Altos Have More Fun

There's a point in every young actress's life when she wants to be the ingenue. She wants to be Christine Daae, Sandy, Eliza Doolittle, Cinderella, Maria von Trapp. These are all leading ladies - some are lovely damsels, wilting flowers - and they are all sopranos.

And then there's a point when the actress realizes that Reno Sweeney, Rizzo, Velma Kelly, Mame* - the altos - are actually the more fun roles to play. (Yes, of course this is a broad generalization, and yes, it does depend a lot on the play. Tracy, the "ingenue" of Hairspray is still a more "fun" role than Christine Daae.)

*You don't even really have to be a great singer for Mame. Lucille Ball, after many years of smoking, played Mame and basically spoke in rhythm for most of the songs.

When I was a teenager, I wanted so badly to play an ingenue. I wasn't the highest soprano out there, but I had a good range. The problem was, I didn't have The Look. My mom once cautioned me that a role I wanted was one the directors saw as being "pale and frail." Well, I've got the pale down. The frail... not so much.

I go more into that aspect of my time in the theatre in this post.

About the time I hit my early-mid twenties (shortly before I stopped doing theatre altogether), it occurred to me that the altos had more fun. I started auditioning for roles like Rizzo; even though I was technically a soprano or mezzosoprano, I had a decently broad range, so higher altos (like Rizzo) were perfectly feasible for me, from a vocal standpoint, at least.

Driving along in the car sometimes, belting (as best I can, now that my range is more limited) along with Anything Goes, I do kind of wish I could go back and remind myself not to ONLY audition for the leading lady. Sometimes the alto sidekick has more fun.

Put the Band on Stage

The past couple days I've been thinking a lot about theatre. Specifically, songs I've listened to have triggered a need to choreograph and/or design. Listening to "Rock Around the Clock," I was thinking about choreography for Grease (particularly egregious, as I turned down an offer to choreograph said show...). Today, driving to Elianna's appointment, my randomizer brought up “Prologue/Tradition” from Fiddler on the Roof and oh... my brain wouldn't shut off.

"Hey. Hey!" my brain said, "What if some of the band were up on stage with the rest of the villagers? What if you hid instruments in the props? Have a mama or a daughter with a tambourine disguised as an embroidery loop. And banging kitchen implements! Oh! And have a papa or a son with a xylophone hidden by an anvil!"

And it kept going. I was brain storming all kinds of props - house and farm implements that could be turned into instruments, or vice versa. Thinking about how to costume everyone. Wondering if we could get away with having an alto woman in a beard playing the Rabbi (there are never enough guys for shows). Heck, can we have the whole band in costume on stage?

Then I started thinking about what other shows you could have the band on stage. When I was in college, we did Cabaret and the band was in costume as the club's band. When I was in high school, we did Anything Goes, and the band all had fancy music stands so they looked like the ship's band. They all had a big moment where they reacted to the news that there was a wanted criminal on board. "SNAKE-EYES JOHNSON?!" the whole band cried in unison. And what about Grease? Put all the band in letter sweaters. Or do period marching band costumes.

And, yeah, I know it increases the costume budget - suggesting period marching band costumes is probably not the way to get the producer or director to agree to having the band in costume on stage.

But Fiddler? Yeah, you could probably do it with Fiddler - raid thrift stores for peasant shirts, old "dress" shirts, floppy pants, broomstick skirts, aprons... Grab surplus fabric for cheap to make head scarves for the ladies. Small throw blankets make great shawls. While that's not the most historically accurate way to do it, I feel that Fiddler is one of those that can be costumed partly from what the cast already owns. Which is probably why I see a lot of community theatres doing it.

I just like the idea of including the band in stage when you can - for a lot of shows, I feel that it adds something.

I also think that if I ever were to get back into theatre, I'd likely be doing costuming or choreography. Possibly directing. I have a feeling that if Elianna ends up getting into theatre that I will definitely get dragged back in. Now I'm reminded of the time I did costumes for our high school's production of I Never Saw Another Butterfly. I was also in the show, and was still madly sewing stars of David onto sweaters and shawls backstage during final dress rehearsal. I accidentally sewed my own sweater to my skirt and had to hobble out onto stage clutching my sweater to my knee. Yeah, let's not do THAT again : )

Sometimes the Theatre Creeps Back In

A few days ago, I woke up with a production concept in my head. I don't know why, but this just happens on occasion. Sometimes I just wake up, or I'm driving, or whatever, and I have an idea for sets or costumes for a play.

I should clarify that this isn't an idea of a NEW play that I'm going to write. This is more "if I were directing X show, if I were the costume or set designer for Y show."

Back a year or two ago I had some ideas for costumes for R2D2, C3PO, and Yoda for William Shakespeare's Star Wars. A while ago I had an idea to do Chicago with Billy Flynn played by a woman and how her costumes would look.

Last week's dream was a production theme for the stage version of Little Women. It started with the set - a bare stage with a wooden back wall. A clothesline is strung across the wall. A grip - a woman in dark period dress - comes out and hangs a stocking (as in, a single leg long sock, not a Christmas stocking) on the line for each of the girls - something plain and practical for Meg, either a bold color or stripes for Jo, black lace trimmed for Beth, and delicate pink lace for Amy. Each act change or scene change, the clothes line gets changed out - vintage "tin type" style portraits, bunches of flowers for Meg's wedding, photos of the 1870 New York skyline when Jo visits the city... and the hook designated as Beth's stays empty after she dies.

It's a simple set. Going with the idea of the "wild theatricals" the girls put on in the attic, it's the sort of set teenage girls during the Civil War could cobble together - trunks, crates, a few simple props - and all brought out by either the actresses themselves, or costumed grips.

I haven't been involved in a theatrical production since I moved back to Georgia in 2007 (unless you count the Christmas pageant I wrote for my parents' church around that time). I majored in theatre but, aside from ghost tours and children's story times, I haven't done anything with that major. But sometimes the theatre creeps back in.

I guess you can take the girl out of the theatre, but you can't take the theatre out of the girl.

Time for that ever-fun game, “Can I Costume a Show Using Only Stuff from My Own Closet?”

