a poor player

Dunkirk NY – Just got finished hosting the monthly meeting of my Catch Club. I’ve been a member since about 1990 or so. We are a collection of people who get together once a month or so and sing 17th/18th century catches. A catch is basically a song sung as a round. Most of the extant ones were written to be drinking songs, and all of them were to be sung by men, since a good portion of them have bawdy lyrics, to wit:

“Once, twice, thrice I Julia tried

The scornful puss as oft denied

And since I can no better thrive

I’ll cringe to ne’er a bitch alive

So kiss my arse, disdainful sow

Good Claret is my mistress now”

Our group used to be all male, but we now have female members despite the nature of the songs. In the old days we called such women “good sports.” I’m not sure there’s a politically correct term for them today.

I like the club because we’re a bunch of old men singing. Make no mistake – we are terrible. We do not sing because we expect anytime soon to go out in public and sing. We do it to make music, drink wine and generally have a good time in each other’s company. It’s not art, but it is a collection of people making their own art, their own music, for themselves. It’s a professorial kind of fun, as well – I mean, what other group of people would get together to sing 17th century drinking songs? I often think that it serves as a model for the potential in making community-based theatre – something for people to make on their own as an outlet for their creativity and fun. I look forward to it every month. Good times.  -twl

Dunkirk NY – I have just returned from a student production of Company. I can’t talk about it right now. I think that’s because, when you see a show like that, and it’s readily apparent that perhaps only one student actually gets something about it, as a teacher you really come away with the feeling that no one – and I mean no one – is listening to a word you’re saying. It’s not Square One; it’s negative one. They will not be happy to hear what I have to say.  This will be hard. Hopefully, as I get ready for some sleeping tonight, I’l come up with some positive spin for it all, but it’s depressing to contemplate the feedback. -twl

Dunkirk NY – I go through spells where teaching becomes absolutely ungodly. Horrifying, in fact.  Always it seems that it comes right after I finish a show. When I’m directing, a show gives me the excuse to put things off, to pay less attention, to coast a bit. But once a show comes down, what’s left of my classroom seems to be in a tattered mess, and it’s time to get to mending.

Today I ask myself this question: what did I get into undergraduate teaching for? To what must I re-dedicate myself? If, at this point, you’re expecting a definitive answer, my apologies for disappointing you. I don’t have one. I’m just asking the question today.

I’ve been struggling with this issue because I am facing a conundrum in my Shakespeare class. In the past I have usually culminated that class by presenting some sort of Shakespearean “production” which becomes their actual final exam. One year I did a cutting from King Lear, and I played Lear with them taking other parts. One year we took one scene from Richard III and had six different interpretations of it. This year I had conceived an idea of doing a reduced version of Hamlet, but this project has morphed into ideas which are competing with one another, where now it’s an exploration on the subjective nature of linguistic interpretation. We are doing two scenes, the Ophelia rejection scene and the closet scene, and exploring different linguistic interpretations of them so as to explore and understand the fluidity of language, and thus the fluidity of interpretation. They’ve come up with some interesting ideas, even if those ideas are monodimensional.

Yet as  I watch them prepare these scenes, it struck me yesterday that much of this is way over their heads. They can barely scan the text, let alone delve into linguistic interpretation. They can barely make personal connections to the text. They can barely discern the rhetorical devices within the scenes and monologues. They can barely feel the subtle shifts of thought from moment to moment. Language, in fact, has become almost foreign to them.

If undergraduate education is about anything, it should be about the fundamentals. The basics. But as I move generationally further and further away from my students, it seems to be that the basics keep getting redefined, and the bar gets lower. And most basic to anything in theatre is language, text, story. I envy my colleagues in the School of Music, because at the very least they are not forced to accept students into their studios who cannot read music or not play the instrument at all. As acting teachers, though, we are expected, at the college level, to take in students who have little to no formal training and just had a good time doing the high school play, so why not act? Students who are starstruck. Not students who have had some past with sophisticated ideas and modes of thought.

And so is this my frustration? Must I constantly be confined to the basics? Must I re-dedicate myself to the basics? Will the basics just keep getting more and more basic? And is that all there will ever be for me now?  -twl

Dunkirk NY – It’s all in the doing. It’s not in the talking. The most terrible trap in teaching is that so often it becomes more talking than doing.

I gave two lectures today. One was in the general education course I am teaching at 8AM in the morning. Here I must somehow infuse my passion for theatre to a collection of kids who, for one reason or another, are required to be there. Another was in Shakespeare acting class, where I finished the class with too much talking and not enough doing. My talking seems to come from a place of frustration sometimes, and that frustration is the inability to act rather than talk.

