A Stain Upon the Silence

Today's Lesson

Thu, 29 Sep 2011 17:55:23 -0400

Dear incomprehension, it’s thanks to you I’ll be myself, in the end- the unnamable

So the lesson for today: never be afraid to ask for help. Also, asking for help sooner is better than later, but later is better than not at all.

Met wil Ilona Pierce, goddess of vocal coachiness out at Hofstra yesterday. Ilona had the distinct challenge of teaching me at a time when I was already transitioning to stage management. Also that was a long long time ago. But back to the future…

Turns out I’m doing everything wrong. Very rightly wrong. All of the things that I thought were good for my voice, in fact, are not. What I thought was centering my voice is actually pressing it and doing damage. Extending to my daily life too.

So I learn. It’s difficult to relearn 3 years of vocal technique, after a long hiatus, in about 45 minutes. But hey, every little bit helps.

Ah well. Fail better.

It’s happening. And very soon. You, dear reader, have you bought a ticket? Get on that please. I’ll wait….

After asking for help, part 2 is trusting the help that you ask for. Welcome Katrina Herrmann, a much needed stage manager for the stage-manager-turned-artist. Sorry to do this to you Katrina. Thank gods you’re here.

The next next step- trusting that when they hang me up, 8 feet in the air, approximately, that i will survive. And don’t have to pay attention to much more than knowing my lines.

What did Billie once say? “Surgeons want to surge, actors want to act.” Well, stage managers want to stage manage, even when we’re not supposed to. So thanks to everyone who has been patient in letting me unlearn, or put aside some instincts. Thanks to everyone who is taking care of me through all of this.

And for the rest of you: buy a ticket already.

On a complete side note- I’d like to take a moment to mourn the passing of R.E.M. Not the sleep cycle, though i miss that too, thanks. These days find me more and more at my desk or in various coffee shops about NYC, and my iPod affords me some peace and a bit of a buffer against the sidewalk pan handlers. R.E.M. made for good, unobtrusive reading, writing, etc music. It’s a sad day when I can no longer look forward to their newest album. Thanks guys, for bringing me music for so long.

And on that that note- let me take a moment to mourn the sudden disappearance of my iPod. To the jerk who stole it on the train at 181st street, I hope my fabulous taste in music brings you joy.

More anon dear readers. Happy new year to those of you for whom it applies. Eat some honey and apples for me.

For now I must go stage manage.

Hello friends

Wed, 28 Sep 2011 12:08:42 -0400

Hello new readers!

*waves*

More to come.

Still trying to figure out how to get comments allowed on here. But feel free to drop me a note and say hi.

Fail Better 2.0 or... asking the universe for help

Sun, 25 Sep 2011 12:39:22 -0400

Blogging can be a lonely activity. With the plethora of technology and communication out in the world, it can be challenging to put your very small gesture out into the world.

So here I’ve been thinking all this time, why the hell do I never ever get comments on the blog??

Answer: I had to install a third party software to allow comments. And I think I still don’t have it right.

Help. Anyone know how to do this? Reach out and email me: marciskolnick@gmail.com

Feel connection one way or another.

The Why of the Book

Fri, 23 Sep 2011 18:36:32 -0400

Why a book?

Well, because there isn’t one currently. 10 years ago when I first picked up these plays I thought what the hell do I do with them? Who are these characters? How does one go from 8 pages of monologue to nothing but a mouth on stage.

The vast majority of information that floats around the info-sphere about Beckett’s plays slants towards the dramaturgical side. What do these plays mean? Why were they written? What’s the point?

The rest of the information is about directing Beckett plays, and very occasionally about designing the plays.

Try finding something about acting them. I dare you.

The most I ever found were 2 biographies. Jack MacGowran’s and Billie Whitelaw’s. Both famous Beckett actors. Both worked closely with Mr. Beckett himself.

So most of the information in those books, fabulous resources that they are, contain stories about working side by side or face to face with Beckett, who was often around productions of his plays whether he was directing them or not.

All well and good. Totally interesting to learn that Billie and Beckett sat face to face and “conducted” each other to learn Not I. Jean and I had to bring in a metronome.

Beckett is dead. His plays are still with us. And they are unique in their existence.

Beckett’s plays are like… happenings, for lack of a better word. The script on the page is not a jumping off point. It is a finished product. The script is a recipe closer to baking, say, than cooking. Not a basis for experimentation but more like science. If you put all the pieces together in the right order you get at what he was aiming at. And something…. happens when you do it right. The Beckett experience as Jean and I have taken to calling it.

