Travel – lifeinthethe8tre

January 19, 2020

The Lake House

I couldn’t imagine anyone I’d rather spend my 60th Birthday with than my friend Bob. Well, any living anyone. Arguably our friend Susan, but she was happily ensconced in CapeTown and a three day weekend wasn’t practical from that distance. I jumped on a plane Friday morning, my birthday itself, and spent the day in transit, via Denver and some seasonably tricky winds, landing finally at La Guardia Airport, well on its way to being “the New LGA.” At one point, a flight attendant leaned over in the dark conspiratorially, and said, “Happy Birthday! Would you like a drink to celebrate?” Little did she know how fraught a question that might be for the not-so-newly-sober, but I said, no, thank you and went on reading. I landed at 11:53PM, with a scant seven minutes of my fifties remaining, grabbed my luggage and began the long trek down the sidewalk outside the baggage claim area, lined with the huge yellow columns proclaiming TAXI with arrows pointing forward. I think I turned sixty somewhere on that walk to the Shuttle Bus to the Taxi stand, in total disorientation and confusion; I’m sure this isn’t indicative of the state of my sixties to come but was appropriate for the transitional moment itself.

I bet you’re wondering why you are on a bus right now….

So began the announcement that played to pacify us during the five minute drive to the Taxi Stand, and indeed it did, as they described the future beauty and ease of our taxi rides into Manhattan. Smart marketing, I’d say.

It’s been about 4 years since I was in Manhattan, June of 2016, the last time after my husband’s and my last trip to Chatham, when we came down to New York to visit a gallery where my Aunt Irene’s work was being exhibited. Jimmie and I stayed at the Algonquin, and had a great time, aside from our very difficult experience seeing The Humans, and I took this shot of Jimmie in front of the Broadhurst Theatre, the site of his first Broadway show, Romeo and Juliet, in 1951, starring Olivia DeHavilland.

We visited The Met Museum, had dinner at the Algonquin Round Table, though we were only about 2/3s a table worth of brilliance and wit, and had an amazing family visit there.

This trip, however, was about celebrating a benchmark age, as well as spending time with Bob who has recently lost his partner. It wasn’t about getting notches in my theatre attendance belt, though that time will come again, but about visiting Bob and their son Nathan. If I’m entirely honest, I also had a secret agenda, to see the lake house. I’d forgotten that January 18th was Mitchell’s birthday – he’d have been seventy, and so I realized I was definitely meant to be there to mark that moment, too. As anyone who’s lost their partner knows, first birthdays after loss are emotionally fraught, both for the quick and the dead.

Bob was receptive to our driving north to the Lake House, and so we got in the car, with a fuzzy flannel blanket very similar to the ones that I’d draped over my knees at the hockey rinks as a hockey parent. Bob opened the front door of the car to let a very excited Springer spaniel, Layla, up onto my lap, where she sat for the next hour or so, in various paroxysms of excitement, agitation, and passivity. She was extremely attentive to all the turnoffs, watching as Bob’s steady hand hit the turning signal, squeaking excitedly as we turned onto the Taconic Parkway, where she began to do full on girations in a standing position on my lap. Bob helped push her into the back seat.

I wasn’t aware that was an option, I intoned drolly.

The snow had begun to fall in Manhattan as we were leaving the city, cascading in big fluffy flakes, doing their best to stick to the road and forests that lined the Taconic. Finally we arrived, and the beauty of the spot took my breath away. The lake house was the love child of Bob and Mitchell, and everything about it speaks to the strength of their partnership and their teamwork. I’d been familiar with the virtual version of the house through our frequent What’sApp video chats, but the huge windows, elevated and overlooking the lake was a perspective that I’d not appreciated for its actual power or beauty.

Now, as I sit at the desk overlooking the water, trees swaying gently in the afternoon breeze, snow atop the overturned canoe and dinghy down by the water’s edge, I can’t imagine a more perfect place to be, to live, to write. I’ve watched throughout the last hour the open water on the lake closing under a meniscus of nascent ice until there was just about a foot left. Earlier this morning, two of Bob’s neighbors breezed in at about 8:00AM, with a freshly made almond paste stollen, and we sat and sipped coffee companionably before beginning their ritual walk with Layla in the lead, around the lake. I had a true appreciation for the danger of the ice, since over the flaky sweet buttered pastry and hot, strong coffee, Ruth had shared her story about falling through the ice one Monday morning in another January, while snowshoeing across the lake. She’d been out on the lake the day before, with all her children, and the local ice fishermen. Monday, it was she alone on the ice. I marveled at how calm she remained through what must have been a terrifying experience. She dropped her ski poles under the water, pushed her snow shoes up onto the ice, then, channeling a recent National Geo show she’d seen about how seals came up from the ice pushing forward with their flippers until their bellies were up on the ice, slid out of the water onto the ice, continuing on her belly to the lakeside where she grabbed at the reeds to pull herself up onto the land. A neighbor, who happened to be a first responder and had fortunately seen her fall into the water arrived, shoved her into his brand new truck ignoring her consternation about getting his new truck wet. He drove her home, dropped her in her clothes into the shower for an hour, standing guard outside, then helped into her bed where he covered her with blankets and she shivered for the next 10 hours. Needless to say, she doesn’t snowshoe on the ice anymore.

Now, as I watch the slow encroachment of the thicker ice into the open water, I have a new appreciation for the perils of country living. I’m no less envious about the view from these windows, however, and the promise of natural beauty to guide one’s mindfulness and appreciation for the natural world as well as one’s creative endeavors.

Our morning walk around the lake, a perfect three-mile junket, was still and cold, but at a pace which belied the slushy conditions of the road. Layla did a good nine miles to our three, dashing about like a mad person after squirrels, other dogs, and just bounding with joy through the woods around us. Eventually, we dropped off Bob’s neighbor at her house, basically about half-way around the lake, then continued on, taking some as-of-yet-untrod paths through the snowy woods to avoid the local highway. We arrived back at the house with a fresh appetite which another piece of stollen quickly satisfied.

Yesterday, we paid homage to Mitchell by coming to the lake, Bob’s building a hearty fire in the stove, then making venison chili, a tradition of theirs with the largesse of their neighbors to the north. Bob had brought with us his Japanese daruma doll; the mystery of which’s eyes had become filled in remains, but the quicker you burn the doll and buy the new one, the quicker you are on your way to fulfilling your dreams. I think of this one’s import as the cleansing of our losses and renewal of our lives. Perhaps it means there’s a lake house in my future.

FBKBWB Gifu, Japan. 17th Jan, 2016. A Buddhist monk throws a Daruma doll into the fire during Daruma Kuyo, a doll burning ceremony at Dairyu Temple in Gifu, Japan. People buy the dolls, which are thought to bring good luck, at the start of the year, and burn ones from the previous year. 10,000 dolls are burned during the ceremony. Credit: Ben Weller/AFLO/Alamy Live News

January 5, 2020

Phoenix Rising

When last we left Nana, she had boarded the big green bus run by the South Tahoe Airporter and was speeding her way up from the lake’s edge to Reno, to fly to Washington, D.C., where she would visit her father and stepmother for the New Year’s celebration.

