For the past few days, I have been listening to the music of Cesaria Evora during my half-hour commute. She is a 60-something singer from the Cape Verde Islands. All the lyrics are in Portuguese, and the melodies are hypnotic, exotic, sad, tribal, exhuberant, memorable. I have listened to one particular cut over and over and each time I listen, I try to focus on a different instrument, and how it contributes to and completes the many-layered piece.

Years ago I taught myself how to draw a complicated diagram of a leaf in preparation for a botany exam. I did this by drawing the leaf over and over…hundreds of times…so that when I sat down to draw it during the exam it flowed from my pencil with no effort.

Before I came to Long Wharf Theatre, I spent most of my working life in newspapers, where you are rarely given the luxury of working on something over and over until you feel it is ready. The theatre process is completely different. The audience sees the culmination of hundreds of hours of the refining of everything connected with the production. And still there is the desire to pick it apart for further revisions. Perhaps the nature of art is that it is in constant process. As a graphic designer responsible for translating the spirit of every play into print, each day I am challenged to refine my vision and process. Some days the creation flows with no effort. And yet it is never really finished.

I realized this morning that I haven’t posted in over a week.

Actually, I came to a similar realization when it hadn’t quite been a week, and then again when it was just a week, and then again twice before I finally logged on to post.

For a moment I felt guilty.

But THEN I realized that, in shirking my posting duties and subsequently reflecting on the experience, I wasn’t being lazy or busy, but rather was looking for a perfect opportunity to comment on what seems to be this season’s overarching theme: denial and accountability.

And we who do theater know very well that SHOWING something is better than talking about it.

So rather than write a post the length of a dissertation about denial and its manifestations (and anyway, Eric already wrote something eloquent for the offstage guide) I decided to exemplify it instead. That–and not dramaturgy for THE PRICE or Prayer for my Enemy talkbacks or laundry or the fact that loading the blog website causes my laptop to freeze–is the reason why I haven’t posted recently.

Earlier this summer I noticed yellowjackets building a nest beneath my deck. The progress was amazing: in the span of a few short weeks, a big, beautiful and functional colony was built to store the queen and her larvae. The pulp that forms the nest is created from chewed wood fibers mixed with saliva and spit (fits nicely with the idea of ruminating). I couldn’t wait to rescue the nest before winter destroyed it. Last weekend I carefully removed the fragile structure, after checking to make sure all the insects had left! It now sits in a corner of my studio, along with butterfly wings, insect casings and other marvels of nature. The color is a striated earthy grey, red and white. Later that day I read in The New York Times that the chanteuse Eartha Kitt is in possession of several insect nests, which she covets and treasures.

As a graphic designer and artist I am always looking for inspiration in out-of-the-way places. There is much to be gained from viewing our environment as a rich visual source. The artist Andy Goldsworthy takes this to another level in his stunning, temporary natural sculptures. Perhaps the yellowjacket paper, once scanned and manipulated, could become the background of a future show poster. Stay tuned.

This has nothing to do with being a working parent. It’s just a funny story.

We used to have a horrible spam problem. I mean, really horrible. You could easily have 100 emails per day of spam. So, we installed this spam filter, which is fantastic, but there has been one down side - any email with profanity, racial slurs, or sexual overtones are filtered out due to content.

At first, this might not seem like a problem, but you have to remember that we read and consider cutting edge plays, which often have profanity, sexual overtones, or the occasional racial slur. So imagine the frustration when we try to receive new drafts of plays from our playwrights and they keep getting filtered out.

Finally, the staff had enough of this, so I had to configure the filter so that these plays can get through. The funny part of the story is that in order to test the new configuration, I had to write correspondence that included one word of profanity, one sexual overtone, and one racial slur in order to make sure that the emails could bypass the filter. Good taste dictates that I can only give you the test email in “Mad Lib” form:

“If the _______ email doesn’t go through, I’ll ________ myself. Yours,_________.”

Some days, I can’t believe that I get paid to do this job.

The rule in daycare is once you have a fever, you are not permitted to re-enter for 24 hours. So, Naomi had a fever, which turned out to be an ear infection.

