Down the airport rabbit hole

No one likes traveling.  And I don't ever consider my airport experiences to be peaceful and relaxing, but some are... well... more surreal than others.  From finding out what happens in the new Star Wars film, to getting in trouble for having a rib cage, to winding up in some strange basement that felt like an alternate reality airport where the announcer was oddly obsessed with a missing flight attendant, my most recent airport experience, as told in text messages:

>>Omg woman in security line just dropped Star Wars spoiler bomb!!!  "I can't believe [HUGE spoiler]!!!!"   ..... Because that sentence just seemed like a good idea to shout out within earshot of 300 so-quiet-you-could-hear-a-pin-drop people??

>>My left ribcage was a problem when I was screened! The TSA agent thought I was smuggling something because my rib sticks out and she was feeling the bones.  She asked what she was feeling.  I explained that was the structure that keeps my innards contained.  My rib cage was thoroughly molested.

>>I'm on one of those tiny flights where we have to take a shuttle (that leaves from the basement of the airport) to the plane, and this set of gates is unbelievable.  The announcer is so casual and unprofessional.  Sounds like they're running a lemonade stand.

>>Announcer dude: "So i just found out why the flight's been delayed.  Turns out there was some slight plane damage."

>>And then: "Oh, I just noticed this flight has downgraded equipment."  Umm... okaaay? Can we get an explanation of some of these comments regarding our flight?

>>He also gave us the name of a flight attendant who's supposed to be here and isn't.  He said that she got in last night and told us she really should be here and there's no excuse for why she's not, and her supervisors are calling her trying to find her....

>>A different announcer is speaking gibberish into the microphone....  Flight attendant walking by during announcement by announcer dudette speaking gibberish:  "Is that a seizure?  Is she having a seizure?"  2nd flight attendant: "It's a remix."

>>This gate is amazing.  The basement is apparently where crazy flights from Alice in Wonderland board.

>>Woman passenger, re: announcer's oversharing of every detail of where the above named flight attendant is and what she's doing: "Is he going to tell us when the flight attendant goes to the bathroom, too?"

>>Announcer: "I don't know if there are Zone Threes, but we're boarding all zones now for flight [5 second pause before naming the flight]  No wait, I mean [names different flight].  Well, I keep getting the flights mixed up, but you guys all know what I mean!...... Which there are zone threes!!!

>>I'm getting on a plane now.  Hopefully it's the right one....

The Little Girl in the Yellow Dress

Throughout the years, my mom has periodically spoken of a Christmas special she remembers loving one year when she was a little girl, called "The Little Girl in the Yellow Dress."  She's looked for it ever since but never come across it, and she had begun to wonder if perhaps she was somehow mixed up about it or was remembering the name incorrectly.  I don't know why I had never thought to Google it before, but last night when we were talking about it, I said I'd Google it in the morning.  Well, she couldn't sleep and beat me to it.  And lo and behold, there it was on the internet in its entirety.  "The Little Girl in the Yellow Dress" originated as a Christmas story written by a Detroit News columnist in 1937 -- the narration of which soon became a tradition on Detroit radio.  And so, with my mom happily reunited with the Christmas special she remembers from childhood (having never read a Nicholas Sparks book, I like to think of this reuniting as a Nicholas Sparks book but with a Christmas special rather than a man...), I present, for your Christmas listening (because in today's world of 3D movies and iPads, everyone should close their eyes, engage their imaginations, and listen to a radio show once in a while), "The Little Girl in the Yellow Dress":

http://www.detroitkidshow.com/little_girl_1949.mp3

Don't be a Hallmark movie character -- When you know what you want, ask

I admire directness, decisiveness, and bluntness.  I also love Hallmark Christmas movies, in which the characters have absolutely zero of any of those qualities.  Invariably, the characters fall in love and then with two commercial breaks to go, they forget how to communicate and have what should be a two-minute conversation but instead turns into a "I never want to see you again and now I'm going to go cry and eat a gallon of ice cream while sad Christmas music plays and I go home to my mom/ grandpa/ best friend and cry about how we can never work out!!!!" argument.  And then of course with two minutes left, the mom/ grandpa/ best friend reminds one of them that hey, there's this thing called talking where you can use your mouth and voice box to put your thoughts into words that the other person can understand, and which helps resolve misunderstandings -- and so Boy and Girl have the light-bulb moment that yes, they do indeed possess those magical voice boxes and mouths, and so they talk, kiss, and the credits roll (usually after they've known each other for about three days).

Though I love those movies for when I need some brainless holiday entertainment, I hate the emotional stupidity of the characters.  But watching one this holiday season reminded me that I've had my own Hallmark "why-am-I-being-so-stupidly-indirect-in-saying-what-I-want-or-what's-bothering-me" moment....

A lot of couples go through the "are we supposed to be calling each other boyfriend/ girlfriend yet" phase for a while until it gets sorted out.  My fiancé and I were no different, dating (exclusively) for almost three months before either of us actually used those words.  But most people probably didn't have the bf/gf issue resolved by the incredibly blunt sibling of an A-list actor.  Three months after we met, I was my now-fiancé's guest at the opening night of a show he stage managed.  I had a front-row seat and noticed one of the actors was looking at me a lot.  Afterwards at the opening night party, I was annoyed that my date did not introduce me to a single person there.  If he talked to anyone when I was right next to him, the other person would always look expectantly for an introduction, which I provided myself.  I remember walking home wondering why he had even invited me, but not saying anything about it, just internally wondering what the issue was, rather than, ya know, asking.  Two days later, he told me that when he got to the theatre for the show the following night, the movie-star-sibling actor who I had noticed looking at me during the performance had greeted him with "Hey man, was that your girlfriend you were with last night?  Because I'm sexually desirous of her."

THAT's what Hallmark Christmas movie characters need.  A dose of pure directness in the face of ambiguity....  I asked him what his response was -- and that's how my fiancé became my boyfriend.

Seeing through the eyes of a child

Today was the second time in a month that a child has asked me if I'm Misty Copeland, famous for being the first African American principal dancer with American Ballet Theatre and currently ballet's major ambassador in pop culture (and today's query came after I had taught the child's ballet audition class, so she had interacted with me a fair amount before asking me).  The first time it happened, it just struck me as amusing, but this time, I was struck with what a fascinating reveal that is about how these children look at the world around them and what they actually see in people when they look at them.  In both cases, other children heard the question, and in neither case did any child laugh or say that was a silly question; they just looked at me for my response.  If only adults could look at people and see first what these children see first....

Maturity knows no age

One of the following is from a journal entry several years ago about an adult actress in a show for which I was a stage manager.  The actress is all about the strength, power, and independence of women, and she prides herself on having those qualities in abundance.  The other is from my journal today about an interaction with an eight-year-old kid.  Like most eight-year-olds, he’s all about testing boundaries in growing his own strength, power, and independence.  Thinking of these two today, separated in life experience by over half a century, reminded me that maturity is not necessarily a function of age....

From my journal:

 .....For a while, she would just throw her underwear on the floor even though I told her where the hamper was (throwing it meant I'd have to put on gloves and deposit her dirty underwear in the hamper for her).  One time, I happened to be there in the dressing room with her when she threw something on the floor even though the hamper was only three feet from her... so I re-positioned the hamper so that it was only a few inches from her... and still she proceeded to just THROW the rest of her clothes on the floor anyway like a spoiled little child.  That was the day I stopped putting her dirty clothes in the hamper.  I simply walked out of the room and took care of my other duties.  By the time I left the theater, she had picked up her dirty underwear and clothes and put them where they belonged….  It took awhile, but she seems to have learned, finally, to take care of her own underwear…. Who knew I'd be trying to break an adult of her immature, inconsiderate, and dirty habits and replace them with the thoughtful, well-mannered habits of a properly brought-up seven-year-old?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 

…And then there's the little boy this week:

Unruly Kid: Can I get a drink of water? [as he runs to the water fountain without looking at me, let alone waiting for my reply.]

Me: No, wait. Stand back in line.

Kid: But I asked.

Me: You didn't.  You know you're all supposed to stand quietly in line against the wall and then one at a time after you ask you can go get water.  But you never stood quietly against the wall, and you didn't wait for my response, so you weren't actually asking.  That's not polite.  So now you have to wait until all the other students, who politely stood quietly against the wall and raised their hands, get water. Then you can get water.

As I wait to see what full-of-attitude response I'm going to get back, the kid thinks about it for a few seconds, then looks at me and nods his head in satisfied approval and says, "Yeah, I can respect that. That makes sense. I'm cool with that."

 .....He's cool with that.  It was all I could do not to laugh.  Who knew there's a mature little respectful guy in there?

Shoelaces and poo

Today I taught a third grader how to tie her shoes.  She didn't already know how not because she was a slow learner, but because no one had ever taught her before, and she learned easily in about 30 seconds.  So that got my morning off to a great start, and I was feeling good about the day....

....Then I had a girl ask me what to do with her shirt after she "dropped it in the toilet with the poo," and witnessed a boy discover "your mom" jokes, which quickly turned into his whole class discovering "your mom" jokes and gleefully going from beginner to expert at creating them (in very dirty, explicit, worse than R-rated versions) in a matter of mere minutes....

