Category: the city

Openings & Closings, Beginnings & Endings

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CLOSINGS
Yesterday, last meeting of the Ma-Yi Writers Lab’s season.  We still operate on a school year schedule/theater production company schedule, so it’s summer and school’s out.  As a kid, I was always sad when summer arrived because I’d be bored as anything.  Now, I’ll miss the company and comradeship as I soldier through these two new plays by myself during the desert of summer.

Also, today, was my last gig at a school for the year.  A meeting to debrief with the teachers after a semester long residency.  I walked up to the classroom teacher’s door and she had her wallet and keys in hand.  She locked eyes with me and said, “I forgot.”

Deep breath.  “That’s okay.”  Unlocks the door.  She seems upset.

Are you alright?  She says that she’s just got a billion things to do.  Has to prep for next class, buy supplies for a capioera workshop later that afternoon and she has ten things more to do.  She’s the team leader.  It’s the end of the year.  She says, “I’m so stressed out I’m about to start crying.  In nine years, I’ve never been so stressed out.”

I feel for her.  I ask if there is anything I can do.  She tells me about why it’s so hard right now.  End of year.  Behavioral issues.  Too many duties for too few staff.  I listen and I think she’s starting to feel better because someone hears.

I’ve been there.  Seven years ago, I was  a classroom teacher and I was there.

The other teachers filter in and we talk about our program and what worked and what could be better in our partnership next year.  And she lights up with ideas and anecdotes about our work together this year.

And I think about how all our hardworking, incredible teachers need more support, more time.  They need not to feel alone with the weight of the world on their shoulders and a classroom of students who need so much.  Students need a teacher, yes, but often they also need a mother, a father, a counselor, someone to draw a hard line, a coach, an artist, an inspiration, a citizen, a dreamer, a realist.  They need all these things.  Each teacher has 45 kids that need all these things (and it is a small ratio here, at my last teaching gig, i had 145 students).

How can we help them to stand under all that weight?
How can we hold them up?
How can we thank them for what they carry?
(Have you ever read “the things they carried?”)

They carry us all.

——————————————————————————

OPENINGS
This opens next wednesday.  I’ve written a new 10-minute play for them called “Closing Up Shop.”  It’s a lovely evening of 7 eleven minute plays that take place in a convenience store.  Please come by if you can.  Some crackling plays, sharp direction and a fantastic cast.

Desipina & Co Logo

Desipina & Company
Rehana Mirza, Artistic Director & Rohi Mirza Pandya, Producing Director
presents
Seven.11 Convenience Theatre 2009: The Final Year

Directed by RJ Tolan, Kel Haney and Robert Ross Parker
Musical Director Samrat Chakrabarti
Only for 10 Performances
Opening Night Wednesday, June 17, 2009
At Center Stage, NY
48 W. 21St Street, 4th Floor, NYC
June 17th – June 28th, 2009
Wednesday to Saturday at 8 pm and Sunday at 3 pm
With: Andrew Guilarte, Kavi Ladnier, Cindy Cheung*, Sam Ghosh, Tim Cain*, Jay Lee and Christopher Larkin*

The final Seven plays:
Soonderella by Samrat Chakrabarti and Sanjiv Jhaveri
A new pop musical involving a fairy tale of a different colour.

Color Me Desi by Rishi Chowdhary
A liquor-run to the convenience store before the big desi party uncovers that there are more shades of brown than there are colors to Holi.

One Dollar Box  by Eugene Oh
A provocative tribute about anybody’s father, anybody’s son and the desperate measures that arise when life boxes you in. Working man, work it man.

A Very Desi Christmas by Samrat Chakrabarti and Sanjiv Jhaveri
An original pop musical that illuminates the true meaning of rice.

Closing Up Shop by Carla Ching
A look at what happens when it’s time to move on to the next generation.

What’s in Store by Rehana Mirza
A run-in at the convenience store leaves its manager with the keys to closing up.

Raj Against the Machine by Vishakan Jeyakumar
A Sri Lankan immigrant questions his life in the convenience store, with his best customer by his side.

Production Team
Production Stage Manager – Nick Tochelli
Assistant Stage Manager- Shannon O’Connor
Set – Jason Simms
Asst Set/Props – Amy Lee
Costumes – Jenny Fisher
Lights – Jeff McCrum
Sound – len DeNiro
Choreographer – Sandhya Jain
Graphic/website design Nilou Moochhala
Technical supervisor Enayet Rasul
Original 7-11 logo and t-shirt graphic design Atif Toor

Summertime as a Teaching Artist/All the Time as an Artist

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I think I might’ve written the last post because living with less is on my mind because now begins the desert times for Teaching Artists.  Unless you’re extraordinarily lucky and gotten one of the few city TA gigs or are flying off to Alaska or New Hampshire or Vermont to work at a camp, you are here, trying to figure out how to piece together a living in the summer.

I feel lucky to have gotten a job working at the Public Theater for part of the summer.  Working with young people around Shakespeare with the wonderful Michael Wiggins.  Awesome.

