw at the Kennedy Center was there for several weeks, while this was the single night in Eugene of the tour. This translates into this set being simpler. The first touring set has a platform that raised up into the air at a crucial point in the story. This one simply did not. I don't think that this raising platform was necessary, but very effective. However, the show does not suffer for the lack of fancy moving set pieces.

These identical productions are interesting. I'm not sure how common it is in the theatre world, but both productions were almost identical, in terms of staging and choreography. I wonder if this homogeneity of production makes theatre more like film? The same show over and over with different actors going through the motions? I'm not sure how I feel about this. I enjoyed it both times. However I think one of the exciting things about theatre is the differences. Its wonderful to get to see the same material imagined different ways, breathing new life into the same production. Yet, what happens on stage for Spring Awakening clearly works, so why mess with a good thing? This way more and more people get to see the production with the original intent.

Spring Awakening is presented in one of my favorite ways: very presentationally. The set is evocative of things, rather than realistic. The characters all sing with hand held mics, although I suspect they are wearing body mics at all. The choreography is very stylized. One important scene takes place with two characters standing downstage, about ten feet apart, both singing out instead of to each other. One of my favorite songs, charmingly called "Totally F*cked" is a showpiece of some of the most exuberant, stylized dancing (and singing) I've ever seen on stage. This song got a round of applause so long it bordered on ridiculous.

Sometimes I end up being a cheerleader of sorts for musicals. I love them. I know a lot of people don't. They find people randomly breaking into song cheesy and schmaltzy. Or alternately, people think that musicals are not are powerful and theatrical as straight plays (anything without music). However, just as there is a huge variety in the strength and power of straight plays, musicals can be many different things. I think that Spring Awakening could be a strong play without the music. I think it might turn into something like "The History Boys," witty and poignant and very focused on the words. But it does have music. The songs in Spring Awakening are never a crutch, instead the music helps the characters express those feelings that are somehow inexplicable just through words. Spring Awakening is an amazing mixture of sauciness and sadness. It contains one of the most shocking sex scenes I've ever seen on stage, and I've seen some surprising things. Yet the show also has a number of songs that never fail to make me cry. And not because the show is manipulative, but because its full of such honest, real emotion. And this is really the beauty of Spring Awakening.

Othello: "I am not what I am"

2010-07-09T15:32:00.000-07:00

Last night I went to see Othello at the Olympia Little Theatre. A few days ago I was wandering around in downtown Olympia with my fellow NODA intern and suite mate, Jamie, and we saw a poster for Othello. I asked if she wanted to go and she said yes, and I figured out the details. We decided a Thursday night might be fun.

So last night after work I plugged the theatre's address into my GPS and it took us into the middle of suburbia. In fact I was SURE I'd put in the wrong address (something I've only done once, shhhh) until we pulled in the theatre's parking lot. And yes it was a theatre in the middle of a suburban street, surrounded by houses. But one inside it was unquestionably a little theatre, but a very charming one.

The theatre itself was very small holding maybe 150 people in total. And including us, there were only about 15 people in the audience. In fact, the cast may have been bigger than the audience. And that's a shame. Because this was a wonderful production of Othello. This is the kind of production that proves you don't need a lot of money, or even a big fancy theatre to put on a show.

I've read Othello three times in my life, all for different classes during undergrad. I also saw a production of it when I was in London, at the Globe Theater. Sadly this might have been the worst Shakespeare show I saw while abroad. We had standing tickets for the "authentic experience," the show ran more than 4 hours. On top of that it was a preview performance and Iago had to keep calling for his lines. So by the time we got the final scene, I was ready for Othello to just kill Desdemona already so we could go home. Which is not the regular reaction to Othello, I think.

But happily this production was a huge improvement over that one. Which proves something important, good (and bad) theatre can happen anywhere. As soon as we walked in to the theatre, I knew I would be happy on at least one point: the set was very simple. It was literally a blank stage, with black rehearsal blocks in the middle, and the audience on 3/4ths and a brick wall and stairs leading off stage way upstage. But more importantly, they used the simple set and the whole stage well. I don't really have anything against elaborate sets, but think that you need a reason to have one.

I think fundamentally Othello is one of Shakespeare's most interesting plays. The character of Iago, (played well) is fascinating. Iago literally spends the play manipulating everyone for his own purposes. And while manipulators are hardly uncommon in Shakespeare (hello, Lady Macbeth)Iago schemes based on barely articulated, transient reasons. The two articulated reasons for his actions are that Iago is jealous that Othello has promoted Cassio above him and that he thinks Othello has slept with his wife, Emelia. Yet, in terms of his rhetoric, Iago never really tries to convince the audience that he believes either of these things. So then, why is Iago bent on ruining Othello's life? Its never clear, and it makes Iago all the more dangerous and sinister. Iago himself tells the audience in the first scene "I am not what I am." So what are we supposed to make of him? Why this deliberate subterfuge? I think part of the art of the play is this ambiguity. Untimely there is evil in the world, and evil that cannot be understood or evaluated is the scariest kind. Iago tells us straightly that he is not to be believed, and this paints the whole play in a sort of uncertainty.

Iago is a challenging role, and as I've seen before, not every actor is up to this challenge. And if your Iago is a bust, good luck getting any traction with any of the rest of the story. But all of the acting here was good from Othello to Iago, to their wives Emilia and Desdemona to Cassio. A Iago was especially good at playing to the audience, and kept making eye contact with me, to the point that I was distinctly uncomfortable at being brought into the confidence of this lunatic.

The language of Othello is not exactly subtle and about half way through, I caught myself wondering how many more way Shakespeare could possibly come up with to equate whiteness with virtue and blackness with evil. However, sadly this piece of Othello is still relevant. The production capitalized on this by setting their production in the US in the 1930's, where a mixed race marriage was hardly more accepted than it was back when Shakespeare wrote it. However, I think that sometimes this imagery, begun in the language, and then reflected back through the costumes and the set boarded on heavy handed. However, I think that a little bit of melodrama is not out of place in a Shakespearean tragedy. But I also thing that it can be scaled back when you are playing to a house of no more than 150, not the rafters in the Globe Theater.

I mentioned already that I liked the set, and this production took advantage of the brick wall and projected videos onto it before the start of the show and in between scenes. A lot of the footage was used to set the scene with images of race in America during this era. However, they also used footage of Martin Luther King Jr. at the beginning of the show, and Malcolm X at the end. I thought this was a very interesting choice, as it associated Othello with these two very different black leaders. The transition from the rhetoric of Dr. King to that of Malcolm X set up Othello's journey form a loving man, to a man so possessed by hate and anger that he thinks killing his wife is his only choice.

The ending of the show was when all the pieces came together. All of the actors had a very good understanding of how to speak verse, and it sounded natural. So natural, that in places I had to wonder "is that REALLY the line?" as sometimes Shakespeare can sound almost alarmingly modern. This is a good sign though, as you want verse to sound normal and accessible. Overall this was a great production and I really enjoyed it. I think that ultimately Othello as a show is thought provoking and tragic. I went home wishing that I had more than about an hour to think about it before I had to head for bed.

Abandoned but not forgotten

2010-07-08T15:07:00.000-07:00

I know its been a LONG time since I've updated this. And I promise, its not because I have not been doing things, but instead because I have been doing A LOT. However, there are only so many interesting blog posts that could read "I went to the library and studied today" before it gets old. And by that I mean, none, because that is boring. But did I learn a lot (I hope) and had a good first year of grad school over all, of course with some bumps along the way.

I also think it boils down to this: being a grad student is hard work. And I'm glad it is, because we wouldn't want anyone just handing out masters degrees out like candy, but its hard. And time consuming. And sometimes its hard to even think intelligently about what I might blog, when I feel like if I'm writing at all, it should be for whatever paper is looming in my near future.

Yet this summer I'm free! Well sort of. I'm not taking any classes this summer, but I am doing a 3 month long summer NODA internship. So apparently my definition of freedom is working full time in the office of Campus Life at Saint Martins University. I've been here for over a month, and I'm loving it. I'm working on orientation, and the summer advising and registration sessions start next week, so things are about to kick into high gear around here, which is exciting.

Yet in a lot of ways it seems like a vacation, a break. I'm back in Washington, where both my license plates and drivers license can rest happily without any extra scrutiny. And I'm only 30 miles away from Tacoma and UPS which makes me really happy, although my actual ties there are getting more and more tenuous. But I am happy to be back in familiar territory, close to both friends and family.

I have no guarantees about the frequency of my blog entries this summer or in the future. I sometimes am unsure exactly what it is that I am sharing of value. At the very least though, I have a number of plays lined up to see, so I might be knocking out my thoughts about those.

Last "Sunday" journal

2009-12-02T13:04:00.000-08:00

As it turns out this journaling project has been reasonably challenging for me. Observing students is difficult, when I don't have any real interaction with them. I see students at working out at Dixon, at Java II and in the MU. I see students walking around campus, in restaurants, at the movie theatre, at the grocery store. It is a college town, I can't really go anywhere without seeing students. Yet I feel like seeing students in these superficial situations doesn't give me any real chance to make meaningful observations. I do work with biology TA's for an hour every week. But they are grad students, and while observing them is valuable, it is only one part of a small of the college student experience.

One of the things I've keep coming back to in this journal is the idea that I still don?t feel like I understand what is going on with students at OSU. Yet a conversation during class last week showed me that I am not the only one who feels this way. Several others in my cohort including those who have a lot of student interaction feel the same way. This makes me look at this question differently. Maybe understanding the student experience is not really possible. Maybe its only something you can understand while you are an undergrad. Yet I'm sure the campus climate has changed a lot at my undergrad institution in the year and a half since I graduated. So do think it is important to try to understand student experience at your university, I'm just not at all sure its achievable.

This text term, I will be teaching a study skills class, as an internship opportunity. I'm really excited for the challenge teaching is going to provide, but I'm also excited to get to work with 20 students on a meaningful basis. I will be spending 2 hours a week with them, for 10 weeks. This will allow for a LOT of observation; it's a big chance to see some of the student issues unique to OSU.
I went to see the OSU main stage musical, "Pirates of Penzance" this week with two others from my cohort. I got there early and I sat on a bench waiting for my friends to arrive. I was sort of overwhelmed. The theatre holds about 400 people and the show was sold out. For some reason, there was actually rather long line to get into the theatre, for people who already had tickets. I felt a little displaced honestly. It is a college theatre, I felt as though I should have a sense or belonging. But its not my theatre, and I don't really think it ever will be, not the way the Norton Clapp theatre at UPS belongs to me. Or more accurately, I belong to it. So for some reason I felt small and disconnected watching people mill past me at the OSU theatre. I wonder how often students new to OSU feel this way. I would assume it's quite often.

Its been interesting to watch attitudes on campus change as the weather gets cold and dreary and the term draws to a close. Tension and anxiety are so palpable you could cut them with a knife. Last week, I looked around our Monday class, Theory, right before class started. I was surprised to see how tired and limp everyone look. We are generally a pretty happy rambunctious group, but there was zero energy in the room. I assume this is happening all over campus during week 8.

I know that adjusting to a term system was difficult for me after a semester school. I wonder how difficult the transition is if you are coming from high school? I bet the difference is pretty startling. I think in freshmen classes, the week 8, 9, and 10 tension must be off the charts. I wonder if it gets easier?

I know this has been all over the place, but I a trying to make sense of some of the things I have been feeling for the last 8 weeks. I know for the most part, there are no answers to these questions. It seems to me that for now, just asking the questions is enough.

Swimming: its just like riding a bike

2009-11-22T21:21:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago, I swam laps for the first time in about 6 years. I was on swim team for a few years in middle school, but other than splashing around a little bit now and then I haven’t really swam seriously since then. However, last week I was working out in the room in Dixon that looks out over the pool, and I felt a wave of longing. I remembered what gliding through the water felt like, and I knew I had to go for a swim. A few days and a trip to buy a pair of goggles later, I was in the pool.

The reason I’m talking about this is that getting in the water took me back. For that split second every time my head was under water, nothing else exited. I felt like I could be 15 years old or 23, there was no difference as I slipped through the water. For me, swimming is one of those skill sets I think I will never lose, I feel like it was yesterday, not 6 years ago that I last swam. So I started thinking about other things in my life that are automatic. What are the things I can do so well, that I never doubt them? Well my list is surprisingly small. I count swimming, singing, reading aloud, writing and acting among them. I think at different points in my life this list will change and grow. And its different now than it was at 18.

Not unlike taking a 30 minute walk, swimming was 30 minutes in the water alone with my thoughts. So while I was in the pool, I thought about the things I knew and didn’t know at the age of 18. When I decided to go to a private school I took out loans to do so. At the age of 18, I didn’t really understand what this meant. I got that I would have to pay them back. I understood money. I’d had a summer job for several years, and had a little money in the bank. But I did not understand the enormous consequences of taking out a total of 30 thousand dollars in loans. In fact, it was really not until this last year that I truly comprehended it. And I haven’t even had to make any payments yet.

Only this week I found out that I have a credit card associated with the bank account I opened my freshman year of college. I had no idea. I’m not sure how this slipped by me. I think that we need to be aware of this, that while they are on their way to being competent young adults, a lot of freshmen have absolutely no experience in a lot of real life matters. I’m not suggesting that they are babies, or that we should treat them that way, but instead that we simply need to be aware that many college students may need a little extra guidance.

I wonder how this happens at a big school. I have been fixating over the last few weeks about the differences between different types of schools, but in particular, large public school versus small liberal arts school. In Programs and Functions, we have had a number of guests from different school from around the area come to speak to us about their job and their school. Finally this week we had someone come from a small private school: Linfield. As he spoke about his college, I thought “this could literally be Puget Sound he is talking about.” And it was both affirming for me to hear it, and educational for the rest of my cohort to think about the differences. There are only three of us out of 20 from school like Puget Sound or Linfield. Those numbers are reasonably surprising to me.

I talked to my sister this week about this. She went to a small private school in Ohio, Wittenberg University. I really wasn’t aware of this until now, but Wittenberg is very similar in mission and demographic to Puget Sound right down to the size, just over 2000. It literally knocks me off balance every time that I remember that OSU is ten times as large. My sister I and talked about the pros and cons of little schools and big schools. Large schools may have more resources, but small school can pay more individual attention. Large schools offer more subjects, but at small schools you can get one on one interaction with professors in your classes. The list goes on and on. For me, I think it’s important to remember that just because a small school was right for me, doesn’t mean it is the right choice for everyone.

So now I will go back to my train of thought when I was in the swimming pool. What are the things that freshman know? What are the automatic things they know how to do? How far out of their comfort zone are they willing to go? What are the things that they don’t know? I think these things are different for every single person. Making choices in live is always a combination of doing what you are good at, and talking the plunge into something more difficult.

Once I got in the pool, the strokes came back to me, and I was immediately kicking up and down my lane (the “slow” lane). But getting back in the pool after so long was not an easy decision. I wondered if the skill would still be there. And this time it was.

Sickness and Health

2009-11-14T21:40:00.000-08:00

One of the things on my mind recently has been health. I had a terrible cold two weeks ago and had to miss Monday’s class. I am the first person in the cohort to get this sick, and there was a huge discussion about it in my absence. While I know for an undergrad, missing one class is not usually an international incident it still gets me thinking.

In college attendance is a tricky thing. In high school, attendance is clearly mandatory but in college its often not. There may be participation points associated with being present, or the class is structured in such a way that presence is necessary. But I think a lot of first year students are totally baffled by the idea that they are actually paying to be in class, but no one can force you to attend.

However, illness is a big issue, especially with the paranoia surrounding H1N1. When I was sick, I would blow my nose in public, and get a combination looks of fear and sympathy from people. When I had to go to the store to buy soup and cold medicine, the cashier assumed it was for someone else sick in my home, and I let her believe that, because I didn’t want her to treat me differently. In fact, I actually think she thought I had a sick child at home, but that is maybe beyond the point, while it does feed into my earlier musings about assumptions.

But what are we telling/doing for sick students? The OSU health center website suggests that an ill student living in a residence hall should leave and go home until they are well, if possible. While I understand that the majority of OSU students are from the state of Oregon, I wonder how many are within comfortable distance to go home to their parent’s house if they are ill? And if you are more than maybe 20 minutes away, would you really want to drive? Or even travel? While I understand that residence halls are incubation for sick students this seems unreasonable.

Another interesting thing that has come to my attention is the biology department’s policy about missing lab. Beginning this year, no makeup labs are allowed: unless the student is sick. This raises an interesting problem. Clearly if a student is seriously ill and needs to rest, we don’t want them in class. If they are this sick, we also probably don’t want their germs in class either. However, this leaves us with a trust system. A cold is not something you need a doctors note for, but how do we determine if students are really “sick enough” to miss lab? We just have to trust student’s judgment, I suppose. But there is an element of mistrust surrounding this issue still for some reason.

All this talking about illness has me thinking about an incident my freshman year of college. Someone in my residence hall had scarlet fever, which is something I thought people only got in “Little House on the Prairie.” At the same time, I was sick in my dorm room bed for a few days with just a regular garden variety fever and missed class. And a miscommunication with a friend led to my entire math class thinking I also had scarlet fever. The culmination of this was my RA knocking on my door and telling me she was the worst RA ever for not knowing one of her residents had scarlet fever. This was the first I had heard of it. And I was effectively Typhoid Mary for a few days until it got around that I had never in fact had scarlet fever. Now it’s a funny anecdote that comes up with my college friends from time to time, “Hey, Char, remember when the whole school thought you had scarlet fever?” But really it is a representation of the negatives effects assumptions about illness can have on people.