How does one get there without Beckett conducting the modern Beckett actor?

I think I have a few ideas. And I think I am not the only one with those ideas. I think that there are commonalities in how actors all over the world are finding their way through these plays. Common modern acting tools are not enough with Beckett. There’s another tool box that needs to be tapped into,

So I want to talk about it. I want to talk to actors and see if some of the things I discovered 10 years ago and this year are similar to the tools that others are using.

And I want to write about it so that people like me of 10 years ago can have a resource to turn to and jump off from.

Fail Better

Thu, 22 Sep 2011 15:46:14 -0400

Jean says I’m no longer allowed to say I’m not an actor. And apparently I’m too young to have a midlife crisis. So i guess this thing is really happening in a couple of weeks.

I am having some real vocal issues. Dry, scratchy, irritated throat. Over usage? Maybe. Allergies? Probably, knowing me.

But also there’s the problem of not having a trained instrument anymore. 2 days out from my last rehearsal and I definitely do feel better. Drinking my body weight in tea and cleaning the Brita filter helped.

Any of your readers out there also performers? Anyone have some voice protecting ideas for me?

Theoretically meeting a vocal coach next week which should be exciting.

Thinking about this question of identity. For a long time I was trying to find a way to call myself an artist, find something that identified me in that way since I hadn’t been on the stage in so long. Knitting mostly. Being a fiber artisan. Which is actually great. I still love it. In fact, I’ve got knitting ready to be finished before I go, or to take with me to Milwaukee tonight, whichever comes first. (Milwaukee. Dance show with Yehuda Hyman. The Mad 7. Good stuff.)

But since I’ve come back to this work, to something that feels so very right for me at this time, I have been reticent to call myself an artist.

Perhaps I am reluctant to accept change. Even positive change in me. But the fact is that I am much happier with this new outlet in my life. Who knows what will happen when we close, as I don’t expect to go back on stage again.

I have a copy of The Happiness Project sitting in my bag ready to go to the airport with me. It seems like everyone and their mom is reading self help books. They came back in with Eat, Pray, Love. And I’m looking to get Spirit Junkie by Gabrielle Bernstein from the library. Also Lindsay was telling me about some book that debunks these self help books. I shall read them all in my copious un-Becketted spare time.

And yes in case you’re curious I do have a copy of the Artist’s Way sitting on my shelf. Thanks Leena. I’ll get to it eventually.

Or maybe I just need to get over it and think that if I’m making art, then I’m an artist. Once who has to take care of her voice.

Yay for knowing who you are.

Green Tea

Wed, 21 Sep 2011 09:37:10 -0400

And then sometimes there are those rehearsals. Something just happened. I am not even sure that I can articulate what happened. But it did. I am having some vocal fatigue. And I was drinking some green tea. And there were some friends that I said hi to and then this thing happened.

We finally brought in the metronome. Jean mentioned this back several months ago when we were trying to figure out tempo. I remember the conversation and that it had to do with finding an app for a phone that could do this thing for us.

But ever since the 10 minute 15 second Not I run, we knew that something was needing. Something needed to change and there was not a clear way to do it.

Thing is, and I think it comes from last time, last round, last adventure, where I started out slow and the tempo sped up as it all went on. But it’s not right. It never was. And I’ve had this problem with the beginning ever since. Getting to hit my “race pace” as I am fond of calling it, from the get go. I can fly as it goes on but that’s not right either. There’s something about a steady pace from the get go and the fragment of the sentences, the tension in that artificially that is key to the inner scream, or the tension in the tension or something like that.

So we brought in the electronic metronome. And hit a pace. Picked a tempo and I learned just how freaking difficult it is to keep on a pace. But if we think about Beckett writing pieces of music more than anything else, then of course there needs to be something setting a tempo. And the fighting against that.

I’ve felt at sea finding the tempo. And the music of all of that is so key. I have felt adrift with the finer points of the words and the pace ever since I got into this swirl with the ellipsis. And once again without Mr. Beckett in my face and conducting me, what’s a gal to do.

First pass with the metronome was too slow. And I was really fighting it. I know that it sounds slower to me than it does to the rest of the world, but I felt like I had all the time in the world between phrases, and that they weren’t neatly fitting together around the bouncing ball. Also began to think about how annoyed actors get about all of Beckett’s “unfair restrictions.” To be clear, I am NOT that actor, and that’s a whole different blog post. But I can see the annoyance. Anyway, round 2 of metronome…

Sped it up a little bit. More beats per minute. And I wouldn’t exactly say it was perfect. In fact it was not. Perfect. But close. Need to speed it up more as it came in at exactly 16 minutes and needs to come in more like 14.5.

