Farewell, Désirée

There are some roles you play, and there are some roles that play you back.

 

Désirée Armfeldt, I have discovered, belongs firmly in the second category. The woman who met me exactly as I was becoming ready to inhabit my own life more fully...

 

And now, apparently, I am supposed to say goodbye to her.

For now. (For now, universe. I am making eye contact with you...)

But the glorious lesson of The Theatre is the lesson of ephemeral beauty, the ever-fleeting impermanence of It All, and in that truth lies a divine gift: that to love anything means we will lose it. And that the axiom "this too shall pass" is just as true of joyful moments as it is of adverse ones. May we relish the good times while they are here, for soon they will ebb once more. 

 

Such is life. 

 

So for now, the kimono goes back. The wig goes back. The glorious Lady-Gaga's-PLEAT-GUY-pleated-this-handmade-Fortuni-gown gowns go back. The makeup comes off. The dressing room empties. And once again I am confronted by the specific, beautiful, brutality of theatre: that we build an entire world together, furnish it with our bodies, our hearts, our neuroses, our snacks, and an alarming quantity of pins, and then one night we simply stop.

Poof.

Gone.

 

Cheers.

 

Which feels particularly strange because the last five months have been among the most expansive of my life.

There was Brigadoon—a piece I had spent years loving, interrogating, rewriting, fighting for, and finally watching become real in front of actual human beings. 

There was Chicago. 

There was Désirée. 

There was turning forty-three.

There were new friendships.

And old friendships returning in surprising new shapes.

There was writing.

There was acting.

There was (fraught but ultimately satisfying) singing.

There were meetings with exciting people. 

There were rooms full of artists imagining impossible things! And then, through some combination of craft, caffeine, delusion, and a text thread or three, making them possible.

 

And somewhere inside all of that, something in me began to soften. From my mindset to my nervous system to perhaps even to my literal fascia? I'm softer. Or life doesn't feel so hard. Or some semblance of both.  

______

Ah, softening. 

For most of the first half of my life, I believed strength meant bracing:

Prepare for the blow.

Anticipate the loss.

Read the room.

Make yourself useful.

Make yourself excellent.

Make yourself indispensable.

Make yourself whatever shape might prevent catastrophe.

And then life, with its usual lack of subtlety, eventually taught me that no amount of bracing can stop life from being life.

People leave.

Bodies change.

Careers zigzag.

Health fails.

Plans explode.

Love arrives anyway.

New identities present themselves with or without your consent.  

 

So perhaps this "middle-aged growing up journey" I'm on, is not at all about learning how to brace more effectively.

It is, I suspect, discovering that I no longer have to. (Isn't THAT rich?)

 

That is one of the gifts Désirée gave me. 

She is, after all, a woman who has spent much of her life moving.

City to city.

Stage to stage.

Affair to affair.

Performance to performance.

Always admired.

Always desired.

Always slightly elsewhere.

 

And then, suddenly, she wants something different.

Not applause.

Not admiration.

Not another dazzling entrance.

Home.

And I know that I understand that differently now than I would have ten years ago.

Home, I now realize, is not really a place at all. 

Home may be allowing yourself to be loved without immediately wondering how you can repay it.

Home may be trusting that the people who love you are not secretly conducting quarterly performance reviews.

Home may be waking up inside a body that has survived extraordinary things and finally regarding it not as a problem to solve, but as the astonishing vehicle that carried you here.

 

I have spent a great deal of my life trying to "earn" safety. I am beginning, tentatively, to believe I might simply... have some?

 

And of course, this has changed the way I think about my work, too.

For years I felt an invisible pressure to choose. To "brand." To "pick a market." Woe betide the mid 2000s and all their "so many years of muddle." 

Are you an actor? A singer?

Or are you an educator?  

Or wait: are you a writer?

Are you truly serious about performing?

Or serious about making your own work?

 

Pick a lane, Silber, the world is waiting. (Preferably before everyone notices you are driving several vehicles at once...)

 

But lately I have started wondering:

Why? WTF? Who made that rule?

 

I have always been suspicious of false binaries, and yet somehow I had constructed an enormous one inside my own career.

Actor OR writer.

Interpreter OR maker.

But what if the answer is simply:

Yes.

I am a woman standing backstage in a corset five minutes before places thinking about sentence structure. 

I am ALL.

"Applause for the clowns. They're finally here..." 

And perhaps my life is spacious enough to hold all of it.

 

Perhaps that is true for you, too. I don't know you, dear reader, but I suspect that we all contain multitudes.  

