Clown and mother
I just found the name of my friend Doug Rosson’s article on our years at Annex. I think next week while My Kid is at school taking the @#$%^&* standardized English Language Assessment, I’ll take myself on up to the Performing Arts Library at Lincoln Center and look it up and read it in Performance Research, Volume 9, No. 3, September 2004.
Will it make me feel old or inspired?
In the dream I had last night: I was about to start studying at Harvard.
My friend Debbie was there already. She had fixed me up for a date with an MBA/future Wall Street type, such a wildly inappropriate pairing, that word got around and people were talking about it. We met in a cafeteria on my first day and agreed that we probably shouldn’t go out for dinner. Maybe later in the term, after we knew each other better, maybe we could be friends… (In this dream I was not only single, but younger and thinner which was nice while it lasted.)
I had been accepted as a graduate student, but didn’t have a course of study. I thought maybe I should get a Harvard MBA as long as I was there, because then I would have a Harvard MBA.
But, I didn’t really want any job a Harvard MBA would prepare me for and the contacts I would make (which is the real reason people pursue a Harvard MBA) didn’t interest me.
Then I thought maybe clown. Maybe I will get a Masters Degree in Clown and write a thesis on women clowns, or women in clowning and their role in society or something like that.
In my dream I didn’t even think that was a stupid idea or a waste of time, money, or a Harvard degree.
Hmmmmmm.
What could that dream mean?
Last night at Phoebe’s bar after the show, one of the Big Apple Clown Care Unit clowns, introduced me to her friend as someone who “sees a lot of shows and takes a lot of workshops”.
She probably meant it as a conversation starter, but I was mortified.
Am I a dilettante?
I feel it more strongly now, the passage of time.
Tonight was the last New York Downtown Clown Revue and Golden Nose Awards.
A community of clowns.
Moving on.
There were two new babies there.
I remembered the Clown College Reunion at Circus Circus in Las Vegas in 2001. Somewhere there is a photo of me in full makeup and costume wearing my baby in a bijorn carrier
Some clowns talked of weddings.
I remembered all the Annex weddings at the end of the 1990’s.
Our kids are big now. A new generation is just starting marriages and families.
The mortality elephant-in-the-room, cancer, was there in conversation about a mutual friend in the hospital and in the presence one who hid her bald head under a hat.
And the story keepers there too;
Hovey Burgess gave an award to Michael Christianson and told stories of the days of Larry Pisoni and The Pickle Family Circus and the San Francisco Mime Troupe and touring Europe and the early days of the Big Apple Circus. Jim Moore was there with his camera.
It is a real community, the clown community.
We took My Kid to see the show Time Step the New Victory Theatre on 42nd Street. It was absolutely charming.
I’m having a family meeting.
We’re going over the calendar of upcoming events.
I’m the only one at this meeting.
The rest of the family have signed off on their delegates to this meeting.
Everyone has delegated to me.
So here I am
By myself.
Looking at the calendar and deciding which is more important. For me to take My Kid to soccer practice or for me to not take My Kid to soccer practice and instead attend the: Workshop for Families: How can you support your third, fourth, and fifth grade students’ reading progress? Teachers College Reading and Writing Project staff developer, Emily Smith will share information to help you encourage and support your child’s reading growth across the upper elementary years.
I was going to go to that.
I had completely forgotten about soccer practice…
Let’s see, what else…
I called the piano teacher and moved My Kid’s lesson from 4 pm on Saturday to 1 pm on Sunday due to a conflict with her soccer game.
I am trying to decide if this will then affect my ability to participate in Eliza Ladd’s Tribal Epic improvisational workshop leading to a potential performance opportunity which is also on Sunday afternoon when My Kid has yet another soccer game in addition to the piano lesson which may end up being cancelled in favor of chilling and free play in the life of my over booked child. And I’m not even going out of my way to put her in a lot of stuff. I blame it on the two after-school days per week devoted to free test prep in preparation for the stupid standardized tests that will affect My Kid’s middle school choices.