But I had this totally relentless beat. I didn’t have to be responsible for the rhythm, just had to honor it somehow in my body. And the damn thing was binging in my head, like the buzzing, that kind of annoyance that I couldn’t get away from. Can’t move. Can’t deny the text. I’m only a mouth saying these words.

So I began somehow thinking that what got Billie through it was having a spotting light in the back of the theatre. A fixed point on the wall that kept her sane. Before that she had been put in a mask that covered every part of her face but her mouth and she couldn’t see, got vertigo and walked smack into a wall. She was standing at the time obviously, and that was its own set of problem, but still.

I picked this point in the wall. Some kind of imperfection in the brick and I began speaking to it. And the rest of the world fell away. Even this damn buzzing/binging thing, sometimes. And I remembered another Billie bit of wisdom, that she began throwing her words at this point in space, as if she could send them there and bore a hole right through the wall. That’s what I did. That’s what I tried to do to escape the rest of the universe.

It was as relentless as it could get. And I was so damn angry, and desperate and it mounted and it mounted and it went on and I got choked up but it kept going.

It slacked off, well, I slacked off at the point where mouth learns from the unknown voice that nothing she could tell, and nothing she could think will get her out of this. I suspect that the only thing that will get her out of this weirdo purgatory loop is to admit that all of this is happening to her, as in first person, as opposed to she or this. Nothing you can think, nothing you can tell, just something you can be. You. Not she.

Doesn’t matter. She never does get there, that we can see.

But I backed off and accepted that that’s what I was being told. Bad idea. If that’s the salvation- telling this thing (refer to previous posts somewhere) then it’s something to fight or something that causes panic. And on a technical level, something that will drive me to the end.

But it was good.

It was also good to learn a little bit about what the ending is supposed to be. Beckett’s stage direction says something about the curtain starting down at a certain point, and that what you get is unintelligible voice for 10 seconds that relents when the lights come up. I believe that the curtain is a convention that Beckett was used to in traditional theatrical settings but not something strictly necessary. I don’t believe that we’re going to have one.

So what does it mean then? What would Beckett do? He’s have the voice slack off gradually until it was gone. Which is what I tried that time after the final movement and the double SHE. Apparently it was great. Or heartbreaking or something. I couldn’t tell you. I was still inside it.

But something happened with these 2 things. Meter and boring a hole into the wall. These 2 things together brought flatness with clarity and inner scream. And all that jazz.

And the best part is I think these are things I can do again. That’s the thing I’ve been worried about. (I’m not allowed to say I’m not an actor anymore.) ok, so I’m an artist who’s been out of practice at being an artist but clearly it’s coming back. The thing I’ve been concerned about it trying for consistency night after night. Obviously live theatre changes from night to night, but when one finds these interesting, helpful, shall we say correct things? How does one get them back night after night? Well I feel like these are things I can do.

And drink green tea apparently. I still have the taste of Tazo Zen in my mouth. There’s a little Beckett in joke there, though I didn’t mean for there to be. Green tea, as the reader will remember, is featured in Play. It’s what the gals drank while they bashed their husband/lover- without sugar or even a squeeze of lemon. I can get behind that.

Such are the rituals I guess. Whatever gets me through the day, or gets me through the play.

More anon, as I realize this was the move closest to going back to the laban technique of 10 years ago… stay tuned dear readers. I need some tea.

Auditing

Sun, 18 Sep 2011 00:59:15 -0400

Ran Not I three times in rehearsal today and I feel, all in all, like I’m going to die. I went after rehearsal to the post office to mail something, and when I signed for it the woman behind the counter remarked that my signature had changed quite a lot. I had neither the strength to tell her that I was tired because I’d just come from a rehearsal where I was channeling Beckett’s women, nor did I have the energy to rip her throat out.

Ah well.

Today was the first time I got to run Not I with Kathryn there as the Auditor. Oh yes folks, we’re doing it. Major change from last time. Kathryn is playing the incredibly challenging and not often seen Auditor in Not I. Not often seen because Beckett never felt like he could get this character to work, though he loved the image and found it integral to the play. It’s not often done because Beckett himself cut it from many productions. Somehow he never got the effect he was trying to produce. Well, I don’t know if we will produce what he wanted but we’re sure as hell going to try.

