The Moon is Big in the White Harlem Sky

They refer to us as apathetic....the worst generation. In reality, we are disillusioned - as disillusioned as they once were, but with the ability to fight ripped from our hands.

I didn't forget, I'm not ignorant of what this all means, I'm just not happy with any of the players in the bloodsport they refer to as American Politics.  What a fucking art form. The highest and most respected one in the land, certainly the best funded.

You want to send a message, create? Fine crawl through the mud, become a professional beggar for favor. Shakespeare did it. Bernini too...although he made sure to not let anyone remember his dissidence by writing anything down, lest the wrong patron be pissed off.

I can't revolt.

I can't fight.

Doing so would make me wrong and cheat me out of my own progress. You too.

Someone will be along to pick up the tab, shortly.

So we wait. We wait for the change the fear mongers and political spelunkers assure us is coming. Wait for relevance. Too much like the string quartet on a sinking ship, even the rats have abandoned.

We've lost. We've lost and worse, we aren't even sure what game we are playing.

Reverberation is nauseating.

I can't revolt.

I can't fight.

It would make me one of 'those people.'

Revolution is a precious commodity now.  How much for that Che Guevara shirt, those ripped jeans?

800,000,000 easy payments of $56, 000 should do the trick. Maybe.

Shut up you stupid cog. Here have a grant, a scholarship, a free gift with purchase, 10% off your next purchase of $17 trillion or more.  Yours now if you get the most retweets, the most clicks.

In A Late Hail Mary Pass...

...Korean's officially out, so are all hopes of Spanish. Art Hum! You're up!

And I And Silence

Silence makes me think of Silence Dogood, who I learned of from National Treasure. It was a pseudonym a young (like, 16 young) Ben Franklin concocted to write into his...brother's...newspaper to express his views on popular culture and politics ect.

The musings of a 16 year old colonial white male apprentice printer, are hardly to be considered worthwhile, and yet Silence spoke with such veracity, she received marriage proposals.

In Naomi Wallace's jarring sketch, we are presented with a reverberation of that tenacity. Two young women, Dee and Jamie, minor offenders locked up in what has become the generationallly, perpetual gray area of adolescence.  High School Musical meets Orange is the New Black, this isn't, however. We are also granted glimpses into the lives of the, now, women nine years on - post incarceration. 

It's 1959, as Older Jamie actress Rachel Nicks points out...in some nondescript corner of the semi-rural American south.  Not a good time or place to be a woman, where old world wealth and status standards still reign.  Not a good time or place in history for African Americans, where walking down the street to work means verbal abuse on a good day.

The setting and all of it's trappings create a sort of perfect storm for Wallace's two characters. With a steely undercurrent of the violability of their sexualities and the vulnerability of intimacy, Wallace has Jamie and Dee traverse the crossroads of what it means to be young, broke, and drowning in surroundings suffering the same fate.  By the play's tragic end we're left with a Willy Loman sense of remorse, except they don't even get the faithful spouse or regretful kids. A stark, nearly Shakespearean realization sets in, in death - no one will miss these girls.

Surely, no one missed them in life.

Directors and Producers of Work I've Seen Recently

So, my Directing professor posed an interesting question at the top of class and since I'm horrible with on the spot things, I came up with nothing...I wasn't the only one.  The question was name all the theatrical directors you know.

So doing my due diligence here is a list of the directors I've got in in my playbill collection. I'm including producers too, because I realize the same question was also relevant to Producing Class. Keep in mind this is only what I had playbills lying around for.

