The Heights, and The Depths

I wrote this two days ago, and posted it in my normal blog; I thought it would be fitting to put it in here, too.
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I'm glad today got gray. As the sun went down, the clouds gathered a bit more, hiding the blue sky behind their wintry blanket. I meandered across campus, going from office to office getting signatures for my leave of absence form. The air was cool, the leaves were golden, and as I walked past the library, I mused about how the delicate white flowers in the bushes looked, at first glance, like bits of tissue paper strewn among the leaves.

I had lunch with my mentor, Dr. Vincent today. It was nothing short of wonderful. She treated me to In-N-Out, a fitting farewell meal, as she put it, since we don't have In-N-Outs in New Mexico. We talked about marriage, and Paul, and school, and theatre, and "The Dining Room".

Dr. Vincent began talking about how things in this life, while tainted by sin, can still be "tastes of heaven"; I think it stemmed from our discussion on marriage. Marriage, we agreed, is a sanctifying tool given to us by God. As Paul encourages his churches to do in his letters, spouses in marriage are not to simply endure trials, or each other's faults, but they are to actively pursue righteousness. As a wife, I am not to think, "I must suffer through my husband's faults and failures." Rather, I am to think, "How can I work with and around those things in order to serve him and purify us both?"

This life is not all about just getting to the next life. We can still have good things now, we can still be good people, friends, spouses, servants, now. I think, in a way, that's what Paul means when he says that marriage is to be an example of Christ's love for the church; we are still sinful, yes, and not fully perfect as we one day will be, but as Christ became our servant in order to make us righteous, we are to serve each other and help sanctify each other. We are saved by faith, not by works, but faith without works is dead. Faith in Christ justifies us; works in Christ sanctify us. In these ways, marriage is a taste of God's perfect love.

We talked about heaven. Dr. Vincent said that the times she most often wants Christ to come back is when she is feasting with friends. There is something about gathering together, around a huge, delicious meal, surrounded by people that you love, that tastes like heaven. She said she often wishes that all of her friends were there, and her whole family, too. She longs for everyone she's ever known and liked, and even those she hasn't liked because there were differences between them. She would love to have the time to see past those differences and to really get to know them. Time to sit, and be together, and shoot the breeze; to talk about things that are important, and things that aren't; to, as she put it, "sit in a corner with them, and eat nuts and berries."

I told her about our Gregory of Nyssa Christmas party, last Saturday at Laura's house. We didn't really think about it at the time, but looking back I think most of us have realized that it was likely one of the last times we'll all be together as our original group; the last time for a long time, at least. It's that same feeling she described; there is something about gathering together with loved ones around a feast that seems so heavenly. Those spaces and times in which we can enjoy each other's company, eat, laugh, or just sit together, content; in some small, shadowy way, that must be what heaven feels like.

Except, in heaven, there will be no need for goodbyes, and we will never feel rushed. We will never run out of time to get to know each other, or to say everything we want to say. As Sheldon Vanauken says in his painfully beautiful A Severe Mercy,

"Golden streets and compulsory harp lessons may lack appeal - but timelessness? And total persons? Heaven is, indeed, home."

I've said a lot of goodbyes lately. I said what will probably be my final goodbyes to some people in my group last Saturday. I cried.

After our long lunch, I decided on a whim to see if Mayers Auditorium was empty. It was. Devoid of people, but full of memories. I sat on the stage for a good half hour, the stage on which me and the rest of "The Dining Room" built characters, confidence, and friendships. I soon realized that I wasn't just sitting, I was waiting; I kept looking toward the door, expecting cast or crew members to walk in at any second. It felt unnatural to be in there alone.

And I cried. But it wasn't a bad thing; in fact, I think it was a good thing. All the talk about life and marriage and the show had gotten a little emotionally overwhelming, and I just needed to let it out. I began to realize how much I'll miss my friends here, and how the love I have for them makes these goodbyes all the harder. It's painful, but it's a joyful pain, and I think that kind of pain is the sharpest. It reminds me that we're not home yet.

