What do you do, with a B.F.A. in Theatre?

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.

Poetry? on the internet? P'shaw.

Both of my parents are gone
Dead is what i mean.
They've been both forever
Since this morning.
Alone in a barren home, full of stuff that made a home.
An unwashed pan still on the stove;
An unheard message blinking red
Red like the blip of a weakening heart;
Yet-to-be-foldeds in a dryer
Adjacent to a bone dry washer.
Ask my why i folded their clothes.
Ask me why all the shirts are hung.
And my dad's shirts
I ironed them on the table he
Sits on sat on sits on still
In front of the TV and
Watched watches watching watched
Football.
Starch scorched through mixed in with
The saltwater taffy sweet tang of
A Desperate and Desolate
Forgotten in his floundering. "Fine."
I'm Fine.
Mother smells(ed) of fiber and too often washed hands.
A quilt of disinfectant and babyshit.
A bed of lambs wool and shirt starch
And for a moment we're a family.
Every memory of homecoming and dinner
Calls through the halls now quiet
But for the serpent hiss of aerosol
and the stutter breath of a sobbing child.

My parents are neither dead nor gone
Nor have they ever been.
We, three of us, are alive
the moment we're gone from work
or school
Or everything else that a life is called
But has nothing to do with being alive.
Every tear shed is fallen for a someday.
today I will have fish in the house
the Home
Of my parents, myself, and our dead dog.

I miss him so much.

Summertime, and the living is.

I found one of these beautiful bastards outside the building i work in. The building itself is half office complex and half art studio so for a moment all i thought of the fluttering heap on the concrete was that it was so much discarded papier mache classwork...but on closer inspection i realized what it was and was immediately taken with the overwhelming urge to preserve and present this incredible little artifact of natures accidental excellence. So now i have, encased in a plastic plate protective vault, a desk friend. I'm hesitant to put a pin through the body, as is (i assume) the practice, but i understand where the impulse might arise: if i secure him...or her, for that matter...if i secure It down with a pin then i needn't worry about being jarred around so much by the unpredictable goings on of a theatre office. already though I've started thinking of this newly dead (2-3 days tops) thing on my desk as some ancient, mummified relic of a time we've lost. when the anaerobic breath of insects everywhere had a deal more oxygen to absorb than they have now and were, by a rule, huge. in my head I'm protecting the jumbo shrimp of the litter.
what really blows my brains out of the back of my head is that there are some people in my office who find Manny (play on the name of the breed: Polyphemus) to just be some disgusting Bug...like he's a horsefly or a dung beetle (both of which i find to be fascinating, by the by, just more enjoyable from a distance for two obvious, if not vastly different reasons).

i'm finishing up the workday that saw me start this blog. go me for blogging at work!

Honestly, this isn't worth reading.

Ripped open and naked i throw myself against an apathetic wall who deigns to recognize but never fall.

Cold as the stone's which reared her i chill my passions like murdered men waiting for their stories to be told.

Forget me now and leave me later, i'll stay with you because i can.

A man a miniature of body and giant of practice i fall behind his shadow, darkened to focused eyes or concerning love.

Hew my body from the rock quarry of your affection and polish me for a mirror armor shine to distract your Quixote father.

Forget me now and leave me later, i'll stay with you because you ask.

Cast our chances like dice across a player board of state line and mountains to luck and fuck if i know what'll happen.

Bring this to a new place and new faces to impress our un-impressiveness upon them.

Forget me now and leave too, i stayed with you because i could.

Forgotten now and left to leave, i leave myself behind because i must.



I'm in no place to be writing but sometimes it's better to just put it somewhere admit that a part of me want's someone to read this and tell me to chill the fuck out. or read it and tell me that it'll all be okay...sometimes broken love needs to be mended by strangers. oh lord, i'm too drinky for this. goodnight.

Stop Motion Magic!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1O-HnZZsaV0

!! :)

Gluttony on the scale of King Gargantua

Masha and i decided that today was a good day to sate both my salty foods craving and her fried chicken craving all in one go: So KFC worked out well.

we bought a twenty dollar party pack, probably intended for like five people, and ate the whole thing in one sitting between us.
because masha is taking a human food and nutrition class she is required to, once during the semester, document her caloric intake and expenditure over the course of four days. that assignment is due tomorrow and today we get to document our daliance into dining disorders.
i, alone, ate almost 2400 calories in a single sitting, not taking into conisderation the delicious coctail of ranch and barbecue sauce i dipped everything in...so lets make it an even 2600 calories in a single sitting. to feel okay about this i'd pretty much need to scale mt. everest with a clone of my tubby ass strapped to my back to properly burn off these calories.

i challenge everyone here(here being the assumed forumn of people who bother to read this, which i know doesn't exist) to document their caloric intake and output and see what you can do to improve their activity vs. consumption level.

peace, love and fried chicken!

Rapid Fire Blog Week

i'm blogging again today because i seem to have an over active word source this week and i need, more than usual, to say something to someone about anything at all.
Masha is a darling but i find it immoral of me to subject her to every little nuance of my hyperactive imagination...so i'll just imagine that someone reads this thing and placate my need for pedantry here!

HUZZAH!

as i mentioned yesterday, brotherhood 2.0 makes me happy. what is even more entertaining for me is that it all started in january of 2007, which means that posts were happening alongside posts of another video blogger whome i love(d) referred to as ZeFrank (think i mentioned him yesterday too). i bring this up only because in march of 2007, where i've managed to find myself in the chronology, they're referencing Ze. makes me happy.

excellent. now that i'm done with yesterday lets talk about tomorrow which is actually today. i started this blog the 17th and its now the 18th, so theres that.

i'm reading richard wright's Native Son and i'm in a wierd limbo about it...no, thats wrong. it exists for me in the limbo: do i damn the book to the hell of pretentious books i've read in school because i've been assigned them and for no other reason or shall i eleveate it to the lofty paradise of actually Enjoyable books that i was originally assigned and have since found qualities in that i deem (mandate?) enjoyable enough to stay on my "may someday re-read or recommend" shelves.
the main character started off like all the other protagonists of the reading list of my "study of the novel" class: whiney and not possessed of any noticable amount of healthy conflict resolution skills. about a hundred pages in, however, Bigger (our protagonist) has taken on a rather amusing self actualizated attitude towards his life, decisions and the reprecussions of either in this post depression pre world war 2 communist fearing black oppressing america. woo: historically based novels.
i've taken up a podcast called Savage Love; a call and response permutation of Dan Savages syndicated sex advice column. in listening to it my attitudes(reflected in the attitudes of the callers) towards what may be considered sexual deviance have been examined, dissected, and normalized to the point where i'm wondering if exploration in that previously unattractive area of interpersonal relations isnt maybe a goood idea. suggestions? do i solicit my curiosities to my girlfriend or simply wait until i burst onto the new york scene and find someone a bit more professional to solicit myself to and explore it that way? or should i be drawn and quartered for even suggesting such things? oh, by the by, i mention new york as an option because by then masha and i will have graduated from both college and from the pre-planned cessation of our relationship.
about that. am i making a fool of myself by giving up on a relationship thats working and that could, possibly, work longer, just because we've got our differences and cause we have plans that dont coincide? should i drop theatre entirely and find my place alongside her in the peace corps and live a happy, world serving, vagrant's life? of course the question needs be asked that even if i persued this life in earnest, would i be a welcome facet of masha's life in a permanent sense.
well, class needs be attended by someone, so it might as well be this guy. by friends.