I’ve wondered recently how the estate feels about it. You know, the estate and their forest for the trees perspective on everything (so it seems, I know they have a hard job to do and they get a lot of flack about it from the outside world.) But we’re doing it so I have no idea how they would feel if we didn’t want to.

Thank God Kathryn loves this idea because it’s one thankless job to be hooded and shrouded and stand listening for 15 odd minutes to this raving.

She said it herself today however, that one cannot have communication without two vessels for communication. Vessels was not the word she used, she had a better one but I am not remembering what she said exactly. Same idea. No matter…keep on…hit on it in the end…

But what a change to actually have someone there doing the thing. To not just be spouting these words off into empty space but to feel like someone is absorbing them. Totally threw me off the first time but it got better as we went.

And then today came what I think of as the 7…8…9…wheel breakthrough of this process. The 7…8…9… incident, as the reader will remember, was looking at the Grove Press edition of the Collected Beckett shorts and seeing that May paces 7 steps one way and 7 steps back. But just once she paces all the way to 9 steps and comes back.

Well I hung my whole damn performance on that one piece of information. It was huge. It was motivating. It was a typo. Beckett’s directions in some edition or other say paces 7 or 9 steps depending on the size of the playing space. The Grove edition never corrected the error. Nor was it corrected in the centennial box set they put out some years back. That, in itself, was a breakthrough. Faced with this several days before we opened I elected to ignore this information and keep on.

So now. This new breakthrough was just a piece of information I had not noticed before. No reason to notice it, really, without the auditor present. Normally I look at the pauses in Not I as just pauses. Places to breathe, or to hold my breath and pause. But the auditor being in the space with me changed everything. Of course.

Not I’s Auditor gestures 4 times throughout the play “a gesture of helpless compassion” according to Beckett. Here’s the tricksy thing- there are, in fact, 5 pauses within the movements. This became apparent when Kathryn, measuring her pauses as we went, didn’t gesture when I expected her to. So back to the text. And we realized something totally obvious if we’d been looking for it, and totally amazing.

The final “what?…who?…No!…SHE!” has no gesture. Because mouth interrupts the auditor’s gesture with a second SHE! How very “absurdist drama,” she says with all the sarcasm she can possibly muster. To turn away from one’s salvation because of one’s inability to accept the first person.

And how cool a revelation.

Score one for Beckett.

Then I had a vision, then I had religion

Thu, 15 Sep 2011 13:11:58 -0400

And I did it with my chakras. Sometimes, what is tried and true is the thing that works. After all the musical scoring, the line by line work with inflection and the struggle for meaning, after my head did all the work, I opened my chakras and let fly. For a more detailed account of this, one can check out the old blog from 10 years ago. And if anyone who doesn’t know how to find it wants to, let me know….

On a personal note, it was something to walk by Hofstra’s playhouse on the 10th anniversary of September 11. As I did 10 years ago. Made me shiver.

And then I had this amazing rehearsal. I wouldn’t call myself a religious person. I was baptized Catholic, but that’s about as far as it goes. Sorry Mom. My father is jewish and with 7 years working at the National Yiddish Theatre, I feel like I’ve absorbed dogma by proximity.

But one thing i can honestly say i have no touch on is Protestantism. Haven’t had a reason to. Other than learning the basics in history and literature classes. Jean, thankfully, has some more touch on this and we’ve talked about it a lot.

Here’s the thing i never thought about: Catholics confess. it’s what they do. Confess, repent, get forgiven. All that good stuff. But Protestants, and Beckett was one, don’t confess. I think there are things in the prayers that are semi confessional but not the formal going to confession thing that Catholics do.

Apparently, God just forgives you everyday. And because of such, one is just supposed to be good for the sake of being good. …yeah, I know. ….

The frustrating part about this, that I can see, is that there’s nothing one can do about one’s own salvation. At least Catholics can talk to a guy in a collar or a funny hat and Jews throw bread in a river or somesuch. But Protestants hope that everything will work out ok and can’t really do anything about it.

I couldn’t work like that. Mouth tries. At the core that’s what mouth is doing after all. Going over a story- over and over a story to find what’s missing. With the thought that if only she remembers the thing that’s missing then she can get out of this mess.

At some point the silent voice says to her that she cannot get out of this in that way. There’s nothing she can tell or think that will get her out of this mess. (Instead, she has to accept that it’s her, not someone else, who is in this situation. Which she never does.)