... I'm flashing back to that time a couple friends of a friend said my life is so glamorous... Yep -- Keepin' it classy.

Oh wait, but then I walked by Meryl Davis on my way home.  And she's about as close to an actual Disney Princess as they come.  So I guess her grace and elegance balance out the poo and stuff....

Live TV can be painful

From my journal during my internship at The Late Show With David Letterman:


Part of the beauty of live television is that there's only so much that can be rehearsed, and surprises are bound to happen.  While this leads to a lot of funny, spontaneous moments, it also can lead to some... well, rather painful spontaneous moments.  The latter was the case when Super Bowl-winning [bearded football star] was a guest this week. As part of his interview, there was supposed to be a plug for [a specific brand of] razors.  The idea was to shave his beard on the air and show the results, finishing with a close-up and sparkle graphics keyed over his nice, clean, smooth face -- a simple bit, begun and completed in the same segment.  However, no one counted on this particular shave being the worst shave any one had ever seen in their lives.  It started off okay... for about two seconds... but [football star]'s flinching made it evident pretty quickly that this might not be the smooth shave [the razor brand] was hoping would help plug their product.... Add to that the fact that the shave was taking much longer than expected, and rather than showing it all at once in one continuous sequence of shots, the control room decided to just show it periodically throughout the show [because showing a man being shaved on late night television would otherwise have clearly made for a riveting piece of television... or not....].  But because it was a promo and not just the show's own bit, we still had to keep showing it until it was over....  At least one "extra" [comedy bits excluding the monologue, top ten, and interviews] had to be cut in order to make room for it -- and to make things worse, the razor was clearly cutting him badly enough that the cuts and blood were showing up on the screen. 

Finally, as the episode that was now about a man being shaved came to an end and the shave was at last complete (or close enough), they did the planned zoom-in with sparkles over his face.... And rather than being nicely shaved as those sparkles sparkled all over the screen, the poor guy was bleeding and looking quite surly.  I wonder how many men will pick tomorrow as their first day to start growing a beard....

Such is the nature of live TV.

Vignette

One of my favorite things about working as an extra on a film is getting to be a fly on the wall and watch all the dynamics between the members of the production team.  Sometimes I see little vignettes that are as amusing and satisfying as the scenes being filmed....

For the purposes of this blog post, I'm re-naming the Set PA Mike and the 2nd 2nd AD Dan.  From a film shoot on which I was an extra:

2nd 2nd AD Dan:  Mike, in your blocking notes, you're getting principals too, right?
Set PA Mike (totally confidently, not missing a beat):  Yep.
[Mike waits until Dan turns around and then whips out his blocking notes and starts furiously writing principals' blocking.]

Later, in a scene where most of us extras are supposed to be sleeping:

Script Supervisor to Dan, with a bossy, condescending tone of voice:  But when [x happens] some of them [the extras] should wake up.
Dan (annoyed):  Yeah, we already took care of that! [as Mike walks towards him and hears this, clearly amused by the fact that they most definitely did NOT already take care of that -- and that Dan is now in the same position Mike was earlier]
Extra, quietly, to Mike:  Should I be one who wakes up then?
Mike, shrugging, with a small smile:  Dan said he already took care of that.
Dan (having missed this exchange, and not aware that Mike overheard his exchange with the script supervisor):  Hey Mike, can you pick some of them to wake up when [x happens]?
Mike (with a satisfied smirk on his face):  Yeah.

A New York minute

Remember when people used Myspace and you could pick a song on your profile page, so you could be like, "Hey, this is the mood I want to set and the lyrics that fill in between the lines as you read all about the filtered version of what I want you to know about myself?"  Well, today put me in a "Tick, Tick, Boom" mood, and if this post had a soundtrack, it would be this song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRzE7cjqYLM.  So if you feel like pretending it's 2005 and you're reading a Myspace post, click it and listen while you read this:  

I didn't get much sleep this week.  It's been a stressful week of dealing with bills, insurance, and trying to put together a huge pain of an apartment application so I don't have to live in the health nightmare apartment that currently is my New York home and its own major stress generator.  My trip home to my parents' house today for Thanksgiving has been the light at the end of the tunnel where I know that I can just be a kid for a few days with no adult responsibility -- because lately this is how I feel about adulting:

But first I had to get through today... which began bright and early with a 5am wake-up (after five hours of sleep) to work an audition for children to study ballet on scholarship.  I learned very quickly at this job that working with kids in the morning forces you to be bright and perky and bouncy, but on some mornings that perkiness and bounciness can be a little harder to come by naturally than on other days.... However, after an audition like this morning's, it's would be difficult not to leave feeling anything other than bouncy and uplifted by hope for the lives we might have touched....

 

Almost immediately after I approached the first group of children about to audition, one nine-year-old girl at the front excitedly bounded up to me with, "Hi Misty Copeland!"  I laughed and said, "What?" and she asked very earnestly, "You're the one who dances.  Aren't you Misty Copeland?"  Not quite, kid.... Not quite.  Though I have this image of her thinking that there's only one ballet dancer in the whole world and it's Misty Copeland, so therefore if Adult = Dancer then Adult = Misty Copeland, I was also very aware that while I think it's frequently the children from rough neighborhoods who could most benefit from ballet training, it's also those kids to whom ballet is usually a completely foreign concept -- and the fact that this girl and her friends knew the name of a principal ballerina with American Ballet Theatre, and that they were excited to audition because of her, was a delightful surprise.  When I was a year older than she is, my gym teacher made fun of me and his own dancer-mom's ballet students because he thought it was a joke that ballet was athletic and as demanding as any sport, so something very right has happened with ballet in pop culture when inner city kids think it's cool to study ballet because of this woman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZY0cdXr_1MA 

 

The real high point of that morning audition, though, was after the selections had been made when we learned that we had accepted two kids who have rough home lives, one of whom lives in a shelter, both of whom really needed something positive.  And they both got selected without anyone on our audition team knowing how badly they needed this.  That alone makes any 5am wake-up worth it.

So, my morning done but my day not even close to being over, I picked up sides from my fiancé at his office for a Skype meeting with a casting director because my worthless-pile-of-junk printer picked today to stop working entirely; raced home to make said Skype meeting with casting director (after first downloading Skype and testing it with my brother and his very cute cats because I'm that odd person who's never Skyped before), where I was invited to test for the lead in a feature film (yeah, I don't know how that happened either) produced by a two-time Oscar winner; bolted to the airport on the subway and bus to catch my flight home for Thanksgiving; and got home at 11pm before snuggling into my childhood bed for my first full night's sleep in at least a week. 

As Jonathan Larson wrote in the beautiful, yep-that's-totally-me song "Why," "Hey, what a way to spend a day."   (...See, this post is like those annoying choose-your-own-adventure books.  No matter whether you chose to click on the link at the top of the post or not, sooner or later I'm making you listen to that song.) 

 

Oh, and when I told my mom that when I book the film I'm buying a new printer and hiring a car to take me to the airport rather than bussing and subwaying it, her response was, "Well of course you'll need a car service then.  Your fans on the subway will delay you getting to your flight on time.  You'll also need a dress for the red carpets."  My parents rock.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

Let it rain

I think if most actors were asked what the perfect state of mind going into an audition is, they would say something along the lines of what results from getting a restful eight hours of sleep the night before, listening to some calming music while enjoying a cup of tea and getting centered, having a stress-free commute, getting to the audition location with enough time to chill and take a moment, and entering the room focused and composed -- basically something that leaves them feeling like this as they enter the room:

img src: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgO9Hd-qCgVo7nkQucW1epqhX5am-O80krzoM-Y25CenPHQOwfobl72nUTKAFq97dtQ9Vuo54wUvTscmbyfGz56VRRuDB1wwmEGjjUCv6fxAwvMN3oeVeVcQdvePexbzWV8gUgiJwHomaZC/s1600/Day15.jpg

 

Probably no one in their right mind would describe the setup I had the other day, which left me entering the room feeling more like this: 

img src: https://lknbeautyinstrength.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/stressed1.jpg

But for me, I think it led to one of my most fun auditions ever.

After a stressful morning of dealing with a massive condo application that requires every piece of information about my life I can gather, followed by an on-camera audition where I was delighted that someone let me be funny, I had 45 minutes to make it from the Upper West to my 2nd audition, a dramatic theatre audition -- in Brooklyn, which I don't know at all -- so I ran out of the building into the windy rainy dark, ran to the subway while looking up how to get there, hopped on the crowded rush-hour train, got off in Brooklyn, where it was now windier and darker and pouring sideways, got briefly lost trying to find the address (and was ever-so-grateful that I'd just gotten a waterproof iPhone case); my umbrella broke; I was soaking wet; I felt like Joey in this scene:  

my rain-ruined mascara was probably making me look like this lady:

img src:http://genius.com/4754419

I walked in right as they were going to end and the monitor told me I made it just in time; I handed the monitor my headshot, ripped off my rain coat, took one sip of water, skipped into the room with a big smile (dumping my raincoat and backpack and pink umbrella by the door), answered their questions about the weather with a grin, and did my scene with absolutely nothing to lose and full of movement and life. The only thing that would have made that experience more fun is if it had actually been raining in the audition room.  Least stressful audition ever.  I would pick that experience over a waiting room full of overprepared, nervous, primping actors any day.  But maybe without the runny mascara.

