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Madness madness, putting it all together in San Francisco and trying to make the show breathe. Our set is amazing. Our costumes are awesome. Our cast is extraordinary. The sound is making something of nothing. The lights are making our shifts make sense. There are plenty of moments still where as an actor I have no idea what I’m doing. I’m pleased with our last-minute rewrites and still sorting out how the ending comes together. We’re not in too much debt yet. Things are coming together. They’re coming. We have two days of rehearsal left until an audience sees a preview.

Eep!

I’m feeling very disorganized. Ever since we hit crunch time a few weeks ago, I’ve let so much personal stuff slide—I have an unpaid parking ticket from weeks ago; I haven’t followed up on the fact that I never got confirmation for filing my taxes; I have checks to deposit in my bank account and emails to write and my laptop desktop is a scrambled mess, and my car tabs need to be renewed, and and and and…
And there’s Nebunele business that’s on hold at the moment too; if you’ve donated recently and you haven’t got your Little Crazies welcome email or your T-shirt etc., it’s because that’s on my important-but-not-urgent list, the one I keep telling myself I’ll get to after we open.

I need a couple hours just to sit down and sort myself out. I’m not sure I’ll get it until, oh, the 13th. But it’s all going to be fine. I’m pretty sure.

San Francisco is lovely, EXIT is treating us very well and it’s so good to hang out with these guys again, and despite my feeling of being slightly out of control I’m also full of excitement and anticipation. So, scrambling. So, living. All of it will go on.

Crazy week from me to you! Come see the show if you’re in SF!
xoxo
Alissa

Didn’t get around to posting this yesterday morning, and last night I was writing this sitting on Dave (my excellent host)’s bed while he studied up about trombones and I tried to unwind from a good but sort of bewildering rehearsal. I think I need a new paragraph to talk about it.

I have this thing, sometimes, where as an actor if I get lost in a scene, and it’s a bit overwhelming to know what to do, and maybe I’ve also been putting in long days for a while and feeling like I’m not doing everything perfectly, where I get frustrated and a little emotional. A sort of fear comes in—that I won’t get it, that I’ll be lost in these scenes forever, that they are impenetrable to me and always will be. So I got a little teary in rehearsal yesterday, to the mild consternation of my director. But something I’ve learned about myself is that when that happens, I can use my own slight panic to make a shift in the scene I’m doing. I think it was Judy Shahn, my voice teacher at UW, who first had me work through my frustration-tears, and something about crying makes some (not all) of the blocks sort of go away. So I cried a little bit, and then I made a little progress. Last night, though, I was just feeling raw. I lost my grip on the play a little, and though I found some new stuff, I haven’t really got a handhold on it as a whole again. I’m beginning to maybe acknowledge that my bizarrely frenetic happiness and excitement that’s been bubbling up inside for the last week or so has a flip side that has probably been equally present despite my denial of it. My weird calm was masking a storm I don’t want to admit to myself.

Or maybe I just got tired. What a day. I love this work; this work wears me out like a hooker’s butt wears out her jeweled thong; I don’t get this work at all; this work teaches me more about myself than Mr. Miagi taught Daniel-San.

Here’s what I saw on the T-shirts they’re selling at Guerilla Coffee: “It’s job of the artist to make the revolution irresistible.”

Okay YES this is totally ridiculous. But my friend Jana wants, more than anything else in her whole life, to be on TV. She’s auditioning online for this reality TV show–who wants to be Paris Hilton’s bff? And apparently she’s in the top 20 girls for votes, which means she has a good shot at getting on the show. But she’s well behind the leaders at the moment.

If you have thirty seconds and a bit of compassion in your heart for a hometown girl who wants under the lights, take a moment, click this link, and vote for her! And, if you think of it tomorrow, vote again! You can vote once a day if you’re really excited for her. I am. She is…well, Jana is something else. I adore her and there’s no one quite like her and I want her to win. So.

http://parisbff.com/people/jsalamanca

Please vote.

Love!
Alissa

Hey, photos from our poker fundraiser on leap day are here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/foolissa/NebunelePokerNightFeb2908

It was a smashing success. Thank you everybody who helped make it happen, and those who came and made it fun!