Thinking of everything Dr. Vincent and I had talked about, I couldn't help but remember Megan's final monologue in the play:

"Lately, I've been having this recurrent dream. We're giving the perfect party. We have our dining room back, and grandmother's silver, before it was stolen, and Charlie's mother's royal blue dinner plates, before the movers dropped them, and even the fingerbowls, if I knew where they were. And I've invited all of our favorite people. Oh, I don't just mean our old friends, but everyone we've ever known and liked. We would have the man who fixes our toyota, and the intelligent young couple who just bought the Peyton place; the receptionist at the doctor's office, and the new teller at the bank. And our children would be invited, too, and they'd all come back from wherever they are. And we've have two cocktails, and hot hors d'ovueres, and a first rate cook in the kitchen and two maids to serve, and everyone would get along famously.

My husband laughs when I tell him this dream. 'Do you realize,' he says, 'how hard it would be to throw a party like that? Do you realize how much a party like that would cost?' Well, I know. I know all of that. But sometimes, I think it just might be worth it."

I am not afraid like I used to be; afraid of the unknown, afraid of failure. God has blessed me incredibly by giving me Jordan, and I'm excited for how he is going to use us to exemplify his love, sanctifying us through our marriage. He has also given me many friends, whom I love deeply; and so there is some pain in our parting. But it is a joyful pain.

Someday, these tastes of heaven will give way to the real thing, the complete, timeless perfection. And then, there will be no more bittersweet goodbyes, and the pain of homesickness will have been worth it. And we will all come back, from wherever we are.

A Fresh Perspective

I guess I'm just not used to going to bed early. I've been up for a while, working on my reflection; it's coming along, but it's proving to be more of a challenge than I expected.

Something silly I've been doing lately, and which I've gotten my castmembers hooked on doing, is to look up clips from other performances of "The Dining Room" online. I did it once before auditions, forever ago, but I didn't watch much. I'm glad I never found the ones I've found now, because I think since we were all coming to it with little to no knowledge of the play we were more able to make it our own, and to let ourselves be creative while not being influenced by someone else's interpretation.

It used to bother me that people would have flat reactions to me when I'd say I was in "The Dining Room", but the more I think about it, the more I'm glad that probably 99% of our audience had no idea what to expect. Granted, the lack of familiarity partly manifested in smaller audiences, but again, I'd rather have a small audience with zero preconceptions than a large one with their own boxes to break. That seems to be the challenge of much of modern Shakespeare, or for the play last fall, "Peter Pan"; trying to do something that's been done many times before in a way that's fresh and that gets the audience to think about it in a new way is it's own challenge.

"The Dining Room" has shown me many new ways to think about theatre, as an art form, and as an experience of growth and of human creativity, and so I hope that those who came to see it benefited from its newness as well.

Bittersweet

That's the best word to describe this day, this play, and, I truly believe, life.

I am very melancholy right now, and I know that every other single person who was involved in "The Dining Room" feels the same way. I saw every person in the cast today, if only briefly, and got hugs and exchanged warm words, but there's a quiet sadness hanging over everything.

I haven't written a lot about the performances until now. Mostly, it's been because I haven't had the time or energy; these past two weeks have been very full and tiring, almost exclusively in good ways.

None of the performances had any major problems, and even if things did go wrong, or the energy level was off, it was OK. One of the great things about this play, and this style of theatre, is that no show is exactly the same as any other. Julia always tells us to "do what feels right", as we are present and focused in the scene, which results in the scenes always being slightly different. We'll still move in the same general patterns, but if we can really listen to each other and be aware of each other, it's inevitable that we will act and react in different ways each time.

It was interesting to see how the play changed with each audience. The attitude of the audience is always very, very tangible. We had to learn to not expect certain reactions to certain lines, and one or two times I was thrown off when someone would laugh at a line I thought was serious, or when the audience would be silent at a line that usually gets laughs.

I think I'm developing a philosophy that good theatre, theatre as I believe it should be, should never look rehearsed. To focus on blocking, or saying a line exactly the same way or at the same tempo, or moving in the same way every time, all distracts from the real essence of the play, whatever play it is. In a way, it's hard to describe; it's not about hitting a cue, but it's about being present, living in the moment of the scene and, as Julia says, doing what feels natural within the framework of the scene.

