shhhhh: i'm starting something (again)

the third installment in a week-long series exploring the rituals of starting again

i didn't tell my husband that i was going to re-start my blogging this week until after i had posted.  and when i first re-started going to the gym a few years ago, i didn't tell anyone until i had used my membership three days a week for at least a month.  and a year before that, i didn't tell anyone that i was going to re-start on a program to help me keep my house clean until after i had finished the first 28 days of babysteps.

i've realized that, when starting on a goal or a project or a life-improving scheme, telling other people what i'm about to do doesn't motivate me to start.  i actually do better getting started if i make a quiet, but firm, promise to myself and don't tell other people about it until i've started (again).  it's almost a secret.

this strikes me as strange.  this is not what productivity-goalbuster-makestuffhappen gurus advise.

i do need to talk about the stuff i'm working on once i've got it going.  but for the getting-started part?  not so much.  no.

i'm so curious:  when is the best time for you to let people know you're starting something (again)?

what are your befores and afters?

in celebration of july 31, the anniversary of the day my husband and i got married, this week’s blog posts will be about the ways we mark the passage of time.

lately, i am thinking about the eras in our lives, the ways we measure our "befores" and our "afters."

global standards dictate that the timeline of human history is measured in b.c. and a.d.--or sometimes b.c.e. and c.e.  but i'm more interested in how each of personally marks time.

my memories tend to get automatically passed through the "before daddy died" and  "after daddy died" filter.  i reckon that could sound morbid, but i'm guessing i'm not the only one who has discovered that one of those "before-and-after-death-of-loved-one" filters got installed in my brain without my realizing it.  

i also have the "before baby was born" and "after baby was born" measure, "when i was in chicago" marker, a "when i could still eat gluten" and "gluten-free era" label, and a "when i was in the green/blue/yellow bedroom" filter from the musical bedrooms me and my siblings played growing up.

when i'm writing or performing a character, i often try to identify a moment in which things change for that character.  now i'm curious to think about characters in terms of their "befores" and "afters," the filters through which they catalogue their lives, the ways in which they mark time.

so, you can help me write stronger characters.  let me know:  what are the "befores" and "afters" that mark time in your life?

how being a mama is making me a better theatre artist (and vice versa)

installment four || caring about it less and enjoying it more


i love my creative work.  i want to say that unequivocally.  not once in my adult life, including now, have i been completely without a creative project of some size or shape.  i love being obsessed with my project of the moment.

but something has shifted with the birth of my daughter.  i'm still obsessed with the creative projects in front of me, but they're not keeping me up at night.  she is.  and that seems appropriate.  i'm not worrying them into the ground or pushing them into being quite so hard, because i'm spending that time watching her discover what her laugh sounds like.

funny thing is, i think it's making my creative time stronger.  i enjoy it more.  i let it breathe a little bit.  if it doesn't work, i don't try to beat it into submission, i just take a break and come back to it later.  i still love it just as much, but i'm caring about it less and enjoying it more.  does that make sense?

how being a mama is making me a better theatre artist (and vice versa)

installment three :: the value of repetition

anyone who has seen anything by both hands theatre company can probably tell you that we love working with repetition.  i've long loved the pattern that repeated sounds make.  i've been a fan of repetitive gesture for revealing and creating a character for years.  and i've been experimenting with repetition in images at least as far back as jeff storer's (excellent) college directing class.

and now: mama-dom has raised my level of respect for repetition to new heights.  right from the start, in fact.  in labor.  yes, i must have repeated the same vocal-warm-up-y, low-pitched "ma" sound one billion times in the transition from mama-of-inside-baby to mama-of-outside-baby.  (and my husband repeated it right along with me.)  that episode of repetition helped me get through one of the hardest things i've ever done.  and i've been relying on repetition as a mama ever since:  one million and one bounces, seven thousand shhhh sounds, reading the same hippopotamus book four times back to back, singing the one song that seems to mesmerize her twenty-seven times in one day (i counted).

i think repetition is valuable for theatre and for mama-ing for the same reason, really:  it both comforts us and reveals new things to us simultaneously.  we are safe while we push against our own edges.  our expectations are met, and our understanding is deepened.

what s/he wrote

recently, amanda soule wrote this blog post titled out to pasture.

now, i'll admit, i often read the soulemama blog with not a small amount of envy over the soule family's seemingly ideal life.  creativity and family and nature and handmade everything and so much love: it's easy to feel like i'm eating a big piece of jealous pie.  but.  soulemama has worked hard to prioritize these things in her life, and i was absolutely reminded of that when i read this post.

she and her family realized a big, awesome, dreamy project together because they didn't just dream about it.  as she says, it's been a "great focus of our time these past (almost two!) years."

they've been working toward it, in a daily kind of way, bit by bit, for a looooong time.  they didn't get distracted away from it for too long.  they didn't give up a quarter of the way through and say it was too hard.  they didn't try to do it all at once or all by themselves and burn out.  and now they have something so cool.

and me?  yes, i'm the girl who wrote a 30-page term paper, complete with extensive research, in a single night my senior year of college.  but i'm also the girl who likes to rehearse new plays five days a week for eight weeks straight.  and i'm the girl who is learning that bit by bit might just work better in other parts of my life, too.

i'm curious:  are there projects--big or small--that you've made happen the bit-by-bit way?

how being a mama is making me a better theatre artist (and vice versa)

installment two  ||  resilience

i fail a lot with this baby.  i do something that i hope will make her laugh, and she turns her head to stare at a blank, beige wall beside me.  i make a noise that i think will elicit a smile, and her bottom lip quivers.  i put on my very best song and dance show complete with rump-shaking and wacky face-making, and she bursts into tears.  with a baby, you can fail every day, 100 times a day like this, but you get back in there.  you try again.  maybe because the reward is so great.  maybe because you have no other choice.

in the theatre, i've failed a lot, too.  but my resilience hasn't been as great.  each time, it takes me a while to get back in there.  this baby's got me in resilience training.  in theatre, just like with a baby, you try again.  because the reward is so great.  and because you have no other choice.

how being a mama is making me a better theatre artist (and vice versa)

installment one :: trying anything

i will do anything to make this child laugh.  or at least stop crying.  go ahead.  ask me for my rendition of my new song moo*baa*lalala.  it has gestures.  and vocal oddities.  and special facial expressions.

i used to think i would try anything when making theatre.  and it's true that i often experimented with movement and voices that would be embarrassing to non-theatre-making friends of mine, so i did have a head start.  but my theatre-trained mama-self puts my theatre-trained non-mama-self to shame in the trying-anything area.  to shame, i tell you.