I don’t really want to talk anymore about acting: I just want to act, and I just want to see acting.  -twl

Dunkirk NY – The universe will play some pretty interesting tricks on you every once in a while, tricks that make you sit up, pay attention, and ponder. I learned this today by laying down my scooter on a back road out near my getaway cabin. I had deemed today my “mental health” day after having closed La Bohème, but it appears the cosmos had additional plans for my mental and psychic health.

I was primed for a scooter ride to day despite the cloudy conditions and upper-40s temperature. As long as it wasn’t raining, I thought, I’d be OK. My plan was breakfast in my favorite little roadside restaurant, then up to the cabin for some radio listening and reading, back to school for the one class I had, and then perhaps back to the cabin for a few hours and home shortly after dark (which now comes about 5:30 PM). I finished breakfast, and headed up to the cabin.

The Treehouse

The road the cabin is on is a dirt road, hard-packed when dry. As I tried to make the right-hand turn onto the road from the paved surface, I either hit the front brake a bit too hard, or I hit some loose gravel or dirt and had come too close to the shoulder in making the turn. Either way, the result was the back tire skidding out to my left, and me and the bike falling to the right. From the point of view of the actual fall, going to the right was good because I was falling away from the road, but it was bad because I got my right leg pinned under the muffler, which was a little hot. It all happened in a flash, and before I was even fully aware that something had happened, it was over. No reaction time was given me to avoid laying the bike down.

I managed to pull my leg out from under the bike quickly enough so as to avoid getting burned. A quick check seemed to indicate I hadn’t broken anything. I had on my full-face helment and armor-padded riding jacket, so no harm to the right shoulder. My jeans did not tear, but my right knee did get torn up a bit, and my right ankle is slightly banged up. I picked the bike up from the road, and the biggest damage was to the right front turn signal, which was hanging loose from the front fairing. I got the bike started again, hopped on, and took the short 1/4 mile ride to the cabin. There I proceeded to patch my knee up with bandages. All in all, a lucky-enough fall; dings and brusies, but nothing broken. Nothing but a little pride.

Now the reason this is all so cosmic is because of a conversation I had with a student in acting class. She’s a very bright young lady who takes in everything and has a very adventurous spirit, but her acting tends to be a bit surface because she does not risk going to more dangerous acting depths in her work. I’ve been trying to get her to see that the most powerful theatrical work has to have an element of danger in it, a whiff of death. She also likes riding motorcycles, so I asked her if, when she gets on a motorcycle, does she ever think about its inherent dangers and the possibility that she may die during that ride. She admitted she did not. I told her that every time I get on my scooter I first remind myself of the inherent danger I am placing myself in; completely exposed to the possibility of a lethal accident with nothing but an armoured jacket as protection. I told her that, in order to improve her acting, she needed that element of lethal danger emotionally and physically in her work. I left her to ponder the matter.

I saw her again Saturday night after seeing Fuddy Meers, and she told me that earlier that day, she was out riding on the back of her boyfriend’s motorcycle when they had their own accident. They were coming down a hill and the bike caught a small lip where a bridge met the road, and down the both of them went. She came away with a few scrapes on her hand because she mostly ended up on her boyfriend’s back as he skidded along the pavement. Neither of them were seriously hurt. But she did say she now understood a bit more what I meant after class.

I was pretty fascinated by the fact that just after we had that conversation she got into her accident, she told me about it, and now I’ve gotten into mine. I believe I’ve been hoisted on my own petard. It causes me to think and wonder again about this world in which we live and this art we practice. A small metaphor about acting all of a sudden becomes reality for both student and teacher. How close is that borderline between art and life, and how much life does one need to create art? How much death?

An old and dear friend of mine, Jim Trenberth, who is the Production Manager and Lighting Designer at Iowa State in Ames IA (and who occasionally comments on this blog), has this quote at the bottom of his email signature:

The way to capture a student’s attention is with a demonstration where there is a possibility the teacher will die.   Jewel Walker

Perhaps the universe is telling me I have to dig a little deeper into the depths of my own teaching, and begin to find ways to bring that whiff of death into my teaching style. And maybe not be so glib. Thanks for the tip, Jim.  -twl

Fredonia NY – I am sitting in the lobby of the theatre as Act 4 of Boheme is about to begin. I’ve seen the show now so many times that it’s a bit of a relief to sit in the lobby and just listen. The singers are getting in their last shots with a few added bits and flourishes. I’m actually pleased to see they feel secure enough to let it loose; now if only they had a bit more skill to pull it off completely

There are times I wish I knew better how to take a compliment. I seem to have gotten to the point where I seldom like my work. So many people have said how good the show is, and I doubt I could find a better undergraduate performance of this show. But while I am quite sure the show is good, for myself I felt very pleased, but not overwhelmed. I just wonder if either the challenges I am facing are just old hat to me, or if I have gotten to the point where I need more difficult, or different, challenges.

