When I initially decided to intern at Henry Street, I was certain that everyday would be full of introspection and that every day, the kids I was working with would prove my hypotheses about theatre building strong communities to be true. In the first few weeks, I was not disappointed with my job, but I was disappointed with the outcome. I didn't feel necessarily like I was learning new things about the field of community theatre/education. Because I wasn't a close contributor to the cast's process in rehearsals, and because the cast is a rather large one, I didn't feel like I was seeing any personal growth in the kids or communal growth in the ensemble.
Last week, and especially today, I realized otherwise. In my opinion, the most important thing in the world (besides music...which I believe to be incredibly important) is community. I believe that having a strong community of like-minded individuals who really care about each other is not just a privelege; it's a right. And furthermore, it's a necessity. Human beings are meant to live and work and play and laugh and love and fight together. If you aren't fully surrounding yourself with other human beings and truly caring about them and letting them care about you, then you aren't fully living. Of course, that's only my opinion. And really, that's only how I want to live my life. I don't feel like it's necessary for me to force these opinions on anyone else, simply to surround myself with a good strong community and a lot of music, and hopefully, to make community an accessible reality for other people.
I believe that in the perfect circumstances, theatre has the ability to create such a strong community and network of individuals coming together because they really love something, because they really believe in something, because they have the desire to make something great, and because they know that flying solo in the theatre is difficult to do and practically a hypocritical statement. Of course, this isn't true of all theatre communities. But in the best ones that I've been a part of (community theatre organizations, summer stock, even plays being put on at summer camp), a bond is created; one that is durable and real and remarkably inclusive.
I hoped to see this sort of bond blossom and grow within the cast of A Chorus Line, and I wanted to be a part of it, in some way. I realized that these things take time. That in order for my hypothesis to work, the cast must first have joint experiences and start to connect through them. And then, last week I realized something even greater. The bond that they're making, that we're making, isn't just a social bond. It's about something much bigger for these kids. It's about creating something, building it from scratch, and making something that they can really be proud of. That they can take ownership over. And doing that together and not being alone, that is the first step to building a community.
Today, they had a full day rehearsal because they're on spring break. I haven't been there the past few days, as it's been Passover and I was with my family. Only the central 19...scratch that, they added one, 20...were called. The minute I walked into rehearsal, I was pounced upon by about 5 of the kids, a few of whom, I haven't really even spoken to that much. They all enveloped me in bear hugs and then leapt about, excitedly. They were all so hyper active and so happy to be at rehearsal and together, that it reminded me of what I feel like when I'm working on a show and the cast is really gelling and the show is starting to come together. It's this super duper high that rivals nothing else. YOu feel untouchable, yet not like you're in your own bubble. You feel untouchable, surrounded by other untouchables, yet all in the same bubble...wow I'm starting to lose coherence, better start wrapping it up. long day.
Anyways. A few cast members were missing, so I filled in for the female roles. Singing and everything. It was a lot of fun. And the show is starting to look great and sound great and the kids are getting excited and the ones who have stuck with it are committed to this and to nothing else but this. I played and bantered with them all today, for the first time, really. I've gotten to know a handful of them through one on two singing sessions with the director and I, or just through random encounters. But it seems like somehow I've made my mark, they've finally enveloped me and accepted me as one of the people that they can trust enough to be silly with and to sing in front of and even, to hug. Funny, all I did was dance with them sometimes, press play on the stereo, and observe their rehearsals. That's what I mean about the theatre community. Once you've established yourself as a believer, you're immediately taken into the fold, and there's less of a barrier despite racial differences or age differences, etc. People are just people. People who love theatre. People who want to be liked. People who want to play.
This is turning into quite the interesting journey, after all.
More on some of the latter themes later on. I'm falling asleep now.
XOXO,
The Great Believer.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Let It Rain
What a wet few weeks! My Henry Street work has continued to go swimmingly. After a last day of auditions, a cast list was announced. Out of the 64 PEOPLE who ended up auditioning, about twenty five or so made it into the final cast, and only 19 of those are central characters. I found out that I'm going to get to direct a scene! The scene I chose was "What I Did For Love" because it's always been one of my favorite musical ballads, and is particularly near and dear to my heart because when I was younger, I used to rent A Chorus Line when I visited my Grandma and we'd watch it together. That song always reminds me of her. Although she passed away during my freshman year of high school, I think about her a lot. Maybe I can dedicate this scene (in my mind) to her.
