dramaturgy

Long story short: I'm back in Iowa for the foreseeable future.

( Long story NOT short... [TW: self-harm, suicidal ideation] )

I have so much I want to talk about. But since brevity is the soul of wit and tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes, I will be brief.

My sister is still in Japan of this moment. She's okay, there wasn't much damage in Nagoya from the earthquake, but she's going (I keep typing 'coming' but I'm not there) home for a bit and she'll get in on Monday. I don't know if my mom will ever let her go anywhere ever again, but maybe now at least she won't drive me crazy for a bit. I love my mother and understand being worried, but seriously. (I also understand that she is ~mother and her worry probably outshines any that I had -- and I was a bit worried but my sister is a smart girl and the Japanese know how to handle it.) I told Gretchen to grab something good when the looting started, but apparently they don't do that. Which is cool.

Sunday I went and saw Angels in America at Signature again. They changed the cast, and Michael Urie was playing Prior so obviously I had to go. As much as I hesitate to say it... Michael Urie is totally my Prior. Justin Kirk is wonderful in the film, and Christian Borle was amazing, but Michael? He was inspired. He was just the perfect combination of righteous, queeny rage, fear, awareness of the absurdity of it all, and at times, utter contempt for the world around him. And how he looks in a dress is exactly as unfair as you would think it is.

Adam Driver was a newcomer as Louis. I LOVED him. He LOOKED like a neurotic Jewboy, and had amazing comic timing. At first I thought he was a little stiff but I warmed up to him. I actually ended up liking Louis a little lot more than I usually do -- which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Considering some of the things he does, it increases my sympathy and emotional reaction when he does or says reprehensible things. Truthfully, Bill Heck puts too much ANGRY~ in his Joe for my taste. I get that he's supposed to be confused and maybe a bit self-loathing, but I don't think I should fear for Harper's safety when they're arguing. I didn't like Keira Keeley (I think that's her name) as Harper as much as I liked Zoe Kazan. Zoe was a bit younger, more ethereal -- I could believe she went flying and saw ex-drag queens in her hallucinations, but Keira went a bit more zombiesque with her interpretation at times. And there was a lot of yelling. :\ Bill Porter was still Belize and he was STILL fabulous. Jeffrey Wright is Jeffrey Wright but Bill Porter was DIVAING OUT. The angel was good. I don't know if I like her as much as Robin Weigert, but it was a different interpretation. A lot more human at all times, not just sometimes.

I didn't want to stalk too much -- stagedooring Off-Broadway is a different culture than Broadway shows, I'm finding -- but I wanted to fangirl Michael Urie a little and was under orders from occultebelta to do so. So he signed my copy of The Temperamentals and told him I'd enjoyed that play as well, I'm teaching it in my 101 class this semester (last semester wasn't so impressed with Angels), and it was in part due to that play that I want to pursue my MFA project in queer dramaturgy. I voiced a concern about identifying straight -- in my experience, cautious self-deprecation and disclaiming works out better in the end when it's genuine -- and he blew it off. He said, "You may have more to say than a queer artist." So therefore I intend to make no more apologies about it. Onward and upward. Michael Urie said so.

Last week I applied and interviewed for a customer service position at Old Navy -- so basically what I'd been doing at Lane Bryant, but I'll be able to do it in jeans. Except when they offered me the position and tried to set up a time for me to come in for training and such, they proceeded to ignore the availability I gave them when I applied and tried to get me to come in Monday during classtimes, Tuesdays when I'm teaching, and damn. I don't even. Why? So I gave him my availability AGAIN and he said he'd call back. That was Wednesday. So if this is going to be a chronic problem I'm not sure I want to work for them. Because my school and teaching job are going to come first. Sorry. The end.

I had two major writing assignments due last Monday. Of course I left them until the last minute. One was a ten minute play, which I actually ended up being proud of despite not considering myself a playwright (it's hard to give all the information the audience needs just in dialogue without being didactic or fake). I got a B+ on a paper on Elizabethan foreign policy. I probably would have gotten higher if I'd been able to bother with MLA formatting and edit properly, but no. She did compliment my handling of the history though, so I will take it.

I've sort of started using my tumblr that I made to see what the fuss was about. And when I say 'using' I mean I'm reblogging shit like it's going out of style. It's here.

I am giving serious thought as to when I want to move, and 'soon' is what comes to mind. Twice this week I have been woken at 9:30 by a roommate (the same roommate) wailing the song "Fuck You" at the top of her voice. First of all, that's a god awful song 24/7, and second, 9:30 is not the proper hour to be shouting songs.

I just have this fear of not having enough money to stay in an apartment elsewhere and getting evicted and having to live in my car. Which is stupid. But I get anxious, I get depressed about being anxious, I get anxious because I don't get anything done when I'm depressed and it piles up, etc.

Also, Galileo is going to suck. And that is an objective assessment.

So Hoff, who directed the Women's Chorale at Coe, died in his home earlier this week. For those of you less schooled in the subtleties of writing and speaking, that's usually code for "suicide" and that was confirmed for me today about twenty minutes ago. There are Coe alums all over the internet buzzing about it, and I already tweeted and wrote on Facebook about it but I'm still trying to make sense of this.

Hoff was not everybody's favorite teacher, as I said, and sometimes he wasn't mine. He pushed for excellence and sometimes I wondered wtf he was doing with us, but it always had results. Sometimes I was resentful for being in the chorale -- it did feel like a consolation prize to not being "good enough" for the mixed choir at times, but there are other times where I would not have jumped to the mixed choir if they'd asked me. I'm sure if you go back into the archives of my journal there will be posts littered with 'OH MY GOD I HATE HOFF RIGHT NOW' and the like, but the fact is that those moments were fleeting. My time with Hoff was... well for lack of a better term, magical.