Defying the perfect circle

From the archives.... the college application archives.  Because those things should be good for something other than getting you into a university you didn't go to, right?  I've grown and changed in a lot of ways since I was seventeen.... But in many ways, I haven't changed at all.  When I came across this college application essay, though I only vaguely remember it, as soon as I read the question I knew exactly what my answer would be.  And sure enough, from beginning to end this is exactly how I would answer this question if asked it today:

Essay Question: When asked by Pope Boniface VIII to prove his skill as an artist, Giotto (1268-1337) drew a perfect circle freehand.  What seemingly simple action would demonstrate your ability or skill, and how would it represent you?

My answer:

If Pope Boniface VIII, using his magical time-travel ability, were to interrupt an otherwise tedious evening of homework to challenge me to provide one single, simple action that would represent my skill or ability, I would be enchanted by his visit, but a little curious and perhaps even argumentative about his request.

It is an impossible request, I might tell him, because humans are too complex, and it cannot be possible to reflect all the nuance and subtle perspectives of who we are in one simple action.  Countering, he would likely show me Giotto’s perfect freehand circle and insist that the artist managed to convey much in one action.  Yet, from the first time I heard about that perfect circle in a sixth grade art class, I’ve been unsettled and unsatisfied with Giotto’s response.  A circle, after all, however remarkable it may be, defines a circumscribed, limited area, a physical and metaphorical suggestion of an entirely closed and ultimately repetitious world, bounded, defined, unyielding both to those on the inside and those on the outside.  It does not, I think, ultimately reflect the unlimited power and potential of artistic talent.

Further, I would argue with the Pope that absolute perfection, in Giotto’s circle or in life, might be a commendable goal, but it is not, ultimately, a good path for growing.  It is, I would tell him, when we take risks, experience life, and even when we make mistakes and then acknowledge and learn from those mistakes, that we can mature into contributing and caring human beings.  For that, we must break away from that simple circle.  Look at Michelangelo’s imperfectly proportioned David, Escher’s confusing staircases, Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan,” or a challenging Chopin Nocturne.  All are endlessly stimulating and thought provoking, reflecting genius and creativity... and all are a complex reflection of multiple facets of humanity that might defy the simplicity of the circle.

By now, the Pope would no doubt be losing patience.  Stop stalling and prattling, he might admonish, insisting that he came not for a philosophical discussion of life, art, or circles, but for one single, encompassing expression of my talent.

So I’d think for a moment.  Having studied ballet for a dozen years, I turn to the fluid grace of dance to search for a single skill that speaks for who I am; it must, I think, be far less limited than a circle, and make some room for joy and celebration.  I finally decide.  Moving back, I take a long, open leap into air, twirling, suspended for a moment.  It is that moment in the balletic leap, in unfettered flight, that reflects for me the endless possibilities for joyful movement, passion, and the unbounded potential of life.  That is, I think, my own “perfect circle."

Barbie is no apple

I was brought up with Barbies (lots and lots and lots of them) and My Little Ponies and Polly Pocket and doll houses and every sort of dress-up costume you can imagine (most of them with pink and purple and sparkles).  I helped my mom pick out her perfume and heels when she went out on dates with my dad (The red heels and sparkly gold ones were my favorites, no matter what dress she wore -- both now have a happy home in my closet).  Most home movies have me dressed up in some sort of girly princess outfit.  My room was all pink, with cat and Disney Princess posters.  I had Barbie roller skates and a Barbie video game.  I got all the Barbie happy meals at McDonalds....

 

I was also brought up to believe that girls are just as strong as boys.  My parents purposely picked a female dentist for my brother and me to show us a woman could be a strong doctor and to give us a female professional role model.  I kicked a soccer ball (pink, of course) around with my mom at the local park, had a skateboard, and used our basketball hoop at least as much as my brother.  I've always believed my mom has superpowers and is as strong as any man.  It never occurred to me that just because I loved playing with dolls that apparently had unrealistic measurements that I should grow up to look like them and be some passive waif in the passenger seat of Ken's car (I'm actually not sure I owned any Ken dolls -- just about 100 Barbies and 10 Skippers).  I could be a brilliant all-powerful ballerina/brain surgeon/Hollywood bigwig/writer and have my sparkly heels and closet full of dresses and Malibu Dream Home, too.  So I have always been annoyed by the backlash against Barbies and the notion that playing with them encourages girls to have messed up ideas about what their bodies should look like and decreases their self-confidence.  To me, Barbies (and all my other dolls) were just one way to stimulate my imagination into making stories.  When I have the opportunity at family gatherings to round up some old Barbies and play with some little girls who are extended family members and who aren't allowed to own any Barbies, I find that, because they don't play regularly, it takes awhile for them to figure out how to use their imaginations and do more than just dress them up in outfits.  Once I get them going, however, they start getting creative and using their brains.  I never see it be anything other than a positive experience for them, and I never see them wonder why the proportions on the dolls are weird....  I think the fact that Barbie's head twists backwards and comes off and her elbows don't move and that she's, ya know, made of plastic, might be hints even for those little girls that she's just a plastic doll, not an example of a perfect human.  I can't help but think that if they were allowed to play with dolls more, they'd actually have more outlets to use and develop their imaginations and to see themselves in more ways. 

So I was completely delighted when I saw this new commercial for Barbies a while ago, which corresponds with my experience playing with them as a little girl: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1vnsqbnAkk

I was also not surprised to see a not-allowed-to-own-Barbies girl post this on Facebook:

“Girls are like apples...the best ones are at the top of the trees. The boys don't want to reach for the good ones because they are afraid of falling and getting hurt. Instead, they just get the rotten apples that are on the ground that aren't as good, but easy. So the apples at the top think there is something wrong with them, when, in reality, they are amazing. They just have to wait for the right boy to come along, the one who's brave enough to climb all the way to the top of the tree...” 

 

While the point of this is probably to make girls who are late bloomers with boys feel good about themselves, I find it incredibly degrading to girls -- both the ones labeled "rotten apples" and the ones who think they have to just wait around at the top until some boy comes along and decides to pick them.  I said as much, saying something about how the apple could just hop down and pick the best boy because the apple is actually a girl who has just as much right to pick her prince as any boy has to pick his princess -- hoping to inspire a little girl power in that girl -- and, since everyone looks for arguments on Facebook, I was met with this reply from someone else:

"But why would the best apple want to hop down from the tree to pick the Best boy? Better to have the finest boy court her and then marry and live happily ever after."

I find this point of view sad and unrealistic and degrading to women.  How do you get a happily ever after when you leave the selecting of your "ever after" to someone else instead of having a hand in choosing and pursuing it yourself?  And what is happily ever after anyway?  There's hopefully a whole lot of "ever after" after that whole "court and marry" part.  Hopefully girls grow up imagining all the ever afters they can have and don't just end their imaginations with the Disney Princess movie ending (and I'm saying this as someone who loves and owns the special editions of every single Disney Princess movie).  I know that my Barbies led active lives, starred in an infinite variety of exciting adventures, conquered amazing challenges, and reached amazing goals; whether as lumber jacks or doctors or plumbers, my Barbies would have been bored silly sitting around in a tree, watching life zip by without them.  They’d jump down and write their own stories.

Walking with jewels

At the small local dance studio where I started ballet lessons when I was five, I remember the owner of the studio telling us to imagine that we were wearing long diamond earrings and we couldn't let them touch our shoulders.  It was her way of getting us to relax our shoulders and not hunch them.  I also remember being told to imagine we had jewels on our chest that we wanted to show off.  I remember when we learned the step "fondue," we had a fondue party with strawberries, marshmallows, and a gigantic pot of hot chocolate fondue -- the reasoning, besides just having fun, being that we would make our dancing as gooey as the chocolate.  I remember holding giant beach balls in front of us to learn the correct curvature of our arms in 1st position.  I remember selling pizza to raise money for the studio; I remember bringing our moms to take class with us; I remember decorating colored folders with glitter and stars and pictures of ballet dancers on the first day of class.  I remember doing some basic tumbling in our first classes.  I remember dancing in our Halloween costumes and the way the studio was decorated for the holidays.  I remember all the inspirational pictures around the studio.  I remember being on a float with my studio in the fall parade in my small town and in the summer going to a pool party organized by the studio's owner.  I left that studio when I was 10 or 11 because I needed more rigorous training at a serious ballet academy, but I've been thinking of it often lately, now that I work myself at a rigorous ballet academy.  Though some of the activities at my local studio at the time might have seemed a little silly, they also left me free to find my love of dance without ever feeling like it was a chore or obligation or yet a few more hours of school.  Instead, my early ballet lessons, and the activities surrounding them, were pure fun and joy.  When I decided to go to a ballet academy where the instructors were much stricter and harder on us and the classes were more time-consuming with obligatory attendance, I knew it was my decision, not teachers' or a school's, and by that time, I had developed a deep love of dance.  And the imagery the teachers at that first studio used to communicate their physical adjustments has stuck with me all these years.  In fact, at an acting audition a few years ago, the casting assistant asked me if I was a dancer.  When I responded yes, she said she knew because "you carry yourself like you have jewels on your chest."

