Organ I zatioN

Lately I've been paying some attention to things like the collaboration, productivity, administration and general logistical aspects of work. By "work," in this context, I mean any effort geared toward a specific goal. But I also mean my day job. So, rehearsing a play, yes, revising a short story, yes, and figuring out how to order toner cartridges with great efficiency: yes. This is part of my newish strategy of looking at my life as more interrelated than disparate, but that perspective is also coming pretty naturally to me just now. Recently I've had to take on extra responsibilities at el jobbo del day, due to the laying off of others who were far more experienced at said extra responsibilities, and this has been a drain on my time and energy for other ventures. However, it has also yielded some surprising rewards ("not more money--that's just what he'd

expect

us to do...") and the main of these has been a discovery that I'm really rather interested in questions of leadership, organization and procedure.

Last summer I obsessed for a while over a Flash game called

Fantastic Contraption

. The gist of the game is to use common elements to engineer a machine to achieve some transportation goal. I was not especially clever at it, but got a great sense of accomplishment from overcoming successive failures until the goal was reached. In a sense, it was reminiscent of a good, difficult rehearsal, in which I try everything and become more and more dedicated to solving a problem the more failures I experience. In a rehearsal process, there's a philosophy of which I'm a fan that says that there are no bad acting choices; not really. Only good, or better. (Or, as I believe to be grammatically better: gooderer.) The idea being continual improvement in effectiveness, not to mention nurturing an environment in which people can be free to experiment creatively, without fear. It creates constantly improving solutions, and really big mistakes -- the kind from which you learn more, and quicker.

Of course, when it comes to most office work, big mistakes are terrifying things. They involve large sums of money, or people's legal statuses, etc. Yet it seems to me that there is too significant a dichotomy between those who keep their heads down and follow procedure, and those who innovate within an office environment. Is all that negative reinforcement directed toward getting people in line with procedure helping, or in fact hampering the work process? I'm not trying to make a sweeping statement here (horribly inefficient: sweeping) about the rules of the theatre lending insight into the process of the office. The current flows both ways. Much of the administrative structure in an office makes better sense and allows better allocation of resources than your typical theatre process does, and it's ridiculous to argue that structure can't apply to artistic endeavors. Structure is, of itself, an artistic endeavor.

There's been a lot of discussion recently on new forms of organization in corporate America and -- almost as though

someone's

been reading this here 'blog -- the comparative value/cost of multitasking and single-focus effort, amongst other process notions. I don't claim to have a significant contribution to make to these debates (though multitasking is

broken

and

wrong

) but every so often I'm excited by the idea of getting things done in a new way. It's oddly satisfying to me, at my day job, when I feel I've made even the smallest change that helps the whole contraption move better. Such ideas for change usually come about because I'm sitting still, thinking about the situation, and unafraid. It's a state that reminds me of the moment-to-moment pauses in my writing process. Does a conventional work environment allow for much of this? I'd say not. I'd also say, it ought to.

The funny thing is, I'm good about gradually organizing things at el jobbo del day, but in my life -- not so much. The first explanation that springs to mind is laziness, the second, lack of motivation (read: money). Yet I question these responses, precisely because they spring to mind. They're motivated by an energy similar to what administrators typically imagine will motivate their employees, stress, and I wonder what the response might be after a little time taken to sit quietly and mull over the situation. In fact, perhaps it's difficult to do this in the rest of my life because I relent to the stress more outside of the office, rather than carving out those moments to ruminate on it all.

Managing others is a skill; managing yourself is a hard-won talent.

Done Taught Some Learnin'

Is it specifically making fun of southern folk when you use that dialect, or just making fun of ignorant folk in general? It's clearly meant to sound southern, but I can't say fer certain if that or the horrible syntax connotes stupidity.