Volume Revolution

Jason and I recently finished watching the second season of The Mandalorian, which I imagine many of you have watched as well (don't worry if you haven't - no spoilers here!). Around the time we finished, a friend of ours recommended we watch the documentaries about the behind the scenes stuff.

As a theatre major, I always enjoy watching things about how the sets or costumes were made, how effects were created, etc. - and Jason enjoys that, too. Plus, rather than one long making-of documentary, it is conveniently broken up into little 30-minute mini documentaries. (Jason and I often have difficulties finding a long stretch of time to watch longer things together.)

So far, we've only watched one of the four behind the scenes specials; we watched The Volume. The episode was not, as I would have guessed by the title, about the sound mixing or music, but rather about a revolutionary new space that they used for the filming. The space itself is called The Volume. It's a studio, a soundstage - in a way you've never seen one before. If you've ever been to the cyclorama in Atlanta, you may have an inkling of what this space is like.

The Volume is surrounded by screens - screens on the ceiling, and 360 degrees around. Rather than using green screen - actors standing in front of obnoxiously-colored empty space, pointing at an approaching monster that has yet to be built - the film crew uses a video game engine* to project the fully-designed, fully-realized scenery all around the actors. The actors are immersed in the world as fully as though they were on location - with the obvious advantage that, even though this technology is new and was expensive to build, you only have to set it up once, rather than flying actors, crew, and equipment to various distant locales.

*Ask someone who knows abut video games what a "video game engine" is, if you want more info on that - I only have a vague notion of how it works.

Hearing the actors speak in awe of this new way of filming, how it completely changes everything and makes their immersion more complete and their performances better, it made me wonder what this might do for the cinema audience. Watching the documentary, I was immediately struck at how the Volume reminded me of rides as Disney and Universal; a fully-immersive world that the rider travels through. I thought of how you might create a ride, an experience with this technology - and have millions of tourists flock to experience it and charge large sums of money for the privilege. Then I recalled an article I had recently read about a TV show Disney+ was looking to reboot.

In the article, the writer came right out and said that cinema was dead, that the film industry will not recover from the pandemic (citing shorter length streaming content as the new entertainment medium of choice). But seeing this documentary, I don't think that's true.

Oh, yes, it will take a while to come back from this. But what if we change the cinematic experience? What if we take the Volume, what if we take the movie theatres that are closing - and remake them. What if we start making film in the round? What if we take the big blockbuster-type movies - the sort of stuff you're already used to paying a little more to go see in 3D or Imax - and make it a fully immersive experience? The superhero soars over your head as the explosion goes off behind you. This is better than Imax, better than surround sound. You're there. You're in the film.

Can we make it happen? Is this a revolution for cinema?

Art and Your Health

A couple days ago, I met up with a friend (socially distanced, of course). I was wearing one of my old Nutcracker cast sweatshirts (I was in the Atlanta Ballet's Nutcracker for four years when I was a kid). My friend commented on the shirt, and we talked about the year that she had also auditioned for the same production. She was 12. She was rejected because, as one kind judge put it, "you're too good-looking." The children's choreographer, who was more blunt, elaborated, "you're too mature-looking," and finally, when this 12 year old still didn't understand, "your breasts are too big."

Obviously, my friend was very upset by this at the time, and still remembers the sting of being turned away from a production she desperately wanted to be in, for a reason that she couldn't do anything about.

Later, as a 20-year-old college student, she was in a dance class and realized, watching in the mirror as her short, curvy self danced in a line with taller, willowy ballerinas, that, yes, the visual difference between herself and other dancers did disrupt the line and flow of the choreography. She said that realizing this for herself as a college student - realizing that she couldn’t "fit" in a professional dance company - was hard, but also drastically different than being told at 12 that your body is a problem.

As another curvy former ballerina, I completely understand this. “Curvy” is being kind - I was fat. (No, this isn't body shaming, fat shaming, etc. When you're 11 years old, not quite five feet tall, and weigh 111 pounds, you're fat no matter how you slice it.) My ballet teacher who, yes, was the same blunt children's choreographer from that audition, always gave me grief about my weight.

Most of the girls at my ballet school started pointe (dancing in toe shoes) at 11. My teacher had me wait a year; she said my ankles weren't strong enough to support all my weight on my toes. Not that I was any better at 12. For some strange reason, I gained approximately 10 pounds a year in middle school - weighing 111 at 11, 123 at 12, and 132 at 13.

Miss Joanne might have had a point, as hard as it was for me to hear. I destroyed my ankles; after a year on pointe, I had not progressed in my pointe work. Rather, I had gotten to where I could not rise up onto my toes without pulling myself up on the barre.

I also neglected to mention that the year I was 12 was the last year I danced in the Atlanta Ballet's Nutcracker, and the last year that my sister and I attended their ballet school. We didn't get into the Nutcracker the next year and, rather than continuing to drive almost an hour four days a week (between the two of us) to class, we found a new ballet school closer to home.

This was also around the time that girls my age were deciding whether to continue in the pre-professional classes - four, five, and eventually six days a week with the intention of one day auditioning for a professional dance company and making this a career. There would be no time for any other activities - I would have to drop drama club, which I had been in for a couple years.

Ankles aside, this was about the time I started to notice differences between me and some of the other girls in my class. They were thin. Some were too thin. Some of them were already talking about how all they ate between breakfast and going home to dinner - late, after all their dance classes - was low fat yogurt and an apple.

I didn't really understand yet what eating disorders were. But I also knew that 1. I couldn't commit to that kind of lifestyle, and 2. it wasn't healthy.

Around the time I turned 14, toward the end of 8th grade, unable to dance on pointe, and unwilling to drastically change my lifestyle in order to do so, I decided that I would drop ballet and instead continue with theatre.

Dance - ballet in particular - is one of those arts that's known for the extremes the artists push themselves to. To some extent, it's necessary. The human body wasn't designed to support 150 pounds on a single toe; some people can make it work with 90, though.

