​So, it shouldn’t come as a shock that I’m about to begin rehearsals for a new play...it’s actually Beauty & the Beast, Centerstage’s annual holiday panto, to be exact (I play Belle's nutty professor mother). I wouldn’t normally go all the way down to Federal Way to do a show, but I was curious about the form, having seen a panto (Goldilocks & the 3 Bears go to Greece) when we were in Glasgow a couple years ago...comedic, musical, dancy, and definitely (WAY) out of my comfort zone as an actor.
 
Anyway,  We have choreography rehearsals every upcoming weekend for the foreseeable future, and had already been asked to send in our conflicts between mid-October-Dec. I had none...or so I thought.
 
I did a show near and dear to my heart back in March (Deli Dumrul) at the University of Washington (Watch it here) – it was a capstone project for a non-traditional age, graduating senior. The story is a Turkish myth that straddles ancient paganism & Islam in the region, and the whole cast had a hand in developing the script. AND I GOT TO PLAY AZRAEL, THE ANGEL OF DEATH, FFS!!! (I also got to wear a really cool cape - the photos don't do it justice - it moved like BUTTAH) Y’all know I’m a willing SLAVE to anything mythology-related, and also, my Uruguayan, Sephardic Jew grandfather was born in Turkey and emigrated to Uruguay when he was six, so I’m also just a little bit Turkish. Like, while rehearsing this show back in the spring, I had little bits of my own identity revealed to me by my castmates. In particular, certain words or phrases that were definitely NOT Spanish that I’d often hear my Papu exclaim(...ask me how I found out “Papu” is the word for gramps in GREEK! Another weird moment of reclaiming one’s many identities, often erased to live life as a “normal” American), and even sometimes, my Mom! And my castmates would tell me what it meant. Both my Mom & Papu have crossed the rainbow bridge at this point, and these simple things reflected back to me by my castmates, all of whom had just met me, was an unexpected and sweet surprise I cherish. 

I've been on an interesting journey over the past year or so, or trying to be a little more mindful, a little less reactive, and really do myself the favor of going after what I want from a place of abundance rather than fear. Trying and succeeding, however, are two different things. There's some really conscious work involved here, and one thing I've discovered is that I've been really good, in the past, at getting in my own way and being extremely up my own ass. Really good at twisting myself in knots and shooting myself in the back before anyone else had a chance to. Like, no one gets to say I suck EXCEPT ME...and then you do it so long and it becomes a habit. A sick blanket of comfort, if you will. 

In the fall of 2021, while we were still pretty mired in the pandemic (though theatrically, things were starting to open up, and I had already performed in two shows in October and November, and was in the midst of the first read-through of In The Heights when a director friend of mine I’d worked with several times in the past asked me what my days were looking like in February of 2022, because she was co-directing a show at Village Theatre and needed an understudy. 

Okay, let’s back up. Village Theatre. I auditioned for them back in the early 90’s ONCE, right out of college. Village is one of the local, professional companies who pays a decent (well...for theatre) salary. I didn’t receive a call back from that at all, and never auditioned for them again until my friend contacted me. I laughed, said “Sure”, and proceeded to prepare the sides she’d sent me on a self-tape, pretty much assuming there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell they’d ever cast me. 

Well, they did. THEY DID. I was so physically and emotionally shocked when I received the offer email a couple weeks later, it caused a migraine for the rest of the day. And I’d like to say I enjoyed the rehearsal process once it started, but I was so far up my own ass at that point, in terms of being a blubbering pustule of impostor syndrome, who didn’t deserve to be there, I barely formed relationships with the rest of the cast. But it was the first steady paycheck of any substance I ever received for an acting job, and my first professional show, and I got to go onstage the entire final weekend up in Everett. 

Because I’d been such a pile of inferiority during that process, I made an appointment soon after, to go check out the Culinary Arts program at Seattle Central College. I was pretty close to done with theatre, and decided that if my career ended at the very cliché of the pinnacle of success, that was fine with me. 
​
The universe had other ideas. Shortly after that visit to the college, another theatre scene colleague invited me to audition for a show she was directing at Book-It Rep. Once again, I laughed, and said “Sure”, thinking it wouldn’t amount to anything and I’d be able to start the culinary program in the fall. And once again, I was wrong, and got offered the role, my first full, professional role where I wasn’t an understudy. While this production was fraught with many difficulties, I actually had fun with much of it, and that was where the imposter-y thoughts about my work as an actor finally began to shift. 