He was a hard taskmaster at times, yes, but it was all to make us better singers. I love to sing, and I love music. Behind his madness there was method, and always passion. He loved music and he loved theatre. He was head of the New York term program and while I didn't go on that exchange, I did get to go to Europe. I had to have three letters of recommendation; one I got from Steven (a theatre professor), one from Dr. Buckaloo (history) and the third I got from Hoff. He also wrote me a letter for grad school; I don't think it was SUNY (I don't remember how many letters I needed for here) but he did write me one and so because he did that I got to do things that I wasn't sure I would get to do. Some of my favorite memories at Coe, too, are the Winter Convocation, where WC sang the music (I love Christmas music) and the spring concerts, where sometimes it was so dang hot in Sinclair I thought I was going to fall over.

He loved theatre, and he knew I did too. When I was a senior he had made a trip to NY over winter break and had gone to see a bunch of shows. He brought in the souvenir program from Spring Awakening and the revival of Sunday in the Park with George so I could take a look at them. It was a small gesture, but one that meant a lot to me -- and now I'm in New York where Broadway is a train ride away. One year we did music from Phantom of the Opera at our spring concert, so we all gathered at his house, watched the movie, and then we had food after -- lots of delicious food.

Undergrad is the days before I got my depression and anxiety under control, and some mornings -- particularly late fall and winter, I think some of it was seasonal -- I just did not want to get out of bed. It's hard to describe but it is just the complete lack of will to do anything except lay in warm darkness. But most mornings I got out of bed, because I knew that at 12:00 or 11:00 or whenever rolled around, I got to go sing. I was never suicidal -- seriously anyway -- but I was probably close.

To know someone was in some kind of pain so awful that they thought that was the only way is awful, especially when they themselves had a hand in alleviating that pain for you, is indescribable. I wish there was a way I could have known, could have helped, could have repaid him. I don't know what he was thinking or feeling, but I still wish that I could have. Even though I have a certain flair for the dramatic, I'm not saying this to go "oh look at me, a professor I was close to died" or "I deal with these issues too," I am just trying to sort out how I feel. I'm sad. I'm a little angry (in general). I am just generally, all around, upset. I owe the teachers I was close to as an undergraduate a great debt, because it was at Coe that I started becoming the person I am today and started heading towards the person I wanted to become. They all had an amazing hand in that, and one of them took his own life for... whatever reason.

I suppose that I have no choice but to pay it forward, do everything my best, and make every showtune I sing just as expressive and wonderful as Hoff could have hoped to make it.

Guys, suicide doesn't just affect teenagers and young adults. Though I don't really know my thoughts on right to die, I do believe that suicide is a very drastic and permanent solution when the hurt is in your heart and soul and not your body. If you are having suicidal thoughts, then PLEASE tell someone. Anyone. If that someone doesn't listen to you and help you, tell someone else. Tell me. I'll listen, I'll metaphorically hold your hand (literally if I am close enough), and I will help you help yourself best that I can. I'm not a therapist or trained for psychology or anything, I just know what it's like to be in an enormous amount of pain that you don't know what to do with. We can find a better solution than suicide together.

Say a prayer for Richard Hoffman. He touched a lot of lives at Coe, and there are many more who will never be blessed to say they knew him, but he was a man with an enormous heart and a lot of soul, and that should not go unrecognized. Love him or hate him, no one should ever have to feel like suicide is the only option.

I'm anxiety piling, so excuse me.

I said the other day that 'home' was a really complicated word, and I find that a lot of people my age feel the same.

I was talking to my mother and was talking about driving back to school before I left. Before I knew it I called New York 'home'. But it's not. New York is where I am living and going to school (for now. For at least the next two years. Please don't even start me on my thoughts on the matter right now) but it's not home. I don't know if it could be. Iowa is kind of home. It's where I grew up, but there are many things I don't like about it. I don't know. My family's there, and my family's probably not leaving any time soon. I don't have a boyfriend, I don't even have a prospect. I don't have someone I want to make a life with. I don't have ties like that here. I don't know if I want them.

When we saw my sister last, I put the Mamma Mia soundtrack to drive to because I needed to stay awake. Stupid idea, because eventually we got to this song:



I saw this movie with my mother, so that whole mother/daughter thing his ~super hard with me. I really do miss my mother, she's one of my best friends, and this stupid song makes me bawl every time.

So home is complicated. I don't know where my heart is so I don't know where my home is, but what I do know if where I pay money to store all my stuff and sleep a few hours a night.

I am watching some episodes of Hoarders on the internet. And now all I want to do is scrub the apartment from ceiling to floor.

( And now the part that is just blah. )

In other news, I have been daydreaming about working in a theatre somewhere near home that is not Chicago. Because Chitown makes me want to cry.

And I have a deficit in TA hours that I have absolutely no hope of making up by the end of the semester, so I am probably going to be in trouble with the department. I hate my life.

Moving 1000 miles from home is hard. There's a reason the only people who've done it are pioneers, criminals, and Super-Man.

Seriously. Getting the doctor who has known me since I was seven to give me an antidepressant was hard enough.

I woke up late this morning. Why do I do this to myself? I'm only shooting myself in the foot.

Nothing today.

I hate pretending to be a responsible adult. I'm so desperately bad at it.

Weekends are such a bad time for me.

I've been on fluoxetine (generic prozac) for a week now. I haven't noticed any differences, except now I know why I want to cry instead of just wanting to do it for no good reason at all, but I still don't have much of a drive to do things. Also, I've been having some really weird dreams.

I'll just add that it would be really nice to have had them been upfront with me about being hired only part time. Really nice.