Yesterday I taught as a guest artist in

Suzi Takahashi

's classroom at

CCNY

. In spite of being mid-cold (oh doh!) I thought it went rather well. The space was awesome: a movement studio built into the ground, so you entered to a sort of balcony overlooking the whole room, and once you descended a flight of stairs you were on a 25x35 wood floor with an approximately twenty-foot ceiling above you. The class was a slightly shifty one, but by that I don't mean they were suspicious in any way. It was a class of about 19, but a few were late, and a few had to leave variously early, and most of them weren't especially interested in theatre. In fact, many of them did turn out to be dance enthusiasts who ended up in the class due to a syllabus error. Nonetheless, they were a great group -- very attentive, and with good energy to put into the work. I worried a bit at the beginning, when some of them were exhausted by the warm-up, but they were mostly crying wolf on that count. The conditioning at the end of class . . . now that rolled them out pretty flat.

I gave them a good long warm-up, explaining as we went why we were doing particular exercises and how they related to the work. Then I got into the typical commedia dell'arte characters, introducing them one-by-one by groups:

innamorati

, then

vecchi

, then

zanni

. I ended up bring along some cut-outs from a calendar I bought in Italy a couple of years ago. I questioned what I would do with them when I saved them, and now I'm glad I did and surprised that I didn't immediately realize they'd be good teaching aids. Each time I introduced a type of character, we spent a little time on specific versions and always, always, keeping the students moving and trying the forms physically. They took to it beautifully, hopefully aided in that effort by my advice, "You can only fail in this form by NOT making a fool of yourself." We just had enough time to get through the three basic categories, then touch on two "hybrid characters" (Capitano and Pulcinella) before I only had ten minutes for conditioning and homework. We worked our upper bodies today (my sadism in full effect with circle push-ups) and I asked them to observe people for character studies to bring into class when next we meet.

As I say, I had a good time. The experience of teaching solo meant that I had to work a little smarter to get everyone to accept me and glom onto my humor. I hadn't realized how similar to having an audience plant it was to have a co-teacher. I also found myself looking at all this stuff, that I teach and have taught for years, in a fresh light. That really ought to happen with every different group of students, of course, but occasionally I feel less enthused about the whole thing. This time, however, something about the almost total ignorance of the form that the class had motivated me to seek out fresh connections between what they did know and instinctively performed, and what I had to add to it. Sometimes I wonder if my enthusiasm for teaching might be based a bit too much in how occasionally I do it. If I had to teach multiple classes every weekday, would it retain my interest?

Suzi and I had a bit of a conversation about this and other things related to education and making a career in the theatre after class was dismissed. She has had a very interesting (and informative, for me) path through acting, directing, bachelor's, master's and even PhD programs, and at present is adjunct teaching quite a bit in New York and elsewhere. We talked about what it was like to return to school, to teach and to get jobs in the academic theatre scene and the world at large. I don't know what to make of all we discussed just yet, but it was great to talk so openly about what I plan to do with my life over the next few years. I ended up being more plain than I generally am with other theatre folk (networking always being in the back of my mind somewhere) and learned a lot about what I see for myself and what I'd like to see.

Now this is a funny point for me. Generally speaking, I like to talk here about the tribulations and rewards of what I call

The Third Life

, meaning what one does in addition to a personal life and a money-making life. More and more, that distinction has come to seem artificial to the point of being obsolete. The artistry for me is not a separate part, even when the goals may seem to be in conflict with the other two parts. Catholics may prefer the divine paradox, but as for me, I was raised Unitarian, so I guess we all should have known I'd take it in that direction eventually.

Assuming that unity as real, or at least as a prospective goal, suddenly my vow to generally leave the minutiae of my personal life out of the 'blog is unwarranted. Basically unhelpful and wrong, in fact. All is one.

That having been said, don't worry: I'll still try not to flood the Internet with things like a detailed schedule of my flatulence. (Note to self: New social networking site idea: "Tooter.")

My point (and this time I do have one) is that it feels very personal,

too

personal, to talk completely openly here about what I want for my future. But it also feels like I need to get past that, in a way, because part of what makes me feel vulnerable is an awareness that I'll be held more accountable for anything that makes it down in type here. So I may not be as open as I could be, but henceforth I'll be more open than I have. Balance in all things, as they say. This may be a little old-dog/new-tricky for me, of course.

But, as they say, it's never too late to learn.