In my current job as an assistant with young children taking their first ballet classes at a ballet academy in New York City that prepares students very successfully for careers as professional ballet dancers, I've been forced to be very creative in how I give corrections.  Every day I'm in class with them, as I see what adjustments they need, I want to tell them about the earrings and the jewels and the beach ball, but I can't.  I can't even mention chocolate fondue, let alone have the kids see and eat actual fondue.  In fact, I'm not allowed to speak to the children at all (only the teacher is), so I can only adjust them physically.  But without words, a physical adjustment doesn't always have the intended effect, because the children misunderstand how I'm trying to adjust them, and I of course can't force their body parts into the alignment I want.  One day last week, I wanted a girl to tuck her tailbone in and engage her stomach muscles.  Tapping her belly wasn't working the way it works with many girls, because she sucked in all her air, making her shoulders go up and her rib cage expand.  If I were speaking, I'd simply tell her to tuck her tailbone in and imagine she had to make her belly button go back towards her spine without letting her shoulders slump, but I had no words to use.  Flummoxed, I stared in the mirror at myself, mimicking her incorrect alignment, and started pushing and tapping things to figure out how to gently make my body get back into position without knocking something else out of alignment.  Once I figured it out on me, I did it on her, and it worked.  Similarly, I've been struggling for a couple weeks to figure out how to get a girl with lovely lines but slouchy upper body posture to pull up when I can't simply tell her, "Pull up," and last week, to my delight, I finally figured out a combination of physical adjustments that clicked for her and had the desired effect.  However, at her very next class, she was back to slouching.  Though all children process directions differently, I couldn't help but feel that if I could just tell her to imagine that she had to show off the most beautiful necklace ever, it would help her internalize the correction and what it meant, and it might actually stick with her.   As it is, since she never internalized the correction before the first round of cuts (children getting cut from the program), she most likely won't be invited to continue with the program.  And I never once saw a smile from her or anything to indicate she was actually having fun in class, so I doubt she'll ask her parents if she can continue to dance elsewhere.  In fact, one of my proudest moments assisting with these kids was when, in the middle of a class in which a girl's hair had come out of her bun three times, I looked at her with her messy hair and shook my head and laughed and saw that girl (who had always had a perpetual "I don't want to be here" expression on her face) smile and giggle for the very first time.

Though neither method of teaching early ballet is necessarily "better," with some children responding better to rigorous training from the beginning and some responding better to being eased into it (and the academy's output vouches for the fact that they train and mold students into exceptional dancers), I have no doubt that, for me, the best beginning I could have been given to ballet and dance was at that small studio where I was free to learn at my own pace with individual attention while eating pizza and chocolate and imagining I was a princess covered in jewelry.  I'm so glad that my first studio was one that focused at least as much on making dance fun as they did on making me a good dancer.  And I'll always carry those long diamond earrings and jewels with me wherever I go.

When "copy me" isn't enough

From my journal during the three-month shoot of Non-Stop, referring to a direction the 1st Assistant Director gave me my first day on the set:

Favorite randomly specific direction for a quick non-speaking shot ever: "You're so sick of listening to the guy in front of you try to sell vacuum cleaners.  And he smells."

I vividly remember loving that direction, because it was so specific and communicated precisely what he wanted.  I thought of it recently when I was on a set with a director who gave the actors line readings -- multiple times.  For one line, I witnessed him give the actor five readings in a row of the four-word line.  Every time the actor said it back, to my ear (and clearly to the actor's) it sounded identical to the director's delivery, but the director was evidently hearing a difference.  There was no conversation or communication beyond the line reading, and when someone on set smilingly said to the director, "Wow, you really know what you want," he responded, seemingly dead-serious, "Yeah, I'm a good actor."  That might be, but what the person hired as the actor in that scene clearly needed (if the director wasn't happy with the way he was saying his line) was communication and direction that went beyond a "parrot me" directive.  But hey, if the whole directing thing doesn't work out for this director, at least he'd probably be happy just playing every role himself....  Or maybe he could get the performance he wants from the actor by playing a smelly vacuum-cleaner salesman....

Why "technical rehearsal" was invented

When I was six, I played a lily pad in my first ever dance recital.  I remember my strap breaking right before I went on and running around trying to find an adult who could fix it so that I wasn't a topless lily pad.  I assume I got it fixed, because I definitely don't remember flashing the audience of 300, and the photo of the dance that hung in the studio for years after showed only fully clothed lily pads (though in the moment captured in that photo, I clearly decided to do my own thing and show my beautiful passé while everyone else stood neatly in place).

Since and including that performance, I have never had stage fright or been worried about my performance.  I've had small mishaps on stage, including the heel of my pointe shoe slipping off, but nothing that I didn't know my training could get me through.  After my ballet performance tonight, in which we danced on an uneven, warped, bouncy floor with bubbly marley, in pointe shoes (having never rehearsed on that floor before), with strobe lights (that we never rehearsed in or were even informed about) while doing highly technical pointe work, with complete black outs and low light randomly interspersed, in our first run with full costumes or props or in that small a stage, I searched my memory trying to think of the last time I danced that poorly for an audience, let alone a paying one.  I can't think of a time.  So I'm going with the lily pad dance.  I've danced through my pas de deux partner bleeding all over my white tutu; I've danced through my pointe shoe ribbon snapping; I've danced through wardrobe malfunctions; I've danced through being hit in the head by another dancer...  But I've never danced through surprise strobe lights on a surprisingly bad floor while turning on pointe.  Until tonight.  But hey, at least I'm still standing.  And whatever doesn't kill me or break my leg makes me stronger, right?

Audition Drama

Today at an audition there were two actors who had already auditioned haughtily talking at length in the waiting room about how young and inexperienced the director was.  They were so engrossed in their conversation that they didn't realize the director had exited the room and was standing right there....  Also at that audition was a girl in a skin-tight dress with her black lace bra showing and another woman staring at her confusedly with a myriad of wonderfully interesting facial expressions trying to figure out what the heck role the girl was auditioning for dressed like that.... Sometimes waiting rooms of auditions are their own drama.

Glow in the dark zombie

It's Friday morning.  The last time I slept (with the exception of one 2.5 hour power nap) was Tuesday night.  I woke up Wednesday at 6 am, went to my day job working with dancing kids, got home around 1:30 pm, changed, showered, brushed my teeth, went straight to an overnight film shoot from 4:30 pm to 5:40 am, walked into my apartment at 6:17 am Thursday morning, flossed, brushed my teeth, changed, left my apartment at 6:33 am, went back to my day job working with dancing kids (where one shouted out "you're fun!" to me, and I refrained from saying he should see me when I'm not a zombie), got home early at 12:23 pm, showered, ate my first actual meal since Tuesday night, slept from about 2 pm until 4:30 pm, left my apartment at 5 pm for another overnight shoot on the film, where it is currently 7:22 am Friday morning.  I have fallen asleep on the subway approximately 10 times in the last couple days.  I have broken my ceramic toothbrush holder, knocked over the Swiffer, knocked over all my makeup at least once, hit my elbow on the hallway corner about 5 times (the wall moved; I'm sure of it), dropped my backpack... but fortunately I've not lost any dancing kids. Today when I walk in my door I can actually sleep until the afternoon (when I have another overnight).  Oh and I have a couple ballet performances next week... not to mention the rehearsals for it.

The glamorous life of a struggling artist.

Glowing in the dark... in a unitard... at 2:30 AM

PA to me, on an overnight exterior shoot on an 80s film on a cold night: Are you comfortable wearing something tight and skimpy?
Me: Sure.
(Ten minutes later, after getting approval from someone I never saw) PA: Great. You're now "Glow in the Dark Girl #6."

Seven hours later, going into my last of three very-80s looks for the night, all of which were indeed tight and skimpy, with hair and jewelry to match:

Hair department: Girl, you can rock a scrunchy!  Not to mention a unitard.
Me: I liked the mini fluorescent unitard more.

....A sentence I never thought would come from my mouth.

The night also consisted of me wondering if I was allowed to tell a confused 13-year-old playing another Glow Girl, who didn't understand what the scene was about, that it was about coke (I did. At first she wondered why anyone would care about cola that much, but then her eyes got really big); learning that Glow Girls #1-5 all tried on the mini fluorescent unitard before me and I was the only one willing to wear it; and learning that hanging with the mostly underage girls playing the Glow Girls, and their moms, was a delightful way to spend our downtime on a set where everyone was freezing and tired (well, everyone except the teens) -- because there's nothing like a bunch of teenage enthusiasm, excitement, and genuinely joyful gratefulness to be there to keep you going at 2:30 in the morning outside in 40 degrees in a mini unitard.  Everyone should be as happy in life as the teenage Glow Girls.

