Just the same…

Two weeks!

It has been two solid weeks since the last blogisode (thanks Sue for the crafty vocabulary word blogisode!). It isn’t summer vacation yet, so I can’t blame the silence on the need to re-charge batteries over the summer. And I can’t say it is because I haven’t had anything to say…

If I had to blame anything for the desert-like silence these two weeks, I would have to say it is the fault of the indefatigable Anne Siviglia!

Two weeks ago tomorrow Anne and our friend Martha arrived for a two-week stint in Jordan. Anne is such a traveler/visitor/explorer/tourist/curious-seeker extraordinaire that whatever time was not spent on school was spent peeking around some relic or archaeological site or new restaurant in Jordan, wringing out every possible ounce of excitement.

All the same, I started to sit down numerous times in the last two weeks to continue the saga of doings here at KA, but Anne’s visit also included trips to Cairo and Aqaba, and there was hardly a moment’s time to rattle off some thoughts. Indeed, during our trip to Aqaba last weekend, I stole away time from snorkeling and sunbathing to write my end-of-year comments for my scholars.

Of course, in a way, this particular blogisode had the makings of TV summer repeats: the play ended, first-guests-ever-for-me-in-Jordan Anne and Martha return to the Middle East, and I went back to Cairo, the first major repeat of a visit here in my new neck of the woods. So I could just shrug off all these incidences with a ho-hum, it’s really just more of the same, anyway…

For example, two weeks ago at this moment, my play Our Country’s Good had just ended. As the three performances unfolded, it turned out that it felt so much like my plays back in the United States, back in Charlotte and Tarrytown. But who knew? With the dress rehearsal backstage drama rivaling the on-stage narrative, who knew if the students would sustain their work and produce a thrilling play?

But two weeks ago, as the performances on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday played out, our play group enjoyed a beautiful calm, a sense of triumph, and an afterglow of a job well done. Saturday had the nervousness of every opening night; there was the added adrenaline of the two new actors who had inherited their parts just 48 hours before coupled with the excitement that 100 audience members were seated just a few feet away in the courtyard to watch our drama of the penal colony in Australia play out.

Since 1996 and going to Hackley, I give myself few, if any jobs during a production. I want to trust the teen-agers to be in charge of everything, on-stage and off-stage, and it was just the same as in New York as my teen-age techies and actors assumed the responsibility and the show ran, intermission-less, and seamlessly, and beautifully for its 90 minutes. At the end of the evening that familiar, and elusive, serenity overwhelmed me as I knew our play had made it to its birth with a startling urgency and power. The audiences were thrilled at what the actors had accomplished, and we looked forward to two more attempts at getting it right.

Way back in 1988, when I directed my first full-scale show, I took on Hello, Dolly! with a cast of 60 in a school that hardly even had a stage. I remember vividly a week before the show opened that I sat with my tremendously marvelous friend Mary (who was also appearing in the chorus to bolster those sopranos) and I wrote out a statement, a contract, I suppose, vowing that I would never, ever direct another show again. It was too hard and just ridiculous. There is a great Arabic word for how I felt then: Halas!! I was through with such nonsense and wanted to make a statement to the world that I simply would not be foolish enough to direct again. Well, during the opening night a week later, Mary and I were stealing peeks at the show through the doors at the back of the gymnasium, watching Dolly! come to life, (and shedding some tears) and Mary asked me if I planned to keep my word. Later we tore up the dramatic contract with the world.

In those intervening years, and the five dozen shows I have directed since, I have created many rituals before and after shows—theater folk love to change the show they create, but keep much of the creative and psychological process in place. So for the pre-show warm-up I introduced my Jordanian actors to the same vocal and physical warm-ups I did at Hackley. I introduced them to my ritual music, Ray Lynch’s “Celestial Sodapop” on the CD Deep Breakfast. Great friend Kess introduced me to this music way back in 1992. I had trouble calming a cast down at the time to give them instructions so I decided to have them lie down on the stage and meditate and then I might have enough quiet and calm to talk to them! It worked and then Kess played this fabulously odd music with the kicky title, “Celestial Sodapop” for me and I thought—oh, that is great to play right before performances. When I moved to Hackley in 1996 a few of the Charlotte actors asked me if I was going to let my new actors hear “Celestial Sodapop.” I decided they needed the boost too, and it became a marvelous sensory memory. I only played it before performances, and it connects all of the actors who have heard that piece with me since 1992. If you did many plays with me, it became a great aural link to the other successes and reminders of hard work and excitement in our theater. I had not heard that piece since the autumn of 2006, and it felt familiar and remarkable to hear that pulsing music again—a signal of a performance.