Freshly showered, latest Grisham book in hand, I boarded the first of two flights from Reno to D.C., enjoyed reading a bit, something which had eluded me for the past week. I relaxed into my seat on the United Flight to Los Angeles, which is only an hour, and best intentions falling aside like the book into the crevice of the seat, I immediately dozed off into intermittent sleep. I had promised myself that I’d finish my blog in L.A. while waiting for the red-eye to DC, but found I was quite content instead reading my book and relaxing in the crowded anterooms in LAX. I boarded the 10:45PM Sunday night departure with other bleary-eyed travelers, all of us anticipating a solid 5 hours and 10 minutes of sleep. At least I was, sure that with no nurseling or tot to worry about, I’d soon be out. The flight was full, and all seats and overhead bins bursting with folks heading to the nation’s capital.

The following morning, after a pricey cab to the Northwest district, I arrived at the home of my stepmother and my dad. I entered the cozy foyer, and immediately sat down to have breakfast with them, as though I’d never left since my last visit in July. They have an orderly life, attended by a loyal staff who’ve been with them for about thirty years. There is hardly a metaphoric point further flung from Tahoe than here. Complete tranquility and care for the next four days, which I was very much looking forward to.

I’d finished the Grisham (highly recommend it, too – The Guardians) – and eagerly launched into Ann Patchett’s The Dutch House, a novel I’d heard people raving about for weeks. Within the first 121 pages, I was struck by a quote which underscored the topic of uncertainty about the future that my coach and I’ve been discussing of late:

There are a few times in life when you leap up and the past that you’d been standing on falls away behind you, and the future you mean to land on is not in place, and for a moment you’re suspended, knowing nothing and no one, not even yourself.
Ann Patchett, The Dutch House

I stopped and read the quote a second time, a third time, a fourth. It had fallen almost like a love letter out of a long unopened book, and I settled into my chair to consider the happenstance of reading such a missive at this time. Just my recent two weeks of travel, visiting my son and his family for Christmas, and now my Dad and his wife for New Year’s is completely foreign to me. Traveling alone is simple, unencumbered. I would always have preferred the encumbrance of my darling husband, but I now embraced the efficacy of traveling alone.

Over summer, I’d signed up for TSA Check, and this was the first trip I’d successfully used it on. If you can call successful being stopped with a half full water bottle at the checkpoint, which I vociferously denied having, then being escorted around and coming through again for two agents to scrutinize the screen and discover a very sharp work-knife in your purse successful. I do, considering they could have done a full cavity search at that point, and they didn’t.

The five days in D.C. was lovely. I’d told my Dad I didn’t want him to fill up the time with activities, that I knew I’d be exhausted and would just like to hang out, and he followed my wishes. Aside from the three squares we all had together each day, we did a few errands together; I accompanied him to get out some stitches at the dermatologist’s office, marveling at how he knew everyone’s name in the office and used it, causing broad smiles to come over each staff member’s face. Unbiased of course, I’d say my dad is a charming guy, and it was great to see he hasn’t lost his touch with people. He has an uncanny ability to meet someone and to know their life story within fifteen minutes, then to hold onto that story like a pit bull with a rubber toy. This is probably a function of his having been a charitable foundation grantor for years; that work is about making relationships with people and determining if what they do or want to do with your foundation’s money is within the guidelines of that foundation’s mission. He’s never lost that flair for finding out what makes people tick. I’ve always admired it in him.

We took a trip to PetSmart, all three of us, to select two new finches for Sally’s indoor aviary. The zebra finch and society finch hopped about trying to evade capture by the young woman at PetSmart, but when they were inducted into their new home, a good 10x larger than their cage at the store, they tweeted happily and flitted about the aviary with joy.

I took two rambling hikes in Rock Creek Park, the first, where I felt accompanied by my dear friend Susie at my side as I walked through the well-marked trails, slipping on the leaves occasionally in my inappropriate hiking shoes, red leather Clark’s moccasins. On the New Year’s Eve day hike I took, I resolved to do fifty hikes in 2020, so unfortunately couldn’t count that day’s hike, but it felt good to get out and move my legs after a few days of complete lassitude.

On the second day of the new year, my dear friend Liz came up from Annapolis to visit me at the house. Liz and I have known each other since we were about seven and eight, respectively, and lived about .08 mile from each other in Greensburg, PA. Our escapades were too many to recount, but included much creative “free play” on the acreage of her family’s home, flinging Barbies into the tiered ponds to “swim,” serving and drinking tea in the tiny log cabin playhouse, picking so many beans from her father’s vast garden that I once thought when I went to sleep, I would see only beans in my dreams. Like Patchett’s Dutch House, Liz’s family’s house in Greensburg had an almost mythic status for me which stuck with me for years, and I would visit its magical spaces in my dreams throughout my twenties, and even occasionally in my thirties.

Academically, I followed Liz from the Valley School of Ligonier, to St. Paul’s School, but diverged as she went on to Stanford and then back to Pitt to get her medical degree. She’s been practicing Emergency Medicine for thirty years, and that was one of the things we kept marveling at during our spectacular visit – how we’d gotten to be in the sixth decade of our lives in the blink of an eye. Both with families, and grown children, successful in our fields, far away from the little midwestern town where we’d percolated as children.

What’s wonderful about staying connected with a childhood friend is the dissipation of time that happens when you reunite. You’ve come a huge distance, with full lives lived between the 53 years between the time you met and now, but it’s all telescoped into a comfortable understanding of who you are together and apart. There’s no need to try to impress; she knew you when you were nine and stupid enough to slam the door of the pool house, inciting the wasps behind the hex sign on the door to chase you around the pool and back in again to sting you both multiple times before you both realized you should jump into the pool. You’ve attended her wedding, and she’s watched from afar your husband’s life celebration. You’ve both been working mothers and wives, with busy careers and family life. You’ve harbored hopes and dreams for your partner and your children, postponing conscious self care so that at 60 it is an entirely new topic to discuss. And you do discuss that topic with ferocity like how you chatted at night trying to fall asleep during that thunderstorm, lightening and thunder ricochetting off the ceiling, as it split a tree just down the hill from Liz’s bedroom. Fears about real and imagined boogiemen have populated our conversations and letters for over fifty years. How is that possible?

The image that I’ve been thinking of recently is the Phoenix.

…a unique bird that lived for five or six centuries in the Arabian desert, after this time burning itself on a funeral pyre and rising from the ashes with renewed youth to live through another cycle.

a person or thing regarded as uniquely remarkable in some respect.

The conflagration of the past two years or so is more or less out, smoldering a bit but effectively over. Charred, a bit wounded, I nevertheless feel the upward draft of the fire’s residual flare. Feet charred, I feel willing to rise above the wreckage to fly, like Sally’s finches, to discover new relationships, to listen to the air currents, open my flaps, as it were, to explore who the new me is.

In this next decade of discovery I’m suspended in the golden amber of past discoveries, magical spaces, and the fealty of noble friendships past and present.

Dear 2020, help me to recognize the opportunities as I encounter them to become uniquely remarkable in some respect, and to recognize and perhaps create the thresholds of inspiring new spaces that beckon me to creative inspiration.