​ I’m not someone you’d ever have called an optimist. Perennially attracted to dark things and sentiments, I scoffed at those who talked about being positive as idiotic Pollyannas. They annoyed the crap out of me, those people who couldn’t stomach the other side of the coin, those who were relentlessly positive to the point of ignoring the opposite. I also felt (and still do to an extent) that it’s important to understand the shadow so you can appreciate the light, rather than simply turning into it blindly and eschewing those dark parts of oneself. I definitely appreciated the term “toxic positivity” once came around, as I felt like so many of those annoying “think positive!” folks were swimming around in that. 
 
The older I get, the more curious I have become about actual, authentic positivity than I ever before. Don’t get me wrong – I still believe you need to make peace with all parts of yourself, make friends with your shadow. However, I’ve also come to believe “thinking positive!” isn’t all bullshit. 
 
It started in my 40’s, as perimenopause saw me suffering from raging insomnia – the kind where you fall asleep fine, but wake up two or three hours in and can’t fall back asleep. This went on for years. I felt very fortunate to live in a state that had legalized marijuana just prior to this milestone, and weed is one of the few things that reliably makes me fall asleep. But unfortunately, it’s the psychotropic stuff with the THC that works the best – which I don’t necessarily mind, but also, too much THC and the paranoia kicks in, sometimes to the point where I feel like it doesn’t matter what I do, I’m going to DIE RIGHT NOW. So trying to fall asleep was always a double-edged sword: on the one hand, weed makes me fall asleep, but on the other hand, if I don’t fall asleep right away I end up having to deal with my own anxiety monster amplified on the THC...which means I usually go down a fast and furious bad spiral, where I obsess on one thought and continue down the scary and horrible rabbit hole, and can’t sleep anyway.
 
Faced nightly with this “OH SHIT! I’m going to DIE!” feeling, the rational part of my psyche took over one night. I decided it wouldn’t hurt to try and spiral in a positive way, as the negative way was so jarring and frankly, exhausting. So my experiment was, initially, if I’m in a bad thought spiral, can I shift it the other way? And of course I answered myself with something like, “Right, you wanna be a stupid Pollyanna?” “No, I just want to get some sleep. So what if I’m being a stupid Pollyanna – what if it actually works?” “Yeah, but what if you go around, being all positive, and then you’re blindsided and you DIE?” I laughed, and said, “Well, at least I’ll die and not feel horrible while it happens, so maybe it’s a win-win?” My shadow self grudgingly agreed, and I tried it. That’s the thing I’ve noticed about my reaction to pot – once I obsess on a thought train, I usually follow it. What if I try obsessing on good things?
 
So one night, I tried it. I felt myself going down the familiar, dark path as I lay in the darkness, and saw what was happening, I course-corrected and made myself turn the thoughts around. What if I don’t die? What if I live, and tomorrow, have pancakes for breakfast? Oooh, do I want sweet or savory pancakes? Mmm, if I make savory pancakes, what kind? Shall I top them with sauteed mushrooms and bacon? Sour cream?
 
...and just like that, I started obsessing over what kind of delicious breakfast I’d have, and completely forgot about the dark spiral. As I mentioned above, I’ve always tended towards the more pessimistic turn of thought, so during this period, still often found my thoughts going dark first, but each time, once I recognized what was happening, I realized I had the choice to go the other way, and in the interest of sleep, I did. 
 
After a couple years of this, I realized my thoughts were actually something I could manage and have influence over. It was like a muscle I had learned how to build and flex. By and by, I discovered my thoughts were not even starting in the habitual dark place anymore, most of the time. This was a huge revelation, and another bonus after many years attempting meditation, I discovered that to be much easier upon trying again, because I’d already been working hard at managing my thoughts, and that managing my thoughts made many things SO MUCH EASIER – not just being able to sleep, but in general, my moods over the last couple of years are generally better and more even-keeled. I contemplate things before reacting, rather than just lashing out, which is especially useful on social media platforms, but also in real life, at work and with my friends & family. 
 
So, while I still despise “toxic” positivity, I’ve come around to see why turning your thoughts away from the abyss (even when you feel like you’re selling out!) is actually super beneficial to mental and emotional health, and that it’s okay, even in the face of the world feeling like it’s always on fire, not to always jump to gloom and doom. Even if we succumb to the darkness anyway, at least it wasn’t such a gloomy, anxiety-ridden slog arriving there. So there’s THAT. 

Someone posted a "dear bad theatre teacher" on social media today. I'm not going to share what they said, though it was totally valid, but it definitely got me thinking about the theatre teachers I've had in my life, and the varied and sometimes not-so-great experiences I had with them.

I think a LOT about the choir teacher who told me I couldn't sing at 13. To which I say: I was fucking thirteen! Maybe I didn't have the prettiest voice (we were all going through a whole lot hormonally at that age), but I've never not been able to carry a tune. The result of this was that it's really taken me until last year (so, 41 years), with the advent of not one but TWO different theatres inviting me to audition for their musicals, which I was subsequently cast in with actual leading roles/solos, and paid. Also, most folks who came to see them complimented my singing and of course, said they never knew I could sing. Yeah, it took me awhile to figure it out as well. 

