Category: Uncategorized

It’s almost new year’s

carlachingLeave a comment

Somehow, I managed to take the whole fall off and not even realize it.  I guess I was distracted.  Or overly focused on what was in front of me.  Or something.

Looking forward to 2011.  There is a lot to be grateful for and I am both curious about and hopeful for what’s on the horizon. 

When the skies dumped two feet of snow on a grumpy city, something possibly transformative happened.  People had to stay put at home with loved ones.  Or play in the snow.  Or stay put with loved ones in another city.  While the struggle to get home is mighty, I have had more smiles flashed at me,  had more of those random five line dialogues passing someone on the street (the sidewalk ballets) than in a long time.  I had two hour-long conversations with strangers this week.  Just sitting there, minding my own business, eating my french fries, and then a sidelong glance, and the ever-so-tentative initial attempts at conversation.  With a retired Scottish lady I-banker and a former pro-footbal player. 

I hope that these are the kind of collisions that continue to come.  That this snow storm isn’t the only deus ex machina of coming times.   We need people to be so disarmed by, oh, say,  the forces of nature that all the walls come down.  They need to express delight, confusion, sadness to someone.  And so they reach out to you and your world gets a little bit bigger.  And you learn a little bit more.  And you’re connected for a second.

Those of you who live where there are no seasons, I feel bad for you.  Maybe that’s why Paul Thomas Anderson made it frogs for the Valley.  May you have frogs, then.

Lascivious Something, Paris Syndrome, In the Works: Experimentation and Play

carlaching1 Comment

What a crazy week. So crazy.

It started off well enough with a weekend of really good theater. You’ve got to see Paris Syndrome at HERE.

It’s a movement meditation on Paris Syndrome, the psychological phenomena afflicting Japanese women who go to Paris and whose romantic perceptions of the place are dashed. It’s surprising and indescribably delightful.

Lascivious Something was the sexiest thing I have seen in a very long time, so I was sorry to see it at closing, so I couldn’t make everyone I know go see it. It’s some of the strongest, textured performances I’ve seen in awhile too. It makes me remember what to reach for, what to cultivate and build with the actors I work with.

2g’s In the Works: Experimentation and Play has been going on this week too. Rehana’s Lonely Leela was a wonderful madcap Alice in Wonderland trip into the internet…with puppets. And Nandita pulled together her charming Lyme Park despite her director having to jump in at the last minute when one of the actors got sick. We’ve got three more to go, and it should be fun.

New Vic had its final meeting of the year yesterday, and the thing that became clear is what a truly incredible community of artists they have. And it is just that–a true, true ensemble. It is what is so difficult to create in theater, because we often flit from project to project. But I realized this:

-We all need a creative home.
-When you are encouraged to take risks and the bar is raised high, you will exceed everyone’s expectations.
-We must remember to play. Theater is play.

Email

carlaching1 Comment

Okay, here’s a question.  How are all of you out there dealing with the larger influx of email communication that we are getting these days?  Is it me, or is picking up the phone more uncommon and in-person meetings too hard to schedule because people are too busy?

I think I am getting upwards of 100 emails a day.  I wish that I were joking.  My gmail is bursting with emails, and that’s after I unsubscribed to a bunch of junkmail.  So, this is really all work-related and personal correspondence.

Who has a good system of filing and responding to all this stuff?  I’m drowning.  As a freelance worker and a writer, those emails are always flowing in faster than I can deal with ’em.  And they’re coming like a river of hot volcano and they’re threatening to burn my house down.

Anybody?