Tag: Brooklyn

Monday, a day off

It’s Yom Kippur, the New York Public Schools are closed so my kid is home.  Even if there was school she would probably home today with a cold.  So here I am with a sunny day, a kid with enough energy to play  and I can’t call anyone for a playdate because she is germy.  The Husband also has a cold and he looked pretty miserable as he got ready for work this morning.  He was coughing as his cold moves to his chest from his head where it was yesterday, after making it’s first appearance in his throat on Saturday.  But, he can’t stay home, there is a deadline.

For me it’s a day of playing catch-up as I realize how many things I have let slide after two three-day weekends of rehearsals with a week of production work sandwiched in between.  My kid is missing the weekend family time and has made her point in a number of ways from the very clear “I don’t like it when you are always at rehearsal,” to end-of-the day meltdowns.

(Yesterday at the end of the rehearsal when we were talking about the upcoming techs which will be on weeknights in venue between 5:30 and 11:00 pm  one of the other clowns spoke of her anxiety over childcare.  She was awake in the middle of the night worrying about it.  The time is hard because the start time is before the husbands are home so babysitters must be found, babysitters that will more than eat up the small payment we will receive for these performances.  I didn’t perform in New York at all when My Kid was little.  It was just too expensive.  You have to pay cash up front not just for all the hours spent at auditions, rehearsals and performances, but also for all the time spent traveling to and from home and the studios and theaters.  Where I live in Brooklyn there are daycare centers with waiting lists and a large network of live-out nannies that come to the home to watch the children of professionals during office hours.  But, when the work is evenings and on weekends, childcare is covered by a patchwork of babysitters made up of artists, students, relatives and neighbors.  Organizing enough coverage to meet work obligations can become overwhelming and that is the real reason that women with children drop out of the workforce.  They really want to work and they enjoy it.

I overhead a couple of mothers at school the other day.  One had just gone back to work and the other was asking how it was going.  The response, “It’s so easy.  I come home from work and the kids have already run around at the playground and the house  is clean!”

Julie and Julia

We saw the movie hours ago this afternoon but we are still talking about it.  We’re googling Julia Child and an actor friend from our Annex days– Julia Prudhomme (we never knew she was related to Julia Child! ).  We have less than six degrees of separation from this movie in several directions:  Julie Powell lived in Brooklyn at some point in the story;  our friend is related to Julia Child; one of our native French speaking neighbors recorded some text for another neighbor who was a vocal coach on the movie…

But mostly, we loved watching Meryl Streep and Stanley (“Big (food movie) Night”) Tucci as Julia and Paul Child.

From a going into the studio to do clown work tomorrow perspective; Julia Child was a 6’2″ woman who couldn’t play the 1950’s cute little woman ideal and oh what freedom that gave her to do great work!

Bigfork Summer Playhouse Alumni Questionaire

name

address  Brooklyn, NEW YORK

yada yada yada

Married/partnered/children/pets YES

Years you participated in the Bigfork Summer Playhouse: 1990

Names of productions and roles performed (if you remember). Shy in The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, Anytime Annie in 42nd Street, the youngest daughter, in the red and white dress while everyone else wore pastels, getting carried all over the place by everyone in The Pirates of Penzance

Were you part of the crew? no

Are you still involved in the performing arts? yes

What is your current career? stage clown, Clowns Ex Machina

What hobbies do you pursue now?  What are you passionate about? drinking coffee and raising my daughter

How did your experience with BSP affect your career choices? helped define me as a comedienne

What is the biggest lesson you learned from your tenure with BSP? don’t date outside the company

What was the funniest/hardest/most dramatic moment from your tenure with BSP? The man-boy actors were in the middle a pie fight using the leftovers from the gala just as the local volunteer ladies showed up to visit the dorm and collect the empty potluck dishes.

What was the biggest challenge faced doing Repertory Theatre with BSP. getting enough sleep  Do you think this is still a challenge? yes

Any tales of romance or intrigue you’d care to share with us? that’s like asking if there are any undiscovered lakes you can see from the highway

What advice would you give an aspiring actor just getting involved with BSP.  It’s not abut being talented it’s about putting in the hours.  What do you wish someone had told you before your accepted your spot with cast/crew?  start young, stay long, appreciate Montana

What makes BSP unique compared to other summer stock or repertory theater groups?  It’s in Bigfork, MONTANA!!!!!!!!  In the SUMMER!