I think a LOT about my high school theatre teachers, Jean and Carrie, and thank GOODNESS for them! Jean really gave me a good introduction to some different techniques & movement (like Meisner, theatre of the absurd, naturalism, etc) which I would come to know more deeply later on in my theatre education, and also was the first teacher to really attempt to teach us truthful acting. Carrie cast me in both shows she directed at Boulder High, and wrote me a glowing recommendation for college entrance, and really helped me hone whatever potential I may have had in those early days, as well as gave me an appreciation for Shakespeare most high school students didn't get.

I think about my teachers in my undergrad program. The musical theatre guy was very intent on my weight. If I had a good audition, he would ask, "Have you lost weight"? The first acting guy, though I responded to many of the things he had to say about art, was abusive and sexist. Basically, if you were a female actor, you fell into one of two categories: fuckable or unfuckable. I was the latter, so didn't receive much attention, but the rumors I heard from my more attractive co-students ranged from the eye-brow raising to the frankly, horrific and abusive. No one ever called him out. He played lots of mind games with everyone in the name of "tearing you down to build you back up". This is a thing lots of acting teachers liked to do back in the day. I think that style has fallen out of favor, at least, I hope so. The second acting guy was basically my savior in that program. He taught both sophomore acting as well as Theatre History, and both classes were stunning, and the cornerstone of my undergrad education...Theatre History was probably the best class I've ever taken in my life. He taught us how to think for ourselves and helped me start what I call my Actor's Toolkit, expanding on the Meisner work I'd done in high school. He made it okay that i was smart and also really interested in the intellectual/philosophical side of theatre/the arts. Had it not been for him, I'd have probably dropped out, or transferred. 

I think about the teachers I had in my grad program - mostly women who respected me as an artist, and through whom I really honed the artist I am today - a thoroughly contemporary actor/writer with a penchant to be highly influenced by my interest in and knowledge of classical work and mythology. I also think of some of the undergrad teachers I came into contact with who were telling so many of the undergrads similar things to what I'd heard, and did my best to call them out, and also impress upon my "pet" undergrads they didn't have to listen to what these teachers said, they could forge their own path, and the world was MUCH wider and vaster than Towson's BA theatre program. I wish I'd listened to my own advice a little more vigilantly.

I think about the teachers in the non-matriculated classes I've taken, mostly at Freehold Theatre. Althea, Rest In Peace, was really the first teacher to SEE me. Every time she cast me in a scene, it was as someone who I never, in my wildest dreams thought I'd ever get to play: Arcadian in The Seagull, Lady M in Macbeth, Helena in Midsummer Night's Dream. I thank my lucky stars she was my first teacher at Freehold. It was working with her where I first started to get a tiny inkling of what I might actually be capable of. I will miss her forever. While I have some personal issues with Robin, her Meisner Intensive is the best Acting class I've ever had...not only did she give us SO many tools to use, but instead of tearing anyone down, she was a practitioner of what I like to call The Compassionate Ass-Kick: she never let us get away with bullshit/laziness, but everything she did was about The Work itself, and though I always felt like she didn't like me, I never felt like I didn't get the best of her as a teacher. Kind of amazing, if you think about it. She is a gifted teacher. Then there was George, who I felt I learned the most from, but also arguably, in the area I had the furthest to go: Movement. I still feel very conflicted about my relationship with George. I learned so, SO much from him, (like, to the point where people have told me I move really well onstage and asked where I received my movement training) while the entire time being totally aware I was NOT his favorite student, he actually didn't care for me very much, and was CONSTANTLY tearing my work down. It's honestly HIS voice that's been in my head since I took his classes in the late 90's, HIS voice I've heard any time I get "too big for my britches" and try to aim "outside my league". 

I think about the other "teachers" I've had: like, reviews written, directors worked with, comments made to me at auditions and callbacks. I remember being at U/RTA (University/Resident Theatre Auditions) callbacks in Long Beach and having a rep from U of Minnesota tell me I needed to wear something that flattered my body more. Or a fellow undergrad student saying something like "Why would you cast her in this anyway? She'd more likely be the Nurse in Romeo & Juliet...no offense." or "She is Not Patti Smith...This is not a good play." 