"Nothing lasts, nothing is finished, and nothing is perfect."

Or:

Wabi-sabi

.

From

the Wikipedia article on

Jujutsu

:

"The Japanese have characterised states of mind that a warrior should be able to adopt in combat to facilitate victory. These include: an all-encompassing awareness,

zanshin

(literally 'remaining spirit'), in which the practitioner is ready for anything, at any time; the spontaneity of

mushin

(literally 'no mind') which allows immediate action without conscious thought; and a state of equanimity or imperturbability known as

fudoshin

(literally 'immovable mind')."

With regards to

anshin

and

mushin

, I've done some significant work in my life. Being ready for anything at any time is applicable to improvisation, stage combat, temping, not to mention simply trying to get acting jobs. Spontaneity, the release of conscious thought, is harder for me but a life in the theatre naturally keeps me in reasonable form.

Fudoshin

, if I understand it correctly, is one in which I have to date been sadly lacking. I'll try not to judge myself here -- "sadly," it may not be; but "lacking," certainly. For most of my life I've regarded such a quality to be ultimately negative, relating it to stubbornness or narrow-mindedness. As I embrace my adult life, however, I begin to see that it is not only a desirable quality in many cases, but a necessary one, in some.

Of course, the Japanese express the idea more beautifully than I could ever hope to:

"A spirit of unshakable calm and determination,

courage without recklessness,

rooted stability in both mental and physical realms.

Like a willow tree,

powerful roots deep in the ground

and a soft, yielding resistance against

the winds that blow through it."

So how do we cultivate this quality, this ability, this eventual instinct in our lives? That's one of the things I'm aiming to find out.

Block? Block. Block?

Friend WHftTS has

a recent post

on his/her/its 'blog that reminds me of how irksome the collaborative process can be. It is easy to feel lost or frustrated, or both, and sometimes the whole damn thing hardly seems worth the effort. It has to be a strong choice, I think, to collaborate with particular people at a particular time on a particular work, and we have to be prepared to have it go

completely different

from our expectations. Even then, we may contend with that familiar urge to go ear rippin'. And anyway, we don't always have a choice in one (if not any) of these areas. Theatre, in particular, involves a lot of ball-passing, and very rarely does any quarterback make a 90-yard dash that results in a touchdown.

Ew. When I resort to sports metaphor, it's time for a new paragraph, at least.

Having just come off a highly collaborative process, I'm very sensitive to WHftTS' frustration over people who block. By "block," in this sense, I'm drawing a parallel between collaboration and improvisation (much safer metaphorical territory [is that ambiguous?] for yours truly). A block, in improvisation, is when someone says "no" to a suggestion. A pretty straight-forward rule: Don't say no. Until you consider that the very rule you just stated violates itself by its negative construction. Then think of how conditioned we are to say "no," automatically or otherwise.

Then

consider how many different ways there are of saying "no," or blocking, without using that particular word; without saying anything at all! It is often quite challenging, saying "yes" to everything. Hell, it's challenging saying yes even once, in some contexts.

It would seem, at first blush, that some critical faculty is required for collaboration, and it is. The trouble is, saying "no," or arguing, is too easy. "Easy?" you demand. "You call that struggle easy?" In a sense, yes, Dear Reader. Blocking is itself a much simpler, more direct choice than, say redirecting, or even trying out whatever's just been given to you. Therein lies much of the problem with blocking, even that of the most sensible and creative variety -- it contributes nothing.

When we teach improvisation,

Friend Heather

and I get people in the practice of saying, "Yes, and..." at the beginning of each sentence. This is a good ritual for keeping communication open. The first, and most consistent, breach of this rule that always occurs is someone saying, "Yes, but...". Let's say, just for the sake of argument, that one says "yes, but" because they sincerely have a better idea. Hands down. No question. What harm then? The harm is that in disagreement so abrupt and direct, one halts the flow of energy, which is more important to a collaboration than almost anything else. Perhaps worse (for the blocker), in a good collaboration you may find yourself ignored. Like water, the group's efforts have to keep flowing, lest they become stagnant, and you, Dear Blocker, are in their way. More to the point, though, there are other ways of influencing the flow, ways that run less risk of ignoring what might turn out to be a problem-solving idea at that. Focus, explore and contribute, rather than block, and odds are that you'll get a better result every time. Maybe in some cases we can and ought to direct a given collaboration. That can be helpful, but no matter how much your direction is needed, you never own the collaboration. It's always the groups'.

