Let Me Down Easy Anna Deavere Smith

Let Me Down Easy  Written and performed by Anna Deavere Smith

Anna Deavere Smith is a genius, and she even has a MacArthur fellowship to prove it. Anyone who is lucky enough to take a seat in the Second Stage Theater on West 43^rd Street and be regaled by the 20 real life characters created by Smith in For Let Me Down Easy will burst out acclaiming her bravura intensity for all to hear.

Anna, as her characters refer to her, pioneered a form of theater at the confluence of journalism, caricature and mimicry, all tied together with a shining bow of theatrical excellence. Anna takes her time to create her work and will not be rushed. For Let Me Down Easy she spent years interviewing celebrities, folks, clergy, doctors and hospital administrators across the county in order to find a synthesis that hits pitch perfect.

Health care in America at this crucial moment is on all of our minds: how to get it, how to pay for it and how to feel safe. Anna began work on Let Me Down Easy with a commission from the Yale School of Medicine. Her findings were then wrapped into an early version of the play and shown at New Haven’s acclaimed Long Warf Theater, and then debuted this fall on Broadway. This is not the usual route to creating theatre, but then Deavere Smith has never done anything other than work off the grid and make her audience rethink whatever subject she is tackling.

She is a consummate journalist whose ear is pitch perfect when both questioning and listening to answers. She begins by taping everything and then she returns to the tapes, edits them and becomes the person whom she interviews. Do not skim over this, she is an alchemist and she becomes for our delight and education a Buddhist monk, a boxer, her aging aunt, Joel Siegel, Eve Ensler, former governor Ann Richards, a patient at Yale New Haven hospital and Lance Armstrong among others.

 

Each character contributes a salient piece on the debate about ageing, becoming ill, dying or attempting to be well and achieve in a society which often seems to not value those who are not perfect: women who are not svelte, the wounded, the poor, the uninsured, the uneducated. Anna gives them all an eloquent voice. She equally allows the celebrities and higher ups in the pantheon of medicine to wax poetic about how they view this confused landscape of medical care and the shifting sands of health.

As the characters emerge Anna is served props or costume pieces by an unidentified hand maiden and by the end of the nearly two hour piece the wonderful set, flaked by mirrors, is littered with the detritus of the twenty characters we have seen metamorphosis before our eyes. Boxing gloves, wine, eyeglasses, a hospital gown, and various suit jackets, all remain to remind us that every character, every story builds on the one before it in this play, as in our lives.

This kind of thought, effort and execution is rare and is the result of long hard work. Anna Deavere Smith has a glorious team surrounding her in the director Leonard Foglia, set designer Riccardo Hernandez, lighting designers Jules Fisher and Peggy Eisenhauer, costumer Ann Hould-Ward and the movement and dialect coaches, dramaturge and various assistants; they all must be noted because Anna obviously knows that all the characters she brings so vibrantly to us are the work of a kind of distillation whereby gallons of liquid are distilled to produced drops of elixir. Do not hesitate to run and drink from the magic Anna Deavere Smith has created.

Thru November 8

ONLINE at www.LetMeDownEasy.com

CALL (212) 246-4422


VISIT THE BOX OFFICE at 305 West 43 Street 

Aging Downtown Experimentalists Shine Uptown

I came of age in experimental theater. Ellen Stewart the doyen of LaMama dragged me, in 1972 at 21, to see Philip Glass in concert under one of futurist Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic domes, perched on a hillside in Spoleto Italy. Stewart crooned,“ Baby you have to hear this cause Phil is another LaMama baby, just like you.”

 

After so many decades, there are many ageing experimentalists walking among us, but the cream of the crop have their talents shining in Central Park in a production of Euripides tragedy, The Bacchae. Greek drama is a staple of downtown experimentalism, Andre Serban, Ruth Maleczech, Richard Schechner, Lee Breuer, and Liz Le Compte all gave us multiple versions of Greek myths gone wild, but this summer’s production features many of the artists who dedicated their lives to this ephemeral craft of creating experimental work that would move audiences to visceral joy, terror and amazement.

 

The likes of Andre De Shields, yes of The Wiz but also countless works downtown were on display as Tieresis auguring in sequins and tearing at our souls. Karen Kandel heads the chorus with such superb marksmanship that the other eleven Bacchanalians follow pitch perfect. Kandel was in an early production of Andre Serban’s Trilogy and is now co-director of downtown’s lauded Mabou Mines. George Bartenieff, one of the founders of the funky, Theater for the New City, think political, shoestring, street theater regaling city streets for decades; he is now explosive as the grandfather of the murdered young king Pentheus.  And as an aside, although not one of the cadre of early experimentalists, Anthony Mackie is a young star as Penteus.

 

The murderer of Pentheus is none other than the incredible, ever incandescent Joan Macintosh.  I whispered to my daughter 24, before Macintosh took the stage that she was about to see one of the truly great actors of our time. A women, who if she had not been married to experimentalist, founder of the Performance Group Richard Schechner and stared in all his “environmental theater” productions might have been as well known as Meryl Streep. Her performance raging as a woman in ecstasy who unknowingly kills her son, thinking he was a wild beast is transformative on the lip of John Conklin’s  glorious river bound Delacourt stage.

 

And of course the  Queen and King of this ensemble work are the director Joanne Akalaitis, and composer Philip Glass; both 72. Akalaitis was artistic director of the Public Theater for a scant two years after the death of founder Joseph Papp. Glass and Akalaitis were married back in the day for fifteen years, but have been working together for more than forty years. And kudos to longevity and dedication because they still create theatrical miracles like The Bacchae.

 I know that if I were a more astute student of the genealogy of Downtown Theater, I could pull more strings of connectivity together, but if my own scant personal history yields this much imagine the wealth lying beneath the surface which is brought to light in this revelatory production. And as ever, all for free beneath the stars, wafted by summer breezes and serenaded by crickets. 

In Search of Whirled Peace

As someone who’s been pegged a whirling dervish on numerous occasions by friends and foes alike, it was no surprise my announcement of an assignment to go cover the real-life spinning mystics was met with chuckles, chortles and knowing winks all around. Not that anybody ever meant to imply I was a Turkish dancing mystic and follower of a charismatic philosopher-poet born in 1207…


Many of us who came of age in the sixties have at least a passing acquaintance with Rumi, aka Mevlana, via his aphorisms that adorned so many inspirational posters of the Hippie era: “Reason is powerless in the expression of love” and so forth. I was lucky enough to have witnessed the dervishes in action at the LaMama Theater, an experimental company in Manhattan’s East Village where I worked in the eighties. Their music was hypnotic and evocative, the precise symmetry of their movements captivating as they spun in tight circles under tall felt hats, their white weighted skirts forming undulating cones and the entire spectacle instantly converting our dusty little auditorium into some exotic middle eastern bazaar.


Later, I learned Rumi was a respected Islamic scholar and theologian who proclaimed the way to enlightenment was through a meditative trance-like induced by spinning. His teachings evolved into what Turks call the Mevlana Sect. Beyond that, I knew nothing. So when a choreographer friend mentioned he had received a grant to travel with his company to the interior of Turkey to dance with the dervishes, I jumped in with both feet and soon found myself boarding a plane bound for Istanbul en route to Konya to continue my education about this sect of whirling seekers.


Konya, the site of the 13th century mosque and mausoleum of the Mevlana Rumi himself, is described in my guidebook as one of the most religiously conservative cities in Turkey. We arrived there mid-morning, and the site’s turquoise minaret, gleaming against the gray of an early spring sky, beckoned from blocks away. The call to prayer was just subsiding and the courtyard of the shrine was filled with pilgrims of all ages, each patiently donning plastic over-shoes in order to enter the mosque where Rumi and his disciples are entombed. (It became a museum in 1927, four years after the establishment of the Turkish Republic.)


Rumi’s faith held Muslim, Jew and Christian in equal regard. He advocated tolerance, positive reasoning and charity, and did not ascribe to an orthodox Muslim doctrine, which has garnered him followers among many sects and creeds.


Inside, the tombs were topped not with gravestones, but rather enormous stone turbans. Candles hung from the ceiling, inside large hand-blown glass lamps. Elaborate carpets covered the floors, and the murmur of praying filled me with a numinous sensation. Pausing for several minutes at Rumi’s place of honor, I began to sense an aura of contentment settling down on me.