(Blank) Times at Day School

Being bullied in lower school was pretty much just a normal part of my day from around 3rd grade until I switched schools after 5th grade.  I wrote a blog post about it months ago, some version of which might one day see the light of day when I figure out how to write it correctly, but this week I discovered that I actually already wrote about it... at the time it was happening in the third grade... in a four act play... that's three pages long....  It is far from a masterpiece, and it reads like what it is -- a play an 8-year-old wrote.  (Act 2 is particularly riveting.  Some fascinating conflict going on there in Act 2.  It also has a great title.  Very catchy.)  But I really like it anyway, especially as a look at how a kid who's being bullied writes about bullying.  So here is my bully play, also apparently known as "(blank)," unedited and copied verbatim from a spiral notebook my mom found in my bedroom that appears to have nothing to do with any school assignments.  Oh and my middle name is Nicole.  And I really really love animals.


Introducer: The name of our play is going to be (blank).  I hope you enjoy the show.

Narrator:   Long ago when I was a kid I learned a good lesson but in a very hard way.   It all started like this:

Nicole:  Come on.  Let’s get a ball Jennifer.  Then we can play 4 square with Kelly and Dian.

Jennifer:  Ok

Bully Barbra:  Hey! What are you doing?  Playing 4 square again?  Ha!  That game is for babies.

Nicole:  Ummm…..let’s go play tag or something instead.

Jennifer:   Why does she always pick on you?

Nicole:  I don’t know….Doesn’t she pick on you too?

Jennifer:  Only when I’m with you.

Dian:  Hi.  Where were you guys?

Kelly:   We looked all over for you.

Jennifer:  Barbra was picking on Nicole again.

Dian:  Again?  She always picks on you Nicole.

Nicole:   Yeah.  I don’t know why.  Anyway, are you guys free on Saturday?  I was just curious because you guys know I like animals and my mom says that she would take me and three of my friends to the zoo.

Jennifer:  I’m free.

Kelly:  I’m free 2!

Dian:   I’m free 3!

(all four laugh)

Nicole:   Good.  We’ll meet at about 12 o’clock.

(someone blows whistle offstage)

Kelly:   Come on guys. Time to go in.

Mrs. Bangallow:  (class)



ACT II

Jennifer:   At last science is over.

Nicole:   We didn’t even get to study about animals…

Jennifer:   Instead she chose Sally’s idea to study…



ACT III

Kelly:  Here’s a table

Dian:   What did you bring?

Kelly:  I brought….wait…Barbra’s coming….

Nicole:  OhOh…

Barbra:  Hey Nicole….what do you have there….a stuffed animal!!!  A Teddy Bear?!!!  That’s for babies, NOT 3rd graders.

Jennifer:   Just Stop it Barbra…

Barbra:  What did you say to me?  No one, EVER tells me what to do…

(Friend of Barbra’s calls her away)

Jennifer:  Do you think she’ll ever stop teasing people and calling people names?

Nicole:   I don’t know, but I know one thing:  It’s that I’m scared of her.

Jennifer:   She is really mean….

Kelly:  I wonder if she’ll ever learn to be nice?

Dian:  Me too.

Nicole: Hey, I just remembered the ice cream social…did you guys bring money?

Kelly:  I remembered mine…

Dian:  I remembered mine too…

Jennifer:  Same with me.  Did you remember yours Nicole?

Nicole:  Nope... I just remembered I forgot it…

Jennifer:  You can take mine.

Nicole:  Thanks a lot.

Jennifer:  You’re welcome.

All four laugh.

Teacher:   You are all dismissed if you are done.

Jennifer:  Let’s go to recess now.


ACT 4

Barbra:   Look a stray dog.  I bet its collar is too loose.
(person who’s playing Barbra pretends to pull on person who’s playing dog’s collar)

Nicole:   Look what she’s doing to that animal….and animals are my favorite thing!

Kelly:   But what can we do?

Nicole:  Stop it NOW Barbra!  (All three stare at Barbra wide-eyed)

Barbra:  Nobody tells me what to do!

Nicole:  Let that puppy go!  (Nicole takes her gently by the hand.)

Barbra:  Ummm.  OK. (she lets go of the dog)

Nicole:  Thank you very much.

(Suddenly Barbra looks guilty as everyone claps for Nicole)

Barbra:   I’m sorry I picked on you.  I guess I just wanted atenchen…

Nicole:   That’s all right.

Narrator:  The five went into their classroom together when the whistle blew.  And I’m glad she stopped me from being a bully and I’ll never forget her.

THE END


Ooooo, TWIST ENDING!! Take THAT, M. Night Shyamalan!

As a side note, two years after I wrote this, in the fifth grade, I did stand up to some bullies on the playground at recess, though it didn't go quite like it does in "(blank)".... But that's a story for a different play....

Lazy Sunday goings-on

You know when you're watching a TV show and a super evil, creepy villain (in this case Victor Zsasz on Gotham, who makes hash marks on his body for every kill) makes his debut, and every time he's on screen you keep thinking, "He so reminds me of someone," and then you finally place whom he reminds you of, and it's one of your friends?  Yeah... Is that bad?  Unrelated, but also among today's happenings, my dad told me Pink is awesome and thanked me for introducing him to her music; an adult American woman at Broadway Dance Center asked another girl what a "figure skater" was and upon being told said she'd "never heard of that sport;" and the man in front of me on the LIRR was texting with someone he'd entered into his phone as "man who sucks on hot peppers."   Not bad for a Sunday.

Long Island Rail Road Cruise Ship Love Story

People who use Twitter sometimes relay events that are unfolding in front of them via tweets -- like the airplane breakup/hookup story that went viral, which is almost identical to one I witnessed and told via texts years ago.  I don't tweet.  But I do frequently relay stories via texts.  The other night was one of my favorite stories -- it had romance, conflict, friendship, fate and/or luck, the bringing together of strangers to form unlikely bonds, however brief, that might have lasting effects... and an unresolved ending that I can only hope will lead to a happily ever after.  My last blog post was a happy beginning story.  This is a slice-of-the-middle story.  By the end of this slice of the story, the entire train car was engaged in this chapter of this girl's life.  So here's the Long Island Rail Road Cruise Ship Love Story from the other night, as told in text messages:


Awesome story unfolding on LIRR.

Big black lady (think Queen Latifah crossed with Estelle Getty on Golden Girls.  I'm going to call her Lula), giving advice to edgy cool 20-somethings: "Unless there's a ring on it honey, what's wrong with cheating?  You're young people."

Girl: "I'm a romantic."
Lula: "Get over it, honey."

Girl and her male friend were talking very loudly (but not angry or drunk) about this guy she randomly ran into tonight with whom she fell in love when she was 17 on a cruise ship.  They went their separate ways after the cruise ended, she's now 22 and has been with her boyfriend for 3 years, her male friend thinks her boyfriend's all wrong for her and puts her down, and then tonight at a bar she and her male friend ran into... the guy from the cruise ship!  Turns out he just moved here.  Sparks flew at the bar tonight, and the friend wants her to leave her bf for this guy.  "Lula," who's sitting across the aisle, said something when she overheard them talking, apologized, and then Girl said, "No, this is great.  I need some feminine perspective.  Give me female advice," and told her (and the entire train car) the story.

Lula, after Girl said she thinks she should try to make things work with her current bf: "Think like a man.  You're not married, you don't have kids.  Save your energy."

Male Friend and Lula want her to dump her bf.  A couple random people on train have voiced their agreement.

The Girl's all "It's a three year relationship; it's kinda f----d up to just say, 'See ya!' "

Male Friend says the instant the Cruise Guy walked into the bar and he saw the way they looked at each other he knew they were meant to be together.

It's awesome because the two friends are super cool and trendy and edgy and are totally welcoming a random person's life advice.

Oooohh BF always judges her clothes when they go out.  She should totally dump him.

Male Friend says Cruise Guy is so genuinely nice and super hot and is crazy about her and it's fate and they're meant to be together.  And if she's supposed to be with Jim (her current bf) and dumps him for Cruise Guy, then eventually she'll wind up back with Jim.  But she's not supposed to be with Jim.  She's supposed to be with cruise guy.  Duh.

I don't want to get off the train until I know her decision!!!!!

Male Friend: "The way he looked at her..... ohhhh.  If someone looked at me like that... Ohh, no one's ever looked at me like that."

Lula has to get off at my stop, too, and asked, "Will someone please tell her?!  I can't give my normal speech!" (Wait, what does that mean?  Does this happen to her a lot?  Does she so regularly dispense relationship advice to 22-year-olds on the train that she has a "normal speech" made up just for that purpose?  I want to know more.  Maybe it's Lula who's actually the main character in this story....)

Girl thanked her for her advice.  Other people getting off are telling Girl she's supposed to be with Cruise Guy.

And that concludes my viewing of this Hallmark-movie-destined story.  I hope Girl winds up with Cruise Guy!!!

