Houston Day 542 - Obligatory Thanksgiving Post

Random Thoughts on the Thanksgiving Day Parade:

• The Rockettes: the missing link between the Ziegfeld Follies and cheerleading.
• NYC parade: spectators in coats and gloves and scarves and warm hats.  Houston parade: people in jeans and t-shirts.
• There were two Australians in the parade! Anthony Warlow (playing Daddy Warbucks on Broadway right now): you have my undying love and admiration forever.  You are what is good about musical theatre.  Cody Simpson: you're alright too.  Your blond, surfer-derived image reminds me of home.
• I love a good celebration, but I sometimes think that celebrations are less special when this country is so goddamn affluent.  And so over-the-top! Fake snow to end the parade?Weird.  It's a far cry from saving up for a special feast because that's the only decent meal you've eaten all year.  I still sit so uncomfortably with that and I am still figuring out what to do about my feeling that we just have far too much money.  Anyway, I'm looking forward to moving into my Simplify Challenge tomorrow. 
• I think I just saw a character who looks like a weird Santa-Jesus-Pilgrim hybrid.

Thinks I'm Thankful For (Random Sample):

• My family and going home for Christmas! Four weeks, y'all!
• My adopted family, the Nickerbekahs, with whom we are eating Thanksgiving dinner.
• That Lucas and I come up with fun hybrid names for couples.

P.S. : The National Dog Show on TV after the parade.  Hilarious.

Houston Day 541 - The Player's Sonnet

I have been reading tons of Shakespeare recently to prepare for some upcoming auditions, to the point where I'm beginning to think in iambic pentameter.  The following is my attempt at writing in Shakespearean style (and continuing to process what the hell it is I do).  I began it when I was having a working/drinking/reading lunch at Onion Creek Cafe and finished it tonight with John Denver on the sound system and Lucas baking pumpkin pie in the kitchen.  Happy Thanksgiving all, and especially to my Houston community of artists.

The Player’s Sonnet

The same way I can look at that cursed table,

And see not just a panel of blank faces

But my true love, or hate; so I am able

To see them in a made-up world of spaces.

I play to them my piece, to achieve my aim,

And in that same way I will play my life.

I will traverse the highs and lows of fame,

(And somehow manage still to be a wife).

Just as I fancy, I will land each role

Then play it, then let it go; but what will stay

Is my integrity, my joy, my soul,

My willingness to play another day.

This piece is hard and sometimes unforgiving;

But I am a player; so I play my living.

Houston Day 538 - Your Silence Is Rich

Sunday Scribblings: Silence

This is inspired by the Sunday Scribblings blog and by some conversations I had with my cast members between shows yesterday.

I sense rather than see the longing in your eyes.  Your voice has just a shadow of sadness.  (Will all this striving be in vain?) I recognise it because it is in me, too.

And yet you hold your tongue and your dignity.  Your silence is rich.  We are masters of self-possession and fake-it-til-you-make-it (will we ever make it?), and from somewhere you find the strength to witness your own disappointments.  You are your own counsellor.  There is an easiness in your posture.  You have learned to wait, with enough love and money to continue, and the unrequited hope still gently bleeding through.

Teach me how to find your silence.  Because the drive won't go away.  And the questions are insistent.

(What if the story of my life just disappears in the noise?)

Houston Day 536 - more insomniac blogging

It's 4am and I am awake (not for the rest of the day, I hope) so here's a little update on life in Houston.

A Little House Christmas

...is super-fun.  We've been open for about a week now.  The schedule is (disappointingly?) light so far, with usually only one show a day.  Again, I could sing the praises of Main Street all day - how instead of just making do when the sound design computer crashed during tech, someone popped out during lunch and just bought a new one; how when one of the actors had a previous contract with another company for one of our performance days understudies were prepared well in advance; and the fabulous costume designs of Macy Perrone.  I love working for a company that says that anything less is not good enough.  In an ideal world every company would work like that, but that's not been my experience so far!

A Little House Christmas cast members: me, Lauren, Natalie,
Chioke, Curtis and Scott

The cast is large (ten) and fun, and we seem to be going out for lunch together most days.  And there's that lovely feeling of being in a Jane Austen novel when you're dressing for a period show - the women's dressing room is all petticoats and lace and corsets (well, a corset).

Hope Stone

Our teen theater class has entered phase two of this year's plan - the Simplify Challenge.  Inspired by this year's performance theme of "Simplify" every student and Leslie and I are giving ourselves the challenge to simplify our lives in some defined way for a defined period of time.  Last night most of the kids gave their commitments to their challenges.  We've got water-drinking, some restrictions on internet usage, a few variations on the theme of minding your own business, dog-walking, a few variations on meditation and intentional living, cleaning and organising stuff, being grateful, being positive, getting on top of schoolwork, and a couple of people trying to keep calm in their relationships (man, I remember being a teenager - that was hard).  My challenge is to do yoga/meditate every morning, and to eat breakfast sitting down in a calm environment with no multitasking.