But dance isn't the only art that seems to produce health issues. There is, of course, the whole concept of the starving artist; the person who is so dedicated to their art that they live in poverty and squalor, making art rather than money, neglecting their health, burning their manuscript to stay warm, and dying tragically young. It's not just something you see in an opera. Jonathan Larson, creator of Rent, died younger than I am now. The night before his magnum opus was to open, he collapsed on his kitchen floor with an aortic aneurysm - something that could have been prevented had he seen a doctor in the past decade, which of course he couldn't afford to do, even working full time as a waiter.

Jim Henson died of abscesses in his lungs because he was “too busy” to go to the doctor for the flu.

And these are looked on and admired as the great tragic artists of our time. They gave all for their art.

On the other hand you have Stephen King. Prolific author, has "made it big," and is still alive and kicking. Is he less of an artist because he's still OK?

There came a time that I had to decide between theatre - and by theatre, I mean working 3 part-time jobs, driving a car held together by duct tape and mold, going to auditions but never getting called back, living with my parents, having no health insurance - and getting a full time job so that I could live something better than an abjectly miserable existence. Did that make me less of an artist than those I know who did continue with that starving artist lifestyle?

I've been writing for years. I still don't dedicate the time to it that I "should." I've been to conferences and workshops, taken classes, and read books on how to be a novelist. Many authors - so many authors - suggest staying up late, after everyone goes to bed, to write, or getting up before dawn to write... or both. And... I can't. I have insomnia. I have anxiety. I had post-partum depression not quite a year ago. (Oh, yeah, I also have a toddler.)

Sleep is non-negotiable. My own nutrition is non-negotiable. My picky, teething 16-month old's nutrition and physical therapy are non-negotiable.

Does my putting my well-being, and that of my daughter ahead of my writing make me less of an artist? Maybe. But if I never finish my novel, if I live to see my daughter grow up, if I live a decent life in comfort and good health and never publish another story... if those are the only choices, then I'll live with that.

12-year-old me and my 8-year-old sister in all our mid-90’s giant sweatshirt glory.

Memories and Magic

Hello, readers! As I mentioned a few weeks ago, posts will continue to be sporadic for a while as I get used to the routine (or lack-there-of) of being a new mom.

For the meantime, though, please enjoy a re-posting of a blog I wrote right around this time 3 years ago:

How many of you remember what you went as for Halloween when you were kids? How many different years' costumes can you name? I'm going to make a go for ALL of them (at least up to senior year in high school).

2 years old - Smurfette

3 - Minie Mouse

4 - Cinderella

5 - Dorothy

6 - a bride

7 - an Amish girl

8- black cat

9 - black cat again. I don't remember why I was a black cat 2 years in a row, but it was the closest to "something scary" my mom would let me be until I was older.

10 - gypsy

11 - a vampire! Finally!

12 or 13 - a butterfly. Whichever year I was a butterfly was the year it snowed. On Halloween. In metro Atlanta. The butterfly costume quickly turned into "Elizabeth in her green parka." Don't remember what I was the other year.

14 - Egyptian. I was quick to point out at the Drama club Halloween party that I was not Cleopatra, as I didn't consider her to be a "real" Egyptian due to her Greek ancestry (I was weird about stuff like that at that age). Not that I, as a re-headed Celto-Ukrainian have any business being picky about who's a "real" Egyptian...

15 - Spanish Renaissance Princess

16 - Salem Witch. I won the Drama club Halloween contest with this costume.

17 - Juliet. Not entirely dissimilar to age 15, but it was a different dress...

In all honesty, 15, 16, and 17 may not actually be in order. I went to the Drama Club Halloween party every year, and also chaperoned my younger sister and her best friend trick-or-treating.

I always tried to have a cool costume every year after that, working or not, going to a party or not. Some years in college I lucked out in that Halloween would fall in the middle of the week and the weekends on both sides ended up having some costume extravaganza to go to. Sometimes I had a costume for each party. But then, I was a theatre major and a costume nerd and could usually "throw something together" that was at least as good as something you could buy.

Halloween 2014 stands out as one of my favorite costume experiences. I was a children's librarian at the time, and I went as Elsa from Frozen. I tell you what, kids know exactly what you're doing if you have even the most vague representation of a costume. I had a platinum blonde wig that I had braided, and a vaguely blueish satin(ish) dress. And every kid (except one) who came into that children's department that day stopped in their tracks and said in whispered awe, "It's ELSA!" (The one kid who did not told his awed 6 year old sister, "That's not Elsa, that's just a grownup.") Oddly enough, this was the second Halloween I can remember that it snowed... Maybe I should be more careful with my costume selection.

But the things I remember most about Halloween as a kid, was the feeling that anything could happen. Those chilly, cloudy nights out walking through the dark neighborhood, I would look up at the sky and see faint ghosts in swirling patterns. Most other nights I knew that wasn't a ghost, but rather a search light from a concert or a car lot. But on Halloween, it was a ghost. On Halloween, that empty house down the street might really be haunted. On Halloween that neighbor that likes to dress up like a scarecrow and sit on the front porch to startle trick-or-treaters might actually be an evil scarecrow come to life that would come get you.

Certain nights hold magic. Halloween is one of them. Christmas is another. On Christmas as a kid, that flashing red light in the sky isn't a plane - it's Rudolph. The fireplace making a thump isn't the flue cooling off and contracting - it's Santa. And I really believed for many years that if I sprinkled glitter on the Christmas tree and the nutcracker collection that one of these days they would magically transform and take me to a magical land... I believed this probably 'til I was way older than I should have.

But my point is, there is something very magical about Fall. (Yes, I know Christmas Day itself is about 4 days into Winter, but most of that buildup, most of that magical transformation is in Fall.) And there is something amazing about kids; they believe. They want to believe. They love to believe. And that is awesome.

Please comment with your favorite Halloween memory, costume, or story, and share with someone who believes in the magic : )

The Trouble with Casting

Some of you who follow this blog know that I was in theatre for a while. Sometimes it was in school (middle school, high school, and college), a few times it was community theatre, and on a couple of occasions, a professional company (one of these was a professional company that I didn't get paid to perform in, as the production was cast with kids in their dance school, and the other I would have gotten paid a small amount had I accepted the role).

The trouble I always had with theatre was casting. Once I got into a show, I always had people tell me what a great actress I was, how much they enjoyed my performance... But the problem was getting in.