Happy Beginnings

I love movies and books with happy endings.  I've been known on many occasions to cheat and find out if a movie has a happy ending before watching it, and if I don't know going in, then I usually enjoy the movie much more the second time through when I'm not worrying about how it's all going to end up.  I'd love for real life to always have the happily-ever-afters of fairy tales.  And sometimes real life does look a bit like those happy-ending movies... but sometimes it's even more promising and delightful when life imitates art with a gentle "happy beginning" story instead....  So, spoiler alert: This is a happy beginning story.  From my day at work:

Today I helped run an audition to select children around eight years old who get a full scholarship to study dance.  I think we auditioned around 200 or more students, with about 20 getting a callback and 6 selected.  I talked to the children before they auditioned, and one little boy in particular stood out to me.  He looked very Russian, like a little Baryshnikov, and was clearly very excited about auditioning.  To see a boy that age express such unbridled and joyful anticipation about ballet is a rarity to me (in fact, I don't think I've ever seen it), so I was delighted to see his excitement, and I eagerly awaited his audition, hoping his potential lived up to his enthusiasm.  When his time came, he paid strict attention to the teacher, and I couldn't help but smile as I watched him stand up straighter than anyone else in the room.  I couldn't take my eyes off him.  At age 8, with no formal training, he had more stage presence than many professional performers I've seen.  I had no part in the actual selection process and had to hope that his maturity, posture, and facility of movement made up for his lack of flexibility (he was probably the least flexible child in the room) in the eyes of the selector.  Flexibility can improve with stretching, but the spark this little boy had is something that cannot be taught.

When I was handed the names of the children who were selected for a callback, I was relieved to see his name on the list.  No child's face lit up more upon hearing their name announced for a callback than his.  He eagerly told me that he wanted this "sooo bad" and that if he could take ballet at our school it would "just be the greatest."  When one of the girls said that most people laugh at ballet and think it's only for girls, this boy jumped in and said that ballet dancers have to be "soooo strong" (Yes, we sure do -- I don't know a ballet dancer who doesn't lift weights) and flexed his arm muscles for me.  I know what it feels like to want to get a job at an audition for myself, but at that moment, I wanted him to succeed at this audition almost as much as I've wanted any part for myself.

At the callback, as the selector watched the children dance, with their audition cards out on the table in front of her, I watched as one by one the cards got a slash through them notating the children had been cut.  Once, I held my breath as I saw her pencil hover over Little Baryshnikov's card and make contact, before lifting off and passing over it.  With about ten students having slash-free cards, he was still in the running.  And then came the splits.  And the slash through Little Baryshnikov's card.  I was so dismayed and wanted to say, "Wait, hold!" and run over to the selector to tell her how badly he wanted this and that I believed in him and knew he could do it.  He pointed his feet beautifully, he followed directions perfectly, he jumped so high with his knees straight and kept his posture ready to present to the last row of the Met…. Surely he could learn how to touch his toes and do the splits.  What if this boy was supposed to dance on one of ballet's biggest stages one day and never got the chance just because at eight years of age he couldn't touch his toes and so was denied the opportunity to study what he so clearly loves and has a natural ability for?   My right foot isn't as flexible as an average ballet dancer's, and if someone had told me at that age that I couldn't dance because one little joint in my body isn't as flexible as it should be, I would be a different, less complete (and less happy) person.  As the callback went on (Regardless of whether their card got a slash, all the children who made it to the callback continued through to the end), he got more and more excited, and when his turn came to gallop to a beat that I clapped out, his rhythm was… well… not exactly what I was clapping… at first.   When he got halfway around the room and another child had already started, he suddenly found my beat, and I looked to see if the selector had noticed, but alas, she had already moved on to the next student.

As the callback neared the end and I glanced at the cards on the table, I saw that his sister had been selected, and my heart sank as I thought of how dejected the boy would be to find out his sister got in when he was the one who so badly wanted to take the lessons.  I hoped he wouldn't give up on his love for and desire to learn ballet and that his parents could afford to get him training someplace else.

But then as I heard the names of the students who were released… I didn't hear his name.  I glanced at the desk and saw his card was still out on the table.  I led the children who had been cut out of the room and hoped that the selector had seen what I saw in Little Baryshnikov.

Sure enough, it turned out that both that little boy and his sister had been "borderline," and the selector wasn't sure if she'd made the correct decision, but ultimately, Little Baryshnikov (and his sister) will get the opportunity he so badly wants to study ballet on scholarship.  Whether or not he continues with ballet throughout his life, he will get the opportunity to acquire the discipline that comes with learning to have exquisite control over your muscles and work toward finite goals, and, as a result of that discipline and hard work, he will have the opportunity to experience the absolute joy of being able to express yourself through movement and create art with your body....  And one day, perhaps, he might just wind up a ballet star... which would be a truly delightful ending for this happy beginning.

Tough

I wrote the following post two weeks ago and didn't post it because I thought that for a reader who wasn't there experiencing the tone and attitude of the guy who said this, it sounds like I'm being too harsh in my reaction.  Writing the words he said does not accurately convey my perception of them in context.  So I didn't post it.  Since then, this guy has been mildly irritating every day I'm there by constantly trying to flirt with me when I'm trying to work.  I've been told that another woman at work completely ignores him and doesn't acknowledge his presence.  That seemed like it would be rude for me to do, so I have been politely and distantly friendly, yet even mere politeness seems to encourage his constant flirting.  Then the other night, when I found myself having to re-count something when trying to close the bar because he was harassing me about whether I'd "come back to visit" when I left and "how are we going to keep in touch" and asking for my facebook info, the mild irritation morphed into anger, not at him specifically but at the fact that every day I have to put up with being harassed by him when I'm trying to work.  If I were in an office, I could report it to human resources.  If I were working in the position of stage manager, I could either handle it myself or report it to the company manager or Equity.  But here, we work for different bosses, I have no power, and my choices seem to be either to ignore him and pretend he's invisible or to put up with him constantly trying to flirt with me just because he can.  I'm done with that job now, but being in that position where I feel powerless and harassed makes me mad.  And then today on my way to work, in lieu of the normal catcalls, a guy actually reached out and tried to grab me, succeeding in making contact before I swung my bag at him.  So I'm angry right now.  I never send e-mails when I'm angry, and I don't post blog posts when I'm angry (which has resulted in several lovely maybe-not-so-eloquent rants getting discarded).  But this one I'm posting angry.  From my first day on the job:

What a 20-ish guy I don't know at the same place of employment condescendingly (but thinking he was being oh-so-charming) said to me my first day on a part-time day job when he overheard my trainer and me speaking:

"You're adorable -- you'll do fine.  You're so cute. But this city will eat you alive. You gotta learn how to be tough to live here. You're gonna need to toughen up."

To that guy, what I wanted to say but didn't, on behalf of all strong tough "cute" women:  Umm, I've been living here since you were a teenager, thank you very much, and just because I might be adorable on occasion [I mean, I am pretty cute when I wear my wide assortment of Disney clothes...] and still get stopped by those tour guides in midtown and asked if I want to take a tour bus [seriously, is that ever going to end?], that doesn't mean that I'm not tough as nails.  I've managed complex teams in stressful situations many times before and run some very tough techs with some very tough people, making me prepared for anything this city can throw at me.  I've fought hard battles, faced rejection you probably haven't even had the opportunity to yet, was toughened up as much by my high school in Indiana as by New York, and I'm still standing here.  Would you tell a guy you just met at work who you learned is on his first day on the job that he's "cute" so he'll be fine, but he needs to toughen up to make it here?  No?  Well then thanks but no thanks, and keep your ignorance of my toughness to yourself.

Sincerely,
The adorable new girl

Golden silence

I have a severe problem with loud noises.  It started before I was even born.  My mom tells me that when she was pregnant with me, if she tried to see an action movie, I would kick like crazy in protest during all the loud parts (i.e. most of the movie), and she'd have to comfort me through her tummy.  I was generally a very non-kicky pre-born baby, so if she wanted to make sure I was doing okay in there, she'd just head to the local movie theatre and see the latest action flick, and off I'd go.

Being born didn't help my tolerance for loud noises.  As a kid, when my parents took my brother and me to fireworks, I'd cry all the way through them while holding my hands on my ears.  When I was older, I hated parties and school dances because of the music that to me seemed ten times too loud, I almost cried at my brother's high school graduation class party because I couldn't handle the blaring music (to the point that my mom had to drive me home early), and I did cry at Blue Man Group because of the noise (well, the noise and the claustrophobia of having mountains of toilet paper passed over my head and feeling like I was surrounded by a group of mob-mentality-driven lemmings who had lost all capacity for independent thought and would do absolutely anything asked of them, but my hatred of Blue Man Group and perception of it as the deepest circle of Hell really deserves its own blog post.  I digress.).