The Hope Stone blog continues to be a fun extra activity in my life, and I'm also beginning to think about pursuing other blogging opportunities as well.  The new Hope website will be up soon, which will see me blogging with more regularity.

TMJ Syndrome

It was when I realised that I was avoiding eating because it hurt to open my mouth more than about a finger-width that I decided to do something about it.  My chiropractor has beaten me up and wrangled my jaw a couple of times in the last few days and I'm going back again after the weekend.  Other Little House cast members have been comparing their experiences of TMJ with mine, and I didn't think that mine was associated with any stress, as theirs was.  But then the chiro said it was phenomenal amounts of neck and shoulder tension that were putting my jaw out, along with some pretty regular teeth-grinding, and asked me what I was stressed about.  Then I got home and Lucas grabbed me by the shoulders, looked me in the eyes and asked me what I was stressed about, and I realised that maybe I am worried about a few things.  Then the next day with my jaw loosened up by the chiro I realised that a tense jaw is my defense mechanism and I spent the whole day painfully aware of how I wanted to grind my teeth and clench my jaw and just generally tense up all the freaking time.

So I'm feeling pretty vulnerable (the chiro took away my defense!) and bruised (her assistant beats me up pretty good during those massages) and worried...she took away my coping mechanism! Another yoga cleanse is in order, I feel - I think I'm going to start that the day after Thanksgiving, along with my Simplify Challenge.  More boring food and meditation and other slightly odd but awesome ayurvedic practices.

Awesome Friends

Ashley and Lindsay looking adorable

Speaking of Thanksgiving, this year we are spending it at Nick's aunt and uncle's place with Nick and Bekah.  They continue to be very dear friends to us, although this week is tech week for Bekah so we won't really see her til that's over!  I also love teaching and doing life with Leslie (wish her a happy birthday!), and my regular walk-and-talks with Ashley, and hanging out at Ashley and Lindsay's apartment.

And an Awesome Husband

Leslie commented last night that it's an awesome marriage when he can look me in the eye and ask me what I'm stressed about and make me realise it.  I am so grateful for Lucas! His field trip a couple of months ago made me realise just how much I need him around.

He continues to love his job, which is ramping up again for another lease sale early next year, and he's totally gotten me hooked on playing Magic, and he also was very excited that the new Halo is out.  Although he's finished it already - I think that's an anticlimax but apparently it's not.

Houston Day 531 - Lucas' birthday!

Lucas' Birthday

...was yesterday, and he turned the ripe old age of thirty-one.  In the tradition of his family, where they got to celebrate their birthdays in both the Australian and American time zones when they were kids, we went out for dinner Friday night, his "Australian birthday".  It was to a fancy restaurant we'd never been to before in the Heights called Glass Wall.  Roasted brie, delicious meat, lovely dessert wines.

The day itself involved breakfast at Yale St, Lucas seeing our first public show of A Little House Christmas, and a pub crawl on White Oak, organised by the inimitable Josh Ulla`, who works with Lucas and who seems like nothing so much as a youth group leader on steroids.

I also gave Lucas tickets to go and see the Texans play the Colts in December.  Yes, I am a good wife.  And we have good friends who are going with us to see them play as well! Lucas' fanship of the Texans is just one of the many symptoms of his sudden-onset (about a month after we got here) and hilarious passionate Texan patriotism.  Another is his belief that he is the reincarnated spirit of the James Buchanan who fought and died at the Alamo.

Houston Day 530 - my latest Hope blog piece

...can be found here!

Houston Day 525 - the best show in Houston this season, and Lucas in a lumberjack costume

Lucas and I just got home from seeing "Body Awareness" by Stark Naked Theatre, and I'm still trying to put my heart back together. So I'm going to process out loud and y'all can read it.

I've mentioned the classes I've taken with Kim Tobin and Philip Lehl in blogs before (Days 254, 269, and 476, among others), and this show offers more proof that they are actually gods.  Stark Naked Theatre is their baby, and Philip directed this show and Kim stars in it.

Kim and Philip are married (to each other) have such wisdom and experience that when they go off on a tangent in class, you pay attention, coz it's going to be either hilarious or freaking gold.  Something funny Kim said in class once (I'm putting it in quotation marks but of course I don't remember it word-for-word):

"You fall in love with people on stage.  It's an imaginary circumstance, and to a certain extent an imaginary relationship, but a real emotion.  So I tell my husband all the time - I'm in love with this person, is that ok? Coz I need to tell you that I'm in love with this person in this play.  And he'll say, "Honey, can I just sit and watch the play?" and I'll say, "Oh, no, you're directing the play." "

I see so many shows, but I've only seen a few other shows since leaving Melbourne that even came close to how good this play is.  The script is brilliant.  It's by a playwright that this company loves called Annie Baker.  You know how some TV shows are overwritten and they dumb it down by explaining things that don't need to be explained, and you know how (if you've ever read an early draft of any of the few plays I've written) you sometimes think "I don't understand what's going on; this is totally underwritten?" Well, for me this show had just the right level of "writtenness".  Beautiful, complex moments and symbolism and relationships that touched me to the heart without bashing me over the head.