Then she is well and truly screwed. And there’s nothing she can do but keep going. Well if that doesn’t give you the impetuous for an inner scream, I don’t know what will.

And with that in mind, I let fly with chakras had a great run. If that performance had wound up on stage in front of an audience I would have been happy with it.

Maybe this will work out after all.

Post rehearsal found me curled up in Jean’s office looking at the finer points of ellipses i need to think about. Back to the drawing board…

Big kid project needs a big kid photo!

Tue, 13 Sep 2011 11:40:00 -0400

Big kid project needs a big kid photo!

Cheater

Thu, 08 Sep 2011 16:47:19 -0400

Each man to his own specialty. (My recollection of a Godot quote, probably not the actual quote.)

And now for something completely different.

I admit it. I’ve been cheating on Mr. Beckett. There, I said it. I’ve been cheating in a big way all week. And it won’t be the last time.

Yep. I’m stage managing again. And I’ve gotta admit, even to myself that it feels good to be doing so again.

So first, the plug. This is the show that I’m doing: Radha Blank’s SEED.

It’s interesting. It’s thought provoking. The design is awesome and the actors are powerful. It’s also still in previews for another week.

Anyway.

My experience doing these things simultaneously speaks to the wisdom of University programs, my alma mater’s included, that have their students try their hand at many different aspects of theatre as a part of a well rounded theatrical education.

It’s nice to have a fresh idea of the plight of an actor in my brain while I’m SMing. I’d like to think it makes me more empathetic when I’m deep in the land of 14 hour work days. You’d have to ask the cast about whether or not it’s actually working, but it’s a nice thought isn’t it?

Though Gemini that I am, it’s an interesting jump back and forth. Artistic multiple personality disorder. And perhaps some kind of grass is always greener on the other side of the tech table thing.

And in some way I have to be careful what I wish for. Friends, family, the voices in my head keep telling me relax Marci, act. Be an actor. Take some long pauses and relax. You have an amazing team to take care of you and you don’t have to stage manage your own show. Think of it as a gift and go breath or meditate or something. Om it up and calm down.

Well, now that I have all the stage managing I can handle I am less inclined to push about aspects of my own show that don’t involve pauses and ellipses. And there was much rejoicing by the production staff I’m sure.

And now back to your regularly scheduled life and my regularly scheduled scheduling.

Hello out there

Wed, 07 Sep 2011 01:23:00 -0400

Are you listening to me? Is anyone looking at me? Is anyone bothering about me at all?

- Play

Hello friends. It seems there are some people reading the blog now. Yay. Welcome. I guess ya’ll deserve and update.

Things are moving along. First off:

We have a web site! It has launched. It tells you a little bit about us. It tells you where and when you can see the production. It lets you buy tickets. It is beautiful shades of orange and grey. Please enjoy.

Also, we had ourselves a production meeting. Oh yes we did. We have ourselves a wonderful design team of fun, creative people who are making something special.

As my mother pointed out to me this morning…. Hi Mom, I’m not sure if you’re reading the blog these days… I Marci am not used to being on this side of a production. I am primarily a stage manager in my day to day life. I go to production meetings and say things and people listen. I solve problems and collaborate.

It’s different being an actor. A really good stage manager I know once said that being an actor is a hard job, and it’s even harder if it’s being done well. I can’t speak to quality (though Jean and company seem happy) but I can attest to this being a very hard job. Really. You act-y types are crazy and I commend you.

And so I am lucky to have a crack team of professionals behind me so that I can do my job.

More on this later. In the meantime I’ll try to be an actor and see what they cook up.

digression

Tue, 23 Aug 2011 20:22:31 -0400

Have you not done tormenting me with your accursed time! It’s abominable! When! When! One day, is that not enough for you, one day he went dumb, one day I went blind, one day we’ll go deaf, one day we were born, one day we shall die, the same day, the same second, is that not enough for you?

It’s been one difficult rehearsal after another. Beautiful, hard, tricky and difficult. Who knew I had the capacity to cry so damn much on stage?

But this is beside the point right now. All of these difficult times, and those good people that that stick by me to get me through these difficult things (I’m looking at you. You know who you are) makes me spiral down into the throes of gratitude when I pause to think about it. I’m pretty damn lucky. I’m pretty damn happy.

