A Sad Return

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Several weeks have passed by in a blur now. I started working at the PUSH summer training session in early July and have been moving at 90-to-nothing since.

The last few weeks have been a lot of fun and a major learning experience for me. Spending the year training with PUSH has lent a whole new dimension to the training. There’s also the part where I’m a staff member now, not a student. I got to teach a couple classes and spent some time reconnecting with the teacher side of myself outside of the studio.

Life, however, was not without balance. On Friday, July 18th my mother called me around 8:45 am to tell me that my grandmother, Leona Lowery had quietly passed away earlier that morning. So, for the past week I have been under an extra load of emotional stress on top of the normal intense training schedule.

Wednesday, I traveled back to Mississippi to attend the services for my grandmother. The burial service was on Thursday and today (Friday) I am sitting in the Jackson airport getting ready to fly back to Rochester. I wish I could have stayed longer, but the balancing act work and necessity are always performing draws me up north again.

So, I got to see my family and was able to finally let my grandmother go. She had been struggling with dementia and other health issues for years and had been spiraling down from assisted living to nursing homes for about two years. Always an independent woman, she remained just lucid enough to realize her situation but could do nothing to fix it, although she tried mightily.

My dad’s parents were the only grandparents I ever knew. My grandfather died in 1994 when I was 10, but I adopted his love of the stage and performing. It was my grandfather who took me to my first ‘theater’ – the circus – which probably explains my current profession more thoroughly than anything else.

My grandmother lived a life of service. She altered her career path when she met my grandfather so she could follow him across the country as he worked. She earned degrees back in the 1930′s and 40′s that would probably equal a doctorate in education today and dedicated the rest of her life to her family and students.

As her oldest grandchild, I ended up having long conversations with her about education and life, learning far too much about my dad’s life in the process. My interests as I grew up began to both merge and simultaneously diverge from her own. I was interested in ministry and in the state of the world, but I took a more expressive than practical path towards those interests. But even though she didn’t always understand what I was doing, she supported me through it. I have my grandparents, and my grandmother specifically, to thank for putting me through college debt-free and allowing me to pursue my career as it now exists.

I could wax more eloquent, but time restrains me. My flight is boarding momentarily and I will soon dive back into my daily routines and familiar faces. I feel like that’s the way my grandmother lived, though. She was the one just behind, who would do anything she could to help but wouldn’t step into the limelight to do it. I feel a strange emptiness without her now, but I have to push on with life. To do any less would dishonor her work in me.

So I had a sadly unexpected return home, but I’m glad her suffering is over. And I remember that the important thing should be that I knew her at all. Having known my grandmother was a blessing that I will treasure for the rest of my life.

The boarding call is nigh. I hope my grandmother’s recent flight was just as pleasant.

A Thinking Series… Part 2

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This is part 2 of my draft treatise on ideas expressed in Planet Narnia.

I have a confession on this one. In a well-written paper, this section would be modified into part 3. I wrote this to help figure out my thoughts and ended up writing the links afterward. However, I’m not done writing that so you guys get the raw process.

‘Donegality’ can be described as the attempt to compress Experiences into the selected recreations within artistic enterprise. I wrote the above poem in response to standing in the midst of a large tropical storm, attempting to describe the every detail that assimilated, related and merged into that Experience. I failed. Similes and metaphors could have taken me down avenues of comparison and association. Yet, those avenues would have only circumscribed the Experience, not defined it. They would have connected many of the correct feelings, sensory perceptions, and thoughts together but they would not have done so in a way that mirrored the Experience. The Experience would have to be changed in order to be transmuted to the page.

Aside: This could be one reason the live stage maintains itself in the modern age. The stage (along with its viewing) is already an Experience of sorts. Theatre presses upon the whole human being in a way that emulates everyday experiences.