I hate auditions. Always have. Auditions are a very large reason why I'm not in theatre anymore. In theory, at an audition, if you're good enough, you get the part. But in practice, there's a lot more to it than that:

-What's their first 5-second impression of you?

-Do you look like what they want for the part?

-Are you ungodly shorter than everyone else in the cast?

-Do you look like someone else they want to cast? (This can be a plus or minus depending on the show.)

-Are you related to someone else who is also auditioning?

-Are you just a wee bit chubby?

-Can you pass as a teenager? (Again, can be a plus or a minus - more on that later.)

-Are you one of 3,000 women auditioning for a play with 3 female parts? Are you a guy? Are there more male parts than men auditioning? If you are a girl and there are more male parts than guys auditioning, can you either pass as a guy, or know a guy you can bribe to be in the show?

-Are you sleeping with someone involved in the show (yes, sadly, that happens)?

-Can you dance?

Examining some of these (and of course these are only the tip of the iceberg of reasons you might not get cast) shows some of the challenges I've run up against (though a couple times things that could have been challenges worked out).

Do you look like someone else?

There was a time when I was in college that I wanted to be in a show that featured three sisters. I was a senior theatre major and there were two junior girls who had a similar build and coloring to me. One of them looked so much like me that when my dad saw a picture of her in a show that she had been in (that I had not been in), he was was annoyed that I didn't tell him I had been in the show. There were a bunch of people who were convinced that we were going to be cast as the three sisters. But the day the cast list went up, the two juniors and a sophomore who didn't look as much like them as I did got the parts. Many people were surprised - including the two juniors. Having not been cast at all, I was devastated. A couple friends, I think trying to comfort me, speculated that maybe I looked so much like the one actress above that the director was concerned the audience would get us confused.

Are you related to someone?

A few times when I was a kid, I think this worked out in my sister’s and my favor - two kids with one parent bringing them means one less person you have to rely on to get their kids there on time. My sister and I were in the Nutcracker together the last year I performed, and we were Wendy and Mrs. Darling, respectively, in a community theatre production of Peter Pan. Of course, the fact that at 18 I was the oldest actor in the children's production probably had more to do with my playing Wendy's mother than the fact that Wendy and I had a family resemblance. Of course there was also the fact that at 18 I had the body of a 40 year old woman who had let herself go somewhat... (no, seriously, I weigh 15 pounds less today than I did when I graduated from high school).

Can you pass as a teenager?

As someone who got carded into her 30's, this was something that I would have thought I had going for me, auditioning for young roles in adult shows. Sometimes it did - I played a 15-year-old school girl at the age of 23. But, as previously mentioned, I might have looked like a teenager, but I did not look like a SKINNY teenager. As in, not Sandy in Grease. And not many other young ingenues, either. To paraphrase Terry Pratchett, people will believe a fat 40 year old is a consumptive 18 year old, but they won't believe a fat 18 year old is a consumptive 18 year old (he was talking about opera, but it's true of straight theatre, too).

There were also times that being able to pass as a teenager was something of a detriment. When I was 24 or 25 I went to an audition for a musical using 50's/60's pop music. The four actresses in the show were supposed to be young bobby-socksers. Being in my mid 20's but looking more like 18 - and also being well-versed in the music and dance of the time - I thought I had it in. But all the other women at the audition were in their 30's or 40's. Like Terry said above, the audience will buy 40 year olds playing teenagers - provided they're not asked to believe that said 40 year olds are the same age as the girl who really does look 18.

Can you dance?

Oh, dear. This is a blessing and a curse. If you're auditioning for a musical with a major professional company, you damn well better be able to dance. But if you're auditioning for a community theatre where 90% of the people who show up can describe their dance experience as "I once did the Hokey Pokey without falling over," you will get stuck as the choreographer or the one-scene wonder.

My sister was once in a community theatre production of A Midsummer Night's Dream (aka, that Shakespeare play with the fairies). When the director found out that Katrina was at a near-professional level of ballet skill, boom, she was suddenly a blue-haired one-scene wonder fairy that did a pointe scene to cover time for a scene or costume change.

Sometimes, you get stuck as the one-scene wonder AND the choreographer. When I was about 25 (again, late teens-looking) I auditioned for a production of Grease in rural Tennessee. The casting call requested that we prepare a song as well as a short dance number. I showed up prepared to dance to Elvis's "Hound Dog" with a piece I had choreographed that included two swing steps, salsa, basic tap, and ballet. I really wanted to be Rizzo. I was offered to be the choreographer, and also Cha-Cha DiGregorio - "the best dancer with the worst reputation" - a character who exists for the sole purpose of being able to have a dance-off with Sandy in one scene.

Admittedly, there was a show I was in once where I was the choreographer, but also a had a decent amount of stage time as 2 other characters, but that seems to be the rare exception.

That's why I prefer writing - doesn't matter what you look like or if you can dance.

Three Minutes on the Stage, Forever in my Mind

I was in the Nutcracker four times when I was a kid - when I was 8, 10, 11, and 12. This meant that I spent every Sunday afternoon for most of Fall rehearsing. (I can't believe my mom's patience and dedication, driving me down to the studio on a sketchy corner of some Peachtree Street all the time.)

We rehearsed for what felt like months, years. The scenes - the performances themselves - seemed like they took half an hour. I mean that in a good way. The first two years, I was one of the toy soldiers. Our scene felt like a battle. It was action packed - it must have gone on and on, right?

The first year, I was the Littlest Soldier - the drummer. I was on stage the longest - the second soldier to move and the last soldier to leave the scene. I was the only soldier not carried off my a mouse; I stayed to the bitter end and pulled the Rat King's tail to distract him just long enough that the Nutcracker could get the upper hand. In the moment, and in my memory, it seemed like this scene took at least 20 minutes. I mean, it was a battle - it had to be long, right?

According to my Nutcracker CD, this scene is 3 minutes and 21 seconds.

Oddly enough, the scene that I felt was shorter, the opening of the second act where I played and angel two years in a row, is 3 seconds longer.

Now granted, despite the shortness of these scenes, I was on stage quite a bit. The first year I performed, there were 2 children's casts who alternated performances. I think each cast performed a total of about 20 times. By my last year, more performances and more casts were added - 4 children's casts in total each performing about 10 times.

