4 Months
12 paintings completed 3 paintings sold 9 songs written 2 songs recorded 2 music videos (3600 combined views) 2 plays drafted 2 rewrites 3 screenplay treatments ½ screenplay 1 puppet show 3 gigs booked 7 concerts performed 1 retreat retreated 1 wedding celebrated 4 pairs of shoes painted 5 flasks painted 1 crossbow built It still feels small. (That’s what she said).
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The first week of August I was very fortunate to go on the Freedom Art Retreat, an annual magic trick put together by Ilana Brownstein and the amazing folks at Playwrights’ Commons (which is really Ilana and her lovely assistant, Corianna Moffatt). We spent a week in North Conway, NH, in a lodge house near a pond, with 10 strangers (mostly strangers, all strange), spending every day making theatre, music, and amazing food. Not kidding: it was a magic trick. Except it wasn’t a trick.
I tried as hard as I could to know nothing about what I was in for, and I’m glad I did. Since I got back it’s been difficult to process what exactly happened and what I learned. I’m not sure I can put it into words, and I don’t think it’s an experience that translates at all to a blog. To try to recreate the journey feels wasteful and inappropriate for a blog. So without trying to recapture the events, a few things I learned that are more than applicable to the world outside of North Conway, NH 1. Silence and Darkness = soul sorbet. They cleanse the palate. Necessary. 2. Swimming! 3. You can make an amazing piece of theatre from anything. 4. You can make an amazing piece of theatre with anyone. [Aside: I’ve spent a lot of time and energy in my life wanting/trying to work with “the right people.” Dumb. The only time there are “right people” is when your idea is very rigid. Work with any people, in an open and loving way, and the “right” project for the group will naturally flower.] 5. Be Grateful (and express it) for your food and for the company you are lucky enough to be in. You won’t always have either. 6. An idea doesn’t have to come to fruition through my working alone in a room. Not exactly revolutionary but writers (this one anyway) can maybe get a little stuck in that idea. It’s not true. You can give your idea to someone else. It’s allowed. And amazing things will happen when you do. 7. How and Why are important questions that maybe don’t need to be answered concretely. 8. Music is more necessary to my life than I’ve ever given it credit for, and that will now change. 9. Every morning should begin with giggles, and every evening should end with a jam session. (And scotch. But maybe a little less scotch). 10. It’s incredibly freeing to approach a piece of theatre from the POV of a playwright, but never even consider picking up a pen and paper. You can write with actions, with bodies, with color, with dust, with sounds. Much more interesting. Those, and the 10 new Bitties in my life, are what I brought back with me from North Conway. The one other thing I’d like to say is this is an amazing company who is making an impact in Boston theatre, and on individual artists. In two years, they’ve taken 20 + artists on these retreats, in addition to hosting monthly gatherings. This January they’re starting a new winter retreat, where even more writers will be served. This is all done out of pocket. I urge anyone who cares about theatre, theatre artists, playwrights, or play development, to consider a donation to Playwrights’ Commons. The investment will go incredibly far. Music has always been a huge inspiration for me, and an important part of my life. One of my earliest memories involves singing the hell out of La Bamba on my front porch at the age of 5 (see the full memory of that story in blog form soon). I was very fortunate to go to a school where music was part of the curriculum. One of the best things for me was a program called Music Memory, which was actually a competition (and oh how I love a competition). We would listen to pieces of classical music: Bach, Beethoven, Handel, Haydn, Tchaikovsky, etc. And we’d have to be familiar with the full piece we were studying, as well as able to identify the composer’s name, name of the piece, year it was written. We’d have these competitions where they’d play an obscure 30 second section of one piece and we’d have to recognize it and write down the info. Looking back it seems a bit of a strange way to get kids into music but it worked for me. When I was old enough I took up violin (which I played for 10 years and still hope to pick up again) and to this day I love orchestral and symphonic music. One of my favorite pieces from that program, and one that I have always had a huge emotional reaction to, is In The Hall of the Mountain King from Peer Gynt, by Grieg. Took me many years to put together that this was actually incidental music for a play by Henrik Ibsen (and clearly if you’ve heard the song, it does not sound like incidental music!). Gaye Stearnes, my elementary school music teacher, often encouraged us to close our eyes when listening to music for the first time. I still remember that the minute this piece came on I had a story in my head: a man was walking up a narrow path through woods, up a hill or mountain. And every once in a while he would look back down behind him on the path. Listening, I saw this all very cinematically. Sometimes when the man looked back, he would briefly see a troll’s head poking out behind a tree, watching him. As he went higher, the troll got slowly closer. (Dude thinking of this while listening to the music still gives me chills). And as the music sped up, so did the chase until finally the man was sprinting uphill, running for his life. He finally came to a small clearing where the path out was blocked and he had to turn to face the troll, during the big huge choral sequence at the end of the song.
Honestly I don’t remember how this vision ended. I just remember the chase. At any rate, ever since that moment, this piece of music has been a huge part of my artistic DNA. It’s one of the pieces I go back to over and over whenever I feel stuck. It’s so sharp, it’s so dynamic, it’s so emotional and so exciting. Pretty much any time I’ve felt stuck, I’ll pull this out and a listen or two will get me out of my funk. Love it. |