While the good stuff is never not heard, the negative stuff always seems to scream louder, to stick with me. I've spent SO MUCH of my theatrical career giving more credence to the negative voices. Hence, one day, as I drove my 20-year-old fellow understudy for Village Theatre to the Everett location for our weekly viewing requirement, and she was telling me all these theatre (ACT! 5th Ave!) she had auditioned for since we'd last talked, my immediate internal thought was something like wow, that's audacious of her to assume she's of that calibre...and then my next thought was something like...but why? Why is it audacious? This is what she's trained for. This is what YOU've trained for. Why haven't you bothered to audition for these theatres? 

This was the beginning of a dialogue with myself that continues to this day, but has also started to loosen the hold the negative voices have had. In this day and age, it doesn't MATTER what size, orientation, race, ability, ethnicity, or even gender you are, in many cases. If you can do the work, you should do the work, and you should aim for what you want. Fuck those old teachers, reviewers, fellow students. YOU should be the arbiter/supporter of your own work and journey as much as you can - don't sabotage yourself because of someone else's limited imagination. Don't wait until you're my age to tell them to fuck off inside your head, either. 

As I left Hutchinson Hall on my way to the light rail last night I reflected on our rehearsal. Only three of us had been called - two student actors as well as myself (The Angel of Death!). I was waiting around a LOT as we treaded and re-treaded some of their scenes over and over again. And once we got to my stuff, basically anything I did was awesome. This has been the case throughout this rehearsal (which by the way is a senior student's capstone project, none of us are getting paid, it's totally a student production, but I'm loving it) - whatever I bring to the table is welcomed. And I was reflecting this is not so much that I'm "better" than the student actors, because I'm sure I likely was NOT at their age/experience level, but definitely has more to do with the experience level. I realized, with shock, I'm not a novice, and in fact, haven't been on in a very long time. I've done the 20 plus years now, George, so you can shut the fuck up in my head. 

It has been another year, one in which I continued to challenge myself artistically & on the culinary front.   As someone who tends to lowball myself and feel like I haven't accomplished anything, it's often useful for me to write it down at the end of the year to remind myself I belong as an artist...and keep myself accountable. These are the things I did this year: 

2023 Performance Credits
​

1. An Incomplete List of All The Things I'm Gonna Miss When The World Is No Longer - (Trust) - Dacha Theatre
2. Proofs 1 - Coprehagia by Nelle Tankus - Dr. Devorah Pry - Parley Productions
3. Proofs 2 - How to Raise a Revolution by Brian Dang - Parent - Parley Productions
4. Proofs 2 - Cheer Up, Birthday Boy by drew david combs - Meredith - Parley Productions 
5. Proofs 2 - 8 Virgin Vices by Carol Y. Lee - Candace - Parley Productions
6. Hedda Gabler - Juliane Tesman - General Gabler's Theatre
7. Proofs 3 - Spell from the Sea by Carolynne Wilcox - Delphine - Parley Productions
8. Original Monologue Contest: Eight Aunt Marys by Andrew Martineau - Eileen - Talking Horse Productions
9. Through the Window - Ensemble - The Shattered Glass Project
10. Miss You Like Hell - Manual - Strawberry Theatre Workshop
11. The Night That Never Existed - Queen Elizabeth I - Latino Theatre Projects
12. It's A Wonderful Life - Mama Hatch - Theatre Anonymous

Notable Culinary Feats:
​

1. Mushroom Wellington
2. Savory cheese & bacon strata
3. Savory Dutch Baby
4. beer-battered salmon
5. Vegan meatloaf 
6. Vegan potato latkes
7. Vegan rum cake
8. Vegan tamales
9. Vegan shortbread
10. Tomatillo salsa

Okay, wow. I've been a busy bee. Grateful to have a little downtime now, to dream, gestate and plan. Happy New Year, everyone!

Theatre has been called a "dying art" (especially in THIS country) for a looong time. All my life, certainly. And yet, impractical and facilful as it was, I was still pulled to it. I kept trying to deny this pull until it was so strong, I just surrendered, once and for all. That was over twenty years ago, and while I've been plugging along steadily in my own way, via not only auditions, but also connections, as well as writing and producing my own stuff, I've only really started to feel somewhat "successful" in the past two years or so, at least in terms of seeing any substantial capital arise from my creative efforts. 

Last night, I read the sad announcement that Book-It Repertory here in Seattle, whose final season I acted in (In The Time of the Butterflies back in fall 2022) is closing. Yet another hard blow to the local theatre community in a sequential series of them, beginning prior to the pandemic. And of course, the pandemic definitely didn't help. Because money. Because in this country, we have a devastating culture of valuing only what brings in capital. 

So, what's a dedicated theatre artist to do? 