As you might imagine, these shows took up a large portion of my December (in addition to the rehearsals taking up most of the Fall). There were even a couple days each year that I got to miss school, as there were several matinee performances on school days specifically for local school field trips.

The last year that I was in The Nutcracker, my younger sister was also in the show. She was 8 that year - the minimum age for the children performers with the Atlanta Ballet at the time. She actually was onstage for the half-hour that I perceived my scene to last. She was one of the Party Children, and if I thought my time was taken up by the show, hers was more-so. In addition to her longer scene, her hairdo took about 2 hours.

We were in the Nutcracker the last year that The Atlanta Ballet did the Balanchine version - the version that is still performed by the New York City Ballet. The next year, neither of us got in. We were devastated. There was a rumor that they weren't casting kids who had been in the old version. I don't know if it's true, but we comforted ourselves with both that idea, and the fact that the show we loved just wouldn't be the same now, so maybe it was better to remember it the way it had been.

4 years. Approximately 60 performances. 3 minutes on stage each time. That doesn't sound like a lot in the grand scheme of things. But it was such an integral part of Christmas for me, and the memories are still so bright. I could probably still follow most of my choreography for each scene, and, for that matter, some of the other scenes that I just watched.

Pick up your feet. Listen for your cue. It's Christmas - the time when memories and magic happen.

Behold 12-year-old me and my 8-year-old sister in all our giant-sweatshirted mid-90’s glory! Notice her curls. My mom had to redo her hair after every performance; she wore curlers to school sometimes.

The Costume Makes the Character

In a previous blog post a couple years ago, I talked about the importance of costume in character and world building.  You can read that here: 

Revisiting "Costume and Character" Post, April 2016

As a theatre major and a costume designer, I personally find that figuring out the character's costume really helps solidify who they are, what they are, where they are, and all those great W's of a character. Granted, there are times that going into too much detail can be distracting. As much as I love reading George R. R. Martin, he does have a tendency to go into so much detail that only a cosplayer who is going to be actually building this costume is still interested at the end of the description.

But it is helpful to know something about how a character is dressed and why. Did she pick out this outfit herself? Did she MAKE it herself, and what does that say about the world she lives in and the position she has in it? Does the character have a certain color, or range of colors that he wears exclusively? And again, is it a case of choosing that color, or is it more that he's in a position that he has to wear this for whatever reason? Regardless of the how or why the clothes were made or chosen, how does the character wear them? Does she take pride in her appearance? And is the pride related to her position? Does he just throw on whatever is lying around? Or has he specifically chosen clothes that make it LOOK like he has picked up whatever is lying around?

This is just as important in a contemporary peice as it is in a fantasy, sci-fi, or historical peice. I think it's something that maybe people think about less for modern peices, but showing the difference between a character who wears a nice dress even when she's working in a book store and a character who has just thrown on whatever rumpled khakis and t-shirt are lying around already tells you something about the two charatcers, even if you don't know anything else about them yet.

As I said above, I majored in theatre, and when I did so I chose a double concentration in performance and design. There was a decent period of time in college where I was always working on some costume project or another. But I was coming at it from the other side than I am now. In college, I was given a fully-formed character and told, "figure out what they're wearing." I had clues in the text to go by. Sometimes the playwright has very specific instructions. There's a Chekhov play, I don't remember which one now, where the dialogue indicates several times that a character is wearing a very tacky combination of a pink dress and a green sash. But this, of course, had it's reasons. Chekhov was pointing out not only that this character was awkward and didn't have a good fashion sense, but also that the other characters were petty enough to talk it up.

Now I come at it from the other side. I have to make sure that if I have pointed out what the character is wearing, that it's important. I'm the sort of person that reading a story I see it in enough detail that I don't necessarily need to know every nucance of a character's outfit. If you tell me they're at a ball, I see them in the finery of the time period you've already set up - unless you have made a point to note that one of the characters is wearing a suit that is at least a decade out of style.

This is actually something I need to work on for Brinyor. I don't know that I have ever described what Rigan (the main character) is wearing in any particular scene. (What makes this a particularly heinous oversight is that her mother dyes fabric for a living.) I do have one scene where I have described what Janus, another major character, is wearing, but really only because he is wearing it for an important ceremony and he's not happy about it. I really need to go back to the peice and figure out scenes where the reader needs to know what people are wearing and why. Maybe that's what I'll do next.

I have been thinking about this again lately, as I work on The Wolf and the Sheath.  I have, fortunately, done a little bit more to describe what Reyala wears in this piece than I had for Rigan in Brinyor, above.  But I still need to do more work on that.

Reyala travels from one society to another in this story.  The clothing of the two societies is different.  I have a very clear image in my head of what she wore in one place, and what she wears in another.  I still need to work on translating those to the page.  Are her clothes easy to move around in?  Can she dress and undress herself?  How does the difference in weather affect what she wears in one place rather than the other?

More than that, though, I need to work on the other characters' clothing.  It occurs to me that I have barely touched on ANY of the other characters' clothes, except one.  Even though Reyala is the main character, that doesn't mean that I can neglect what the rest of her society are wearing.

Part of the Art

If you're on Facebook, you've likely seen "post the covers of albums that had an impact on you" thing that's been going around.  There are several versions of it, but the one that I did directed you to post 10 albums, 1 each day for ten days, with the additional note that you not provide explanations.

4 of the 10 that I posted were either movie soundtracks, or ballets.  I seriously considered even more movie soundtracks, film scores, original cast recordings, and ballets.  Why I eventually decided not to was because it had been not simply the music, but also the story, film, and/or full production that impacted me.  (I decided on this distinction after having posted my first cover, The Lion King film score.)

Why did I decide on this qualification?  I guess it's kind of the same reason that I won't list plays among my favorite books, nor playwrights among my favorite authors; plays are written to be performed, not read.  You lose a large part of the play - even that which is left up to the interpretation of the director, performers, designers, and in some cases musicians - if you only read it.