I also went and saw a show with Bret on Thursday night called Hey Girl! It pulsed with all these intense, dreamlike images and expensive electric props, and it was supposed to address issues of the feminine image, I think. It wasn’t very good–as Bret pointed out after the show, it seemed to be stuck in the most shallow and obvious symbols and images, and failed to explore anything in a particularly involved way. It succeeded very well in pushing visceral buttons cheaply, though–a loud sound, a compelling trio of images, a violent, disturbing scene–and so it wrenched the gut in a sort of delightfully satisfying way, but without providing much real insight.

That said, there were some moments in it that took my breath away. At one point, there was an incredibly tight and bright green laser beam shooting directly into the ear of the main performer as she cocked her head, and words were projected on the back wall of the stage, one at a time, slowly at first and then faster and faster, pausing occasionally for a split second, apparently random but occasionally easy to make connections between. I was amazed at the ability of the brain to pick up so many of those words as they went flashing by so fast I could barely see them, but they made impressions anyway. I was overwhelmed with the sensation of mental tickling, my mouth was open, I felt like I was in the Matrix learning some new crazy mental skill, I was astonished. There was another beautiful moment at the very beginning when the woman emerged naked from a pile of flesh-colored, dripping goo (silicon? something crazy that oozed off the table in glops for the entire rest of the performance). An electric sword that burned whatever touched it, so that when the woman covered it in a folded-up sheet, a stripe was burned all the way through it so that when she picked it up and unfolded it there was a perfect, brown X on it, and she wore it like a cape while talking about the beheaded queens. Perfect circles everywhere. The black woman’s body being coated by the white woman in silver paint so that she danced with the lights off and we saw the glowing body in the near-dark and nothing else. These things and more filled me with wonder.

So when you have a joyful experience, even if the thing that produced it was not what you would call great art, how do you react? I decided in the moment of the curtain call that I’d much rather live in a world where I respond to my delight than to my critical mind, and I gave the clunky piece a standing ovation. Later, I felt slightly guilty for doing so. Should I really inflate the value of that piece of theatre by publicly lauding it, potentially increasing its value in the minds of the theatregoers around me and increasing the likelihood that mediocre theatre will be praised as exceptional? Am I contributing to a sort of creeping complacence around theatre, allowing it to die an ugly death because I don’t hold it to high standards that would demand better art?

But…I can’t choose sitting down with my dour critic’s mind, refusing to applaud when the child in me really wants to. And as a producer of theatre, I know how much pain and hope goes into even a terrible show, and surely my genuine joy can’t really be hurting anything?

Oh, I don’t know. What do you guys think? To deliver the unwarranted praise and be happy about it? Or to maintain a rigorous critical mind and, full of integrity, reserve my standing ovation for the rare piece that really changes everything?

Baffled by the ethics of having an opinion,
Alissa

I had the super-cool opportunity to go to Olympia to hang out in the state capitol on Thursday. There was a bill up for debate in the state House and the Senate about renewing a hotel/motel tax that’s been a large source of arts funding in King County for the last decade or two, and a call to action in the nonprofit community sent us all scurrying down there to show up in support of the bill (which the hotels and motels, quite understandably, would like to die a nice quiet death.) Anyway, the experience of sitting in the legislative session was surprisingly awesome. I have this general notion of legislative politicians as being the doofy sum of their dorky/dumbed-down campaigns, and was pleasantly surprised to find out that in fact, our state government is run by people who seem reasonably competent and intelligent! Who knew? For each bill that was up for debate, the chairwoman called up testimony for and against, and then the representatives would ask perceptive and well-informed questions of those there to debate the bill. There was a woman sitting at the side of the room whose nameplate had the title “research analyst” and it appeared to be her job to answer all the informational questions about the content of the bills themselves. I kind of want her job! Actually, Mom, this would be an awesome job for you. She was there to know all the bills inside and out, anticipate and research circumstantial questions (”is one of the proposed sites of effect on the Indian reservation?”) and explain the information to the lawmakers in the room who don’t have time to research all that. Holy moses! What power!

The other nice thing was that the architecture of the capitol building (and the corporations building/office of the Secretary of State) was lofty and grand and white-marbled and gold-lettered and columned and beautiful. I know it’s naive, I know it is, but I walked in and felt a sense of greatness and accomplishment, and pride in what we flawed humans have made of ourselves despite enormous logistical difficulty. I mean, our government is messed-up and bureaucratic and inefficient and full of compromise, and is responsible for many horrible things, but at least it functions, and some stuff does get done. That’s not trivial when you’re representing millions of people who all disagree about what, exactly, should be done, and how. I felt, wandering under those high ceilings across those impeccably clean white marble floors, a bit like I feel when I walk into a cathedral–I may not agree with everything that goes on here, but god damn this reverent setting gives me hope and a sense of faith.