PUSH’s work “Galileo” springs to mind as a good example of donegal and contemplative merging. The piece centers around the human embodiment of the heliocentric solar model. Performers run around each other, partner with each other (analogous to mutual gravitational spins), and recreate the tugging and pulling of gravitational events with choreographed movements. These are the things that can be Contemplated as the work progresses. However, at the same time that these particular actions are taking place, the performers are also aware of a separate mode of performance, the Donegality.

In “Galileo”, every movement is defined by some form of ‘circle’ or ‘curve’, imitating the shape of planets, the curve of orbits, etc. Reaching for another performer is not accomplished in a straight line, the reach is accomplished by sweeping the arm through space only meeting the partner at the end of a curved path. For another example the performers are constantly focused on the emotional extension of their movements; meaning the projection of their emotions, along the lines of movement, into a larger, imaginative space than their physical mobility allows. Finally, there is the application of weight as the driving force of movement initiation throughout the work

Without the less obvious application of movement within the framework of the ‘contemplative’ movements “Galileo” would fail as a performance piece. The larger movements, running around each other for example, would jar if the performers simply stopped to violently grab their partner and begin spinning around their mutual center of gravity. Instead the performers slow down, arc their bodies and curve their arms through space as they transition between one movement and the next.

I also want to mention that this concept is readily apparent in studies into design concepts for the theatre. Sets, lights, costumes, sound, etc… have for years been supplying this donegal element in the theatre. A scene can be thoroughly defined by its trappings and accouterments just as easily as its dramatic content.

A Thinking Series… Part 1

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I want to try an experiment with an extended thought. This post will be broken into several parts because of its length. Part 1 is mainly concerned with laying the groundwork arguments for my main focus. I haven’t finished the draft process yet so I don’t know how many posts this will take up. Part 2 is done so I’ll put that up in a few days. I may alter some things if good comments are raised about what goes up.

Introduction
I want to toss up a draft of some thoughts I’m working on. I recently read a book called Planet Narnia by Dr Michael Ward, which I highly recommend. The book dealt with a theory on a hidden, but central, theme embedded in C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia – the use of medieval astrological bodies in the creation of the individual stories.

I won’t go into detail about that theory. If you want more, read the book. It’s great. What I am after is a particular concept that Dr. Ward clarified in the opening arguments for his theory. The concept was described from one of C.S. Lewis’ writings on his own creative process. Lewis took the image of a dark shed with a beam of light shining in through a gap above the door and gave two methods of artistic engagement.

The first method Lewis called ‘looking at the beam’ which Dr Ward labels more succinctly as ‘contemplative’ engagement. ‘Contemplation’ regards the idea of the audience (reader in Lewis’ case) looking at the artistic creation as an object. The audience sees the beam of light and engages it as a beam of light.

The second method described by Lewis is what concerns me, primarily. ‘Looking along the beam’ is further streamlined by Dr Ward as ‘donegality’ – this word refers to a particular beach in England for reasons found in the book. ‘Donegality’ or ‘looking along the beam’ takes the audience inside the ray of light so he can see the landscape behind the gap in the doorframe. This takes the focus from the light itself (which is now invisible to the audience) and places the focus on a completely separate object, the landscape.

The Translation
The ‘contemplative’ thought will occupy the conscious mind for the main part. This is where the audience will say, “Oh! I get it, he’s running!” or “I see, she is jealous.” The contemplative moments are mathematical, they feed into one another to produce a result. This is the forward action of a scene or play: the plot.

The ‘donegal’ aspect is harder to define. I re-wrote a post from several months ago as a poem in an attempt to describe this:

The Ocean Flies

The sky flattens out to meet the trees
The rain falls hard enough to hear
Thunderous joy as drops find bliss

Hurricane unwound, blind and toothless
Descending, only searching for a bed
Titanic breeze adrift on a sea of land

Colossus of clouds, waning, still immense
This storm brings the ocean,
On wings of warm winds

My feet drown in flooded grass
I face the single cloud that covers the sky
Taste salt far from its home, miles away.