The walk from the mosque to the conference center on the outskirts of Konya, where our whirling workshop would take place, revealed the city to be a jumble of modern industrial buildings; ancient architecture, including numerous religious monuments; and small shops. Carpet stores abutted barbershops where men wrapped in hot towels peered out, their faces slathered with cream. Turkish children whooped in schoolyards surrounded by fences with rusting bicycles tethered to them. Tiny businesses sold figs, walnuts and olives; kiosks plied delicious warm pide bread. Doner kebab stands offered sliced lamb or chicken stuffed into the bread’s pockets along with onions and tomatoes.



At the conference center, Ahmet Calisir, the leader of Konya’s semazen—their dance is called the sema, hence they are the semazen—began to enlighten us. Through a translator, he spoke of the pressing need, especially in these times, to connect to the earth and to our own immortality, and to recognize that we are not the center of the universe. He began to unfold the deep symbolism of the sema, how it hearkens to a mystical journey, our spiritual ascent toward perfection, and how the spinning represents a turning toward truth and away from the dangers of egotism. It also honors the commonality of all beings, reaffirming a fundamental condition and scientific truth of our existence: Whether we are planets in a solar system or electrons in a single atom or flighty journalists in between jobs (as I was), we all rotate.



irst, we would watch the dervishes perform then they would assist our efforts to replicate their swirling dance. I was champing at the bit for the active part, even in the face of such a patient teacher as Calisir. We sat cross-legged as the ancient music of the ney, a reed flute, and the kudu drum invaded our thrumming modern psyches. The dancers began at a markedly slow pace, arms crossed. As the crescendo built, they released their arms to heaven and earth, their eyes rolled up into their brows and they spun faster and faster, slipping magically past each other, never colliding. I was in rapture, with whirling skirts flying just inches past my nose and nimble feet, tightly laced in thin black leather boots, crisply pivoting at barely arm’s length. The dervishes’ sikke, those tall felt hats, somehow remained fixed. By now, I knew they represented the tombstone of the ego, a renunciation of worldly attachments.



The dance lasted perhaps thirty minutes. When the music subsided, the semazen calmly took their places against the back wall, hands crossed to opposite shoulders, sweat rolling down their cheeks yet breathing sedately.



Rising with my friend’s troupe, I was self-conscious about my age and lack of a dancer’s physique. My unquiet brain taunted me with self-doubt. We assumed the stance and the music began. Omar, a baker by day, and Hassan, a plumber, adjusted our arms and feet as we attempted to find the orbit and singular thread evinced by these practicing mystics. Many of us faltered or tipped; some clung to a wall for spatial solace. I wobbled, plopped onto my backside, and took a moment to revel in the spin of the room.



We were privileged to witness another miraculously calming performance by the semazen and were then asked for our reactions to the entire experience. Sensing no need for a clever response, no impulse to swoop in and deconstruct the scenario or come up with a definitive string of witticisms, I remained uncharacteristically silent. I realized that with real whirling comes focus, balance and the connection to a greater sensibility than anything my left brain could parse.



The next day, I was awakened at dawn by a muezzin calling the faithful to prayer. As I lay in bed in my little room at the Hotel Rumi, across from the mosque, I felt myself still spinning. It was not the residual rocking of a seasick ship passenger but a constant, steadying, internal movement, like the ticking of a well-oiled clock. I could pause again to acknowledge my newfound connection to all things that revolve and spin and find their centers.

The Day After Christmas

I suppose I keep waiting for the day when I feel clam and safe and whole. I know it is never coming. I am the only one who can dispense with the fear, the dangling shoe waiting to fall and unseat whatever morsel of fearlessness I have cooked up in my kitchen.

Here it is again. The holidays, and I have been searching for work: in the arts, teaching, upstate or in the city, but to no avail. Then twin occurrences rock my core: the incredible NY Times writer who did the piece on me and the opera in September, called to say she was hurt that she had to find out about the “scandal” when readers sent the article from NY Magazine to her, scanned from their collection, aging for 16 years. I was sorry to have hurt her, to have let her feel that I had been less than intimate but there is, or was this fine line between wanting all of “THAT” to go away and believing that all good works, bright deeds and forward motion would allow me to put that giant misstep behind me.

Now I know otherwise. Well, that conversation shook me to my foundation, because I had inflicted pain on a good woman, and became she said, "Didn’t you think that the reason I didn’t call you back, was because I found out? “

"No," I blurted, “I thought it was because you have baby children and an enormous job.”

But now I will think that. I will think that every unreturned phone call, every rejected story idea; every job where I am passed over is always because they found out. And in fact this past week, the eve of Christmas Eve, I got the second phone call from a potential employer, one where they had already offered me the job. A position that was running a small arts organization in disarray, and where I would be paid a fraction of what my experience and education should command. But I was going to take it for a challenge and to bring myself back into more full time working in a tough environment.

Here is this phone call. “Do you have a scandal in your past?”

And so I tell the story. And the phrase the Times’ writer said I should employ,
“There was no indictment, no charges, and it was 16 years ago, so it is a non- story.” And further I worked as a stock broker where the FBI investigates your past giving you a green light or tossing your ass out. But this is the arts and innuendo and gossip are key elements. I answered his questions in as calm a voice as I could muster and then I climbed the stairs in my hallway to call my husband, who was in our bedroom. I called him because I did not want to have my daughter, even as a near grownup at 24, to hear me break down yet again.

I had given her too may sleepless nights, and days of fear. She had recently shared with me that my very high and low personality was tough on her and I vowed then and there to share less and attempt to be more even. So I called from the stairwell near the roof, and cried.

“Do you want me to come to you?”

“No I want it to stay normal down there until the girl leaves for Christmas tomorrow so early, then I can break down, right now I need to hold it together. People are coming for dinner and there is laundry and clean up to do. I will be right in.”

I called two friends, both wise in different ways. One a composer and former porn star, who wants to aggressively pursue the purveyors of gossip and pummel them; the other, a spiritualist from San Francisco, wants me to dissolve the dark cloud through thought and forgiveness and also wants me to promise to never go looking for a job in the arts again. At least not in NYC.

So that’s it. I have sworn off the non-profit art world. And I pledged to find a job where I can offer my skills to a non-profit that attempts to help battered or abused woman. Because in that environment I can be open about my past, the fact that I was so terrified and beaten down, and that I did a terrible thing, can become a pledge to assist other women, who might be more voiceless that I am.

I don’t know if I can continue to come here to this blog thing.

It feels lonely and as if I am trying to do good or prove that I have a modicum of value, when often, of late, I feel empty and valueless. As devalued as this crazy economy.

So I am attaching a chapter, one from my unpublished book, called MID-LIFE MAMBO; the chapter is entitled Stealing Home. What the Time’s writer said is that I need to publish the story as a book, a memoir and then no one can ever again say, “Hey why didn’t you tell me?” cause it will be out there.

So this is a clumsy attempt to have this story out there in some form other than the tabloid tellings. May the truth really set me free, because of late I am festering and in the dark place and during a time when the world is attempting to bring forth great light.


Light and peace to all.