 

So aside from being overwhelming in its feeling of "midlife tardiness," this realization feels enormous not because it means I must now do everything at once (which is exactly the sort of conclusion my nervous system used to draw automatically, but, frankly we are no longer letting her run the meeting...) it means I don't have to amputate pieces of myself in order to appear coherent. My coherence may be entirely about embracing the combination. The All. The All of AL! 

 

And while I may moan and weep about how long it took me to heal and get a grip and make these discoveries, one of the strange gifts of midlife is realizing how much time has passed us by while simultaneously discovering how much life might still be waiting. Ahead. Still. 

There is grief in that. Of course. 

But there is also tremendous freedom.

I am no longer "waiting to become the person who gets to relax and just live my life."

 

She is already here. 

 ______

So farewell for now, Désirée.

 

Thank you for finding me at exactly this moment.

Thank you for asking harder questions than I expected.

Thank you for reminding me that growing older is not the diminishment I once feared, but perhaps an invitation to become more.

 

More honest.

More ridiculous.

More true.  

More absolutely alive.

 

There is still so much I want.

 

And for the first time in a long time, wanting does not feel like evidence of lack.

It feels like evidence that I am here.

 

Still becoming.

 

Still beginning.

Still.

©Joe Mazza / Brave Lux (of course) 

 

"Don't Bother, They're Here..."

 Tonight after opening, and a week of tech plus 2 show days, I was doing the show feeling as “lost” and “at sea” and “clueless” as I ever have been (perhaps, save, Kiss me Kate for the BBC where I was just operating on adrenaline and... cortisol and... panic? Unclear. I still can't watch it...) 

 

Bluntly: I have been waiting around for the Désirée “aha” moment to arrive much like the (totally fake) Handbook for Adults whose delivery I am still anticipating. But tonight, during the crushingly iconic “Send in the Clowns” I began to have a catharsis so huge I was rendered inarticulate. I felt like I was bombasted with a shattering realization: that silly ol' Désirée is meant to teach me/show me/force me to:

confront my life choices

confront the health and traumatic history realities that had nothing to do with my “choices” 

including the loss of the full spectrum and potential of my singing voice

and above all my unavoidable relationship with self loathing and my compulsive search to find attunement and safety in the gaze of others. 

 

Whoa boy. It was overwhelming. And excruciating. 

 

The mistake? I was waiting for the intellectual breakthrough—for the moment when I'd finally understand Désirée.  Instead, my body understood her first.

 

It strokes me that most people regard "Send in the Clowns"  as a love song, or a ballad of regret. But psychologically, I think it is something much more terrifying: 
It is the moment when a woman realizes that she has spent a lifetime arranging herself around other people's desires. In my experience thus far, it is filled with almost every emotion there is— including if not especially rage and shame. 

Désirée has always known how to be admired.
She knows how to be wanted.
She knows how to enter a room and make everyone turn.

She even knows how to piss of her own mother. 

But the week we meet her, what she discovers, far too late, is that admiration and attunement are not at all the same thing.

And something about that distinction feels uncannily close to a pattern I have come to recognize in my own life.
From childhood onward, I learned to scan faces.
Dad's long illness.
 An emotionally unsafe extended family.
Years of illness. 
Multiple surgeries.
Throughout those experiences, my silly ol' nervous system seemed to have created a painful equation:

If I can just become the right person... the exceptional person... the indispensable person... perhaps then I will finally be safe.

Not consciously, of course (nervous systems don't speak in sentences—at least I don't think they do...) They speak in actionable strategies.

I have always wondered why, with so much external "evidence" of worth, and with a great loving support system, partner in Alec, and such loyal friends, I have such a ravenous need to feel "deeply seen." 

I now realize that every time I moved to a new environment (which, as a freelancing artist happens every couple of months or sometimes weeks!) a new relationship or singular artistic environment would end up carrying the weight of my need to feel deeply seen. 

 

That's too much pressure for a scene partner. Or a group of strangers. All of whom have their own lives and boundaries and needs and neuroses. 

 

Tonight I think I experienced a revelation: I haven't actually been seeking any kind of admiration or even platonic intimacy.

I have been chasing safety. 

The experience of finally relaxing.
Of no longer having to earn belonging.

Those are different things.
One requires performance.
The other requires surrender.

Then there is another irony.
I've spent much of your career trying to convince audiences that I am "worthy."
But what if the mature roles ask something entirely different?
What if they ask:

Can you stand in front of people without asking them to heal your self-loathing?

 

Not because I no longer have self-loathing (I'm a woman on earth, after all...)

