So after turning myself into a work-breathing theater mermaid of the mind, how am I to handle the aftermath of the show? I certainly still have work that needs doing (think of the common hamster on a wheel metaphor), but all of a sudden that work doesn't require that I use nights and weekends as working hours.
I can do the work in the daylight. Monday through Friday(ish).
Which means that the person behind the job now has evenings and weekends to...?
Try to downshift and remember what precisely it is that I enjoy doing not because I have to, but because I want to. And reacquaint myself with the people in my life who are marginalized into the category of neglect known as my "friends and family."
I took two personal days off of work to recover.
Day One:
5:00am- Wake up, groggily get into clothes, swill coffee.
5:30am- Go into work to set up Romeo & Juliet video & plans for sub.
6:30 am- Come home, attempt to write personal emails.
7:00 am- Write work emails that keep distracting me from personal emails.
8:30 am- Okay, back to personal email I had left off in mid-sentence.
8:40 am- Field phone call from school freaking out about how to turn on lights in theater, which is being used for school pictures.
9:30am- Finish up school emails. For real. Even close the tabs. Go back to writing personal emails.
9:40am- Pass out in puddle of drool, having just started chatting with friends.
11:00am- Wake up, determined to go into Ellsworth with self, to buy chicken shavings, read a book at the Mex while eating nachos and veggie fajitas, with possible window shopping at Goodwill and TJ Maxx.
11:15am- Dave wakes up from his (matching- we do his and hers) morning nap, and gets a chance to talk with his doctor about that pain in his abdomen.
12:00pm- I drop Dave off at the doors of the Ellsworth ER, and then go hit the Mex. I did mention that after all the work attempting to be a humane director that it is a struggle to regain my humanity in my personal life, right? Also, Dave is a walking physical/health disaster magnet, and I have learned to sort his pain into drama levels so I won't live my life worrying (and getting stress-related conditions myself). This was not life and death.
12:10pm- While tucking into nachos (OMG, sooooo good) think: "Wow, I am a total asshole."
12:15pm- These nachos really hit the spot.
12:20pm- It's as if I just dropped him off for a playdate at the hospital. I'm that callous. Oh- I'd know that sizzle anywhere- my fajitas are on their way!
12:21pm- While the fajitas are exciting, I am still digging these nachos.
12:22pm- Worst wife ever, but I am in my happy place.
12:40pm- Finish my green tea chai, settle up, prep to do walk of wifely shame into ER.
12:45pm- ER Room #3. Dave told them that I buggered off to go shopping, so the looks I am getting are a little quizzical, which is the professional version of horrified. Happily, my theater training has made me pretty comfortable with making an ass of myself publicly.
12:45-4:00pm- Time ceases to have much meaning (the interiors of hospitals being similar to theaters, that way). I get to watch Dave's insides via ultrasound in a dim room with white noise, and hear the nachos in my belly say "Sleeeeeeeeeeep. Sleeeeeeeeeeep the sleeeeeeeep of the satiated!" Curse the molded plastic chairs that are my destiny as the patient's spouse. Spend much time in ER Room #3 sitting in molded plastic chair while looking longingly at Dave's comfy johnny and hospital bed. Experience intense spousal jealousy. Why does he always get the bed and I always get the chair? Text Dave's Mom re: the condition of Dave's condition: liver, appendix, & gallbladder fine, just a new presentation of his kidney stone issues. Text friends for sympathy/to keep from falling over in puddle of own drool.
4:something pm- Leave time sink that is hospital, get into truck, go to fill prescriptions for Flomax & high test ibuprofin. Buy self hair dye and leave in conditioner. Get Dave to buy me cadbury creme eggs, because I have made a rule I will only eat them if they are gifts from other people. Nearly drive off road three times when back on Deer Isle because I am distracted by some form of natural beauty that I can't recall or even imagine now, because seriously- this is just the ugliest part of the year. Maybe it was sunny and I was just dumbstruck. Dave waited until the third time before he said "ummmm.... wifey? Are you trying to kill us?" He is very patient with me.
6:00pm- 12:00am- Work 500 piece Jane Austen jigsaw puzzle while watching Austenland and the intensely abridged movie version of Pride & Prejudice. Dye hair improbable shade of auburn. Dave passes two kidney stones.