The kids that I'm working with are lovely and difficult. I'm starting to get a little bit frustrated with the lack of commitment that I see, and I'm feeling more for directors that I had in the past, when I was working on shows with casts that were loud or missed a lot of rehearsals. As an actress, I have little patience for people who waste time. As Kate, the director, said in rehearsal the other day, time is precious. That being said, I also understand that it's difficult for high schoolers to make serious commitments and that the lives of some of these kids are more difficult than they portray them to be. Already, a number of actors have dropped out of the show for personal reasons. The cast list is always shifting a little bit, but it seems like it's almost solid now.
I've only been present for full cast dance rehearsals so far. They're fun, and it's clear to me that the cast is getting better and better. I feel a swelling up of pride when I see a girl, who has been struggling, finally do a graceful tour jete. Although my work mostly consists, right now, of watching them and doing odd jobs, I feel a sense of ownership over the show and the final product, and a real sense of pride towards the people involved who love theatre so much.
My other job is going well. For Hashomer, I coordinated, planned and executed a successful seminar on Sunday! Twenty five or so kids came and about fifteen counselors. We played Passover-themed games and got to know each other, and I ended up feeling really proud of myself. I've been putting a lot of work into making sure that things happen for Hashomer. This involves some obnoxious emailing and calling, but it has also helped me to reignite a passion for community building and a passion for Hashomer Hatzair and the people involved. I have such high hopes for what this summer will look like, camp wise, and for what the movement could look like, once we get the rest of the counselors back on track and feeling EXCITED and INSPIRED and Proud. I feel like starting to do that is the most important part of my job with Hashomer this semester.
OVER AND OUT.
ALG
The kids that I'm working with are lovely and difficult. I'm starting to get a little bit frustrated with the lack of commitment that I see, and I'm feeling more for directors that I had in the past, when I was working on shows with casts that were loud or missed a lot of rehearsals. As an actress, I have little patience for people who waste time. As Kate, the director, said in rehearsal the other day, time is precious. That being said, I also understand that it's difficult for high schoolers to make serious commitments and that the lives of some of these kids are more difficult than they portray them to be. Already, a number of actors have dropped out of the show for personal reasons. The cast list is always shifting a little bit, but it seems like it's almost solid now.
I've only been present for full cast dance rehearsals so far. They're fun, and it's clear to me that the cast is getting better and better. I feel a swelling up of pride when I see a girl, who has been struggling, finally do a graceful tour jete. Although my work mostly consists, right now, of watching them and doing odd jobs, I feel a sense of ownership over the show and the final product, and a real sense of pride towards the people involved who love theatre so much.
My other job is going well. For Hashomer, I coordinated, planned and executed a successful seminar on Sunday! Twenty five or so kids came and about fifteen counselors. We played Passover-themed games and got to know each other, and I ended up feeling really proud of myself. I've been putting a lot of work into making sure that things happen for Hashomer. This involves some obnoxious emailing and calling, but it has also helped me to reignite a passion for community building and a passion for Hashomer Hatzair and the people involved. I have such high hopes for what this summer will look like, camp wise, and for what the movement could look like, once we get the rest of the counselors back on track and feeling EXCITED and INSPIRED and Proud. I feel like starting to do that is the most important part of my job with Hashomer this semester.
OVER AND OUT.
ALG
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Internship Begins
My first day at Henry Street was yesterday. Although my commute is annoyingly long, the day was invigorating and exciting and everything that I had hoped it would be. After getting slightly lost in Chinatown, I finally found the Abrons Art Center at around ten after 11 AM. It's a big building in the most interesting location. A few blocks from the Delancey subway stop on the Lower East Side, the Henry Street Settlement has offered its wide range of programs in everything from health services to employment to arts programming since the 1890s. As a leader in the field of community organizing, Henry Street has helped to improve the lives of countless people by giving them the tools to enhance their quality of life.
I've never spent much time on the LES. Growing up, I may have visited a few times, but I don't really remember. As I got older, I spent most of my trips to New York in and around Times Square, staying in YMCAs with my Grandma Rita and seeing two, maybe three Broadway shows in a single weekend or in Bayside, Queens, where my Grandma lived when I was young. And when I passed into teenagehood, a trip to New York became more about seeing friends than sightseeing or history lessons. I would stay with my best friend in Park Slope, visit with friends on the Upper West Side, rough it in Bushwick. The Lower East Side is one of those places that existed to me only through school history lessons, books that I read about female, Jewish immigrants, and stories from my family. Even the very second that I set foot in the area yesterday, at 11 AM, I felt that I was about to embark on a crazy adventure and that I had no idea what was in store for me.