Anyway, I would like to say that as an adult I am now better at handling loud noise, but really I'm only better at covering my problem with it when I have to in order to seem like the mature adult I sometimes am. (Fortunately, this does not include when I'm around my fiancé -- Just this summer when a beach-stroll date with him unexpectedly included fireworks, I petulantly covered my ears and literally dragged him away from them, forcing him to walk backwards to see them... but hey, he still got to enjoy them... so it's all good.)  Loud noise to me feels like someone is beating my eardrums while wrapping me head-to-toe in an oppressive black wool spider-web-lined blanket that I can't fight my way out of.  SO... what is my job today?  Working a theatre bar at a hip show in the Village catering to audiences college-aged through their 20s, with music that blares incessantly at a deafening volume into the lobby for all 2 hours and 30 minutes.  I spent my first week on this job (in which I work the bar at multiple theatres) at a lovely off-Broadway theatre with a fantastic play that I could watch parts of and listen to the rest of through the walls when not serving the laid-back audience, who drank more Stellas and Diet Cokes than anything else.  Here, on my first day at this very different theatre bar, I'm routinely consulting the menu after they order to interpret what they just ordered, which, I realized about two minutes after opening, is usually in French and about five words longer than the way the drink is written on my sales sheet.  The other show I've worked on this job is at Lincoln Center -- so peaceful and dignified.  I'm great with either the suit-and-dress, classy and elegant Lincoln Center scene or the fun, ready-for-a-laugh, beer-drinking scene, but the hip and happening (and I think by even referring to it as "hip and happening" I am making myself most decidedly not hip or happening) trendy scene?  If volume is a requirement, then I think not so much.

So on my break during Act II, when I got to the point that I was actively working not to cry and have the other workers wonder what the heck was wrong with me that I was randomly crying when there was nothing wrong, I tried to find respite from the aural abuse by sitting in the stairwell -- where I immediately was in someone's way.  So then I tried upstairs in the wardrobe/ green room but was feeling suffocated by all the incense.... so now I'm on a couch in the bathroom, enjoying some blissful reprieve from the oppressive enveloping layer of sound that awaits outside.  On one hand, I feel like writing in the bathroom probably makes me the super anti-social weird girl, but on the other hand, all the other bartenders are on their phones in the lobby and couldn't have a conversation even if they wanted to, so I don't think I'm missing out on much....  Next time I work here I think I'll just be the weird anti-social girl with earplugs.

Tips on Tips (and other observations from behind the bar)

 Lessons and observations from my first week working a theatre bar:

 - My tips have nothing to do with my service.  They do, however, correlate strongly to my hairstyle.  A low braid over one shoulder doesn't get me any tips, and few people will initiate chit-chat.  Seriously, I made half my normal tips when I put my hair in a low braid.  Hair half up and half down is okay, but hair all the way down gets the most tips.  Hair up in a messy bun also gets good tips, particularly from women, who are quick to engage me in chit-chat.

 - Women who are by themselves and straight men under 40 by themselves or with other straight men rarely tip.  If they do and they paid with a credit card, the tip is almost always on the card.  And a straight man under 40 by himself who does leave a cash tip usually fumbles around in his pocket and leaves the tip when I'm serving another customer, about a minute after he's paid for his drink.

 - Women with other women tip wonderfully.  They're also very chatty and seem like the happiest customers of the night.

 - Men with girlfriends tip very well, and usually by cash even if it's on a credit card -- as do their girlfriends when the girlfriends interject that they'll get the tip themselves.

 - If a man over 40 is in a suit or sport jacket, he will use words like "mademoiselle" and say he's leaving you a tip for your jet flight.  If you don't understand what he means by the jet flight thing, just smile and laugh, and he'll pull out an extra dollar and throw it in.  I could Google if the jet flight thing is code or something, but I'm kind of afraid of what I might find, so I'm just gonna leave it.

 - Dads with kids who don't have the mom with them have to be reminded to put their credit card in their pocket and not walk away with it on the bar....  No one's left a kid at the bar though, so that's good.

 - I have now either worked with, eaten dinner with, served a drink and snack to, or been driven two hours back from set with a famous TV parent icon from the 60s (Mrs. Brady -- I know, it started in '69, but "barely counting" still counts), 70s (Mrs. Cunningham), 80s (Elyse Keaton) and 90s (Danny Tanner).  Now if I can just work with Lauren Graham, I'll be up-to-date.

Sometimes I miss the third grade

When I was in the third grade, I remember a classroom exercise where we had to write out directions for someone to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich from scratch, starting with the bread in a closed bag and the peanut butter and jelly both in closed jars.  We had to write in excruciating detail; the teacher would not perform any action not specifically detailed in our instructions, and if we wrote something like "spread the jelly on the bread" without first specifying how she needed to pick up the knife with one hand, how to hold the knife, how she needed to get jelly on the knife (after previously detailing how to open the jar), how to spead jelly, etc., she would stop and not complete the task.  I remember loving the assignment and writing a whole paragraph just on undoing the twisty tie on the bread bag and getting one bread slice out.  I love precision when choosing words in writing, and I frequently think of that exercise.  I thought of it when taking the critical reading portions of standardized tests in school and finding a lack of precision in the writing that led to either multiple answers being correct or none being correct without more precision in the diction.  I thought of it in middle school when we had a great textbook called "Word Within the Word" that examined the Latin and Greek roots of words, and our tests consisted of giving word-perfect definitions for both the roots and the words.  And I thought of it this week when taking a test based on the training manual for a new part-time job and being utterly frustrated with the inconsistencies between the words in the manual and the answers available from which to choose.  I feel like writing short explanations in the margins of why none of the above is correct based on the words selected in the manual... but I also feel like that would probably be frowned upon....  So instead I'm writing this blog post, urging everyone to write out instructions on how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.  It's an awesome exercise, really.  And you get to reward yourself with yummy deliciousness upon completion.  Oh, and on a related note, be careful with your grammar, too.  After all, punctuation saves lives....
 

Welcome to showbiz -- You're cut

No one's safe from the editing scissors until they actually make it on screen.  Anthony LaPaglia shot scenes as Al Capone for Road To Perdition but appears nowhere in the film.  There's a whole storyline with an old man and his dead wife in The Sixth Sense that was completely cut from that film. Winona Ryder's seemingly inexplicable casting as 30-years-older Spock's mom in the opening scenes of Star Trek was actually because she shot scenes as her own age, which were all cut, leaving only bad-age-makeup-Ryder in the film.  (I'm still hoping my awesome FBI day makes it into its film....)  And along with those lost performances and many more in the black hole of "you're cut" oblivion is, apparently, Tweety Dave....  From my Late Show With David Letterman internship journal: 

....This week also included what I thought was the funniest bit to be created for the show since my internship started.  Unfortunately, it didn't make it onto the show, and I'm not sure if Dave even knew it existed, as it was made during the taping in response to something he improvised.  During the second act, when he sits at his desk, Dave inexplicably started speaking in a high-pitched nasally cartoon voice, and after some banter with Paul about it, he offhandedly remarked that he hoped to one day have his own cartoon character.  I'm not sure whose idea it was, but the graphics team started quickly making a cartoon character for Dave, to be used if he did the voice again later in the show.  It was a Tweety Bird knock-off with a caricature of Dave for the face, complete with glasses and moving mouth, and everyone in the control room thought it was hilarious.  Unfortunately, once it was finished, Dave never did the voice again, and the control room was disappointed that "Tweety Dave" would never get a chance to debut.  As Biff said to us the first day of our internship though [when the interns were supposed to be used in a skit but were cut due to time restrictions], "Welcome to showbiz; you're cut." 


More from my Late Show journal: 

http://www.behindtheseen.me/2015/08/you-write-about-what-you-can.html

http://www.behindtheseen.me/2015/09/making-lemons-out-of-lemonade-or.html

Making lemons out of lemonade... or lemonade out of lemons... or something like that

When I interned at the Late Show With David Letterman, I had to keep a journal and submit it half-way through the internship to my advisor at Indiana University to get credit.  I forgot all about it until, as a result of my mom's e-mail account going berzerk and spitting out years-old e-mails at her, she sent it to me a few weeks ago.  Though the writing in the 25-page document has the somewhat stilted, sanitized filter of a journal written for school credit, my favorite entries (aside from the one where I write perfectly seriously about a chicken suit) are about all the things that went wrong during shows and how the Late Show team dealt with them -- usually creating a bit that was funnier with the mistakes than it would have been had the bit run perfectly.  A snippet from one of those entries:

The writers of this show have a gift for making lemons out of lemonade [...Yeah, I know, but that's what I wrote -- Freudian slip?... though I do actually enjoy eating lemons....], and it's always fascinating to see how they will overcome obstacles to put on a great show night after night.  This week, there was supposed to be an appearance by the "Man on Fire," a recurring character who runs across the stage on fire.  To do this stunt, a Broadway house is required to have a fireman present.  The show found out during rehearsal that the fire department was too busy that day and could not send someone over.  Despite repeated phone calls, the fire department wouldn't budge [Though it's not in my journal, if I remember correctly, the show didn't put in the request until the day of, so the non-sanitized version of this entry would probably be a lesson in why not to procrastinate...], and we thought we would have to put off the bit until tomorrow.  However, the writers realized there was a way to use the Man on Fire that would be funnier than him running across the stage screaming and on fire [2015-me has to admit I fail to see what's so hilarious about a person running and screaming while on fire, so I'm not sure it would be that hard to come up with a funnier way to use him, but maybe that's just me....] -- have The Man on Fire run across the stage screaming and NOT on fire... to be extinguished at the end.  The audience ate it up, and Dave explained that The Man on Fire wasn't on fire because they couldn't get a permit.  Making fun of their inability to do the originally planned joke wound up being funnier than the original -- and, as a few staffers noted, was conveniently way cheaper.