December 30, 2019

Off the Grid with Nana

I’ve been off the grid for the past 8 days, spending the Christmas holiday with my son and his wife and their two adorable girls, S, a recently-turned four-year-old, and B, a recently turned 9-month-old. My son and his wife run a beautiful home – chaotically creative – the best kind. There are lots of toys, and lots of entertainment units of the organizational sort to keep Nana busy after the sun goes down. My OCD kicked in in a serious way. I don’t want to get all judgy — in a minute, you’ll see why–they get the job done brilliantly with a minimum of fuss, and don’t let the little things like organizing shoe piles spoil their afternoon. They are Present, yes, with a capital P, at all moments that their children are awake, and they thrive on the triumphs and squalors that constitute growing up well and happy.

I arrived on December 22nd, just in time to assist and attend S’s fourth birthday party, at the local bowling alley, a festive affair, with sparkling Spindrifts and Pellegrinos, and a beautiful fresh fruit platter from the local grocery store, as well as a veggie and dip tray. Perfectly and easily organized. (My producer’s brain noted “Know your audience.”)There were about 20 unicorn themed gift bags. Each bag had a very sparkly beaded wrist wrap which went from straight to bracelet with a quick slap on your wrist. Each one sported a cat or an animal. They ranged in color from pink to Cabaret black. They were a big hit. Also in each bag, there was a bag of Frozen Pirate’s Booty – when I first heard that, I gagged, but then realized that it referred to the Disney movie, not the geothermic state of the puffs; I’ve never really understood the appeal of them when corn syrup packing peanuts are available in any Amazon shipment. Clearly the Frozen Pirate Booty is great because of the product alignment.

Parenthetically, I finally sat down and watched The Movie this holiday as well, so I will no longer have to pretend to know the claw accompanied by the hiss reference when S freezes me. Poor Ilsa. She really had it rough.

Have you ever seen almost-four-year-olds bowl? It’s spectacular. First, there are the adorable shoes, which only begin at kids’ size 10, so the wee ones just wore their own shoes. The ball is larger than their entire torso, and definitely heavier than they can manage. Their proud parent behind them. the toddlers reach the head of the lane and then unceremoniously drop the ball at their feet, where some miracle of physics and floor wax progresses it down the lane at about the speed of a very old demented tortoise. Miraculously it doesn’t stop. However, if one gets impatient, one can just line up the next ball to be ready.

After a few seconds, the tot turns away disinterestedly and resumes animated dance or conversation with their friends as parents and adjacent onlookers wait for the next minute-and-a-half as the ball makes it’s tortured way down to the end before shuttling off into the gutter. If they’re lucky, they might hit one pin. As the afternoon went on, S got a little better and was knocking a few pins down. But it didn’t matter. Bowling was just the setting. Ever so much more important was the giggling and chasing each around the bowling alley.

These Tahoe Toddlers’ parents are nice people in addition to their accomplishments. I met several of Whitney’s school colleagues and their children. My main job was to hold B so that Whitney and Chris could host the big kids and their folks. B is a magnet, so charming and smiley. She has this lovely full-body wiggle she does when she eats something she likes, or if someone smiles in her direction. I mean anywhere in her direction. She must be the happiest baby I’ve ever met. Everyone in her family now emulates the B wiggle when they want to see her smile. Adorable.

S is iconoclastic, a leader in the same way her daddy is. Rebel, comic sense of holding for a laugh and then letting herself laugh with abandon. Her friends all arrived with various packages of Playdoh products, again many of the gifts were this season’s favorite, Frozen. Unicorns and Ilsa are big in the under 5 market.

In addition to coming to spend the holidays, I ended up staying in this beautiful part of the world so that Chris and Whitney could attend a wedding after Christmas. I’d agreed to babysit for the dynamic duo for an overnight trip. When I arrived, I realized it was actually for two days, which was fine. I’m always up for a challenge. Being a Grandparent is a dance. I’ve never been a particularly good dancer, ~~save for the disco competition I won in a state of extreme inebriation in the college pub~~. It’s harder than it looks in books, movies and TV. My practice unfortunately looks more like George Wilson to Dennis the Menace – you know- the cranky neighbor trope. Four year olds (and fifty-nine-year-olds, for that matter) can be mercurial. We can go from chill to chilly in a heartbeat. One of my corrections to some benign four-year-old action resulted with her responding, “Why don’t you go outside, Nana, and die in a snowbank?”

Beat….

I consider a moment whether this is a witty musical reference to Grandma got run over by a reindeer….Nope. And before you jump to conclusions and decide either that my granddaughter is a psycho or I’m Emily Gone Postal, let’s just say transitioning from a single, urban life style into the afore-mentioned creative home combined with the onset of a serial stomach flu suffered on the 23rd by Whitney, the 24th by Chris, and my hypochondriacal certainty that I would be next on Christmas Day made me less than nimble. And she told me so.

Note to self. Nana’s is to remain chill. Assume the corrective mantle only when necessary when someone is about to die.

On Christmas Day I fell into a slough of despondency the likes of which I’ve not felt since last Christmas, the first without my husband. Leaden limbs, near total disinterest in presents, a need to fall asleep on the couch by 10 in the morning. It was bizarre and I was incredibly relieved (as I’m sure Chris and Whitney were) when I mostly recovered the next day. (And I didn’t get the flu, thank you, Baby Jesus.)

In spite of being somewhat physically and mentally disengaged on Christmas, I still got a charge out of S’s generosity in offering to open everyone’s presents. I had bought S a little robotic dog that pants, barks, growls, sits, wags his tail and runs on command. At one point during the weekend, B and I were sitting with the little cutie on the floor next to the chair and I was patting it, while she depilled it and ate the fluff when suddenly, the dog turned it’s head sidewise and looked up at me in the chair – like Linda Blair in The Exorcist. It scared the bejeezus out of me. Toys are too damn smart.

As stage managers and production managers, we manage logistics. Rehearsals have breaks taken at Equitable times, and we’re trained to track multiple people on stage at any time, and write what they are doing, where they are going and what they are carrying down. Two kids for two days? Piece of cake.

Two days later and I would challenge any Stage manager to take care of two toddlers under four. In fact, I think this might be an amazing training drill. B has her eyes on anything that can be put into her mouth, lint, pine needles, dice. Her favorite is Puffs, little colored cheerios that come in a can. Doesn’t matter if they’re from two days ago and are gummy. In it goes.