Art fails in every way
A thing is too much to capture
I cannot pin the sky, nor corner a cloud

Although still I try… am compelled!
The deluge pervades, pressing
What cannot be held

There are stories to tell,
Emotions to evoke,
Always Experience beckons
With a stronger cord.

So ‘donegality’ is the created frame through which a work of art is viewed. It is also the channel which controls the general trend of audience response. In this poem, word choice and structure are some of my donegal elements. Making the transition to the stage requires that we find the corresponding elements between the two art forms.

———To Be Continued!———

Part 2 deals with some practical translation terms and how this idea takes shape in another medium.

By the way, Dr. Ward gets a huge send up for being personable (read: ‘cool’) enough to email me when I linked his book on my reading list. I made sure to link the book and his website this time.

iTelegram!

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For the past few weeks I have lost that fundamental lifeline of modern times: consistent, convenient high-speed internet access.

Yes, I know. Horrible.

There are plans to remedy this situation soon, but these are complicated by the fact that I am preparing to be out of my house all during July. Seeing as I would have to pay for this month, I’m not inclined to set it up until afterward. It’s a pain, but hey, it’s life.

I’m hoping to do some thinking/writing during the off-internet time. Hopefully I’ll get things in order so I can post them whenever I do get online.

How to measure a year?

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There are two weeks left in my first year with PUSH. On June 5th we start a short run at a theatre in Rochester followed by two days of regular shows. This takes us to June 10th, which is marked on my calendar as the last day of the Trainee program.

Whew. Oct 2nd to June 10th. Crazy times.

Don’t worry, I won’t get all sappy and do a year recap in this post. I’m not a huge fan of soliloquizing in any case. (This does make blogging difficult at times…)

The thought that comes to mind is actually a line from the musical Rent.
How do you measure a year in the life of friends?

Not much of a line, but it speaks to the idea of counting time in something other than minutes and seconds.

Some results from that train of thought:

  • Friendships gained – I have a lot of friends up here who I value very highly.
  • Friendships left – physical proximity is a huge barrier. I’ve also firmly put most of my college friendships in the ‘past’ category – not all by any means, just most.
  • Career growth- instead of constantly creating the method and means to go forward, I spent this year learning and following others.
  • Personal growth – always hard to define, but I definitely have made some marked improvements (I think) in the manner and style by which I encounter the world. In particular I feel like I’ve filled in a lot of the gaps in my life that constantly left me on shaky ground.
  • Etc… – it’s hard, nay!, Impossible! to name everything that changed over so many months. Here’s to the ‘Unknown Detail’ upon this Mars Hill (I’m currently on ‘Walnut Hill’, but I don’t think that makes for as clear an allusion).

The occasion on which I’m feeling so reflective is that today was my final day in the studio for this season. I think we (PUSH) noticed this coming up a few weeks ago and then didn’t think any more on the subject until it was under our feet and gone. Combine this with the residual experiences from my excursion back to Jackson two weeks ago (!) and I went all thoughtful and introspective.

The final note for this go-around has to do with that oh-so-clever segue about my trip to Jackson… alright, it was just a normal segue – but at least I made it somewhat ironic!

*Ahem* The segue was SUPPOSED to mention how I felt like that trip put an endcap on my experience here. With all the maturing and changing I’ve experienced, going home felt like I was trying to act like another person. I wasn’t, but the general expectations from people who haven’t seen much of me for almost a year were disconcerting.

However, it was kinda cool how I was able to meet my family and good friends at a new place. It was good to remember who I’ve been and then find ways to pick out elements of that to reincorporate into who I am now. I wish I had more time to process those things with everyone back home, but alas this was not to be.

Oh well, that will be for next time.

Now, for an updated reading list!

What I’m Reading Now:
Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C. S. Lewis by Michael Ward

On the Shelf:
The Necessity of Theater by Paul Woodruf
The Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster