22 days? Really

I think I think about posting to this journal far more than I do it. This is one of my problems with journaling in general. Too much (?) thought and too little action.

Looking at the calendar, it shows that's 2 weeks of class that I didn't write on.

It's not likely a sufficient assumption to think that I can make it up, so let's see what comes out now as I try to think back on the past few weeks while filtering out that which is not on topic. I can free write for days, so it's best I work with a more limited circumference ...

I just finished The Vulnerable Observer and was pretty moved by it. There are some larger issues in there that I feel like I also struggle with. I was in a very bad accident as a child which left me legally blind in one eye and that gave me years of problems in school and with headaches. I had a lot of sympathy for her struggle in that regard. I was also very accident prone and spent about 6 months in various stages of castware on an arm and a leg from two different mishaps that I had within a month of each other - which was also not very far removed in time from the auto accident - so there really was a lot to relate to on a personal level.

The idea of vision becoming restricted from a stagnant point of view really resonated for me as a metaphor. A favorite expression of mine in regards to a previous employment of mine was "you look out of a dirty window long enough and it you forget what it looks like on the other side." Similarly, when our view is limited - even if not by our own choice or doing or if it is intentional or not (and I can think of cases where any of those options exist) - there are serious consequences to that.

On 125 she says that she always knew she's tell this story, but kept censoring it. I am currently struggling with that with several narratives that stem from my childhood, and one that is much more recent. For someone who by and large exists as a teller of stories, I have a really hard time in telling my own in those same forums. I feel a lot safer behind the words of others, and often think that my stories - though integral to me - are perhaps of not much interest to a wider group, or that these things that have formed me are either not really that unique or interesting. Worse, that I might be making too big a deal over them, and so the act of actually telling them would result in that being pointed out to me.

I submitted an abstract for a performance panel on loss to NCA just last week in an effort to push myself over this hurdle. If it gets accepted I'll have to see it through, and so will have to commit one of these stories to the page and make myself vulnerable to the experience. I'm not convinced had my desire to participate in NCA this year not been this strong that I would be agreeing to this right now.

I can agree with the Miller citation in the piece that "coming to terms with one's childhood is a process of mourning." I also feel Behar's need to "find others with whom to share my grief."

And the final thing I'd like to note from this piece is the imagery she employs at the end about how driving in circles in Ann Arbor force her to consider these things she's been holding on to, and how that process prompted her to have that reflexive turn, though she never calls it that. Her loop was not without end, but has allowed her to continue forward in a changed capacity.

The past two weeks have had me pushed pretty far out of my comfort zone. It's a combination of factors from my theater work to my own self-doubt about my abilities as a serious doctoral student. The resultant anxiety has had my mind cloudy and my body exhausted as if out of sympathy for state of my psyche.

I know I wrote not too long ago about feeling paralyzed, and this current feeling is perhaps a continuation of that but at a new stage. Paralysis to me implies a numbing, this current sensation is far more active.

Observation: I've begun rehearsals for the next play that I am directing, reasons to be pretty. I've already noted a change in my approach, which I may explore in my paper but I'd like to relay anecdotally now. Typically speaking when I direct a show I have all of the movement patterns pre-ordained and written out in my script prior to the first day of rehearsal. Our jargon for that is blocking. Directors tend to "pre-block," work completely "organically" or somewhere between these two poles. Either extreme, like any extreme, can be problematic for performers which makes sense when you consider the basic principles tied to either would be either to much structure or no structure at all.

In any case, I tend to work between in that I will establish basic patterns with pictures contained within at key moments that I really want to accomplish on stage, but then allow the actors to often fill in the blanks and work more organically to connect us from one picture to the next. I will often require that the actors get my patterns down before moving away from them, my justification being that they need to learn the structure that I'm going for before they begin to disrupt and adapt. In the end, what I often get is not usually that wildly different from what I initially "saw" in my mind anyway. Every so often though, I am surprised by what I'm given.

I want to be careful though that I am not making a claim to knowledge that I am excluding the people I work with from being able to possess. As a director I may have a vision, but I work in a collaborative, collective medium.

In blocking rehearsals for rtbp last week, I caught myself getting frustrated with actors who after being given blocking began to adapt it relatively immediately. The past me would have stopped and asked them to go back, reiterating that there would be time to explore and play later. Working with the principles that I am trying to embrace now though I stopped myself from stopping them and simply gave what they were bringing a chance. The playing field immediately felt more level, and the group more unified. Even if an actor instinct was not as appropriate for a moment where I was really trying to accomplish something else did not work, who am I to stop it without even giving it a chance? By doing it the old way I was in fact forcing others to completely replicate the way I saw things before allowing them much of a voice. And, after they've been indoctrinated in essence to the way I see things, am I not possibly still limiting what they *may* be able to see?

To return to the earlier metaphor, my own direction can become a dirty window.