Then there are the todays. Todays that make me both grateful for the people in my life, and remember that nobody cares about my problems because they aren’t important in the grand scheme of things anyway. Poor baby- working hard at realizing her dream. All the world should have these problems.

And so, my darling Doyle, my friend who has always stood by me, tonight I get over my own petty neurosis and stand by you. Or rather, I sit in NYC and blog while you travel to Delaware and hold your mother’s hand while she struggles to hold onto life a little while longer.

The last time I saw her, we were watching you graduate from law school. No mother could love her son more than she loves you.

I have no grand words of wisdom. I have 2 healthy parents. But in times of stress I think to myself: what would Beckett do?

I can’t go on. I’ll go on.

Hang in there buddy.

The Dalek Game

Tue, 23 Aug 2011 20:03:20 -0400

The Dalek Game

It's 1:30 in the morning and I'm still blogging

Fri, 19 Aug 2011 01:53:26 -0400

Nevermind the fact that i have rehearsal in the morning. And not even happy Beckett rehearsal (joke. not really. Beckett makes me laugh but others think im crazy I know)… but CTH rehearsal. Wherein the actor gets to be a stage manager once again.

Totally different kind of schizophrenia here. The two major halves of personality, sensitive artist and terror who flaps in the night …see twitter…. working on opposite ends of my day. Try reconciling that one, Gemini.

I woke from a dream that was not a dream….

But really. I am here to complain. So dear readers, just skip this post if you’re not ready for some seriously paranoid whiney bitchy crying. Exorcising demons.

I’m thinking of canceling the show. James and Jean please stop reading here, just do yourselves the favor and stop.

really.

no REALLY.

I warned you.

I don’t know why the hell i am doing this project anymore. I have lost sight of my goal and I am wandering down a dark tunnel with no light, not even the right light, grey rather than white, at then end. A land where my punctuation and capitalization have gone right out the window.

I was once accused of being afraid of everything, including my own shadow. That is to say i had gone from being a fearless person who was not weighed down by the neurosis of the universe to becoming a person who was paralyzed by fear.

Fine then. Right now i am paralyzed by fear.

They say that to do something right, to really know how to do something, any thing, one must be able to do it 30 times in a row, successfully. I cannot for a moment imagine doing NOT I 30 times correctly. Without calling for line or forgetting a …so-called…. or adding a …so on… or something. I cannot see it. i am stuck in the tunnel with no grey or white light.

i recognize that my blog posts have been shallow fluff, when they have appeared at all. i think because i am conscious of you, dear readers, and being afraid to bore the pants off of everyone.

i remember being in Drama 60 as a sophomore. When i did the Footfalls monologue (Sequel…) for my final project. Also knows as how all this started. I remember moving so slowly that each centimeter of my feet hit the floor, rolling through, in a painstakingly thorough process. It was slow. Really bloody slow. And i remember feeling the collective angst of my classmates as they wanted me to hurry the hell up and get to the end already. I remember smiling internally and taking a couple of extra seconds. Gleefully. Because I could.

So now i blog, gleefully. And listen to Leonard Cohen. No one’s perfect.

Because yes, I AM AFRAID.

the whole point of this whole bloody exercise. Exercise: a word which here means “a whole process of relearning and putting on a Beckett play in Manhattan, 10 years after I did it the last time. …the whole process was designed to help me write and publish THE BOOK. the book I’ve been talking about for a long long time.

the point was not to go back on stage. If I could have gotten a doppleganger to go on for me and save me a few WHAT… WHO… NO…SHEs then i would have gladly hires said sucker… i mean actor.

The point was the book. To talk to some people who have done Beckett, preferably those who did it well, and get them to talk to me about it.

and to see if the things i figured out 10 years ago, the tools in my Beckett toolbox as i called them, are still useful now. As they were then.

I have not spent hardly a moment working on the book, the questions, the reaching out, the academic side at all. Not at all.

Beckett quoted Nabokov’s diary once. ”Nabokov: gardening. No hope for the future. At least he could garden.”

Yup.

tonight i feel like it’s all too much and if i keep going with it it’s totally meaningless because i have missed the thread. there is no point.

i am afraid to finish this work and come to the end, stop and find that i am no closer to finishing the book.

There aren’t enough hours in the day. There is not enough time and now i’m working again.

And i have nothing to say because i’m scared to let it all out.

Also I’ve discovered i’m unwittingly ignoring the ellipses in Not I, something i never meant to do and now which to fix but feel deeply that i need another 6 months to fix it.