Whenever anyone asked me what this play I was going to see was about (feeling a little awkward because of the juxtaposition of the company name and the show name) I wasn't really sure what to tell them.  You can read the blurb on the company website, so essentially I burbled that back at whoever was asking.  I really was only going because despite my best efforts I'd never seen Kim or Philip's work on stage yet.  But as I was watching it I went "relationship drama". That's how you describe it as briefly as possible.  And as I learned from Kim's classes, what makes for thrilling theatre is authentic relationships.....well, I couldn't take my eyes off the actors for a second.  The character of the son (who spends the whole show protesting too much that he doesn't have Aspbergers) is repulsive - a very unpleasant human being - but fascinating, and very funny, and although tears threatened a lot during this show, he was the one who finally made me cry.  Kim's character (his mother) and her partner are both beautifully drawn and performed.  You know when you are with a couple or watching a show about a couple and you recognise which role in the relationship you play? Well, I spent about half the play thinking "Oh, I'm so like Joyce" and the other half thinking "Oh, I'm so like Phyllis".  They were both just such real beautiful characters and I recognised myself in both of them.  And the fourth character, who isn't as touching because you don't really go on a journey with him as much, was still fascinating and enigmatic and great to watch.  And the set, costume and sound design were all great and served all this stuff really well.

The issues in the script make my head turn.  The male gaze, self-awareness, how language shapes how we think, the nature of art, the nature of relationships, gender stuff....it all sounds academic, and it was, but in such a way as to be painfully personal as well.  There was an art exhibition on the female form in partnership with the show, which to be honest felt a little conflicting (how do you look at some of those pieces of art and not get angry, as the character of Phyllis does, about being complicit in the patriarchal system, and then see the other pieces grouped with them and feel that those too are undermined and made more complicated?) ....God, that sentence was so long I lost track of it.

Anyway, I think I'm just about done processing for the moment.  In a complete non sequitur, and because Sass requested it, here is a picture of Lucas' Halloween costume.  If you don't get the reference, go to youtube and search "lumberjack song".

From the sublime to the ridiculous.  :)

Houston Day 522 - Happy Halloween!

...and, also, given that I'm writing this post on the 1st of November, happy All Saints Day.

Has Halloween become more of a thing in Australia since I left? Here it's enormous.  People of all ages are in costume all throughout the day, and grownups are also in costume on the Saturday before at big parties.  And trick-or-treating is for real, y'all! TV doesn't lie.

Last year we had more trick-or-treaters because our old house was more welcoming (you could see the front door from the street) but this year I got into the whole costume thing more.  And evnWe were in Austin last weekend checking out the Texas Book Festival with Sam & Katie (Sam works at Exxon) and saw many fun people out in costume.  Yesterday, on Halloween proper, Little House had a costumed rehearsal and so I went as a Weeping Angel from Doctor Who! It was an interesting test of our concentration to be doing A Little House on the Prairie with Morticia, Kermit, Barney Stinson, a Woopie Cushion and a Starbucks coffee cup.

The day ended with our regular "family dinner" with Nick and Bekah, and Bekah (who is delightfully childlike even on her normal days) was on a sugar high from so much candy that it was quite hilarious.  And then she crashed and so they went home fairly early.

Bekah after too much sugar

So today is All Saints Day, which we have kind of celebrated already, at....church....yeah, we went to church.  And then we liked it enough to go back.  And now we're planning to go back again...and I'm having lunch with the pastor this week....we hesitate to say "yes, we're definitely joining this community" but it is at least a place where we feel like we could belong, which is a HUGE step.  Their name is Zeteo, which is Greek for "I seek" and you can look at their website here.  We first went with Heidi and Joel McKerrow, who were visiting us on their world travels (that was good for the soul), when Joel was asked to perform his poetry at their worship gathering.  We had dinner at the pastor's house afterwards, and she explained to me that central to Zeteo are Jesus, the bible and communion.  Not - and this is my favourite part - that you have to believe anything in particular about those things, but you must engage with them.  And everyone agreeing and believing all the same things is not their aim.  So anyway, the first service we went to at Zeteo was All-Saints-themed, in which we celebrated people - living or dead - who are points of light in our lives.

Joel & Heidi - two of my favourite people in the world!

So happy All Saints, everyone.  I hope you have light and hope and that you share that around.