But because it no longer gets the starring role.
That is Désirée to me.
She isn't trying to be adored anymore.
She is trying, perhaps for the first time, to tell the truth.

 

I've been... surviving.
And the agony is that the strategies I constructed for that survival kept operating long after the danger had passed. 

I dunno. Perhaps that is why "Send in the Clowns" undid me. It is exposing the exhausting performance you've been giving for decades.

And somewhere beneath that performance is the woman I've been thinking about all year: the one with the surgical scars, the cellulite, the altered voice, the intelligence and strange humor, the immense capacity to love, and the courage to stand in the center of a theatre without pretending to be immaculate.

 

Becoming Warm Again

There is cold, and then there is New-York-waiting-for-the-above-ground-N-train-in-deepest-February cold.

 

Ah yes! Welcome back you vicious breeze! You have discovered the one gap in my coat! I hear your raspy whisper threaten: “You will never be warm again...” Y'all? I weathered the Polar Vortex of 2018 in Chicago (where it was -53ºF and colder in Chicago than on the surface of Mars), and I've been to Siberia, and this New York winter kicked my ass. So I would like to formally submit a complaint: 'hear ye hear ye, no human being is meant to stand on an open-air platform while the wind weaponizes itself against your femurs.' 

 

I don’t care how cold it is in the Arctic Circle, Vladivostok or Fargo—are those people waiting for the bus? 

 

Because that’s what this winter felt like.

Not just meteorologically. Spiritually. 

Good ol' 2026. Making itself known. It's not enough that the world is at war, everything is unaffordable and the spine of America has been crushed beneath an orphaned mack truck no one can afford to drive because gas is $5 a gallon. 
No. We also had to have when-will-it-end winter whilst stuck on the 6 train. 

 

This was a winter of sub-zero temperatures, multiple snowstorms, and me, once again trying-and-failing to quit show business like a woman calmly exiting a casino before she sets her own wallet on fire. I called it a “dramatical sabbatical,” which sounds elegant and intentional, like I was sipping oolong and reading Strinberg, but in reality? I was horizontal a lot. I finally did (and remain "doing"), the trauma work. And not the chic, go-to-the-woods-for-a-retreat kind. I mean the kind where you sit inside things you have spent decades outrunning. The kind where your body (which has been quietly holding receipts since childhood) decides it’s time to present the bill. Dad, his parents, disordered eating, ulcerative colitis. All all all. All of it, apparently, has been living in my proverbial basement like emotionally charged raccoons, waiting for me to finally turn on the light. There was a lot of sitting and remembering. A lot of realizing that I had built an entire life around highly functioning.

 

And also—and I want to be clear about this—there were still, like, errands. Getting your shit together does not cancel your CVS obligations. You can be mid-epiphany about your childhood and still have to pick up a prescription and stand behind a man arguing about coupons. 

 

But something began to shift. Very slowly, like thawing. At first, it was physical. I realized one morning that I was not clenching my jaw. Then I noticed I could sit still without immediately reaching for an activity to "accomplish." Then—and this felt revolutionary—I took a full breath without it catching halfway through like a Windows 95 error. 

 

All to say: 

Warmth, I am learning, is not just temperature. 

It might just be your nervous system lowering its weapons, and the body deciding, at last, that it is not under siege.

I did not know, until this winter, how deeply unrested I have been for most of my life. How much of my productivity was powered not by inspiration, but by fear. Fear of stopping. Fear of feeling. Fear of what might catch up to me if I ever stood still long enough to let it.

And now, having stood still—truly still—I can say this:

Nothing caught up to me.

I caught up to myself.

Because when you emerge—and you do emerge—you are not the same person who went in.

You are warmer.

You are rested.

And perhaps most importantly, you are no longer estranged from yourself.

 

This is a kind of abundance that has nothing to do with money or accolades or even opportunity. 

It is the abundance of being present in your own life.

Of feeling your breath fully.
Of trusting your body again.
Of knowing that whatever comes next, you will meet it as yourself — not as a performance of yourself.

 

So here I am.

Standing on the edge of a season that feels, for the first time in a long time, not like something to survive—but something to live. 

If winter was the pulling back of the bow, then this moment is the breath just before release.

 

Not frantic.
Not forced.

Ready.

 

© hula seventy

Bye bye 2024

^ on a kamzoil date with adam kantor. cheers vienna

Good Gd, you were weird. 

 

There were great times

And new friends

and mountains climbed

and lessons learned 

What a ride. 

A year full of jaw-dropping highs and face-palming lows. 

Is it okay to say I am so glad you are over?  