So how should a campus respond to sickness? Overreacting clearly is not helpful, but keeping students informed and healthy is important, and necessary. Yet striking the right balance between the two is difficult. My big sister is teaching in Bulgaria currently and the school she teaches at is closed for a week because of the number of H1N1 cases in Sofia. So I do understand that this flu season is clearly not a laughing matter, yet people are also overreacting. I’m not sure what I think the administration at OSU should be doing to keep people calm and informed. I’m just not sure its happening currently.

"My Name is Rachel Corrie"

2009-11-08T18:33:00.000-08:00

Last week, I went to see “My Name is Rachel Corrie” produced by the OSU theatre department. Again, like the Laramie Project, this is a play with a strong tie to student affairs. “My Name is Rachel Corrie” is a one woman show complied from the emails, journals, and letters of Rachel Corrie. She was a student at Evergreen State Collge who went to Palestine to do peaceful protesting, and was killed by a bulldozer in 2003 in Gaza.

I can see exactly why OSU chose to do these two plays, “The Laramie Project,” and “My name is Rachel Corrie” in addition to their regular season. Both plays deal with subject matter that is very important for any college campus. Both Rachel Corrie and Matthew Shepherd were university students at the time of their deaths, and this kind of tragedy hugely affects campuses, and in their cases, the world. While the circumstances of their lives and their tragic deaths are very different, both called attention to a world wide issue, and each of them left an unexpected legacy.

The structure of these two plays is in some ways opposite. “The Laramie Project” is taken from the words of everyone except Matthew Shepard, “My Name is Rachel Corrie” is taken entirely from Rachel’s own words. Additionally, “The Laramie Project” begins with Matthew’s death, and “My Name is Rachel Corrie” ends with Rachel’s death. Because "My name is Rachel Corries" ends with Rachel’s death, the play itself does not explore the reaction of Evergreen students, or the reaction of the world. Yet her death must have had a profound impact. Instead, the play shows how a young woman like Rachel felt compelled to put herself in a dangerous situation: to help others.

Through the play, in her own words, the character of Rachel speaks of feeling lost in life, until she took a class at Evergreen that encouraged her to get involved in the community. From there the path to the Gaza strip seemed to clearly open itself up to her. This is the piece of her story that caused me to want to write about the play for my journal this week. I think so many college students are constantly looking for this moment, when their world simply lines itself up, and the path is clear.

Of course, I understand that the play is taken from only some of Rachel Corries words, and of course, only those thoughts, experiences and feeling she was willing to put down on paper. But even when she was in Palestine, she didn’t seem to feel any fear for herself, or for her own life. Instead, she wanted to know how she was ever supposed to find any meaning in life after she left Palestine. She talked of going to France, or going home to Olympia, but imagined she would be racked by guilt. I think this is a reasonably common feeling. I think that most young people who have some kind of life changing event such as serving in the Peace Corps have survivor’s guilt, or readjustment shock. It seems immeasurably sad to me that she didn’t ever get to leave; she never got the chance to see how this experience would affect the rest of her life.

In some ways I am stuck on Rachel Corrie’s story because I feel that it could have been mine. I could have made the choices she made. But I felt that my calling was working with the homeless through AmeriCorps, not peaceful protesting in Palestine. I feel aligned with Rachel Corrie, with all young people who feel a need to change the world in their own small way.

I find myself having to keep using the terminology of “being called.” When I was in high school I read Barbra Kingsolver’s “Poisonwood Bible” and was fascinated with the tragedies it told of Africa. It was my first experience with these horrors, they had never occurred to me before. In some ways it is a miracle that I’ve never signed up to go do work in Africa. I think that’s fine. I don’t regret my choices. I’m not placing any value judgment on any of these things. I don’t think every one who wants to make a difference need to go the Gaza strip. And I don’t think that is the message of “My Name is Rachel Corrie.” I don’t think Rachel Corrie herself would pass any judgment in this way either, I just think this happened to be her calling.

Now I have to come back to student affairs. All of this is great you may say, but what does it have to do with observations of student experiences? I think that every thoughtful student addresses this issue at some point, wanting to know how they are called to make a difference in the world. So what are universities doing to help students with these moments? How are we encouraging our youth to be global citizens? Who in my life helped me pursue volunteerism? Who in Rachel Corrie’s life helped her decide that activism was her life’s purpose?

While Rachel Corrie’s life was sadly cut short, she lived according to her values, which has to be respected. Yet, she was just a girl, and I’m not idealizing her, nor is the play. However, she has become an example of what following your heart can look like. Yes, it’s sad that she was killed by a bulldozer, it’s a huge tragedy. But the way she lived her life should be an inspiration to anyone, college students and beyond. And if we don’t learn something form this, that would be the real tragedy.

Campus Climate: I need a thermometer

2009-11-01T21:50:00.000-08:00

This week, I have a lot of questions about how to gauge a campus climate. OSU is now my school, but I don’t feel very connected to it. I feel connected to the CSSA program, and to my job, but I don’t have a lot of contact with students in general. I really have no idea what is going on with the undergraduates. I don’t spend a lot of time on campus. I don’t really have reason to.

This week I specifically spent some time on campus, both in the library and in a coffee shop, Java II. I was surprised to find how loud the library was on a Sunday afternoon. I went with a two hour window of time, hoping to get a lot of work done, but was seriously distracted by a group of exceedingly loud young men in the quiet section. I was surprised by this level of disrespect.

You can see a lot of different things in the library, people studying alone, in pairs, in small groups. But it occurs to me that anything I observe on campus is just a tiny window into someone’s life. Students are involved in a huge number of things, and observing them in one activity sheds no light into the rest of their lives. I see students working out at Dixon, but what else are they doing? What clubs are they in? What classes are they taking? I have no idea.

So this leads me to the issue of balance. How do we know what kind of balance students have in their lives, when we don’t know what they are doing? Even the biology TA’s I work with, I only see a tiny portion. I spend an hour with them once a week, and know what issues they are facing with their labs, but what do I really know?

Something I was discussing this week with my mentor in the CSSA program is this issue of accountability. Student affairs as a profession is pushing students to live balanced lives, with a healthy level of all activities. Yet we are student affairs professionals are not always setting a good example. As grad students, especially, we are expected to do a lot. Part time or full time jobs, part time or full time classes, and we are still expected to live “balanced” lives. I’m not entirely sure how to do this, and in that case how do we encourage students do the same?

I think that I need to continue to purposefully spend more time on campus to observe, but that creates an imbalance in my own life. I still think that no matter how much observing I do, I will only be seeing a small part of student experience. I’m really not sure how to see more than a small sliver of the whole. I do have a game plan. I will start reading the Barometer, going to events, and have my powers of observation turned on whenever I am on campus. But will this be enough? It will have to be a good start,I guess, but it won't solve the whole problem of me feeling disconnected from the pulse of OSU.

The Laramie Project: 10 years later

2009-10-25T18:27:00.000-07:00

I finally went to my first play in Oregon. Can you believe it took me over a month to figure out where on campus the theatre even is? However, this is not my typical review, but third in my weekly journal series. It is theatre looked at through the lens of student affairs.

Last week I went to "The Laramie Project: 10 Years Later" produced in the main stage theatre on the OSU campus as a staged reading. This was the follow up to the play The Laramie Project. Both the original Laramie Project and the new epilogue are a very unique theatrical experience. The Laramie Project was produced as a reaction to the tragic death of gay University of Wyoming student Matthew Shepard. He was brutally beaten by two young men and left tied to a fence half dead for four days before he was found, and his death attracted massive national attention to hate crimes, and to the town of Laramie, Wyoming.

OSU was one of over 100 theatres to produce a staged reading of this new play, on October 12, the 11th anniversary of Matthew Shepard's death. The Laramie Project is the intersection of my two passions: theatre and student affairs. Much of the discussion of the Laramie Project is around Matthew Shepard as student at the University of Wyoming. The play raises a lot of questions. How does a university respond to such an enormous tragedy? What does a horrific hate crime do to the perception of a small town and the university housed in it? How do students and professors and community move on? The Laramie Project posed some of these questions. In the days of the media coverage surrounding Matthew Shepard's death, a theatre company went to Laramie and conducted hundreds of interviews with the people of the town, the local sheriff, professors and students at the university and Matthew Sheppard's friends and family. The play is taken from these interviews, literally from the words of these people. Because of that, it is a very special theatre experience.

"The Laramie Project: 10 Years Later" is just what it says. The same theatre company members went back to Laramie and re-interviewed all the people they'd talked to 10 years earlier. Many real life people recur as characters in both plays. The police officer who found Matthew Shepard shares that experience the first time around and in the follow up discusses how dramatically her life was changed by it. A university professor shares her thoughts on the changes in the school itself in the intervening years. In this way, these people feel familiar. We as the audience get to see their journey.

While I've been setting up the context, I think the thing I want to discuss here is how this play impacts college campuses and what the effect of having it preformed on ours might be. A lot of the epilogue discuses the idea that the town of Laramie wants to move on. One of the ways they are doing this is claiming that Matthew Shepard's death was not related to him being gay, but was a truly a robbery. Yet the play shows a variety of view points. It truly does its best to show every person as just that, a real person. In this follow up, the company members were able to interview both of the men serving time for Matthew Shepard's murder. And one of the strengths here, is that neither of these plays are trying to prove anything, no agenda to push other that honest and through investigation of the reaction to a nation tragedy. And the two murderers are not painted as two dimensional criminals, but as troubled young men with a lot of life factors leading them up to one truly terrible act. Nor does the play attempt to exonerate either of them from their actions.

Yet in the interest of moving on from this that has me interested. The play does not go in depth into the university's grieving process, and importantly to my lens here, student affairs role in it. One man interviewed states that he is openly gay, and almost left Laramie because of Matthew Shepard's death. But he met the man who is still his partner at Mathew Shepard's memorial service and the two of them still live in Laramie. He works in a non specified department of student affairs at the university. He called student affairs a safe cocoon and indicated that the rest of the town and the university itself is still not as accepting. This is the root of the discussion, this idea that nothing has changed.

In "10 years later" they discuss the 10 year coverage of the incident in the town's newspaper. An editorial in the paper stated that "Laramie is a town, not a project" and this attitude is reflected through out. Yet how do they move on from something that put them on the map in the worst way possible? What does a new college freshman do, when starting at a new college in a new town, when the only thing people ever know of their home town is this tragedy? The town is ready to move on, but have they healed?

So this brings me back to OSU. An article in the Barometer a few weeks ago stated that we were the only university in the state of Oregon doing this staged reading. While nothing I read indicated any kind of selection process for which theatres could take part in the staged readings, the article expressed disappointment that no other universities in Oregon took part. I'm inclined to think there was some kind of process. Surely more than 100 theatres all over the world, would want to take part in this event. Strictly as a play, the Laramie Project has a lot of prestige. The interview structure is interesting and the play itself is moving. So why are no more theatres involved? A part of me thinks that my alma mater, Puget Sound would have had a huge support for this play if they'd taken part. They didn't, for whatever reason.

The main stage theatre that this happened in at OSU holds 360 people. It was 95 percent full; I was disappointed that there were not more students or faculty or staff or community members interested. Maybe it wasn't well publicized. But maybe people don't remember what happened. Without the play, I wouldn't know. I was 12 years old 11 years ago; I had no idea when it happened. If I hadn't had a chance to see the Laramie Project when I was in college I might have had no interested in seeing this follow up to it. Most of the students at OSU may not have any idea who Matthew Shepard was or what the importance of the Laramie Project is. But is this good and natural, or is it cause for concern?

Maybe it's just that we as a nation are ready to move on. I'm just worried that we are moving on because we don't want to dwell on tragedy, or that we don't remember. I wish that we were moving on because we have recovered, and healed. Laramie just happens to be the place this happened, and this university could be any university. This is why I am concerned that this event didn't get more attention. How can we move on from a tragedy we haven't recognized? Laramie could be any town and that is part of the tragedy of it.

Small Fish in a Big Pond

2009-10-17T13:14:00.000-07:00

This week for my second journal I've been thinking about students at a big university, as I've now found myself. I went to a small private liberal arts school, of about 2 thousand. I am now at a huge public University of over 20 thousand. At Puget Sound, my largest class was probably 50, (and I only ever had one class this large, and ironically it was a biology lecture) my smallest class was about 8. I'd say that most classes were around 20 students. This creates a special environment where all of my professors know my name, and I got a lot of individual attention. When the class is that small, as a student, you are very responsible. Responsible for being present, responsible for having done all the work and always having an opinion. And while this small environment was prefect for me, it may not be what everyone is looking for.

During the first week of class I didn’t send a lot of time on campus if I wasn’t in class, at work, or studying for class. This was my second week of school and I felt a little less overwhelmed by classes, and I spent some time on campus during the day. I spent some time observing other students. And there are so many of them. I can't help but feel very anonymous on the OSU campus. I rarely see people I know, and when I do its considerably exciting. At Puget Sound, I couldn't go anywhere with out seeing everyone I knew. And even if I didn't know names I knew faces. And I miss that. I think that the anonymity of a big school could be both exhilarating and terrifying. But maybe it gets smaller? I'm not sure.

This week, for my assistantship, I sat in on a biology 211 lecture. There are two lectures, with a total of over 1000 students enrolled in the class. This is half the size of my undergraduate institution! The lecture I went to had 600 students registered. I'm not sure how many seats the auditorium in Miliam holds or how many were actually there. But 600 students. I sat in the upper balcony very far from the professor. There is no one up there to monitor what the students are doing. One of the biology TA's I work with was observing form the upper balcony, but he didn't seem to be there in a disciplinary function. From where I was sitting I could see about 4 open laptops. And of the two screens I could see, one was following along with the black board presentation and one was playing some kind of game. Right in view of everyone around him! The student sitting directly next to me was taking notes and following the lecture, but also texting on his phone. While I clearly know all of these things are issues, I've never experienced any of them before. I am only one year out of college; I expected to still have a good sense of the "student experience." But some combination of the extra 20,000 students at OSU and the 5 years that now separate me from a college freshman leave me feeling clueless. Student trends move fast. And as an aside (but on the same point) spell check does not recognize "texting" as a word. With the technology college students have in their lives, their lives move at lightning speed. How do I even attempt to keep up?

Sitting in on the lecture leads me directly back to where I was last week: assumptions. During the lecture the professor gave a quiz question and gave the class permission to speak to their neighbor. The question was based on the lecture I had just heard, but I hadn't really been paying attention to the biology. I'd been absorbing the environment, the professor's style of lecture, and what the students around me where doing. The young man next to me asked me what I thought about the quiz question, assuming I was a student. I truly had no idea at all, so I threw the question back to the young man. What do you think the answer is? And he said "E." I told him I thought that might be right (still having zero idea) and finally he talked himself in the right answer, which was "D." I didn't tell him I wasn't in the class because it was unnecessary, but it was rather humorous to bluff my way through a biology question.

I know part of the reason we have so many school in the US, is that every school is not right for every person. Yet I continue to feel like I’m on another planet, as far as being a student goes. And I’m hugely glad to be experiencing something different, if I’m going to work in student affairs, I should be aware of all types of institutions and how the affect the students.

In the coming weeks I plan to investigate what some of the issues students at a big school face might be. Currently I have no idea. I plan to do a little sleuthing. If I spend some more time on campus, and go to more campus activities, and I think some things should start revealing themselves to me. What is it that makes OSU special? And what kind of educational experience can an undergraduate student really expect to get here? I’m ready to find some more questions and answers.

Weekly journal: the beginning

2009-10-11T13:51:00.000-07:00

Clearly I haven’t been doing such a great job with my blog. I really do intend to continue writing. I think I will be crazy busy soon, but there are things I still want to explore.

For one of my classes, a first year transition seminar, I’ve been asked to write weekly journal articles. My journals are emailed to my professor, and don’t have to take a specific direction, or be a prescribed length. What they are supposed to be is a reflection on student experiences, things I’ve observed on campus, or even reactions to articles I’ve read. So it occurs to me (actually it occurred to MoM) that I should go ahead and post these journals here. Because what does that assignment sound like, if not a blog?

So here comes my first journal.

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the assumptions that people make on a college campus. I am only one year out of college. I am 23 years old, and I look young. I assume most people who see me on campus think I am an undergrad. I think this is an issue a lot of young people deal with going into student affairs: people assume we are students. And we are, but we are graduate students, on a professional track. And currently I feel like I’m more on the professional side than the student side.

Yet people make assumptions. I was at the OSU bookstore a few weeks ago buying books. My visit coincided with freshmen move in, and the bookstore was packed, yet the line moved very quickly because every student had extra people with them. I was alone and the cashier asked where my own entourage was. I told her I was a grad student, and she said, “Oh, so you’ve been through this before.” And I have, but not on this campus. Here, I am honestly just as lost as the undergrads with their parents. The assumption she made here may be wrong, but it was reasonable and safe. It did no harm to either of us and had no lasting consequences.

While I started talking about other peoples assumptions of me, I’m not innocent in all of this. I’ve been making some assumptions of my own. We all do. But I've also foun some situations are equalizing. At Dixon Rec on the elliptical machine, there is nothing to distinguish me from anyone else. It is an equalizer of sorts. The only things that signify status are outward appearance and particular exercise gear.

