A Stranger's Faith

This morning, I woke up and couldn't fall back asleep, so I decided to go on one of my early morning bike rides that I love so much. Except this time, I wanted it to be special, so I grabbed my copy of The Perks of Being a Wallflower, a water bottle, and my backpack. I sloppily shoved the blanket and book into the backpack, hauled my bike up the stairs, and headed out the door. My usual path provided no extraordinary circumstances and I listened to the New Broadway Cast Recording of Godspell on the way there. The uphill section of my route was not as much of a challenge today as it had been before, probably because I have been going up the hill more often lately.

I turned into St. Ferdinand Park and hunted for a good spot to settle down and read. The air was stagnant, the sun was bright, the world was quiet. Flies, wasps, and bees invaded my reading area. Or maybe I invaded their living area. I laid down my blanket on the dewy grass, sat down, and cracked open my book. Half a page in, the bugs became unbearable. A rather large bee took residence on my neck, and following my impulse, I grabbed at it mid-sting. It hurt, but not as much as being squished between two monstrous fingers I guess.

At this point, I was sweaty, thirsty, feeling the wrath of an upset bee, wet because of the dewy grass, blinded by oncoming sunlight, and  felt overall dissatisfaction. So, I decided to pack up and leave.

I didn't leave though. I noticed the gazebo across the pond. It's a quaint gazebo, overlooking majestic landscaping before the deep end of the pond. I guided my bike into the opening of the gazebo, pulled my water bottle and book back out, and read. Over here, there were no bugs, a constant flow of wind combed my hair to the right, the sounds of birds and the fountain and industrial lawnmowers reverberated in the small valley between two hills. Normal 7AM-at-the-park activity happened; dog walkers and weight losers and bikers peppered the otherwise lonely atmosphere. Out of nowhere, a man on a modest bike in black bike shorts and a teal t-shirt arrived.

"Well, this is the spot I normally stop to pray at and I'm gonna go on ahead if that's okay. Wow, that's a big bike." The man checked out my awkwardly-large bicycle as he sat down to pray. "I'm gonna pray silently so I don't bother ya."
"That's fine, go ahead. I'm just reading, you're okay!"

The man prayed. His sunglasses covered his eyes too well to see, but I know he was crying. Amongst his tears, he sneezed. I paid him the obligatory bless you. He finished up his prayer, thanked me, and stood.
"Do you know Jesus?"
"Yep, he's a good guy."
"He's the best thing to ever happen to me."
"I'm glad, sir."
"Thank you. Well I'm gonna head on home now. Take care."
"You too. Have a nice day!"

Maybe he thought I was being rude, but I wasn't sure what to say. I'm not a religious guy, but I am fully supportive of those who are. I believe faith is a beautiful thing, and am truly happy for those who have found solace in their faith. Hearing this man's few words touched me. I knew how important this man's faith was to him. I may never see this man again; I never caught his name. But he won a place in my heart by sticking to his faith, and being a kind, genuine person. I have no clue what was included in his prayer, but I hope with all of my will that he finds his own happiness.

I'm glad that I stayed at the park today. I stopped sweating, the bugs left me alone, the seat of my pants dried, and I got some quality reading done. I also felt a stranger's love. His love for something intangible, that can only be felt in the heart.

There have been things in my life that have driven me from faith in a higher being. I cannot find that light in myself, and I cannot see past all the scientific proof that disproves many aspects of faith. But what I can see is that faith and light in others. Seeing others find peace gives me peace. That, and rereading Perks on a Thursday morning in a bug-infested but genuinely beautiful park.

An elderly couple just walked past the gazebo. A tear welled up in my eye. Then a father and his young daughter. Next, a group of middle-aged women.

Parks are beautiful places. I'm glad I stayed.

Goodbye, a short play by Nick Oswalt

People who know me well know that I consider myself a writer. It's one of my favorite things to do, and being in THE210 - Writing for Theatre, is probably one of the best things that could have happened to me this semester. In this class, we write short scenes and other assignments based on plays we read for the class. This particular assignment was to write a contemporary morality play. Many morality plays tell biblical stories or other clean-cut lessons, but I decided to take mine in a different direction. This play faces the hard-hitting subject of depression, suicide, and bullying. I wanted to write this for all of those who thought their lives weren't worth living. I'll let the play speak for itself.