 

 

I never thought I’d spend December 31st clutching a glass of wine like it’s a flotation device, but here we are. 

 

2024, you full-on gave me the business—and also handed me Champagne. Work opportunities rained down like somebody forgot the funnel on the sky. I made some incredible new pals. Created some new traditions. But whoof. This was a year that made me seriously consider things like "when I finally complete my transformation in to an 'Interesting Town Character,' shall I have a more predictable vice like a drinking problem, or shall I go rogue and just get a Shoulder Crow?" 

I’m ridiculously lucky to have Alec. He didn’t flinch when I came home after soul-pestling days at work, and said, “Babe, you crushed it,” even though I felt like I had spent the day doing Shakespeare wearing an inflatable unicorn costume because oh wait I DID. 

But hey, it wasn’t all rainbows and group hugs. I faced health drama that took my breath away. I spent more time in waiting rooms this year than I did in dressing rooms or actual rooms of my house. Doctors ran so many tests I half expected them to stick electrodes on me and say, “Great news—you’re a spaceship.” Turns out I need not one but three twists eliminated from my small intestine and for extra measure: I also had a hernia. Also I’m spiritually burnt out and have the gut health of a shopping cart with a wonky wheel. Go figure.

I said goodbye to people I thought I’d keep forever, watched friendships and professional relationships shift like tectonic plates, and at core? I learned that outgrowing your old life can feel a lot like boredom—this deep, yawning ache that happens whether you want it to or not. I cried at the airport. I cried after the election. I cried when not one but three close friends told me they were pregnant. I cried because the houseplants I named after Ragtime characters kept dying. (RIP, Willy Conklin.)

I discovered that “adulting” isn’t a destination; it’s a series of irritating pop quizzes. I decluttered, and decided that if I have nothing to spark joy, at least the pile of Amazon boxes will spark curiosity from the recycling center.

So what did I learn?

• Gratitude is a muscle. Obviously. You have to work it out every day, especially on the days your back hurts and you hate kale.  

• Some people DO NOT WANT YOU WHOLE. They want you manageable, agreeable, and small. Before you internalize their shame, take note. Adjust. 

• Change often brings grief. especially when it means losing people who prefer4ed a stagnant version of you. A new path will always pull you away from the old one.  

• Humor is medicine. If you can laugh at yourself—and at the delicious absurdity of life—you’ll survive just about anything.
  

 

As the clock ticks toward midnight, I’m planting my feet firmly in the chaos, raising a toast to everything. Here’s to 2025. Ring in the new.

The Talkback: An Epilogue

 Epilogue: *

 * "It is not the fashion to see the lady the epilogue..."
— William Shakespeare

1. This clearly touched a nerve.

I'm vaguely in awe of the enormous response to my post regarding the talk back. The shared outrage and anger surprised and moved me. I'm not certain why— but perhaps it's because in my "Other" roles I so often feel left hanging so I didn't expect such support. 

 

But genuinely? 

None more so than as a woman.
We don't allow women to speak. 

And when we do, we don't listen very well, or at all.

2. Compassion first

 I want to acknowledge that these older men (one declared himself to be Jewish — the other spoke with the authority of someone who identified as Jewish) seemed to be in a lot of pain.
And you know what?
I get it.
I respect their pain.
In some ways I share it.

I share the pain of a human being with a few "Other" status' (like billions of humans) who thought they had not merely the hope but the firm belief that the arm of history was moving in the direction of a more compassionate, loving world. When they look around, I imagine these men see shadows of things they assumed were long gone, and feel despair.

And something I have that they do not? Is more time. They have less time on earth to see the world course correct. And it brings them grief and outrage and fear and hopelessness that everything they've devoted their lives to is evaporating.

I have more time to change the world than they do.
I understand.
If they had given me a chance, I would have validated their pain.

 

3. Demand no "pound of flesh"

 

Their valid pain? Is no excuse for further pain.
 

And the almost breathtaking irony is that this is the precise larger theme of The Merchant of Venice.
 

Oppression can warp us, if we allow it. And hurt people hurt people.

We must rise above our personal and collective agonies and demand no “pound of flesh”— no matter how
"justified." We must heal ourselves and our communities so that we cause no further harm — micro and macro.
 

May the bringing of peace begin within the quietness of our own souls.

 

 

 

The Talkback: Part 2

This piece is a more detailed account of a specific negative talk-back that occurred, and is continuation from more universal theatre talk back experiences. For those thoughts, Part 1: is HERE.

