Art is acedemic too you know!

My campus newspaper often does a special survey where they question students "ARH or Noyce?" This question is meant to create a tally of students who like ARH - where most of the humanities classes are taught or Noyce - the science center.

Yesterday I was in Noyce when asked the vague question "ARH or Noyce" stunned I looked at the questioner and answered "The question should be Bucksbaum or Noyce, so Noyce." He laughed and then carried on his survey to other students in the study area. Apart from the obvious bias of questioning students already in the science center, I began to think about the bias against arts at Grinnell College. It's not a huge apparent divide, but it's large enough to be noticeable.

I spend hours of my day in Bucksbaum, with class and Theatre (both paid and volunteer) and working on projects I can spend half a day in Bucksbaum easily. I know I am in the minority of students at Grinnell but other Theatre students and artists understand my commitment to this building. Not many classes outside of the arts meet in Bucksbaum, only a few English classes are ever moved into these spaces and they are normally the Shakespeare or theatrically driven English courses. I am not saying the system is flawed, because I understand we only have a few class rooms and the rest of the spaces are designed for studio or artistic spaces. I simply wish the arts and artists on campus were recognized as academic instead of creating a divided where only ARH and Noyce are considered acedemic hubs. The work I do in Theatre and the arts is as acedemically drived, with research and procedure taking presidence. Theatre and art also have history and theory that have to be understood, critiqued, and learned.

Political Histories

I get really excited about politics in the past. I think that's maybe because I get really excited about politics in general and I like to see the progression of how we got to where we now are. Yes, that is a very conservative notion on my part but this is a point where I am quite certian.

Especially concerning speeches of famous individuals. I really like speeches by those who were and still are considered famous mostly through political grounds. Currently in my posession I have speeches by, Abraham Lincoln, Stephen Douglas, Malcolm X, and Martian Luther King Jr. all for the sake of my play. Yet, really when I read the words in my book that are claimed speeches by Douglas I can't help but feel the nudge of excitement as I visualize the charachter and the man that was. I've read parts of his biblography and seen pictures of him so I am creating him while his words fold out in front of me. He was there and people listened to this speech. The past gives me an eerie poke of satisfaction, nothing exists singularly.

the Desire to Consume

All I've wanted to do for the last two or three weeks is consume. And I have been consuming so very much, in all different forms of media. I read comics and books and poems and short stories and blogs and newspapers. I listen to podcast of short stories and poems and politics. I watch movies and theatre and anime and youtube. In conversations I listen to stories and monologues and rants. I can never be doing only one. I read three books at a time not counting what I am doing for school. I get bored with one if I am alone with it for too long. Everything needs it's own break which is why I can't do blogs or tv shows everyday. Just a little L word today, and a little Kafka tomorrow, then some blogs and poems. Keep the balance, you know.

I have been eating it all up and ingesting it. All the art and the language on my computer or bookshelf or table.

I find myself wanting to spend my life reading in parks, on benches, in the library, on my couch, or in my garden. Spending hours of my life enriching myself, indulging in art.
I could be very happy.

For now I am also very happy, doing some consumption for school and some consumption for myself. and sleeping a little in between. It's a happy balance.



Right now the first volume of The Count of Monte Cristo is siting on my table along with 3 books of Kafka in the native German. One is Die Verwandlung which is one of my very favorite books, yet I have never read it in German. I am excited now to be about 3 pages in.

Assistant Stage Managers

I have been working on the North American premier of Testing the Echo, a British play by David Edgar. Tomorrow after an 8 week process it finally opens at Grinnell College. I am the Assistant Stage manager, and in charge of all the backstage business. Today after a bit too much stress I broke down and the actors saw me cry. I am embarrassed about it now, but I don't think any of them will say anything about it.

During this whole process I have been reading quite a bit of Theatre theory. Frances Harding has an article titled Presenting and Re-presenting the Self: From not-acting to acting in African Performance. I have been reading about African performance lately on my own accord because I think that I want to spend the rest of my life working with it. Re-Presenting the Self resonates with me especially now because it talks about the stage-hand as a performer who is support of the central character/charters. This performance role is a fully functional balance between acting and not acting. As the assistant stage manager I am performer the role of backstage mom, making sure that the actors do not worry about timing, costume, or other technical aspects of the performance. This is a very necessary role to have performed during any show, yet is the least recognized.

I have come to terms with the fact that an assistant stage manager's duties are invisible yet valuable. Harding say it better than I when he writes about stagehands, "in spite of the deliberate absence of visual signals (costuming, behavior, etc.) the stagehand is drawn into the "informational structure" of the performance. It is because they are invisible that the show is able to be experienced in its entirety. I wish I could thank all the invisible assistant stage managers of the world for the hidden magic they bring to the stage.