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Sep

Weekend Update

Oh, weekends, I love you. Five reasons my weekend was fantastic: 1. I went to yoga! Class was hard, and I was embarassed that I’ve gotten so out of practice. I fell out of balancing poses left and right; I didn’t flow so much as heave myself from posture to posture; I was shaking like a leaf doing squats. But I showed up. Yay me! 2. I read a really really good book, Lisa McMann’s Wake. I don’t tend to go for thrillers, but this one had a great hook: Janey falls into other people’s dreams. I sympathized with the protagonist right away; she’s funny and smart and determined, but she has an alcoholic welfare mom and no one to turn to with such a huge secret. The book was a super-fast read. It made me laugh out loud and then cry. I got it from the library, but I liked it so much that I may put...

Sep

Melting Pot

Jessica

I went to the National Endowment for the Arts’ Heritage Fellowships Concert Friday night, and I’m so glad. It was amazing. The NEA gives out ten National Heritage Fellowships every year. The recipients are folk and traditional artists chosen from a wide array fo disciplines, all across America. This year’s honorees ranged from a Nez Perce chief–a drum-maker, singer, and tradition-bearer (I love that phrase!)–to an Ethiopian-American liturgical musician and scholar. There was also a former cowboy, now a saddlemaker, from Idaho; a sassy Alabama quilter who has got to be someone’s truly awesome grandma; a Peruvian retablo maker; twenty-odd Oneida tribe hymn singers bussed in from Wisconsin; a Korean-American dancer and Shamanic singer; a bluegrass musician; a jazz clarinetist from New Orleans; and a Brazilian-American capoeira master. Each fellow gave us a demonstration and answered a few questions. Some spoke perfect English; some struggled to make themselves understood in their second language. All of them seemed...

Sep

Revision Rollercoaster

Jessica

It’s beautiful today. A few degrees cooler and it’d be Exact Perfect Weather. But I’m stuck inside photocopying things. On a deadline, no less, so I can’t skip out early. Boooo. It’s nice that I don’t need my brain for photocopying, because it’s otherwise occupied. I’m on the revising rollercoaster. One minute I believe that the book has promise, that people besides me might be interested in spending time with my characters. That other people might swoon over Ky, laugh at Claire’s whoredom, hurt for Bree, and sympathize with Molly’s blended-family issues. The next minute, though, all I can see are the things I want to fix. It could be so much better, I know. There are three small characters I can delete entirely; they’re amusing but they don’t really further the plot. There are two characters I can merge to create one definitive, tattooed, incendiary political artist....

Sep

You Can’t Go Back on a Public Vow, Right?

Jessica

Certain parts of my life have been neglected lately. Yoga, for instance. It’s been months, people. Months. That is not good. Last night I felt twitchy and tight while I tried to fall asleep, so I did Frog pose for awhile. It felt. So. Good. Weekend conflicts have been keeping me away from my usual Saturday-morning class. Well, weekend conflicts and laziness. I know that when I go back, it’s going to kick my ass, and I will be embarassingly out of practice. But…unless I throw my mat in the middle of the kitchen floor, there’s no good space in my new apartment to practice. And the local classes are beyond my current budget ($18/class adds up!). And…excuses, excuses…. So I’m going to yoga Saturday morning. I know it’ll be rough, but it’ll be worth it for that awesome, in-tune, blissed-out feeling at the end. I just...

Sep

Romeo, Romeo

Jessica

We saw an interesting all-female Romeo & Juliet Monday night. I’ve never seen any Taffety Punk before, but I recognized many of the actresses from other work around town, and I was impressed by the talent. Their Mercutio, Kimberly Gilbert, was dynamite. (Unsurprising, given that one of the best shows I’ve seen, ever, was her amazing one-woman, fifteen-character performance of The K of D. But I loved the Queen Mab monologue.) Casting young women as Benvolio, Romeo, and Mercutio heightened the roughhousing and teasing of the early scenes. Their macho posturing made it so evident that these are teenage boys. It was so different from seeing the roles played by middle-aged men, and it exploded all the bawdy wordplay of the text. I love theatre that makes me see classics in new ways. Like the R & J last spring at Synetic. It was a silent adaptation, all movement and dance,...

Weekend Update

Melting Pot

Revision Rollercoaster

You Can’t Go Back on a Public Vow, Right?

Romeo, Romeo

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