After we started the antibiotics, we had a Daddy-daugther day. We ran some errands. We played in the playground. We went for a walk and looked at dogs in Edgerton Park. It ended up being a wonderful day.

7 voicemails and 92 emails first thing in the morning are a small price to pay for QT with my daughter.

Objects and their function as meaningful signifiers of a different time, place, and culture is something that has been on my mind for a while now.

1) Today, I received a package I had sent to myself when my family moved from Singapore to India. It was big and heavy and I asked Eric to give me a ride in his car to pick it up. So we’re pushing this gigantor box out of the post office in a gurney and when he asks me what it contains, I realise that I don’t know for sure. It’s a bunch of journals, and yearbooks, and pictures, and picture frames, and candles, and other girl stuff. Eric thinks I should throw it away. He sounds like my mom. But he’s wrong. Because in some ways, the objects describe who I was. And when I look at them every six months, or a year, or two years, I remember who I used to be and it sometimes makes me cringe but it also makes me smile. What Eric, and my mother, are suggesting is that I should treat them exactly as they are-as objects-and get rid of them. But they are not objects. They are markers, signifiers, and a function of something so much deeper. Of memory, and contemplation, and self. Through them, I create my own biography and my own history.

2) Today was also the first rehearsal of The Price by Arthur Miller, directed by Gordon, the theatre’s Artistic Director, and stars-as one of the staff pointed out-the Mayor of New York from Ghostbusters (there’s a piece of pop trivia for you). The play is set in the attic of a well-to-do man who was ruined in the depression, and has now passed away, and features the conflict between his two sons as they deal with the different choices they have made in life, and the consequences of these. We also meet an antiques dealer who comes and appraises the objects, putting a price on them, which becomes a further source of conflict between the brothers. And it struck me that here was another example where objects were not given the respect they were due.

3) Finally, I was reading this article on the BBC website which you can see below. Here’s the link if you’d prefer to go directly to the page: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7010036.stm. It’s about this place that takes all this lost luggage from planes and trains and sells it on to other people. It’s a good place to find a bargain, but I have to tell you, the thought of people rifling through my stuff to buy it at a cheap price, when my intention was never to sell it makes me feel queasy inside. How can people be so blasé about the story this object could be telling? It gets wiped of all its old meaning and starts a new, and one could argue, that the original owner may just have lost a small part of themselves. Perhaps I’m going too far. Perhaps the original owners don’t care at all. And perhaps I shouldn’t be so worried about a story to tell about myself into posterity.

(more…)

Art hurts. Art urges voyages — and it’s easier to stay home.
~Gwendolyn Brooks

Something that made me smile…

Hello all.  First a brief introduction: my name is Jacob Stoebel and I am the Resident Education Fellow here at the Long Wharf.  I am a director, teacher, educator, and mime (no joke on the last one, ask me more about it).  This is now my second year here at the theatre, last year I served in the position of Education Resident.  People who come to the Long Wharf might also see me behind the bar in the lobby, working my second job as part of the front of house staff.One of the things we spend a lot of time thinking about in the education department is funding.  A significant portion of our funding comes from very generous grants from philanthropic organizations, who support, among other things subsidy for students to come see our plays for a reduced rate, or if circumstances permit, for free.

I’m very passionate about subsidy for the arts, particularly ticket subsidy (simply put, the cheaper the ticket for audiences the better).  I could spend hours talking about the subject with you all, which I hope to do sometime.  But for now I have some questions for all of you:

To what extent should ticket subsidy be available for theatre going audiences in America?  W/hat is an acceptable price for a theatre ticket?  Should all theatre be free?

Secondly, does ticket subsidy cause complacency in audiences?  That is to say, if audiences can see a play for free or very little money, would they value the play less?  What do you all think?

Jacob Stoebel

Went to a baseball game on Monday (Mets vs. Atlanta Braves) and loved the hot-dogs but thought that, at least for me, baseball is a little like peanut butter. To fully appreciate it, you need to have grown up with it from infancy.