Helpful background

 

Now, as for what happened tonight after The Merchant of Venice. The producers advertised this particular evening as "Pride Night—" and welcomed the audience to stay to discuss the themes of "Othering" in society, the play itself and in our production. 

 

For those who may not be familiar with the piece, a quick background: 

The Merchant of Venice is a play written around 1594 by William Shakespeare and listed as a "comedy." The play centers around three main protagonists who are all "Others" in the hetero-normative, Christian, male society of Venice: Antonio is a queer man, Portia is a woman, and Shylock is a Jew. The play has long been considered extremely controversial for the portrayal and ultimate fate of it's "comic villain" Shylock-- who goes after the Christian Antonio (whom he despises for his blatant bigotry of Jews) in court when he fails to meet their iron-clad money-lending agreement promising that should Antonio fail to meet the terms, Shylock may exact "a pound of flesh" from Antonio, ostensibly killing him (for he has Antonio's heart in mind). 

Yet, despite Shylock's legal "correctness," Portia—dressed as a man and serving as the loophole-finding lawyer for the case—Antonio is spared, and ultimately stripped of his property and life, only to be saved in the end if he agrees to give up all his worldly goods and, of course, be converted to Christianity. 

 

My take: Honestly? It is a play about some rather horrible people doing some truly horrible things. And along the way there are some great laughs, fun subplots, and some of Shakespeare's most iconic and beautiful poetry and prose.  

 

In short: it's complicated.

Our Production

Now MoV has much more than Jewish themes— it also has the othering of women and LGBTQ+ people. Not to mention the total lambasting of countless nationalities and cultures in the smaller parts of the original text. 

Our production—for better or for worse, not my call—eliminated the queer themes utterly, which I felt was a missed opportunity. It also largely diminished my role as Portia and did little to illuminate her lack of agency, her blinding intelligence, her loneliness and really any redeemable part of her humanity. (I hear you asking and yes, sure: it wasn't my favorite take on this play, and not my favorite acting experience, but I'm not in charge. That's the deal we sign as actors! Sometimes an actor has to trust, commit fully to a director's vision as an instrument of and extension of their artistic expression and suppress one's own preconceived notions and ideas. That's the gig. And globally: I applaud anyone for taking a bold "swing" and really trying something). 

 

With these two arms of the triumvirate diminished, our production did, however, focus almost exclusively on Shylock: on ancient and contemporary Antisemitic tropes, on the way we treated Jews then, and continue to today.

Tonight

After the show, we sit down, a moderator is present and highly qualified to speak on the subject of the evening, but does not have journalistic credits. They do not set any ground rules, they do not create a "container" for how this is going to go. I am immediately concerned because the subject matter is so intense, and it is obvious that audience members are experiencing high emotions.

 

An older man took up an enormous amount of airtime speaking for over 5 minutes about his background as a Eastern European Jewish immigrant, then proceeded to express his "disappointment and outrage" at our production. He used inflammatory language. He was clearly angry and directing a great deal of his anger in my direction.

 

I interrupted him (as politely as possible) in minute 5, noting that no one else—not the moderator nor the producer—was putting an end to a speech that was clearly going off course. I stated calmly that I "didn't hear a question." He replied, impassioned: 

 

"How can you do this?"  

It went downhill quickly from there. 

 

I won't get in to the minutia of his words, I will ask you to trust that this was not a conversation, and his comments and his tone were inappropriate.  His feelings are of course, valid, but there is an appropriate  audience, time, place and manner in which to express them.  And my feelings were valid: it was perfectly reasonable to become defensive when asked—as an actor—to personally "defend" a production I did not direct or produce.

 

It needed to be shut down long before it was dealt with. And there was no need for it to ever arrive at such a confrontational place to begin with, had infrastructure been in place.

 

I will own my part: I became defensive, in my fear and anger I "puffed:" I rattled off facts, figures and basically barfed the encyclopedia at on onto these men— to prove something. My intelligence, my worthiness of respect; to show that they had underestimated and belittled me? I don't know exactly. I'm still figuring it out in the aftermath. I was also defending myself because I felt unsafe! No one was stepping in and meaningfully coming to our aid! I was terrified that there was no infrastructure in place from our moderator or producers to help the exposed actors navigate this moment. As the conflict escalated, both ushers and audience members left. 

But where the conversation turned ugly for me was when this man, and another older man sitting beside him (also outraged) vociferously attempted to "teach" me—not the men—about Jewish history. They spoke directly to me, looked me in the eyes and used demeaning language to do so. I believe used tone and language that insinuated that I was too young, too goyishe, and too female to possibly understand the nuances of 5000 years of Jew-hatred.