Yet assumptions can be dangerous. You never know who is in your vicinity. Two women in my cohort work in conduct. Recently we were at a football game there were students in front of us passing a flask back and forth. While the women work in conduct, and are only responsible after the student is in trouble (and honestly, neither of them actually saw the flask) these students made a call that the student section at the football game was a “safe” place to do this. Yet they had no idea who was behind them. People make assumptions all the time based on appearances. It seems that these assumptions need to be tempered by a little practicality.

Another young woman in CSSA works with sorority women. At the new student picnic she was at the Greek table wearing the same t shirt the sorority women were wearing. And students kept coming up and asking what activities her sorority takes part in, ect. And while she was in a sorority, it wasn’t here at OSU. She is the adviser, not an undergrad. And while that is a reasonable mistake on the part of the students and again causes no harm, it is still an assumption.

This is something I think most of us will deal with in student affairs for years to come. We will teach people older than we are, supervise those who are only months or years younger. This creates confusion for everyone involved. How do we balance the professional and the scholarly? Or balance student affairs professional with the friend?

Students often seem blissfully aware of some of these issues. The fact that I may not be in their radar at all doesn’t matter. While I know this reflection is intended to examine the mid set of today’s students, it somehow feels right to start with me. Where does my presence fit into the mindset of student? I wonder if these assumptions I’ve examined serve to help one make sense of the world. The world would be a truly confusing place if you had no ability to make patterns out of it. The danger is simply in letting assumptions take the place of real knowledge, both for me, and for the undergraduates in this scenario.

Back in the Northwest!

2009-09-05T22:28:00.000-07:00

People have been asking me if I intend to keep blogging. And I think the answer is yes. I can't promise quality or frequency. But I enjoy writing, and it seems some of you enjoy (or are forced) to read.

This last month has been a blur. I spent three weeks in Walla Walla. I had a wonderful family reunion. I saw my sister for the first time in a year. I made a quick trip up to Seattle to see what I'm missing this year. I got to see a few friends from high school, but not at frequently or as many of them as I would have liked. I've seen three plays since I blogged last. "Spring Awakening" in DC and "The Taming of the Shrew", and a musical review in Walla Walla. While I will probably write about theatre more in the future (try to stop me!) I think these three have slipped through the cracks.

While it was nice to be home, this was a period of not a little anxiety. When I came home from Washington I basically owned two suitcases full of clothing and a laptop computer. I spent the last 3 weeks accumulating the things a girl would need to live in an apartment by herself. Like a bed. And dishes. And you know, the basics, like a bread maker (my dAd is the king of yard sales).
I know have a very nice assortment of personal belongings. This Monday we loaded up my little ford tempo, my parents SUV and a trailer, and caravaned to Corvallis. MoM and dAd stayed with me until Thursday, when they took off and left me all alone. Although honestly I'm doing just fine. I'm starting to feel like I have an idea of Corvallis, while I remember very little of it from my childhood.

Pictures of my new apartment will follow, I think its pretty cute. Honestly I couldn't have done better long distance. And possibly I couldn't have done better in person either. I started work on Friday, and an orientation for my program coming up at the end of next week.

This is the beginning of a new chapter and the next two years of my life. Honestly though, the title of this blog still applies. I'm still living on a stipend, although it is a larger one, I have more really life responsibilities this year One of the things I've been struggling with over the last 4 weeks, is the legacy of my volunteer year. The people who changed my life, and these whose lives I may have changed, what do I do with that experience? I'm off to grad school but poverty hasn't changed. The people I left behind are still doing the best they can to survive in a city like DC. I don't really need to worry. Samaritan Ministry already has a new intern. And I'm sure she's on her way to being a great case worker. These things are circular, and they were always intending for me to leave. Hoverer for me, it will take a little soul searching to figure out where volunteerism belongs in my life now that I've lost my identity and title as "volunteer." However, I'm glad I'm considering all of this, if I wasn't contemplating the events of the last year, I would be worried. However, for now I don't need answers, the questions are enough.

Thoughts on my last day of work

2009-08-04T10:47:00.000-07:00

Its lunch time on my last day of work. My housemates have all moved out, and I hop on airplane home tomorrow at 2.

I have a few random and disconnected musings to share today. I have been cleaning out my desk and all of that, but even more I've been getting my space ready for the new intern. Making sure she has all the numbers, blank disks, papers, and fax cover sheets she needs. This is kind of fun project. It makes me thing about what I use, and what is helpful to know. Hopefully she finds my organizational system and some of my notes helpful.

This morning was a bit wild, tonight is a full moon and I honestly think that my have something to do with it. Some of the participants we dealt with this morning were challenging to say the least. A good note to go out on, I guess. Other things of note, yesterday I had my last computer mentoring session. Good luck, and I hope there are now a few more people in the world who know how to check their email without me. Additionally this week I have provided participants with correct spellings for the words "application," "Massachusetts," and "piercing." Not all for the same person or purpose, luckily. Sample conversation: "No, I don't think the word 'stipend' has a 'F' in it." "Are you sure?" "Pretty sure." I also decided this morning that I want my next job to be one where people don't pee with the bathroom door open. Small but important requirement in employment, I think.
I've said goodbye to my roommates of 11 months. We had a lot of fun together, and been there for a lot of highs and lows. As a part of our last retreat, we were asked to tell the members of the volunteer corps board what the most challenging and the most rewarding parts of our jobs are. And I was struck by the difficulty of our jobs. We are not any normal 5 young people sharing a house straight out of college. No one is working at Starbucks. Instead we have jobs where we are a very important part of our agencies. And between the five of us we cover everything from homelessness to child abuse, and delinquent youths. Not easy. Defiantly not like working in the library at school. And while of course I understood this on some level the whole time, I really was hit by the enormity of it just a few weeks ago.

Another odd side effect of moving across the country with no plan to return any time soon is that people keep telling me to "have a good life." I appreciate the sentiment, but that sounds so scary and final. I've been alone in my house for a few days, which is odd and kind of lonely. I'm almost completely packed, which is a good feeling. Tonight after work I'm going out with my supervisor and the two other year long interns and that should be fun. And tomorrow I leave our nations capital. Its been good run. But I can't wait to get home!

Location: 1600 Pensylvaia Avenue

2009-07-29T07:39:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago I was making an event for my tour of the white house on my google calender. When you create an event it asks some pretty standard questions. What? Tour of the White House. When? 7:15 am Wednesday, July 22nd. Then is asked me, Where? And I answered: 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. For some reason this really gets my funny bone, as it comes off as Google Calender needing to be taught the location of the White House. Which is not the case, but pretty funny.

Also currently there is this commercial playing in rotation on NBC about Jay Leno promoting his talk show changing time slots. It shows a young woman being interviewed on the street. She is asked "Who lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue" and she doesn't know! Next, she is asked "Who lives in a pineapple under the sea?" and she promptly answerers "Sponge Bob!" Hopefully this is really not that indicative of the state of our nation. And for the record Jay Leno, I know the answer to both of these questions. But there is nothing funny in knowledge I suppose.

Well last wednesday I pulled myself out of bed at the inhumane hour of 6:00 am, a full hour and a half earlier than usual. And I am not a morning person at 7:30, let alone at 6:00. But I popped out of bed with the energy that goes with any special event, and a little nervousness about getting there on time, and finding the visitors entrance. I was not allowed to bring very much with me. Usually I go to work with a pretty good sized purse. Things you can almost always find in my purse include cell phone, i pod, keys, Kleenex, lotion, chap stick, allergy medicine, water bottle, wallet, and whatever book I'm plowing through on the bus. So I'm basically Mary Poppins. This day I was allowed to bring cell phone, keys, wallet, and photo ID. And nothing else. So I took the bus to Farragut with nothing. No purse (which felt really odd) no book, no I Pod, no water, no packed lunch. And it was sort of fun. It felt a little like taking a break from all the things I carry with me, literally and figuratively. I made it to Farragut in good time, but had a little trouble finding the visitors gate, which caused a little anxiety, but I did find it, and didn't miss my tour time. I think I should be sure by now, that if there is the potential for getting lost, I will. Somehow I'm wired with the opposite of a navigational system. But I am getting smarter about asking for help and preparing for the eventuality of being lost and/or confused. One I found the visitors entrance, they had us get in line according to last name, and I got through security pretty quickly. Which is easy when you have only your ID, bus pass, and cell phone in your pocket.

We we touring the east wing. It is a self guided tour, but there are secret service agents(!) in every room to answer questions. I get too shy to ask questions in situations like this. I would love to know more information, but don't really know what to ask, and don't want to ask dumb questions. We got to look at about 9 rooms. Most of them we got to walk through, but about 3 we could only peek into. The rooms themselves are beautifully decorated. They were prepping East Room for an address president Obama was giving later that day and pointed out the long hallway with red carpeting you see on television. And maybe that was the neatest part. Physically standing where Obama would be in just a few hours. Standing where so many presidents, dignitaries, and every day people have stood over the years.

When I studied abroad in England I saw too many castles, palaces, and historic estates to count. By the end of 4 months, all the students in my program have developed what I might call "castle ennui." Everything starts to look and feel the same. Cardiff Castle honestly doesn't feel all that different from Windsor Palace. They are both amazing, but when it comes down to it, all the hundreds of rooms and staircases start to bleed together. I think I feel that way about the White House. It is a beautiful piece of architecture, and lovingly decorated and preserved. We can be proud of the majesty of the White House. But the thing that sticks with me from my time in all the historic places in Britain, is how it felt to stand on Henry VII's tombstone, or to be in the room where Mary Queen of Scots gave birth to James I. Not what that room was physically decorated with. And I think thats what I will take from this visit. For 30 minutes of my life, I was inside one of America's most treasured piece of property. And maybe during those 30 minutes, Barack Obama was too.

15 Days!

2009-07-21T08:27:00.000-07:00

As the title of this post suggests, my days left in our nations capital are numbered. I work right up until August 4th, and on August 5th, I hop on a plane home to Walla Walla. Where I will land smack in the middle of a family reunion. Big sister Carolyn will beat me home by a week and I'm excited to spend most of August in Walla Walla before I move to Corvallis in the beginning of September. It's wonderful to have the next step all mapped out, and I'm getting pretty excited about being closer to home and starting grad school.

I'm feeling a little antsy to get home, but for now I'm planning to relax and enjoy my last little bit of time here. I've been trying to make a list of things to do before I leave DC, however I'm feeling a little uninspired. However, tomorrow morning I get to go on a tour of the White House with my coworkers, which seems like a huge thing to cross off the list. Next week I am going to see a play at the Kennedy Center. I have a few friends to see again, housemates and coworkers to say goodbye to and a farewell from Westmoreland Church.

I recently asked a woman who is a native Washintonian what things should be on my list before I go. She said (jokingly) "Lord and Taylors?" But this encapsulate my feelings pretty neatly. I feel like I've seen a lot of DC in 11 months, and honesty its become a little commonplace to me. Its been my home, I don't think its odd to go by 20 embassies on the bus in the evening. However, before I go, I need to switch briefly back into tourist mode. I do have a few museums I want to repeat visit and I am going to the White House, but thats about as far as my list goes.
Any thoughts on of a few can't miss DC things before my time runs out?

And the Rain it Raineth Every Day

2009-06-23T10:40:00.000-07:00

So I've been thinking recently about the content of my blog. I've been writing basically only about theatre, which wasn't really my intent. But real life is tricky. Most of my job is confidential, and the ins and outs of my volunteer house seem too private and its hard to figure out what to say. But I'm quickly approaching the end of my volunteer year and I do have some thoughts on that coming up. I've decided anyway, that I'm not forcing anyone to read my blog (umm ok I might be...) But if you are reading this, you probably are either interested in what I've been saying about the dc theatre scene, or you like me a whole lot, or have the same last name as I do. So here comes another (very long, very in depth) theatre post.

I saw King Lear at the Shakespeare Theatre Company a few weeks ago and it took me a few days to recover from the shock of it. I know King Lear pretty well, I've read it 4 separate times and now have seen it on stage twice. On Monday before seeing this production I was making jokes because the theatre placed this warning on it: "Recommended for mature audiences. King Lear will feature graphic violence, sexuality and nudity." And honestly I thought that was pretty great. At UPS, when our productions featured certain things we had to put warning signs in the hallway for the audience. This applied to stuff like smoking, gunshots, or nudity. In fact, it was a running joke during my thesis play that we wanted to push the limits and have as many warning signs as possible. We did pretty well on that account.

Well for this productions warning signs would have been exceptional. There were too many gunshots to count, 3 entirely naked actors, several characters were graphically smothered to death, smoke, fog, there was even a CAR driven on stage. I'm not sure that last one needs a warning, but just to give you an idea of the spirit of the production. And I was honestly not ready for the levels of brutality this production accomplished. This production is not for the weak hearted, and I'm going to discuss some of the very graphic things it explored. Before I move on I have to say that all the people I went with loved this production. They really enjoyed it, and my reaction is by far the most critical I've encountered.

This production seemed to be very interesting in finding and exploring the moral ambiguities of the characters. Almost no one escaped unscathed. Generally King Lear holds a host of unsavory characters, notably Goneril and Regan, Cornwall, and the villain of the piece, Edmund. And these four nasty characters are enough to to rip the whole fabric of their world apart. This production took it a step further. The characters who are usually sympathetic and noble, the ones who carry the show and act as a moral center for the audience to follow, were all were destroyed by this production. For instance Kent, Lear's loyal servant, the voice of reason, threatened to brutally sodomize Goneril's servant Oswald. Here, Oswald was a nasty piece of work, but still the noble Kent lost his nobility in this threat. Albany, usually the sole voice of reason in the sisters world, rapes his wife. Even Edgar, usually the most noble character, still first emerges as a flamboyant, foolish drunk.

Somehow amidst all this debauchery, Gloucester emerges as the long sympathetic figure, with Edgar, his son also moving past his initial drunken foolishness and finally approaching the heroic space he usually holds. Yet it is this Gloucester, who is particularly nasty about Edmund's illegitimacy in his first appearance. who becomes the hero of the play. And what a tragic hero he is, giving his eyes and his life for Lear.

While this is an enormously long play, this production pushed over 3 hours and very little was cut. However, the last act was sliced and diced and for content it seems, not time. This production, obsessed with pulling the evil out of every good character, and the good out of the evil, cuts Edmund's attempt at atonement at the end. In the traditional script, Edmund and Edgar have a sword fight and Edmund is mortally wounded by Edgar. When Edmund realizes that he is dying and that it in fact is his brother who killed him, he tells Edgar he has ordered Lear and Cordelia's executions and Edgar rushes off to stop it. This is completely absent. Instead, Edgar pulls out a gun and blows Edgar away killing all dialog of the scene and obliterating Edgar's moment of change. This puzzles me. Why would this production, so interested in exploring the darkness and ambiguity of the human soul, remove the one good deed Edmund does? Even at best it is a sorry attempt to save Lear and Cordelia. It truly is a classic example of too little too late. Even if he did save them, it would not be enough to atone for all of his horrific misdeeds. And this is a particularly nasty Edmund, who not 30 minutes earlier strangles Cornwall with his tie, another bit of script alteration that bothered me.

To take this even further, in this production Goneril and Regan die after Edmund, not before. And not only this but Goneril strangles her sister on stage over Edmund's lifeless body, instead of off stage. By the time Goneril finished smothering her sister and shot herself, I was ready for the play to be over. But they were just warming up for the most brutal moment yet: Lear stumbled onstage carrying the naked, beaten, and obviously violated body of Cordelia. I was not expecting this and it shocked me. But maybe not in the way they intended.

As I mentioned I've seen King Lear on stage before. I saw a Royal Shakespeare Company production with Ian McKellen as King Lear. While that production was by no means puppies and kittens, in fact it was effectively brutal, its violence didn't approach this level at all. And I'm really at a loss. I didn't hate this production. The acting was good, the design was interesting, there were some phenomenal stage pictures and moments, but I really cannot move past the brutality of it. I'm not sure what the place of all the violence is supposed to be. Who is the hero in this tale, where all the characters are despicable? The last lines of the play are usually spoken by Goneril's sweet and misused husband. However, the Albany of this play was such a beast that his lines had to be given away to Edgar, who is the only good charter possibly in the whole production. And certainly he is the only one left standing, or more accurately oddly delivering the final lines crawling across the stage. I'm just left really not sure that I like this interpretation of King Lear, although it was definitely provoking.

Is this play a product of the times? Its set in 1990's in the Balkans. It feels achingly modern and its commentary on war is clear. Is it a product of the focus of the last few years on graphic and violent TV shows and movies and the crowd of anti heroes and despicable protagonists who populate them? Called into existence because of "The Shield", and "Dexter" most importantly "The Sopranos?" Quite possibly. But is this the way King Lear is intended? Or has it mutated into something different entirely? I'm left unsure, and slightly unhappy.

One of my college professors calls King Lear the best play in the English language. And maybe my problem comes down to this : the language was lost in the shuffle of all this epic violence and hatred. The actor who seems to speak the verse best was the villain, Edmund, who delivered his lines clearly and thrillingly in between stabbing, shooting, strangling, and seducing everyone in sight. The other actors didn't always seem to 100% understand their lines in a way that they communicated to the audience. I'm not sure what message that sends. The stage picture at the end, heaps of garbage and smashed up cars and dead characters, including a dead Cordelia completely naked on a table took away the power of Kent's last lines.

