Mumbling Madly

Pic by: victoria vanbruinisse http://www.hotavocados.com/blog

Received a flu shot and promptly tumbled into the misery I always feel when getting a shot. Last year I tried to avoid getting one and became incredibly ill. This year, I scheduled the flu shot on a Friday so I could take Saturday off. Sunday was spent going from location to location for an elaborate FD photo shoot. (Per request, pictures will be released Saturday).

On Saturday morning, in an effort to feel better, Josh and I dined at the breakfast place down the street; ordering the classic breakfast and a waffle–plus an extra plate. We carefully divided both meals in two and read the paper in companionable silence. There was some discussion about getting Josh a haircut but we quickly abandoned this idea and settled into a day of no driving, no working, and no obligation. We fired up our coffee maker and spent the day in an on-going, coffee drinking, relaxed stupor. I realized this was the first weekend I hadn’t performed in a long time. Between the improv theater and the FD gigs, I’ve been a busy, busy lady.

The Sunday photo shoot was massive with multiple costume changes and the final shoot location at a roller rink. A friend of a friend loaned me a pair of skates. We struck all sorts of slightly awkward poses, our toes firmly planted using the knobby skate brakes. In between shots we skated around and around, our feet cramping in the cheap leather. Because it was in between events, the roller rink was ours alone–sans music. We sang old skate songs from the infamous Skate Night everyone remembers being held in their hometown once a month. I remember my Mom taking me to a few Skate Nights when I was really young…maybe 2nd grade? It was there that I first experienced Licorice Rope–a foot of long red licorice encased in plastic you could wear around your neck while you skated. I also remember hearing Twisted Sister for the first time and recognizing it as something truly bad ass. Skating was a big leap for a nervous 7 year old; I went from clinging to the training bars that were away from the action to actually going around the roller rink floor–hands clinging to the carpeted edge the whole time. Years later, I (we) managed to recapture the lure of Skate Night as older, creakier, adults…dressed outlandishly in striped knee socks and short shorts. Our stomachs filled with cheap tacos from the strip mall Mexican restaurant next door, we glided and giggled, our nostalgia pushed to epic child-like proportions.

I know I’ve been posting nothing but pictures lately, but I’ve been so busy that sometimes a photo is the only way to describe the recent events:

That’s me lying on a certified Equity cot in the very nice dressing room at the ACT theatre. The Freedom gang was invited to perform with the illustrious musicians from “Awesome” this weekend. It was absolutely amazing–one of our best gigs ever! We danced, paraded around, kicked up our legs, and frolicked–all while narrowly missing the dozens of instruments and 8 talented musicians that shared the stage. The show combined music, multi-media, theater, and a smattering of dance to highlight our political climate–past and present. The audience was a combination of the fringe theater crowd, the theatrical elite, and music-lovers. There is a real energy in the air that’s largely generated from the sheer happiness everyone is currently feeling over our election. All we had to do was yell, “Let’s hear it for President-elect Obama!” and the audience went nuts. (Maybe a cheap trick, but no one ever seems to get tired of hooting and hollering over Obama these days).

Pics are here.

Completed 5 improv shows in 3 days. Today, I spent the day in a strange daze, shivery, complacent, peaceful, tired. Josh made coffee and raspberry pancakes for breakfast. I ate Trader Joe’s sandwich cookies for lunch. The sun shone.

Last night’s audience was entirely, completely, cosmically, opposite of the friday night audience of mean debauchery. They loved us. They sang, they called out, they roared. At the end of Theatersports several people rose to their feet and cheered during the first standing ovation I’ve ever seen for an improv show. After the performance I received more high fives in 10 minutes then I’ve probably ever received in my life (and that includes 2 years of indoor soccer as a kid). One teenager gave me a high five while holding a hand warmer. People streamed out of the theater beaming as if their lives had been changed. Multiple people shook my hand, ‘congratulations, what a great show, you’re amazing.” My head was going to explode! A foreign kid with a cleft lip and a thick accent hovered around me, “I was secretly rooting for you,” he revealed. “It might have to do with the fact that we share the first three letters in our first name.” I tried guessing his name, “Mark? Marcus?” Shyly he revealed, “Mario.” I was surprised since he didn’t look Italian at all but congratulated him on his cool name. “You were in the first improv show I ever saw,” he said, eyes glowing. I realized I had better detach myself or risk breaking his heart. “Well, that’s great,” I said genuinely. “I’ll see you at the next show.” He smiled after me, “I’ll hold you to that!” I felt like a celebrity….at least in Mario’s world.