The other block I have on my mind is one WHftTS addresses rather frequently as well: writer's block. Or, I should say, WHftTS addresses the cure, which is regular writing. A discipline. Like a pulp detective, I can't help but feel the two blocks are related in some way(s). I spent a couple of months away from my play

Hereafter

-- never reading it, much less writing on it, in that time. My intention had been to spend the last two weeks of

R&J

working it over, but the first week was packed with workshops, and the second . . . well . . . I just couldn't get to it.

It has become apparent to me that I'm actually suffering from a bit of writer's block. That seems natural enough. My writing in general over the rehearsal period had been sporadic at best, downright occasional at worst, so I'm a little out of practice. Plus, I care an awful lot about

Hereafter

, and so I don't want to mess up whatever I've already gotten right. Plus, I can't recapture how I felt when I was writing it. Plus . . . I mean, I wrote the two best pieces of it months apart from one another, with no regard for unity . . .. And . . . uh . . . er . . ..

"Yes, but . . ."

You can block yourself. In fact, what may be so very frightening about collaboration is that it mirrors the internal process so well. They're both instinctive, wandering, exploratory quests, filled with wrong turns and time, time, time. They're best approached with patience, enthusiasm and direction, albeit ever-changing direction. It's hard enough work without getting in my own way.

Wrapping Up Romeo

But soft, what light through yonder window breaks? It is the East, and Juliet is the sun!

[

The actor is silent, twitching his fingers as if to draw something out, then upping the gesture until it is a furious, full-arm coaxing.

]

Arise, fair sun! And, and and...

[

The actor looks around himself frantically, finally spotting something in the distant horizon.

]

KILL the envious moon, who is already sick and pale with grief that thou her maid art far more fair than she!

[

The actor gives a take to the audience as if to say, "

Wow, did you hear me come up with that?

" The actor is never sure if this take is going to land as he intends it {that is, as a gleeful sharing of enthusiasm rather than giving the sense that he's impressed with himself} and so, sometimes, he skips it. Sometimes.

]

I'll miss my clown Romeo. Though potentially not for long, as the Italians are very encouraging about getting some part (if not all) of the production to Italy to perform, either this summer or next. Still, the curtain has fallen on this particular outing, and it's unlikely that another will be quite the same. So. To review:

The key to my take on Romeo lay in a late note from our clown director, Mark McKenna. He compared Romeo to a puppy -- all loyalty and enthusiasm, no strategy or subtext. This worked great, though I'm sure another performer could have done it better. One of the greater challenges for me in this exploration was to let go of my calculation and crispness in favor of an instinctive openness. I've never done so well at this before, yet I'm certain I didn't take it as far as it could have successfully gone. (So I'll be thankful for another chance, or two.) Romeo had big, ungainly paws and an ear-flapping energy. Part of the beauty of this puppy imagery was that it gave permission to be angry as well as cuddly, which helped me figure out how a clown Romeo could slay a commedia dell'arte Tybalt. It's funny: I used to attribute an animal to every character I played, a technique I've gotten away from in my adult career. Of course playing such a young lover would end up being nested in that work!

Prior to that image, there was a lot of struggle on my part to succeed as a clown in the role and, as I said, my success was mitigated by me just being me. I remember in college my TV/film acting teacher told the class that I shouldn't be going after non-brainy roles, that my "look" or "type" was too focused for that. I thought,

thank goodness I'll be doing theatre, where I can more easily transform

, but the personality traits she was picking up on were perfectly valid. I'm a thinker. That's not to say I'm especially intelligent, just that I work from my head first whenever I can. Bad habit for an actor, generally speaking, which is part of what I like about trying to do this amazing craft. I like the work involved in getting instinctive, getting into my heart. That didn't save me from some fury-inducing frustration during this rehearsal process (natch'), but even that was reminiscent of my teenage years, and so wasn't entirely an obstacle.

