I've been teaching Children.
A family close to me since high school is the name attached to an open community performing arts after school...school.
Walker Performing Arts.
I am, at present, one of the assistant teachers cum substitute cum bloody goddamn director of the junior high-school/senior high-school acting class. The project for which i so colorfully claimed director for is a 'class project' production of Shakespeare's whimsical dalliance into sparkles, fairies and bestiality: A Midsummer Night's Dream.
I adore these children. Even the hellacious little bastards who have no interest in Shakespeare, the Theatre, nor even in usages of our language vaguely reminiscent of that which one might find in an english primer.
(quick side note: the word primer when used in reference to, in fact, a reference; do you say it like 'he accidentally inserted the wire into the explosive primer and was incinerated in the blast' or 'one could easily say that Liza Doolittle became significantly primmer after her education, courtesy of mr Henry Higgins' )
Yes, i love them all. And every one of them is missing out on what should be an exhilarating introduction to what is, in my eyes, the most fun you can have with your clothes on. The world of the theatre is a world that allows, nay invites, nay demands you take off your hesitations like soggy boots, mired with the sweat of a day's work and worry, and prance about nimble toed and light of mind in the presence of your peers and friends to discover something important, something provocative, or something purely entertaining. These children are being slammed through a 'program' so deliriously disorganized that i don't think any of them save those who came in with some idea of how the theatre worked could tell you word one about the workings of theatre. nothing more complex than 'you learn the lines and the moving about bits and then you say one while doing the other,' that is.
I feel partially responsible for this because i've not made enough active attempts to offer insight for these kids, to give guidance. I've just taught them the few theatre games i know (i've never cared for the things so i never learned 'em) and then made them do yoga.
Theatre is not games and yoga. Theatre is any number of classic stereotypes (truth, passion, comedy, tragedy, a mirror up to life, hopelessly commercial, a-moral, the last bastion of morality in an otherwise corrupt media culture, etc) rolled into being one of the most compelling art forms i can think of. A well composed play can have the imaginative pull of a well composed picture, the whimsical grace of a dance, the rhythmic soul of a song and still manage, too, the intellectual gravitas of a novel...a well composed play, produced to it's full potential, creates, on any given evening, a shrine to a divinity not to do with any church or dogma. The theatre's success is built on the crystalline foundation of our willingness to believe, latticed up from it like a shadow stuff seedling that grows and blossoms and bears a beautiful fruit that, even when picked and enjoyed is gone with the rise of the lights. but the nourishment it...oh, well listen to me.
So i wait tables.
I work at a restoraunt in shepherdstown called Shaharazade's Tea Room. I've discovered that i'm neither a bad waiter nor a very good anything else. i can chat up the people, bring them their food with a smile and a joke, offer them this that or the other and walk away with a not too shabby tip...now writing down reservations, balancing the register, or even remember to roll silverware? notsomuch.
So i'm in movies.
I've developed a relationship with The Factory, an offshoot of Douglass Community College and an affiliate of the Tom Savini School of Make Up and Special Effects. Tom Savini being one of the big names in 1980's and 90's horror/sci-fi make up. So these guys like making horror gore-films and weirdness like that. That said, i've been called in, thrice now, to fill in gradually larger and larger parts in different projects. i'm far from anything akin to a big deal, but i'm meeting the young men and women (few of them at The Factory, tell you that. good thing, too, cause 'bro-itude' runs rampant in the place) with whom i may someday work with on other projects and who may, even, call me in to help them in work as they've done in play.
So i'm dying to get out.
I've an audition in march.