Or maybe my problem is that this entire production is what one of my professors would call "phenomenologically hot." Everything was distracting, rather than enlightening. Things that are phenomenologically hot on stage include babies, animals, water, fire, even actors with a certain type of charisma. (Maybe my UPS theatre kids can help explain this concept if they want) And the audience instinctively spends the time wondering if will the baby will cry, the animal will bite (or pee), or if the whole stage might go up in flames. That's how I ultimately feel about this production. Get the lion trainer handy and have plenty of fire extinguishers back stage. Figuratively of course.

Seasons of Love

2009-06-18T09:07:00.000-07:00

Recently I got to do something pretty spectacular. I got to see the official touring cast of the musical RENT. Which included the original Mark and the original Roger, Anthony Rapp and Adam Pascal, who first started playing these roles 13 years ago as young unproven actors on Broadway.

I have never seen RENT on stage before. I was aware of it as a musical, but had never heard of seen it before the film came out a few years back. I saw the movie three times in one weekend when it was the campus film and fell in love. I, like so many people, was captivated by this musical, by the music, and the story, the energy and the feeling of it. I bought the movie, got the Broadway soundtrack, and know the music very well. Yet I'd never done the crucial thing, I'd never seen it on stage. Simply because I've never had the chance, until now.

And when I was offered the chance to go see it way back in February, I jumped at it. I wrote a check to a friend and was the proud owner of a ticket. However, I didn't realize until about a month ago that Adam Pascal and Anthony Rapp were going to be in it. Anyone who has seen the film has heard their amazing voices (MoM, FYI, you have seen the film). Because 90% of the original Broadway cast was in the film, and these are the only two recordings of RENT I've ever heard, I've literally never heard anyone else sing these two parts. Isn't that sort of spectacular? And my excitement was amazing. These actors make the musical for me.

I'm sure at some point I will see RENT again with a totally different cast. I may even be lucky enough so see these actors in other roles on stage on person. Or maybe even in these roles again. I was thinking last night about all the famous people I've seen on stage. Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Daniel Radcliff, 60 percent of the rest of the Harry Potter cast, and I'm probably forgetting someone really cool or famous. Yet getting to see these actors in the roles I know and loved them for, that is something really special. They inhabit this play in a way that I'm not sure any other actors ever can or will. And because of them, this production.

RENT premiered on Broadway over 13 years ago. And it became a sensation. Something about the intertwined stories of these 7 characters speaks to people. RENT tackles a broad variety of topics, or alternately, a specific thing. It tells the story of young people dealing with AIDS, drug addiction, suicide, homosexuality, even homelessness. Because of its frank, loving, supportive treatment of these things RENT became a symbol for the disenfranchised, the lonely. It seems to be about hope and yes, love. Oh man, maybe I am fixated on love and its place in theatre. Which is a good thing to focus on, if I have to pick, I guess.

Getting to see it was a perfect fleeting few hours of theatre. I wanted to drag my feet and make it go on forever. I always feel that way when watching a particularly good play; I don't ever want the moment to end. But it did, of course. However, even a few weeks later I'm still pretty happy about it. I told my friend Julia, who is getting ready to see the same production in Seattle soon, that seeing it was a bit anticlimactic for me. She was disappointed to know I felt that way. I'm not sure thats exactly right. I just wonder if sometimes, its the whole entire theatrical experience that makes a show. The build up, the let down, all of it, more than the actual two and a half hours of theatre that create a show.

The Epic Memorial Day Weekend

2009-06-05T09:45:00.000-07:00

Sorry this post was a long time coming! But here it goes. The day after Garrison Keillor I went on a 22 hour epic adventure with my new friends. It was Keri's birthday, and she wanted make it count. And it did.

My day started at 12 when I got picked up from the metro. We went to a park in Laurel Maryland and had a picnic lunch, my second in two days. I brought more of my great pasta salad and we had a nice time and a ton of food.

From there, we hopped in the car and drove the Boordy Vineyard, (http://www.boordy.com/) which is the oldest vineyard in the state of Maryland. We got to go on a tour, and our lovely tour guide, Pat, also led the wine tasting for half of our group. Up until now my entire wine tasting experience has been in Walla Walla, where we have a million and a half wineries (140? Is that the current count?) but they are mostly small boutique wineries, however they are producing fantastic wine.

Somehow its become a thing in my family that I like white wine more than red, but the Walla Walla valley is best for red. So on my family wine tasting last summer, I think I was forced to try every bottle of white Walla Walla produces. And now I think my taste is actually moving towards those rich, flavorful reds. So the opposite was true here, I loved the white wines, but was disappointed in the reds, all except for their reserve red, that I payed an extra dollar to taste. It was worth it.

After the winery we went out to dinner and then the main even. The drive in. It was outside of Baltimore and they were showing four movies. From dusk to dawn. And they literally played movies from last light to first light. In order the movies were Coraline, Star Trek, Obsessed, and Knowing. The only one of those I wanted to see was Star Trek and I wanted to see it a lot, and was previously unable to get anyone to go with me. But I loved Star Trek as a kid, (it was the only thing I ever remember Nick and I agreeing on to watch together) and I loved this movie. It was a lot of fun. I don't see movies very often anymore, and I paid 8 dollars to see 4, which is amazing. Or as I like to think of it, I paid 8 to see Start Trek and got 3 free. I found Coraline very creepy, and not necessarily in a good way, which is interesting because its animated and I think its for KIDS. I was really disturbed by it. Obsessed was ridiculous and mostly fun. It was good to be a the drive in where you can yell at the screen. It was good that Knowing was last, as the end of it made absolutely no sense, and the lighter it go the less we could see it anyway. By the time Knowing was over, it was almost 6 am and the first movie started at about 8 pm. Woah.

I was dropped off at my front door at about 7 am. I promptly fell asleep and woke up in the early afternoon. At about 5 pm, when I was considering another nap, I got invited to go the Memorial Day concert on the lawn, with my housemates Deanna's visiting mother and grandmother. We brought sandwiches, and they had a blanket and I took a very brief nap there waiting for the concert to begin.

This concert was actually sort of star packed, although the quality and reputation of the "celebrities" varied greatly. We had Laurence Fishburne, who is currently on CSI, Joe Mantegna who is on the show Criminal Minds (also on CBS), we had Katie Holmes (with Tom Cruise sitting in the front row!) preforming a moving piece with Broadway actress Diane Wiest. We had former American Idol (runner up?) Katherine McPhee, singing my favorite song from West Side Story, "Somewhere." Most excitingly for me was Colm Wilkinson, the original Jean Valjean from Les Miserables, my favorite musical, singing "Bring Him Home." That was the highlight for me. While he is getting older, he still has a wonderful voice. I wasn't even aware he was a part of the concert until they announced him and I was beyond thrilled to get to hear him sign in person, especially such an appropriate and emotional song.

And on Monday we had a memorial day grill out in our back yard with Deanna's family, a very nice end to a busy 3 day weekend.

A Prairie Home Companion

2009-05-26T19:38:00.000-07:00

On Friday night right after work, I trekked out to the Wolf Trap Theatre to see Garrison Keillor preform "A Prairie Home Companion." My friend Brian again organized this trip, and I do have to admit I would see much less theatre if I didn't have Brian organizing things. Also I have to admit, I haven't listened to "A Prairie Home Companion more than a dozen times ever. NPR is my entertainment of choice while I make jewelry in my dAd's shop. And then it gets interrupted for the belt sander, or the vacuum or any other loud noise one of us might make. But I know my dAd has a man crush on Garrison Keillor and I am the proud owner of a "POEM: Professional Organization of English Majors" t shirt after last Christmas. So I felt a need to represent the fam and go see Garrison Keillor in person. Carolyn says I failed by not wearing my POEM shirt to the concert, but to be fair, I did go straight from work.

We had tickets on the lawn, which means that we got to bring in any food or drink (even booze!) that we wanted. Apparently the only line is a KEG. I'd love to see the crowd that came for Prairie Home Companion bring a keg, actually. While we didn't try our luck on that, we did bring a cube of sangria, which was sufficient. I made pasta salad, for the first time ever, and it turned out quite delicious, although I made a ton of it and did just eat the last of it tonight, 4 days later. I was glad we had lawn seats, we had blankets and got to continue snacking on our lovely picnic well into the show itself.

While I knew Garrison Keillor was funny and entertaining, the show in person was amazing. Radio shows are a lost art. Even if we listen to them, we don't take the time to sit down and just listen, doing nothing else. Seeing it live forces you to do just that: listen. I laughed until I cried and just cried also, the show covered a lot of emotional ground. But also I watched. The actors acted with their faces and bodies. There was a set, and they even flew props in and out. It was well worth watching, simply looking at the performers.

The show covers a lot of ground, from serious to funny. New material, fantastic musical guests and visits to some of my favorites from the files of "A Prairie Home Companion", like Guy Nior: detective. I really enjoyed the Wolf Trap theatre itself. Garrison Keillor even got the audience to howl like wolves before intermission, not often you get to see (hear?) that. It was an excellent evening of food, friends, and entertainment.

For those of you keeping track(MoM), this was theatrical event 5 out of 6. That turned itself into 7 with the memorial day concert on Sunday. Stay turned for more theatrical rambling.

Love or Cruelty: Design for Living

2009-05-25T20:27:00.000-07:00

Last Monday my housemate Rachel and I received a pair of last minute tickets to the opening of “Design for Living” at the Shakespeare Theatre Company. I had gone to two of their fantastic productions so far, “Twelfth Night” (which I blogged about) and “Ion” (which I loved, but didn’t write about). So while I knew absolutely nothing about this play or Noel Coward, the playwright, I went in with very high expectations.

The first moments of “Design for Living” had me thinking that it was going to be a very different play than what it turned out to be. The play follows three young "bohemians" Otto, Leo, and Gilda in the 1930's. The play opens with the young woman, Gilda living with Otto, but uninterested in marriage and having just slept with Leo, the third side of the love triangle. In the first 30 minutes of the play, I made a very wrong assumption. After a huge, honest, and enormously painful fight, Otto deserts Gilda spectacularly angry. And I thought it was going to continue to be a play about evisceration; characters ripping each others hearts out of their chests for sport.

I thought the protagonists were going to engage in a three way precursor to "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woof." In that play, a married couple, George and Martha, spend a whole (progressively drunker and drunker) evening ripping out each others internal organs, again figuratively. Although maybe something like zombies would make me like that play better, some literal evisceration. Unlike George and Martha, the lovers in "Design for Living" are not trying to destroy each other. The vitriol at the end of the first act never returns. Instead of trying to rip each others hearts out, they spend the rest of the play (and years of their lives) trying to rip down societal constructs and rebuild their lives in their own image. So while they may hurt each other, its never out of hatred, or callousness, but out of an honest desire to make it all work.

Each of the three acts tries another pairing. We begin with Gilda and Otto as a couple, move to Gilda and Leo, and finally to Leo and Otto. Each couple is happy together, yet none of these pairs quite work. And in the final scene, Leo and Otto come to reclaim Gilda, and enter in the final combination, all three of them. The play ends on this suggestion, but there is no act of the play devoted to it. And I guess I was left to feel that meant the final combination, the three of them, would work. Because nothing before it has and what is present here, is love. I never doubted that all three loved each other, and that through that love they could find happiness.

I didn't know anything about Noel Coward or this play before I saw it, so I had to read the program and do a little internet research to find some back ground. Noel Coward was a British playwright, however the content of “Design for Living” is very progressive, so much so that Coward premiered “Design for Living” in New York, not in London, where it would not have made it past the British censors. Although in the 80 intervening years, I think this has reversed itself, with productions in London now more progressive than those in the states. But in the 30’s Coward was actually in danger of being arrested for the content of this play. Which is interesting, considering that “Design for Living” still feels progressive now. And possibly this is why I’m so interested in it. How have we come so far, and not very far at all? I’m sure there were some people in the audience shocked by the earnest depiction of homosexuality, and love and just sexuality in general. However, I would need to get my hands on the script itself to be able to tell how much of progressive nature of this production is text based, and how much is stage direction, and interpretation. I think that this production clearly did pushed the envelope in those regards much more than it would have 80 years ago.

As I've sort of mentioned, the play follows a three act structure. Each act takes place in a different city. We begin in Paris in Otto and Gilda's apartment, take up two years later in London in Leo and Gilda's home, and end another two years later in New York with Gilda and her husband. The structure is very clever. The repetition of the themes is beautiful, not repetitive. Each time I thought I knew what was coming next, but I was never quite correct. This mix of predictability and surprise makes the play always interesting. I struggle to write about this, without giving the entire plot away, which I've sort of done anyway.

As the play takes place in three different cities, there were actually three totally different sets, one for each act and apartment. This meant that the show has two intermissions for set changes, and they actually closed the curtain to do this, something I almost never see in professional theatre. The sets were so detailed and beautiful that the third set actually got a round of applause, again something I've never seen. The lead actress even got a round of applause at her entrance in a very spectacular third act evening gown. While this was opening night and the sets and costumes were spectacular, I think this applause was more about the audience being completely in love with and invested in the story.

While I haven't talked about the humor at all, this production was hysterically funny. I think Noel Coward is primarily famous for writing comedies, although I think this play is more a very, very funny drama. The dialogue is terribly witty, and the audience is expected to keep up, with frequent call backs and pay offs to previous jokes. The supporting cast did an excellent job with a number of characters including a brilliantly funny maid, who would have stolen the show if the leads were not so darn mesmerizing. The play also included the best drunken sequence I've ever seen onstage, and some wonderfully intoxicated acting. Acting drunk onstage often goes wrong or off base or overboard, but the two leading men accomplished this perfectly. This scene also culminated in a kiss between the two men that has been building for the whole first two hours of the play and the tension was built perfectly in the 20 minute drunken scene. This moment ends the second act and sets up a final act that I hardly wait 10 minutes to see.

By the end of the play I was profoundly relived that I had been so wrong about it in the beginning. There was nothing bitter or mean spirited about this play. Instead it became a joyful and funny exploration about the relationships between people and the nature of art, and love. As I talked about in my last blog entry, I love relationship driven plays. The characters love for each other is what keeps me interested. The play ends on a slightly ambiguous, but hopeful note, and I wouldn't want it any other way.

Oh and because it was opening night and opening night was fancy we got to get all dressed up. We also got to got a complimentary drinks things at a nearby swanky bar. Between the free tickets and the free wine, I feel like a real theatre critic. Does this mean I have to start being mean? And critical?

Not a Love Story?

2009-05-19T12:54:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, a member of the Westmoreland board had one extra ticket to Tom Stoppard's play Rock'n'Roll. He extended an invitation of all of us in the house, but because the performance fell on a night we were already planning to have a BBQ, I was the only one in the house interested in abandoning ship mid BBQ and going to the play.

Somehow, the timing of it combined with the fact that I'd been asking people to go to another Stoppard play, Arcadia, had my housemate Noah reasonably confused. A few days before I went to see it, Noah finally figured out that the play in question was indeed Rock'n'Roll and told me he'd seen it in London (the world premier run I think). So I asked if he liked it, and if he thought I'd enjoy it and he said, "I'm not sure you'll like it. Its not a love story." WHAT?!? To which I got rather riled up and informed him that I was a theatre major and do indeed have appreciation for things that are not "love stories." To Noah's credit, when given a chance to amend his rather offensive statement, this is what he said: "Rock'n'Roll is about communism and rock and roll music, neither of which you're really that interested in." Which was much more acceptable, also, true and true. I don't have any really strong opinions about rock and roll. I like it, but no strong emotions. And communism is something I'm clearly aware of but have never really studied or researched extensively.

So imagine my surprise when I was sitting in the Studio Theatre on Saturday night waiting for the play to begin and reading the dramaturg's notes and found this: "Despite a plot spanning decades and political movements, Rock'n'Roll is ultimately a love story." HAH. I am not making that up. Take that, Noah!

No, but really I tell this story because I think the dramaturg is right. Rock'n'Roll is an epic story bounding back and forth between Prague and Oxford and chronologically spanning 20 years. It is epic, has tons of characters a lot of scope. But ultimately it comes down to relationships, and love. Lots of different kinds of love, love between parents and children, husbands and wives, unrequited love, love between friends. Its the relationships between the characters that keep the play from being an oral dissertation on the history of communism, and turns it into a really thoughtful exploration of how standing up for your ideals shapes the path of your life.

From a strictly production standpoint, this production was fantastic. It was done in the Studio Theatre's smallest space which was somehow converted into theatre in the round. Apparently its usually a regular theatre, but since I've never been in that space before, I'm not really sure how. The stage had tracks that accommodated some very quick set changes, as they were able to send a large dining room table in and out on the tracks, among other things. The floor itself was inset with lights to look like expansive flooring a fancy hotel or art gallery might have. But during the blackouts a dull glow from the floor guided the actors and the scene changes. And it was so subtly done that it took me most of the play to realize that was part of the reason the changes were so expeditious. There were also a bewildering number of lights hanging from an unmasked theatre ceiling. But again they were used fantastically and the light was always organic and called for.

While Arcadia and Rock'n'Roll are being produced by two separate theaters in DC, they are an excellent study in opposites. Its like Tom Stoppard sat down and said, "I'm going to write a new play, and I'm going to do everything the exact OPPOSITE of Arcadia. Brilliant." Except it is brilliant. Every character's role in Arcadia is carefully laid out, with hardly a small or insignificant role to be found, and I as I discussed, some vary major players who never appear onstage. Rock'n'Roll is the opposite. The cast is HUGE and people come on for single scenes. One actor appears (memorably) for only about 1 minute of the entire play. Others have single scenes and few lines. However, it feels organic rather than wasteful or excessive.