Like I said, I got lost in a particularly shady section of Chinatown, and eventually wandered my way through dirty streets with street vendors selling equally dirty apples and oranges and arrived at the main settlement house, where I was directed to Abrons. Upon arrival, I greeted my new "boss", a woman named Nellie, who took me on a tour of the people that I should know in the department, introducing me to the people in charge of marketing, technical theatre, dance, drama, and of course, arts-in-ed. She informed me that Abrons' own youth theatre company is putting up a production of Metamorphoses later in the spring and that the staff was already well-aware of my proficiencies in all of the various performing arts areas, and that they would probably ask me to help out. After the meet-'n-greet, she armed me with an introductory packet filled with a list of nosheries in the area and sent me out into the (bright!) sunshine for lunch. I ate at a cute sandwich/soup/Mexican/trendy/coffee/pastry place a few blocks down. When I returned, I worked on cutting out ads for various Abrons events from mags like Time Out NY and regluing them in artsy layouts on sheets of white printer paper. At around 2:30, Nellie and I headed over to LoMA (Lower Manhattan Arts Academy) where I will be doing the brunt of my internship. I'm going to be Assistant Directing and just being a general helper with their production of....A Chorus Line! (Which was so so so exciting for me to find out, musical theatre dork that I am.) Yesterday was their first day of auditions, and I felt really lucky to be there.
The school is only four or five years old, and exists in a building with a few other sort of "themed" schools. In terms of the racial population, the kids are mostly African American, Latino and Asian American. They come from all sorts of varying backgrounds, from two parent, steady income, middle class homes to the multitude of impoverished and broken homes. 54 kids showed up the audition, which took place in a small dance studio. They were taught the famous audition sequence dance from A Chorus Line, and I alternated between watching the choreographer teach the kids and going out into the hallway to help the groups that weren't being worked with figure out the intricacies of a pretty difficult and very fast paced choreo sequence. Although I was nervous and somewhat shy (not to mention completely exhausted from a crazy first day), I do feel that I started to make some good connections with the kids. Auditions will continue tomororw with the formal dance, singing and acting auditions, which I'm very very excited for. I got the impression that LoMATE, as they call it (Lower Manhattan Arts Theatre Ensemble), has become an invaluable resource in the school. It keeps kids off the streets and gives them something productive to do with their time, something that they can be really proud of. Which, essentially, is what I think theatre SHOULD do. I'm excited to meet the kids who will make up the final cast and start building relationships with them, not to mention watching and assisting their relationships with each other to develop and grow throughout the rehearsal process, as I know they will. This is theatre in the making, and community building at its source.
I wrote earlier in this entry about the rich cultural history of the Lower East Side. I noticed some interesting things happening, even on my first day in the area. First of all, it's become an incredibly trendy and hip place to be, home to some of the city's best clubs, bars and restaurants. So I noticed a steady flow of twenty-something/early-30s hipsters and indie darlings, filtering in and out of a deep crowd of impoverished Asian people, elderly Jewish immigrants, and so on. It's such a diverse area, with all of the various cultural and ethnic groups trying to push their way around, in order to maintain even the slightest amount of elbow room, and more importantly, in order to not be pushed out. The area really puts meaning into the term "melting pot." I remember singing about the "Great American Melting Pot" when I was in Schoolhouse Rock Live! and knowing but not really UNDERSTANDING what we were singing about. Well, maybe I'll finally get to understand.
I can't help but feel that through the completely wild, roller coaster ride-type chain of events of the past few months, I've SOMEHOW ended up doing exactly the right thing at exactly the right time. I'm literally working The Job that I've been picturing myself having in the future. It's the ultimate stepping stone and I am so incredibly lucky to have landed here, even without fully knowing what I was getting myself into...or even knowing at all!
Now, I just have to try not to bite off more than I can chew and absorb every single detail of my experience, really live it, and try to make some sense of it all.
Phew, time for bed.
Step, kick, kick, leap, kick, touch...Again!
I'll have the combination running through my head for months.
-AL.PAL.