Monday will require some finessing since there is not that much time between the end of My Kid’s ballet class and The Husband getting home from work and the Downtown Clown event I am planning to attend…
…and what about dinner and homework?
Eleven o’clock at night and my 9-year-old is just now starting to do her homework.
We just got back from seeing our home schooled neighbor in the NYCHEA (New York City Home Educators Alliance) production of the musical Annie. Daddy Warbucks was played by an adult, the father of the girl playing “Annie” as it happens. He was the oldest person on stage. The next oldest cast member was 16, with the majority of actors in the 9-13 age range. “Miss Hannigan” was 13 and “President Roosevelt” was 12. I spent part of the evening watching the musical director as he conducted the orchestra of one trumpet and one drummer while banging out the tempo on the grand piano and occasionally mouthing the words. Boy he really must love musical theatre! Productions like this one drive home which elements are essential for a good book musical.
I can’t believe I’ve never seen a stage production of Annie before. I wanted so badly to play “Annie” when I was a kid.
When Andrea McArdle was on the Tonight Show I stayed up past my bedtime to watch her come out and sing “Tomorrow” and then give a gift of some kind of special Philadelphia sausage to guest host David Brenner.
“Tomorrow” was my very first audition song. I belted my heart out at my very first audition for the very first community musical produced by the Missoula Children’s Theatre. (J.K. Simmons was in it.) Unfortunately for me, they were looking for a boy soprano, the musical was Oliver!
This evening did not go well, and I feel guilty. It is my want as I take the role of mother in this scenario also I’m Catholic so I’m very good at feeling guilty.
The day was spent focused on the physical aspects of the apartment aka housekeeping.
I picked up the kid at 4:30 post after-school test prep UGH!
So neither me nor my kid had spent the day doing the things we love…
So
Art? Yes. No… TV… Play…
What will we do?
How about a meltdown?
I can’t believe I told her, “If the neighbors call 911, you are going to have to tell the police why you are screaming because I have no idea.” (My Mom is going to enjoy a schadenfreude moment when she reads this.) Not my best parenting moment…
Can we please pull it together before Daddy get’s home?
Dick Van Dykely home from the Midtown Manhattan expecting Mary Tyler Moore and a kid in pajamas ready for a good night kiss…
More like Roseanne Barr’s “If the kid’s are still alive when my husband gets home I’ve done my job.”
Only the soup is ready.
Actually we still have to go…
…to the store…
before we can make dinner…
Arctic char, broccoli, fresh baguette, a little wine…
Sounds good…
But, it’s not, because…
The homework’s not done…
Oh, and there’s a hole in the pipe under the kitchen sink so… I have to wash the dishes in the bathtub!
God the daily dinner-homework-bedtime show can become downright Shakespearean!
AND IT’S ONLY TUESDAY!
Is there an emoticon for “kill me now”?
This afternoon just after I had climbed the stairs hauling my cart full of clean clothes from the laundromat my friend called. She was in the neighborhood because she was going to a reading at Irondale. I had an hour before I had to pick up My Kid from dance class at Mark Morris so we met for a beverage at a table in the sun and talked about New York Magazine’s ranking of our respective neighborhoods. I was able to join her for the reading of Barbara Wiechmann’s play, The Holy Mother of Hadley New York. It was good AND my friend and I ran into another friend we both knew when we all lived in Seattle who has recently moved to New York and works for RipeTime, “a theatre company devoted to producing ensemble driven theatre infused with rich language, visual power and physical rigor”. How cool is that!
For our Easter celebration we went to see the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus this evening. It was the 7:30 pm and the last show in Madison Square garden, a full house with lots of little girls in pretty spring dresses. The rigging was hauled away to be packed onto the truck at the end of each act.
Funundrum–what a strange title.
I could tell by the poster that the publicity machine had gone into action before the show had a headline act.
And, the show didn’t have a headline act.
co·nun·drum n.