Goodbye

By Nick Oswalt

Top-light opens on a single school desk. Empty. Projections of the words "It's over.", "The end.", and "Goodbye." swirl on a screen upstage; swirling as if suspended in a pool of water. Soft, yet intense piano plays. Spot on BOY up-left. Teenager, awkward, reserved. He holds a note. Music and projections fade as he begins speaking

Boy:

I know that you think what I'm doing is wrong. No, you're wrong. I tried. For fifteen years, I tried to make you happy. I wasn't that perfect son you always wanted. Well, all I can say is that I'm sorry I didn't give you what you wanted. And I thought at least I would be able to find friends at school, but I'm weird.

A chorus of two boys and a girl enter. They act as children, circling around the desk, chanting in a sing-song fashion.

Chorus 1:

Weirdo!

Chorus 2:

Smelly!

Chorus 3:

Ugly!

All:

Gross!

They pause in their tracks. Boy reads the note some more.

Boy:

No one gives me a chance. There was once light in this darkness. I feel so unsafe in my own body. I feel embarrassed in my own mind. I've come to realize there is nothing more for me to do in this life anymore. My mission is complete.

The chorus ages to middle-school-age, early teens. Chanting, less sing-song, more accusatory, circling desk again.

Chorus 2:

Fucking nerd.

Chorus 1:

Freak.

Chorus 3:

Asshole.

All:

Kill yourself.

Chorus stops again. Boy continues reading.

Boy:

My entire purpose in life was to give people justification to hate something. I was the scapegoat for their problems. Because I wore unfitting clothes and kept to myself and wrote, instead of getting high before class and fucking girls in the bathroom down the hallway during lunch. I chose books over looks.

During the rest of Boy's monologue, the words projected on the screen begin swirling again. The chorus, in slow motion, bang on the desk violently, ad-libbing previous insults sporadically as they do so.

Boy:

I was nothing to them, and I wanted them to be nothing to me. You, my whole family, no one cared. I have come to believe I am less of a human than all of you, and a sub-human being like myself does not deserve to live any longer. So take my death as a lesson. You have the power to kill someone, without even touching them. You did it to me. You can do it to someone else. The most fucked-up part? I don't even hate you. Even through the hell I have lived, I do not hate.

The spot on the boy becomes blood-red. The chorus stands in a line in front of the desk, heads down, as if in mourning. Projections of the phrases "Bless his soul.", "We will miss you.", "Why?", and "I always loved him." swirl on the screen. Still under the deep red light...

Boy:

Hypocrites.

End of Play.

Sometimes, Life is Hard.

This half of the semester is feeling weird to me. We're a week in, and I feel myself drowning in all of the work I have to get done, yet I'm not sure if I really care about half of it. That half of it being gen eds.

I'm in my last math class of my life right now. And I'm three classes behind. It's not that it's hard, it's just that I'm not a big fan of math. I know, I should feel like oh it's my last math class of my entire life I should take it seriously and go out with a bang but I just don't feel that way. I will always feel the same shitty thoughts towards math. And I will always neglect my work in there. My midterm grade was a C. I can deal with that. Is that sad? I just don't want to care about something right now that I won't ever care about down the road.

That's my main stress right now, balancing not caring at all and trying to care a little bit about math. Other than that, I have my theatre classes, which I love all the same, but they are getting intense. Theatre is hard sometimes, you guys. A lot of people don't realize that. It's just playing dress-up and being weird to so many people. Well, it's not. My rehearsal for the one-act I'm in was a bit of a wake-up call. I'm not as solid with my lines as I should be, which inhibited me so much during rehearsal. I felt so unprofessional, and so ridiculous, wandering around the stage aimlessly as if the lines were just going to pop into my head right then and there. That will never happen.

Something did make me feel insanely better though. My fantastic director had us run my scene without words, just gibberish, objectives, and tactics. I found so much in physicality that I didn't have because I was weighed down by words I couldn't find. It was really cool. Now I'm going to have to use the flash-card method to get these lines down solid. Whoever said learning lines gets easier as you go on was full of shit. It's never easy, and anyone who says it is, is probably not telling the truth.

I'm looking forward to the improv show tomorrow. When I do improv, I feel like I'm doing something right. And so often, I feel like I'm doing everything wrong. It's freeing.

Side-note: Indifference is probably the most dangerous thing to me. Not hate, not love, but indifference. If you truly don't give someone the time of day, it can hurt more than falling out of love, or being hated. Being effortless with someone is truly how to let them know there is nothing they could do to make you care about them one way or another.

This post has been weird and kinda Debbie-Downer-ish, but oh well. I blame the weather.

Until next time, friends!

A Journey Through Innocence

Tonight was an incredible journey for me. A small group of people from the department and I gathered for all that we knew was a Midnight Viewpoints session that involved character and a loose storyline. I won't go too much into detail about what the story consisted of, but as an ensemble we experienced sibling relationships, accepting new family members, inevitable loss of home and of loved ones, and the ultimate acceptance and journey forward through tough times. To be short, it struck me hard, in both a cathartic and an incredibly eye-opening way.

