Deluge

My father has recently dubbed this a "Post-Zionist Blog". Really now, why not just go full-fledged Post-Zionist Daughter? Hey, dad, couldn't you have just called it a post-Zionist post? There was just one of them so far… And this is my cue to lay politics aside (I mean, come on, it's not like I have a readership to address and educate. Good thing no-one reads this other than a) people who agree with me, b) my dad… Hey, there's one of those emoticon smileys here, ok?) and go back to concentrating on me me me (and some bake bake bake).
Well then, in my escapist bubble of a life there is rather a degree of hustle and bustle that has not been experienced for several months. First of all, DirectorsLab starts in less than a week! Exciting!!! I hope and pray that there will be interesting and engaging activities for us mere interns to be engaged in. For use in their first-day introductory exercises, they asked us to send "an unusual fact" about ourselves. Now, candidate pieces of information popped into my head in this order: I have never learned to ride a bicycle (more and more people are learning this not un-embarrassing fact bout me in the last few weeks…); my sister died four months ago; and, after relatively a lot more thought, I do not like chocolate also came to mind. I went with no. 1, though both 2 and 3 have a very shocking affect - of dissimilar kind - to them. No. 2 could have been a bit of a bummer in a casual get-to-know-each other game, don't you think?

I have been reading mostly theater related stuff all week. On the one hand, the Lab people sent us a bunch of references to theatre practitioners from Peter Brook to other more obscure (to my ignorant self) directors such as Dario Fo and Vsevolod Meyerhold. On the side project side, quite a bunch of very contemporary plays that are considered for production in the next season have come my way. It seems like I'm slowly but surely being seriously deemed part of the brain-storming and decision-making team of this young and lively theater (as I write this I got an email from the artistic director opening with "GREAT script meeting yesterday! I'm excited!!!"). He, like everybody else on board, is volunteering to make this theater happen, simultaneously coping with a dreary day-job…
Immersed in all these theater thoughts, the conflict between what I officially do (as of next September at the latest) in the academia and the amount of time and energy it will demand, and what I really want to do - uh, yeah, that would be theatre - is becoming more and more pronounced. The frustration is appeased only slightly by a vague intuition and hope that there will come a time in the future when I might be able to actually do both theatre and classical scholarship, and that what I have achieved in the last few months in terms of connections and observations will not go to waste until and/or unless I officially study theater and have real opportunities to direct (when will I get one of those? pleeeease?…. is it just a matter of me being ballsy enough to seize them?!? Because that interpretation may put me straight on the good old downhill of self-berating dispiritedness.) Anyway, I'm getting ready for an intensive week of theatre, on the other side of which await Greek-reading summer courses… Or maybe some mysterious unexpected personal growth/directorial development?!? Tum tum Taaahahahaaa.

But right before the Lab, adding to the buzz and excitement of this coming week and a half, and to the feeling of blind anticipation of what to expect afterward - DH and I are going to NYC for the weekend! In a word: yay!!!

See you post-diluvium.