IN THE WORLD AND THRIVING

I just got this email press release about an upcoming show in Philly...read and enjoy.  (I think they might be on to something!)

For Immediate Release:

May 3, 2007

New Theatre Company Re-Imagines Oedipus Rex as an Interactive Comedy for
Today's Audience

Philadelphia, PA- To The Wall Productions, Philadelphia' s newest theatre
company announces their inaugural production of Oedipus Kings-The Drinking
Game. Dedicated to creating a new generation of theatre audiences, To The
Wall has re-imagined the classic tragic tale as an interactive comedy for a
modern audience. Designed to appeal to a younger generation, and pique the
curiosity of older ones, Oedipus Kings will play at The Dive 947 E Passyunk
Ave., Sunday and Monday evenings, May 13th-June 4th at 8:00 PM.

Oedipus Kings combines the classic Greek Tragedy Oedipus Rex with the
timeless college drinking game "Kings Cup." Oedipus (Ed) just can't seem to
catch a break. His kingdom is in distress, his trans-gendered
brother-in-law is making a run for his crown, the Gods are smiting him, and
everyone seems to be holding information from him that could drastically
change his life. When one bad event turns into another, the only thing
left for him to do is drink the pain away, and the audience gets to
join in. The drinking game aspect is incorporated by the Chorine
character pulling a card and starting a game every time "something bad
happens" in the play. It's the classic Greek tale for a new generation,
served up, with a comedic twist!

"We wanted to find a show that would take theatre to a non-theatrical
space. Somewhere that would allow a non-traditional theatre going
demographic to feel comfortable and excited about theatre" said Christiana
Molldrem, half of the artistic team that wrote, directed and produced
Oedipus. "And we knew if we combined theatre with a drinking game, we
would be reaching out to that new generation," Dawn K. Cowle, the
other half of the artistic team stated. Molldrem continued "The idea for
the show was inspired from a friend who worked with the Legitimate Theatre
Company on a production of Twelfth Night: The Drinking Game in NYC. We
wanted to create something that would take a really classic tale, one that
everyone knows, and make the audience see that the word 'classic' is not
synonymous with 'dead'."

To The Wall Productions was founded by Producing Artistic Directors Dawn K.
Cowle and Christiana Molldrem after both served as the Casting/Literary
Apprentices at the Walnut Street Theatre. Eager to create theatre where
artists and audiences alike could take risks, they started their own
company. Dawn made her Philadelphia directing debut last fall with the
smash hit FAT PIG at the 2006 Philly Fringe Festival. Oedipus Kings marks
Christiana's Philadelphia directing debut. Conceived by Christiana
Molldrem, Oedipus Kings: The Drinking Game is also the directors' debut as
writers. Rounding out the cast are Samantha Beedle as Kreon and The
Messenger, Rob Cutler as Oedipus, Marin Masino as Jokasta, Krissy Schuck as
Chorine, and Joshua S. Ray as The Priest, Teiresius and The Shepherd.
Arizonia Newsum Stage Manages.

It's strange to me that I'm much more stressed going into production for this show, for which I'm only an assistant director, than I was going into my thesis production. The key may be that I was hella ready for my thesis when we opened and I was really proud of both the process and the product. I'm not un-proud here, but I think that there were many more poor qualities and aspects associated with this show than with my last one. Hmmmm.

We have our first audience tonight for a "pay what you can" preview. The guys were still not off book yesterday. This is slightly worry-making.

I'm still struggling here with what my place is, what my responsibilities are, etc. The artistic director keeps talking loudly about a previous intern they had named Emily who, apparently, is perfect. Yeah, guys, um, it makes me feel like shit when you say, in my hearing, that Emily was the best intern you ever had and that you can't believe that she has gotten such a good start to her career.

I am in search of some information relating to a line in "Kiss of the Spider Woman." 

One character says to another, "If you want I'll go on with the [story], if not, ciao....I'll just whisper it to myself, and arrivederci, Sparafucile!"

The actors want to know what the significance of the phrase "arrivederci, Sparafucile!" is, and it's my job to find out.  I've looked up some info on Rigoletto, but I don't read Italian so all I have so far is a synopsis telling me
1) that Sparafucile is an assassin
2) that Rigoletto refuses the offer of his services initially
3) that Rigoletto later does employ Sparafucile to kill the Duke
4) that Sparafucile actually ends up killing Rigoletto's daughter.

Does anyone know any other information or details that might shed some light onto this line?  With the information I currently have, I still have no idea why the reference is in the play. 