So, allow me to be clear, gentlemen:

1. I am Jewish.

I understand that I may not "look Jewish" you.
Your assumption of my exclusion says more about you than it does about me.

2. Yes, I am a woman. 

I understand that 10 minutes ago, I was dressed in nothing more than a pink bikini (and looking ravishing-by the way) and that possibly leads you to believe that I am an intellectual lightweight whose beauty is her only asset. But my attractive, apparently "youthful," hyper feminine woman-ness makes me NO less capable of academic rigor, dramaturgy, context, nuance, curiosity, or for a deep and secure grasp upon my Peoples' history, Theatrical history and of history itself.
 

Just because I am a beautiful woman does not mean I am a stupid one.

Do not assume that you "must" "TEACH ME" anything. (Yes, sir, I am speaking to you who felt it necessary to teach me about The Rothschilds in front of an audience.)

3. Censorship is a society-killer. 

Also? Yes, this play is officially a "comedy" and yes, it is problematic. But to quote Professor James Shapiro author of "Shakespeare and The Jews"

“I have tried to show that much of the play's vitality can be attributed to the ways in which it scrapes against a bedrock of beliefs about the racial, national, sexual, and religious difference of others. I can think of no other literary work that does so as unrelentingly and as honestly. To avert our gaze from what the play reveals about the relationship between cultural myths and peoples' identities will not make irrational and exclusionary attitudes disappear. Indeed, these darker impulses remain so elusive, so hard to identify in the normal course of things, that only in instances like productions of this play do we get to glimpse these cultural fault lines. This is why censoring the play is always more dangerous than staging it.”

In essence: we must be willing to see.
Censorship in art achieves nothing.

 

4. Producers and Moderators, please protect your actors and creatives. 

This is a professional engagement. We might love our work, but a labor of love is still labor. And our time, safety and dignity should be respected by implementing safeguards before and during audience engagements. It is respectful. To all.

5. Never assume: onstage and off. 

Finally, this talk-back revealed through it's "failure" precisely the reason we were gathered:
The assumptions we make about Others based on a myriad of preconceived beliefs, prejudices and assumptions. I—like millions—exist at the cross-section of many identities. None of them should be questioned, tested, proven, explained or even educated-about against my consent. Particularly in a public forum.

We are, all of us, capable of prejudice, bigotry, rage and hatred.

Equally, we are, all of us, capable of great compassion, empathy, curiosity and courage.
I welcome you to—whenever possible- align yourself with the latter.

Take care of yourselves, your communities and one another.
And to all a good night.

The Talkback: Part 1

Me V. Outraged Guy

Just left a horrendous talk-back held after the show Off Broadway down at Classic Stage working on The Merchant of Venice.  I wanted to take this opportunity to comment on a few of the subjects that came up in this particularly activating evening. 

 

1. Etiquette

There is a proper and improper way to engage with artists, (and I propose that audiences and theatre producers would be wise to hear our experiences.)

 

2. Be Responsible for Yourself

We must take responsibility for the energy we bring into any room, conversation and/or encounter. 

3. Sometimes Things Get Tough

The Merchant of Venice is a complicated play that brings up a tsunami of unprocessed emotions for many, (particularly when the political landscape exacerbates them.)

 

 

So before I dig in, here are a few PSAs to say off the bat: 

This has been an already difficult week/month/year at work, and this blog has never been a place where I drag, name and shame, or gossip, so I won't start now. Suffice it to say: it was. I'm learning a lot. I'm grateful for the lessons.

 

The Merchant of Venice is a very confrontational piece of theatre that brings up a lot of feelings for people, regardless of the production. 

The theatre-going audience must know that there is a proper and improper way to engage with artists, and producers and even managers need to know that those rules must be communicated clearly by them when they allow audiences to engage with artists. 

We do not allow audiences to enter the orchestra and start playing the priceless instruments.
We don’t allow them to walk around or climb on the sets.
Audiences do not try on costumes, or mess with the sound or lighting boards. 

And yet, over and over again they are permitted and even encouraged to assume authority over the actors and their art. The more we allow these mores to persist, the more respect and courtesy will break down on both sides of the footlights.

 

These observations are ones I have collected over nearly 20 years in show business; they are not exclusive to MoV, though this was a particularly repugnant example of a talk-back gone awry for reasons I am happy to articulate, many of which are entirely universal:

 

1. This talk-back—for the creatives—is voluntary and unpaid. 

If you ever attend a talk back post show, no matter your opinion of the work or the piece, keep in mind that actors and creatives giving of their time after work is "extra," and you are not "owed" anything beyond the show you just witnessed. 