Alternately, both plays have a central conceit. Arcadia is focused on the interconnectedness of the past and present and mathematics, and love. Rock'n'Roll is about communism and, yes, love. And when it comes right down to it, the relationships, the way the characters affect each others lives, that's what captivates me.

A Six Play May (say that three times fast)

2009-05-19T09:13:00.000-07:00

Somehow a number of things have converged on me recently and its resulted in me going to see six theatrical events in the month of May alone. And this makes me totally happy. It also threatens to turn my blog entirely into a theatre review site. For now I'm going to give into that urge and continue to write about the shows I've seen. Because they've been amazing and more than worth my time to explore a little further.

The night after I saw "Arcadia" I went to see Richard Wright's "Native Son." A volunteer from Samaritan Ministry was in charge of props, so we got a group of staff together to go out to dinner and go see this play.

I had some trouble with this play. Not because it was a bad production, or because I didn't like it. It is very serious and I found the subject matter difficult. It brings up some very deep questions about race in our country. I think that my problem is that it hits a little too close to home. Not to my home, but to the home (or lack thereof) of my program participants. Right now, I'm working with people who have some very serious issues in their lives. And while I do my best, I don't have any magic tools and I can't make problems go away.

Native Son is the story of a young black man living in 1930's Chicago. He is the head of his family and has moved towards criminal activity to make the ends meet. His whole family is just one step away from starvation and homelessness. He gets a job with an affluent white family that seems to be a step in a better direction but it all goes wrong in the worst way possible in under 24 hours.

All of this was a little too much for me. I couldn't really enjoy it, even though when I take the pieces apart, the acting was good, the staging was good. It was in a black box theatre and it was in the round, which I completely love. The stage was almost totally empty and prop pieces were used effectively. However, I really couldn't get over the bleakness of it. The protagonist is not a sympathetic character. In fact, a sympathetic character is hard to find, which is completely intentional but not comfortable. So while I understand the reasons for this, I would have enjoyed this play much more last year from my comfortable college cocoon, far away form the reality of the lives I now interact with every morning.

After seeing this play, we discussed it at our staff meeting. Taking the time to break it down and discuss the themes and characters helped me some. However, connecting it even more directly to our program participants didn't help ease my unfeeling of discomfort. What is comes down to for me it that this play was very thought provoking and a little disturbing, which was probably Richard Wright's goal in the first place.

"Native Son" was play number 2 out of 6. Coming up in future blog entries, I have thoughts on a second Tom Stoppard play, "Rock and Roll", and a very last minute dash to go see "Design for Living." This Friday, I get to see Garrison Keillor doing "A Prairie Home Companion" and next Wednesday I see the official touring cast of "RENT". I'm beyond excited.

"Et in Arcadia Ego"

2009-05-07T13:21:00.000-07:00

Last week I saw the Tom Stoppard's play Arcadia at the Folger Shakespeare Theatre. I love this play. I've seen it before, and read it before. It was the main stage play at UPS when I was abroad and I always felt like I missed out on not getting to see it, or be involved with it.

So when I saw way back in the fall that it was a part of Folger's season I knew I had to go. I was even willing to go by myself. But I got my housemate, Rachel, and my coworker and partner in crime, Jalaine, to come with me. Because I orchestrated the trip, I felt a certain pressure for them to enjoy the play. I mean, clearly it wouldn't be my fault if the production wasn't good, or if they didn't enjoy it. But I found myself watching them a little during the first few scenes. Quickly it was clear they were both really enjoying it, so I could relax.

The Folger Theatre calls this part of their grounds "the Elizabethan Theatre," but I feel that its really a reconstruction of Shakespeare's theatre, the Globe. Our (very inexpensive) seats were on the balcony on the right side. At times I had to lean either forward or backward to see well, and there were a few times the action happened almost under us, but otherwise the view was very good. Our tickets were also very reasonably prices, and I should mention, that the play is still in previews. However, I saw very little that needs to improve, other than occasional and very slight stumbling over lines. But that can happen at any point really.

I think Arcadia is a fascinating show. First of all I really enjoy Tom Stoppard as a playwright. He gets dialog in a way all his own. His plays are incredibly pithy, wordy and intellectual. Yet he straddles the right side of pretentiousness through the warm and well developed characters who deliver his incredible dialog.

Arcadia is an amazing piece of theatre. It takes place in a beautiful English house, centered around the different generations of the same family, in 1809 and 1811, and in present time. Scenes alternate back and forth expeditiously and easily through the centuries. It is both a modern and a period play, which is not an easy tack. In fact, I cannot think of any other play that does that. This culminates in the most mind blowing and amazing theatrical trick ever. In the last scene the past and present are on stage simultaneously. This is accomplished through very clever staging, while both scenes unfold they are not aware of the others presence, like you you reach in and lift one scene out and the action would continue.

This works so well because it is not a trick. It is the play. The characters in the present become obsessed with discovering a particular event in the past. They grope blindly (but intelligently) toward the truth. And last night the brilliance of the play struck me when characters in the present kept exclaiming "I wasn't there." They can't know exactly what happened in the past, as much as they try. They rely on letters, and game books and logs of the garden to discover the past. However, we the audience ARE there. We get to see both. We know exactly what happens in past and get to feel like a reader of a mystery novel where we already know the ending. However, that analogy isn't completely apt. Its more like a puzzle where the audience hold some of the pieces separate. The characters spend the play looking for the answers and we get to find them just a few steps ahead.

This play is a great ensemble piece. There are a quite a few actors, but even more interestingly there are quite a few characters that are much discussed but never seen on stage. The husband in the past, the mother in the present and Lord Byron, are conspicuously absent from the actual stage to name a few. I think that this was a very interesting ad good decision. Especially a character like Lord Byron actually benefits from being larger than life, unable to grace us with his presence. It keeps him from taking over the play, although he is kept quite busy off stage.

To wrap this up, I have to say that I think that am a little notorious for being a overly gentle theater critic. In my theatre classes, I always had a kind word for every script I read, and every play we saw. Yet its not that I'm undiscerning, I'm just willing to let the small things go completely and enjoy the big picture. However, this play seems to have no small things. I enjoyed every second of it. The ending of Arcadia is one of my all time favorite theatrical moments. The play ends with two waltzes, one in the past and one in the present and ends the play with the perfect mix of melancholy and hope. That perfect feeling of the last moments of the play(I cried) stayed with me on my way home and lingered for the next few days. Which I think ultimately is what good theater does, it stays with you.

"Hey, want to meet me in Bangladesh"?

2009-05-05T20:08:00.000-07:00

On Saturday, I got a voice mail from my housemates that went like this, "Hey, so there is an Embassy open house today. Want to meet us in Bangladesh?" And clearly thats not the kind of offer you can turn down. So I hopped on a bus, went to Van Ness and arrived at the Bangladesh Embassy.

Apparently the embassy open houses are a big deal. They are ofen very crowded and lot so people turn out. Well we seemed to time it well, I didn't have to stand in line at all. My housemates were at the Bangladesh Embassy when I arrived. At the door, I got to shake hands with the Ambassador from Bangladesh, which is both random and very cool. Then I made it inside and found my housemates Rachel and Deanna, who had just got in line to get henna done on their hands. Well, I've never had henna before, and I thought, sure why not?

For those of you who don't know what henna is, it a a form of temporary body art. It is applied by a paste that is left to dry on the skin. When washed off it leaves a reddish brown "tattoo," that stays from days to apparently weeks. We had the option of having henna painted on the back of our hands. My design also goes down the back of my middle finger. The woman who applied it was very quick. We stood in line for about 15 minutes for about a minute of actual henna application. And then we had to move very carefully around the crowded embassy to avoid getting henna on anyone (or ourselves!) while it set.

However, while this was quite a bit of fun on Saturday afternoon, the moral of this story is that out of the three of us, none of us considered how a henna tattoo was going to go over with the populations we serve at work.

By Sunday night, with my tattoo showing no signs of fading, I broke out the camera and Deanna and I did the self picture thing. It was surprisingly difficult to take a picture of the back of your own right hand. And even harder to take a picture of the back of two right hands. I've included our adventures in picture taking.

So maybe I can rule out "hand model" as a possible career.

Its now Thursday, and while my henna has faded, it is still very visible. We have all gotten some great reactions. Rachel gives presentations for children, and they especially have trouble understanding, and they are very concerned when about her "tattoo" and whether its ok for her to even have a tattoo. My participants and Deanna's clients have also had some great reactions. One of my particularly boisterous participants is convinced that I am marrying an Indian man, as henna is often a part of wedding rituals. I have to admit I did not totally discourage that mistake belief, as #1, my personal life is not his business and #2, I found it really amusing. and just today, someone asked if I had a cooking accident! I did set one straight and explained it wasn't a burn.

All together, henna was a fun little adventure, but maybe I'll avoid my right hand if I get a second opportunity.

Mental Illness and the Cuckoo's Nest

2009-04-23T11:30:00.000-07:00

I went to see "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" last week at the Round House Theatre in Bethesda. This is the same theatre I saw "Eurydice" at, because of that, I had high hopes for "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." And I was not disappointed.

However, the timing on this play may not have been the greatest. Or it was excellent timing, depending on your viewpoint. Before seeing "Cukoo's Nest," I knew almost nothing about it. I'd never read Ken Kessey's novel or seen the movie, which is apparently very good.

So it wasn't until I literally was seated 10 minutes before curtain taht I realized "One Flew Over the Cukoo's Nest" takes place in a mental institution. And as fate has it, I had spent the majority of my morning trying to get a program participant in touch with mental health services. I honestly think that mental health is the hardest part of my job. I clearly have no background or training in dealing with or diagnosing it. However I am an intuitive person, and I have leaned some of the social cues that tell a person may not be mentally stable. Also, sometimes its very very clear. Such as any day when I get to work at 8:45 and a participant is standing on the porch talking to themselves, mental illness is a pretty easy guess.

So I sat there in the audience, by myself waiting for my friend, and thought, well shoooot. I stared at the set. It was simultaneously very simple and very detailed and very clearly a ward in a mental institution. And I wondered if I was going to be able to handle this, on this of all days. It was just a little close to home.

But my friend arrived with seconds to spare and the lights went out and I was thrust into the world of the play, like any good little theatre major. And it occurs to me that being in the middle of a theatrical experience is the ideal. "All the world's a stage..." and all that. Anything else is sort of just holding place. So as soon as the play started, I was fine.

This production was funny, heartfelt, and ultimately heartbreaking. Because of my lack of knowledge of the plot, I was surprised several times by some twists and turns of the plot. The whole production took place in a single location, in the ward of the institution. This is mostly a blessing I think. It means that a set designer can really go all out because nothing has to move or change. I think unit sets open up a lot of opportunities. And this set didn't break my rule about having a fancy set and not utilizing it. The set was used perfectly.

I think that I came into this play not expecting such a touching story. The characters are all well fleshed out, and there was not a weak actor in the bunch. Not one of the actors playing the patients was just going for laughs, which could have been a temptation for a lesser production. Instead, they had developed deep thoughtful characters whose character quirks felt like a part of their real life experiences and illness. Often characters in the background were in danger of stealing the show, but in a good, balanced way. The characters in this story are not black and white; there is no clear villain. Horrible things happen, but does anyone really mean to do them? The realism throughout was bleak and startling.

During and after watching this play I got a little worked up about the way we used to treat mental illness in this country and the way we do now. From what I understand about this which is not extensive, is that in the 1960's the Community Mental Heath Act was passed which resulted in deinstitutionalization, which was a factor in the biggest numbers of homelessness that our nation had ever seen. This is something we are still feeling the repercussions of now. Now in Washigton DC, there are a number of places that serve those with mental illness, but getting those who need these services connected is an unbelievable problem.

This leads me back to where I was the morning before I saw this play. I convinced the program participant I was working with to call the Access Help line and get an intake appointment. The soonest he could get in was two weeks. Now I haven't seen him in almost a week, and I don't think he's going to make his appointment tomorrow. But I'm not giving up. I won the initial round. I got him to make the call, to trust me, and to try getting connected. Maybe he'll come back next week or next month and try again. Maybe he'll remember us and his positive experience and come again in 5 months. Who knows? And at this point I did what I can so for him.

I'm glad that this play was performed. I don't always believe that theatre has to be timely or topical in order to be important. Often I get annoyed by this view of theatre. However, I do think that "One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest" had a lot to say that is applicable to what is happening in our country right now.

O...S...U!

2009-04-09T10:05:00.000-07:00

So my long winter of grad school applications, interviews and anxiety is finally over. Its officially spring, and I know that I'm going to Oregon State University next fall for their College Student Services Administration program. I've been offered an assistantship in "teaching biology TA's how to teach." And I'm pretty excited about it. Or course, I lived the first 8 years of my life in Corvallis and I really do consider myself a native Oregonian rather than a Washintonian. So I'm happy to be moving back to the northwest. The Willamette Valley is beautiful and I'm even excited about the rain.

This hasn't been an easy decision at all. I would have really loved to go to Seattle University next year. But I think in this case, everything ended up working out for the best. Most of all I've learned a lot in my grad school application process.
Here are some of the things I've learned:

1. I am a much better traveler now. Before I moved to DC I could count the number of times I'd been on an airplane practically on one hand. I don't sleep well on public transportation and I had a good degree of anxiety about flying. I think this is partially because almost every time I'd been on a plane it was by myself, and associated with a MAJOR life change of some kind. I've discovered the secret to becoming a better flier: the drowsy kind of dramomine and frequency of travel. I'm practically an old pro now.

2. Interviewing well is, like anything else, a skill that can be learned. I had interviewed only a few times before this spring. In fact during my interview to the CSSA program at Oregon State University, I was so nervous and preformed so poorly because of nerves that I was convinced I would not be accepted to the program. I've since decided that being comfortable with an interview is a combination of being prepared, and just being familiar with the structure of interviews. It shouldn't be too surprising that the assistantship I was offered was the very last of my interviews. I learned a lot about marketing myself in the process.

3. There really is a fundamental difference between the east and west coast. While this seems to be both a no brainier and not important, I've felt this a lot this year. While people are people everywhere, attitudes and standards and values are very different in the pacific northwest and in our nations capital.

4. My life view is an odd mix of living in the moment and loving the past. When I visited OSU I said, "This is it, this is where I'm going." When I visited Seattle U I said, "This is it, this is where I'm going." So I've come to think that I am very much present where I am and influenced by that. Yet this year I can't help but feel nostalgic for where I was one year ago(finishing my thesis) or two years ago (in LONDON).

5. There more I explored student affairs as a path, the more sure I am that I made the right decision.

I will end here and spare you from having to read a top 25 things I've learned. But know that I am feeling good about this and happy about my decision.

To end this post I have to say that when I moved away form Corvallis at the tender age of 8, I was very sad about it. I thought for a long time that I would move back to Corvallis and do my undergrad at OSU. Well, when college application time rolled around senior year of high school, that dream was forgotten and I didn't even apply. And now here I am.

Cherry blossoms and partying for spring

2009-04-08T10:50:00.000-07:00

I'm actually being misleading by titling this post cherry blossoms. I have not been down to the tidal basin to see the cherry blossoms yet. I know this is a big deal. However, I have seen the blossoms in all there glory elsewhere in the city. And I did go to the cherry blossom parade on Saturday.

Recently, I've decided I need more friends. While I love my housemates dearly, they are not always around. And it would be nice to have some people I feel comfortable calling to hang out with.

So when I got invitations to watch the cherry blossom parade and to go to a party I jumped at the chances. And coincidently this led me to stand in front of my house on Saturday waiting for the bus at both 8 am and 8 pm.

In the morning I took the metro downtown. It was completely packed. It was almost as bad as riding the metro on inauguration weekend. I met my friend by the American History Museum. He and his housemates had gotten there only a few minutes earlier than I had, but they had staked out a space on the curb. So we got to sit for 2 and a half hours, instead of standing, which was great. It was a clear morning with a blue sky, and not too cold, but it was very windy. This both chilled us, and made some of the poor parade walkers banners very hard to hold up.

This was really my first parade experience outside of the parade in Walla Walla's fair. I will say it was very different than that. There were many marching bands. One of them was from a city in Washington state I'm pretty sure is fictional as I've never heard of it. My friend told me that it was not really my place to call another city imiganiary, as he is pretty sure Walla Walla doesn't exist.

Other cool things in the parade were some very old cars, and even Alex Trebek as the grand marshal. All that means is that he sat on top of an old convertible and waived! Some of my highlights were a unicycle preforming group (which is my new life ambition, rehearsals start on monday), a military marching band and drill team, and some girls in amazing Scarlet O'Hara dresses.

Like any parade, people lined up to watch on either side of the street. About 50 yards from us, there was a cross walk that people were allowed to cross the street through. However, people did not want to cross at the cross walk, but instead tried to cross in the middle of the road, which was pretty inconsiderate and a little rude. So the poor police men who were crowd control, would chase the illegal street crosses down. About half way through the parade, they started catching people and sending them back to the side of the street they started on. While the police men couldn't have enjoyed this, the crowd around us would cheer when someone was caught and sent back. It was a good secondary source of entertainment.