Day Two:
Do not really even remember this day except that it involved reading, sleeping, and solving the puzzle again (a NEW way) while Dave watched Magnum P.I. I bet I ate something. Like pizza or nachos. Dave passes another kidney stone. I do know I got up and went into work at 5:30 again, thinking I needed to set up the theater for my class, and realized- nope, it was going to be in the computer lab again, and I should have just slept in.
Day Three: BONUS! Snow Day.
I totally cleaned the kitchen and the bedroom, and was only mildly passive aggressive about it!
Took apart and solved the puzzle again, mourning the fact that I did not time the puzzle working, so can not analyze the affect of learning on completion time. Could have at least tallied number of times Dave shook his head at me about the puzzle mania.
By Day Seven, I had read two actual books, had gotten back to sanitary conditions in our food space, had clean laundry- bathed for real (not just washing my hair while kneeling at the tub) had written two long nearly intelligible blog posts, had dinner out with friends. Also, naps with my cat.
Today, Dave used a 2x4 to block me and win a race while we were running through the deluge to the truck, so the jerk balance is back in a happy place as well.
So the official steps to regain my humanity (assuming travel and good weather is out of the question):
Eat at the Mex. With book.
Close out of work email, and hide computer/iPad. Seriously- phone as only device, used for audible, compulsively checking weather, and texting friends.
Work puzzles mindlessly and repetitively to get out the excess OCD.
Read books (anywhere, everywhere).
Clean.
Binge watch BBC material.
Write inane blog post or journal entries.
Spend mundane time with Dave being made fun of.
Pass out in puddle of drool with cat.
While it might make for a unnecessarily long post, I am totally talking to my future self right now, and I know she'll probably appreciate the reminder this time next year. And now... think about ordering Galley Pizza for lunch, (my stomach also went OCD and I am having a hard time getting off the pizza, nachos, frappacino wagon), and working a puzzle- I borrowed new ones from a friend...
Sunday, March 30, 2014
Saturday, March 29, 2014
Wait, Who am I? Part One: A Director
The danger of working in a very immersive, salaried job is that you will drown in it.
Theater tends to be this way- everything must come together in relatively short order for opening night. For the show to come off, you just plow through the work, and time very quickly ceases to have any meaning. You are working in a space with no natural light, so day and night pass without making much of an impression. Weekends are simply a cultural artifact made up by unions, and in many places in the world, aren't an entitlement. Vacations, likewise. To get through the work, it seems critical to just let go of those markers.
So when I am in the throes of directing, if I want to be joyful in the process, I have to get pretty philosophic- to run full tilt at Humanism. I work to stay present in the moment, to be happy in the company I am keeping whether I chose the company or not, to see all challenges as enrichment. My props master has been asking me in all seriousness how I do what I do with the community without going mad, and without getting mad: hard-headed philosophy (and ruthless optimism) is my trick.
I've worked with directors who screamed and used sarcasm, either out of temper or as a tactic. Good product can come out of harsh rehearsals- but I suspect that works best with advanced students and professionals, not with young students and untrained community members looking for a healthy way to while away winter hours. Yelling at people is not something I have ever seen bring about joy, or build confidence. Sooo... not in my theater. Also what is pretty keen about leadership is that people will take behavioral cues from you. If the big (albeit rather small rather youngish) kahuna doesn't yell, no one else gets to. Except Tinker. Why she gets a pass, I am still... not sure. It's a work in progress.
My working theory is that you can get to quality work through kindness. To execute the theory requires that I breathe and blend (very basic) Buddhism and Christianity. With a soupcon of folkloric delusion bent to my needs. It may well be that I never bring my community actors to the brink of greatness, but for our group, the goal is met if the audience leaves entertained, and we've created something we can be proud of.
So I put in the hours. I practice my patience. I remind myself that good ideas come from anywhere and everywhere, and that as director, I need to stay open and above all, be approachable. I have to actually believe in people. As a community theater director, I am a teacher, and teaching is a two-way street (if it isn't you are doing something wrong). I am pretty much the Anti-Auteur. There are basic mantras I rip off from people smarter than me, who I can not remember but will quote...
"Here. This. Now."
"Only connect."
(okay, the latter is E.M. Forster, and I prefer to use ! sparingly(ish) so make it my own by thinking of it with a gentle full stop, instead of with his punctuation)
The upshot is that I spend 10 weeks or so, consciously existing in the moment with a large group of people ranging from age 8 to age 80, and working with great care to create reasonably good amateur musical theater under humane conditions.