It occurs to me there's a HUUUUUGE financial disparity between screen and stage. Both mediums are essentially doing the same thing: telling stories. Film, TV and Video Games are able to do this in a slicker way with more bells and whistles, but essentially, the goals, at least at the outset, are the same: to tell a good story to an audience to craves it. And make no mistake: the public craves these stories. But sure, it's much easier to turn on the tv than make the effort to get dressed, drive or bus to a local theatre, sit through a production which might suck, you might be too cold or too hot, or have to go through the bathroom, or get sleepy, you have to sit amongst other audience members who might be annoying in some way (loud candy wrappers??? talking during the performance??? etc), and then after the show, you have to commute back home. If you just turn on the tv, all you have to do is turn it off if it's bad, or change the channel. Go pee during the commercial, or pause your content. 

Thus, as a whole, our culture values television, and by extension, film and video games, far more highly than theatre - these things are PRIORITIES to most Americans (I mean, what did we do during the pandemic, after all?) whereas attending the theatre is NOT. 

But did you happen to realize they are both vital parts of the same ecosystem? You don't really have the others without theatre. Imagine, if you will, a country where all the theatres go belly up, except for high school and college productions. Fewer theatres mean fewer young artists will bother to learn the craft of acting, so these high school and college programs will diminish and eventually disappear. Theatre is a DIRECT PIPELINE to screen, oftentimes. Without the training born and bred in these programs, without the fertile ground of being raised into the artistic community through these fringe and regional theatres, the quality of artists stepping into film will diminish as well. Sure, the training might pivot and programs might begin to cater towards film acting/writing/directing instead, but we will lose a great deal of the richness in these artists who come up in their high school, college and fringe breeding grounds. By eliminating theatre, we're eliminating an entire food group of spiritual and emotional nutrition. We're already bordering on cultural anemia in this country, do we really want to remove more nutrients? 

I sure hope not. As a multi-hyphenate artist, I will do everything in my power to continue - continue the conversation, continue the action, continue the work and continue to bend and shape my creativity to find the best and most unusual solutions to pull my greatest joy and exhilaration back from the brink and at least help bring it into remission, because an artless society is a dead society, and we are slowly careening towards the cliff. 

I'd venture a guess there are THOUSANDS of screen artists in Hollywood/Vancouver/Atlanta right now who came up through the theatre. I'll bet a good chunk of those artists enjoy returning to the theatre now and again. I've heard many actors wax poetic about the stage, and how their screen work enables them to return to the stage and still keep a roof over their head. I've heard them say there's nothing like live performance, nothing like acting in the moment on a live stage with a reactive audience. I know this feeling well myself after returning after nearly two years of Zoom theatre during the pandemic. I appeased myself with steady, live-streamed performances, but the moment I returned to a real stage in October 2021??? FUGEDDABOUTIT. I haven't looked back.

As an actor (or playwright, for that matter), I've never been that interested in pursuing a film career, other than as a means to an end: do film to make money to finance more theatre. I've done both. In terms of being able to sustain an emotional moment, theatre is HARDER. If you get to a certain point as a stage actor, shifting over to film is merely a matter of being able to memorize quickly and find your mark. Being able to offer different emotional moments over different takes is a breeze to do from one moment to the next, compared to sustaining the same thing over a period of rehearsals and performances, so if you can do it on a stage, your emotional agility is already so finely-honed that taking on a film set is an emotional cake walk. 

I'm not the only actor who knows this. 

Well, folks in screenland, now is the time for you to PAY IT FORWARD. All you artists who are now multimillionaires who started in theatre - it's time for you to infuse these theatres with donations, and I'm talking about not just the big, for-profit things that are grinding out musicals adapted from previous movies, but I'm talking about the little regional houses like Book-It, like The Empty Space (RIP), like the Group Theatre (RIP) the tiny, experimental fringe companies doing the weird stuff that run on the energy of their courageous artists, or the tiny ethnic theatres consistently employing scores of diverse minorities. These theatres and their (often voluntary) staff/artists are BURSTING with creativity - all they need are the dollars. So why not put a nice chunk of your dollars back into the institution you came through? Pave the way for the generations who follow you. There are plenty of folks out in the world who are going to give money to health and social causes - as an artist, it's your duty to put your money into the continued existence of the thing that gave you your start.

Artists are shamans and healers of the spirit. These stories we're telling, via screen, canvas, paperback, song and stage are important. They matter. THEATRE MATTERS.  

Periodically, I'll google myself, curious to see what's made it out into the internet stratosphere for public consumption, and I was doing that one day last month and discovered a spoken word poem of mine had won first prize in a contest I submitted it to back in March or something like that - SURPRISE! Only bragging rights, of course, but still pretty cool something of mine in a form I don't often put out in the world received recognition in any way. If you're curious, you can see the award here. And the poem, without further adieu:

My Dearest Babes,
It is with joy and sorrow I speak these words...
You always knew your mother carried within her
A mysterious secret
Something which caused her to be a little distant at times,
Something she longed for, but her love for all of you
Kept her from:
 
The thing of it is, it used to be part of me
And I part of it.
 