After the parade we went to Five Guys, which is a DC burger institution. I'd never been before, and loooove hamburgers. It was pretty good, I will be back.
I went home, too a lovely long nap and then went to my coworkers party. She is also in a volunteer corps, and lives in a beautiful house with a total of 7 women. I bet my housemate Noah is thanking his stars he only lives with 4 women. It was a nice party, but I couldn't stay long as I wanted to make sure I caught the last bus home from Dupont.

All together I had a very lovely spring Saturday, and did feel like I made some connections on the making new friends front.

A Rambling Update!

2009-04-03T07:44:00.001-07:00

So I've been MIA for the month of March. I've been having a crazy time (both good and bad).

So here are some thoughts, facts and musings. First of all I've been applying to grad school for Student Affairs for the last few months. Since before Christmas, this has been one of my top priorities. However, I need to step back and say that one of my problems with this blog is finding the balance of putting your ambitions and dreams on the interwebs for anyone to read. This might actually be a delusion on my part, and maybe everyone who actually reads this does already know the excruciating details of my life and grad school search. I'm not sure. But I was keeping this process quiet until I was pretty sure about a positive outcome.

Anyway I've been accepted into two grad programs in the northwest and am trying to figure out the finical situation. I'll have some kind of decision in the next few weeks. I have in fact flown back and forth across the country twice during last month. The end of February I trekked to Corvallis Oregon to interview at Oregon State University. It was nice to see the city of my birth as an adult. The formerly white house I grew up in has now been painted lavender. Walking by it was surreal. But dAd, don't you worry, the picket fence you build MoM with the heart shaped cutouts is still in tact. And still white. So that's good at least.

Also I've learned that I find it easy to write when I'm excited, and difficult when I'm upset. So yeah, there have been some things going on that are less than stellar. I think I'll be able to write about some of them in the near future, including the effects of a very big staff change up at my work.

I few weeks after I visited Corvallis I flew to Seattle to hang out in Tacoma at UPS and interview at Seattle University. This was a rousing success and a great little vacation. This is the first time I've seen my college friends (or my alma mater) since July. So it was great to reconnect with people. Its good to see that the 4 years I spend making relationships were put to good use as I have many wonderful friends in the Seattle/Tacoma area.

For me, it was good to come back to the place that was home for so long. I found that it's good to really know that my life isn't going on there, just with out me. Things change, people grow and move on. But it was great to see all the people I love and miss and remind myself why I love them.

It was also nice to go back and see a little bit of my legacy. The months before I graduated and left the theatre department I thought a little about other grads and the stories/impact they've left behind. Part of the beauty of being in the theatre department is learning with and from those who've come before you. I would not have been able to tell you my freshman year that my legacy would be Dr. Wallace in "Beyond Therapy," yelling naughty words on stage and talking to a stuffed animal. Or that people are still saying I was the best part of my thesis (umm, if anyone else involved with Beyond Therapy reads this, I love you).

Now I'm back in good old Washington, DC. Its now officially spring, and suddenly warm. Its Cherry Blossom time. Westmoreland is celebrating 60 years on the Circle. Its also time for the volunteer to host next years prospective Westmoreland Volunteers.

I think I have most of the things that are bothering me mostly under control. Those of you I've been leaning on more than usual recently, thank you. Life comes in cycles, I think, and things are beginning to look up.

Not Orpheus but Eurydice

2009-02-26T19:41:00.000-08:00

Last night, the housemates and I were sponsored by a volunteer corps board member to go see the play "Eurydice" at the Roundhouse Theater in Bethesda. I had determined that I wanted to go see this play some time ago. Its at a theatre called the roundhouse so I assumed (wrongly) that it would be theatre in the round. Its based on a Greek myth, and its by a contemporary female playwright. These are all things I'm very interested in. After a conversation at coffee hour, a very kind board member bought us 5 tickets to go see "Eurydice." Honestly, I was a little surprised that everyone wanted to go. Every time I've brought up theatre in DC, its been met with a lukewarm response. This is OK. I'm used to my "non-theatre" friends not always wanting to go see plays with me. In fact, if i really want to see something I will go by myself.

I decided last night that I've become a theatre snob. I had this feeling that I was the only one of the group who could really enjoy the play. This is totally untrue. Just because theatre is my chosen artistic medium, doesn't mean that people who haven't spent hundreds of hours studying theatre can't enjoy a play! Just because the housemates couldn't tell me what type of stage it was doesn't mean they can't understand what is happening on stage. For those of you who are curious, I guess you'd call this stage a non-proscenium modified thrust. Not in fact theatre in the round at all, but the audience was almost on 3/4ths. But you don't need to know any of that to enjoy it.

So to move on the storyline, the myth of Orpheus, what do we know about it? Orpheus is an epic story. Countless plays, and operas have been written about it, it echoes everywhere. It may not quite be common usage now, but I think it has been in the past. While I know the basic myth, it is not one of my favorites and I've never really studied it in depth. Before seeing the play I might have told you something like this:
Orpheus is a musician, a maker of beautiful music. On his wedding day his bride, Eurydice, dies. His love for her takes him to the underworld to beg for her back from Hades. He plays Hades beautiful music and for once, Hades shows mercy and strikes a bargain: Orpheus can have Eurydice back if he can lead her out of the underworld with out looking back, without seeing her. Orpheus almost makes it to the surface with Eurydice, but looks back to make sure she is there and loses her to death. They are not reunited until Orpheus dies, many years later.

This is what I knew going in. And look at my description. The story is all about Orpheus. And the different versions are almost always titled "Orpheus." This story is about him. However, this play is really about her. In the mythology, Eurydice is a non character. Not that most women in greek mythology get wonderful treatment, but I think it would be difficult to find one less developed as a character or more passive. We have some wonderful women, and some who are slighted. Even Helen is a strong presence "the face that launched a thousand ships", though she hardly gets to speak a word. Odysseus's patient Penelope waits at home for 20 years for her husbands return but is wily enough to trick her suitors. What does Eurydice do? She dies. Then she walks behind her husband. That's it.

To make a story centered around Eurydice is ambitious. And wonderful. I thought it was a great play and a fantastic production. The playwright did a good job navigating the original myths while making some additions. Eurydice is given a father who has been in the underworld for years, and is there to meet her when she dies. Eurydice is finally given a personality and the love between Eurydice and Orpheus seems very strong and reciprocal. They actually seem to have a connection that could conquer death. The Eurydice and Orpheus of this play could go on anyone's list of star crossed lovers.

The most interesting change is that in this play, Hades himself is obsessed with Eurydice; he actually causes her death and wants to make her queen of the underworld. This is not a part of the original myth. It gives some weight to the story. It presents an actual villain. Eurydice, instead of being bitten by a snake on her wedding day, is actually stolen by death. Orpheus is then trying to right a wrong of the universe, not just wildly mourning a woman who died too young, but one who shouldn't have died at all.

I will move on and discuss some of the particulars of this production. I realized last night that apparently I have a few rules for theatre. One of my rules is that if you have an elaborate set, you better use it. Another rule is: if you have a real body of water on stage, someone better get submerged in it! The production did both of these things.

I don't like huge, expensive set pieces that are used only once. I once saw a play that had the capability to revolve their entire set to reveal an alley way, and they moved the whole set for a two minute dream sequence. Then it was back to normal and never used again. I thought that was ridiculous. I'm not interested in how big or gorgeous your set is. I'm interested in how you it. This production's use of their set was very pleasing.They had a reasonably complicated set, but used it all to satisfaction. The back and forth movement between the underworld and the real world was done through a complicated scaffolding system, extensive lighting and some draped fabric.

The set itself was a thrust stage built to look like a shore. A stream ran down the middle of the stage, and the very front of the stage was water, with a sort of ledge to keep it from running into the audience. This water turned out to be shallow, maybe a foot deep. However three was some kind of trap door in the water that allowed a character to be completely emerged to great effect. I was honesty surprised by the technical capabilities of this show, and this theatre. They had several trap doors. They dropped things from the catwalk. At one point they showered balloons form "heaven" and managed to get every single one of them in the water. They even had a elevator into Hades, that either worked, or they were very clever in the sound and lighting to imitate a working elevator. I think it must be the latter, but it was very convincing.

I have been considering the concept of "knowing" a story for several days now. I went into this production knowing the myth. One of my housemates refused to be told the myth, preferring not to know anything before she saw the production. Is the the theatre major in me who wants to know the story? Why do we want to read a play before we see it? What does that do for you the audience member?

Interestingly, I am going to see a production of the Checkov play "Uncle Vanya" next week when I'm in Tacoma. I talked to a friend who is in the production and I asked if I should read the play before I come to see it. He told me no, that it was not necessary to my enjoyment for me to know the play. So where does this idea come from? In Shakespeare's day, his whole audience would have know the plot of most of his plays. Almost all of them come from other sources that would have been familiar to Shakespeare's audience. And today the popular Shakespeare plays are in our vernacular. It would be difficult to walk into Hamlet without knowing "to be or not to be" and how it ends. So how does this translate to "Eurydice?" Well I think it doesn't really matter. I got something from know the mythology, but did my housemate loose anything by not knowing? I don't think she did.

So to conclude this very very long ramble on theatre. I loved this play. I thought the way they incorporated the themes of music and water (and actual music and water) were well done. The production values were amazing and the ending was beautiful, surprising and heartbreaking (not to mention myth breaking).

What's Beyond These Hills?

2009-02-04T07:32:00.000-08:00

I went on a retreat this weekend with my housemates and the volunteer corps board. The whole thing was a lot of fun. It marked my first time in Delaware and my first trip to the beach in a year(!) However it was a little too cold to hang out on the beach, which was a disappointment, as I'm borderline obsessed with the ocean.

While there are a lot of things I could say about the retreat, I have some thoughts about a reflection activity we did on Saturday night. Noah and Deanna very thoughtfully created it and led it. They asked the members of the board to bring a story, a song that affected them, or an "artifact" about a time in their life when they were at a crossroads. A time when they had to make decisions about their future. When they had been where we are now.

And for our part we brought something about how we feel right now. Rachel brought a passage from a book that inspired her to change the world. Personally I think Rachel has been saving the world since she was a toddler, but this book was important in her journey.

But interestingly the other 4 of us brought songs. Mine was Rufus Wainwright's "I Don't Know What it is." Deanna, Noah, and Jen brought songs by Wilco, Neil Young, and Ani Defranco. And while these 4 artists couldn't be more dissimilar musically and in their genres, the songs all have parallel messages. One song says "the world owes us nothing and we owe earth other the world." Perfect. All of the messages were truly very similar. While we are an intentional community, its still amazing to see how closely our attitudes about where we are in life sometimes line up.

Here are lyrics from two of the songs we shared:
"If you feel like singing a song
And you want other people to sing along,
Just sing what you feel,
Don't let anyone say it's wrong" -Wilco

"I don't know what it is
But you got to do it
I don't know where to go
But you got to be there
I don't know where to fall
But I know that its comfortable where
I don't know where it is"-Rufus Wainwright

I have to say that I am making some of this post from this point on intentionally vague. I think this night of sharing and reflection is a little bit "What happens in Vegas..." The reason it was so powerful is that people were willing to dig deep and share. The board really reached into their history and found moments where they made changes or metaphorically (or literally) came to the edge of a cliff. So with out violating anyone's privacy or naming names (sorry housemates) I want to talk about some thoughts I left this activity with.

One man talked about several choices he has made in his life. He never knew exactly where he wanted to go, and to a certain extent things lined up and fell onto his lap. However the thing that stuck with me is that while he is happy with his life, he said "you may not know what you want until you are 70 and the choices are made." Somehow, instead of that making life feel futile, it seems liberating. The right choice is not always clear. And maybe the path is only illuminated when you are literally standing at the end of it.

For others, good things came to them later in life. So if the first path doesn't turn out the way you imagined, try again. My personal favorite decision making process: one man decided to go swimming instead of getting in his car to drive to California to begin law school. And now he's very happily a doctor.

For one woman, her personal desire to be a teacher lined up with what society expected of her: be a teacher. Alternately, another was willing to put everything on the line protesting the Vietnam War. Hold strong to what you believe. Really truly.

To end this post and the night, a woman told a story. A little girl from the South has never been outside of her small town. She sits on the porch with her grandfather and asks him, "What's beyond these hills?" Every time he tells her, "Open doors."

So where do we go from here? Halfway done with our volunteer year, what is next? How do I make these choices?

What's beyond these hills? Open doors.

the ball

2009-02-02T07:11:00.000-08:00

I thought I was going to avoid talking about the ball, just slip it past you clever readers. But no, I was called out about it (thanks Clay) so here I go.

First of all, I may have misrepresented/not explained myself on this. The ball I went to was definitely not an official inaugural ball. We tried to get tickets to the youth ball, where Obama made an appearance, but couldn't get tickets. Westmoreland Church had decided to have their own Ball. There was food, and wine and live music. And they paid for our tickets which made it both affordable and convenient. The proximity of the church to our house sweetened the deal even further.

After getting home from Inauguration itself I took a nap and literally had to drag myself out of sleep and into the shower to go to the ball. But once I was awake, it seemed like the best of all deals. They provided food, so we didn't have to cook dinner, which is always a plus. The ball was "black tie suggested." The five of us dressed more like we were going to a cocktail party, and were not out of place at all.

The room where we usually have coffee hour was decorated beautifully for the event. There were tables with assigned seating and they put is in pairs at different tables. I think I haven't mentioned that Rachel's parents were visiting and they went to the ball with us, which was lot of fun. A good number of the members of the volunteer board were present, and many other people that I knew from going to church. It ended up being a very enjoyable night. I couldn't manage to get food or a drink for the first 40 minutes I was there because people kept wanting to talk to me.

After people ate, the structure relaxed a bit and we table hopped and mingled with each other and the rest of the attendees. By about 10:30 I was ready to pass out, so most of my house headed home. It ended up being a perfect way to wrap up a crazy inauguration weekend.

the big day (almost two weeks later)

2009-02-01T16:37:00.000-08:00

Here it is. The long awaited report of Inauguration Day! In hind sight, we had a charmed experience. For days afterword, we heard about all the people with tickets who were turned away. Or even worse, the people who were stuck in the tunnels for hours. None of that happened to us.

Instead, we woke up at about 8 and went around the corner from the place we were staying to get a cup of coffee and a muffin. The coffee shop literally didn't have a line, even though there were thousands of people in the vicinity. The single mindedness of the crowd was astounding. Everyone near us had tickets, and they were all focused on getting to their designated standing area. However, we are heavily addicted to coffee. Our first goal was caffeine. And once we got it, we were very happy girls indeed.

Deanna and I separated from the friends we stayed with. They had silver tickets, and we had purple. Purple tickets were supposedly for "dignitaries." At least that's what NPR had been reporting. But not really how we experienced it.

We had to walk about 15 minutes to get to the gate we could enter at. Because of where we started and the tickets we had, we were swimming upstream. However, this was the moment that the excitement of the whole weekend caught up to me. I was overwhelmed with a feeling of excitement and contentment. I had taken off my gloves and was warming my fingers with my coffee. I was perfectly content with my world. The excitement of the crowd was contagious. Really the whole weekend, people were amazingly friendly and polite. Especially for that many people, and especially for Washington DC.

When we found our gate, we had to wait in line to get in. This was maybe the one rough part of the process. It was a little unclear what gate we were supposed to be at, and there were people of other ticket colors mixed in with our line. Deanna and I talked about this afterword, and we are not really sure what we did right to get in. People who were there hours earlier than we were didn't make it. So somehow we just managed to be at the right gate at a good time. There was a little anxiety from the people around us at this stage. At this point, Deanna and I started singing "love, love, love" and the people around us joined in for "love is all you need." The Beatles are always good for a sing-a-long.

One they opened our gate, and we had to go through security. And something happened that puzzles me still. I had a sandwich, a granola bar and two apples in my bag. The security guard confiscated one apple. So either it take two apples to make a bomb, or they did such a poor job searching my bag that they missed the second apple. Not exactly confidence inspiring either way. So I got one apple into the inauguration, one apple out of inauguration and ate it for lunch the next day at work.

Once we were in, we scouted out a good spot to stand. Again, we made friends with the people around us, everyone was truly happy to be there. We had a group conversation about who we "hustled" to get tickets in the purple section. And I must say, thank you Washington state, that was truly the easiest hustling I've ever done.

So we got to our place at a little before 10 am, maybe. And the musical entertainment started at 10. We spent the next hour and a half singing songs, playing word games with each other, chatting up the people around us, and occasionally jumping up and down out of sheer excitement.
Honestly, the inauguration ceremony itself is a bit of a blur. We couldn't actually see very well. I could see the gumbo tron pretty well on my tiptoes. Deanna is a little shorter and had some trouble seeing. When the president and his party started entering the area, we could see them on the screen. They got huge cheers and applause. This was the third time that I have been able to see Barack Obama speak in public, which is something I honestly never dreamed I would get to experience. I think the actual swearing in was my favorite part. That is truly the moment that I will be glad I was present for.

After the inaugural address (which I had to watch at home later to really be able to concentrate on) people started to leave. This was the point of the day when I sort of went limp. I was ready for the weekend to be over, but getting home was going to be a monumental challenge. So we went back to the apartment we'd slept at and retrieved our stuff. We drank hot chocolate and waited a few hours before braving the journey home. I was home and in my bed for a nap by 5 pm. I took an hour nap, and got ready for the inaugural ball at Westmoreland Church.