As much as i’ve been trying to follow Beckett’s every wish i have no idea how i got so far away from something so Beckett,

i feel like it will never work.

Jean warned me this would happen.

...to be clear

Fri, 19 Aug 2011 01:06:00 -0400

I hate elipses…

When you decide you can't do it

Tue, 02 Aug 2011 00:27:58 -0400

You find that you’re doing the thing after all. Much like this whole process.

A few days ago I was on the subway running Not I, with as much connection as I could muster. And for the 267,562nd time I crashed and burned at the end. So on. Keep on.

I restrained myself from chucking my meticulously color coded (more on this later) copy of the play across the subway car, looked up to the subway ceiling heavens and thought- there is no way in hell I’m ever going to learn this nonsense.

And then I went on. And I finally had it.

That’s the super annoying breakthrough moment in the process that I love/hate/love to hate. Just when you feel like you will never get past the hurdle, you do.

I am on a 30 day yoga challenge. More correctly I am on day 1 of a 30 day yoga challenge. So far so good, ask me how it’s going in a week. The last time I did this, 30 classes in 30 days, it changed my life.

We’re a long way from life changing breakthrough when I’m 40 minutes into my “fundamentals of Vinyasa” class at SonicYoga slipping all over my mat and trying to hold side plank for a respectable amount of time. And yet, after nose surgery and otherwise being “off the mat” for about 6 months, the fact that I got into side plank or head stand prep is, in itself, a miracle.

I like yoga because you can only push yourself in terms of your body’s own limits. Maybe that’s why I’m drawn to these plays. To doing this work. Because I can’t go on, I’ll go on.

Also on a completely different note- I think rest within work is the key to success. I remember taking a yoga class in upstate NY from Lara, one of my unstoppable trio of yogi women who changed my life (see above), in which we talked about samskaras. (spelling? No idea- I don’t write sanskrit.) Samskaras, so sayeth the internet, are roughly translated in english as “deep impressions.” Think muscle memory. The results of repeated action.

Lara would guide us into poses and while we were holding them she would instruct us to soften in the pose. Relax into it. Find that place of rest in the exertion. Theoretically this would help create samskaras that we could find each time we come back to a pose.

I find this also works on breaks in rehearsal. The moments that I can’t get past, the lines I can’t remember or the thought I can’t articulate swirl around in brain ether while I’m drinking coffee and debating the beauty of Venice vs Greece so that I come back to work 15 minutes later and I am past/remembering/articulating just fine thanks. Somehow this helps create those samskaras too.

Also why I like to work on lines and/or blog right before bed. I work well in my sleep. And tomorrow I do it again.

Namaste.

race pace

Sun, 31 Jul 2011 17:06:57 -0400

Listening to Bad Religion today. ?

Just got back from rehearsal in which I finally ran Not I up to speed. And the funny thing is- we clocked it in at more or less 13 minutes (goal speed 14.5), and yet it did not feel super fast, rushed, problematic, unintelligible, or anything of the kind.

I keep comparing the process and the ultimate performance to running a marathon. I have a little bit of experience with this, as the reader will remember, having trained for a half marathon, only to screw up my knees and not exactly run it. However I do know from race pace. That is, hitting your stride and keeping up that pace to get to the finish line.

So we found it. Much like skipping a stone on calm water. That’s the image. And the feeling? Kirtan chanting. Seriously. All things seem to come together in this process and inform it. Well, as Jean reminded me today, anything you feel in rehearsal even on break, all those thoughts and feelings that come up are related to the character and should be treated as such.

Ok. So Kirtan it is. That’s what I was listening to when I started to relearn the text. Also what I was listening to when I started training as a runner. And so we go.

Good day.

But do we believe everything we read on facebook?

Mon, 18 Jul 2011 16:12:58 -0400

But do we believe everything we read on facebook?

Memory is an Unreliable Narrator

Tue, 05 Jul 2011 17:34:38 -0400

Welcome back friends. Looking over my last entry I realize that I never addressed how I have been duped once again. At some point I will write about the history of textual inconsistencies in different editions of Beckett’s texts. Later.

This time, Jean was giving me notes after our rehearsal, some of which included lines that I was dropping or otherwise not saying correctly. One of the lines was “whether standing or sitting or kneeling or lying but the brain still, still in a way…” (ellipses missing because I don’t feel like looking up where they land in the text right at this moment) Jean’s copy of Not I from Ends and Odds does not have two “stills.” I have not yet grabbed my copy of what is supposedly the definitive editions of the plays, edited by Paul Auster, to see what it says. Not that I trust that either. Don’t get me started. We’ll get back to it later.