Likewise, the music of a film or musical is just one part of the art.  The full experience involves both viewing and listening.  Take, for example, a recent project of mine.  I recently went through my closet and, finally, after much debating, got rid of all of my favorite videos.  (I kept a list and am slowing buying the DVDs!)  In so doing, I also jotted down the soundtracks of some these favorites, with the intent to buy or download them.  I have recently added the soundtracks for Hook, The Raiders of the Lost Ark, and MuLan to my collection.  I love these films.  I love their music.  Or, at least, I remembered the music in conjunction with the films being awesome.  

And that's not to say that the music isn't as good as I remember, but I actually did feel like I was missing something listening to these soundtracks rather than watching the films.  And maybe part of it is that you physically can't fit the entire score of 90+ minute movie onto a CD; maybe the parts that I remember loving in the film weren't included, or were truncated.  

Or maybe it really is that you can't have the full experience when you remove one aspect of the art from the rest of it.
 

Better Than Just Nostalgia

A couple weeks ago, Jason and I went to see The Lion King at the Fox.

The Lion King is one of the pieces of entertainment from my childhood where I can look back and say, "this is when I started appreciating things on a more adult level."  The movie came out when I was 12.  I remember, very specifically, watching the scene where the wildebeest stampede begins, flowing over the cliff like water, and being just blown away at how real it looked.  I remember thinking about it on a level beyond simple entertainment, thinking about the work that must have gone into it to make it look so good.  

I remember also feeling that way about the soundtrack.  Not the songs (which, don't get me wrong, are great), but the instrumental score.  The Lion King soundtrack was one of the first CDs I owned.  The other was classical music (and that right there should tell you A LOT about my personality in middle school and high school).  Now, I had other Disney soundtracks before - I know I had a cassette of the Aladdin soundtrack, and I'm pretty sure I would have had Beauty and the Beast, too.  But I had those for the fun songs.  I had Lion King for the reflective, relaxing, and sometimes goose-bump-inducing* instrumental pieces.

So, with all of the above, I went to see the stage production, knowing it would be drastically different, but still hoping it would hold up, not to the fond childhood memories, but to the pedestal I had set it on at 12 as an incredible production, different than all the kids' movies that had come before.  And you know what?  It did.

For those of you who aren't familiar with the stage version, the live musical incorporates masks, puppetry, and kind of abstract costumes.  There is no way to perfectly replicate animated animals on stage, so they don't really try.  The scenery, costumes, masks, etc. are stylized and abstract.  You find yourself forgetting that Zazu's actor is wearing a blue suit and bowler hat, and his face is painted to match - you focus on the puppet.  You find yourself forgetting that there is a dude underneath Scar's mask - you watch the mask move around like you would focus on the face of a lion about to pounce at you.

And then we came to the stampede.  Here it was, the moment of truth, the scene that stands out as a stark red line of Before and After in mind.  I won't try to explain how they made the scene work.  (I've tried typing it and it really loses something in nailing it down with words.)  I watched that scene.  I listened to the music build.  I knew what was coming.  And my hair still stood on end.

If you can tell a story, if you can replicate that orignal awe across years and multiple media, you have done what many of us only dream of.

*"Mufassa!"  "Oooh...  Do it again!"
 

Keeping it Real

How do you take something most people have never had to deal with - war, devastating natural disaster, genocide - and make it resonate?

You narrow the focus.  You pick something small, something someone can relate to, and you show the details that grip the emotions.  You make it familiar, you make it local, you make it relatable.

Last year, I applied for a job at KSU's Museum of Holocaust History and Education.  As part of the 2nd round of the process, I was asked to make a presentation suitable for 10th graders discussing the book Night by Eli Wiesel.  One of the things I included in the notes with the presentation were interactive exercises to be done with the students to help them digest the unfathomable idea of the sheer number of people killed.  One of these activities included randomly selecting 3 students from the class (assuming a class of 25) and informing them that of their class, they were the only ones to survive the forced-march evacuation of a concentration camp.  I did not get the job.  I wasn't given a reason, though I wonder if maybe the presentation was too intense.

Yesterday, I saw a graphic online of Hurricane Harvey's area of destruction as overlaid over other coastal areas.  It didn't hit home for me how massive the area of destruction was until they showed the area overlaid over the Georgia/Carolina coast - the entirety of South Carolina was covered, as was a chunk of Georgia as far inland as Macon.

Last night, Jason and I watched The Zookeeper's Wife.  This movie really "brought home" some things about Poland in WWII for me - and as someone who spent a large portion of middle school reading everything about the Holocaust that I could get my hands on, that's saying something.  I don't know why, but for some reason it never occurred to me that Warsaw was bombed when Germany invaded in September of 1939.  I don't know why I thought that Germany just rolled up in trucks and said, "hey, you're part of Germany now" and that was that.  And even then, maybe I had known at some point about the bombardment, but forgot, because it was the bombing of nameless, unfamiliar buildings.  When a mother walks out onto her back balcony to investigate the sound of airplanes, only for a bomb to land just dozens of feet away in her yard, while her son and pet play in the room behind her, that hits home.  Watching the animals that this woman has just greeted, petted, fed, and healed in the previous scenes  run in terror, or fall to the violence, becomes very real.  Watching the man who we have watched struggle with the dangerous choice of hiding people in his home take up arms and shoot at Nazis from between the bombed-out walls of the city that we have watched be slowly destroyed over the course of the movie makes the utter devastation and nightmare that the people of Warsaw had to deal with approachable.  You see pictures of a bombed out city and you think, "well, that sucks."  You watch characters you have come to "know" deal with the destruction and the loss, and it becomes real.

There is a phrase "a million is a statistic."  I think Eddie Izzard says it better, even though it was said in a joking context - "over 20, we can't deal with it."  I think it's true, though.  You tell someone that 20 people have died in a fire or a storm, and they think, "Oh, wow, 20 people.  That's how many people were at the last party I went to.  That's how many people are in my kid's class.  That's awful."  You say thousands or millions of people have died or been displaced, and we just can't wrap our heads around it.

In an odd way, it's another thing I learned from theatre.  One of my theatre professors was always impressing on us to make our acting choices - our choice of an expression, a way of walking, a tone of voice - more specific.  "The more specific you are, the more universal it becomes," he would say.  You have to do something, find something that is relatable.  When you do, you can make the audience or reader understand.