 

2. Respect the labor. 

Actors (in particular) have just done something incredibly vulnerable — we've bared our souls to the public in the name of art and social reflection, and one would be wise to take care with how you address and comment upon every aspect of the work. Creatives are human beings with intelligence, life experience and feelings. 

3. Focus on questions. 

That means phrases between 1-3 sentences that ALWAYS end with a question mark. A talk-back is not the time to give the actors or creatives a review, unburden your personal history, pain, or outrage. A talk-back, is, at its core, a Question and Answer session. It is not an opportunity for you to unload or unleash your unprocessed thoughts and emotions. In the age of social media where everyone's opinion (however unqualified or biased) is given similar credence, sometimes we can falsely assume that our sharing our opinions and reviews are legitimate and welcome. Questions, always welcome. Within reason, bring me to...

 

4. Actors and Creatives may decline to answer. 

Actors and creatives always have a right to decline to answer questions or comments that make them uncomfortable or are inappropriate. That includes questions or comments about their personal lives, as well as questions regarding defense of their roles or the production. Actors are only a PART of a production.  Further, actors and creatives take jobs for many reasons, and can't always "speak to" let alone "defend" every aspect of a production — not that that is owed to you anyway. 

 

If you ask a question in a respectful way, it is acceptable to ask a director to offer their ideas/visions for the production, but please decline to review it or offer your opinion unless expressly engaged to do so. 

 

5. Be mindful of the space you occupy and share "airtime" with everyone. 

If you MUST offer a comment, keep it extremely brief, and be mindful that the people on stage owe you no explanations and are human beings with intelligence, life experience and feelings. 

 

6. There should always be an experienced moderator  

An experienced moderator should always be present to set ground rules and keep the conversation respectful, safe, and engaging for all. In an ideal scenario this should be a trained interviewer with journalistic training, preferably with expertise in the arts or the subject the piece of theatre addresses. A producer serving as moderator, or a person with experience in the topic, but not experienced managing Q&As, is not an acceptable or safe situation to put your Actors or Creatives in. Without a professional managing this process, it can be dangerous. The role of a professional moderator is akin to an intimacy coordinator’s. There must be professional representation when intimate contact is required.

*

Self Portrait APR.25.15

Thirty-One

Thirty-one is...

• a popular a card game
• the atomic number of Gallium
• the third Mersenne prime ( 2⁵ - 1 )
• and a centered triangular number, a centered pentagonal number and centered decagonal number

and,

• the code for international direct-dial phone calls to the Netherlands. 

Also...

• In Buddhism, there are believed to be 31 planes of existence
• There are 31 days in the months of January, March, May, July, August, October and December.
• In ice hockey 'goalies' often wear the number 31. 
• Messier object M31, is a magnitude 4.5 galaxy in the constellation Andromeda. It is also known as the Andromeda Galaxy, and is readily visible to the naked eye in a modestly dark sky.
  In music, 31-tone equal temperament is a historically significant tuning system (31 equal temperament)
  
• 31 is a London bus route running through Camden Town

And of course,

• The number of Baskin-Robbins ice cream flavo(u)rs! 

*

Having spent my 30th in San Francisco onstage at Davies Symphony Hall singing the role of a lifetime, then quickly following it up with a weekend with my amazing family, last year sure does seem hard to out-do...

Oh: but out-do-it I shall.
Why, do you ask?
Because this thirty-one-derful year I am spending my birthday returning to London (a place I have not spent it in five years since birthday number 26). I can't officially tell you why I am here yet (sigh), but rest assured it is for a fabulous, exciting, bucket-list-esque singing-related reason that thrills me to my core.

But beyond a working identity, London is about the origins of my adulthood, and above all, about the friends I made and continue to love here.

It shall be a day of big reunions
Of revisitations with people
and places
     and a chance to truly look at how far I have come...

To quote my younger self,

MAN: I hate birthdays.
Well, no. That's not true.
I don't hate birthdays.
I love birthdays.
There is nothing that gives me greater pleasure than reminding people how glad I am that they were born.
     I hate my birthday.
We know this. (Remember the Nietzsche-an spiral of 24? The way I tried to get a grip at 27? The way I kiiiiinda got that grip at 29?) 
It's a passage-of-time thing. (I think it is also why I don't like New Year's Eve, and cut flowers for opening night...I dunno...)
I'm working on it. 

Poor little younger Al. (I wish I could give her a squeeze and tell her it all gets so much better, and life gets so much richer and calmer and deeper once she turns 30...) That said, looking at the list of "31s" above, I have to say, this number is on point: this birthday year I feel truly in my prime, as well as centered and thirty-one-derful.

