Year Three

My mom passed away 3 years ago in August.

Mourning has gotten easier, or at least more compartmentalized.

I have long since stopped tearing up when I unload the dishwasher with no one to call on the phone, or when I walk around the garden, or slice a home-grown tomato.   I can walk around the mall on Mother's Day and not frighten store employees when I'm surprised by a sudden sob while watching people interacting sweetly with their mothers in ways they take for granted.

I still steel myself against sadness when the spring comes.  It's not that spring is sad, but that it was my mother's favorite season.

She hated winter, when what little amount she could walk was made treacherous and slick, and she felt shut in by weather and her withered leg.  Winter is dark, and her life had shadows that grew too easily in the dark. Alone and confined, they threatened to engulf her.

But she loved the spring; green things, the new beginnings, the lengthening light.  She poured over seed catalogs and saved her energy for the garden center,  and for pointing out where to plant  things to my brothers.

The growth of the new beginnings was nurtured into the summer, and the plants would thrive and the backyard became a well-tended jungle.  I used to laugh when she'd declare that she was going to go out "looking at her crops" growing in the 10 x 10" space where she grew her vegetables.

Now I find myself doing the same thing (without the announcement) going out to watch the garden grow.

And I find myself breathing in through my mouth, as though inhaling her cigarette, filling my lungs from the bottom,  and breathing out through my mouth and nose, wondering if people start smoking to have an excuse to breathe so deeply.

August arrives. This is my month of sorrow, where most of my sadness sits, reminding me of its presence in a way that doesn't express itself the rest of the year.  This is the month that has not lost its psychic hold, and all the sadness gathers in a light ring of wetness around eyes and sorrow presses inside my chest.  My sense memory is mixed with the heat of the summer, the smell of the air. My frantic drive to Ohio on my own, hoping to be able to talk to my mom one last time before she left comes back to me with an immediacy that takes my breath away.

I did get to talk to her.  And she went so soon after.  It was all so, so fast.   The shock still resonates.

But resonance transitions from sound to echo.  It's still there.  I know it's there. But it's easier to not hear it all the time.

Women Onstage and Directing. It's a Thing that Needs to Happen a Lot More Often.

First off,  I just want to thank Geoffrey Nauffts for writing the wonderful play, "Next Fall" that I just closed a couple of weekends ago with the Village Theatre Guild.  We had a top notch cast and crew and the audiences loved and raved about the play and our performances.  It was material that was a delight to make come alive, and I am in show mourning because it is over.

It's great, though, to go on to the next thing, and look for something to match or replace the experience, or to create something new.  My experience lately, though, is so disheartening to me as a woman and a theatre-goer.

I look at the Chicago theatre listings and see nothing but calls for men, and a smattering of women roles.  And when I say smattering, I mean, like, on average,  21 parts for men, 6 parts for women, any age or phenotype.  And of those numbers, a fair number of the parts for women do not have much to do with the actual driving force of the plots of the plays, but are almost superfluous to them.

Sure, there are only 2 women in "Next Fall," but at least they were well written and important to the play.  There was meat in those parts that were essential to drive the action forward.

Many times in the past couple of years,  a part for a women in my age range will come up, one that could be fairly meaty, and they decide to gender-bend and have the part played by a man, to be "edgy." Because men need more parts, right?

It just seems to be getting worse, and despite the women-centric theatre companies out there like the 20% Theatre Company and Babes with Blades trying their darndest to get women's writing and women's parts out there, the disparity is maddening.

I ran across an excellent article about this very subject here, and felt vindicated, somewhat. It isn't right, and it hurts the viability of live theatre when it doesn't truly live up to the needs of the core audience.  The key section:

"Now, are we story-telling artists catalyzing a better world, or are we tractors hauling the old guard forward? Are we defining our age or merely maintaining the status quo?

I’m not saying all theater needs to address this issue, and if it does, that it be with serious, frowning faces. Feminism can be fun, funny, heart-warming, thrilling, suspenseful, and poetic. We needn’t be righteous to be right. We can still have fun, and entertain, and do the great old plays of yore. But for the love of god, if theater’s stats on women are as bad as the US Congress’s, then we are not doing our art right.*

This is happening in London theater too, as this article from The Guardian presents:

This failure to represent women, argued the actor, writer and director Stella Duffy, was deeply entwined with society’s wider failure to put women’s voices on an equal footing with men’s. A sense of responsibility to the world was, she said, being ducked—particularly by our larger national stages. In an impassioned blog post, she wrote: “When we do not see ourselves on stage we are reminded, yet again, that the people running our world (count the women in the front benches if you are at all unsure) do not notice when we are not there. That they think men (and yes, white, middle-class, middle-aged, able-bodied men at that) are all we need to see.

This wouldn’t be as deeply infuriating if the audiences for our work weren’t decidedly female. Seventy percent of theater ticket-buyers are women and at least sixty percent of the audience members in every theater are women. And yet our female-driven audiences are, over and over again, given male-driven stories, written and directed by men.**"

- See more at: http://www.howlround.com/we-are-not-a-mirror-theater-must-lead-with-women%E2%80%99s-stories#sthash.4eINNP2U.dpuf

She goes on to say that theaters need to look at their programming with a stronger eye towards gender parity, both in the play itself and it's directorial and backstage staffing.

It makes sense to me.  Theatres are struggling to get audience members engaged, to get more butts in the seats, to create meaning to their work.  How can this truly be part of their mission if they dismiss and demoralize the majority of their audience?

I am waiting for the Fed Ex person to come by with my replacement phone.  My near-new phone suddenly stopped being able to have me hear or respond to calls unless I am on speaker-phone mode, so that is sort of important, if I ever need to have a private conversation.

Luck is not with me when it comes to smart phones.  I think I have had to have each one of them replaced within the warranty timeframe, and some models several times.  I don't think it's me.

Anyway, this gives me time to type and think, and expound on what has been going on here, and why I am such a terrible blogger.

Perhaps I just don't have it in me to be an essayist, mostly because I don't remember to keep a list of topics to expound upon at the ready.  This is probably the way to go about it, so I will come up with some and someday, there will be an essay.  Booya.

Anyways,  I am finally in a play again,  and I love it.  I had a whole year off from live theatre, and I find I really missed it.

I play the part of Holly, the best friend of the main character.  The play is very funny, very sad, and really is one of those,  "You'll laugh, You'll cry, and afterwards, you go out with friends and talk about it for hours" kind of plays.  Click to embiggen.

You should go see it.