A Six Play May (say that three times fast)

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"

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"?

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

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!

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

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!

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.