Gotta earn your rejection

There's a lot of rejection in this business.  The more auditions you go on, the more rejection you'll get; it's just a fact, and if you're not okay with getting rejected more times than you get job offers, you should probably find a different career path.  I get that.  But I do put a limit on who can reject me -- I generally don't find it acceptable for people to walk down the street and just randomly tell me they reject me, which is pretty much what happened today....  I got an e-mail from someone I don't know, for whom I've never auditioned, telling me she's decided to go in a different direction and will be using a different dancer on her current project....  Okaaaay?  Different direction from what?  Can't be a different direction from me, because neither of us knows what direction I would be on this, and I have no clue what this project is, but I am positive I didn't audition for it or anything else she's done.  Don't you have to actually call someone in before you can reject them?  When I was involved in casting a musical last year, I'm pretty sure we didn't e-mail every dancer we knew of to let them know we'd be going in a different direction from them....

This afternoon I auditioned for a major-label music video, and I appeared to be the only ballet/jazz/contemporary dancer they'd invited in a room full of hip-hop and street dancers....  They can go in a different direction by deciding not to use me.  But this choreographer who e-mailed me a rejection notice that served no purpose other than to throw some unearned random rejection my way cannot.

So, to this unknown random choreographer, I'm sorry, but I've decided to go in a different direction.  I reject your rejection.

You write about what you can

I've always liked to break down performances and analyze them.  I love watching direction and seeing how it affects performances, and I love watching the same actor give a different interpretation of the same line.  These days, I'm frequently exposed to wonderful performances in one of the best theatre cities in the world; however, when I was interning at The Late Show With David Letterman, between the internship, running the light board on an Off-Off-Broadway show, tutoring a student in neuro-psych, and taking dance classes, I didn't have much opportunity to watch theatre.  So I wrote about... an actor in a chicken suit.  Proving no performance is too small for good direction to make a difference, a snippet from my college internship journal:

...I also had a chance to watch more of the Late Show director's excellent direction this week.  One bit involved a man in a chicken suit who was supposed to jump and run around the theatre as the Olympic mascot.  Though the bit was cut, it was amusing to watch and listen to the director's direction and how that changed the chicken's performance.  I wouldn't have thought such a seemingly simple role could take so much direction, but the director did a great job of conveying exactly what he wanted and getting it out of the guy in the chicken suit.  The direction that finally made the chicken-suit performance click:  "You know when you watch a baseball game and there's that guy jumping up and down on the mound and you think 'he must be a complete asshole.'  Be that guy.  Be a total s**t-head."  And it totally worked.

Making friends

Today after a ballet class, another dancer who took the class came up to me just to introduce herself, compliment me, and chat.  I thought she was in her 20s, and though in my experience women don't normally just strike up conversations with strangers for no reason, she was very friendly, so I talked to her for a bit.  When she asked how long I'd been dancing and I responded over 20 years, she was shocked.  Turns out she thought I was a teenager… and she was actually 15.  We were both off on the other's age by about 10 years, and I've been dancing longer than she's been alive.

So what I got out of this: 
A. My moisturizer must be really good.
B. To kids, taking a ballet class together is all the foundation you need to start a friendship.
C. My conversational skills are much better suited to teenage girls who wear fuchsia-colored leggings than they are to adults.

From Bambi to Poppins

April 2011, at dinner break on the first day of tech (when a show moves from the rehearsal room to the stage and all the design elements -- lighting, sound, costumes, projections, set, etc. -- are incorporated into the production) on the first fully produced and teched show for which I was the Production Stage Manager (as opposed to the Assistant Stage Manager or a production assistant), and therefore the one running tech:

Me, to my fiancé, in a text:  I made it to dinner break!  And no one's yelled at me yet, and they don't seem mad at me.... So I think I'm doing okay and not messing up too badly....  I'm still breathing.

August 2015, dinner break of tech on a show for which I was brought in to help guide a young stage management team just starting out:

Designer, to me: What? You're leaving?

Me:  Yeah.  They [the stage managers] don't need me anymore.  I'm like Mary Poppins.  When they don't need me, it means I've done my job well and I just quietly fly away.

.....What a difference four years makes....

Mickey and a band-aid

From one of my "escape to the bathroom to write" dinner experiences:

 

Today I discovered that if you're going to a super upscale fancy dinner party whose snootiness makes you feel a bit uncomfortable and out of place, and everyone else there feels right at home, then a pink streak in your hair, neon pink nails, a big Mickey Mouse cartoon-strip band-aid on your thumb, and a mood ring will make you feel much better....  Because in the moments when you feel like Julia Roberts with the snail in Pretty Woman, you know that no one else there gets to look at their thumb and watch a Mickey cartoon or twirl their pink hair while seeing what mood they're supposedly in when they get bored....  I'm a stylistic entertainment center!

Sick Snow Day

I wanted to take Sascha Radetsky's open ballet class today.  Like any girl who was a ballet student in 2000, when Center Stage came out starring the then-soloist at American Ballet Theatre, Sascha Radetsky is to me what I imagine boy band stars are to most teenage girls (except super masculine and way more talented...).  Once, in David Howard's open ballet class several years ago, Radetsky (who was at the time a principal dancer in the Dutch National Ballet, and therefore not one of the many famous ballet dancers I was used to seeing in classes around the city) walked in as I was stretching before class and took his spot at the barre right next to me.  I silently freaked out and texted my mom "SASCHA RADETSKY'S STANDING NEXT TO ME IN CLASS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

That was probably the most nervous I've ever been in a ballet class -- because the time Paloma Herrera stood next to me in class, I just moved (and somehow wound up next to Julie Kent, my all-time favorite dancer. But that was okay because it turned me into a 5-year-old again in awe, leaving no room to be nervous).

A couple years ago, I was cast as a ballet dancer in a television show that Radetsky was appearing on.  I was thrilled.  Then they cut the scene I was in the day before it was supposed to shoot.

So anyway, when I found out that Sascha Radetsky was guest-teaching an open ballet class today, I was super excited to be there -- and to contain my inner squealing teenager and actually learn from his immense talent.  But instead I'm stuck at home with a nasty lung infection making bubble sounds when I inhale.  Fun!  So instead of taking class from one of my idols, I've spent the day watching videos of a deer lick a cat, a bunch of dogs who want to play with cats who don't want to play with the dogs, an emu named Earl, a peacock named Bruce, pictures of dance students at my first dance studio doing exercises on beach towels with parasols propped up by them (which reminded me of how when I was in kindergarten my teacher told my parents that she was concerned because I didn't know what an umbrella was on my IQ test and that I called it a "carousel," to which my mom replied, "No, she called it a parasol," to which my kindergarten teacher said there's no way I'd know what a parasol was, to which my mom replied that I had specifically asked to get a parasol and had a pretty pink one with a white handle and white lace fringe around the edges....  I still remember buying that parasol with my mom.  And I still remember thinking that teacher was silly for not being able to hear the difference between "parasol" and "carousel"), and more.

So, the lessons I've learned on my sick day to make up for my missed ballet class:

1. I want to be this woman when I grow up:  http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/maine-woman-pilots-plane-time-young-age-91-article-1.2319160

2. My fiancé thinks I look like Cozy the chimp at Chimp Eden.  He says we have the same smile.  I am okay with this, because Cozy is awesome.

3. Sometimes, no matter how old you are, when you're sick, all you really want to do is go home to your parents, play Minnie Mouse Candy Land, and have your mom's homemade soup.  Unfortunately, I have too may states in the way keeping that from happening today.

4.  Wanting, but not being able, to play Minnie Mouse Candy Land can make you search for Disney stuff on Netflix -- and Snowed In At The House of Mouse is excellent snow day viewing. (From now on I'm calling today a "snow day," not a "sick day" -- no one can have fun on a day with "sick" in the title.  That's a stupid name for a day.  Today's a snow day.)

5.  Those "Ringers" word puzzles I've always skipped in my puzzle books because I thought they were impossible are, in fact, NOT impossible. They're actually addictive.  Not quite as addictive as those Friskies cat commercials though. 

6. The Rewrite is a really fantastic movie, with really fantastic acting (Hugh Grant, J.K. Simmons, Marissa Tomei, Allison Janney, Chris Elliot) and direction, that never even got released in theatres in this country.  What's up with that?   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhEVfpHH9Vk

7.  This: (but if you haven't watched Jurassic World yet, don't watch this until you do.  And if you haven't watched Jurassic World yet, why not?!?!) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXGCyjJh48I