Why do you think theater and performing arts are important to our society? THIS is the question that caused me to set aside this form without filling it out…just saying.  What benefits are there to participating in live theatre as a crew or cast member?  Is this an essay question? How about as an audience member?  As a kid growing up in Missoula in the 1970’s it was the closest I could get to professional theatre watching Kim and David Simmons, Laurie Bialik, Emily Clubb, Dick Nagle, Jim Caron, Kathy Danzer and the rest…

What’s your one dearest wish for the future of the Bigfork Summer Playhouse?  That it will continue long enough for me to be a “blue-hair” watching my niece on stage while my daughter runs the light board. 

The Missoula Public Library and The Book Exchange

I was literally plugging in my laptop so I can check my e-mail from a public wi-fi site (because my parents only have dial-up) when my cell phone rang.  It was Kendall asking if I’ve sent out the e-mail blast asking for donations for the troupe. Yikes I haven’t.  GUILT.  I’m a bad friend.  I am a bad company member.  I dropped the ball. Twice that I’m aware of–maybe three times if end up not making it to the Bigfork Summer Playhouse Reunion this weekend.  I’m here in Montana without a car and just today getting passwords and such so I can walk over to my brothers house in order to use my laptop outside of a coffee shop with wifi.  

Last night I really missed being able to check e-mail and facebook as part of my bedtime routine.  At the hotel in Seattle I’d go to the lobby for wifi or use The Husband’s bluetooth connection because I don’t have a crackberry of my own.

In Brooklyn before we left we made it to the good-bye party for the friends moving to Uganda but I didn’t get back to the friend running for office in Brooklyn who needed me to fax him our info because his campaign lost our donor card.  The Husband was too busy at work trying to get ready to leave town for a week.  I was cleaning and packing and trying to say good-bye to the friends who will have moved away by the time we get back to Brooklyn.  Things were dropped. Things were missed.

Now I’m at the public library where I have come with My Kid, Girl Cousin and The Grandparents.  The girls are signing up for the summer reading program (grand prizes provided by Dairy Queen) and searching the shelves for matching books to read to their dolls.

And now we’re at The Book Exchange where my father has a lot of credit and his grandaughters are sure to acquire some new books in the next few minutes.  While I try once again to go on facebook and see who I know from long ago who is in Missoula, Montana at this point in time.  Yesterday I got a call on my cell phone from an old friend and we were so excited to speak to each other that it took a while to figure out that I who live in Brooklyn am in Missoula and she who lives in Montana is in New York.

Now that I’m sitting here looking across the street at the fairgrounds where the rides and animal pens are being set up for the Western Montana Fair and My Kid is otherwise occupied I can’t remember what I wanted to say.  It’s just so weird being back in my home town, a not-young (this is a college town) mom, just visiting from my Brooklyn, New York.

And the girls are ready to go.

a moment or so

I’m sitting here ALONE  in the bar in the lobby of the Westin, the hotel that looks like a silo, in downtown Seattle.  I have in front of me my laptop which I haven’t touched since we got off the plane and a pretty lemondrop martini.  The Husband took My Kid for a walk so I could have some time to myself.  But,  I’ve been checking my e-mail and facebook which is good because we’re trying to hook up with some old friends while we are in Seattle.  (And of course there was at least one e-mail from someone who used to live in Brooklyn, back home to visit their relatives checking to see if we’re around to get together, and we’re not…) Though I have been here, at this table with my laptop, for some time I have not yet written the blog that I sat down here intending to write.  There is so much to process.  This is the city where The Husband and I met working in the same theatre.  This is where we became engaged, got married, had a baby, bought a house  (I felt tears trying to well up behind my eyes this morning at Home Depot, where we drove The Husband’s mother on an errand for some shelf brackets for her apartment, because we spent so much time at Home Depot with our little baby, right after we bought our little house that needed so much work, as we lay the groundwork for the life that we ended up not living in Seattle.  I had selected my paint chips…

AND THERE’S MY CELLPHONE RINGING!

“Mom.  Dad fell asleep.”

“Are you in the room?”

“Yeah.”

“OK.  I’ll be up in a little while and then we’ll go swimming.”

and that’s all she wrote

Black men close to home

I have so much faith in Obama that I think the whole Henry Louis Gates Jr. arrest fiasco will be cleared up when the police officer, the professor and the President of the United States have a beer together at the White House. 

There is no such hope for Shem Walker, a man I never met, who was shot to death by a cop on his own stoop 12 blocks from where I live in Brooklyn.  He is my neighbor.

Undercover cops dressed as drug dealers loitering on the stoop of Mr Walker’s elderly mother.  Mr. Walker told them to move.   They did not respond.  So he pushed them off his elderly mother’s stoop.  That’s when one of the undercover cops fatally shot Mr. Walker in the chest.  Mr Walker died.  The undercover cop required two stitches.

These two scenarios have been playing out in my imagination for days.