Stealing Home
Chapter 4
Wickham Boyle

When I was 42 years old, newly separated from the abusive father of my children, terrified, and ensconced in a secret affair with my ex-brother-in-law, I went to the home of a rich friend and stole her jewelry.
I never thought I’d be able to write that. After more than a decade, I never believed I would have the clarity, forgiveness, and inner strength to just say it. Age and time are wonderful healers.
This morning I sat watching a torrent of rain pour into my window boxes, inundating the six small cypress tress I planted to give myself a sense of Christmas cheer. As I meditated, I begged my mind, my higher power, a goddess, the universe, or the watching cats, to give me the vision and gumption to write about stealing and forgiveness.
I had stolen things before. During my final years in high school my mother returned to work after a twenty-year hiatus. Our family was pretty desperate for money. My alcoholic father’s career seemed to be in a tailspin, and my bi-polar mom took it upon herself to save the day. She lacked the clothes to be a modern businesswoman, and for my mother the outfit really made the woman; so as the first child, the hero, I came to the rescue.
I went to Bloomingdale’s in the mall, and I shoplifted pantsuits. I then bestowed the suits on my mother. I told her I purchased them with baby-sitting money. I was a champion baby-sitter, but there weren’t enough kids in Poet’s Corner, our suburban neighborhood, to support these extravagant suits. But my mother, chief enabler and household master of denial, was always ready to incorporate any story, no matter how far-fetched, into her lexicon of truth. So she welcomed this wardrobe windfall and traipsed gaily off to her new job.
I continued to snag suits for her for years until she fell ill. She was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. Since my mother placed such a premium on appearances, she decided that her tremors were too awful for anyone to see, let alone trust her to excel in a job. She quit, and the pantsuits languished in her closet. My father retired from NBC, and they moved south to Durham, North Carolina, where he took a job running a small news station. They restarted their lives in a ranch-style house where my mother didn’t have to climb stairs or be seen by folks she knew.
This was pretty much the end of my brilliant career as a thief. I had never thought stealing for myself was an option. Theft was something I could do for others. I didn’t feel guilty about taking the outfits for my mother from Bloomingdale’s. I rationalized that it was a conglomerate store, my mother needed this stuff, and I provided it for her. We all tell tales to justify what we do—from stealing, to sneaking the extra brownie, to having affairs. Life’s choices, opportunities, and even morals seemed to me to be dictated by compromises.
Later, with my grown-up life in turmoil and my children grown to the point where they could stand up for themselves, I finally made the choice to leave their father. I decided that I couldn’t take the abuse, neglect, and mockery. (Let’s call him Dick, since it describes one of his chief characteristics.) After I told Dick I was finished and he had to leave, I began an affair with his brother. My therapist said instead of just moving out of the house, I burned it down metaphorically, so there would be no possibility of ever moving back in with Dick. In a sense, having the torrid affair with Frank, did inoculate me from any future relationship with Dick or his family.
I had been in an abusive relationship for almost fifteen years. I am appalled to write this. I am stupefied that a strong, educated, outspoken woman put up with the kind of physical and emotional abuse I endured. I was so devalued that I came to believe I had no worth. I had fallen in love with Dick, who was handsome, aloof, under employed, a philanderer, and a full-blown narcissist. Dick was what I had learned in my childhood to be model husband material.
Dick never married me. He said he’d be damned if he would give me the opportunity to be “a fuckin’ princess for a day.” And yet we stayed together because a part of me felt I would never find anyone else, anyone better, and I wanted to have babies. So I called him my “husband” and got pregnant with my sweet daughter—a child whose spirit, I believed, was just waiting for me to welcome her into the world. Then three years later, although Dick rarely worked, we had another baby, a boy. My fantasy family was complete; I had what my mother called “The choice of kings, le choi des rois, a boy and a girl. I also had a man who cheated, belittled me, spat at me, shoved me, and tossed me down a flight of stairs while I was pregnant. Dick always said, “I never hit you.” Moral hair splitting. Since I produced theater for a living, I continued spinning illusions with my personal life. I worked endless hours, pretended everything was fine, and yet I was miserable and terrified. I had no idea where to turn. After creating this elaborate fantasy, I couldn’t admit to any of my friends how degraded I was.
Dick and I were in therapy where he disclosed how his father had sexually molested two of his sisters and how this fact illuminated the roots of his emotional withholding. I was convinced I could save him. Since being the rescuer was my childhood role, however, neither of us managed to transcend our broken beginnings. I was always the angry, disappointed mother, and he was an angry, fuck-up of a father. We made a perfect pact of complicit insanity. We stayed locked in this baleful world where I begged for attention, affection, sex, financial assistance, any bone he would toss me; and he gleefully withheld and played the uptown gigolo. It was pathetic.
It was my daughter, then eight-years-old, who came to my rescue. One early morning, as I was picking up clothes, washing dishes, calling my assistant, and getting the kids ready for school while the man of the house slept in the big feather bed, my angel whispered, “Mama, when you are the woman, does it mean that you do all the work, earn all the money, and pick up after everyone, and the man yells at you? And why do the kids have to pick up clothes if papa doesn’t have to do anything?”
The circuit in my badly wired brain flipped; it was as if my internal sanity signal, which had been stuck in the off-position for decades, suddenly switched on. This farce of a relationship would stop; I was done. I began to formulate an exit strategy. Even if I couldn’t take care of myself, I was not going to doom my children to a life where they learned abuse.
I canceled our family summer vacation—the one where I would pay for everything and Dick would complain and berate me. Instead, I took the kids away to visit friends in the south of France. Before leaving, I sat down with Dick at our kitchen table and told him I was finished. I wrote out my speech on a scrap of paper. I had scribbled it over and over in my journal trying to find the essence of why I could no longer go on. Imagine, I felt compelled to find the right words to express why I was leaving a man who had never supported our family and had been stone cold mean to me for years. Dick told me I was totally negative and there was nothing redeeming about me. I told him I couldn’t listen to those characterizations any more.
Dick didn’t object or even negotiate staying. He moved out ahead of schedule on July fourth, right before I went on vacation with the kids. I was 42 years old and about to have a real independence day. Even after he had agreed to leave, while we formulated his exit strategy, we fell into a bitter fight. Dick ran after me trying to beat me with a set of crutches he was using for a severed Achilles tendon while I threatened to call the police. When he left the house, it was cold and final.
As much as I wanted to believe in magic, I was so broken that I imagined no one would ever love me again. I would be that lone woman in the diner with no partner, no sweetheart. My sexuality had been so degraded by the years of enduring Dick’s affairs and insults, including calling me a fat pig, that I sought to restart my erotic engine by having an affair with his brother Frank.
Frank and I had always been drawn to each other; we shared a raucous sense of humor and very judgmental spouses, who disdained us and castigated us, often in public. The affair was wrong. I know that. Frank had a wife and two little kids. But I knew he had been having affairs for his entire marriage, and I rationalized that I needed him and the rest be damned.
It was the same sensation when I stole the jewels at a friend’s Thanksgiving breakfast. They were there on the bathroom counter, and in a drawer. I put my hand out, filled my purse, and left with my kids. I believed this stolen jewelry could save my children, save me, and even—this is so stupid—save my neighbor across the street who was in the process of attempting to leave her abusive husband. I rationalized that I was Robin Hood.
The universe and my destiny had a different scenario in mind. After the theft, I called a society woman, who I assumed was a friend, and asked her how I could sell some jewelry in order to raise funds to finalize my separation from Dick. She invited me to her Upper East Side home where she had set up a sting operation. The family from whom I had stolen surmised I had done it and evidently contacted people we knew, putting out the word. When I arrived uptown, there was a former prosecutor, and the husband of the woman from whom I had stolen the jewels. I was caught. It was mind-boggling. I kept saying, Please don’t take my kids from me. Please, I am so desperate, please don’t take my kids. I will do anything you ask. That’s all I can remember, except that I felt as if there was no air. And outside it was raining and cold, just like it is today.

I have to stop.