The sea. THE SEA. 
Endless, inviting, enveloping
It was my home, my name, my family
It sang to me, and I sang back
Beautiful wordless melodies 
Of sand, of surf
Of depth and mystery
 
And one day, I pulled him out – your father – 
I heard him, from miles away, struggling to keep afloat
He was drowning, you see
And I couldn’t let death claim him in my home.
 
Once on land, he sang to me, charmed me, took me home
And slowly, languidly
That sunkissed afternoon
The haunting musk of sweat and seaweed lingering heavy in the air
I let him strip my skins and hide them away…
And I stayed. Stayed!
I made his home, bore his little ones, and you know,
We had a good life in our little green cottage by the bay.
 
But...secretly...
I longed for it. Pined for it.
My home beneath the waves
Communion with sand, salt and skin
It would call to me and I strained to hear its wordless music
But my heart held you all dearly – 
We had such a happy home by my beloved waters – 
Duty and love pulled me back...
And anyway, I couldn’t find my skins,
And the years wore on.
 
One stormy day, awaiting his return,
Awaiting clothes to dry by the fire,
I gazed out the window and – 
 
The seas turned black for a moment...
I knew he was drowned,
Taken in forever by the febrile ocean
And life was suddenly sucked of color,
Rendered dull and meaningless,
All the little ones gone away...
And I looked out at my
Once-home waters with fear and dread,
And the years wore on,
And I began to grow old and bent.
 
One day, cleaning dusty, forgotten cabinets of his
I found them. Almost mistook them for
Old celluloid negatives 
ALMOST – 
threw them away! 
 
-but- 
 
My skins.
MY SKINS!!!
 
I drew them out, soaked them in my laundry bucket,
They began to revive.
Spotted and thick, almost glistening by the firelight,
I wondered if
They’d even fit me anymore!
But they are part of me and re-adheared like new.
 
And now, my dear ones, I look out to the swirling waters before me
With a strange mixture of fear, yearning and some long-buried sense of freedom and love
I’d forgotten I ever knew!
 
It pains me to say goodbye to you, my sweet babies! 
But you’ve grown so strong, and mother couldn’t be prouder.
I raised you to be yielding but fierce, 
Like the tides from whence I came.
I must go!
But you’re half me as much as you’re half him,
And if you need me,
You need only go to the water’s edge and call.
Wait for me, and I will come.
 
And slowly…
Surely…
I walk towards the salty waves
Prepared to sink or swim underneath them forever.

...I wrote it during the Spoken Word class I took years ago (2013) with Daemond Arrindell, and performed it for the end-of-class showcase performance. Recently, I've dusted it off both as a performance poem, and have also adapted it as a monologue. 

 SO a few things have hit over the last 24 hours that feel a little bit connected, but I’m starting to learn that many things are connected, so maybe it started before that, especially since some of this will connect to work/self from the past. 
 
Last month, my collaborator, Hannah and I worked on a proposal for Strawberry Theatre Workshop’s call for proposals for “Strawberry Jam” - it was meant for directors, which I am NOT. I have always kinda hated directing, to be honest. I’ve done it a couple times. The product usually comes out well, but my enjoyment of the whole process is usually stressful and I don’t have fun. Hannah doesn’t consider themself a director either, and there was a moment where we were both pondering on this call for, specifically, directors. But the proposal also stated they were open to people trying it out, so we went ahead with writing the proposal, deciding we’d co-direct. We went with the simplest thing we could think of: two solo plays of mine focusing on women in Greek myth as well as a 3rd piece Hanna would write. I’ve already performed my own two pieces, so figured I could borrow from those previous experiences, and also, that would afford us a small, manageable cast we could work with one-on-one or as an ensemble. I feel like I do well with the actor-to-director part of the directing process, the in the thick of it moment of coaching them within a scene, but less well with managing an ensemble, being in charge, talking to designers, etc. We put my name as the “lead” director on the proposal, as we though I might have better name recognition, with the intention of both of us being at the helm, and perhaps practicing a model, to a certain extent, of direction by committee. We spent a good chunk of time working on it, over about 3 weeks, and submitted it on March 15th, with the understanding we’d hear back by April 15th if our proposal was accepted. Now, STW is a very well-regarded organization within Seattle’s theatre community, so I wondered if I was (once again) aiming a little high...but I also had the strangest inner feeling we were going to get the gig. 
 
