Current Perspectives

I have this thing with starting over, beginning again, fresh, a new. As I move from one state of mind to the next I constantly begin to start over.When I was younger I attempted many a time to be a dedicated and consistent journal writer. Alas, it never happened. I would write sporadic entries only to re-read them years later and decide that the said entries were overly passionate and poorly executed. I would then rip the pages from my many journals only to start again, on a clean slate, compose what I thought was a better journal entry.

Looking back, I obviously regrette discarding those beautiful pages, no matter how silly they seem in retrospect. Those thoughts or stories that I wrote, those few and far between personal histories would give me a lot of insight into where I’ve come from.  My mom always kept things that I did when I was little, saying, “You’ll love to look back at them when you’re 30″. I wish I had applied that thinking to some of, what I thought were my less important works. Although, thank God for the preservation of those macoroni necklaces.

The reason for this topic today is that it has been since April thirtieth that I made the last entry on this blog of mine. April thirtieth, the date the reason for the existence of this blog (my ideas and performance class) ended.So, even if this is only one more sporadic entry, I wish to begin again. And start from a place of writing that isn’t part of a class and that will most likely not be read by any of my class mates.However, this time, when I “start over” I will not erase or delete what I have written so far. I won’t search for a new blog hosting site to start fresh there either. I will just write from my current perspective regardless of whether I deem previous entries fit to appear next to my “born again” ones.So, regardless of the consistency this blog will have, especially as I am about to begin my last undergraduate fall semester. Here’s to new beginnings and starting something over without taking away any history no matter how small.

Tonight I read a passage from Charles Mee’s True Love what struck me most was this thought,

“because life is a process of becoming
and once you are involved in that
you’re lost
lost forever
but what a fantastic journey!”

The idea of being completely emmersed in the journey of your life, expecting to evolve and be in a state of change is interguing. I think that believing in the journey could make someone be incredibly open to experience and the spontinaity of life. I think that being “lost” has a negative conotation but I think here, with this thought, the idea of being “lost” is embraced.

As I get closer and closer to being out of school, which is what I’ve been doing for the past seventeen years of my life the idea of being lost before you can be found or  before you can be involved in the process of becoming is interesting to think about.

On Monday of this week I was lucky enough to be able to attend a delicious dinner and speak with Nancy Robinette, a favorite actress in the D.C. circuit. She is currently in two Arthur Miller shows, Death of a Salesman and A View from the Bridge.

We recently saw Death of a Salesman and while I don’t think it was my favorite production it was really great to hear Nancy talk about her work with the production and how she felt about her performance.

Nancy has been working as an actor for about 25 years and it was great to hear what someone with her experience and investment in the theatre as an actor had to say about the work that she does. Something she said when she was talking about her feeling like she was an actress was about being given “permission” to do the work that you love. She made a point later on to actually give us permission and that idea is very interesting. I don’t know if people in other disciplines feel like they need to have permission to do their work but I understood what Nancy was saying in relation to acting.

I thought that the show itself was flat (for lack of a better word). The set was so lateral and maybe because of the height of the ceiling couldn’t be done any differently. At first I thought the set was clever and then it just seemed too much the same for every sequence of the show. I felt most of all that Willie didn’t grow as much as I wish he had. Now, true, he possibly is incapable of hearing what other people say to him and is so in his own head and with his own pride that he simply can’t change. I was just thinking as I left the theatre that it would have been a very interesting choice if at the moment when his son, Biff is leaving for the final time he heard what Biff was saying. I wish that Willie could have a lucid and understanding moment and then makes the conscious decision to continue his extreme faith and belief in his own world. 

I am not sure precisely how to say that in a blog but I would have been interested to see some change in Willie at some point and I don’t believe that I really saw one in the performance that I was at.

I did enjoy Nancy’s performance. I understood what she spoke with us about as far as getting through this role in this particular production but overall I thought her performance was very nice.

Nancy also talked about working with different directors and something that I thought about was how to find a balance between the direction and the conversation about a piece and how do you figure out how to balance what an actor brings to the process and your own aesthetic for the show.  Or, is there no balance that needs to be made and you just create what it is that you think needs to be created in the way that you see it.  I find this to be an interesting question.

I am really glad that we got to speak with Nancy, she was delightful and it was a fun evening.