Monday, January 19th

2009-01-25T13:48:00.000-08:00

I intended Monday, the day before inauguration, to be a day of rest. While Obama declared it a day of service, I decided to take it as a day off from service. I had both Monday and Tuesday off from work. And it only occurs to me now as I write this, that in the rest of the United States real life did not shut down for four days. Only for the couple of million people in Washington for this event did we enter this weird limbo that only inauguration mattered. Although, I was surprised by the number of DC residents not taking part in inauguration festivities. However, it was bitterly cold and crowed all weekend, and I do understand that is not everyone's idea of a fun time.

While I did not volunteer in any way shape or from, my day was still not a day of rest. I got to sleep in to a pretty good hour (which I'm not going to admit to) and then Deanna and I went and did the speediest of all grocery shopping trips. Shopping for 5 adults is never exactly quick and easy, but we got it done.

Then I went down to my congresswoman's office to pick up my tickets! Somehow, I hadn't really thought this through, and didn't realize it would be an adventure. Simply getting down there is a feat from Maryland. And since there was an 8 hour window to pick up the tickets, I hadn't even considered how many other people would be doing the same.

I took the metro to Capital South, and when I got there, there were huge lines in front of every house office building. I had to stand outside for an hour, which was not terrible. But I had not dressed to be outside for long periods of time, and this was the coldest I felt all weekend, even though it was the shortest time outside.

I only realized that I was having an adventure came when a man came out of the building and asked who in line was from Washington State. When I identified myself (yeah Walla Walla!) he then asked me if I wanted him to have my tickets sent out of if I wanted to wait to get inside and get to meet the Congresswoman, Cathy McMorris Rogers. I decided that getting to go inside was pretty exciting, so I waited.

And it was neat to get to go inside the building and meet my congresswoman. I even got to talk to her briefly and she was quite nice. The man I'd met outside took a picture of me with her with their camera. It only occurred to me on the way home that I should have asked for one with my own camera! Sorry dAd.

I went home and made dinner with my housemate Jen. It was nice to get to relax a little in our house. Then we went back to Capital South to meet Deanna and her boyfriend Joe. We had made arrangements to stay the night with a friend of Joe's who lived literally 3 blocks from where we needed to go in the morning.

So we went out for drinks at the Capital Lounge, which was not quiet by any means, but not nearly as crowded as it might have been. I think that people got scared away by some of the press about how crazy the weekend would be. The best part of this was that Jen and I had accidentally on purpose had worn matching Obama shirts. And to make it even better the shirts are grey, blue and red and I wore a blue cardigan and she wore a red one. So as we were leaving these very intoxicated women came up to me and asked were the shirts were from. They were convinced that Sheryl Crow had been wearing the same shirt at the concert on Sunday. While I had noticed she was wearing an Obama shirt, I'm not entirely convinced it was this MoveOn.Org shirt she was wearing. But I got a kick out of these drunken ladies.

After this excitement, we went back to the friends apartment to go to sleep. At this point I was mostly exhausted and ready to rest up for the big event.

From Lincoln to Obama

2009-01-19T16:59:00.000-08:00

Yesterday my inauguration weekend got off to an official start with the kick off concert on the mall. The concert started at 2:30. We were told that the gates would open at 8 am, and that we were expecting a million people. We decided that we should leave the house at 7 am and camp out all day. However, 6 am comes a little early when you are at a party at another volunteer corps house until 1:30. So we woke up at 8, had a big breakfast and packed lunches, peanut butter sandwiches, apples and granola bars. We took the metro to Farragut and walked. I thought getting there might be awful. But the metro was not very busy and the walk was not either. We got there a little after 10, I think. We decided to go ahead and sit down the closest we could get and wait for the concert to start. We brought books and newspapers. Then we made friends with the people on blankets around us and they played word games with us. We also protected our little patch of ground from people trying to sneak in.

The wait was a little long and a little cold but not bad. I found myself wishing I were wearing maybel one more layer. The only bad part of the experience was when the first speaker appeared on stage and the crowds behind us rushed forward. We were sitting and had to jump and run to not get trampled. But we got up and managed to all stay together.

The concert was great. It was structured so that a famous person would do a reading, and then someone would sing. The readings of speeches were mostly reflections on historical events, and presidents. I liked this. It seemed like a good way to keep the past in mind as we move into the future.

The variety of performers and presenters was amazing. I got to see people I never thought I would see live, like Usher and Shakira. Singing together. This is really funny, but as a kid I loved Garth Brooks, (and still do) so getting to see him sing "Miss American Pie" and "We Shall be Free" was great. Other highlights I also loved getting to see Tom Hanks do a dramatic reading. And of course, the grand finale, Beyonce, was great.

I just asked my housemate Jen what her favorite part of the concert was and she said it was watching the crowd go wild for Obama. There were huge celebrities there and they would get some applause Tom Hanks got some cheers, so did Jack Black and Samuel L Jackson. But they showed Obama's face on the jumbotron for just seconds and he got monstrous applause every time. And that was really cool to experience. And I agree with Jen, seeing that our president creates this response is in fact spectacular.

After the concert there were huge numbers of people spilling onto the streets. I hadn't actually realized how far forward we where until we started to leave and saw thousands and thousands of people behind us. We walked to Dupont and after searching and searching for a restaurant, we ended up having Chipotle. Deanna and I went home and the others stayed out for a beer. I then went to bed and slept for 12 hours, which was wonderful.

And here we go!

2009-01-15T07:39:00.000-08:00

I'm back in DC after a busy few weeks. I spent two of them at home in Walla Walla with the family for Christmas. It was incredibly snowy. I got to drive the (my) little white tempo for a total of 3 days of my 14 day visit. Highlights of this visit include relatives braving the snow to come to us on Christmas Eve, making a ton of jewelry with the dAd, and seeing my little cousins.

It seems that over the last few years my big sis Carolyn has taken a liking to waking me on Christmas morning by climbing into bed with me and bouncing. So imagine my happy surprise when I was woken by the MoM with a cup of coffee and Carolyn on the phone from Vienna! I got to see some wonderful Walla Walla friends (Kate!) and unfortunately missed connections with others. I even had wonderful Thai food with the surrogate grandparents.

I came back to DC and went back to work for two days. Then got all four of my wisdom teeth yanked out of my head. This is an ordeal that I may have been a little bit of a baby about, and am still recovering from.

And all of this leads up to INAUGURATION! DC is going crazy. The housemates and I are working out our plans for the most packed four day weekend ever. Currently I think we are going to a party on Saturday, the kick off concert on Sunday ( Bruce Springstein! Beyonce!) the crazyness that will be Tuesday and an inaugural ball at Westmoreland Tuesday night. I was somehow lucky enough to get tickets to the inauguration from my representative (thank you Eastern Washington). I'm taking Deanna and she is excited enough about the inauguration for a whole city block. We can hardly contain our excitement.

I'm back at work this week. And other than a sense of excitement, the city seems to be functioning normally. It seems that the influx of people will begin in earnest tomorrow. I'm expecting to spend most of my weekend on public transportation. I hope that several more posts about inauguration will be welcome, because I'm just getting started!

Hitting Parties 4, 5, and 6 out of the Park

2008-12-21T17:08:00.000-08:00

So I'm at home in Walla Walla. And I thought I'd put the blog to rest, as I assume a large percentage of my audience is now in a stone's throw distance from me. But the MoM and the dAd have both been asking for write up the rest of my holiday parties. I think I'm about ready to be done writing about parties (and you might be done reading about them) so here it goes.

Party number 4 was a Christmas tree decorating party at the volunteer house sponsored by the volunteer corps board. Which in theory is perfect. A member of the board took Deanna and me to pick out a tree on Saturday morning. Deanna has never done this before, so we were both excited. We picked out a lovely tree and on Sunday the board came over to help us decorate it. and they brought us food, drinks, and even presents!

And this would have been perfect had I not woken up on Sunday morning with a terrible cold. So I drugged myself with cold meds, and propped myself up on the couch and let people come to visit me and my pile of Kleenex or leave me be for fear of germs. All in all a lovely party, but I would have enjoyed it much more if I had not felt miserable.

Party number five was the Samaritan Ministry staff party. There was a lot of great food, some of my favorite people, and the big event: a white elephant gift exchange. It was one of those things where everyone brings wrapped gifts and you are allowed to unwrap a gift, or steal an already open one. Gifts could only be stolen three times before they are retired. Well you know that its going to be a good name when "you are in fact allowed to steal from a nun" is a rule that actually have to be articulated!

My supervisor had given me and the other interns a gifts of a bottle of wine each. And it occurred to me part way through the gift exchange that I should try to see how many bottles of wine I could go home from work with, but this strategy failed. However, I was very successful in my thefts in the search for the perfect gift. I ended up with a "tranquility fountain" foe my desk and I was very satisfied. However, I did have to take the bus home from DuPont circle with a bottle of wine, a tranquility fountain and a large tray of vegetables. That was an interesting bus ride.

The final Christmas season party I will write about was at the home of a couple on the volunteer corps board. It was a wonderful party. They even loaned us their own car so we could drive ourselves there! When we arrived at the party, the house was full of people we had never met, and we were easily the youngest people present. But very quickly the other young adults present (they work with the hostess) found us and we held court on the porch, letting people come to us. This ended up being a very successful party strategy, and we even met a few members of Westmoreland church we'd never encountered before, by sitting still and letting them come to us.

And this wraps up my party write ups. If I went to any other parties, I'm not telling!!!

Whatever you do, don't say Christmas

2008-12-19T07:24:00.000-08:00

Party number three was "organized" by me. I put it that way, because there really wasn't a ton for me to organize. It was the Christmas party for our single participants, or more its the opposite of the family party. Its for participants who don't have small children.
My task was creating fliers, signing up participants, decorating the office and organizing how the party would actually flow.

I set up a fake Christmas tree. My supervisor picked up food from Boston Market. We had presents and gift cards and Christmas Music. I had the participants play a game. When they arrived they got a ribbon to pin to their shirt and a number for the gift give away.

The pins were for a game we played. The game was that I set a secret word: "Christmas." If you catch someone saying Christmas you get to take their pin. If you said Christmas you lost your pin. The person with the most pins at the end got an extra gift card. And luckily for me, they really got into the game. They spent the party tricking each other into saying it.

The participants wanted me to be able to play, so they decided I could say the word once, every time I had to explain it to latecomers. One man even tried to trick me into saying it as I right after I finished explaining the rules of the game.

The gift giving part of the party went pretty smoothly. We had some nice things to give out, and I think people were happy. The food was good, and there was a good amount of it. One of the associate caseworkers even brought his guitar in and sang Christmas carols. This created the funniest part of the party. Imagine singing the "Twelve Days of Christmas" with a room full of people refusing to say the word Christmas! It was great. The winner had about 12 pins displayed proudly in a column on his jacket by the end of the party.

But the best and most unexpected part for me, was that a couple of participants asked to say a few words. And they made us all cry, telling us how much Samaritan Ministry means to them and how thankful they are. It was a very sweet ending to a funny party.

Stalking the Beastie Boys

2008-12-17T10:10:00.000-08:00

As it turns out, party number two was a completely different scene. Bread for the City, Deanna's employer, got invited as a guest organization to a record company's swanky Christmas party. And the employee's who are part of volunteer corps got to invite their entire houses. Which meant that not only did Deanna get to invite us, but all of our favorite volunteer corps friends were there also. We've been hanging out with other volunteer corps a lot. They are awesome people and none of us have any money, so having them all at this (free) party was great.

I had already made plans with my sisters friend Maryam to got to coffee before the party. We ended up having pizza at this great place in Dupont. It has huge slices of pizza and no chairs, only counters to stand at. As it was raining outside, we stood. I had a great time with Maryam and then I was off to meet my housemates at the recording studio.

It was great, I had my name on a list and everything. That may be a first in my life! My housemates were there when I arrived, so Jen met me at the elevator, which was useful, as I would have never found them otherwise. Jen took me on a little tour, which basically consisted of wondering around their office, looking at platinum records they had produced that were hanging on the wall.

So we joined my housemates. And Deanna’s boyfriend, Joe, told me (as a form of greeting) that he thought the two men over by the coat check, were in fact the Beastie Boys. Which was very logical, as one of them was the DJ for the second stage of the party over at the 930 Club in U Street.

So I accompanied Rachel on a reconnaissance mission, AKA we stalked the Beastie Boys. We approached the target and saw the two suspects. At this point I realized that I am the worst spy ever. I have essentially no idea what the Beastie Boys look like. I know their music a little bit, and I’m aware of who they are, but I’m not sure I’ve ever seen them in any from of visual media. Definitely not at any other coat checks. So the result of the mission: well, no idea. I think so. Rachel and Joe think yes. Maybe not my finest celebrity stalking moment.

Shortly after this they started flashing the lights at us, prompting us the make the mass voyage over to the 930 Club. On the way we wondered through an adorable little Christmas Street Fair set up near Metro Center. I felt like I’d accidentally wandered into Santa's Village.

So at the 930 Club we had to stand in line, have our names on yet another list and show our ID about 7 times. But we got in and were able to dump our coats, which was great, as they really would have interfered with the crazy person dancing we then initiated. This was the best part of the night. All out vol corps friends were there, and we hung out and danced, and were ridiculous and silly.

At 10 (woah party animals) the free portion of the night was done, and so were we. We traveled back to there metro, where we almost lost Noah to the allure of a carry out place boasting all kinds of ethnic foods, which frankly scared me.

Then we went home (after taking a little nap on the metro), and tried unsuccessfully to order pizza. Finally we put a frozen pizza in the oven and went to bed. This last portion of the evening took place in reality with a lot more boisterous voices and a lot of (playful) yelling at each other, but all that will benefit from not being overly documented. Or to the contrary, sometimes I think we would be a captivating reality show.

My Friend, Santa Claus

2008-12-12T18:41:00.000-08:00

So this has been a crazy week for me. I have attended (or thrown) but also a total of five (5!) Christmas Parties and counting.

I'm going to go back to a week and a half ago, Sunday the 7th and start with party number one.
Party number one was the family Christmas part for our program participants and their children. This was really neat. We joined up with one of our Partner Parishes and another organization to throw a party with lots of food, crafts, and a room downstairs where the parents could pick out presents for their children. The really cool thing about the way this was organized was that there were many volunteers at the craft tables making really neat things with the kids. What this meant was that the parents could leave their children doing a craft and go pick out a gift for them, so it would be a surprise!

My supervisor had been planning this party for months and I think it went really well. 40 families came, which apparently is fewer than usual, but not unsuccessful by any means.
I spent the first hour of the party writing peoples names on bags that they could put their coats in. Not the most satisfying of activities.

But I spent the second hour of the party hanging out with the guy playing Santa Claus. Apparently this man is a district attorney who has been coming to the party for years playing Santa Claus. I got to be the photographer. Which meant I got to chat with him until a child came up to have their picture taken. This happened in a lot of different ways. Some kids had to be dragged up. Some ran up on their own. One very cute little girl came up to show Santa the craft as she was leaving. She said, "I love you Santa." Which was completely adorable. A couple of times I had to take the picture before the kid started screaming. One mother even handed me her tiny 4 month old baby to give to Santa Clause! Talk about trusting. And adorable.

The only negative part of this is it took me a grand total of 4 hours to get to the party and back. Which effectively meant it took up my entire Sunday. But it was a good time, and I'm happy to have been a part of it.

If Music be the Food of Love...

2008-12-11T10:40:00.000-08:00

On Monday, I saw my 2nd play in DC. It feels a little unbelievable that I've been here for over 3 months and have only seen 2 plays. But priorities change. And theatre is an expensive habit. Inversely finding ways to make it less expensive is time consuming.

So I went to see Twelfth Night at Shakespeare Theatre Company with a group of other volunteers. So first of all I need to explain my personal history with the play Twelfth Night. It was the third play (out of 35) that I saw when I studied abroad in London my junior year. I was going for my Shakespeare class. I had been given the script something like the day before and requested to read it. Needless to say, I'd didn't get it all read before I went to the play. And I didn't expect this production of a Shakespeare play I didn't know to become my most perfect theatre going experience. I fell in love with the production, and with the play itself. Twelfth Night may be my favorite Shakespeare play.

And last year, I saw a production of it in Seattle that I liked enough, but didn't love. And I thought maybe my love for Twelfth Night was always going to stay with that elusive perfect night of theatre.

So I'm not entirely sure what my expectations for Monday night were. It was opening night. We got 10 dollar tickets for the third row, which ended up being perfect. The theatre itself was amazing. It was a proscenium stage, which isn't always my favorite, but the theatre was new, had great capabilities and I doubt there was a bad seat in the house. Talk about good design of a theatre space.

Every time I go see a play, I try to take a little time to think about why I liked it or not. What makes theatre "Good?" Taste is so subjective. You can think a play had excellent actors, set, costume and production values and not enjoy it at all. What is a barometer of good theatre?
So this is all building up to the fact that I adored this production of Twelfth Night, almost as much as the elusive London production.

The acting was wonderful. The woman who played Viola made a delightful boy. She had a quality sort of reminiscent of Julie Andrews, and it was charming.

This production also made a lot of sense. The actors seemed to understand every word they were saying and this leads to the audience feeling like they are not even speaking in verse. It honestly can feel like modern English. Although to be fair, I know the play pretty well, to the point where I can anticipate jokes, so it would be a very bad sign indeed if I couldn't understand what they were saying.