1. And I and Silence -
   dir. Caitlin McLeod
   prod. Signature Theatre
2. Juarez: A Documentary Mythology
   dir. Ruben Polendo
   prod. Theater Mitu/Rattlestick Playwrights Theater
3. The Correspondent
   dir. Steven Brackett
   prod. Rattlestick Playwrights Theater
4. King Lear
   dir. Arin Arbus
   prod. Theatre For A New Audience
5. Antony and Cleopatra
   dir. Tarell Alvin McCraney
   prod.Gable Stage, The Royal Shakespeare Company in Collaboration with the Ohio State University (Jeremy Adams)
   asso prod. Maria Goyanes
6. Love and Information
   dir. James Macdonald
   prod. NYTW in asso. with Royal Court Theatre
7. The Long Shrift
   dir. James Franco
   prod. Rattlestick Playwrights Theater
8. Phoenix
   dir. Jennifer Delia
   prod. Nicholas Jabbour, Julie Pacino, Poverty Row Entertainment, Rian Patrick Durham, Rattlestick Playwrights Theater
9. Inventing Van Gogh
   dir. Karla Hartley
   prod. Jobsite Theatre
10. S'wonderful
    dir. Tripp Hampton
    prod. David A. Straz Jr. Center for the Performing Arts
11. Priscilla Queen of the Desert the Musical
    dir. Simon Philips
    prod. Allan Scott, Troika Entertainmenrt, Nullarbor Productions Ltd., in asso with MGM on Stage and Darcie Denkert, Dean Stolber Gary McQuinn, Liz Koops, Michael Hamlyn,
12. Spank! The Fifty Shades Parody
    dir. Jim Millan
    prod. Michael Mills/Mills Entertainment
13. Morningside Nights: The 120th Annual Varsity Show
    dir. Emily Feinstein
    prod. Allie Carieri, Ally Engleberg, Renee Kraiem
14. Hamlet
    dir. C. David Frankel
    prod. Tampa Repertory Theatre, Hat Trick Theatre Productions
15. The Ballad of Hipster McBigballs
    dir. Christen Petit Haley
    prod. Jobsite Theatre
16. Night of Power
    dir. Kareem Fahmy
    prod. Meghan Long (Columbia School of the Arts Theatre)
17. A Thousand Clowns
    dir. Jack Holloway
    prod. Hat Trick Theatre Productions
18. The Physicists
    dir. Sina Heiss
    prod. Mia Shen
19. All the Way
    dir. Bill Rauch
    prod. Jeffrey Richards, Louise Gund, Jerry Frankel, Stephanie P. McClelland, Double Gemini Productions, Rebecca Gold, Scott M. Delman, Barbara Freitag, Harvey Weinstein, Gene Korf, William Berlind, Caiola Productions, Gutterman Chernoff, Jam Theatricals, Gabrielle Palitz, Cheryl Wiesenfeld and Will Trice; Associate Producer: Rob Hinderliter & Dominick LaRuffa, Jr., Michael Crea and PJ Miller
20. Twelfe Night, or What You Will
    dir. Tim Carroll
    prod. Sonia Friedman Productions, Scott Landis, Roger Berlind, Glass Half Full Productions/Just For Laughs Theatricals, 1001 Nights Productions, Tulchin/Bartner Productions, Jane Bergère, Paula Marie Black, Rupert Gavin, Stephanie P. McClelland, Shakespeare Globe Centre USA, Max Cooper, Tanya Link Productions and Shakespeare Road
21. Wake
    dir. Mei Ann Teo
    prod. Mariana Ortiz
22. Neville's Island
    dir. Gi Young Sung
    prod. Hat Trick Theatre Productions
23. The Meeting
    dir. Alan Bomar Jones, Bryant Bentley
    prod. Hillsborough Community College
24. Evening of Shorts
    dir. Jack Holloway/Kerry Glamsch
    prod. David A. Straz Jr. Center for the Performing Arts
25. Jeffrey
    dir. Keith Odums
    prod. Hat Trick Theatre Productions
26. Titus Andronicus
    dir.Helen Tennison
    prod. University of South Florida School of Theatre and Dance
27. And Then There Were None
    dir. Jack Holloway
    prod. Hat Trick Theatre Productions
28. Musings of a Post Modern Romantic
    dir Matthew Ray
    prod. TRT²
29. Twelfth Night or What You Will
    dir. Julia Flood
    prod. Eckerd Theater Company
30. Hay Fever
    dir. David Jenkins
    prod. Jobsite Theater
31. Wicked
    dir. Joe Mantello
    prod. Marc Platt, Universal Pictures, The Araca Group, Jon B. Platt, David Stone, 
32. The Amish Project
    dir. Todd Olson
    prod. American Stage Theater Company
    
    

Summer

Loads of little updates to the stat trackers, some I'm not thrilled or proud of, some I couldn't be more ecstatic about. However, the Florida summer has been kind. I'm brown, have a new hobby/sport, and I haven't experienced the usual fattening I usually do when I come down. About three weeks or from returning and I feel trepidation most of all. Being a native Floridian you never realize how much of a permanent vacation home is. It seems so incredibly easy and warm and pretty.

BORED

Source: http://www.pinterest.com/pin/63050463507588623/

Paper possibilities
Politics of desire, choices of desire and the consideration of government leadership in Antony and Cleopatra. IRL Historical considerations. Cleopatra balancing being a head of state with corporeal desires and attractions.  Internal fight against her own weakness of desire.

Joni Mitchell A Case of You - Parallels to Antony and Cleopatra?
"Just before our love got lost you said,
"I am as constant as a northern star."
And I said, "Constantly in the darkness,
Where's that at?
If you want me I'll be in the bar."

Joni and The Bard?

Ironic foreshadowing of 1.3.100-102: 

C: And all the gods go with you. Upon your sword
Sit laurel victory, and smooth success
Be strewed before your feet.
A: Let us go.
Come. Our separation so abides and flies
That thou residing here goes yet with me,
And I hence fleeting, here remain with thee.
Away.

Magical language attached to Cleopatra. Instances of supernaturalization of women in Shakespeare?

 

Something New

I have indeed forged a lot of new territory this semester (check out the adventure recap to the right!)  Unfortunately, it hasn't all been city roaming and stellar academics.  I was very sick in January through February.

Resolutions

So I made three resolutions after putting some thought into what was truly lacking from self-improvement the past year.  First, I feel like I've been in the greatest city in the world for 5 months, and have seen next to none of it. So,

Resolution #1: Have one adventure day a month. Do this as cheaply as possible. Record and reflect.

I also felt like I wasn't getting to know my new city and that I could do so by giving back. So,

Resolution #2: Have a day of service every month in which I find a volunteer opportunity to engage in in the city. Record and reflect.

Finally, I felt like I was severely underread in the drama department in all periods so,

Resolution #3: Read/see one new play a week
Oh, hey look at that list up over there in the top left...

So that's it...
Self betterment? Maybe. Meet new people. Most definitely. Make new friends. Very possibly. I'm looking forward to this.

Something like a 3-oh...

Ahoy from Florida...it's a chipper 40 something.  I'm reading some Garrison Keillor fiction, and still utterly tired. I'm of a good mind to take the semester off to watch the spring come in on the beach.

That's no good though...

Forgive, I'm running a fever at the moment so my malaise is both dazing and exasperating.

Anyway, my last grade came in today (finally), and it's higher than I hoped.  The professor and I jerked each other around enough, I was just happy to be done with it.

Ballet and English Conference were both passes (P's), and as such don't count towards the GPA... :\
Western Theatre Traditions was a solid B
Advanced Acting Lab was a solid B
Arabia Imagined a B-

So, a 2.8680 ...call it a 2.9?  Which is something very close to a 3.0...right? Right?

Stats are updated, so is what's on deck.

Things really fell apart this semester...I fell apart this semester, and rallied but the damage may be done.