Post-Diluvium indeed. I didn't even remember that's how I ended my last post, but it is so uncannily appropriate to the apocalyptic weather we're having here. Not only were there hail and turnado-ish (or is hurricanean?) winds, but some kind of firefighters alarm is still constantly sounded, and the skies are a dark shade of yellow.
The Guggenheim and Central Park and people-watching in East Village and a lovely, peaceful Brooklyn weekend with our favorite 1-year old daughter of the best friends we don't see enough - all have practically been washed away from the short-term memory in which they should technically still reside.
The week-long flood of a workshop that came straight after them has been a conflictual experience for me. Partly, inherently, because I am not too good with groups. They make me feel extremely self-conscious, whenever I am required to say something I feel on the spot and am at a loss for words, my command of the English language falters and my sense of foreignness is heightened, and whenever I want to say something most of the same happens and I end up expressing poorly articulated half-thoughts (if not forgoing the bold act of speaking out altogether, which happened more often that not). Groups do not bring out my full potential, let me say that. In this case in particular, perhaps, because I felt like an outsider not only as an Israeli in disguise (bless my American accent… it makes me seem more fluent than I am… wait, is that a good thing?), but mostly as a more-of-an-academia-person and less of a theatre-artist, see, I'm only the intern. Now that kinda sucks, when a) you're in a room full of theatre directors that are there to share their thoughts about their art and craft, b) you (i.e. I) got it in your head that what you want to be when you grow up is a theatre director but for now I'll just keep busting my ass off at the Classics department and keep kicking myself and thinking I'm a total wuss and sell-out for not leaving everything and just doing all I can 24/7 to make a theatre artist out of myself, but hey I kinda also want to be a classics scholar and I also think I might be pretty good at it… and after a week of talking and talking about theatre I end up thinking maybe that's not what I want to do with my life because there are so many of us (them?) and everybody's trying to find their voice and struggling for an audience and funding and fulfillment and what is there still to be said, really? Does the world need - not "art" in general, yes the theatre is about humanity etc etc, the question is not even worth asking anymore - but SO MUCH ART? And I leave a friend's house, slightly drunk at 1 am Friday night, couldn't believe I'm still up after a week of 12-14 hour-long days of workshops and rehearsal-observing and talking talking and packing lunch and snacks and more snacks for the road - and virtually on the landing outside his door I say "I'm not sure anymore if that's what I want to do" and he asks "what, theatre or academia?" and I just go "AAAAAAHHHHHHHH!" because I don't even know the answer to that.
And I guess the shutting myself up or blocking myself out of some of the experiences I could have had in this LAB if! only! I was more! convicted!!, was exactly a reaction to the need to answer the question, right here right now, though I'm still on the landing, in the in-between, and feeling it's an either-or situation, and what I kept telling others (and myself) is "I'm worried I won't have a chance to do any extra-curricular stuff (i.e. theatre) once school starts" and that's probably true, but still this frame of mind is detrimental to creativity and puts grad school in the box of "boring commitment that will suck the life out of me" instead of an exciting and stimulating path to look forward to giddily.
So the lab is over, and the need to wrestle groupiness and group-talks and group-dinners and group-hugs and the most aggressive air conditioner I have ever encountered and I'm so tired it hurts to sit AND I've got my fucking period, I would really rather be in a place where I can shower four times a day - all this is thankfully behind me. And now, at least, some of this lab can finally sink into place. And besides meeting some truly incredible people, a bunch of which are from Chicago - and if the "only" thing I "get out" of this lab is a group of people with which to see theatre together every once in a while, that in itself is huge because it's at least putting me in some kind of a community instead of a self-deprecating vacuum - besides that I can once again see where creativity has a place in my life, my actual life right now, not the one I will maybe have after I get more experienced. And while this creativity is not necessarily in the "theatre", as long as it has a place to grow, and a framework in which to communicate with others, I have the right to feel I am fulfilling myself.
P.S.
Also helpful in getting a smiling outlook on life: going out to drinks in Pilsen with my favorite two Daniels in the world (one old, one new! so fun to have new friends at the ripe age of almost 28!) and my very own best-looking DH with his newly purchased hat from a shop in the Village that was so cool everybody there looked hipstery-gay. Except me.
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