I've never spent much time on the LES. Growing up, I may have visited a few times, but I don't really remember. As I got older, I spent most of my trips to New York in and around Times Square, staying in YMCAs with my Grandma Rita and seeing two, maybe three Broadway shows in a single weekend or in Bayside, Queens, where my Grandma lived when I was young. And when I passed into teenagehood, a trip to New York became more about seeing friends than sightseeing or history lessons. I would stay with my best friend in Park Slope, visit with friends on the Upper West Side, rough it in Bushwick. The Lower East Side is one of those places that existed to me only through school history lessons, books that I read about female, Jewish immigrants, and stories from my family. Even the very second that I set foot in the area yesterday, at 11 AM, I felt that I was about to embark on a crazy adventure and that I had no idea what was in store for me.
Like I said, I got lost in a particularly shady section of Chinatown, and eventually wandered my way through dirty streets with street vendors selling equally dirty apples and oranges and arrived at the main settlement house, where I was directed to Abrons. Upon arrival, I greeted my new "boss", a woman named Nellie, who took me on a tour of the people that I should know in the department, introducing me to the people in charge of marketing, technical theatre, dance, drama, and of course, arts-in-ed. She informed me that Abrons' own youth theatre company is putting up a production of Metamorphoses later in the spring and that the staff was already well-aware of my proficiencies in all of the various performing arts areas, and that they would probably ask me to help out. After the meet-'n-greet, she armed me with an introductory packet filled with a list of nosheries in the area and sent me out into the (bright!) sunshine for lunch. I ate at a cute sandwich/soup/Mexican/trendy/coffee/pastry place a few blocks down. When I returned, I worked on cutting out ads for various Abrons events from mags like Time Out NY and regluing them in artsy layouts on sheets of white printer paper. At around 2:30, Nellie and I headed over to LoMA (Lower Manhattan Arts Academy) where I will be doing the brunt of my internship. I'm going to be Assistant Directing and just being a general helper with their production of....A Chorus Line! (Which was so so so exciting for me to find out, musical theatre dork that I am.) Yesterday was their first day of auditions, and I felt really lucky to be there.
The school is only four or five years old, and exists in a building with a few other sort of "themed" schools. In terms of the racial population, the kids are mostly African American, Latino and Asian American. They come from all sorts of varying backgrounds, from two parent, steady income, middle class homes to the multitude of impoverished and broken homes. 54 kids showed up the audition, which took place in a small dance studio. They were taught the famous audition sequence dance from A Chorus Line, and I alternated between watching the choreographer teach the kids and going out into the hallway to help the groups that weren't being worked with figure out the intricacies of a pretty difficult and very fast paced choreo sequence. Although I was nervous and somewhat shy (not to mention completely exhausted from a crazy first day), I do feel that I started to make some good connections with the kids. Auditions will continue tomororw with the formal dance, singing and acting auditions, which I'm very very excited for. I got the impression that LoMATE, as they call it (Lower Manhattan Arts Theatre Ensemble), has become an invaluable resource in the school. It keeps kids off the streets and gives them something productive to do with their time, something that they can be really proud of. Which, essentially, is what I think theatre SHOULD do. I'm excited to meet the kids who will make up the final cast and start building relationships with them, not to mention watching and assisting their relationships with each other to develop and grow throughout the rehearsal process, as I know they will. This is theatre in the making, and community building at its source.
I wrote earlier in this entry about the rich cultural history of the Lower East Side. I noticed some interesting things happening, even on my first day in the area. First of all, it's become an incredibly trendy and hip place to be, home to some of the city's best clubs, bars and restaurants. So I noticed a steady flow of twenty-something/early-30s hipsters and indie darlings, filtering in and out of a deep crowd of impoverished Asian people, elderly Jewish immigrants, and so on. It's such a diverse area, with all of the various cultural and ethnic groups trying to push their way around, in order to maintain even the slightest amount of elbow room, and more importantly, in order to not be pushed out. The area really puts meaning into the term "melting pot." I remember singing about the "Great American Melting Pot" when I was in Schoolhouse Rock Live! and knowing but not really UNDERSTANDING what we were singing about. Well, maybe I'll finally get to understand.
I can't help but feel that through the completely wild, roller coaster ride-type chain of events of the past few months, I've SOMEHOW ended up doing exactly the right thing at exactly the right time. I'm literally working The Job that I've been picturing myself having in the future. It's the ultimate stepping stone and I am so incredibly lucky to have landed here, even without fully knowing what I was getting myself into...or even knowing at all!
Now, I just have to try not to bite off more than I can chew and absorb every single detail of my experience, really live it, and try to make some sense of it all.
Phew, time for bed.
Step, kick, kick, leap, kick, touch...Again!
I'll have the combination running through my head for months.
-AL.PAL.
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