Lately I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about choices.

An actor makes choices — some conscious, some not — about how she or he lives in the moment.  Sometimes the choice happens on its own as a result of information that the actor is given; other times the choice is deliberate.  Whatever the genesis, that decision sets the tone and, ultimately the trajectory for the scene, play, movie, TV show or Youtube video.  Because once that choice has been made, the story gains new life.  It moves in a new direction with new choices — again, some deliberate, some not — that present themselves.  My point is, there’s no going back.  The story is in motion, and you’re along for the ride.

In other words, you can’t go home again.

Or can you?  I’ve recently been exchanging emails with a fellow writer/actress who, after years of slogging it out in The Big Apple, has moved back to her hometown in Kentucky.  She will continue being a writer/actress; she will just do it from a place where she can hear the cicadas at night as opposed to police helicopters.  A place where, upon hearing what she does for a living, people actually respond with “Wow, that sounds exciting!” as opposed to a raised eyebrow.

I am intrigued by people who do what we do outside a major metropolitan area.  I often think about moving back to my hometown of Chapel Hill, North Carolina.  And when I say “think”, what I mean is, I am lured by a romantic notion that includes a rambling house that I either own or rent for next to nothing with a wraparound porch and a slightly uneven wood floor, twilight cocktails on said wraparound porch, quiet walks in the woods unsullied by the sound of cop choppers overhead (yes, this is a serious pet peeve), and a small group of like-minded people all committed to doing good work.  But wait a minute — don’t I already have that?  That last part?

If there is a center in Los Angeles, I live in it.  Hancock Park/Hollywood is, in many ways, both a geographical and emotional center of this vast patchwork of communities.  The copters — yes, those again — idle overhead when Paramount Studios hosts a big to-do.  Through the windows of my Hollywood bungalow I hear my neighbors talk about auditions and scripts and making a video to jumpstart their songwriting careers.  This often unhinges me when I’m trying to write, and lately I long not so much for a wraparound porch but a tent in the woods and no one for miles.  The radio static of all the creative energy and eagerness to “be something” in this town can get to me.  Try as I do not to care about keeping up with the Joneses — or, in most cases, the wannabe Joneses — it’s hard not to be in a state of constant personal evaluation: Am I working hard enough?  Why did she sell a script and not me?

Then there’s just the energy of it all.  If you believe in it — and I do — a city filled with people striving creates a certain energy that isn’t necessarily the kind that calms you down and lets you look inward.  In fact, it pulls you outward, away from your center as you gaze with envy (and then self-loathing for feeling the envy in the first place) at those around you who seem to have it together more than you do.  But there’s another aspect to that energy: creativity.  It’s here and in spades.  Scratch the surface of almost anyone you meet in L.A. and you find they do something interesting.  New.  Freely and without limitation.  An actor has a food blog.  A food writer plays in a band.

And again, if you believe in energy, I live in a bungalow that once housed writers and producers who were under contract at Paramount in the ’20’s.  In the fifteen years I’ve lived here I’ve come into my own as a writer, and more importantly as an artist.  As a person.  I found my voice here.  I found myself.  I credit the bungalow almost as much as my own determination.

Could that have happened in Chapel Hill?  Or Charlottesville or Austin or Louisville?  Possibly.  But as a single woman not hell-bent on getting married and having a family, I found my people here.  “Here” being L.A.  “Here” being at my acting school, an amazing creative community.  “Here” being with my playwriting group, with my writer friends.  “Here” being literally right here, on this blog.

A better question might be: Maybe you can go home again, but do you really want to?

I found an inspiring talk by Amy Cuddy on “body language”.  And it resonated with me in all the ways that words become scripts become characters become bodies.

As an actor I’ve worked with some stage directors who were all about the floorplan, “Move left three steps, raise your arm, turn away, walk to the wall.” There were times when I was asked to do some physical bit of business, that was not organic to my process, that made me feel like a puppet on a string. Other times, I would find becoming the body of the character in the challenge of doing something that wasn’t my idea.  And sometimes it was all about finding the shoes that my character would wear, as the footprint of the body would tell me how I would walk in that play.

But what I related to most in this talk, was the idea that “I don’t belong here.”  I’ve done a lot of shape shifting in my life, in my travels and shows, and that concept of “belonging” has been a large part of my hunger and identity. Being able to be part of the LA PI blog gives me a place to belong

The clip is 21 minutes long.

Amy Cuddy’s TED Talk

I’m watching a social gaff on Facebook unfold into an example of what happens in real time in social media.

One of the writing groups I belong to found this Facebook posting for a community college production of “The Three Musketeer”:

“Boobs and Swords! Send me an haiku about swashbuckling and win two comps!

(limit 10 pair per performance. Ten pair of what? Comps. Pervert.)

Solano College’s ‘The 3 Musketeers,’ a swashbuckling success”

The director, who was surprised to receive negative feedback for this posting, then created a kind of apology on his (public) Facebook page:

“I really offended a group of total strangers on Facebook of late. I apologize for the offense, it was unintended. I just love my show so much, and my cast is so amazing; some of us have taken to shouting the phrase, “Boobs and Swords!” throughout the rehearsal process, because — well — the show is The Three Musketeers and as it happens, there were an awful lot of boobs and swords in everyday culture back then.”

As a feminist I really object to this guy’s use of language to sell his beloved show. But then I thought, you know, I’ve said some really unfortunate things in my lifetime, onstage and offstage, and I’m really glad that no one seems to record or remember those comments.