Now when I go about creating the humane conditions, I am creating them for everyone but myself. My production team tends to do this as well... they also put in the insane hours, to make sure that when the whole crowd is in the theater the machine works with some degree of smooth efficiency. Blessed are the stage manager and props master (and the main builders) for they are also so committed they should be committed.
The project becomes practically my whole world. I constantly have to assimilate info and make and communicate decisions, or delegate them. My focus has to shift with speed from the music, or dance timing to lighting cues, sound issues... all of those pieces that have to come together. It's a Zen ADHD: people come at me with questions regarding their specialty, and I have to provide answers on the spot. Which means I really do have to listen to them. It takes all of your powers of concentration to split your focus like that.
I start seeing the work in aquatic terms- fluid dynamics and folkloric biology.
First- I am a surfer. All of the group's input, the questions, comments, observations, ideas... that's the wave, constantly in motion in multiple dimensions. Either I go with it, pay attention, and make allowances... or I wipe out. So much for the succinct metaphor. On to the painful and extended one...
Second- I'm a drowning woman. The work has engulfed me, and there's no surfacing until the show is
over. I remember one night alone in the theater, as I was in the stage right wing thinking about my to-do/priority lists and how many hours were ahead of me and how they would not involve quality food, sleep, or a home life... and that none of the work could be shirked or procrastinated... the only thing ahead of me was work and then more work. This kind of realization can lead to many responses- hysterical weeping and hyperventilation, quiet stoicism, a quick and indefinite trip beyond the nearest international border... in this particular case (I was pretty tired), I just thought...
If work is water, it's way over my head and there's no escaping it... I am just going to grow some motherfucking gills. It's my imagination, bitches. I'll be a management mermaid if I want to, breathing all the questions that need to be answered, and breathing out answers and decisions. And it's okay that I am not breathing fresh air outside the theater, because I have transfigured. Done.
WEIRDER THINGS HAVE HAPPENED.
So yeah- for the final three or four weeks, when people came up to me with bizarre detailed questions that I had to answer, I was totally imagining it was all being filtered through gills, and that I no longer needed actual fresh air... "wheeeeeeeee! I am a mermaid!!!! Or a Selkie!!!!!" Darting from back of the theater to the lighting booth to the dressing room as needed... Work? I BREATHE THAT SHIT. IT'S MY ELEMENT.
Okay, while I didn't get mad, I might have gone a little mad- but as a tactic. Incidentally, theater mermaids exist on a diet of mocha frappacinos, pepperoni pizza from The Galley, and nachos to survive. Also fresh water to ingest. And Shirley Temples. With Ricolas, chocolates, and candy canes as important dietary supplements. It's fairly hunter-gatherer. Thank god it was chocolate and candy cane season in the theater.
Jesus had beatitudes, Buddha had his eightfold path, we all need useful ways of thinking. When something has got to give, and the circumstances won't change, your thinking has to. So in order not to drown in my (let's face it- deeply ridiculous) work, my mind morphed. I was so surrounded by work, I felt like I couldn't breathe, so I chose to go with it, and to just believe that I could just breathe the work.
Personally, I also need humor, so rather than a profound vision, I had to get more than a little stupid.
And then the show closed. The work was finished.
How do I breathe now?
Dammit.
Theater tends to be this way- everything must come together in relatively short order for opening night. For the show to come off, you just plow through the work, and time very quickly ceases to have any meaning. You are working in a space with no natural light, so day and night pass without making much of an impression. Weekends are simply a cultural artifact made up by unions, and in many places in the world, aren't an entitlement. Vacations, likewise. To get through the work, it seems critical to just let go of those markers.
So when I am in the throes of directing, if I want to be joyful in the process, I have to get pretty philosophic- to run full tilt at Humanism. I work to stay present in the moment, to be happy in the company I am keeping whether I chose the company or not, to see all challenges as enrichment. My props master has been asking me in all seriousness how I do what I do with the community without going mad, and without getting mad: hard-headed philosophy (and ruthless optimism) is my trick.
I've worked with directors who screamed and used sarcasm, either out of temper or as a tactic. Good product can come out of harsh rehearsals- but I suspect that works best with advanced students and professionals, not with young students and untrained community members looking for a healthy way to while away winter hours. Yelling at people is not something I have ever seen bring about joy, or build confidence. Sooo... not in my theater. Also what is pretty keen about leadership is that people will take behavioral cues from you. If the big (albeit rather small rather youngish) kahuna doesn't yell, no one else gets to. Except Tinker. Why she gets a pass, I am still... not sure. It's a work in progress.