I own who I am.
Fully. Deeply. Truly

Alexandra Silber.
Al.
Woman.
Friend.
Traveler.
Adventurer.
Believer.
Artist.
Actor.
Singer (a hard-won self acceptance title!).
Teacher (the most thoroughly fulfilling aspect of my life thus far).
Writer.
American. 
Story-teller.
Listener.
Forever-learner.
Homebody. 
Taker of photographs.
Maker of kick-ass salads.
Handbag-rummager.
Lover of road trips.
     and crime drama.
     and books.
     and radio. 
     and baseball.
     and carnivals.
     and meteorology.
     and one-on-one talks.
     and vegetables.
     and hand-written correspondence.
     and the ocean.
     and Angela Lansbury.
Aunt.
Daughter.
Human being.

Here's to another year. 

A Letter Never Sent

B

Somewhere in

New York

United States of America

Continent of North America

The Earth

The Solar System

THE MIND OF GOD.

A balcony in

Knob Hill

San Francisco, California

June 25, 2013 

B

So I am officially off my writing game. The words must’ve caught the first bus for the bay. Or the hills. Or...somewhere I am not. None of this is helpful for my finalfinalfinal deadline for the books, let alone a handwritten letter to you (which I promised myself I would write at least one of, here on the balcony of this really quite magnificent hotel in Knob Hill). 

To be fair: all my energies are focused on music. 

Specifically: not screwing up the first-and-only symphonic recording of “West Side Story” EVER. 

I don’t quite know how that piece of information escaped me, but it did, and here we are: there’s no backing out now. 

It's funny, I am no stranger to the ebb and the flow (I am possibly the doyenne of both The Ebb as well as The Flow) but something about these last few weeks feels very different. I can't put my finger on it exactly but it has everything to do with seismic change, a true turning over of cells. What that means precisely, I don't know. But change is in the air. Nothing to do but breathe in, open my arms and leap. I might be wrong, but I might also be Wright. […See what I did there…?]

Also to be fair: it is summer. And I have many a festive intention. In fact, I wrote a little Manifesto on the red-eye. Then? Well then I dug my heels in, John Proctor, I dug my heels in deep. I shall be the very last of the Mohicans holding onto summer--gaze set. 

Here are some highlights: 

- I will make room for small adventures

- I will say yes to camp fires

    and road trips

- I will always say yes to the park

- I will always have Popsicles in the freezer

     ...and watermelon in the fridge 

- I will stop worrying about things I can't control

    …because I will turn 30…

- I will chase and tickle my nieces

     and sing them to sleep 

     and escort them to the county fair.

- There will be many a photo-booth

- And the eating of raspberries off the tips of my fingers, out of the carton 

    …And not sharing the watermelon

- I shall sit on rooftops and balconies and fire escapes

- I shall swim in rivers and lakes and both American oceans.

- I shall bring magic and romance and spontaneity into my own life. 

*

Well. My my my. Guess who has finally mastered the use of the espresso machine (!!) in my hotel room? Why me. The best part of this development, however, is not the double espresso that I can now enjoy each morning while sitting on the patio overlooking the bay with my score (and 10,000 markings and mental reminders to use less vibrato), or listening to the bells from the church across the road, or trying (and failing) to write. 

No. OH NO. The best part is that while I make said double espresso, I get to recite aloud (for myself and sure, sometimes the housekeeping staff) in my somewhat laughable Italian accent, the molto-lame-o slogan embedded on the side of the machine:

For Music ~ Puccini

For Art ~ Bernini 

For Espresso ~ Pasquini

Yet, isn’t that the most ridiculously charming thing you have ever heard? …Perhaps in the whole of your life? 

In other news, do you know what goes nicely with espresso? Bernstein. 

*

I hope you are well. You’ve gone awfully quiet these last few weeks, which of course I understand. You should. You deserve a moment (or five) to look inward and make adjustments. I would never have wanted to have been robbed of my silent contemplative treks through Siberia all those years ago. Figuring out who the heck I was going to be next. Not on paper, mind you, but within. As well as without. 

Yet, Gogol said 

“Everywhere across whatever sorrows of which our life is woven, some radiant joy will gaily flash past.” 

He is right of course. That white-hot, phantasmagoric mind was so very correct. Nickolai Gogol is my kind of genius. 

So, Dear B, wherever you are, I hope you are everything you need to be right at this moment; and that those 'flashes of radiant joy' are not kept from you. 

Always,

A