Many thanks.
Rowen

I' m on my lunch break from our first rehearsal of "Kiss of the Spiderwoman," for which I am the assistant director.  I'm not sure how I feel about the process/experience so far.  I think it can be a good show but there's a lot of work to do, mainly in pulling the actors away from their natural selves/habits so that they can exist as the characters and act/react as the characters.  Both guys (it's a two-person cast) have some natural qualities in common with the characters, but they're both vastly different as well.  While I'm glad that they're not totally type-cast (which is almost always crappy and boring), I'm dubious about achieving the desired degree of 'otherness' that will be necessary in only a three-week rehearsal period.  The good news is that in conversation/discussion, both actors seem to realize what needs to happen - they're just not *doing* it yet.  Which, I guess, is fine seeing as this is the first rehearsal, and we've only been working for a total of three hours so far.  What can I say - I'm just an impatient young 'un. 

I'm also kind of up in the air about why I'm there and what my role is as an AD.  The director and I have met to discuss this once already, and I came away from that meeting feeling pretty good about the whole prospect.  He said that he was basically looking for me to be another set of eyes/ears in the rehearsal process so that we could compare notes, see where we felt the same about things and where we diverged, and ideally create the best and most nuanced production possible.  Sounds good in theory, right?  But, so far I've been totally ignored by him, so we'll see how it goes.

I took a modern dance class this past Saturday and felt like the stupid, slow fat girl.  Choreography is hard!  I always want to take a little time to learn steps/movement combinations, but that wasn't how this teacher worked.  She demonstrated what she wanted once, maybe twice, and then you had to do it.  All of the other students were really experienced dancers, so they got it almost right away, and I just flailed about and felt like a reject.  Awesome.  I am, however, going to go back this coming weekend and see how it goes.  If it's still horrible I might find another class.  I'm also going to start a contact improv class that meets on Monday nights, starting this evening, and I'm completely psyched about that.  Yay for improv.  No stupid steps to learn!

On Sunday I did run into a girl who had been in the class on Saturday morning.  I was picking up a class schedule from another dance studio near where I work and she was coming out of a class there.  She recognized me and said hi, and we ended up going for coffee.  It was very exciting and grown-up feeling :)  So, even if she thinks I'm a crap dancer, at least she (and I hope the others folks in the class) don't think I'm a crap person.  Awesome.

I'm going to a bar with my coworkers.  We are, apparently, going to play some strange Philadelphia trivia game called "quizzos."  I did tell them I would be useless, but they said to come anyway.  My life feels weird.  Bar...coworkers...trivia...what has become of the girl  that I knew?

I'm in Portland, I'm in Portland, I'm in Portland YAY!  I am so happy to be back (in case you hadn't gathered that).  I am also extremely sad to know that I'll be leaving again shortly, but, as my parents keep telling me, at least I know that Portland is here and that I can come back to it whenever I am able.  At this point I have to say that I don't think I'm cut out for the east coast.  Parts of it are wonderful, of course, but the general culture and way of life are so abrasive.  I feel like all the self esteem and "one with the world-ness" that I've tried to cultivate over the past forever of my life are going go get rubbed away in about two weeks.  Anyone have any ideas on how to make it through the east coast with one's humanity intact?

linettasky and Trix had an amazing party last night.  Thank you so much.  nidhogg and I were late getting there because we'd been at a theatre barbecue in Lake Oswego (dude, who lives in Lake Oswego?) right before and had to drop crazy people back on campus.  I was tired and cranky when we got to the second party - I've found it strangely stressful to see and interact with still current Reed students en masse, and having to deal with the entirety of the current Reed theatre department was extremely draining - and I thought I'd only want to stay for an hour or so.  Upon arriving, however, everything was perfect and welcoming and the people were awesome and the food was great and I had so much fun.  Yay.  I love it when the situation I'm in is so great that it pushes me out of my mental/emotional funk without me even noticing. 

I'm now off to continue my steamy love affair with Portland, starting with Saturday market (which I always feel strange going to on Sunday...)

Those of you who I have not yet had a chance to see, know that there will be a small event type object at my/Jonathan's apartment on Tuesday night at whatever time you can come starting at 6ish.  There will be tofu cooking lessons (you'll learn more at the time) and other non tofu goodness.  Give me a call/email and I can let you know more details/address/etc.

I cannot believe how much better the world is with friends - I forget when I'm not with/around them how important other, compatible people are to my general health and well being.  I'm in Troy right now with jennekirby and I have not felt this relaxed or like myself in ages.  It is good.  More later - I was in the mood to write and to reflect, but the moment has passed.  Silly moment.

So I sucked it up today and finally began active preparations for my transition to Philadelphia.  I've been stressing out about the entire process, but not doing anything about it, thus making myself even more stressed...  I was moaning (and not in a good way) about how I hated this type of transition period to my co-worker/boss Claire last night and she, very kindly, told me (via a "this is what I do in this type of situation" comment) to get my ass in gear and take some action, rather than sitting on my ass and then complaining that my ass hurt because I'd been sitting on it too long. 

