Last night, I finished watching a series of documentary movies made in England between 1963 and the present day, which is unofficially known as the Up series. Starting with 7 UP in 1963, the show interviewed a bunch of seven-year-olds from all different backgrounds about their views on life, school, the opposite sex, race, and money. They went back to interview these kids (the shop assistants and executives of 2000) every subsequent 7 years and together we watch them grow and transform.

I’ll be the first to admit that this series has had a profound effect on me. Originally intended as a political experiment (to profile classism in England), it is not so much that as a lesson in the studies of life. Whatever the backgrounds, the participants follow similar lifecycles. From the openness of their first interviews, to the nervous giggle of their adolescent selves; from the uncertainty and excitement (and arrogant pronouncements about the way of the world) in their early twenties to the settling down period and family focus of their late twenties; from the financial, emotional and marital strains of middle age, to the contentment and acceptance of life in their late forties; it is possible to detect a pattern. And of course, as Michael Apted says, the popularity of the show stems from people watching not the interviewees, but themselves. And this is entirely true.

 I got to thinking about theatre. So many theatres have settled into the complacency of middle age (from the view of an idealistic twenty-something) that they are happy to tailor their expectations to what they know, and what they have come to accept as reality (audience preferences, ticket sales, etc). And they are content. Meanwhile the young thrash about trying to create something new, to break away from the old, and are not content until things exist as they believe it should, and as they want it to be. One thing the program has me thinking is that neither is better nor worse. They are simply different stages in a life cycle. And what I really appreciate about Long Wharf is that it is so healthy at balancing the new ideas with the existing jewels, the idealism of youth with the reality of experience, the uncertainty of new spheres with the stability of longevity.

This is just a fraction of what this documentary has made me feel.  It’s so rare to see anything that has the power to do that. Therein lies its integrity. I’d recommend watching it to anyone. If it inspires thought in you as it has in me, it’s worth the investment.

Re-read RIP VAN WINKLE last night after Chinese food of all sorts.

Eric and I are going to adapt RIP for the second stage –- an April kids’ show at the Long Wharf.

RIP’s devoted companion and powerful silent observer is this dog… and Louis de Rougemont (of SHIPWRECKED!– another kid-friendly show in the season) also has a dog, devoted and powerful but not always silent companion.

A dog motif in the season, ooo.

…is through its script library (or its annual fund, perhaps, but as a voracious reader with a small bank account, I’ll take the former route).

This afternoon I began the project of organizing the Long Wharf’s script library–a sizeable project, given the forty one years’-worth of American plays that have passed through here. Since I’m new to the Long Wharf, I’ve been trying to wrap my head around the theater’s production history. A year-by-year list of productions has been sitting on my desk for two days, but the information had remained just that–a memorized list. But today, as I alphabetized the production scripts, I felt as if I began actually getting to know the theater’s history: not just what plays have been produced here, but who wrote them, when they were written, how many drafts they went through before production, and what the literary agents scribbled on the inside cover when they sent the plays to the artistic director. My favorite part was definitely reading the notes. I felt as if some of them should be museum pieces–typewriter-typed on delicate vellum, signed with nicknames (”Pete” instead of A.R. Gurney). I even happed upon the stage manager’s book of sign-in sheets and rehearsal reports from the 1980 National Tour of “The Lion In Winter”! We decided to keep only the final drafts of each play and get rid of unrevised versions. I felt a little sacreligious throwing them away, but I felt better when I saw the room it made on the shelves–all the more space to fill with scripts from seasons to come.

i brought to work the equivalent of a supermarket of food.

maybe because of the lack of people today?

Yesterday, Eric and I decided to meet about the blog—yes, the very same blog that you are now (hopefully) reading. Our earlier conversations were coming to fruition; the powers that be have deemed our little project worthy; and we are on the way to sharing our experiences with you. So we met, to discuss the details (or at least that’s what I thought).

Instead, our meeting turned into an intense two hours where we fought and scrapped and nitpicked about tiny little details in order to answer the big question: why do this? What do we want it to be? …To say? We talked about dissemination and manipulation of information, and how our generation accesses information in so many different ways that we need to create many entry points in order that people can experience us on their own terms. We argued about (don’t laugh) the philosophy of the blog versus the aesthetic of the blog, and whether they are the same thing, or at least so closely tied together so as to be impossible to separate. We agreed that design would always be secondary to content, and that the content should never be confined by anything, but then we argued again about whether too much structure would be constricting, or instead would provide a framework to allow people to be entirely free with their thoughts, writings, and expressions.