And let’s get to my own status within the Seattle theatre community over the past 20 or so years, as the red-headed stepchild. I haven’t historically been offered many opportunities, and have had to create many for myself. I don’t know if it’s my good diction, my unwillingness to play nice, or my low threshold for bullshit, but I’ve never felt part of the “in” crowd in Seattle’s theatre community, and after having gone to Baltimore and slipped in kind of easily (perhaps through my grad-school status), I felt it was less “me” than Seattle or perhaps me and this community not quite meshing. Seattle’s theatre scene, for one thing, likes to think of itself as super progressive and experimental, but now that I’ve left the community for a few years and seen actual, amazing experimental stuff, this scene is kind of in its infancy. It’s gotten better, and thank goodness for On The Boards, but by and large, experimental = camp around these parts. And I also don’t necessarily think of myself as all that experimental, but I do like to employ experimental ideas, and I love to devise work in the true sense of the word, rather than just showing up as an actor and have other people guide the devising. All this to say: things didn’t change that much when I returned from grad school, other than my own aesthetic and sensibility. I’ve still by and large, been the red headed stepchild who had to claw and bite to receive many opportunities. 
 
Something has shifted, however, post-pandemic - partially within myself as much as outside me. For one thing, I’ve now worked as an actor on two professional shows over the past year, and been invited to audition in another that was one of the best projects I’ve ever experienced, and yet another bucket list classic I’ll begin rehearsals for in June. Also, I’ve been on a bit of a roll as a playwright, having been accepted as a resident playwright to Parley as well as a company playwright for Pacific Play Company, and have been not only generating a ton of work on both scores, but have had many of my pieces go up onstage over the past couple of months. Like, between the two, the respect I’ve craved for 20 years from my peers is finally starting to seep in. People actually SAW some of these things and are noticing my work positively, for a change. After SO MANY years of hustling, it’s nice to finally see a little payoff for all that hard work. 
 
Which brings me to opening up my email last night to find our proposal to StrawShop had been accepted...YIKES!!! So now I have to be a director. I had a moment where I considered turning down the proposal and just telling Hannah we hadn’t been accepted - because I know doing this is going to bring a WHOLE LOTTA STRESS my way, and lots of it probably won’t be fun - but I also really thought about this after we submitted the proposal - maybe it’s the Universe’s way of telling me something, and something important will be revealed during this process. So I forwarded the acceptance email to Hannah, and we’ll discuss further during a celebratory dinner in a few days. I guess we’re doing this!
 
...and now we enter into the next part of this missive, that being a digital class I took today about getting yourself unstuck as a writer. One of the exercises was a guided meditation that invited us to relax (you know, all the things: focus on your breathing, relax your muscles, notice your senses, etc) and find where in our bodies felt the most comfortable, and I felt the answer coming somewhere from my solar plexis, and it screamed at me:
 
THE PEA!!!
 
Yes, the pea. Not your ordinary garden variety pea you use in pea soup, of course, but The Pea I first met in Hans Christian Andersen’s Princess and the Pea during childhood - you know, the prince was trying to find a real princess and couldn’t, then one night, a woman knocked at the door saying she was a real princess. The Queen put a pea on the bottom of twenty mattresses and twenty featherbeds, and the princess couldn’t sleep that night, because she felt the pea beneath all this covering, and that sensitivity meant she was a real princess. 
 
Pertaining to my own personal mythology, I wrote a poem in undergrad which I called The Princess and the Pea after I wrote it, because it inadvertently recalled the fairy tale, but without actually saying it - “...deep, deep down, under all the thick, masking layers of myself is something small, rare, pure, and perfect. It is all of me, I am all of it.”
 
Aaaaand of course, just typing out those words brings a sting of tears to my eyes. It meant a certain thing to me then, but also again, in my early 30’s during an acting class exercise about “the decisive self” at Freehold, where we were to imagine ourselves having been paralysed and today, after many months of rehab, we were going to walk for the first time. I remember something in my solar plexus propelling me to the wall of the studio so I could prop myself up and stand - it was an extremely emotional exercise for me, as someone who struggled with weight issues when I was younger, and between getting to the wall and realizing how precious my (oft-maligned) legs were in that I CAN WALK, and a valuable lesson. My old poem about the pea came back to me as we wrote about the experience afterwards, because while trying to get to the wall, I could FEEL THE PEA in my solar plexis....ahhhh, the power of the pea.
 
...So to have it speak to me again, over 20 years later here in my bedroom in this beautiful little house that chose us to live here was such a gift and reminder to me, whispering back to me yet again, “It is all of me, I am all of it.”
 
The card I drew today was “Crossroad”. Instead of examining it and describing it, I went straight to the description in the book, which talked about “upcoming decisions” and “a turning point in life”. Interestingly, the pieces Hannah and I have proposed for Strawberry Jam are about women having limited choices, so it resonates on many levels, and even harkens back to the last line in my friend Orla’s Uncaged I wrote about last weekend: “they looked down at the woman beneath...waiting for what she was going to do next.”
 