Last night, when the MC asked for an example suggestion (“can I get a room in the house?”), a fellow raised his hand and shouted, “My room!” The MC applauded, “Yes, yes, that would be a correct suggestion to a room in the house…uh, ma’am?” The young woman next to him was waving her hand frantically. When the MC called on her she announced, “My room is called the fuck me room.” There was a startled gasp amongst the crowd and even a few of us lesser experienced improvisers (like myself) backstage. The audience ruffled and then came back, but the group in the corner became raunchier then ever. I’ve endured drunken audiences before but never a drunken, dirty, slightly angry audience. During intermission the bartender reported that they lined up shots of jager and then polished it off with $9 absinthe all around. They called out to us onstage (“sex toy party!” Which we accepted just to humor them, presenting a fairly chaste party). When asked for a suggestion of ’something you try to squeeze into a moment every day,” (a very creative question, I thought), one of the guys yelled, “Beating off!”

All of this aside my team members consisted of two long time female cast members, ladies who I respect endlessly for their ability to command, wrangle, and handle the stage. I presented myself with a (sometimes forced) confidence the entire time, certain that I could hold my own if I just pushed myself. I thoroughly enjoyed myself, despite the occasional suggestion from the back.

Went to Utah to attend the opera with family. Madame Butterfly was dedicated to my grandpa, a founding Utah Opera board member since it began in the 70’s. It was a whirlwind trip on the heels of a hectic week of rehearsals, scheduling, dodging and ducking. I flew into SLC on Friday night and left Sunday morning. My grandpa’s house remains largely the same since my aunt continues to reside there. It’s comforting to see the old pictures and nick knacks still standing, yet, strangely disconcerting to have my grandpa know longer around…no longer living there. While searching in the cupboards my uncle found an ancient can of apricots:

We also found a historic box of starch. This was back when folks used to starch their clothes. My uncle and I spent a while trying to research the date of the box. It might stretch as far back as the turn of the century but our internet research turned up inconclusive:

The opera was beautiful; I felt horribly under-dressed as we dined at a fancy benefit dinner prior to the show. Men were wearing tuxes and women sported long gowns. I can’t believe I wore my red Dansko clogs to the opera. However, the atmosphere was elegant and festive. Relatives I used to never know but have recently become well acquainted with in the last six month were there (i.e. my great uncle, avid collector of phonographs). We sat at a special table in honor of my grandpa and sat through speeches and pleasantries.

Madame Butterfly is a feminist nightmare. Written at the beginning of the century by the legendary Puccini, the whole opera is one big heartbreak waiting to happen. Chauvinist pig, Captain Pinkerton shows up in the orient, marries a former concubine and then splits. She waits for him dutifully for three years, gives birth to his son, and sing aria after aria about how lucky she is to have him. Pinkerton finally shows up with a new, white, American, replacement bride and let’s everyone know he’s just swinging by to pick up his kid. Madame Butterfly discovers the new wife, realizes her kid is as good as gone, and kills herself. Dang.

This is my brother and I outside the theater:

I went to Safeway to buy dental floss. The pink paper frame around the credit card machine at the counter announced that it was Breast Cancer Awareness Month. “Would you like to donate a dollar?” the checker asked me. “Sure!” I said, feeling very purposeful. I contributed my dollar and the checker continued ringing me up. “Uh, can I have the little pink card with the donation name on it?” I asked carefully. “Oh, of course!” the checker apologized. The card read, “Donated in Honor of __________” I took the card and carefully wrote Brynn’s full name. Then I blabbed to the checker about Brynn’s Stage 8 breast cancer at age 28, how she’s in radiation now, how proud I am of her. “Bless her heart!” the checker said genuinely.

Hobbes returned a week later to the vet for a follow up appointment. When we entered the exam room, I opened up the cage. Hobbes refused to come out. I didn’t realize the delicate nature of examining ill-functioning anal glands. Hobbes needed an anal exam, read: a lubed finger up her butt. Under the vet’s request I left the room again this time, Hobbes yowling in protest. “She peed,” the vet said when I returned. “Her glands feel fine, no relapse.” Hobbes glared at me from inside her cage. We will return in 2 weeks.