Ten years have passed, and still I can’t escape the sickness in my muscles as I write this: the shame, the terror, the horrible notion that I blew up my life and hurt others. I risked my children’s future all because I believed I had so little value, so little hope, that I had to steal.
My life began to go into free fall. I can see now, in retrospect, that this explosion set me on the course to find my real path, but in the middle of the crash, the dust and debris were daunting. The woman who conducted the sting, Trixie, called my ex; she also called many of the benefactors of my non-profit theater, and she called the press. She did this even though the people from whom I had stolen signed a pact specifying no one involved would talk about this, ever. In return, I agreed to seek professional counseling, and we would all move on with our lives. It was incredibly generous on their part, but Trixie had other plans.
Within weeks of the confrontation, right before Christmas, a tabloid paper ran the story of my thievery, featuring Trixie as the savior. My affair with Frank was there, my separation from Dick, who it turned out had been having affairs with many society women. He was portrayed as a poor beleaguered patsy. I was conjured as some sort of seasoned nefarious thief.
I saw my life evaporate. I panicked. I could not see my way out. Maybe I could be a waitress in a fast food restaurant; I could do that. I would move, start again and build a tiny, clean, untainted life for my little family and myself. The press was calling my house, and then my ex would call to gloat and threaten to take the children away from me forever. He chanted into the phone, “I will destroy you!” Dick had found a way to continue his abuse, and I had handed him the tools.
I took Nyquil every night after I put the kids to bed and cried myself to sleep. I awoke in the morning groggy with sopping wet pillows. I made strong black coffee, forced a smile and got back on the path. I was psychotic every time the children had to visit Dick for a weekend. I was convinced I would never see them again. All the grants for my theater dried up. I considered killing myself, but I couldn’t possibly leave my darling children with Dick.
I called Kass, my best girl friend, my heart, and my partner in the little theater I began downtown after leaving LaMama. Kass worked a second job as a concierge in a fancy uptown hotel. This was the first time I had admitted my culpability to anyone other than the prosecutor involved in the sting. To the outside world I attempted to brush this off as gossip initiated by a vengeful ex. Like a child afraid of bad dreams, I felt if I kept denying that any of it was true, it would go away. Kass was on duty at the front desk, and as she checked in Prince, over the phone she simultaneously read me the riot act: “Under no circumstances are you to consider killing yourself. You are not your mother. You are too strong for that. You must never let Dick win. You stole stuff; that’s bad, but there are no charges. You will rebuild your life better than before. Believe me. We will make this work. You have to go through fire now. You were a piece of pottery and the fire is at your heels. You have the opportunity to become porcelain if you make it through without cracking. I have confidence in you and fuck the rest of them. I will call you back.”
Kass hung up the phone, and I sat for hours in the same chair, frozen in place. She called back, and we planned to shut down our theater in the new year and to put one foot in front of the other.
The stories in the newspapers didn’t stop for five years. Every time I got a job, there would be another story, and it would be sent to my boss. I changed careers, moving into the financial services sector where an FBI background check was conducted and prospective stock brokers have to pass rigorous qualifying exams. I passed and was building a business, but still the hounding continued. I began to look for jobs—with my bad press clippings in hand—and I even landed some, but then Trixie or Dick would call and harass the bosses until I was fired. I felt mired in shame and terror.
When I lived with Dick, I felt unsafe because of the battering and assaults, but even with Dick out of my home, he continued to pursue me. Dick sued to take the children away, even though he had no apartment and no job. By the time of the hearing, I was a vice president in a brokerage firm, living in the children’s original home. As Dick’s accusations were not substantiated, the court awarded me full custody. But his abuse did not abate. It was up to me to find my own safety in the midst of the continued onslaught.
I cried, I smashed things, I cooked and cleaned, and I called my friends, who counseled me to believe this crisis was I all part of a plan and promised life would improve. They prescribed forward motion, continued therapy, and forgiveness. The last part has been the most difficult because too often what I wanted was revenge.
I enrolled in a small Buddhist school where I learned meditation and yoga. I was introduced to the teachings of the Dalai Lama, who preaches that we need to offer forgiveness to those who have hurt us most and accept their venom back as a neutralizing process. I wrote letters of amends to some I had harmed; I tried to get up every morning, do good work, help people, be kind, and believe in action as a great healer. I had good and very low moments.
I fell in love with a wonderful man named Zachary; I told him everything. After I disgorged the story of my theft, he took me by the hand to the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Fifth Avenue, and in front of the Temple of Dendur, he said with great rectitude: “Look at all this shit, all of it was stolen.” We left, enough said. He loved me, proposed later in the year, and we got married. Zachary adored me and supported me when I was fired and broken. He encouraged me to be a writer, which had always been my heart’s desire. He said, “Baby, you need to know that when the phone rings and someone asks to complain to the boss, you can say, she’s right here.” Rather than fire myself, I needed to forgive.
I struggled, I worked, I volunteered, I mothered, I laughed outrageously as I strove to forgive myself for the abuse I welcomed and for the lack of faith I evinced in my own abilities. I began to admit that I had not lived an exemplary life—I had been mean, less than generous, manipulative—I could do better. I tried to forgive myself for resorting to thievery rather than believing that there was help available. I focused on forgiving myself while I reveled in writing, the work I always wanted. I now regard the past decade with a wide-eyed sense of wonder.
I left a relationship where I was abhorred and worked in jobs that gave me low remuneration and terrible esteem. I rebuilt my life out of the rubble. I fell in love with a man who refused to judge me, who was present and supportive to my every transformation. I have used my transgressions as a teaching tool, a cautionary tale, reminding my kids that there is nothing from which we can’t recover. I have told them everything. I remind them that since I have been honest with them about my big misstep, they should know that there is nothing they can do that will appall me. I will listen; we will learn and do better.

In the rubble of my life I found good building materials for forgiveness. What facilitates forgiveness still stymies me. Perhaps it is the cessation of rushing hormones flanked by the simple passage of time or the realization that holding hate is a great toxin and one I am free to release. I may not have become the precious porcelain my girl friend predicted, but I am on a path. I fell down and broke, but I remembered to take all the pieces; and with love, with friends, and with forgiveness I am piecing it together.

Last Performance

9/29/08
I had to change the date on this posting, I thought I’d come home from the final performance and write, on Sunday night. Right as I came in; I would sit and write. Well I am a fool. I was wrung out, a puddle. Not tired, but done.


During the run of this show, at all 15 performances, we were all tested by heat, lack of working machinery, and nearly every cast member was so late on at least one occasion that it gave me palpitations. And I kept saying, OK so who can fill in for the clarinet? Or can we cover for Troy until he gets here? And they always slipped in right as I was about to call the Deep Lunatic Ward at Belleview, for myself. On top of that, we had endless and constantly morphing technical challenges in the near to ancient LaMama theater. On the final night, the lights went dark for a scene and a half as the cast and musicians kept playing while the less than competent electrician attempted to jiggle wires and reply things.

My frustration level was tip-top.

9/30 08
OK starting again.
It seems I am having trouble writing this.
It is the end; the end for now folks keep saying,
but I know it is the end of this artistic moment.

I have done no other work since March nearly seven months, a long time.
And for now it is over.

I’d love to, mount it again; but for this moment it is over.
And the ground swell and I had wanted, OH DON”T GET ME WRONG the press, the love, the applause, all were wonderful, but I felt it would be life changing.
I felt, or fantasized that I would be hired, or lauded to the point of being saved and that we would most definitely know where we going after this. My book would be picked up by a publisher and I would stop asking, begging, requesting things from others to help me or those I loved, respected and wanted on my team.

I felt I would raise or earn funds to pay people more that the tad they received. Hell, I didn’t think I’d be here attempting to figure out if we made enough to pay the violinist, the choreographer and the press woman. These three, the best sports, who have still not gotten their promised amounts. UUGH. Or that neither Doug nor I would be paid a cent, and would, in fact, be out of pocket. Not a fortune but now, what is a fortune? Grocery money, certainly, and where else will that come from? OK that is too dramatic, even for me.

As the country melts down financially, I await the word on REAL JOB.

I had my phone interview with the LA shrink hired to deconstruct the personality, aptitude test I took in haste last Thursday. Dr. Whoever was nice enough and we had some interesting off topic conversations about cooking, but still he did tell me there were others in the running. I said, “Well, I hope so as it is a plum job.” I didn't say 'and in a shrinking job market.' I answered what he asked; I stayed on topic; I was friendly and open hearted--meaning I was a portion of who I am. I checked my fear in the hall closet and only occasionally gave the finger to the phone. That felt good, and let me stay calm and happy. I was. As I knew one way or the other, this was moving me steps closer to the decision.

The show is so vibrantly present in my front and back brain that when I can’t sleep, I sing the words and music constantly to myself.
“Nothing to do but breathe,
Nothing but sweet air.
Sweet air, in and out.”

Or when Zac leaves for work I sing, “Quick trip there and back. Quick trip.”

Silly.

I love this show and I feel like a bit of a failure, as I wish we were signed up to go to Festivals across the globe and across the country.

I loved, and was challenged by so much of this. I was dubbed a hot head by composer Doug, and I am sure I was, but I feel I got things done, I did light fires and made so many calls, wrote emails and sent actual mail. But there is this huge let down, a post partum, if you will, where I can’t help seeing and thinking of all the other things I coulda, shoulda done, felt, said . . .

This is no different than the culmination of a relationship, or job or maybe it is, because this is exacerbated by the fact that we are also living in terrifying times. And once again I am moving funds from here to there attempting to pay bills and not scare myself or those around me.

Today I cleaned, I straightened books, papers, magazines, scripts, invitations and I found all the back bills. I began to catalog the papers for CALLING to be able to retrieve and redo at a moment’s notice. And I attempted to feel the spirit of the Jewish New Year as it slipped quietly into New York City.

A few months ago, I made a promise to come here often to chronicle the making of this opera and I did that somewhat. I couldn’t be totally honest; as there were often so many emotionally frustrating and crazy occurrences and I felt it would have compromised the production to be an unflinching scribe. But now it is closed and I am exhausted and want to read, or eat apples and ride my bike to nowhere.

I went back to the gym yesterday and in my mind I screamed for the entire hour,
“RUN AWAY! RUN AWAY!!”