Mimi is about to die. In opera, the director takes a bow along with the conductor, it seems. Off to the backstage area to take the last bow on this one. And then – onward! -twl

Dunkirk NY – Still two more performances to go of Bohème, but already I can feel the post-show crash on its way. This was another gorgeous day in WNY, so my wife and I did what any normal couple might do on such a beautiful day – we went furniture shopping. We bought a new bed. Just about all our married life we have either slept on the floor or (giving in to age and the increasing difficulty of getting up off the floor) on sheets of plywood supported by cinder blocks. Our headboard I got from a colleague for $5 when we moved here 20 years ago. So on a pro-rated basis, the bed is actually pretty cheap. But the price of furniture simply staggers my imagination.

When I get busy doing a show I generally stop engaging in normal activities like food shopping, cleaning dishes, and the like. I tend to eat out more, get work done in my office, get to rehearsal, and sleep. It would not have been my first choice for a day off (first choice – a scooter ride out in the country), but it had to be done. I’ve put off helping the wife prepare for the arrival of our daughter and her boyfriend (is there a word for the person your daughter has been living with for 6 years but hasn’t married? “Boyfriend” seems inadequate, but son-in-law is not technically accurate), so I had to do the right thing today and move furniture around to prepare a guest room. I prefer to release that post-show stress by getting lost and alone somewhere.

I’ll be easing into a more peaceful routine over the next week, and then I have a week off for Thanksgiving break. Some of my discussions in acting classes have been interesting over the past few days. I’d like to post about those once the show closes. For tonight, more culture: seeing Fuddy Meers tonight (our current mainstage department show) and sneaking a peek back to the opera after that.  -twl

A local field

Fredonia NY – We usually don’t get such beautiful weather this time of year in Western NY. Today the sun is shining brightly with not a cloud in the sky. Temperature right now is 52º. Last night on returning home from Bohème, the sky was littered with stars, with a temperature of about 42º. Perfect bonfire weather, I thought to myself.

The opening was rough around the edges; good performances, but some rough technical moments. I have a freshman music major running the snow bag, and she panicked and dumped the contents of the snow bag onto the stage right at the end of Act 3. It looked liked a lake effect blizzard for a second. Despite myself I laughed quietly in my seat. My stage manager blew her knee out running from our booth to backstage at one point when she couldn’t raise anyone on headset backstage. In short, we had an early technical triskadekaphobic event last night. We just don’t get enough time to train and rehearse these beasts. We really shouldn’t be opening until next weekend, after a week of preview-style performances. Only in academic theatre.

I smell a mental health day coming up soon.  -twl

Fredonia NY – Well, it won’t sound or look like a Met Opera production, but it should be good nonetheless. Despite all my misigivings and difficulties, I cannot help but applaud my colleagues and the students for even attempting to climb a mountain this high. Time to let them loose on it!  -twl

Dunkirk NY – Everyone is stressed these days, or so they say. In my large lecture class I often get emails from students whose assignments are late that talk about how stressed-out they are. Many of the Facebook statuses I see from students talk about their stress or hint at ongoing difficulties in their lives. And if you’d like to read something a little bit more in-depth about how stressed they get, here are three blog posts from students of mine recently posted to our department blog.

I worry often about the mental health of our students. Where does all this stress come from, and why is it necessary to create it? Is this stress just a condition of living in the 21st century no matter what you do or how old you are? What should be the policy of a theatre department in terms of the mental health of its students? How should stress be handled?

These are all unasked questions when it comes to curricular and extra-curricular situations within theatre departments. As I prepare to open the opera, I can see many stress-out students, performers and backstage personnel alike, working in semi-panic mode. It took longer to load in the set than anticipated; the deck crew are all pretty much freshman opera production majors; the set itself is a three-act behemoth which looks fantastic on stage, but none of it is on wagons for easy shifting; last night my student Mimi was singing with a stiff back and neck, needing ice in between acts; orchestra players were out with the flu (no harp); and even my professional Mimi had just come in on Monday after opening a premiere in New York City and has exactly one dress rehearsal before opening. Ay mie Ay mie!

When students ask me if I get stressed out, often the answer is “not so much.” I get concerned about certain things, but as the director at this level it’s not my job to fix them. I get a little stressed internally when I see others not working as fast as I would, but otherwise I work to keep a calm demeanor. I feel that if I show stress, others will just get more stressed. I do what I can within my classes to be a stress-reliever, trying to make my classes “stress-free zones.” I don’t believe at all in the saying “I work best under stress.”

What do I keep in mind when I start to feel that stress creeping up on me? Two things. The first is long-term thinking. My assignments and grades are not going to be the be-all and end-all of these people’s lives. Hence, I tailor my expectations accordingly. The world does not revolve around my demands. Secondly, “it’s only the school play.” Save the stress for when it really counts in the outside world. More thought needs to be put into thinking about stress and mental health as we consider changes in theatre curricula.  -twl