Memory is no better either. The trap that I find myself falling into in taking myself through this process again is that pieces of text come back to me very easily. The phrasing is musical and the cadence comes back to my tongue in whole chunks. Problem being that the connecting tissues don’t come back as easily. It’s like having chunks of a jigsaw puzzle and no frame. Frustrating as hell and the only cure is more repetition.

I can’t go on. I’ll go on.

Not Exactly Live from Las Vegas OR We miss you Nora’s Wine Bar

Tue, 05 Jul 2011 17:29:00 -0400

Greetings friends and readers- we are not exactly live from a large white couch in Las Vegas. Yes, here we have reached the part of the year when this little Beckett blogger runs away from the gritty sauna of New York City and repairs to the relative comfort* of the oven known as Las Vegas, and my mommy’s couch.

For the last few years, I have made it a habit to sit on the couch in the brilliantly created bonus room of Chez Skolnick and borrow internet from the wine bar whose parking lot is not too far from the house. Let me say for the record that I enjoyed Nora’s Wine Bar for much more than the internet they were so graciously sharing with me. Their wine and tapas were really first rate. The atmosphere was nice. It was close to home. But really, now that they are closed, I miss the internet.

And so my dear readers, I am embarking upon what I call the 7 second delay blog or, Not Exactly Live from Las Vegas, where we write from the comfort of the big comfy couch and then trek through the oven to the local Starbucks for uploading.

So anyway…

Bicoastal entry- started in a Starbucks in NYC and continued out here in the desert.

Rehearsal #2

I have been duped again, but we will get back to that. Manhattan rehearsal today. First rehearsal in a long while. Not a physical rehearsal, largely due to space restrictions if nothing else. So a words and meaning rehearsal. Text in a chair.

First of all, as a person who makes a living stage managing and also holds a BFA in performance, I think it’s hilarious that I forgot how to call line. Just dead forgot that calling for line is the acceptable way for continuing a rehearsal when you forget what the heck you’re saying. Or how to work with someone else in the room.

I was working slower than I’m used to through the text. The lack of pace, compared to the speed I’ve been up to and the change in conditions left me losing my words. Apparently I’m a visual learner because suddenly I couldn’t see the words in front of me, couldn’t see the page in my mind. That was a bit of a problem.

Major differences thus far from working compared to the last time. Much as I’m used to complaining about the logical/realistic way of working on a play being bad or useless for Beckett, finding a thru line in the text is a good thing. Today I discovered that Mouth’s default is expecting to be punished. It is what first occurs to her no matter what she discovers she is feeling.

I’m not sure if this is a product of thinking in a more Right Brain directed way these days, but it’s working so far. I’m reading A Whole New Mind by Daniel H Pink, more on this later.

Also, back in 2002 my memory muscles, much like my ab muscles, were a little more toned and firm. …and speaking of which, dear readers, I am considering doing something crazy to lose 15lbs for the Beckett gig. Ideas? I’m open to suggestions.

So anyway, we worked in a logical way, piecing together what the hell Mouth is going on about for 14.5 minutes. For the last 10 years I’ve been fond of ranting that Not I is a nonsensical monologue with no linear thru line, but that’s not exactly true. Mouth is telling a linear story, but she goes off on tangents and goes back to previous parts of the story to clarify or figure out whatever it is she’s trying to get at.

Therein lies the problem- she isn’t sure what she’s trying to figure out. And the voice that keeps interrupting her is trying to get her to own the story as hers, but she won’t step out of the third person.

Also having stamina issues. I never thought about breathing during Not I particularly, I just breathed when I needed to last time. And I think that’s right. Not something to be thought about. This time however I find myself breathing in the middle of phrases, not able to get through a thought. Time to go back to running, eh dear readers? Time to build some stamina.

Other things to consider- sudden flashes. A phrase she uses over and over. Things come back in flashes, a new piece of an idea. During round one the sudden flashes very specifically came on the phrase. But Jean pointed out that they probably come earlier. Or later? On the actual flash of information. Getting technically acty shmacty here, sorry folks. I believe that the key to Beckett is specificity, not justification. But I’m not sure where this specificity lies.

Things to think about. Like being a grown up actor. Got my homework to do. Now off to Starbucks…

*it is a recorded fact that extreme heat can make one delusional