My experience in "The Dining Room" has caused me to fall in love with theatre in an entirely new way; I have always loved theatre, but I have a much deeper, richer appreciation for it as an art form and as an expression of human creativity now. I believe that what makes theatre unique and beautiful and exhilirating is that it is a living, breathing thing, like the people that participate in it, and like the people who come to watch it, and that's why it's never the same and, hopefully, never boring. I also believe that anyone and everyone has the capability of having a great experience in theatre, which draws me toward amateur, community theatre more than anything professional.

I hope to be involved in theatre throughout my life, and I believe theatre is something that should be open to everyone, almost especially those who are amateurs. It's not about being a "theatre person"; it's about being human, and theatre is one of many activities that allows us to explore what that means.

Learning to Love Change

I really do need to get to bed, but after rehearsal my mind is just racing with adrenaline and, well, theatre thoughts. I've just got to write something.

Last night was wonderful beyond words. We started off as we always do, by just hanging around, waiting for everyone to show up and settle down. My dad had brought a digital video camera for me from home, and I used the last few minutes of its battery life to get some shots of us sitting around, talking, laughing. I'm going to take it to rehearsal tomorrow and have it close by all weekend, to get some behind-the-scenes footage of the show, as well as some concrete memories.

We didn't do a lot of actual "rehearsal" stuff; just some brief vocal and physical warm-ups. We all tried to play "ninja", but Julia begged us to start doing vocal warm-ups. So, still in our ninja poses, we began yawning. Then we were told that we could not play "ninja" onstage, near the rented, expensive props. Sadly, we relented.

When that was finished, we sat in a circle on stage, all of us - cast, crew, directors - and began what Julia told us would be our very last feelings time. I was sad to hear it, but I have to say it sure was a good final feelings time.

One thing I observed that really warms my heart is the unity and love that is so tangible among those of "The Dining Room", not just the cast, but the crew as well. Early on I didn't feel it as much, since I was just getting to know half of the people I was working with, but last night it was really evident. As people were sharing, every now and then someone would say something lighthearted, and all of us would erupt in laughter and embark together on a brief tangent of joking and teasing. Then, all together, we would return to feelings time, after enjoying that break together. Jonny said something at one point that left me doubled over with laughter, although I can't quite remember what it was.

These humorous eruptions happened while I was sharing, too, but I didn't mind in the least bit. I sat back and smiled, thankful for the people God has blessed me with in this show, people who can be serious with each other, but also silly with each other. People who work hard, but also play hard. People who are united by more than just a love for theatre, but a love for people, a love for each other, and, most importantly, a love for God.

"The Dining Room" has really caused me to fall in love with theatre in an entirely new way. It has been beneficial to me personally, and has allowed me, for the first real time in my life, to feel like an artist, which is something I think I have been longing for, deep down inside of me. I have never invested so much of myself into a show before, but the payoff is well worth the late nights and early mornings, because I know I have grown in so many ways, and I have made friendships that will not soon fizzle out.

But that's not all I've learned. I have come to realize that theatre is a great and unique space in which multi-faceted and layered aspects of humanity can come together. It brings people together who wouldn't normally be together (why I love amateur theatre); it is a place to work, to play, to explore, to imagine, to be serious, to be silly, to be thoughtful, to be impulsive. A play is a living, breathing thing, just like, and in many ways, because of the humans in it and the humans in the audience. No performance is the same, no scene is the same, because we are performing in live space and live time, and the very fact that something is alive means that it is constantly changing. Every audience changes the play a little bit, and the excitement of the actor is not knowing exactly how their scenes will go, because within the framework of what we have been given and what has been rehearsed, there is always space to change.

That's how I feel personally about acting; within the framework of the lines, and the direction, and even the props, we are free to move and create as we will, and there is no rule that says everything has to be the same every time. In fact, in many cases, if it is the same every time, we are ceasing to truly experience theatre; we are no longer creating "live" art, but simply performing "done" art, like a movie. It is a challenge, but I think I'm learning to embrace that challenge, rather than to fear it.

I am so thankful to God for creating us as creative beings; we are thinking, breathing, curious, feeling creatures, and theatre, I feel, is such a perfect place to learn about what it really means to be human, and to explore the many, many different ways God has given us in which to express that.

