Saturday, January 22, 2011
for the first time in 6 years...
As my regular readers know, I live in LA now. I have founded a theater company there, and I will be producing and directing our inaugural production there, to open in June. The demands on my time and psychic energy from this venture will be very high. Also, the business in Los Angeles is heating up. I had to turn away six students from the LA Essentials that started last week because it was full, so I have announced a second Essentials class to start shortly. Also, I am teaching the Advanced class in LA for the first time starting February. In light of this expansion and the demands of directing and producing, I have reluctantly faced the fact that weekly trips to SF for the period of April to June is just going to be too much.
However. Fear not!
I have not abandoned you SF! I have 4-1-5 tattooed on my neck, don't forget. I will be returning to the Bay area to catch the balmy summer, with a course starting in late June or early July. I love the Bay area I want to continue my presence there.
And you know what they say about absence making the heart grow fonder.
So wish me well on my new exploits, and I will leave a little bit of my heart in San Francisco when I leave after the upcoming Friends and Family Night.
Parting is such sweet sorrow!
Sunday, January 16, 2011
Mother of Invention blog greatest hits
- "The aspects of things..."
- that damned talent question
- excellence
- "Everyone works every class": and what's wrong with that
- 15 minutes a day
- above all else
- why Uranium Madhouse
- quantum leaps
- wisdom for actors
- one more thing about priming
- rehearsal clothes, "priming", and the land of make-believe
- in defense of third degree
- "Zen and the Art of Archery and the art of acting (not to mention the art of teaching acting)
- we don't know what we know
- William H. Macy is a written page guy. That's good, but...
- when it's important to be an adult
- the viewpoints mystique
- excellence
- the trouble with Mamet's practical aesthetics
- the trouble with Mesiner
- Saving Uta Hagen
- throwing away the ladder
- the Beatles' apprenticeship
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Friday, January 07, 2011
Uranium Madhouse launches Indiegogo campaign
Monday, January 03, 2011
notes on immersion
Which can inspire you to make your own works of art. You can also lose yourself in doing that.
This can be intensely rewarding.
However, there is no artist who walks the earth for whom it ALWAYS turns out well.
Talk all we want about how it's a process. We still like it when it turns out well, and we don't like it when it doesn't.
Creating great work requires immersion. Immersion can end in drowning. This is a fact. Once you've drowned, it's that much harder to immerse yourself.
Although, no lie, Confucius did say "It's easier to live if you're willing to die."
Try that one on for size.
As with art, it's possible to lose yourself in love.
This can also end in drowning.
As with art, that's not a reason not to let yourself be immersed, ultimately at least. But there's no question it becomes more challenging once you've been through the whole drowning thing.
Come to think of it, in thinking this through, I see the Christian rite of Baptism in a whole new light. It's like they're saying "This is what it's like. Get into it." DUNK!!!
In the last six years, I have arranged my creative life in such a way that I was actively engaged in my creative work for 3-6 hours a week. Most of the time, no more than that. I waded, I swam some laps, I bobbed and treaded water. But I pretty much stayed in the shallow end.
That, again, seems about to change.
I think I'm ready. Time will tell.
And wherein lies this readiness?
Well...
Experience, for one thing. Which, as Oscar Wilde famously quipped, is the name that other people give to their mistakes.
I've made plenty of those.
So that's one thing.
I think I also have a clearer picture of what it is to engage in a collaborative enterprise. As the captain of the ship, I can exert a lot of influence on said enterprise. But there are limits. To what I can do. Even I. Having bumped my head against those limits enough, I won't be tempted to pretend they don't exist. In times when things don't go as I had hoped, there may be some comfort in remembering those limits.
I have worked to acquire some decent interpersonal skills. There's always work to do on making those better, but I have some.
I have people around me who truly, truly, love me. No question.
And I feel like I get that it's a marathon, not a sprint. I'm probably a sprinter by nature (Aries), so that may well be what they call "the rub" in this particular instance.
But I have also discovered that I can actually be quite happy splashing around in the shallow end, if push were to come to shove. Sooner or later, the deep end would probably beckon again, but it's nice to know that the shallow end is always an option, at least for a while.
That Yeats may have overstated things at least a wee bit when he spoke of "perfection in the life or in the work."
I stand on the threshold.
Or, to quote the first play I ever directed:
"On the brink. On the beach. On the verge."
The air...is bracing.
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