The Gorgeous Losers of Wrestling

(The below contains mild spoilers for the first episode of GLOW, but those spoilers really shouldn't do anything but convince you to watch the show : )

I've read somewhere, probably multiple places, that the most compelling characters are the ones who have lost everything, the ones who have hit rock bottom.

Jason and I have been watching GLOW on Netflix.  It's a show about... well, it's a show about losers, when you get down to it.  In the 1980's, a washed-up director is attempting to get a women's wrestling TV show off the ground, and all he has is the dregs, the losers, the people who have hit rock bottom and have literally nothing else.  And it is glorious.

Each episode, we learn a little bit more about these "losers," about what rock bottom is for each of them.  I'm not sure what I expected going into the show - maybe more silliness.  And there is humor, don't get me wrong, but there is also drama and struggle, and characters that you identify with.  These characters, these losers, they're the ones that you watch claw their way back up from nothing, and you root for them.

It's also doubly impactful for me watching it, as a former actress.  Ruth, one of the major characters, is an unsuccessful actress.  She goes to auditions and never gets called back.  She's taking acting classes, but has no money for food or utilities.  I've been there.  She accepts a casting call for the wrestling show mainly because she has nothing else and she has been assured that it's not porn.  And she's the worst!  She complains.  She can't take direction.  She doesn't want to play the bad guy.  For someone who has been in enough acting classes that one would assume she'd have at least some physical (dance, stage combat, etc.) training, she has no physical prowess.  And I sit there thinking, "god, she is the WORST actress!"  And then it dawns on me that yes, she IS the worst actress - that's the point.  Her story arch is going to be that she grows as an actress once she starts taking this seriously.

And - spoiler alert - she does.  She gets kicked out of the show for not being able to take or follow directions.  She completely loses it in her acting class when the teacher falls asleep in the middle of her Tennessee Williams monologue.  Then she pulls herself together.  She starts watching wrestling on TV - she researches the characters and the moves.  She shows up at practice for the show, striding in the door in costume and makeup like she owns the ring, and proceeds to deliver a verbal throw-down of the Maggie the Cat as portrayed by Hulk Hogan.  And then she gets her ass kicked by her (ex)best friend.  And it is one of the best pilot episodes I have ever seen.

Even if it were just Ruth, it would be a good show.  But it's not just Ruth.  We're slowly seeing characters being torn down, their vulnerabilities revealed.  And now, about 6 episodes in, we're starting to see them make their comebacks.  We're seeing them transform into something new and better.  We're seeing them start to glow.

Confession Time: I'm Not Super Girly

It may come as something of a shock from someone who wears skirts a majority of the time, but I'm really not all that girly.  I can't really do my hair.  My makeup routine takes about a minute and a half in the morning.  Said "makeup" is mostly baby powder (yes, 'cause I'm that pale).  I haven't had my nails done professionally since my senior prom.  The last time I did my own nails is coming up on 2 years ago, and that was for my grandmother's funeral.

So now here I am, 35 years old with no hair or makeup skills (aside from stage hair and makeup, and even that was a long time ago), and I'm getting married in a couple months.  I'm now having to make appointments for these things, and when people ask me what I want to do, I don't even know the right words to use.

Most people have never asked, but there are reasons why I don't do much with my makeup or my hair.  One of them is because of the time and money you save by not doing much with either.  (The afore-mentioned baby powder?  99 cents for a 3 month supply of makeup.)  But I think actually a big part of it is because I was in theatre at such a young age.

Aside from the Christmas pageants and small scale elementary school plays that everyone does, I began my work on the stage at the age of 8.  I was in the Atlanta Ballet's Nutcracker.  As you might imagine from a major dance company, things were very professional.  Even the youngest children (8 was the minimum age) and their parents had many of the same responsibilities as the adult professional dancers.  Our call was an hour before curtain.  We wore heavy pancake makeup.  Our hair had to be solid as a rock.  On top of that, we were expected to remove our makeup before leaving the theatre and we were not allowed to leave in only our leotards and tights.  We had to either change completely, or wear street clothes over them.  Heaven help you if someone caught you trying to leave the building wearing your dance shoes.  (I still cringe when I see kids out in stores or restaurants wearing just their leotard and ballet or tap shoes.)

We were expected to be professional.  Not only did that mean that we were expected to be there on time or either call our understudy and the children's director if we were sick, but that also meant our behavior in and out of the theatre.  There was a very strong delineation between performance/character and your normal self.  It was drilled into us our characters did not leave the building.  Every trace of your makeup and hair (unless you had one of the hairdos that took 2 hours to undo) should be gone before you leave - because a professional does not leave the theatre in costume.

(Granted, many years later, I joined a community theatre where it was common practice to greet the audience as they left in costume and makeup.  But you could argue that that was an extension of the performance and the character.)

Fast forward a few years.  

When I went to high school, my mom decided that I was old enough to wear makeup.  We bought foundation, eye makeup, and lipstick.  It wasn't long before I decided I didn't like it.  It felt heavy, and somehow both greasy and dry on my skin.  The eye makeup usually itched.  Plus I think by that point, having been in the Nutcracker 4 years, and in drama club all through middle school, something about wearing "that much" makeup (I say it in quotes, because in the grand scheme of things, it wasn't a lot) just out and about on a day to day basis didn't feel right.

I don't remember when I stopped wearing foundation and eye makeup on a daily basis.  I don't remember when I started wearing just powder (translucent cosmetic powder, at first), a little blush, and lipstick as my daily makeup.  I do remember, vaguely, either in college, or just shortly thereafter, when I was dirt poor, and realized that $5 for a compact  of translucent powder that lasted a few weeks was nowhere near as good a deal as a travel bottle of baby powder.  I did go in for eye makeup for parties, but you could almost argue that that was a character/persona thing.