It was horrible to stick with the difficult Pilates class, and to see the slippage of my corpus and my resolve. I am attempting to eat no sugar and drink no alcohol, but as we watched the news about Wall Street last night, I thought, the sky is falling better finish my birthday cake and have a glass of wine. And so I did. Getting back in shape is always a test, finding a slimmer, not slim mind you, me and ending the sugar highs that have kept me awake and functioning at all.

I’d like to visit here often, but I am making no more promises for a while.

Small House. Big Hearts.

Today Saturday, a gorgeous perfect fall day.

And I was stuck attempting to continue to take this mechanized assessment test for the REAL JOB, a series of endless computer screens and math questions.

Oh my god -- math and me. Bad in high school, worse as I got older. The lowest math score ever registered by anyone applying to the Yale School Of Management. I mean, a monkey would have gotten higher. So for this test, if the choice is "NOT ENOUGH INFORMATION TO ANSWER THE QUESTION," you can bet I check that. And in fact, that is the truth; as it is not enough information for ME to answer the question. How much information would be enough? Well, if they laid it out like paint by numbers chart, maybe I could plug them in. But honestly, still not a sure thing.

Then you have to write what your most ardent admirer would say about you and your most vehement critic. I asked my husband, and he said it didn’t mean what any of your ex's would say WHEW.

So I worked away at it for a while, going through the 350 first questions and slugging through the logic and other stuff until I excitedly came to the language skills part. I like those kind of questions, but it was not to be. My computer froze--well, the screen for the test froze. I tried all manner of things to get it back on track and then I wrote this email to the headhunter and the test administrators.

So, it is the most beautiful fall day ever and I am being a good sport taking this test. And it crashes and I
A) Call the help line
B) Attempt to reset the browser
C) Printout the time and error type #2050
D) Send an email detailing all attempts to restart said test
E) ALL OF THE ABOVE

ANSWER E

Now to the logical progression of this glitch. In frustration I
A) Beat the computer to a pulp
B) Go outside on my bike to have some fun
C) Call a tech friend and ask them to finish the test
D) Decide that this would be a good moment to take a nap

ANSWER B

I thought it was funny and if they don’t, I guess that is what in BIZ School they would call DATA. So see? I did learn something.

Now to the opera. Last night the show was kick-ass, super good. I was slack-jawed as I thought I had gotten inured to the good and the bad, I was sort of floating in the audience, and then bang wow. It was so good.

Tough because our audiences have been tiny, this week but last night just as I was about to call places, in walked my two first bosses from over 3 decades ago at the Off-Off Broadway Alliance OOBA, Marnie Mueller and Karin Bacon. There they were, still beautiful and stylish, and I near to cried from their kindness at coming down to see this show. And tonight, I had a call telling me that two teachers from High School are in the car, caught in traffic near Yankee Stadium and I should meet them outside LaMama at 6:30. Well, of course I will.

So the house may be small, but the shows, the singers, musicians and the rest are increasing in prowess and every night there seems to be a blast from my past that warms me incredibly.

Keeping the Beauty in Mind

Today I had to ride to the dentist for the third attempt at a root canal. I was not in the best mood, still tired, wrung out from an encounter with a former friend who is trying to keep his aged mother, who is suffering form dementia, away from all her friends, as a means of control. It was ugly yesterday and made me cry torrents. I always feel depleted the next day, which is today.

I woke up late, hoping against hope that the dentist would be an another hour, but instead I had to gulp coffee and hop on the pony. I could see I was still groggy and my mind kept me going back to the fight and the sadness I felt and saw in my friend’s eyes when we were separated. I thought about all the people who hadn’t come to see the opera, of all the pushing and conniving, of the wheedling and cajoling to develop an audience for this lovely opera. The level of disregard for a project like this given the economy tanking and the craziness surrounding the political climate leaves me feeling often scared and certainly anxious.

But on this ride, on the first ten minutes of this ride, I gave myself a strict talking to.

DO NOT MISS THIS DAY, I intoned over and over again.

DO NOT MISS THIS DAY.

It was crystal, soft air, feint breeze, and my legs and arms felt strong and I was happy to ride my nice old bike, tires full of air, up to 50th Street. My mind roiled back to sadness, missed calls, people I want to see or hold and still I pushed to return to the immediacy of the day. It was warm, I was healthy and I had work to return to this evening.

I had to keep seeing that.

And I did keep trying as I called the bigwig producers who turned me down for one thing or another, and I persevered to get names of other folks to call. Hang up, email, make a package, call another person, hang up send information. Keep sounding as if I believed and not as if I was flagging, and losing heart.

Did they know, this little cast and crew how much goes into turning on the lights and having butts in seats. Do they know how I fret over getting this last payroll to them on the 28th of September and how much I feel like a failure because I can’t and clearly see now that I won’t be offering them big money for all the miraculous stuff they have achieved.

I have to run now, shower, maybe more email, maybe more Advil OK definitely more Advil.

Here we go: week two.

The Ides of Everything

Okay, today is the 15th of September. I had an article due, I had a Guggenheim grant due and this is my first day off in three weeks.

Whew, the market, the stock market, took a giant dive, while I typed, and edited and talked to potential grant recommenders. It seemed all around me swirled craziness and I attempted to keep my head down and write a very large grant.

Although I have received grants, I have never written a grant for myself. Asking or telling or wanting for myself has always been difficult and today exhausted and over wrought it seemed I could only get engaged in long phone calls, calls I wanted, but I had trouble jumping back on the writing pony. But I kept going back.

I finished the story for the TriBeCa Tib and by the help of magic fairies; it must have been that, I rode up to the Mail Box place just as the last Fed Ex guy was about to roll out.

“Hey, wait please,” I hollered.

The cute Fed Ex guy stood while I wrote out the labels to myself required by Guggenheim.

“So if you get this grant, what will you give me?”

“I will take you out for drinks.”

“OK, but I am planning on winning the lottery first.”

“Well, you better take my number then in case I don’t win, then I will need a drink.”

AHHH sometimes I just love humans, the ones who get that a little extra time won’t kill you and it might even help a fellow traveler.

Yesterday at the theater, the show was the best ever, nice because we were video taping it. I joked with the cast saying that if they did a great job, I’d be overjoyed, as we wouldn’t have to re-tape. A joke perhaps but they were flawless, inspired, amazing.

I really loved the show yesterday afternoon and that was a great treat.

I am taking Tuesday and a part of Wednesday off and running away to the country to dig dirt and smell the roses, literally.

The Day After Opening/ Lucky 13

Last night was beyond astounding. Packed house, really full, me telling the box office to sell tickets that were not there--I mean not printed, and we used programs as tickets.

People sitting on folding chairs on a balcony or stair. The New York Times photographer snapping as folks arrived and the reviewer sitting in the aisle.

FINGERS STILL CROSSED.

Energy through the roof. The singers hit the notes, the highs and lows, somehow they found consonant and vowels. Who knew that vowels are easy in opera, but words like GLUE turn into GOO. Or PILE becomes PIE. Since I have no idea what goes into an opera and I just blurted out LET'S MAKE AN OPERA, this entire process has been a hapless wonder to me.

And fair warning readers , my house guests from the South, who got up at 11am, to find me at work on my Guggenheim grant application, due Monday, (oh the universe has a sense of humor), asked, “Can we take you to a wonderful lunch?”

“How wonderful?” I asked.

“Whatever you want.”

So I called Chanterelle, really the best anywhere, but it is around the block from me and they have helped so much with Calling. You know they took us right away and treated us royalty. We had champagne and wine. This is in the middle of the day, mind you. I came home at 3:30 believing I had missed the Sunday matinee; please recall that it is Saturday... oh my god, that lunch seemed really long and magical.

Oh the discussion among a Jungian mother and her daughter with me as the interloper when weaving between marital sex, an opera about September 11 and how to promote healing, the distancing that sons MUST DO WITH THEIR MOTHERS, and food, travel, art, literature and jewelry. That’s really all I can recall and it was marvelous. After lunch they went to buy champagne for after the show and then jumped into a cab to run to the Guggenheim before it closed. I asked them to bring back good luck from there for my grant and I hugged the couch and cat and took a well-deserved nap.