I have come to a new appreciation of the axiom that "there is no subtext in Shakespeare." This is a saying so often said that it is starting to lose letters, holes appearing like new constellations in the firmament of phraseology. (And yes, I do miss the language already.) In the little roles I've previously filled, it was apparent to me that every character says what is on his or her mind, and nothing less, but it wasn't until trying to fill out a role like Romeo that I felt how essential that no-subtext rule is. You don't just say everything as you feel it, you express it, wholly, and the whole thing is in motion the whole time. There is no stop to your internal life, there is no censorship or, ultimately, room for grand interpretation. Take, for example, the following:

"This gentleman, the Prince's near ally, my very friend, hath got this mortal hurt in my behalf. My reputation stain'd with Tybalt's slander -- Tybalt, that an hour hath been my kinsman! Ah Juliet; thy beauty hath made me effeminate, and in my temper softened valor's steel."

This ended up being the text I most had to mess with, interpretation-wise. Somehow in the clown world and with our vasty cutting of the text, it needed to be an upbeat bit, in order to more dramatically drop in the moment when Benvolio came back with Mercutio's mask in hand to tell of his demise. It's right there: mortal hurt. Romeo's upset and knows that Mercutio's at death's door, yet I felt I had to play it lightly, as though Romeo were oblivious right up to the last second. It never felt right, and it never would, because there's only so much room for interpretation. The conditions are all right there in the text, and honesty lives in living them out in their time and measure.

Apart from a few other little alterations, I feel strongly that our show was very true to the story and the characters. There was some doubt of this to begin -- we didn't know if a clown & commedia world would work at all, much less whether it could be convincingly applied to

R&J

. (Note: Next time, Jeff, read through the play a couple of times before you get super excited about your concept....) We were lucky in discovering, in my opinion, that this concept was in fact well-suited to the material. Romeo and Juliet are just as innocent and moment-to-moment as clowns, and they are surrounded by a world of connivers, and scarred fighters, and hypocrites. And all these people are lovable, even the worst of them, which makes the tragedy truly, uh, tragic. You feel bad for

everyone

. It will be a while before I'll be able to see the play as anything other than how we conceived it. Indeed, watching film versions of it I'm compelled to laugh, especially during the back-to-back "banished" scenes. You can't expect me to believe that he wrote those without some sense of the comic irrationality of teenagers.

One criticism of the show lingers for me: That it was too manic, that the tragedy was ultimately undermined by all the broad comedy preceding it, and came off as too abrupt. This sticks with me because I feel quite the opposite. To me, life is like that. Tragedy is abrupt, and I meant every emotion prior to our characters' deaths, regardless of how comic the effect was, so I feel that there was plenty of room there to believe that something truly sad was happening. This critique is also interesting to me because, technically speaking,

Romeo & Juliet

is not exactly a tragedy. The deaths are quite accidental and unnecessary, rather than inevitable. There is no return to the status quo, true (the hallmark of classical comedy), but neither are the main characters of especially high status. Furthermore, it seems to me that Shakespeare

knew

this, and spent some effort to counteract it. Of all the lines we cut, a great many were (I believe coincidentally) of a foreboding nature. Hardly a scene goes by without Romeo and/or Juliet saying something about a bad dream or sudden image of death. Methinks the playwright doth protest too much, in other words.

What we made, ultimately, was a very broad, structured comedy that aspired to inspire tragic catharsis at the end. I know we reached this aspiration for some, and not for others. Such is theatre, such is life. I feel very fulfilled, now all is said and done. It was not as I imagined it, but that's collaboration, and the show was probably better for it. I learned much, and kept learning, which I take as a sign that we were doing something right in terms of story and character. The audiences enjoyed themselves, and we achieved some measure of delight, surprise, and grief. It was funny, and it was beautiful, and if I never get to play another leading Shakespeare role again, I can happily hang my hat on this.

That's not my plan, though. I've got a taste for it now.