Then there's hair.  Even at the height of my theatrical ability, when I was more capable of doing things with my hair, I didn't.  My hair is very fine and it takes a lot to keep it in place.  Even a little hair spray brings me flash backs of the absurd amounts of Dippity-Do (a 1980's hair gel that was something like clear Elmer's glue in radioactive green) that lived in my hair for most of the month of December for  4 years of my childhood.  They say there are light, fragrance-free hair sprays out there.  But in my (admittedly limited) experience, just like with sunscreen, even the stuff that is supposed to be "light and fragrance free" is still heavy and smells like what it is, in my opinion.  Plus, there again, if I have stuff in my hair, I feel like it should be because I'm on stage with a period-accurate 1820's chignon.

So what's a non-girly, bride-to-be to do?  I actually felt a lot better about it yesterday after meeting with a hair-stylist to try out some stuff on my hair.  In her simple ponytail, she confessed that she doesn't do much with her own hair anymore, either - it's time she could be spending on other things.  Plus she agreed with me that at your wedding, you want to look like yourself - the prettiest, best version of yourself, but still recognizably you, and not a Character.

What does this have to do about writing?  Well, not a lot, really.  But it does kind of give you a glimpse into my mind as to where Character begins and ends.

Just Because You Write it Doesn't Mean You Feel It

Over the past couple months as I've been re-reading the things I've written to decide what to work on, sometimes I wonder about what people will think.  Not worrying about what people will the of the book (at least most of the time), but occasionally worrying about what specific people might think about specific events, characters, or who has died.  I'm sure this is something that every writer worries about at some point.

Last weekend, I went to my writing critique group.  One of the pieces shared by one of the ladies was about a serial killer who had killed several girls, but who was now starting to fall in love (or at least his version of love) with the one girl he had let get away.  The story was narrated from the killer's point of view, which gave us a great insight into his twisted mind.  He describes why he is making a facial expression and what emotional reaction he hopes to illicit from the person he's talking to.  He feels that he deserves a special reward for not killing that last girl.  He also reflects that if things don't work out between the two of them that the easiest solution would be to just kill her after all.  These are not the thoughts of a normal person (and I'm not presenting them here in a way that does justice to the author's writing).

We praised the author for these disturbing but very well-written glimpses into the character's psyche.  Was this author a troubled millennial who felt the world revolved around them?  Was the author a dangerous-looking man with a heavy metal t-shirt an bothersome bumper stickers on his intimidating car?  No.  The author is, as best I can tell from my interactions with her, a sweet, well-dressed lady in her late 60's or early 70's.

I will say again, we praised her for her writing.  Each person at the critique spoke at length about how strong and well-developed the character was, and how enjoyable (though creepy) it was getting into his mind.  One other participant, also an older, well-dressed lady, said, "I never read this kind of stuff - but I would read this!"

And yet our author, throughout the critique process and after, expressed concern that she had "gone too far."  She was worried about what people would think not about the writing, but about her as a person.  

I guess this is something that all authors - especially the ones that write serial killers, kill off characters, or just generally write dark, scary, or violent stuff - worry about at some point.  But just because you write it doesn't mean you feel it.  Just because you write it doesn't mean you have done, will do, or even want to do it.  I'm pretty sure Poe never hacked up his neighbor and buried him under the floor.  There's no evidence that Stephen King ever chopped down a bathroom door with an axe to get to his wife and son.  I have a feeling that George R. R. Martin has never killed any wedding guests.

You write what comes to you.  You write what you feel is the best idea you've had and has to be brought out and shared with people.  Being an author is the real life equivalent of being a character on the stage.  I went to a theatre workshop once where the teacher said that the Shakespearean monologue and the Broadway musical number are what happens when the emotion builds up to the point that simple speech will no longer serve to express it.  Of all the dozens (hundreds?) of theatre workshops I've been to, that idea is one of the ones that sticks with me as a writer.  When the idea, the emotion, builds up to the point that it can no longer be contained, it must be written.  It must be shared.  

Maybe family members die tragically.  Maybe there is a battle and a beloved mentor dies.  Maybe wolves eat people.  But there is no story if there is no conflict.  The character needs an impetus to get up and get going.  And if everything is just fine and dandy, there is no conflict and no desire to change.  No one is going to read a story about a normal character in a normal family where nothing goes wrong and nothing ever changes.  Or, to paraphrase an acquaintance, "No one is going to pay to read Harry Potter and the Fairly Uneventful Year at Wizard School."

My Theatre Major Comes in Handy

It's funny how I look back on stuff now, stuff that I didn't realise years ago might be useful for more than just the reason I was doing it then.

As some of you reading this know, I was a theatre major.  As such, we did a lot of exercises about things like why a character does what he does, how to use your own memory (or imagination) of sensory detail to make your performance deeper and more meaningful.  At the time, I wasn't thinking about how I might ever use these sort of things other than in a performance.

But now I write.  And one of the things I've found is that a lot of what we worked on in theatre translates well to writing.  You have to know your character inside and out - things that the audience may never see or know about, you have to know about.  The audience might not ever have smelled freshly cut poplar wood, or heard the scream of steam escaping a boiling conch, or walked outside at night under a sky so far away from any lights that you feel like you can see to the end of the universe.  And maybe you never have, either.  But if it's a part of your character that's important for the audience to know, understand, or feel, you have to help them.  You have to deliver that sensation to them.

One of the things I've realized about my writing is that I am very good at this.  When I go to workshops and get feedback and critiques, one of the constant and pretty much universal observations is how good I am at folding rich, sensory details into my work.  One reader at a workshop once said that my level of description is cinematic; when she read the excerpt from my novel she could very clearly see the world I was describing.

I was reminded of this recently when I started going to a new writing group.  I took a story that I knew was good, knew in my bones that it was strong and well-written, but was also concerned about sharing it with a new group.  I was concerned that the details might be too strong, the emotions might be too much to throw at people who didn't know me.  And you know what?  When I asked the group, "Is it too much?" the overwhelming response was that it was just right.  "Don't change a word," one of the ladies said to me.  Another thanked me for being brave enough to "dare to go there."  Two women who I had never met got teary while I was reading it, because it resonnated with them so strongly.

The peice I talk about above is a short story called "Ashes."  It's going to be the next peice I work on for submission (and as evidenced by the feedback above, it's pretty much ready).  So you won't be seeing it on here for a while*, but I promise, someday I will share it with the world.

*Most literary magazines require that submissions be unpublished, even on personal websites.