Crossing the campus of the capitol, though, Bret and I had to laugh at the old oak trees growing next to the pedestrian path. They all sported huge, unwieldy branches that would certainly have broken and crashed onto the sidewalk or overbalanced the trees themselves had they not been held up by serious and elaborate metal-and-concrete scaffoldings, permanently installed. How like a bureaucracy.

Rubbernecking with the best of ‘em,
Alissa

Hey look! Pics from the show!

http://picasaweb.google.com/foolissa/MedeaKnowsBest200702

Wheeee!

Taking Claytie to the airport at 4:30, and haven’t managed to fall asleep yet. Seeing as how it’s 4:20 now, I suppose I’ll give it another try when I come back. My sleep schedule’s been all funny lately.

Medea Knows Best opened tonight, and nothing blew up! This is in great contrast to my expectations. We had a sold-out house and a partial standing ovation. There was a reviewer from the Seattle Weekly there; I hope he noticed the people standing.

It’s funny, though; I seem to have misplaced my sense of the play as a whole. I came offstage thinking, “Why am I doing this play, again?” So my triumph at its apparent success was somewhat muted tonight. This isn’t the first time I’ve asked myself that question, and so far every time the inspiration comes meandering back when it wants to. So I expect it to return this time too. But at the moment, feeling bewildered instead of celebratory. Why make a play about Medea? About images and ideals? Are we really asking questions I don’t already know the answer to? And then, of course, it becomes: why am I doing theatre, again? What’s so great about this art that using a different medium can’t accomplish the same thing better? And I don’t know the answer, tonight, at 4:25 on Saturday morning, not having slept since the opening show and the cast party. I may not be in the best mental state to analyze my career choices.

Any other theatre people out there ever feel deflated instead of stoked by an opening? Does it mean anything? I can’t remember, now. I vaguely remember feeling this way after some renditions of the Secret Ruths, but usually only after I felt like I had given a substandard performance. But I did all right on stage, tonight. So…

Well, so keep moving forward. This is where faith becomes important. I trust the self that has been inspired by this stuff enough that when the inspiration takes a vacation I won’t collapse. I will be re-inspired. I know because I know. And I think of Mother Theresa and her years and years of agonizing doubt and how she kept doing what she thought she ought to, even when the inspiration and her connection to God was gone, and I think, “did she do the right thing?” and I think, “yes.” and I think, “was she happy?” and I think, “no.” and I think, “is it maybe a little ludicrous to compare myself to Mother Theresa?” and I think, “It’s time to take Claytie to the airport.”

Bye!
Alissa

Working on the script right now has got me reaching for all kinds of distractions. In my stuffy-head-cold state, I’m allowing the distractions in.

I spent half the night reading “Dance to the Piper”. It’s an Agnes de Mille autobiography, but she devotes much (maybe most) of her prose to describing fellow artists who influenced her, from her father in the movies to Martha Graham to Anna Pavlova. These portraits are punctuated by stories of de Mille’s struggle, constant obstacles and financial peril, and eternally thwarted success.

For a young, self-producing artist, it is not a heartening read. (I’m just over halfway through the book; perhaps it brightens up later.) Agnes published this book in 1951, and things are much the same now as then as far as available money to fringe arts.

What consumes me as I read it is that all the great artists that Agnes had the fortune to run across in her formative years as a dancer are described as temperamental, unstable, and slightly insane. Few of them have business sense. The people that she describes as even-keeled and successful are people whose work she does not bother to comment on.

And I ask myself, is it necessary to be insane to be great? And I ask myself, from whence comes this private certainty that I myself am destined for greatness? And I ask myself, am I insane? And reluctantly conclude that I am not. That I am sane and therefore mundane, and therefore no tormented artistic genius. That I am not driven to mad distraction by intense contemplation of my work. That I would rather compose a blog entry than wrestle with a difficult bit in the script, which I have been avoiding all evening by reading about insane genuises. Genii.

And I ask myself, am I willing to face failure after failure after disappointment and continue to do the work, as Agnes de Mille did? She ultimately won acclaim and made real strides in the field of dance. But her name fades pretty darn quick…I would say that of the people who inhabit this country, maybe a third know vaguely who Martha Graham is? And of those 33%, maybe a fifth have even heard of Agnes de Mille, and maybe a tenth of that subset know that she is a choreographer. I don’t, myself, know anything about any of her work except what I am learning from reading her autobiography, and I am a person with a peculiar interest in this sort of thing.