The logistics went something like this:

5-7AM Wake up to the baby standing up, holding onto the crib and shrieking.
Take her downstairs, change her and sit her on the floor to play. She is happy.
6:30-7:00AM S comes down and wants to make slime. “Nana doesn’t do slime.” The truth is that Slime is my Cryptonite. Bring out a bowl and ask for glue and I start quivering all over and not in the charming way that B does.
7-9AM Negotiate about the slime. S is definitely going to be a prosecutor and a damn good one.
7-9AM Make breakfast while keeping an eye on B so she doesn’t spill out the dog food or water on the floor of the kitchen or find/eat dessicated grapes under the cabinets . Find something that S will eat that has some nutritional value and sit with B giving her some bacon and blueberries. Bacon goes down, Cupid gets fed. Blueberries go down. Nana gets to do some waist bending. That’s my exercise for the day. Did I eat?
9-10AM Color with S while bouncing B on my knee and handing her the lids of the markers to hold for me. This is what we call stasis.
10AM Warm up some milk and bottle it while holding B on my hip.
Put on the TV for S and take B up to put her down for her nap.
10:30AM-12:30PM Play with S, again negotiating for a more manageable game than slime…We might get dressed here or we might
12:30PM Retrieve caterwauling B from the crib and bring her down. Change her.
Lunch. What the hell will they eat? Did I eat yet?
Afternoon activity – walk outside, go to the indoor childrens’ playspace nearby
Naps
5:00PM Start dinner while making chocolate chip cookies with the neighbor children. Calculating how much raw dough will make them sick….
6:00PM Eat dinner followed by a brief Gymnastics competition.
6:30PM run a bath. S and B love their bath which they take together. Make sure B doesn’t fall face first into the bath. No actual hygiene seems to take place in the bath but they both look cleaner when they come out.
7:00PM Prepare bottle and take B up to bed after finding something appropriate for S to watch. Kids Channel on Netflix. Oh, here’s the original Grinch movie. I came down after putting B to sleep and saw Jim Carrey in a green suit with maggots or bugs climbing all over his teeth. Slapping hand to my mouth…

Whoa! This is going to give you bad dreams, S!
Yeah, it’s scary.
I thought you told me you’d watched it before.

(Sometimes S uses her debate techniques to persuade you that she is making an actual case when it is really just a very inventive story narrative.) Correction: she’s going to be a prosecutor/novelist when she grows up.

8:00PM Read books or listen to a sleep story with S.
8:30PM Tiptoe downstairs and start playing the Nana OCD cleanup game.
10:00PM Crawl into bed
10:30PM B Caterwauling. I’ve got this! Bottle on the way.
10:45PM B refuses bottle
11:00AM S stumbles into the room.

You’re not going to get much sleep in here, S.
I want my Mommy!

Cupid starts barking manaically at something outside the window.
Els realizes she’s left the car in the driveway, throws on shoes, then opens the front door and Cupid goes screaming into the night, surely to be eaten by a coyote or a bear. What will I tell Chris and Whitney?
12:30AM B, S and Nana cry themselves to sleep.

6:30AM the Following Day – Rinse and Repeat.

Along the way, I would occasionally pick up my phone and see people wishing each other Merry Christmas! But I didn’t have time to play those reindeer games. I was off the Grid with S and B.

And you know what? I wouldn’t trade one glorious second of it. Happy Holidays!

November 3, 2019November 3, 2019

Nanas on Scooters – What’s next?

Since Nanas are the ones driving Facebook, it wasn’t such a stretch to get to Nanas driving Scooters. It seemed appropriate for me to utilize the tools available to me to get to LATC yesterday, where our MFA Y2s are beginning to tech their fall productions, The Brothers Size, by Tarell Alvin McCraney, and The Minotaur by Anna Ziegler. About a year ago, I’d bought myself a bicycle helmet, with the strong intention of getting a bike to go with it. I figured I would reduce my carbon impact on Los Angeles. After I shared my plan with several friends and watched each of their faces contort into a grimace of concern and incredulity, cooler heads prevailed, so I’m taking the Dash or Metro to and from work, thanks to the reinstatement of a USC discount for using public transport. This new practice has afforded me about an hour of time to read, answer emails, and listen to music. The helmet has sat on the bottom shelf of my foyer table gazing sadly up at me with disappointment.

When my friend Caro was visiting, I thought we’d go out and try the scooters, more because I wanted company in my first outing, but alas, time did not allow for us to try. Knowing I had this all day rehearsal at LATC yesterday, I’ve been checking out the scooters as I walked home from the bus. Now I am going to get myself in trouble, because the scooter I chose to ride was not the one my nibling is the spokesperson for in SF. (Sorry EV – they look so tall!). I chose the Bird because it looked geared for smaller Nanas and I’ll work my way up to the citrus fruits later. Friday night, I downloaded the app to my phone, happy to discover that part of the process was pretty standard for someone with experience with Uber.

Yesterday morning, I shuffled everything from my purse to a backpack, grabbed my very excited little purple helmet from the shelf and headed outside, where the app told me a Bird was waiting for me in front of my building. Sure enough, there she was, and I stood over her, looking at the handles and trying to figure out how to turn it on. Pretty easy, and she chirped a few times, before I scooted her away from the restaurant where she was parked, and headed out onto Ninth Street. Scooting past the Grand Hope Park, I could almost imagine Jimmie in a Munch-scream-like pose sitting on the bench watching me pass, but couldn’t raise my hand to wave because it would have been too perilous. I’m such a damn goody-two shoes, so had watched the little instructions of how to ride twice, and I was damned if I was going to ride on the sidewalk which was not allowed. Because it was Saturday, there was a lot less traffic, but I learned first hand that the scooter ride is not smooth – there are about a dozen sewer covers on each block, and as I turned left onto Main St., the traffic crawled to a halt because they were paving the street. Bad choice, so I did ride up on the sidewalk until I could get to an east/west street to dart over to Broadway. This involved negotiating the still clumpy asphalt around the sidewalk crossings and eventually I was back on my way up Broadway, then a right on 6th, and I still walked about a block to the LATC building. Bird insists that you take a family photo of all the other little scooters parked on the sidewalk before she chirps a brief goodbye to you. This, an attempt to make sure you’re not leaving her lying face down in the path of another Nana to trip over. (Have you noticed how many Nanas there are in DTLA?)

At ten PM, as I left LATC after the day’s spacing rehearsals, I found a Bird right in front of the theatre, but she wouldn’t play with me, so I walked a little further south, finding another, which chirped happily at me and off I went.

I got home, and in my excitement, called Chris (at 10:30).

Mom, are you okay?
I became a scooter rider today! Love you, bye!

What’s next for Nana? Stay tuned. Anything’s possible!

October 16, 2019

Amsterdam and Venice – Canals, Water under the Bridges and Tiny Steps

I drove my friend Caro to the airport where I bade her goodbye as she went off on the next leg of her trip to Sidney, Australia. We’d had an amazing five days visiting; the last two, she’d accompanied me twice to campus, where she observed a production meeting Monday evening, a quick dinner in the Tutor Student Center courtyard, then a workshop on Post-Dramatic Theatre with our Israeli guest director of Amsterdam, Lilach Dekel-Avneri.

Caro lives in Venice, Italy, where I visited her and her husband, Alberto, for about five days this summer. Over those days, she patiently helped me to reconstruct my geographic synapses of a city that I had known well enough to make it home late at night intoxicated, but which thirty-three years later, greeted me as a bewildering maze of indiscriminate streets and courtyards. The canals teamed with water buses and ambulances as we strode around, crossing the arching bridges to stop at shops and galleries sampling the fruits of the Venice Biennale. One of our favorite stops had been at the Lithuanian Pavilion, where we voyeuristically drank in the performance of the actors romping on the faux beach while singing the modern opera about life’s vicissitudes in a warehouse near the Arsenale.

And we laughed. We laughed about the silly things, Caro’s bright Australian accent piercing through the afternoons and evenings. I marveled at how she’s managed to keep her youthful sense of humor and life appreciation even as she’s matured into a wise, insightful woman. When I left them in Venice, we made tentative plans for her to stop in Los Angeles on her way to Australia to see their daughter.

