Tag: female energy

Hmmmm

I was thinking of the comments from an actor who came to the show last night.  He also does some stage clown work.  He’s youngish white male from a traditional background. He was blown away by the female energy he felt coming from the stage.  The thing that is surprising to me is that it is a surprise to anyone.  It’s a small stage, a small audience a dozen performers and a lot of different images.  Except for the point at which I was completely filled with anxiety over the higher stakes of promoting this production and trying to take the troupe to the next level, it is not a particularly ambitious production.  This is not the first time we have filled the stage with women in red noses riffing off cultural images.  Yet, the actor was surprised that he fell “a little bit in love” with all of the clowns even though they were all very different.  None of them presented herself as a proper ingenue or leading lady.  Hmmm.

This morning I googled a bit looking for artist moms and I found some websites and some blogs by and about women who are combining visual art with parenting.  One essay about a documentary film about artist moms described how their art was just as good as the work of male artists in Soho galleries or at the MoMa where less than 5% of the permanent collection is art made by women.  Apparently these women-artist-moms could combine making art and having children, but the aggressive self-promotion of the male art world was the aspect of a prominent art career that these women may have let slide (or they promoted themselves and nobody cared so they stopped wasting their limited energy, or they made compromises by being choosing to raise a family far away from the centers of art and criticism.  Hmmm.

During this Clown Axioms rehearsal process, it was the marketing aspects of the production that threatened to put me over the edge.  Hmmm.

And so I make peace with being unknown because self-promotion is not always worth the stress.

Is that why so many of the successful artists are men while the majority of practitioners are women?

Hmmmm…

Opening night went well

We had a full house and they laughed.

Afterwards I talked for a few minutes with some of my friends, from Jef Johnson’s Clownlab, who came together to see the show.

One of the guys was quite impressed with all the female energy.  He said he fell in love with all of the women and we’re all so different.  It’s not something one sees on stage very often.  (I Wish I’d seen “The Women” on Broadway.)

I didn’t start to feel nervous about the show until I was on the subway platform alone waiting for the train to take me into Manhattan.

Before that it was a regular mommy day.  There was a publishing party in My Kid’s class.  The Husband and I grabbed breakfast together at a diner after the classroom event and before The Husband went to his office.  We had a chance to talk.

Then I came home and got some writing done.  By the time I was finished it was almost time to go pick up My Kid from school.  I got her Girl Scout vest, and then set it down again in my search for something else.  I took My Kid and two friends to Girl Scouts and learned that the mother who had planned to be there as another adult had an emergency so I stayed.  I had to leave before it was over to get something to eat because I hadn’t had lunch and I had planed to eat and go over my notes for the show while My Kid was at Girl Scouts.

After that was over, My Kid and I came home.  I wouldn’t stop at the toy store or anywhere else because I needed to get home to get ready.  We talked to a neighbor mommy and kid we hadn’t seen in a while just as we got to the house.  I ended up taking a shower to wake up.  Then I put on my makeup before I left because the dressing room at La MaMa is so cramped.

The Husband got home after seven and I left at 8:00pm for the 10 o’clock show.

When I returned home at 1:00 am, My Kid was asleep on the couch, still fully dressed.  She had fallen asleep trying to wait up for me.