let that be a lesson to you/collaboration

My muse does not like to be ignored. Monday night we had this fabulous meeting/rehearsal/jam session for the show I’m creating for the showcase. I mean, it was just . . . a dream. I don’t know how else to describe it. All I wanted to do afterwards was go home and edit the script, change the things we had talked about, and then blog about how wonderful the evening had gone. Instead I stayed up till five in the morning talking about boys and watching girly movies with Holly and Megan. And that was great, too. Much needed and absolutely what the moment called for. However, when you ignore your muse, she tends to punish you. I’m sorry, let me speak in the “I” voice, the way I tell the apprentices to do. When I ignore my muse she tends to punish me. So Tuesday I get the day off, but instead of using Tuesday to get all the stuff done I didn’t do the night before, I did nothing. What happens when you ignore your muse? She makes you unable to sleep as a thousand and one things slip through your head: ideas for plays having nothing to do with this one, and 8 million other things that won’t let you sleep. So Wednesday I’m still exhausted and not feeling like I had a day off at all. Then Wednesday night I know I don’t have to come in till later on Thursday, so I get all of the stuff done I didn’t do before. Which was great. I finished my script, I read two other scripts, I put away my clothes and made up my bed, I sent out e-mails, I reorganized, I figured out my schedule for some things. Great. But it still made getting up Thursday soooo hard. Let that be a lesson to me. Don’t ignore my muse (don’t you like how I completely placed the blame on a mythical being and not on myself?).
So. Monday night. Ah yes. I’ve had two rehearsals/jam sessions now with this piece and I want to tell you a little bit about it. So if you don’t want to have some showcase stuff spoiled for you, please do not read on.
SHOWCASE SPOILER BELOW!
I’ve written this type of thing before. This collaborative “I’ll come up with a structure, then I want you guys to write on some topics, then I’ll throw it all together, we’ll all throw in some ideas, shake it up and see what we get” sort of thing. I love it. Great work comes out of it. The problem with this one was I didn’t have a question. I usually have one specific question that encompasses the plight of the twenty- something and where these specific people are in their lives. The questions of the past were “what does it mean?” and “What now?” They are pretty generic, but they help create a through line and they speak specifically to what is going on in our lives, or more specifically, what’s going on in my life. I usually go in knowing what question I want to ask. I didn’t this time.
I knew the general shape and the basic topics I wanted to touch upon, some of the devices I would like to try and use. But I didn’t have a question. I didn’t think this was a problem until we read one of my previous pieces and Ashley asked me “So what’s the question for this one?” “Do you think we need one?” “Yes.” “I’ll think on it” So when I was sending out e-mails asking people to respond to certain prompts so their writing could contribute to the piece, I also sent out possible questions for the show to be centered around. The questions were as follows:What Next? Where do I go from here? What have I learned? What’s Possible? What’s Probable? What’s really important?
And I asked each person to give me their opinions on these as possible title/themes. Then I started thinking. The fact that I (or any of us) didn’t have a specific question in mind for this project spoke directly to our experience here, spoke volumes about where we are in our lives. Think about it. Few of us are doing internships that are actually what we want to do in the theatre. Most of us are performers, writers, directors at heart. Those are our dreams. But there are only so many artistic spots open, there are no play writing internships here and there are not performance internships here. So we chose what we did, and we did so for a reason. We all chose our internships for different reasons, but most of us came to get our foot in the door. You have to start somewhere. This way we get to work at a reputable theatre company, get in some experience that we wouldn’t otherwise, and get some contacts. Get our faces seen by important people. Make it known that we are hard workers, and if we are hard workers doing this, think how hard we will work doing that thing we REALLY love to do, whatever that thing is. I do want to teach, and I knew this would be great for me to learn and grow as a teacher. But teaching is not all I want to do. Plus I think in order to be a good teacher you have to DO as well. If I want to teach performance then I should have experience as a performer. If I want to direct teenagers in shows, then I should have experience as a director. If I want to write or help teenagers to write, then I should have experience as a writer. These are important things. These are the reasons we came here. However the problem with accepting an internship doing something you’re not necessarily super passionate about has its problems (obviously).
It was asked of us, for our interim reviews, to think about what we wanted to get out of this internship, and if we were getting it. So many of our responses were “I don’t know what I want out of this internship”. Look at where we are in our lives. Some of us are still in college, some of us are freshly out. It is helpful to see all the different sides, the different opportunities in a working theatre, but honestly most of us are still figuring it out, and will be figuring it out for a while to come. Of course we don’t know what we wanted out of this internship. Some of us didn’t fully know what all this internship was going to be till we got here, and some of us still don’t fully know what our time is going to be spent doing.
Debra and I sat down to have a discussion about freelance teaching. She has a lot of experience in this area, so it was deemed that she was the best person to talk to. One of the first things she asked me was “Where do you want to teach” “uhhh, I don’t know” and I didn’t know. I still don’t. She said it made a big difference - where I wanted to be. What section of the country, and then more specifically, teaching in a school , at a specific theatre, or pure freelance? “uhhh, I don’t know. Is there a place you would recommend?” Debra’s response was “do you really want me to decide where you’re going to be for you?” Well . . . no.
So I guess what I am trying to say is . . . none of us have figured out what questions we want to ask. There has been so much talk about what theatre is, what theatre should be, could be, what type of theatre we all aspire to do. These are all abstract, broad questions, but they are so important to know the answers to because it is only then that we can know what our next step is. I don’t know what questions I want to ask. That is what I have gotten out of this internship. I have to figure out the questions I want to ask. Questions like: Where do I want to be? What do I want to do?What do I want to teach? Do I want to teach? Why would I chose to be somewhere? What opportunities would that afford me? Not just, what do I want to get out of this internship, but what opportunities are possible in this internship? What is it possible to get out of this internship? Where do I want this internship to take me?
I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know. But I am aware the questions are out there. And I now know that it is important to ask them first. Whereas, this time, a big part of taking this internship for me was purely to get out of Raleigh, NC and do theatre somewhere else. Somewhere bigger. Somewhere truly professional. Next time that will not be my reasoning. My reasoning will be that I want to go to a place specifically to be in THAT place, to do THAT work, to affect THOSE people. That’s what I’ve gotten out of this internship - a truly fantastic gift. I’m starting to understand the questions that I need to be asking in order to make my way in this life – not just my way in the theatre- but my way in life. 5 ½ years of undergrad didn’t teach me that. But one summer here did. That’s pretty incredible.
So I decided that the question/theme of the piece was going to be “What’s the Question?” It seemed appropriate.
I meant to write more on how wonderful the collaboration of this piece has been- with Julie and Ashley writing, and Holly, Sarah, and Michael writing and being in the piece, Michael playing the guitar and adding in instrumental incidental music. Basically we’re hanging out and having fun. That’s what theatre should be. But I’ll write more on collaboration later. This entry is already 2 ½ pages in a Word Document, and that is far too much for one entry. I am too prolific for my own good.
~ Laura (Roux)