Feel the Love!

I was very sad that rehearsal was only scheduled from 9:00 to 10:30 tonight, but happy for me we only just split up, and it's half past midnight! Not so happy for the boys who have to write seven page research papers for tomorrow, Lord have mercy, but I just love my cast and crew so much. Staying up an extra two hours is worth the time of fellowship and laughter that we had tonight.

It was a very informal "rehearsal"; the only actual rehearsal part we did was about half an hour of vocal and physical warm-ups. We spent the remaining two and a half hours or so having "feelings time", sharing our thoughts about opening weekend, and about our experience in the play in general. I am so thankful for the time and space we had to do so, something we probably won't have again before the play is over.

I love these people so much, I could stay up all night with them. Oh wait, I've done that!

Open-Ended

I'm writing this post immediately after publishing the last one. I decided to split things up so I wouldn't have one ridiculously long blog post.

Jordan and I talked for a long time after the performance last Saturday night. He was really impacted by it; he told me that he felt really faced with a lot of his own sins reflected by the pain and choices of the characters in the play. He was reminded of the depravity of humanity.

It was interesting to hear his side of things; I'm obviously more affectionate toward the characters and the play, but Jordan was really effected by it emotionally; he said the intermission was a much needed emotional break.

The play is very heavy in a lot of ways. There is a lot of humor in it, but almost every scene is juxtaposed with serious issues and problems. No character is simple, no dialogue lacking depth. These snapshots of different lives I think can resonate with almost everyone; there are feelings of loss and shame, of hopelessness and hope, of sadness and confusion, of anger and fear. The most basic human emotions are represented by Gurney's characters.

Jordan and I compared and contrasted the scenes of Kate and Gordon (affair) and Peggy and Ted (birthday party). Kate and Gordon are obviously dirty, and there is something wrong about their relationship, based on sin and lies. Peggy and Ted I've always been more affectionate toward, partly because of my own biases because I play Peggy, partly because I feel that there is something tender and cute in their relationship. They haven't done anything wrong, even though they are openly discussing their feelings for each other, both as married adults with children and responsibilities.

I've thought about it more, and talked with Dr. Vincent about it, and as much as I feel that Peggy and Ted are meant to be more endearing to the audience, they are not entirely virtuous. The "resolution" in the scene comes from them feeling it would be too messy to try and be together, and they "resolve" to endure and try to press on in spite of their feelings. Dr. Vincent made the interesting remark that the solution was not to encourage each other in their marriages, but to "suck it up", in a sense, and to continue to do nothing. Like just about every other scene in this play, Peggy and Ted are left somewhat unresolved.

To Create Something Magical

Over the summer, I listened to the audiobook version of Neil Gaiman's "'M' is for 'Magic'". It's a collection of short stories of his, and I really enjoyed it. Some of the stories are strange, and some are funny, and some are a little in appropriate for kids. What actually stuck with me the most from the book was the introduction, read by Neil Gaiman himself (as was the rest of the book). I'll copy it in here, because I listened to it again last night, and it got me thinking in similar ways about "The Dining Room":
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When I was young - and it doesn't really seem that long ago - I loved books of short stories. Short stories could be read from start to finish in the kind of times I had available for reading; morning break, or after lunch nap, or on trains. They'd set up, they'd roll and they'd take you to a new world and deliver you safely back to school or back home in half an hour, or so.

Stories you read when you're the right age never quite leave you. You may forget who wrote them, or what the story was called, or sometimes you might forget precisely what happened. But if a story touches you, it will stay with you, haunting the places in your mind that you rarely ever visit.

Horror stays with you hardest. If it brings a real chill to the back of your neck, if once the story is done you find yourself closing the book slowly for fear of disturbing something, and creeping away, then it's there for the rest of time. There was a story I read when I was nine that ended with a room covered with snails (I think they were probably man-eating snails) and they were crawling slowly toward someone to eat him. I get the same creeps remembering it now that I did when I read it.

Fantasy gets into your bones. There's a curve in a road I sometimes pass; a view of a village on rolling green hills and behind it huger, craggier, grayer hills, and in the distance mountains and mist, that I cannot see without remembering reading "The Lord of the Rings". The book is somewhere inside me, and that view brings it to the surface.