Between then and now, classes resumed, the seven undergraduate plays were cast and rehearsals began, designers collaborated, directors directed, and we already have closed one of the shows and opened the second. The fall has been a blur of activity, and the impending anniversary of my husband’s death has begun to rattle my cage.

The other night, the night of October 3rd, I had a dream, where Jimmie and I were traveling. We were at the airport, which was clean and modern, white shining subway tile in a hallway leading to the bathrooms. Jimmie emerged from the bathroom, standing tall, no walker or scooter, shock of neatly combed white hair. I walked to his side and we began walking, but I couldn’t keep up with him and said, “Hey, I can’t keep up with you. You’re walking too fast.” He turned, and with the twinkle in his eye I always loved, he said, “I owe it all to you.” And with that, he was gone. It was only later when reviewing some photos and some writing I’d done that I realized October 3rd had been a momentous day for us. Nearly 28 years before, it had been the day we had the call from our adoption social worker, with the news about our soon-to-be son. Also, last year, Chris had been visiting us and I’d snapped this picture at home, before our last dinner out together before Jimmie’s rapid decline. October 3rd had returned to remind me of its power and the power of our love for each other. Later that morning, poor Chris called me to say hi, and I blubbered for about ten minutes.

It was in this emotional period, when I picked Caro up at the airport on Friday afternoon, the beginning of the only weekend of the semester when I didn’t have a tech rehearsal. I marveled at how we’d somehow scheduled her visit for a pocket of my life when I could pull in my PM shingle and just play for three days. We’d opened Amsterdam just the night before, and I was giddy about getting to spend time showing her around my city.

Amsterdam has been an unfettered learning experience in mounting a non-hierarchical production. Working with Lilach has been challenging, and exciting and instructive as to how to create a play and environments through the sheer creative drive of a team. You should try to get over to USC to see it this weekend. It plays three more times this weekend. It closes Sunday 10/20.

Friday, after kidnapping Caro from the airport and driving her to Malibu, we had dinner at Gladstone’s, sitting outside, smelling the seasonal fragrance of the local fires, and watching the blood-red sun sink into the Pacific Ocean as we waited for our dessert and coffee to arrive.

There’s truth to the idea that the friends you make in your twenties are the ones you keep closest. As we looked out over the sand, I reminded Caro of the silly game we used to play at the beach at the Lido – find your physical twin. I remember my eternal body dysmorphia and how I always selected someone who looked well…. hmmm… sort of like I look today. Not as we looked then, svelte, and carefree and…twenty-two. I feel so fortunate to have managed to keep my friends close at hand.

Tonight, as I sorted through some of Jimmie’s residuals, finally made out in my name after almost a year of back and forth with the lovely folks at SAG-AFTRA, I thought about my new competencies. I’ve learned out to grieve as I need to, to pull it together when life calls for that. I know how to weigh the value of time spent with dear friends versus an extra hour of preparation for work. I’ve learned how to calendar my time to do the things that matter to me, and to keep committing to the forward actions that will make my future. I’m learning that I can be quite satisfied with a fried egg for dinner and I don’t need to beat myself up for not cooking. Or cleaning, or tidying the pile of mail before I sit down to write. When someone says they’re coming to stay, I don’t need to launch into a worry-fest about how I’ll manage house guests in the busy days of November, including November 9th, the anniversary day. Instead, I’ll think about how wonderful it will be to be surrounded by family at that time, fantasize that they might have dinner on the table when I come home, then proceed to take it one day at a time rather than drifting into a miasma of martyrdom.

I’ve spoken to several students this week who suffer from depression, anxiety and OCD. And the cold or the flu that’s going around relentlessly. I want to tell them it will be okay. Emotions are emotions. They won’t kill you. You have the power to control them. And even if you can’t for a moment, this too shall pass. That’s what they made Kleenex for. Lord knows I’ve developed a competency with Kleenex this year.

This fall, I have an amazing class of GESM 111G students. We’re learning how to read plays together, how to look at plays, how to sit and experience each dramatic outing and then come together and share our more and less favorite parts. They’re so enthusiastic and willing to share. I tortured them with an exercise this week. I’d had them do the Creative Autobiography from Twyla Tharp’s terrific book, The Creative Habit weeks ago, then carried around their little bits of heart in my bag for weeks until I finally read them. Each of them shared their creative successes and failures and aspirations with me. Across the board they all want to make a unique contribution in their field that helps people. So I thought that was worthy of some torture. I had them write what they thought that unique thing might look like, and after several iterations of sharing their ideas with each other in small groups, I wrote on the board what the tiny steps that they could take to get moving toward the goal would be. (Can you tell I’m working with a life coach and trying to emulate her? Good guess.)

Amsterdam, Venice, friendship, creativity, supporting each other. These are the tiny steps that make a life. In the end, it’s all water under the bridge.

September 24, 2019

Production Managers Forum – Spring Green, WI

I’ve had the privilege of belonging to this mythical group for the past seven or eight years, a national group of Production Managers from Regional Theaters, Educational institutions like mine, Opera Companies, and other assorted theatrical institutions across the country. Benefits of belonging to this advanced “hive mind” are almost instantaneous solutions to problems posed to the group, ranging from seeking contacts for designers and other artists, to advice on how/whether to have a horse on stage, which was one of my first queries back in 2012. Having the lived experience of so many other theatre practitioners at your fingertips makes being a PM possible and educational as well. I’d never before been able to attend a PMF gathering – maybe once before. Last weekend was filled with professional networking, sharing of practices, and a healthy dose of relaxation and taking in the green of Spring Green, WI.

In Wisconsin, we don’t say “I haven’t hit a deer”; we say “I haven’t hit a deer yet.”
Mike Broh, Production Manager, American Players Theatre

These words reverberate like the chimes played on the Hill before the matinee at American Players Theatre. Driving to dinner from the hotel, as the slight framed deer dashed in front of the Gray Nissan rental car I’d refused extra insurance coverage on, I breathed a sigh of relief and slowed down.

The road to hell is paved with the flat squirrels who couldn’t make a decision.

This and other funny and insightful quotes peppered many cork boards throughout the backstage and shop areas at American Players Theater. My favorite was the APT Core Values sheet, on the safety yellow paper stock that APT’s production manager, Mike Broh, reserves for only the most critical areas of safety, of which core values would obviously be.

APT’s Core Values

As someone who began as a Stage Manager prior to moving to Production Management, I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for SMs, as folks who will have your back to the bitter end. This PMF group may have superseded them after getting to go on this weekend fall PMF conference. Our host was Mike Broh, of American Players Theatre. Sitting in the wide circle of tables in the rehearsal room for both sessions on Friday evening and Saturday during the day was humbling in terms of the collective experience of these Production Managers but in a comfortable non-judgmental way. There were about 40 of us there. Due to the location of the conference, there were PMs from Milwaukee and Chicago, but others who came a further distance, from Boston, New Haven, and Oregon, as well as three of us from Southern California.