When I did plays with the great, great Simon in community theater in Belmont, NC one of his rituals was invoking the blessings of the Indian god of theater, Puaba. I borrowed that in that first production of Hello, Dolly! and have used it ever since. Right before taking the stage, the entire cast meets, stands in a circle, and someone, or a small group is chosen to be in the center. There is a laying-on-of-hands from the rest of the cast, and whispered, and then yelled, the name Puaba resounds backstage.

Explaining theater traditions and rituals always sounds more hollow than it ought to. Oh well, it’s like the football team on Friday Night Lights as they chant about pure hearts and minds before taking the field. It is powerful in the moment, but sounds hokey outside of the moment. That’s okay. My Jordanian actors took to all the rituals. As we prepared with the warm-ups, the meditating, the Ray Lynch, the make-up, the adrenaline, it all felt just the same as it had dozens of times for me before.

Performances two and three ran smoothly—seemingly effortlessly even, and the audiences were so excited. At the end of the third performance the students asked me to the stage to thank me. They produced the biggest flower arrangement I had ever received—seriously it looked like the kind of arrangement one gives to a winning jockey and horse in the big race.

And the following day, when I should have just been rejoicing that we had made it through the play, I noted another thing that was just the same as plays at Hackley: that familiar ache that it all had to come to an end. So much of the play process had been just the same. But as we performed outdoors, under the stars and the full moon, there was an added depth to this production. It wasn’t just another production at Charlotte Latin or Hackley. It was in this new home of mine. I don’t know how long I will stay here, but for now it is my home, the center of my work and energies, and I had the divine pleasure of introducing these students to the work and process I have been enjoying for over 20 years, ever since that Hello, Dolly! directing gig had bit me.

Just the same…no, part of what has been so interesting in the last two weeks is seeing how things are running similarly, looking like earlier incarnations of themselves, but not just the same.

When Anne and Martha planned this trip, they didn’t just want a repeat of their March, 2008 triumphal tour of Jordan. It couldn’t be just the same.

We took it up a notch and decided to go to Cairo so we could play around the pyramids.

I had been to Cairo in December, 2007, in that first fall here in Jordan. I thought it might be just the same for me. However, on this trip, with good friend Tristan accompanying me with Anne and Martha, I got sick. I thought it was from the sketchy-looking meal on Egyptair, but I think it might have been something viral. Anyway, I spent most of my time on this trip in the fancy hotel room of the Intercontinental. I blessed the bathroom many times. We ended up hiring a private guide for Anne and Martha since I was indisposed and not available for much touring. It turned out to be great—the guide, this gentle man named Mohammed, was a sensational guide. He is a real teacher, and so smart and patient and calm taking them (sometimes I can say “us” when I got better) around the sights of ancient Cairo, Coptic Christian Cairo, Islamic Cairo, and modern Cairo. See, things are hardly just the same.

Overall, I found new things for Anne and Martha to see in Jordan. New restaurants, new spots for archaeological digging, and new resorts. In the midst of things seeming the same, I also pondered how KA has changed since Anne and Martha’s visit last spring. The facilities are the same—impressive to be sure, but this spring has a decidedly different mood. People feel more ragged, a little disillusioned with problems and imperfections, and wishing for the break beginning very soon. It gave Anne and Martha an interesting perspective of changes and continuities.

This all reminds me of a great moment at the end of a chapter of Doctorow’s novel, Ragtime. I don’t have my copy of the book here, but I think it is the designer of the Brooklyn Bridge who has become homebound from a disease. He looks out of the window at his masterpiece. Of course, it is just the same day in and day out. But one of things he does every day is consciously change the angle and position of his chair, making the adjustment every day, and changing, even though just slightly, his perspective on things. Much of the last two weeks has felt just the same but as we come to the end of this school year, I am appreciating the slightly different perspectives all the time.

By the end of the next evening, Tuesday evening, I will be heading to the airport for my return to the United States. That will be wonderful.

But I have a few more blogisodes in the pipeline, Sue, before I take a summer vacation from the blog. Next time I write, though, I will be stateside. I wonder what will be just the same, and what will give it all a fresh twist.