The pea has been there, since I was little, propelling me forward, despite fear, despite feeling like a fraud and a charlatan, despite the worry my peers don’t think I’m worthy or “cool”, propelling me to the next step: push yourself across the floor, prop yourself against the wall, take a tiny step” and “write this piece, develop this proposal, hit send”. 
 
Am I, at last, a Real Princess?

The tree in the background no leaves, really, though the photo is light green - maybe it is a spring tree, just getting ready to sprout with new life? It’s the home of a butterfly, and there are birds flying in the distance. There’s a big hourglass imposed on the tree’s trunk, with mirror images of leafless branches on one half, and full, leafy trees on the bottom - the hourglass also seems to invoke an infinity symbol, vertically. There’s a transparent heart at the base of the tree, and I can see some of the roots. 
 
Weirdly, it reminds me of this monologue I performed years ago, just coming out of Freehold, written by my friend Orla, who I coincidentally, just saw last night as she passes through town back to Ireland. I hadn’t seen her since my thirties, and she was part of a small group of friends who went through 9/11 together back in 2001, here in Seattle, and the show this monologue was part of came out of that. She brought the monologue up last night, when I mentioned I had just done “In the Time of the Butterflies” and alluded to similarities between butterflies and birds, which were prominent in the piece she wrote, and both birds and a butterfly present themselves in this card. In Orla’s monologue I performed, the narrator opened up her chest and tons of birds flew out, and all stood on the tree above her, “waiting for what she was going to do next”. It was an extremely powerful monologue for me during that time, but as I’ve discovered, throughout life, you can still have dialogue with art you made in the past, in different ways. It appears this piece wants more dialogue.
 
This morning I woke up to find a physical manifestation from a recent energy shift. A teacher in Boston produced a cut version of my play, Loom, for competition in the Massachusetts Educational Theatre Guild annual high school contest. They won the preliminary round, but alas, didn’t go further than that. Still exciting, though, and just having the piece discovered on NPX completely unsolicited a few months ago in the first place began a bit of an energy shift for me in terms of my own writing, so when the teacher wasn’t paying me my playwright’s fee for use of my piece, I started to go down an unpleasant road. Immediately after they were done, he asked me for my venmo, which I gave him, and then: radio silence. Two weeks later, I sent him a gentle reminder. Another week of completely silence. I started wondering what I was going to do. I mean: $200 isn’t a life-changing amount, but it’s more the principle of the thing. I kept thinking of what I was going to do: write him a nasty email, threaten to talk to his higher ups at Everett High School, try a heartfelt, artist-to-artist email...I went so far as to look up faculty and staff at the high school, doing a google search to find out more about him. I was actually getting a little anxious and stressed out, and the initial excitement of the play being selected, performed and winning the preliminary round started getting polluted by my bad feeling. I thought to myself yesterday: I don’t want to be that person who threatens and tries to manipulate. Maybe I just make my peace with the fact I’m probably going to get stiffed, and let karma do the rest of the work. I don’t know. Universe, please help me figure out what to do. It felt like an energy shift on my part.
 
And this morning, I had $200 sitting in my Venmo account. The universe didn’t even answer me with what to do: it just rewarded me with what I was struggling with all along. And yes, the $200 is nice, but more important to me is the ENERGY SHIFT I arrived at on my own, not only was it its own reward, but I also got the actual $$ I was due, without having to write any letters or really, do anything other than be patient and make my peace. 
 
It makes me wonder if the tree with the birds from that long-ago monologue is still there, on my astral plane, and if those birds have been watching me ever since. I think of other subtle energy shifts I’ve made over the last few years, and how my life has changed because of them. It’s not like, a 100% transformation, of course, because there are still threads that connect me, and I’m still learning and growing. But I definitely LIKE the person I am now more than I liked the person who performed Uncaged back in 2002. I feel like those birds have been watching me make missteps for SO LONG...or maybe I shouldn’t think of them as missteps. Maybe it’s just part of the journey. 
 
When I read the description for the card’s meaning, after having written all the above, it’s weirdly SPOT ON: “...as a time factor, it indicates a long time either into the past or the future. It is a slow growth; the tree also does not grow overnight...keep going with things that are important to you.” This is not all, but it definitely tracks with what I’ve written based on the experience of being paid for Loom and the experience of performing Uncaged during a time of huge, personal transformation. 
 
More than anything, it assures me I’m starting to move towards something a little more deliberate, energetically, and more sentimentally, assures me I am still, in fact, ON THE PATH.