Saturday morning we started the day off with a tour of the APT kingdom, which is a vast network of spaces intricately designed for their individual purposes, to support simultaneously five to eight productions annually. The complexity of this was clear even from the initial board filled with the beaming pictures of the staff, and visiting artists, designers and directors. Everyone’s friendly face on a yellow card with their name and their role clearly indicated.

We toured the props domain, starting with the props woodworking shop, framed by the organized jury of chairs sitting above to watch the clean well-organized shop. We moved through the kitchen, to the upstairs clean room for props and costume work, and finally to the furniture storage, each item clearly tagged and coded for easy retrieval. The staff’s sense of humor was evident, from the prominently displayed Julius Caesar, modeled after one of their core company members, complete with 20+ stab wounds overlooking the props work room from behind his own work goggles.

Chairs stored aloft
Mike shows the prop woodworking shop to PMF members
Props woodworking shop
Props kitchen
Props Kitchen
Props workroom area
Food Storage Bins
Clean Area for Props and Costumes
Props Storage
Costume storage
Armory Props Storage
Furniture Storage

The tour continued around the many acres on which the Alpha and Bravo buildings were arranged, to the rehearsal space building. I didn’t look around to see if others were salivating like I was, but I suspect they were. I had definite space envy. In addition to the workroom spaces, each of the theatres has adjacent storage spaces to handle the scenery and costumes for rotation in and out of its stages in a very active Rep. Everything’s designed, or course, with these changeovers in mind.

The Costume Domain was equally impressive. From hats to storage, Millinery and Wig rooms, and spacious fitting rooms, all spaces reflected the ethos of giving your employees what they need to succeed.

Hats aloft
The Wig Room
The Millinery
Spacious work room

After touring the facilities, seeing the indoor Touchstone Theatre and outdoor Hill Theatre, we returned to the rehearsal room for our second round table discussing important topics. Topics of the weekend (at the risk of banishment from the group) included:

Trends in Theatre
Salary Transparency
Sustainability
Onboarding New Employees
Vaping
Social Media
Use of Cell Phones backstage

Mike ran the meetings beautifully, letting the conversations about each topic ebb and flow; he didn’t need to moderate – this group pretty much self-moderates, but ending each segment right on time with a droll unsardonic “Well, that was fun,” which elicited a rolling, warm shared laugh across the room every time. Aside from acute space envy, I came away from American Players Theatre with an appreciation of the effects of transparency at practice there, the self-evident respect among the staff. It was great to run into a former student, Lea Branyan, who has worked at APT for several summers, and has recently taken a job with the Lyric Opera in Chicago.

So happy to see our Alums looking so well
Lea gave us a late night tour of the main street.

Just for yucks, as I was writing this, I looked back to see the colorful and extraordinarily helpful descriptions of what could go wrong if I allowed them to bring a horse on stage back in 2012. That’s the other benefit of being a member. Not that I’d wish more email on anyone, but this group is thoughtful and funny with their responses to members’ questions. About that horse idea?

Calculate the weight of the horse when standing on 2 hooves and if you have a trapped stage, figure the point load of the floor. Oversheet the floor with 1” plywood and reinforce the braces in the areas where the traps are.
Hire a horse and a handler. There are plenty of people who do this in Los Angeles. They bring the horse, rehearse the horse and then ideally, take the horse out of the facility.
Be aware of campus sensitivity. Everyone will be looking for you to be abusing the animal. This is usually quelled by saying you have an animal wrangler. (Emphasis is mine)
Talk the handler through the expectations of what the horse would be doing, and conditions on stage.
When you get to tech, if you haven’t found it too crazy, you will need to proceed really slowly to integrate the horse lest it get spooked. You’ll want to have horse no people with work lights, then horse with people, then horse with lights, then horse with sound, then add people and sound (this is the biggest jump and the most likely to spook the horse), again then people and light. Only after everything is good with each step do you go ahead. We would take a week to get animals who are used to performing acclimated to being in a different production number. And then this was a long lead before audience.
And I forgot to say that the backstage traffic is almost as complicated. With the right animal it could be quick, if the horse is jumpy, it could be disastrous.
Oh! And don’t forget you’ll need to assign someone to poop duty.

Throughout the weekend, we ate well at a series of local restaurants, including one of the local hotspots, Slowpoke Bar and Cabaret owned by Mike and his wife Stacey. We even got to slip away Sunday morning to visit the garish House on the Rock, which until I’d travelled there, always thought referred to the Frank Lloyd Wright house, Taliesan. Oh, couldn’t have been more wrong. A kitschy must-see for when you go to Spring Green. That and the National Mustard Museum in Middleton, WI.

I feel lucky to be in the company of such amazing Production Managers.

July 28, 2019

Crenelated Time

In the past few days, I’ve been reflecting on the events of my recent trip to Italy. There I stayed with friends I’ve known for almost forty years. In both cases- my visit to Umbria and that to Venice, it felt as though we were picking up where we left off, and yet, we’ve all had full and rich lives between meetings.

This week, out of the blue, I got hired to do a reading, a wonderful project with interesting people, from referrals by friends from completely different segments of my life. And so, (I have to laugh because it’s so Mrs. Malaprop of me) I started thinking of the image of time as crenelated.

I laugh because what I really was thinking about was the way an accordion fan is folded, which isn’t at all what crenelate means. Crenelate means to furnish with crenels, or battlements to a wall, to fortify it. Which, ironically, could also be a little accurate in this recovery time. I’m coming up on nine months since the loss of my husband, and while things are slightly less raw, I am startled occasionally at the depth and pitch of the forgive the metaphor, crenels of grief.

Last weekend, I had a wonderful weekend in Carlsbad with my son and his wife and their beautiful daughters. Saturday, I’d made a dinner reservation for an Italian restaurant and found it on the map about twenty minutes away. We started off for a brisk walk along the beach wall overlooking the beach, arrived at the restaurant to discover that it was the wrong restaurant (there was another one with the same name two blocks from our hotel.) Hangry and more than a little annoyed, we walked back and stopped at another restaurant halfway between the two, where we had quite a nice dinner. My food came last, so I was holding the baby while her parents ate, and I gazed out the window of the restaurant at a couple who were standing still, arms around each others’ waists, watching the sun as it sank into the Pacific. They looked intently at the sun dipping into the water, then equally intently and fondly at each other. That’s all it took. I completely lost it. Tears quietly cascaded down my cheeks. I tried to hide it but with my hands full of baby, I wasn’t able to wipe them away.

My daughter-in-law said, “Are you okay?”

“Yes,” I blubbered. “I’m fine. Just snuck up on me.”

I proceeded to try to explain the loss of one’s other, the feeling of yearning to share life’s simplest moments, in direct contrast with intractable solitude one faces with the loss of one’s life partner. It didn’t go well, particularly because she’d been quite moved that I was so emotional about holding their darling baby. Which was part of it, I want to assure her.

But back to this feeling about time and the connection between quite disparate points in my life, and how they have remained joined to others on the same continuum. The metronome of friendship tick-tocking up to tap you from behind. I’m moved by it.