But more than just making the language accessible, they made sense of a few plot things that don't always follow. The scene where Olivia and Viola meet for the first time, was played with five women dressed identically and veiled, kneeling in prayer. So when Viola cannot tell who is the lady of the house, it makes sense! I've seen this played with just Viola, Olivia and a Maria who is clearly a servant, and the effect was unintentionally goofy.

I think one of the reasons I like Twelfth Night so much is that the characters find themselves in difficult positions not because they are unlikable jerks, or unintelligent, but because of something inescapably human: death. Viola and Olivia are both mourning the death of a brother. And the whole main plot rotates around this sorrow. It steeps the play in a kind of melancholy of longing and also of unrequited love. Viola finds herself in a very dangerous position. She has crashed on a new land, and believes her brother is dead. She seems to have some money but no family, connections or prospects. So she does something both logical and brave: dresses as a boy and goes to work for the duke of Ilyria. What other options did she really have? Interesting the play doesn’t dwell on this problem.

However, this cross dressing creates some serious problems. A woman falls in love with a woman (disguised as a boy). Viola, disguised as a boy, falls in love with the Duke. And in turn the Duke sort of loves this boy Viola is pretending to be. One single person cross dressing for a very good reason throws the entire universe of the play off kilter.

I find the love story between Duke Orsino and Viola to be especially poignant. The reveal that it is in fact acceptable for Orsino to be n love with Viola, because she is in fact a woman, may be a little too convenient. Especially with some of the commentary this production seemed to be making with some of the same sex attractions. But their attraction and love for each other felt genuine and the moment where Viola is revealed to be a woman had a delightful sense of discomfort, along with the joy.

Maybe one of the reasons I enjoy Twelfth Night so much is its musicality. How could I not love something that begins, “If music be the food of love, play on.” And Twelfth Night seems to contain more songs and lend itself better to music than almost any other Shakespeare play. This production had a small orchestra and a young soprano on one of the side balconies, and their use of music was effective. The actor who played Feste, the fool, was also a wonderful singer and had a good sort of magnetic gravity to him. And as he ends the play with a song, this is especially important.

So ultimately, have I made any progress on my quest to find out what makes a play good? I don’t know. I know what I enjoy, and can anticipate what I am likely to enjoy, but I don’t think I will ever be able to figure out the formula to it.

I could go on and on (and sort of did). But I'll end my thoughts here. Going to this play reminded me again why I love theatre, and maybe even why it was my major. I’m also happy to know that I in fact do love the play “Twelfth Night” and that love doesn’t end with just one particularly moving production.

Cheesecake Wars

2008-11-29T20:13:00.000-08:00

Now I feel I need to talk a little about my actual Thanksgiving. My sister Carolyn just did a lovely job articulating both her Bulgarian Thanksgiving and all that she's thankful for (which includes me!) And so by no means is this a blog competition, but she's inspired me to write a little more.

On Thursday morning I was supposed to wake up early to go to Virgina and go to a Thanksgiving service with Alacia and her family. And since Westmoreland did their Thanksgiving service last Sunday and I have never been to a Thanksgiving day service before I was a little excited. However, I was not so excited about having to get up earlier than I wake up for work to get there at 9:30 am. But my internal clock did the deciding for me; I slept through my alarm. This happens to me every now and then. Usually when I know I need to get up early I set two alarms. Right now I only have one. Uh oh. Well I woke up when I should have already been on the bus, so I called in late to Alacia and she agreed very sweetly to pick me up at the Metro at 11 after the service.

I got up and adventured to the grocery store to buy flowers. My lovely hosts had told me I didn't need to bring anything, but I didn't want to arrive empty handed so a bought a very pretty bouquet of orange and white flowers. Which I just realized I should have taken a picture of! But anyway, getting on the metro all dressed up wearing my slightly old fashioned winter coat (Carolyn, I'm not knocking the coat, I love it) carrying flowers made me feel a little displaced in time. Something about it felt a little surreal. Also I love people watching and it was especially fun trying to figure out where people might be going on the metro at 10 on Thanksgiving.

I got there with no problem. And when I got there most of the cooking was done. I lent my excellent skills with an electric mixer to the yams and that was it. So if you are shopping for a new Thanksgiving experience I much recommend a small dinner with a family that is not your own. There were only five of us, so not mountains of food and not too many dishes. And no matter how many times I asked there was not too much for me to do to help.

It was a very nice, and classic dinner with all the old favorites. The best part of the dinner was probably that Alacia and her brother had a cheesecake war. Which means that they both made cheesecake! In a cheesecake war, I think everyone wins.

Also of note, apparently before I came there were jokes about my friend bringing me as a date for her brother. And he was very nice and very polite, but that was it. As a note, if anyone else would like to set me up with any other young, elementary school music teachers, who also work at a theatre, I wouldn't mind. At all. Also I hope Alacia reads this! I'm reall just being silly, please don't set me up with anyone.

So I had a good time, headed home early where I phoned home and got passed around the living room on the phone, which is always confusing and funny. All in all it was a good first Thanksgiving away from home. And if Cheesecake Wars is the tradition I pick up from this year, even better!

Giving Thanks

2008-11-26T18:33:00.000-08:00

So I'm at home alone in my house tonight on Thanksgiving Eve. Now, don't worry, I have plans for tomorrow. Actually I had 5 offers for Thanksgiving dinner. I've decided to go to my coworkers parent's house in Virgina and I'm very excited about it.
But tonight I'm home alone. Which is fine. I like cooking myself dinner and watching TV alone occasionally. But tonight is one of those nights that has a significance and a sense of expectation.
This is the first Thanksgiving I won't be with my family. 22 thanksgivings with them one, without actually makes me very fortunate. But tonight I'm a little sad not to be in Walla Walla with them.
So instead of feeling sad or sorry for myself I've decided to think a little about the things I'm thankful for. I'm living in a beautiful home in Washington DC. I love my job and my house mates. I'm very fortunate.
One of my program participants told me today that "the homeless don't get a holiday." But I do, and I think its needed. I've been feeling a little less patient the last few days with the program participants. Now I have a little time to take a few deep breaths and regain some of that initial joy and patience I had in my casework.
I have a chance to refresh and recharge with this 4 day weekend and I'm going to embrace it.
I will miss making deviled eggs, polishing the silver, and eating my moms turkey. I'll need a status report on how the dad does making the corn casserole this year; its always different and always an adventure. I'm happy to know that Aunt Jane's pies will go on with out me. And who knows, maybe I'll still have a chance to cheat at cards sometime tomorrow.
But most of all "bless the apple pie and tea, bless each and every calorie," as the Boys and Girls Club Thanksgiving prayer tells us every year. That neatly encapsulates my feelings right now.
I'll miss being there but I'm happy to be here. This all might be a little sappy, but what is Thanksgiving if not a time for nostalgia? Most of all I'm happy to have so much to be nostalgic about. And you know what? Its not going anywhere (even if this year I'm not going anywhere either).
So friends and family on the other side of the country(or across the ocean), I love you and will miss you tomorrow especially.
This weekend I plan to have a wonderful time with a family kind enough to take me in. I will take time to get in order whatever I need to get in order to be the best possible case worker I can be on Monday morning. And I will take a few moments to consider how truly lucky I am.

Graduation and Shakespeare

2008-11-17T18:17:00.000-08:00

Friday was a big day. My housemate Jen works at SOME’s Center for Employment Training and Friday was their graduation. People enter and end the program on their own schedule and they have twice yearly graduation, and Jen invited all of us to come be a part of it.

On Friday morning I went to work like normal. It was a reasonably busy Friday. Even with the lead case worker, the associate caseworker and I there, we still all saw a lot of participants. I went on a little bus adventure. Really it wasn’t an adventure, just an hour long bus ride. It was actually pretty neat. The bus from my office took me right downtown DC, even past the White House. Then I switched buses and went over the river into south east, which is really not as ominous as it sounds.

The best part of this is when I was on the second bus, my housemate Noah got on the bus with me. I hadn’t even known that Noah was coming to the graduation. So we found Jen’s building easily and Jen was saving us seats right in the second row, like celebrities. My coworkers from our SE office were also there. One of our front office coordinators was graduating from CET. They were there to support her and I got to support Jen.

And coincidently, my fellow intern and I, Jalaine, were going to a play together later that night so it worked out really well.
The graduation was just that, a graduation. However, it was a fun graduation, with a real sense of ceremony. The graduates wore gowns. There was even a key note speaker who is a talk radio personality. She was very interactive and focused on the graduates. I was glad to be a part of it.

After the ceremony, a crowd of us went out for drinks. We went to Lucky Bar in Dupont, which I loved. Jalaine and I ate dinner and headed out to Arlington Virginia for our play, “All’s Well that End’s Well.” We went early to avoid ending up late and ended up in the middle of nowhere Virginia 50 minutes early for our play. And in the middle of nowhere Virginia there is nowhere to get a cup of coffee or a beer. There were only closed government buildings and friendly police officers (who may have been surrounding a deserted building…?) who helped us find the playhouse.

The theatre was Washington Shakespeare company. Once we found it and went on a time killing walk and got settled in out seats, I was pretty happy. The theatre was a black box and they had built a series of platforms and there were no fewer than four black and white beds as a part of the set. Which I thought was great. Not in a dirty way. But in a “if you show a gun in the first act, it better go off by the third act.” I think it’s the same with beds. If you have four beds on stage you better use them. And they did. There were a couple of seduction scenes that, ahem, utilized the beds.

So I found the play enjoyable. But I think there is a reason that “All’s Well That End’s Well” is not preformed more. It has kind of an odd romantic plot where I could not understand why the heroine would ever be interested in the man and a subplot involving humiliating an old soldier or possibly someone only pretending to be a war hero. While I thought they did a great job of making the verse understandable, I found this sub plot totally incomprehensible. And I think I understand Shakespeare pretty well generally. So having made the decision not to read this play before seeing it, I'm not sure if I have a problem with the play, or the production.

So for my first play in DC, it was pretty good. I think next I need to go to something actually in Metro DC. But altogether it was a great Friday.

No Touching

2008-11-13T13:46:00.000-08:00

So this is a subject I’ve been thinking about almost the whole time I’ve had my new job.

And before you get nervous, this is entirely PG. Its not good touch bad touch. That is my house mates job over at DC Rape Crisis Center.

What I’m interested in is participants wanting to hug me, pat my arm and shake my hand.

And I should preface this by saying that in my personal life, I’m pretty physically affectionate. I love hugs and cuddling. In fact one Miss Kate Stone even told me once, “Char, I think your only boundary is clothing.” Which might be some degree of true.

Practically, what this means is that I need to find my boundaries and comfort zone at work. I’ve never really had a job before where physical contact was an issue. People don’t really try to touch you when you scoop them ice cream or check out books to them at the Puget Sound library. Although I always giggled when someone asked me if I wanted to “check them out.”

So it was surprising to me on my second week of casework when a participant reached out and toughed my side. He was making a point and touched me to emphasize it. I was shocked when I had an involuntary, almost visceral, negative reaction. It was all I could do to keep from jumping back. And I did step back gently and discourage him from hugging me. This particular program participant is someone I struggle with. In this same conversation he told my coworker that “I needed to be trained up better.”

To illustrate my point abut physical contact I have to say that the evening after this happened, I was standing in the doorway of my kitchen talking to my housemate Rachel about the incident and why my gut reaction had been so negative. And my housemate, Noah, walked up mid conversation and rested his elbow on my shoulder as a form of greeting. Also I might have been blocking the doorway. He had been doing dishes and had no idea that we had been talking about “touching” when he came up and touched me. So clearly it is not all touching that upsets me.

I have another program participant, a young woman, who initiates a hug me every time she comes in and this is fine.

I had some training at some point, maybe when I was an orientation leader, that taught me that when in a position of power, you should always let your “subordinate” (for lack of a better word) set the rules about physical contact. Such as, don’t touch a student’s arm unless they have already established some form of contact. You can never know what someone's comfort level is.

So I’ve been basically following my own rule with participants. I don’t touch them at all unless they initiate it. And if I am at all uncomfortable being touched, I don’t allow it. I even refused to shake one mans hand when he made it into a power play. And I’m not sure if you’ve ever been in a position where you had to turn down a handshake, but it is truly uncomfortable. And awkward.
So here I''ll end the ramble about touching from the queen of both awkward situations and cuddling. I'm not sure I've yet to answer this issue, but it is interesting to explore.

Charlotte Thinks About Obama

2008-10-30T13:17:00.000-07:00

So Barack Obama. Obama is everywhere. I don't mean this is a new age-y "we're surrounded by the promise of hope" way nor am I suggesting that our potential future president is a stalker. Instead, I think I mean that I cannot move throughout my days without encountering the election approximately every 15 minutes. Part of this is because I'm in Washington DC. Proximity to the actual movers and shakers of our political system does really charge this city with a particular energy.

However, it is everywhere. My program participants talk about Obama and how excited they are about him. I try to avoid talking about politics with our participants. I think casework is a little like a dinner party: I never bring up religion, sex or politics. However, they often (well, sometimes) want to talk about these things, especially Obama. Today a participant was wearing a white hat with very large black letters that said OBAMA. That was the entire hat. No other logo, no other message. I loved it.

We have an Obama pumpkin at my house. My lovely housemate Deanna carved her pumpkin (after carrying it all over DC. Twice.) To say "08 VOTE" with the "08" as the eyes and the "O" as the Obama "O" and as the mouth. So Obama pumpkin hangs out next to the Obama sign in the window.

On nice days, I walk home from work instead of taking 2 buses. And while I walk, I take in nature, foliage, and small animals. There may be an entire blog post on my musing about nature coming up... But anyway, one day when I was about half way home, I decided to start counting the political yard signs. And almost immediately I saw something that made me laugh out loud. By myself. One reasonably large yard had a total of three Obama signs. One on the far side, one in the middle, and one very close to their neighbors single "McCain/Palin" sign. The neighbor on the other side of the McCain sign had two Obama signs. So is that the correct ratio? 5 Obama to cancel out the negative energy of one McCain? It seems like a reasonable formula. However I wonder how a neighborhood potluck might go on that block...

At work, we even spent the staff bonding time at a particularly memorable staff meeting asking and attempting to answer: is America ready for a black president? (I'll come back to this)

So you would think that the culmination of this whole campaign for me should have been casting my vote for Obama. Instead it was a little anticlimactic. My absentee ballot arrived from Washington State on a night I was alone in the house. Unlike my sister I didn't even have an Obama shirt to wear while I filled in my bubbles very carefully. So I sat on the couch watching the show Greek on television and voted for Obama. There it was. My big moment. And then I very carefully affixed a stamp (Thanks MoM for sending me stamps with American flags on them) walked to the front door and clipped my ballot to the mailbox. No marching band, no film crew, no roommate with a digital camera. Just a girl from Washington State doing her part all the way from our Nations Capital.

And now, all this rambling might have a point.

To give my own personal answer the the question posed by my staff meeting: I hope America is ready. Not just for a black man, but for this man. Barack Obama.
Today, a volunteer caseworker who comes in once a week told me that when he sees me again we will have a new president. This event, so many years in the making is almost here.

What is America's answer? But the thing I really wonder is: Do we even know the question anymore?

Location, Location, Location

2008-10-27T15:54:00.000-07:00

I moved across the country. After two months this is not a news flash to anyone. However, it is a huge change. And clearly I did know that I was moving to Washington DC. And I did understand that it is almost physically as far away from Washington state as you can get and still be in the United States.

Yet the actuality of this is still startling. There are the simple things, such as not recognizing any store names. A good example of this is World Market. There is a World Market near my metro stop. I assumed it was a grocery store. Wrong. It is in fact an import store for things, more like Pier One, I guess. Or Harris Teeter. When someone mentioned this store I literally thought they were speaking another language.

Another thing I never thought about is my accent. I mean, I’m aware of accents because I studied abroad in London. And I was a theatre major. Clearly accents come up every once in a while. I just didn’t think I had one. Apparently I do. Although people seem to think I’m from the Midwest…? So I’m not sure where that comes from, but I feel foreign in a lot of ways.

It is a long distance to be away from home. And I am a little oblivious. I know way less about the geography of this side of the country than I should. To the point that it is a little embarrassing. So maybe I should spend some time with a map? If anyone has any suggestions, I’m open.

And simply my attitude towards location and distance needs some adjusting. In Walla Walla, I would hesitate to drive an hour to go to a shopping mall. Yet here my commute to work is 45 minutes each way. And I considered going to school roughly a 5 hour drive from my hometown reasonably close. I think a 5 hour drive from DC would take me through 2 or 3 states. Maybe. Obviously geography is not a strength of mine. So maybe I’m not actually in a different country, but culturally I still feel a little bit at sea in some ways.

The Triumphant Arrival

2008-10-17T18:36:00.000-07:00

So here it is. The DC blog 2.0. Better, stronger and more personal. By popular demand I have created a blog that is strictly mine, not shared with the lovely housemates. Don't fear, the joint Westmoreland volunteer blog, Candles in the City, still exists. I just don't think it will get updated very often. It turns out that only 2 out of the five of us are even remotely excited about having a blog.

And that leads me here, where I can post as often as I like. And where I can be a little less general and a little more emotional and specific.

Right now, I'm still loving the house and I am feeling much more settled into my job. I love it. I haven't explored Washington DC to satisfaction yet, but I'm happy just to be here. I'm getting ready to experience the election from possibly the most relevant and exciting place to be right now.

So that's it for my attempt at an introduction. Next time around more excitement(hopefully).