Why was last night so wonderful? Because the cast had gelled, the fear subsided, (before last night we had run the show only twice, really) and with this diminution of fear came boldness, not recklessness but the confidence of professionals. The stage manager was on time, the lead little girl had pigtails and not a salon “do”, and the light board operator ran the lights, not the designer. The fans that click and clack were turned off. And although the theater must have been 500 degrees (okay 90) it was calm, save the late comers seated and wedged with children into the balcony. But that is, as my mother used to say, “an upscale problem.” I wish us too many in the audience every night.

My roommate from college, Nina, was there with her sister, Deb, and we hugged, acknowledging our 40th anniversary. The very pregnant and gorgeous Rebecca Asher Walsh, tan from the summer in East Hampton, was prettier pregnant than her normal radiant self and was squired by Dr. Chuck, who is the cutest soon to be dad in our circle. Christine and Carter came--bigwig music and art couple, and I believe they really did love it. Neighbors came, the friends whom I met in Morocco last summer came from Birmingham and Pensacola to support and fete me.

At the curtain call everyone who worked on this baby from any point on came to the stage and we held hands and bowed. And my teary eyes saw my husband who had begged off coming as he had work and a biz trip this morning. But there he was in the back of the theater, smiling and clapping for me the second night in a row. He had even ridden his bike in the rain, He does not like rain the way I do.

So Zac and I didn’t go out with anyone. We biked home to snuggle and wait for guests and I just wanted my “normal life.” On occasion now when I find myself uttering, par hazard, phrases that crop up in the opera, I feel like a parody of myself, but I need to remember no one sees this but me so I need to relax.

Oh wait, that’s another line.

Ok back on the bike, (another line) and off to the theater.

Break a leg.

Paragraph Depeleted

What I mean is that I don’t feel as if I have the brainpower, or mind space or some good computer term that would indicate how fried I am. So I thought maybe I would resort to lists to express how the first invited performance went last night.

This is in the order the thoughts come to me, and I wish I could send this out without spell check or spacing check or insanity check, but alas I’d like to cling to the few writing jobs I have and if they saw the true mess I am, even those would be gone. Here is what happened last night.

The stage manager arrived at 8pm. I kid you not--the curtain is at 8pm--so I acted as the stage manager until the final moments.

I asked the electrician to do one task and that was turn off the electric fans that are poorly mounted to the ceiling so they clack incessantly. He did not.

The lights of tribute were amazing because it was so overcast it was as if you could climb them into the sky. Especially transformative after champagne, exhaustion and stepping from an overheated, but incredible party into cool air.

My friend from Brownies, from when I was 8, the age the two little best friends in the show are now, well, Nella came to the show with her husband, a blues musician, I called him a blue grass musician, saw that was an insult and thought, well the word 'blue' is in it right? Oh no. They loved the show and I loved them for coming.

Diane and Dick came down from Salem, Mass. I met them on a press trip I took to the Galapagos Islands. Such lovely folks... meant the world.

The gaggle of gorgeous young volunteers, led by event wizard Hattie Elliot and Grace Samson, who took over the lobby and the bike shop and made magic.

I gave books to everyone in the cast.

My great, good girlfriend Thalia flew in from Milwaukee and cried sitting next to me the entire time.

My friend and lawyer Tori came, she almost never leaves work.

My upstairs neighbor, Terry Berkowitz, who designed the book and has expressed over and over how much she hates opera, came.

My financial advisor Lisa came, my pal Dave came--he also hates theater, and he was the editor for the book. He dragged his girlfriend and his stepbrother.

My kids' cousin from the wretched baby daddy's side of the family came, WE LOVE HER, and she cried and hugged me. Her sweet boyfriend helped carry buckets of ice and water. I asked them when they were going to get married. Hattie dragged me away saying I had too much champagne. It was one glass.

Liz Papas, mom to little star Madison, bought the champagne and told me she got it donated, it was lovely but not as stunning as she was in a wrap dress.

Souhad and Paul were there, she so beautiful and not aware that she is. Soheyla and Pico, Mitchell and Whitney, Lori and Laurie, and on and on and on.

We were clapped for and toasted and I thought, oh let’s limp home after watching, barely helping Hattie’s mom and dad, Margaret and Rod, load up all the left veers into their car. Oh, let me go home and sleep, but neighbors Liz and Michael Pierce had other plans. So I was a good sport and we ate late at the local pub, Walkers right across from the fire station, the one that loaned us the fire coat that the cast believes is magical.

The entire night was magical.
I am so full of appreciation to all the components of my life.

BUT I still am only fantasizing about sleep.

Seven Years Later

It seems as if it was yesterday and eons ago.

A part is the weather; it is not the scrubbed blue September 11 sky that helps me to not go there to that day as deeply. But we all hear the bells and the sirens and the bagpipes at fire stations intoning our grief, the mournful wails tears at us.

And then tonight I open this opera about September 11 and my family’s little personal involvement in it. The New Yorker says that it ”harkens back to “Our Town” in its communitarian ethos." That says it just fine for me.

And so, in praise of that spirit of community being celebrated on the stage and really is the only reason we made it here today and will play for three weeks, I want to attempt to chronicle a little bit of how my neighborhood, TriBeCa, reached out to support this project and by extension me.

I started to write this while sitting on the steps of David Bouley’s newest culinary creation on Hudson Street. I love these steps surrounded by planters with wild flowers and herbs. I sit often and drink iced coffee, laced with extra espresso. Crazy, but I feel calm here.

David Bouley generously helped this opera with food and donations and a feeling that even a big swell, a real star like him, feels the community spirit. His wife, Nicole, is always ready to give us handouts, as are the folks at Bubbys, who fed pie to the entire cast at dress rehearsal. The pie was washed down by cider from the Greenwich Street Green Market. I am grateful especially to Pat and Stan and their farm stand as they sold the book on which the opera is based years back and continue to stuff post cards about the performance into bags of green beans or tomatoes.

Every where I go I see support for CALLING: An Opera of Forgiveness:
Erika at Myoptics hands out post cards and last week told me that now her friend’s grandson is in the show. One of our best chorus members works in Design Beyond Reach, Tribbles the design store on West Broadway loaned us the owner’s daughter to be my stage manager. ALL FOR FREE, no less!!

The Church Street School, who was an early recipient of the funds raised by the original book, helped with audiences and child singers. They sent us to the Trinity Church Choir, whose master, Robert Ridgell rehearsed some kids. Businesses all over downtown have taped up our posters including Paul Blaustein the plumber who put up a poster and gave me a check to “help pay singers.”

The folks at Mail Boxes Etc Avery, Wendy and Joe, copied all our fliers, mailed out post cards so folks across the country could have real snail mail to stick onto bulletin boards or their fridges. To the downtown papers, the Battery Park Broadsheet and Tribeca Trib who covered us generously, to Cheryl Hazen and her gallery, all the guys at the Tribeca Wine store, the wait staffs at Walkers and Bubbys, to the brokers at Douglas Elliman, all who gave out post cards, to all these and more an enormous thank you for showing that community spirit is more than alive and well, it is thriving in TriBeCa.

Gathering Storm

I am awake and neither in a meeting nor rehearsal. I am up, well-coffeed and processing the dream I had last night about seeing a performance of Calling, our little opera at the grand, Paris opera house. I have seen work there, and it was that very place, with the fru-fru like a wedding cake interior, and a full orchestra and stage filled with our casts’ wonderful faces and, of course, more and more.

They were whirling and doing the mechanized dances that Edisa has cooked up, born from the images, photographic images, of workers fleeing the Towers on September 11, 2001. But now there was a chorus of heartfelt, office workers and construction workers all moving to composer Doug’s amazing music. And I don’t know if they do this at the Paris opera, but dreams can merge and purge and thus my words were running across the top of a lush red velvet curtain and they were in French. Although I speak French sometimes in dreams, I rarely read French and here were words so clear and fast zooming across my mind.

I suppose the dream was predicated on the great success of last night. Not only was the reading and performance, our little Page-to-Stage concoction at the TriBeCa Barnes & Noblem, a success, but the fact that we, our tiny company, pulled off a performance and rehearsal in dual locations was incredible and showed our nimble abilities to the best.

There we were, Carl conducting Maja on violin, and replacement crazy talented, Rob Walker on clarinet, subbing for Jay Hassler who was playing for Paul Newman (can you make this stuff up?). Nicole and Madison both really exemplified mother and child, full of emotion and voice. Hattie marshalling the forces of booksellers and press wishing she had a staff of 20. While Hiroya took the other musicians through their paces with Edisa blocking scenes where mom and child were extraneous. We were a producing family; all going about our tasks, staying on point and moving this baby closer to the real thing, an opera.