Earlier this week I came home from work and went down to swim a little in the pool at our condo. Only a year ago, my husband would have come with me, rolling his scooter with aplomb to a shady corner of the pool, where he would have watched me swim, or dozed off in the late afternoon. We might have brought crackers and cheese and some sparkling water down, and after emerging from my minimal pool laps, I would have sat and joined him in companionable silence, munching our crackers and enjoying the diminishing sun that warmed the chaises on the north side of the pool before it slipped down behind a nearby building.

I pulled my head up out of the water and looked quickly to his corner, deliriously expecting him to be there, just as I had earlier in the week as I stretched on the floor of our apartment, looking up to his picture on the table.

Damnit. You’re not coming back, are you?

No, he’s not. Anger, worry, hollowness, impatience, weariness, wallowing self-pity are some of the feelings a person in grief slogs through every day. But as time passes, it’s not always terrible. There are also moments of hope, optimism, gratitude, self-discovery, pride of accomplishment, and even some joy, too. Those are the feelings I try to steer myself toward. I’ve always been a “there must be a pony here somewhere” type of person, and now is no exception.

I’m so grateful to my friends and colleagues for their support now. I’ve learned the power of making plans to look forward to, to experience, then look back on and enjoy remembering the events of those times you’ve planned. I guess that’s what makes a good life, you could say. Even if time isn’t actually crenelated at all.

July 26, 2019

Final Days of My Roman Holiday

The last day in Rome, I visited the Vatican. I got adventurous, and took the metro from the Spagna stop (at the base of the Spanish Steps). This was my first immersion in Rome, far from the selfie-snapping tourists and close to the daily press of flesh which is the metro. I wisely waited two minutes for the second train and wedged myself in next to a woman with kind eyes and a universal sense of “What can I do about it?”

I made my way to the tourism office where the tour was meeting. They rented Vespas there. Can you imagine renting a Vespa in Rome? I’d seen three young girls on bikes the previous day at the Coliseum walking them more than riding them through the hordes of boisterous tourists. The tour I’d booked through ItaliaRail was called “Show and Go” and was $116. for the two tours of the Coliseum and Vatican. The beauty of them was that you could show up any time to join the tour. “No waiting in lines.” This proved to be ludicrous. There are nothing but lines in Rome in July. Get used to it. I can say I saw the Sistine Chapel, even without the benefit of having a selfie, unlike the woman at St. Peter’s in front of Michelangelo’s “Pieta.” It did feel sometimes like the pictures were being taken more to prove we’d been there than to experience these great artifacts and sculptures.

I’m guilty too.

My final night in Rome, I was feted by an old friend in his home with two indulgent Italian professionals, who let me struggle more than I had on the trip to date with my rusty Italian. It was a great evening and a wonderful way to close out the International part of my summer holiday.

The next morning, I winged my way back to Washington, DC, suitcase bulging with a few treats and my feet snuggly in my compression socks that my friend had generously loaned me.

I may have told you how much I loathe the phrase “to unpack the meaning of something.” I mean I really loathe it.

So when I say unpack, I mean literally unpack from my trip. The last leg of my trip was a visit to my Dad and his wife, Sally’s in Washington, DC. If I need any encouragement in continuing to travel as a measure of a life well-lived, I need look no further than my Dad and Sally. They have traveled all over the world, and now, as conditions keep them closer to home, it would be hard to impress them with stories of an Italian trip. But they were extremely indulgent, looking at my Ipad slide show of Umbrian hill towns, Venetian churches, and Roman ruins.

I remember as a child sitting through my maternal grandparents’ endless slide shows, with an actual slide projector, loaded with slides, and then reloaded with perhaps a second tray of slides. My grandfather was an architect, with a good eye and terrific composition in his photos, but as an eight or ten-year-old, one’s attention span is limited.

We sat in the breakfast room, watching as wildlife flitted by: three raccoons, a doe and her dappled faun, a cowbird and a dozen other varieties of seed-eating birds. It was delightful. The heat outside fogged up the refrigerated interior of the house.

They had a lot of things planned for my four day visit. I had seen an article about the new Spy Museum, and after an aborted attempt to get in, complicated by the parking at an unreasonable distance and poor planning in booking tickets ahead, sent us scurrying instead to the National Gallery, where we drank in the visiting exhibit covering 17 centuries of animals in Japanese Art; though they’d already seen it of course, they graciously accompanied me, then treated me to a lunch in the cafeteria connecting the two wings of the Gallery. When the exhibit comes to Los Angeles Sept. 22-December 19, 2019 don’t miss it! These are just two examples of the whimsy and elegance of this exhibit.

After lunch, we visited the Tintoretto exhibit upstairs in the West Wing. It was particularly satisfying to think that I’d just seen so much of his work in situ in Venice. There was a particularly interesting room of portraits which brought to mind Rembrandt, rather than the usual luscious, quick strokes of Tintoretto’s angels and suffering saints.

This richness made me realize that over the past 10 years or so, I’ve not been taking advantage of the cultural opportunities that Los Angeles affords us. Full time work, care taking my husband, who in the later years, tired easily. So many excuses, so many lost opportunities. The future gleams with potential.

Thursday evening, which was July 4th, they had planned a family dinner with some local relatives, which was lovely. Meanwhile, only a few thousand miles away, my home city was rocking and rolling from earthquakes. I didn’t feel the least bit disadvantaged by missing these shakes. Instead, we watched the rather insipid July 4th celebration on TV, hosted by John Stamos and the Muppets. After dinner each night, we worked diligently on their diabolically complicated Stave puzzle which we finally finished on July 4th.

Friday evening found the three of us in the Kennedy Center, watching the touring production of Hello, Dolly! starring Betty Buckley as Dolly Levi and Lewis J. Stadlin as Horace Vandergelder. It was a lively, satisfying show with a powerhouse performance by Buckley. In the gift store before the show, I picked up a replacement fan so that I could continue my Venetian tradition of staving off the heat. I bought a second fan to send off to Caro in Venice, because I’d put some kilometers (chilometri) on hers while there.

My gracious Washington, D.C. hosts!

Saturday we made our way over to the Hillwood Estate, Manor and Gardens of Marjorie Merriweather Post, and spent the morning steeping ourselves in the hostess’s meticulous and lavish lifestyle, beautifully preserved in the park and mansion exhibits.

That evening we had dinner out and called it an early night, so that I’d be ready for my trip home on Sunday, July 7th. A spectacular trip and one which I’ll remember fondly for a long time.

July 21, 2019

Thinking Heads and Voyeurs at The Venice Biennale

I’d be derelict if I didn’t share some of the photos from the two days we spent at the Biennale while I was in Venice. On the way there, though, Caro and I had a wonderful time exploring all the different countries’ pavilions. Here are some photos from our first day. If you get a chance to go to the Biennale, go. There’s a mind boggling amount of beautiful art and ideas. Beautiful for people watching. Take the largest frame below for example.

The Biennale is rife with colorful images, shapes and ideas, and could be represented by almost any of the pieces shown there. The Lara Favaretto room, in the main building of the Gardens felt like walking into a curated prop room, with shelves neatly decorated by groups of objects, identified with a descriptive word under each shelf. The most intriguing part of the exhibit was its reference to secret meetings of people in a bunker in Venice to discuss the objects. Wait, a bunker in Venice? The piece suddenly gelled as a metaphor for the whole Biennale.