But then I read more of the apology:

“What is, for some of us, a happy watch-cry is, for others, extremely offensive. In my enthusiasm for the production, I neglected to consider the feelings of other people. So, for everyone who was offended by my use of the phrase, “Boobs and Swords!”, I apologize. For those of you who don’t know, a warning: The Three Musketeers is set in 1625. There’s an awful lot of … um … ladyjiggles … and even more swordplay going on throughout the show. Now that I’m on the subject, I suppose I should warn everyone that several of the men wear pants that are very tight. If you are not imaginative but also easily-offended, this could be a problem. If you come see the show, whatever you do: do not look at any of the actors’ … manflappies. In fact, it would probably be best if everybody who comes to the show studiously look away whenever ladyjiggles or manflappies can be seen OR imagined in, through or near clothing. Honestly, our budget is not very large. So this presented a problem when costuming the show. As a result, we could only afford one Puritan. Everyone else is a libertine and, sadly, dresses the part. If this will make you uncomfortable in any way, I urge you to stay away.”

So, actually, I think that the director of this show is a complete knucklehead.

Facebook post from the director

And now comments and concerns about this apology are now fluttering all around tweets and Facebook groups and blogs. Like this one.

This was an interesting interview with Carey Perloff at the ACT Theater in San Francisco in Howlround.  Here is her bio:

“Carey Perloff, a vigorous proponent of unusual classical literature and a passionate advocate of new work and new theatrical forms, is celebrating her twentieth year as artistic director of A.C.T. Perloff has directed dozens of award‐winning productions for A.C.T., including the American premieres of works by Tom Stoppard, Harold Pinter, and Timberlake Wertenbaker, world premieres by Philip Kan Gotanda, Constance Congdon, and Mac Wellman, and new interpretations of Schiller, Webster, Euripides, Gorky, Gogol, and Molière.”

Great bio. How many women playwrights did you count in that round up?  One.  Constance Congdon. But then Carey Perloff is also a playwright. So make that two.

I think it’s great that she’s a champion of child care in the workplace. And she has some great things to say about what has prevented other women from getting to leadership positions.

“There are many, many threads to tease out of this. One has to do with women playwrights and women’s stories and why those are so underrepresented.”

But then I read this in her interview:

“One reason this gender conversation has been incredibly valuable is that I’ve never done things like bean counting. I never actually sat down and made a list of the twenty women directors I wanted to hire. When all this conversation came up, I thought  “I should do this, because who is out there that I don’t know? Tons!” I looked at the Goodman season, and half the plays were being directed by women I didn’t know. I thought, “All right, so one of the things is to keep the running list in front of me, so it’s right there. I should get to know the next generation. I should keep the former generation alive too. Are we forgetting who is out there? Sometimes having the list is good. I really don’t like bean counting because I don’t think it’s the solution to diversity.  On the other hand, it makes you think.”

We all work in different ways, but how well informed are you as the artistic director at ACT if you don’t know who half the new women directors were at the Goodman season?  Is her aversion to”bean counting” really an aversion to being held accountable to the very statistics that she cites as a “bottleneck” or a “pulling the ladder up behind her”?

Read the entire interview at the link:

Carey Perloff’s Interview in HowlRound

I seem to remember a game of dodgeball where you would line up against a schoolyard wall, and some psychopathic child would try and smack you with a hard rubber ball.  There would be screams and laughter  and bruises, and if you wore hideous cats eye glasses like I did, invariably you would get smacked in the face and your glasses would get broken.

Writing my newest script reminds me of  that game. Trying to get out of the way of the ball, running into walls and people, and chaos and pushing and yelling.  All this because an unwelcome character showed up in the script this past month. I knew I was writing towards him, but he isn’t what I expected, and there he is.  I’m going to refocus on another script while I think about this dodgeball character.

What has really helped cope with this change in direction is sharing the script/writings with another playwright I really respect.  The comments and feedback have been a kind of tough love/insight I couldn’t give myself.  (Thank you MD~!)

From the ICWP (International Centre for Women Playwrights) Nina Gooch posted an article that really lifted my spirits. Ursula Le Guin is working with the Portland Playhouse & Hand2Mouth Theater on a new stage version of her  The Left Hand of Darkness. What she she wrote about the rehearsal process brought me back to that circle of magic that I was once a part of.

“Sitting in on a rehearsal is a strange experience for the author of the book the play is based on. Words you heard in your mind’s ear forty years ago in a small attic room in the silence of the night are suddenly said aloud by living voices in a bright-lit, chaotic studio. People you thought you’d made up, invented, imagined are there, not imaginary at all — solid, living, breathing. And they speak to each other. Not to you. Not any more.”

Ursula Le Guin – In rehearsal in Portland

Back in the day when I was limber and shoulder pads were in, I used to cool down from ballet class to Pachelbel’s Canon in D Major. I am listening to it now and I finally hear music and it feels good… There, I’ve said it. Tonight, I feel good. And even as a twinge of anguish for the loss of my friend sweeps down my spine, I am drawn back into the music and with it toward new feelings of hope and anticipation for the future.

I kicked off the evening with Chris Isaak’s Wicked Game after an amazing drive to Walnut with a friend to shop for rugs, of all things. But it was fun. Then, sitting, drinking juice and eating a bowl of soup, watching him play with my dogs, talking, enjoying the weather, the sunset, I used the word “faith” in the context that I believe things are going to be okay.

I thought faith is a simple enough word, but then I use words liberally, like I’m icing a big, sloppy cake. Am I able to reconsider the words I use, know why I am using them, apply a logical thought process and be able to defend them? He wants to understand Me… No different than a reader of one of my plays.

Finish the thought, Bennett. It’s a good note.