Yeah, yeah, so obviously you don’t do this for fame and recognition. You don’t do it for money. You don’t do it for the respect of the public at large, who recognize performance on Broadway and very little else as a measure of success in the theatrical world. You do it–right? Because you must, because somehow it makes more sense to do this than anything else. But what is the reason, the real reason?

If I wanted to reach more people, I could be making film or music or even TV. So I can’t claim that I want to change the world, really. There are more efficient ways of doing that.

I would say I went into the field where my talents lay–but the truth is I’m a bright young lady with lots of talents, and there are many fields in which I could do well that have nothing to do with theatre. And as an actor, I’m only competent on my best days. As a playwright, well–here I am, script open in another window and neglected while I ramble on to the 8 or so people who read this. About my own existential angst. Oh dear, I just suffocated in my own pretentiousness and pompousness. And now I’m drowning in my self-pity and choking on my self-conscious irony. Argh, the recursiveness! I’m stuck! Heeeeeeeeeeeelllllllp!

But returning to the central point: why do theatre? When people ask me I say it is because of the relationship between performer and audience. I think it’s the same as with dance and live music performance and any other kind of activity that involves a performer and an audience being in the same room at the same time. And I can’t say anything about that that doesn’t sound utterly schmaltzy. (Is that the right word for corny and saccharine? I’m not up to par with my pidgin Yiddish.) But there’s this energy, right? This…uh, yeah…this vibe. …and it has to do with generosity, on the part of both the audience and the performer. And…I think that live performance just makes everyone in the room more human. Even bad live performance. I think.

But damn it! I’m making that up. I do it because I like it. Because when I came offstage after my first guitar recital in first or second grade, I was so buzzed I still remember the way my footsteps echoed in the empty school hallway on the way back to the room we were using for tuning. And I really want my reason to be grander and less ego-driven than that. But I think that’s really it. I do it ’cause nothing else makes me feel quite as alive. And right after using the word ‘generosity’ in the last paragraph, here I am saying I just do it for me. All for me. All the time. Mine. ME! I don’t do it for anyone else. I don’t even particularly care if the work I do is earth-shattering or important. (That’s a secret, by the way, that last part. If you confront me with it I shall deny it vehemently.)

And I was saying to David the other night that my favorite thing on Earth is when life works out so that I get to do exactly what I feel like doing, and it accidentally makes someone else happy.

I hope Claytie doesn’t still read my blog. She’d repudiate me. :-p

Love and selfish generosity,
Alissa

Been a good day, long couple of days. From rehearsal to meetings to scriptwriting to business-doing to brainstorming to rehearsal again. I also did my laundry AND had my flat tire fixed. I am feeling very productive.

Last Thursday, Claytie and I had a wonderful (if somewhat boozy) brainstorming session about how to live life as a theatre producer. We came up with these notes to live by. They…er. They all seemed somewhat more profound after a couple of screwdrivers. I recommend consuming some vodka before meditating on them.

Ahem:
“Oh look! More life.”

-embrace the stress (i.e. “Oh look! More life.”)
-being proven wrong is a GREAT experience (”Oh look! More life.”)
-never hate ‘those people’ (”Oh look! More life.”)
-always just setting a foot down on the path of the next thing (”Oh look! More life.”)
-zooming out helps you find the path again, around the obstacles (”Oh look! More life.”)
-dreaming is necessary. doing is necessary. (”Oh look!…” …actually it doesn’t work as well with that last one)

In other inspiration news: David sent me this quote today via his apparently awesome friend Cary. It is kind of perversely reassuring.

“There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action and because there is only one you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable, nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly to keep the channel open. You do not have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever, at any time. There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.”

-Martha Graham to Agnes di Mille in “Dance to the Piper”

Since I just saw the Martha Graham Dance Company with David on Saturday night (they were awewewewesum, by the way) the timing was nice. She was a crazy smart lady, that Martha.

xoxo
Oh look! More love!
Alissa

Hey look! I finally figured out how to post pictures on my blog! I haven’t figured out how to control their size, though…

She is ready

She waits

There’s more on my picasa gallery at http://picasaweb.google.com/foolissa, if ya wanna see all the fruits of our labors last week.

Whee!
Alissa