The result of my non-ass-sitting is that I have a hostel bed reserved for the first six days that I'm there, and I've contacted at least two possible housing options (both of them a really good deal - 400 and 480, both including utilities - the location isn't great in terms of convenience, but I can probably deal with that.  I've been told that Philadelphia public transport is decent). 

In the course of my efforts, I also found this fantastic looking hotel/hostel type of place called the Divine Tracy Hotel.  You'll have to read the linked page in order to fully appreciate the hilarity.  I particularly like the part of the description that states:

I'd just like to take this opportunity to say how fucking amazing my various friends and their various friends are. I had a slightly less than awesome morning (more below), and then I came into "work" and read shiny livejournal entries. As a group you are all amazingly funny, perceptive and well expressed. I kept wanting to read stuff out loud to the other people in my office, but after the first couple of comments only got awkward laughs and confused looks I decided that some things are best kept to those who actually have the context to fully understand the humor.

Explanation of my "less than awesome" morning:

Things were fine initially - I got almost enough sleep, woke up, exercised, made tasty coffee and drove to work. Upon arriving at work, however, there was a honking big black SUV not in one, but in both of my department's parking spaces. It was one of those amazing parking jobs where it looks like the driver actually *tried* to place their car in the most inconvenient position possible. There was also another car, this one actually in a space, in the theatre festival artistic director's spot. The signs designating "WTF (Williamstown Theatre Festival...hehehe) Parking" are fairly large and totally visible, and yet these people (who were, incidentally, together) ignored them.

Soooo, because this happens all the time and it pisses us off, we've taken to blocking people in when they're in our spots. It's childish and doesn't accomplish much, but when one's immediate superior and the department head both say to do it, it's hard not to. Anyway, I was just done blocking this jackass in when I met said jackass. She was helping her daughter move into the Williams College dorms and couldn't be bothered to park in the temporary parking lane because it was "too far away" and she had heavy things that she and her two "little girls" couldn't possibly carry from that far away, regardless of the fact that there the difference in distance was negligible. She was very rude and loud and confrontational and had overly tanned skin. I did not like her.

Since she was throwing a fit, I moved the car I was in and told her that I'd *try* to find the driver of the other car (which was a lie - I knew exactly who had driven it and where to find them).  In parting I asked her why she had not only parked where it was clearly marked "WTF Company Management," but why she had taken up two spaces.  Her first response was "Oh, I see you've had a lot of time to think about this" - what's that supposed to mean?  Then she justified herself by saying, "Well, the parking lot was empty when I got here."  I then asked her why she hadn't parked in the one student parking space (which was empty when I arrived), and she said "(splutter, splutter, splutter) There was someone in it!"  I propose a logic check - the facts, they do not match.

Anyway, I cut my losses and left, sending Claire (my amazingly ballsy and together co-worker/boss) to conduct a secondary attack.  Seemingly, the woman asked Claire, "So, are you going to move?" and Claire said, "Are you?"  Ugly tan lady moved.  It was beautiful. 

It was just so frustrating to encounter such pigheaded antagonism first thing in the morning.  I hadn't even finished my coffee yet and this horrible woman decided that she wanted yell at me.  Yes, she had reason to yell, but the entire situation was fundamentally her fault.  If she hadn't been stupid/horrible/inconsiderate in the first place then we all could have had a warmer, fuzzier start to the day.

The moral of the story - be kind to the world and to those you meet, especially before 10 am. 

So the move to Philadelphia is swiftly drawing near...

Which means that I am swiftly beginning to spaz out...

I literally keep having to tell myself to breathe, which is massively not fun.  Being tense is not good for me or for anyone around me.  In good news, though, my folks have said that they'll help me figure out a place to live (i.e. rental condo or hotel room) for the first week or so until I find a room or an apartment.  That's a weight off of my mind - I think the transition will be much smoother if, from the start, I have a place to live in which I can have a degree of independence.

My mom also told  me that neither she nor my dad were expecting me to get a job (i.e. a paying job in addition to my unpaid internship).  While I will likely still look for something to provide a supplemental income, it's still nice to know that they'll love me and support me (financially and other).  Of course I feel like a big mooch, but I don't have much of a choice.  I have to get my foot into the door before I can start making the big bucks...or little ones for that matter. 

Money's stupid.  Let's go shopping.

(Let it be noted that I'm not feeling as dark and dreary as I may sound.  Things are good - I'm just dealing with the changes and stress in my life by telling everyone about it!)