I have a need to insert an aside here, and although this is ALL ABOUT ME. (Hey, I wrote this thing right, so here it is.) I was touched beyond belief by the folks who showed up at Barnes & Noble and they all seemed to be truly moved by the reading and the operatic segment that followed. But here is the kicker, as I was shuffling paper getting ready to go on, I hear a voice from my very far past hollering my name. It was my favorite high school teacher, and just typing that I begin to well up. And all of this crying is happening as Tropical Storm Hanna gathers outside my window turning a blue sky to gray and threatening a big cry from the sky. Not only was sociology teacher Vic Leviatin there, but so too his wife Roz, who I had not seen in 40 years. I used to babysit for them.

“Oh, you are a regular old person.” She blurts. “I mean, you are a grown-up”.

Okay, Roz was the very first blunt person, blunt woman I had ever encountered. Roz was honest to a fault, and very political. This long time married duo, sported OBAMA buttons, hers a “WOMEN FOR OBAMA" button and, other than my husband, they were the only ones wearing political buttons at this event. I was so happy to see them; of course they bought books for their two little boys, now 44 and 48. I am still reeling from the kindness they showed and the happiness it gave me, especially now with both my parents gone, those in loco parentis mean so much.

I do miss my parents and with my kids away and sometimes unavailable, I miss that love the perfect squish of a hug that says, “You mean everything to me.” Luckily I have the kittens and a sweet, affectionate husband to fill in my family circle.

We have a super-long slog today, and every time I write September 6 and do the math, meaning it is four days until we offer our open dress rehearsal to folks downtown who helped us, my skin starts to leap off the back of my neck and arms. My job is to remain calm and hold the reins of this run-away pony. Composer Doug did give me some good feedback today, although I may be evincing this calm, he says I am jumping to conclusions too fast and I often jump to a negative conclusion so I need to slow my roll a little.

Okay, Doug, here I am, breathing and going to get a little lunch with my man with whom I feel I haven’t eaten in ages. Pizza or late night cereal does not count. I am excited to sit in the café next door and watch the storm arrive as I contemplate a salad and the metaphoric storms on the horizon lurking in wait for our little opera. I am confident that although we will get wet, we will flourish.

Spinning Wheel

It is nearly suppertime and I have passed most of the day sitting behind a wheel. No not driving, but spinning clay into bowls. For five hours I took slabs of clay, between two and four pounds and I spun them into bowls. Fat, flat, lifted feet, stuck to the ground... each unique, and I was in heaven.

In my head, there was no missing voice coach, no lack of funds, the clay slabs all got along. I didn’t think I should have nicer here, or more stringent there, I sat and I mesmerized myself. Each bowl for a different person. Do you, gentle readers, recall my insanity at deciding that I “needed” to make all the opening night gifts. Well I now have enough and there are even some extras thrown that may go to my son Henry’s campus apartment, if he stops mouthing off.

I worked on Calling this morning, I gathered, listed, and talked at length with composer Doug about schedules and how to copy music and distribute it, and when to meet to begin writing the next round of grant applications that are due the first of September. It still seems a little like fantasy baseball or knitting for a yet born baby. I know how these things happen, I have seen plays and dance and music evolve from idea to magic under the lights of a flickering stage. But I have never been the one who had the hair-brained idea and then rallied the troops. It feels so different.

At any moment I expect these troops of amazing artists and designers to turn on me, as if we were on a bad hike and rebel.
“We are not taking another step!” they will holler.
I will shrink back and cower, “Why, why?”
“Well, because you do not know what you are doing!”

Shall I say, “What’s your point?”
Or something a tad more philosophical, “Do any of us really know where we are going or what we are doing?”

That might throw them off the scent of fear for a day or two, but I know it will reappear.

All of this life thing for me, making pottery, being a mother, cooking, writing, producing, directing; I am aware there are books and methods that could. . .
NO can teach you how to do it, but then there are people like me who have to feel things or they can’t achieve it. At any rate today I made seven bowls and a big mug complete with handle for Henry, the converted Scottish tea drinker.
So that’s a good enough amount to make me feel productive.

Tomorrow is root canal, getting checks cut, that’s a kind of root canal too I guess.
And Rehearsal, writing grants and whatever else the gods of theater find amusing to toss our way.

Unlucky 13

Usually I love the 13th of the month. In my mother’s family lots of kids were born on the 13th. I even opted to take my brokerage exam on Friday, January 13 when so few others wanted to, thus the date was available. I passed.

But today I seem to be falling prey to a concatenation of unlucky happenings. It was not enough that yesterday we had to whittle the set back to bare bones and I was heartened when the creative folks all pitched in to change and react with love and aplomb. That was tough.

This morning began with an email, from my soon to be 20 year-old son who is visiting his sister in the south of France. I had to talk him into it, forget why, but my heart jumped when I saw his name in the email box. Then I opened it. Let me leave out the swearing. But it said in short “You have never had a good idea and this was among the worst on your long bad list.”

Then I attempted to restart the day with a positive attitude by corralling the schedules, and meeting with the costume gal who is my new favorite neighbor, Liz Dougherty. I can see her loft from mine. I love to talk with her and she seems to really understand me and that buoys me up. So I waited for her to call. But in the meantime I receive an email from Composer Doug, with whom I had spent a great long time last night, matching words and music. FUCK it says in the subject matter. I open this one right away.

It turns out, the family whose 3 kids, count them, three kids out of a total of Four kids, in the opera, THREE KIDS are being pulled from the project; less than a month from opening. I call the mother who says, the kids need to practice choir at school. I say I can call the school and ask if perhaps opera practice with us can count. She says NO ONE CAN EVER CALL THE SCHOOL. Then she says the kids need weekends in the country. I say I am Gob-Smacked and perhaps they could have thought of this before coming to the first rehearsal, signing a letter of agreement and taking checks, albeit, tiny checks.

There is no resolve with her. She wishes me well, which in these kinds of situations really seems quite false. Good wishes I don’t need. I need a little boy and other kids who can sing. So I call the trusty Director of the Church Street School of Music and Art and nearly weep. Lisa Eklund-Flores and I have wept many times: over grants and life over music and talented kids, over September 11 and over cleaning and making parties. We have both run non-profits and know the joy and terror of that endeavor. Lisa was undaunted and began to list kids, what their skill set is and how to get them. I began to believe again and this may sound like Polly- Anna, but hell she lives inside me too; I thought, I’d much rather have downtown kids, and children associated with this school I so adore. So come on universe dish it out.
There are still 10 hours to go before the 13th is over.

Let’s see... we need to redo the schedule, and get champagne and goodies for the opening. We need costumes, we need to get the book reprinted and I need to get out in this summer air, which is a miracle.

And my kid, my son, the one who gave me guff and whose doppelganger in the show quit; ALL ON THE SAME DAY; well my son Henry can just venture forth and visit the beaches of the South of France and hate me when he gets home. The one who was about to play him can toddle off with his brothers into the sunset.

By this point in the day, I wish them all well.

And I may break my 30-day moratorium on alcohol. This day can count as thirty. And believe me I haven’t even gone into the 12 other crazy things unfolding.

I will hold off on all of that until after the drink, and the sunshine.

Til Tomorrow.

Keep Yur Friggin' Chin Up

Thirty days to go.

OK yeah, so I actually counted them putting one stubby finger on each day for August and September.

Last night was the first rehearsal and it did go well. Lots of energy and the incredible, really genius, Edisa Weeks whose calm, choreographic leadership is a rock and wings to all of us. We had kids and chorus and some leads and some musicians. Just the way I knew it would be when folks are not being paid to be present at your beck and call.

The good thing, and here is a silver-lining moment, about not having money to pay people, and they participate anyway, the great thing really, is that you know they are there because it is also a passion project for them.

We have all done money jobs, but Calling is now a labor of love for all of us. Not just Doug and his music, or Wicki and her wacky ideas and non-linear words, but the idea of recreating a community that thrives and soars. And that was the big take away lesson of September 11 Downtown. That we were all in it together and in order to rebuild, we had to be friends, neighbors and cohorts in a totally different way.

So yesterday we were turned down by more foundations and even Nintendo whose silly electronic Wiiiiiii machines Doug electronic wizard boy turned into hand bells or didgeridoos, amazing instruments of joy and celebration for our finale. But they turned us down. As if they are getting any better sponsorships idea. So the doors of money closed, and closed until there we were, alone with our $17,000 bucks in total to commission, mount, light and dance our way into folk’s hearts and minds. And we will not stop.