My working theory is that you can get to quality work through kindness. To execute the theory requires that I breathe and blend (very basic) Buddhism and Christianity. With a soupcon of folkloric delusion bent to my needs. It may well be that I never bring my community actors to the brink of greatness, but for our group, the goal is met if the audience leaves entertained, and we've created something we can be proud of.
So I put in the hours. I practice my patience. I remind myself that good ideas come from anywhere and everywhere, and that as director, I need to stay open and above all, be approachable. I have to actually believe in people. As a community theater director, I am a teacher, and teaching is a two-way street (if it isn't you are doing something wrong). I am pretty much the Anti-Auteur. There are basic mantras I rip off from people smarter than me, who I can not remember but will quote...
"Here. This. Now."
"Only connect."
(okay, the latter is E.M. Forster, and I prefer to use ! sparingly(ish) so make it my own by thinking of it with a gentle full stop, instead of with his punctuation)
The upshot is that I spend 10 weeks or so, consciously existing in the moment with a large group of people ranging from age 8 to age 80, and working with great care to create reasonably good amateur musical theater under humane conditions.
Now when I go about creating the humane conditions, I am creating them for everyone but myself. My production team tends to do this as well... they also put in the insane hours, to make sure that when the whole crowd is in the theater the machine works with some degree of smooth efficiency. Blessed are the stage manager and props master (and the main builders) for they are also so committed they should be committed.
The project becomes practically my whole world. I constantly have to assimilate info and make and communicate decisions, or delegate them. My focus has to shift with speed from the music, or dance timing to lighting cues, sound issues... all of those pieces that have to come together. It's a Zen ADHD: people come at me with questions regarding their specialty, and I have to provide answers on the spot. Which means I really do have to listen to them. It takes all of your powers of concentration to split your focus like that.
I start seeing the work in aquatic terms- fluid dynamics and folkloric biology.
First- I am a surfer. All of the group's input, the questions, comments, observations, ideas... that's the wave, constantly in motion in multiple dimensions. Either I go with it, pay attention, and make allowances... or I wipe out. So much for the succinct metaphor. On to the painful and extended one...
Second- I'm a drowning woman. The work has engulfed me, and there's no surfacing until the show is
over. I remember one night alone in the theater, as I was in the stage right wing thinking about my to-do/priority lists and how many hours were ahead of me and how they would not involve quality food, sleep, or a home life... and that none of the work could be shirked or procrastinated... the only thing ahead of me was work and then more work. This kind of realization can lead to many responses- hysterical weeping and hyperventilation, quiet stoicism, a quick and indefinite trip beyond the nearest international border... in this particular case (I was pretty tired), I just thought...
If work is water, it's way over my head and there's no escaping it... I am just going to grow some motherfucking gills. It's my imagination, bitches. I'll be a management mermaid if I want to, breathing all the questions that need to be answered, and breathing out answers and decisions. And it's okay that I am not breathing fresh air outside the theater, because I have transfigured. Done.
WEIRDER THINGS HAVE HAPPENED.
So yeah- for the final three or four weeks, when people came up to me with bizarre detailed questions that I had to answer, I was totally imagining it was all being filtered through gills, and that I no longer needed actual fresh air... "wheeeeeeeee! I am a mermaid!!!! Or a Selkie!!!!!" Darting from back of the theater to the lighting booth to the dressing room as needed... Work? I BREATHE THAT SHIT. IT'S MY ELEMENT.
Okay, while I didn't get mad, I might have gone a little mad- but as a tactic. Incidentally, theater mermaids exist on a diet of mocha frappacinos, pepperoni pizza from The Galley, and nachos to survive. Also fresh water to ingest. And Shirley Temples. With Ricolas, chocolates, and candy canes as important dietary supplements. It's fairly hunter-gatherer. Thank god it was chocolate and candy cane season in the theater.
Jesus had beatitudes, Buddha had his eightfold path, we all need useful ways of thinking. When something has got to give, and the circumstances won't change, your thinking has to. So in order not to drown in my (let's face it- deeply ridiculous) work, my mind morphed. I was so surrounded by work, I felt like I couldn't breathe, so I chose to go with it, and to just believe that I could just breathe the work.
Personally, I also need humor, so rather than a profound vision, I had to get more than a little stupid.
And then the show closed. The work was finished.
How do I breathe now?
Dammit.
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