To those of you who might not know what Viewpoints are, it's kind of hard to explain simply through words on a screen. Basically, these two women named Tina Landau and Anne Bogart explored what makes for good moments on stage in performance, and broke it down into nine elements - Viewpoints - to follow. These Viewpoints are disciplines of movement that performers can use at their disposal to help create character, conflict, story, and tone, as well as make in-the-moment discoveries. These Viewpoints consist of Tempo, Duration, Spacial Relationship, Architecture, Shape, Topography, Gesture, Kinesthetic Response, and Repetition. All of these mean different things; tempo is the speed at which you move, duration is the amount of time in which this movement happens, spacial relationship refers to your physical distance between other bodies, and so on and so forth. All of us have worked intensely with these nine Viewpoints in classes and can use them at our will to help make discoveries.

That is what I thought was going to be about. I was prepared to Viewpoint while keeping in mind that I was a little kid and blah blah blah. That's not what ended up happening. An entire story evolved, and this room of people connected and interacted in ways I never thought possible.

Through tonight's journey through innocence, I was reminded of the importance of sibling bonds. Many already know this, but I lost my older sister as a senior in high school, in November of 2010. Since then, my life has not been the same. At all. It's fallen apart and it's been a steady building back-up since then. I'm at a good place now, and I have processed most of the grief and I can readily use the experience of losing my sister as a time of growth. Yes, I still miss her in incredible amounts, but I am constantly reminded that I haven't lost her really. In our story, our oldest brother was taken by Death, and everything we knew, our home, the place we were growing up in, was gone. Tears streamed down my face, because it was incredibly real for me. Being an eight year old going through parallel experiences brought me to the realization that I needed to protect and love my remaining siblings in the story. They were vulnerable. I was vulnerable. Death was on the hunt again and we weren't about to let him take another of our own.

Luckily, the story didn't go in that direction. Death was intimidated by our togetherness, our love, and our constant diligence to stay a family, and Death instead brought back our eldest brother. Although my sister in real life obviously won't be physically coming back anytime soon, or ever really, this taught me something. My sister has come back to me, in what I'm choosing to do with my life as a career.

My sister was so supportive of my love of theatre. She saw every performance she could and was so mesmerized at what I helped create. She died before I'd finalized my college decisions, but I like to think she has so much to do with it. Her love and support gave me the courage to go into theatre in college. Her love fuels my passion for this art form, and there is nothing that will stop me from pursuing this crazy dream of mine because if I do, I will have let her down. I can't do that; she never let me down. I let her down many times when she was alive, and I can't let myself do that anymore.

Just last night, I remembered how much she said she loved watching the old movie version of Les Miserables and knew there was a musical version of it, and I told her they were in the very early stages of creating a movie version of the musical. She was so excited for it.

She never got to see it.

Listening to that music brought me back to such specific memories of her. I remember, her sitting on the couch as I got ready for another dumb day of school, and she told me about how she wanted to see the musical.

Listening to that music last night brought me to tears because she never got to experience it. And I did. I wanted nothing more than to bring her back to me, and let her listen to the beautiful music with me. But there was no way. There is no way to bring back what is gone.

At least I thought. Tonight, when we in those imaginary circumstances, lost our sibling and experienced grief and everything that comes with it, along with the ultimate acceptance of death, then the surprise of his return, my sister's spirit returned to me. I felt her presence, it was almost like she was speaking to me. I felt a message of what you are doing is right. You chose to major in theatre for a reason. Doing anything else would make life miserable for you. You have a voice and this world needs to hear it through your writing and the theatre you help create.

And I felt validated. I felt right, and I felt amazing. I was committed to the work we were doing, I was present, with all of this in the back of my mind, and it was one of the most freeing experiences of my life post-November-2010.

I will never forget this night and the people that I shared it with.

Spring Semester Woes / Triumphs

It's the end of February. It's been two months since I've been home, and we are seven weeks into the semester. It's also my fifth week of nonstop working out. Well, except that weekend in Tulsa, but even then I maintained a pretty high level of activity. I guess you could say I need a break. Luckily, Spring Break is right around the corner. But also, I'm scared of Spring Break, mostly because of what is to come afterwards.