And science fiction (although, there's only a little of that here, I'm afraid) takes you across the stars and into other times and minds. There's nothing like spending some time inside an alien head to remind us how little divides us, person from person.

Short stories are tiny windows into other worlds and other minds and other dreams. They're journeys you can make to the far side of the universe and still be back in time for dinner. I've been writing short stories for almost a quarter of a century now. In the beginning they were a great way to begin to learn my craft as a writer; the hardest thing to do as a young writer is to finish something, and that was what I was learning how to do.

These days, most of the things I write are long: long comics or long books or long films, and a short story, something that's finished and over in a weekend or a week, is pure fun. My favorite short story writers as a boy are, many of them, my favorite short story writers now: people like Saki, or Harlan Ellison; like John Collier, or Ray Bradbury. Close-up conjurers who, with just twenty-six letters and a handful of punctuation marks could make you laugh and break your heart, all in a handful of pages. There's another good thing about a book of short stories: you don't have to like them all. If there's one you don't enjoy, well, there'll be another one along soon.

The stories in here will take you from a hard-boiled detective story about nursery rhyme characters to a group of people who like to eat things; from a poem about how to behave if you find yourself in a fairy tale, to a story about a boy who runs into a troll beneath a bridge, and the bargain they make. There's a story that will be part of my next children's book, "The Graveyard Book", about a boy who lives in a graveyard and is brought up by dead people. And there's a story that I wrote when I was a very young writer called, "How To Sell the Ponty Bridge", a fantasy story inspired by a man named Count Victor Lustig who really did sell the Eiffel Tower in much the same way, and who died in Alcatraz Prison some years later. There are a couple of slightly scary stories, and a couple of mostly funny ones, and a bunch of them that aren't quite one thing or another; but I hope you'll like them anyway.

When I was a boy, Ray Bradbury picked stories from his books of short stories he thought younger readers might like, and he published them as "'R' is for 'Rocket' and 'S' is for 'Space'". Now I was doing the same sort of thing, and I asked Ray if he'd mind if I called this book, "'M' is for 'Magic'"; he didn't.

"M" is for "magic". All the letters are, if you put them together properly. You can make magic with them, and dreams, and, I hope, even a few surprises.
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I love Neil Gaiman's comments on how stories stay with us; I've often thought of human beings as sponges, absorbing ideas and experiences that may not always be on the forefront of our minds, but they are always with us, inside of us, shaping us into the slightly new person we are each day.

I began to think about "The Dining Room" as a collection of short stories. It's certainly an applicable parallel; the play as a whole is a collection of short scenes, with unconnected characters and no continuous plot. While I think every scene is amazing, I'm probably biased, and I'm sure the audience has favorites and least favorites. Short stories may be "pure fun" to an experienced writer like Gaiman, but I think they would be challenging. Getting the reader interested, creating a coherent plot and characters with some depth is a fair challenge to rise to when you're working with ten or twenty pages. At least, I think so.

I feel that "The Dining Room" is a similar challenge, one that I've enjoyed working with. Gurney is able to reveal some real bits of humanity in his characters in a matter of five or six minutes of dialogue. What I love about theatre is that it's a team effort: as talented as Gurney is, it's not just his words that create these characters, but it's a combination of his script, Julia's direction, and our performances and choices as actors. Within the framework of Gurney's writing and Julia's direction is where I as a performer have the space to create and to express myself.

The entire process of theatre really seems magical to me, a unique experience and creative outlet that I believe every person, at some point in their lives, should utilize. What I love about it is that letters and words are not the only tools for creating the magic of live theatre; human beings are tools themselves, the pallets on which and through which and by which that mysterious, wonderful thing called "art" can be created. Our minds and hearts move our bodies through space and time, interacting with each other and with the characters, and, hopefully, finding some humanity in them with which to empathize. I think that's how "acting" can become real, and genuine, and only then is the audience truly impacted. No one is impressed by a mask, but when someone takes the mask off and reveals their real, vulnerable self - in this case, through the medium of Gurney's characters - that is what leaves people laughing, crying, or absorbed in thought.