I asked one of the docents who are there to help you understand what you’re looking at if there had been any meetings. An earnest young art student, he answered, “I believe that the first one was cancelled, but there may be more scheduled.” Given the top secret nature of Favaretto’s description, I figured if we went to any bar that afternoon, it would serve as the bunker for conceptual inquiry into the nature of not just these objects, but any in the various countries’ pavilions.

Our second day at the Biennale, Caro and I were joined by her husband, Alberto, and we explored the even more vast exhibits in the Arsenale. Here are some of the exhibits, including the studies by Lorenzo Quinn of sculptures that are currently able to be seen all over Venice, including in the Arsenale.

This piece is meant to be seen from the water, so that you’re in the same relationship as I was to the study in the nearby warehouse.

Beatrice and ….
…the tiger
Flattery
Suicide

Earlier in the year, as I planned for my trip to Venice, I’d read about the Lithuanian Pavilion, and the first prize (Leone d’Or) they’d won for “Sun and Sea.” The exhibit was evocative and sensory, with the spectators looking down from above onto the denizens of a temporary indoor beach. Joshua Barone’s review in the New York Times, along with their photos captures the feeling of the experience. I thought it was a little critical, considering the accomplishment of this trio of artists. Try getting 30 people to commit to spending 8 hours on the sand in their bathing suits over a period of 8 months. Probably in June it’s pretty easy, but consider November, when the cold winds blow off the water whipping through the Military Arsenale into this warehouse with open windows. I have limited experience with wrangling volunteers for theatre projects with our production of “Don’t Go” a few years ago with Sojourn Theatre. It’s harder than it looks. An article in the ArtTribune.com shared the invitation they put out to get people to participate. https://www.artribune.com/arti-visive/arte-contemporanea/2019/05/biennale-di-venezia-2019-padiglione-lituania-cerca-volontari-vacanzieri-per-lopera-performance/

Seeing the performers in their swimsuits, digging in the sand with their children and dogs was pretty wild. Almost every exhibit in the Biennale this year examined in some way the impact of humans on the environment, and this one provided a chance for us to watch ourselves in microcosm. The opera itself, parts of which we saw in our thirty minute stay at the exhibit, had some both haunting and comedic, jaunty tunes. It was fun to identify which of the singers might sing next, the man with the gray chest hair, who scanned the balcony idly as his tween son ran off to play with some other children, or the woman who barked her little portion of the score, a tirade against people who bring their dogs to the beach. There were two visible at the time, well behaved little dogs who also looked like they were enjoying themselves. Periodically, cast members would sprinkle bottled water on the sand to keep the dust from kicking up into people’s faces. I was reminded of the Robert Wilson piece I stage managed in Sicily years ago, staged in a 13th Century Granary building. After a few weeks of rehearsal, they trucked in tons of sand and suddenly it became a different exercise entirely. Sun and Sea was pretty fascinating, though. I didn’t want to leave.

Some other stunning works from the two days at the Biennale.

There was quite a bit of video and theatrical experiences aside from Sun and Sea. The Istralei Pavilion hosted “Field Hospital” where you entered the exhibit, which looked like the waiting room for an urgent care facility. There you were given a number, and you waitied approximately 10 minutes, while watching reassuringly placid videos about the type of care you would receie there. Everything felt very hospital-like. All the staff were wearing white coats, and were very gentle with the visitors. Once your number was called, you went to the registration table, where you were given a paper wrist band, and the opportunity to select which video you would see in the treatment area. The videos ranted in topics from transgender bullying to The Palestinian question. Up the stairs from registration, you were guided into one of three padded rooms where you were told to follow instructions. I did, but after emerging from the booth, I realized they were not soundproof, so everyone in the outside waiting area had heard my primal screams.

On we went into the treatment room, where a large array of reclining chairs held other patients who were watching videos, and then watching additional material (second opinions ) from experts with knowledge of the topics of the videos. Once you finished watching, the “nurse” came and freed you from the chair, giving you a rubber bracelet to replace the paper one, which said “Field Hospital” on it. It was an eerie experience, especially for Caro. whose video was a little more graphic than mine. (I won’t spoil the exhibit for those of you who are going by telling you which videos we watched.) Suffice it to say that once we emerged from the Field Hospital, we were ready to go home and also to get a cold drink before taking the Vaporetto back home.

July 16, 2019

The Littlest Theatre in the World and Gratitude to the Madonna Dei Bagni

One of the last days I was in Umbria, we visited the Umbrian hilltown of Monte Castello di Vibio, another spot of unspeakable beauty. Our destination was to see Il Teatro Piu Piccolo Del Mondo. As the sign below promises, Civilization isn’t measured in square meters and volume. Built by a consortium of nine families (I’ll spare you the poor historical recall and defer to Wikipedia). But when we visited, the lobby had a fascinating exhibit by a local man who had documented his family’s history in a series of scrapbooks, only seven out of thirty-three of which were on display. There were photos, paintings of weddings on the stage, and other news clippings detailing the historic events that had taken place in the theatre. The frescoes by Luigi Agretti in the second floor lobby were really wonderful, considering he was 14 when he painted them in 1892. Yes, 14!

After relishing the tiny space, complete with playback of a recording of a musical concert so that we could experience the acoustics in the all-wooden theatre, we retired from Monte Castello di Vibio, and made our way to the Madonna Dei Bagni, a church near Deruta, which features approximately 700 votive tiles from the 17th century to the 20th century, all presented in gratitude for acts of salvation by the Madonna. Each tile has the initials P.G.R., which stands for Per Grazie Ricevuto, or For Graces Received.

The front door to the sanctuary
The neighboring commune (once a convent)

The Sanctuary itself is not notable, except for these tiles, almost totemic in their iconography. Four Hundred years ago, according to the history, a man found a piece of pottery with the Madonna on it and he nailed it to an oak tree, and prayed for his ill wife’s recovery. When he returned to his home, she had recovered, and thus began the practice of these votive tiles. They represent graces received from the Madonna after accidents throughout the centuries. Did you know that the most perilous thing in Umbria is the tree and the ladder? So many people fell from trees and lived to represent it that there developed an iconography of falling out of the tree.

That and getting trompled by horses.

Or struck by lightning.

You’ll have to believe me when I tell you that just like the tree plates, there were several of the lightning and later, dozens of gnarly car and motorcycle accidents as well as war survivors and leaky rain gutters. I just didn’t take photos of them all. It’s worth going to verify my account.

But my favorite was the tile that told the story about the recovery of 140 of the tiles which had at one time been stolen (rubata) from the sanctuary. Thanks to our guide, Marina, who was able to read the tile to us and translate, we understood that an off-duty cop (Carabinieri) born in Deruta, but assigned to Perugia, had come across one of these plates at a swap meet or whatever the Italian equivalent is. He bought it, then launched an investigation and was able to recover all 140 of the stolen plates. I think the guy carrying the tile is the same one lying down in his carabinieri uniform (Art History 101).

After that, we were exhausted and of course, it was time to go get some lunch. We were very happy there as well for the graces received.

Asparagus soup with tiny muffins in it.
The never-ending cheese platter. Always eat soft to hard on the platter. Did you know that?
Shrimp Curried Risotto
The dessert platter was brilliant.