We talked, argued, discussed, and debated for two intense hours, and by the end of it I was exhausted: mentally and intellectually drained. And it felt awesome!

One of my professors once told me that the hardest thing for some students about going into the “real world” is that you get too busy (as do the people around you) to think about the “big” questions, and to realize exercise your mind. Thank god that’s not the case here. In fact, in my first few weeks I have spent a lot of time being idealistic, theorizing, debating, arguing with my colleagues here, and nothing would make me happier than if this is how my next two years go. The gloves are off, and I’m ready. Ding, ding, ding. Let the games begin.

eric said my previous entry was too long. deeksha is okay with it.

they watch over me.

i have 7 paper-hearts fixed on the brown wall in front of me. i had nothing to do with them. the artistic team decided to tease me last season. (hem). they plastered hearts and pictures of my boyfriend marco all over my office (and i mean ALL OVER), the day he was leaving for the west coast on a job. that was last season and it was funny, and most of those bits of paper have made their way through the recycling bin, but the hearts in front of me have become part of my daily surroundings and i couldn’t take them away without feeling like i’m losing some history…so they stay.

my office is really about paper. mainly.

there are occasional mice passing by and little spiders and some things made of colorful plastic. but really, it’s the paper- in all its configurations and heights and shapes.

bea

p.s. i still don’t have any special thoughts on the “how to get the best out of people” question as of today.

but i have thought about it.

Paula Vogel Will Host Sept. 10 Discussion With Playwrights …
Playbill.com - New York,NY,USA
Pulitzer Prize finalist Sarah Ruhl (The Clean House, Eurydice), whose Dead Man’s Cell Phone will have its New York premiere at Playwrights Horizons in …

Prayer for My Enemy
TheaterMania.com - New York,NY,USA
… Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut, playwright Craig Lucas aims to open a few holes in the American psyche and let our collective soul ooze through. …

Ojai Playwrights Conference, Featuring Works of Julia Cho and others…
Playbill.com - New York,NY,USA
By Ernio Hernandez Broadway and television stars will perform the works of Charlayne Woodard, Julia Cho, Rick Cleveland and Annie Weismanline at the tenth …

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TWENTY questions??! TWENTY???? Wow, you must think I have all this spare time just-just lying around, scattered about, across my desk, stuffed in my drawers, dangling from stacks of scripts… Twenty? Really? Yikes.

1. Name and occupation? Eric. I play a lot. And talk loudly. Push people around. That sort of thing.
2. What are the three best things about your job? Playing. Talking. Pushing. Not necessarily in that order.
3. Tell us something you are excited about? Vintage browsing.
4. Favourite play? Hmmm. That’s like 10 questions wrapped into one. If I had to say, in this very moment, Richard III speaks to the closet despot in me…
5. Favourite book? Blindness (Saramago). The Giving Tree (Silverstein). Winter’s Tale (Helprin).
6. Favourite movie? Amelie. (yeah, I’m a sucker for stylish love stories…)
7. What’s your favourite color? The color of the sunset light.
8. Best band ever? The High School Virgins. No, really.
9. What’s the name of the song stuck in your head? The Great Escape.
10. Ocean or mountains? Sky.
11. Ideal vacation? There’s this lagoon in Bali, you have to walk through a crack in the cliff to get to it. White sand. Cerulean water. Clouds that scrape the divinity.
12. If you were an animal what would you be? Why? That’s easy. Turtle! Because that was my first life.
13. If you could have one super power what would it be? The power to cook like my mom.
14. Do you have any famous ancestors? My grandmother was a famous calligrapher in China.
15. Do you speak any other languages? Mandarin – conversationally fluent. As in, don’t ask me about the molecular state of mercury in Chinese, cause it’s all Russian to me.
16. What were you doing this morning at 8am? Working on this friggin blog entry! TWENTY questions!
17. What are your plans for the weekend? Family. My sister’s bringing her boyfriend to meet everyone (which is a really funny story, but another time perhaps).
18. Name a celebrity you would marry. How can I answer this without opening a Pandora’s Box of racial identity questions?? Nope. Not going there in a 20Q list. Nope nope.
19. What is on your desktop background? I’ve been obsessed with tile patterns lately – I think it’s this sort of post-Victorian design, all red velvet-y…
20. Parting words? No worries…