After the break, time will start sliding and accelerating at hyperspeed. It does this every year; one minute it's the beginning of March and in the blink of an eye, finals are upon us. Not only does another class start after Spring Break, but all of my other classes will only get more challenging. In Voice and Movement we will begin poem work. Which will probably mean lots of out-of-class work on that. Kinesiology will continue to be sneaky and kick my butt. Writing for Theatre will (hopefully) continue to be relatively stress-free and fun. As Pajama Game comes closer, we will have more to work on in Stagecraft Lab, and the work we'll be doing will be more pertinent to the set. Also, Stagecraft Lecture will include a lot more work and projects and stuff, so yeah.

BUT more importantly it's great to think about all the great stuff that will be happening! One-Act rehearsals will be in full swing and we'll be doing those, which are always the most fun. On top of that, Grin and Bear It is back and ready to do shows for the semester, and I think this team will be the best yet! It's really great working with such a supportive and hilarious ensemble of people. Improv rehearsals are a highlight of my week!

Also, the sun will be out and Winter will be over. The sun is my best friend. I love the warmth, the brightness, the beauty... I could just lay out in the sun all day every day and be perfectly happy. Can we have Voice and Movement outside? Just an idea.

Anyway, that's what is in my mind right now. Spring Break, please PLEASE hurry your ass. I can't wait to go home and see friends and family and recover from all this working out and homework and waking up early and and and....

Plus I get to see Next to Normal. Which will be SO good.

Quick post about my first rehearsal

So tonight we had our first rehearsal for the Directing II One-Act A Number on the Roman Calendar, a play by David Johnston. It's a very interesting piece and this cast is the first to have ever performed it. My character is called "The Pope", but upon the first readthrough I'm beginning to wonder and play with the idea that he isn't the Pope. The story has a very ambiguous ending and my character's actions are very questionable. He's not that great of a guy, but at the same time, out of context of the play, he is. This is definitely the most dimensional character I've played in recent memory, so it'll be fun to explore the different tactics he might use and to play with different objectives and ways he fits into the story. My fellow cast members are great, one a great friend of mine and the other a new friend of mine! My fabulous director, yet another friend and mentor of sorts, is really emphasizing ensemble for the rehearsal process of this production, so I'm really confident our show will be a strong one. I can't wait to get further into this experience!

In these bodies we will live, in these bodies we will die.

Today, I (being the perpetually poor person that I am) walked a few blocks to the grocery store to cash in my hitherto unused change at a CoinStar. On my trek up there on this beautiful Sunday afternoon, I noticed a few key things:

• Springfield drivers do, indeed, suck.
• Sunshine, wind, and good music can be extremely freeing, artistically and emotionally.
• Little girls can be very persistent salespeople when it comes to Girl Scout Cookies.

Seriously, I almost got run over like six times during a 20-minute walk. But that's not what this post is about.

There is something about the beauty of nature that makes me instantly happy. I can't quite put my finger on why, but sunshine and a gentle breeze make me feel free; like everything I've done wrong in my life and all the mistakes I've made and downfalls I've experienced mean nothing in the long-run. The wind brushes past my heart and grasps onto the pain and sorrow I hold, and carries it away. My body soaks in the rays of the sun, and the infectious smile the giant ball of gas in the sky reflects on my face. In this moment, with this sun and wind, I am feeling perfect. 

The work I've been doing this semester has really helped me connect my mind with my body. Not only Voice and Movement work but my workouts have assisted me. Learning the principles taught by Kristin Linklater has made me aware of my skeleton, and just how important it is to me as a performer, artist, and person. My spine is strengthening, my jaw is loose and able to help produce words more efficiently, and my breath capacity is becoming deeper. It has become so important for me to take care of my body, because we really only have this one body to help us live. There are no second chances. In consequence to this new discovery of mine, I have worked to lose weight. Within the first three weeks of school, I lost thirteen pounds, and as of now (six weeks into the semester), I have lost a total of twenty pounds. I feel better, I have more energy, and best of all, my motivation is at an all-time high. Once, I had to be "in the mood" to do exercise, but now I feel weird if I go a day without extra physical activity. My weapon of choice thus far has been the elliptical, but I am becoming more interested in finding other ways to strengthen my body, lose body fat, and overall become a more healthy person.

One downfall to this weight loss is the fact that I can feel my clothes becoming looser on my body. Most jeans don't fit perfectly anymore, my coat is becoming looser, and the shirts I own appear large on me. The problem here is, I don't have the money to replace my wardrobe! I'm sure I can deal with what I have for the time being, but at some point I'll have to undergo a makeover of sorts. I know this sounds like the epitome of a first-world-problem, but it's a problem nonetheless.

Anyway, I've rambled enough for one post. Hopefully the past few paragraphs have been somewhat interesting to read, and I'll see you again soon!