Oh please... sounds good right? As if I am Princess Pluck. Let’s see the back scene: couldn’t sleep last night because I knew I had to jettison more that 75% of the set, and I love the designer, one of my oldest friends. And I knew we would suck it up and move on and when the audience arrived it wouldn’t know that this minimalist design wasn’t exactly what we had in mind from the get-go. But I thrashed the night away, doing crossword puzzles and reading politics.

And this morning I made lists and was worried. But when I spoke to the force of nature who is our volunteer development director, Hattie Elliot, about the Benefit and my fears, and uncertainties, she pulled herself to a full maybe five feet and screamed at me, “You keep yur friggin' chin up!" I think she is maybe 26 years old, blond, fierce and how does one wimp out in the face of that force?

If she is undaunted, who I am to lose heart?

So chin up and out into the sunshine to copy schedules, and a contact sheets and letters of agreement and of course all for free at the local Mail Boxes Etc on Greenwich Street because the goodness doesn’t stop. Even if I sometimes forget.

Frozen in August

It is exactly one month until the opera; I so haphazardly wandered into, will open.
How does one wander into an opera project?

I wrote a book about September 11th, A Mother’s Essays From Ground Zero; then two years ago I produced a fashion show (horrible incongruity I know, such is my life.) For the show I hired a young, most fabulous composer Doug Geers. After the show Doug and his virtuoso, violinist wife Maja asked me out to tea. I went. They inquired what I wanted to do next.
I blurted, “ I want to turn this book I wrote about 9/11 into an opera.”
They are an under spoken couple. “ Oh, let’s take a look at the book.” They sighed.

As I rode my trusty nearly 40-year-old Raleigh bike home from the meeting I had a spirited conversation inside my head.
“ I never knew you wanted to make an opera, you never tell me anything!!”
“ I thought you knew, after all you live inside here as well, do you pay attention to what I am thinking or are you too bludgeoned by the quotidian details of your stupid life to ever spend time with me, your interior life.”

My interior life won that battle, she was right I had been absorbed in editing a magazine, putting money away for college payments and falling in love with a garden, yet all this time my crazy imagination had been creating a secret opera. As soon as I was given a chance to talk about it, the idea blurt itself out, as if it had a life of its own.


And now it has a very real life, a web site, music, libretto and, a small, mostly volunteer team, growing astoundingly larger by the month, and now by the day. They are composing, designing, building and tinkering with this project, now entitled Calling: An Opera of Forgiveness. We open in the 99 seat LaMaMa First Floor Theater officially on September 12, but we have an invited dress rehearsal on September 10 and a benefit September 11. Today is the 10th of August and I am frozen in fear, even as the air around my shoulders reflects my inner body temperature. Heat surrounds me, but I am frozen.

Again there are two of me. The frozen, who is screaming,
WHAT DID YOU DO ??
WHY DID YOU DO IT ?
Then there is the calm rational worker bee who is making lists, creating blasts, writing small, small checks and attempting to think of every detail from folding beds to foot lights. I pass out post cards and ask each person to take one and pass one on. As if this Luddite, viral distribution will achieve the full houses we so desperately need for funds and a future.

The warm air beckons and I have a stack of gorgeous postcards, designed by a young Russian designer ( Vikotria Televnyy) yes of course for free, that sit here and upbraid me, begging to be handed out.

Terror and joy

I don’t write this blog regularly or even semi-regular-like as my father used to say.

I can’t.

I think all the time, but I want to escape from saving my thoughts.

I am in the midst of creating an opera from a book I penned.


Simple right?

It is terrifying.

We have very little money and a mountain to trek up involving artists and logistic leaps and slogs.

And so I move daily from abject terror to a giddy elation.

I never know how it will unfold.

Someone calls me back and I am high.
The calls go unreturned and I am reduced to a puddle.
My ex boyfriend sends us a $100 donation and I leap.
The fabulously wealthy mother of a Yale friend tells him to call me, to say she has NO MONEY and I am in a rage.
Can a heart and mind continue like this?

I suppose it is no different from what we see played out daily on Wall Street... big-huge, excruciating swings.
We hate the economy,
Then we are hopeful, and the market swings hundreds of points, like yesterday.
Today who knows?

Have we all been reduced to this pendulum of emotion because the real terror of the environment and war has inured us to the scary things that abound?
I have young adult children, 23, and about to be 20, well at my age, thank god they are not baby children. But I worry for these kids; I attempt to not obsess about their world or excessive expense and diminishing resources. I worry for their joy and freedom from fear.

As I write this I think that perhaps the wild ride of life has always been the impetus for writers, painters, and composers to create something else - to both divert themselves and others from tough times or to focus our energies on how to do things differently.

OK back to the OPERA salt mines. This week we finish scheduling auditions, which will happen next week. This means that the boat has sailed and now we head toward the dock and performances in September.
BON VOYAGE and Stay with us.

Producing theater then and now

The last time I produced something, a real something with collaborators and sets, casts casting about for motivation and the pressing need to raise funds to raise the curtain, was over ten years ago. I had a staff and the technological revolution had hit them, but not me.

Today I am in the throes of producing and writing an opera about the very personal effects of September 11, 2001. Any one of those things would be enough to induce blood boiling: scribbling, producing or revisiting 9/11, but taken together the troika could present a tipping point for a middle-aged mama. But I have been saved by the onslaught of technology. Yes, the emotional pitches and sways cannot be mediated, but the speed and efficiency of my work seems magically augmented especially when we three collaborators sit down together.

This past week we were lucky enough to have an entire day where the composer, Doug Geers, who normally lives in Minnesota and the designer/artist Christine Sciulli, who lives across the street but teaches, designs and has two baby children, well where we could all be together in the my loft. We make pots of coffee and scrambled eggs crammed full of sharp cheddar and farm-stand tomatoes and then we worked.

We each had our Apple laptops; we talked, we waved hands, we argued about sensibility, religion and tempo. We outlined the entire opera; we cut a quarter of an hour from the running time, just in theory. We agreed that there would be no iconoclastic tower tipping images but rather that we would focus on the “presence of absence” and the leitmotif of “harmony from dissonance.” These are not facile concepts and we agreed to push each other to remain true to them IF words, or music or images threaten to revert to mini-series heartstring tugging. Then we gave out tasks.

But unlike “back in the day,” when workers went away and came back weeks later, we accomplished many of the TO DO LIST right where we sat. Christine called to find a choir conductor. We emailed her. Doug had a friend who sets up web sites. We wrangled with the URL and came up with WWW.CALLINGTHEOPERA.COM and maybe also .ORG. We drank more coffee and wrote out three separate a best-case scenario budgets, we emailed them to each other and then created a single unified document. Now we edited that document down to a bare bones production. In other words Doug really wants “SIX CELLI” but can live with two playing against a recording. Christine wants rear screen projectors, very expensive but she could hang one in the front if the funds are scarce.

We all had been saving the names of funders who we thought might be interested in our project. Doug found his from listening to public radio, Christine gleaned her info from designing the lights for the new Mabou Mines piece and I revisited the backs of every theater program for the last year. We found a few that suited us, found the guidelines on line and began filling out the grants. We exchanged email biographies and compiled information for the web site we were constructing.

We drank more coffee and called to cancel the rest of our day and we worked. We looked at images; we reread passages in my book and fought about order and tone. We took time out to make calls on our cell phones, connecting to other clients who never knew we were in a frenzy of creativity, taking an interstitial moment to give them an edit or a drawing or a syllabus. Our discreet electronics allowed us to work together and separately all day.

When I was the executive director of La Mama back in the 80’s to early 90’s this level of output would have taken weeks. All the paper and Xeroxing, the collating of reviews and copying music tapes to send to funders. And now many of the RFPs (request for proposal) for grants require everything be sent only electronically. And this aspect means I have to send stuff to Doug so that he can oversee my Luddite slowness.

But even with my backward techniques and recalcitrance to modern life, this session, a veritable flurry of passionate producing bumped me up to a new level of appreciation for what the last decade of technology means.

Within three days all our information, bios, music, reviews and some aspirations had been uploaded, by Doug, to the new website. So check it out, because I am still amazed at what that one day wrought, albeit with much back-story and working already loaded into our electronic brains. And I also still have a great deal of faith in the positive effects of copious amounts of coffee.