On Sunday night Josh and I went to a rather prominent modern dance show. I won’t give away too many details but the artistic director is African American, the company has elevated status in Seattle (above the usual fray of 10 Tiny Dances and eclectic Cap Hill ensembles), and I typically take a ballet class on Friday morning’s with the company. The first piece was unarguably the most enjoyable: hip-hop infused with a liberal use of hoodies, beats, and well timed facial expressions. There was a really beautiful dancer in this piece who was both charismatic and wonderful. The other two pieces were, quite simply weird. I borrow Josh’s assessment: “So many of the pieces were based on just being weird…I mean the dancers were good, but the movement was so strange I was distracted. Why is all the merit placed on just being really odd?” In addition to being weird, the piece by the artistic director looked painful. The dancers were slapping their limbs inadvertently all over the mylar floor, their bodies taped up in obvious attempt to hide and prevent bruising. They sweated and purposely huffed and puffed, the panting obviously included as part of the choreography. They smacked their limbs around and sounded like they were all having asthma attacks. I wasn’t into it.

On the rainy drive home, Josh and I agreed that the one dancer in the first piece was really hot. Then my husband said something marvelous, “You know, I think she looks kind of like you! This happens to me all the time…I’ll see some girl with dark hair and think, ‘wow, she’s really attractive…” and then I realize: ‘Oh, she looks just like my wife.’”

Score.

Performed like a madman last night at the improv with my ass (again) being a starring role. Whether I was accidentally shoving it in another improviser’s face or pantomiming putting on a pair of tight jeans, it’s not a 10:30 show unless I’m exploiting myself in some small way. Late night shows always buzz with an excited drunken energy and improvisers are required to meet that energy with matched enthusiasm. Because I was nervous I resorted to a state of physical mania, a leaping, prancing, mincing performance machine. One of the judges said it was one of the most visually interesting shows he had seen, filled with physicality, movement, and shapes. Narratively, the show suffered. A scene was honked on my team because the Entertainment judge simply didn’t like it (ouch). I ran out onstage completely unprepared and scared only once with nothing in my head…nothing. “Okaaay,” I blinked at the crowd. Politics fresh on all our minds I blurted out, “Let’s do something with a world view.”

I’m so unfamiliar with theater sports sometimes I feel like a big dumb elephant. Luckily, the teams were well matched but my group was clearly the underdog from the start–which led to our typical loss. However, the narrative ballet was a lot of fun using a hilarious tale of a first date: Fellows meets a girl at a party, asks her out, and finds out during the date that she is engaged. Humorously this was after they went to the mall and she tried on jeans, ate Thai food–that he paid for, and pretty much toted him around as merely a ‘friend.’ As you can imagine, this made a very good ballet. (And somehow, I managed to bust out my patented break dance move: The Triangle).

From the narrative ballet to the interpretive dancing, I quickly sweated through my Costco bought peasant top. I wished I had worn a t-shirt and spent most of my time backstage fanning myself while wearing my shirt around my neck. Backstage, I guzzled water from a random mug left at the theater that read: “I Hate My Job.”

Unlike long form improv and the fuzzy family improv shows at 7:00, theater sports continues to be the most challenging for me. With the incredibly highs come the devastating lows. It is much more rewarding to come out, regardless of failure and loss, at the end of a late night show. “You all have big balls,” a beautiful girl told us after the show. “Guts and big balls.”

I was recruited to perform with a European performance art company for a short weekend run at On the Boards. Reviews of the show can be found here and here, but the summation of the performance is this: Pop culture fanned with the fire of lights, sound, nudity and European extravagance. Ten local dancers were needed for a night club scene and for a brief energetic piece at the end; I knew this was an opportunity for me to get to know other dancers and acquaint myself with the only theater in town that produces contemporary dance on a regular basis. (Backstage pictures can be found on my flickr page).

Dubbed “Team Seattle,” before we even met the Europeans, we rehearsed the piece via video and a local choreographer for two consecutive Mondays. Despite the simplicity of the choreography, there was a lot of high kicking. For anyone who has thrust their leg high into the air in an attempt to make it look like a sideways split, you know that shit hurts. You also might know that it throws off your balance and unless you have years of cheerleading under your belt, perky dancing can be hard to master. I say this, not necessarily as an excuse, but to convey how complicated the process became. After being shepherded by Amy, we were turned over to the Europeans. It was then that they informed us our turns weren’t sharp enough, our clothes were all wrong, and the big smiles plastered on our faces were too small. During the final dress rehearsal, they put us on a huge, white, stage and drilled us. After each set they would look us over, critique, and then subsequently move us to new positions on the stage. My response to this pressure was to revert back to some sort of adolescent stage: I became awkward, gamely, and found myself struggling to ‘keep up’ despite the previous ease I’d had in the choreography. I was moved twice–ending up in the dark, upstage right, corner of the stage next to the board op. This did little for my self-esteem. (Side note to Kimberly: Remember when we were both moved to the back so many years ago during VSA? This experience was similar). That night I struggled with an unreasonable amount of devastation: they put me in the back! I must not be a dancer after all…

Luckily, this inadequate feeling was dismissed once the show began its run. The unity of Team Seattle outweighed any inadequacies I might have felt–we had all received heavy critiques during dress rehearsal. Despite our respective dance levels, the small group of ten became tightly bound. Before the audience was allowed in, we were sequestered away behind a fantastic light box, hidden until the big night club scene. With no where to go, the ten of us hunkered down as if we were at a slumber party. The Europeans came and went, changing their clothes in a hurry as we squished to make room and tried not to oggle.