But, until then and after that, it’s playing the survival game.  Temping, where I’ve often turned for summer work in years past is slower than usual due to the economic downturn.  And I will figure something out.  I always do.  But it occurs to me that these are the things we often don’t talk about as artists.  How do we make it all work.  So, I’m taking a poll in order to share resources.  I’m currently reading Microtrends by Mark Penn to research a new play and he says that gleaning information from polls can help determine the trends of tomorrow (and of course establish where we are).

So help me out and answer the poll.  And we’ll try and find some answers together.

Poetry, Found Text and Birthdays in America

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I promised I would try to start getting to things before they close so that I could tell people about them.  I missed it this time, and I’m sad about that, but you can still check out Jenny Holzer’s Protect Protect, if virtually.  She has always wowed me with her truths and aphorisms, but now she is working with found text, heavily redacted, declassified documents she found at the National Security Archive.

I also saw the lovely Pious Poetic Pie from Fluid Motion last week and it was good to see poetry onstage again.  Beautifully directed by Denyse Owens and beautifully rendered  remake of Medea by poet Yubelky Rodriguez.  And, this guy’s post-show performance was also a revelation.  Makes me wanna write in verse again.  His band, the Mighty Third Rail, violinist, bassist and voice, was mighty fine.

And I hear some people are keeping their birthdays quiet.  Happy Birthday, Ed Lin.  Keep taking down the man.

Oh, and speaking of birthdays, you’ve got one more week to see American Hwangap, Lloyd Suh’s newest directed by Trip Cullman at the Wild Project.  A touching, heartbreaking, very funny play about what happens when a Korean American man comes home after deserting his family 15 years before.  And it’s his birthday.  But don’t trust me.  Variety, Theatermania, the NY Times, Time Out, they all friggin’ love it.

Ching-chong

But, color me shocked to say that, I got ching-chonged in class today.

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So, in my other life, I am a teaching artist in schools around the city.   At just about every corner of this wide and beautiful city, to almost every last stop of every subway train.  Schools showered with accolades and citywide attention and schools that are more ignored, but children everywhere.  I’ll also say that because I’ve never liked formality, I have usually asked them to call me Carla.  But, I’ll bend to the culture of a school and that the one I went to today, they use Mr. _____ and Ms. ______, so I obliged them.

But, color me shocked to say that, I got ching-chonged in class today.

“Everyone, can we all say thank you to Ms. Ching for doing this workshop with–”

“Ms. Ching-chong.  Ching-chong.”

“What did you say?”

Sigh.

I haven’t heard that in a long time.  A very very long time.  Which given my name, I guess surprises me.  But, it’s New York.  It’s a pretty multicultural, pan-ethnic city.  It’s the US.  We’re still glowing because we elected Barack Obama president.  The man with midwestern and Kenyan roots, raised in Honolulu.  Come on.

Double sigh.

When I have heard homophobic, racist or misogynist comments come out of the mouths of high school kids, I let ’em have it.  Because they know better.  And because they can take it.

It is my gut reaction when I hear comments of this nature.  To let the other person have it.

He is a fourth grader.

He is mimicing things he’s heard without even knowing what they mean.  This is what I tell myself.  When it comes to children–actually, the big ones and the small ones–I am an eternal optimist and eternally patient.  The reverse of how I am with adults.  So I look at him steadily.  He is smiling.

“You know, when people say, ‘ching-chong, ching-chong,’ they are usually doing to to make fun of Chinese people.  Because they think the language sounds funny.  But, I don’t think you mean to make fun of me, do you?”

He looks at me with wide eyes and shakes his head.

“So, just Ms. Ching will be fine, thank you.”

“Are you Chinese?”  “Konichiwa!”  “Where are you from?  You look like one of those Los Angeles people?”  “I’m learning Chinese, I think it’s a beautiful language.”

And here comes the rainstorm of curious questions of young children who haven’t known a lot of people like me.  So I answer them in shotgun style, checking the clock on the wall to see if I can get to them all before the bell goes.

“Yes, I’m Chinese.”  “Konichiwa is Japanese.”  “Actually, that’s funny, I am from LA.”  “Chinese is beautiful and it’s super-hard, so it’s awesome that you’re learning it.”

And I close the class and thank them for working with me.

And the little boy who “ching-chonged” me walks over.  “I’m sorry,” he says.

“That’s alright,” I say.

I smiled at him to let him know it was okay.  He smiled back.

I charged off to my next class.

***

Oh, I should mention that this happened two other times in a different class.

“Ms. Ching-ching.  Ching-chinga-chinga–”

“Just once, thank you.  One Ching.  Ms. Ching.  That’s it.  Thank you.”

Taking Over

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i was talking about this play with some partners in crime from the women’s project tonight about this show and i was thinking i should get the word out and ask people to go, if they can. there are even $20 rush seats. i know it’s a lot in these trying economic times, but it’s possibly the stuff of changing the status quo.

i am of course talking about taking over by danny hoch at the public theater. i think it’s really incredible that he’s taken a form he helped to popularize and really take on the gentrification of williamsburg, and really, this whole city. his performance is for the most part nuanced and when he does an entire scene as a dominican car service dispatcher and a developer, inspired.

i’ve been thinking that this is what theater is for–to ask difficult questions. and it is nice to see someone asking us all to consider the question though he does not have the answer either. what we need, what he begs us to do, is to ponder this together.