All of us were a little thrown by the nudity…not just by the nakedness itself but by the sheer confidence and beauty the women possessed. I don’t have to remind you that European women are known for their stellar good looks and grace. These women were no exception: leggy, smooth, with the perkiest breasts in the room. (DAMN IT). During the night club scene we danced furtively on a platform that contained multi-colored lights shooting out in every direction. We were creating ambiance, a scene, and yet I found myself dodging the Europeans every time they tried to bump and grind with me–shyness perhaps? After the night club scene, a group of us would huddle around the viewing window in the green room, murmuring to each other: “Here comes the locker room scene,” “Wow, I can’t believe she takes it all off,” “I feel so short and stubby,” “Look at the guy sitting in the front row–he’s grabbing his ears like a bomb might go off,”

Despite earlier intimidation, the European cast was incredibly kind. I could not get over their amazing interpretation of the English language (’shit’ becomes ’sheet,’ ’so’ becomes ’sew,’ etc.). Rehearsals were directed in a mixture of English, French, and occasionally, German. Their clothes were markedly different: the women wore long and loose fabrics with pieces that they could wind around their necks like a scarf, they all wore colored sneakers, and dammit, they made me want to look at buying tapered jeans again. The guy in charge of herding us around wore low rise, flared, jeans and really great ‘American’ t-shirts (“Gas, Grass, or Ass” was my favorite). He spoke frankly with us about the piece, shouted encouragement from the sidelines, and complimented my shoe choice, “Thank you for wearing heels, all the others are so conservative; don’t they know heels make the legs so sexy?”

Gradually, the Seattle team of dancers nestled into this unique European show by feeling a little freer about our own bodies, strolling around in various stages of undress backstage, and making fun of our gravity plagued boobs. I found myself occasionally slipping into some sort of hokey European accent–the lilting sounds of foreign-tinged English infectious and enjoyable. Despite earlier clothing criticism toward my cast mates (‘too many jeans and not enough skin’) the Europeans loved my sparkly stretch pants and refused to consider any other costume choices. By the end of the run we were on ‘kiss on both cheeks’ terms with everyone. When the cute German bass player of the group greeted me this way I blushed and actually said ‘thank you,’ which resulted in mild surprise from him…and inward cringing from me (duh, why would I thank him? That’s like thanking someone after they say ‘hello.’) It was everything I could do not to throw myself against their touring trunks and beg to be taken back to Europe with them. “How do we compare with other cities?” We asked, like a possessive lover over our new foreign friends. “Well, in Spain they were very, sexy, like overly sexy…in Austria they were fun, New York much like you with enthusiasm and good dancers, but Paris…it was very bad in Paris, no one knew how to dance.”

Last night several us stood outside the theater and, while inhaling what felt like an entire pack of second hand smoke, I asked one of the women what it was like to get naked every night in front of an audience. “Don’t you worry about some creepy guy watching you?” She was pointed in her response, “No, I never see the creepy guy…instead I enjoy being admired and the object of desire…it’s really nice.” She went on to say that during a Q and A in Austria, a group of lesbians accused them of being exploited onstage. “I said to them, ‘you act as if I can’t think for myself, as if I have no idea what I am doing up here…you discredit all of us and quite honestly: I enjoy it. I enjoy being the object of desire.’”

When I had initially seen the show during dress rehearsal, I found it confusing, full of style and bright lights. (Coming from a Fringe Theater background I am used to shows being self-contained with little to no technical glitz). I was distracted, bewildered, by the nudity, blinded by the subtext of social commentary and unwillingly to really listen. (Besides, is there really such a thing as cynical nudity or was it all just gratuitious?) The show grew on me each time I watched from the sidelines, overheard the dialogue from backstage, or came in contact with the cast. It took multiple viewings to really like the show. And, while this might sound silly, it was so “European” in that wonderful, unusual, big-world sort of way that I haven’t felt since my trip to Paris. Here we are on this big fat world, experiencing similar woes, pains, and emotions. We operate under duress, politics and culture weighing heavily on our minds, searching for understanding. How refreshing to be near people so very different and yet similar in their need to produce big fat art in all its naked glory.