My History With Hedwig

This is a letter to Michael Mayer, the director of Hedwig and the Angry Inch on Broadway. Hopefully it will be in his hands on Tuesday, opening night.

April 20, 2014

Dear Mr. Mayer,

My name is Lindsay Hope Simon. If you don't have time to read my novel below (though I hope you do), the moral of the story is HEDWIG is the most important show that's ever come into my life, which happened a decade ago, and thank you thank you thank you from the bottom of my soul for putting it on Broadway like this. I have never in my life looked forward to something more than I looked forward to this production of HEDWIG, and it fulfilled my every wish, hope, and expectation.

This story begins on August 7, 2004. And I beg you to stay with me, because where it ultimately leads is to sitting in row H of the Belasco Theatre on April 19, 2014.

2004: I see RENT for the first time, and my subsequent obsession with my first Broadway experience leads me to HEDWIG (because of JCM's nod to it in the film). I spend most of high school very confused about gender because of my love of Angel and Hedwig and my newfound desire to be a drag queen, which I tell no one about. That's something I've never quite resolved. ANYWAY.

2005: Falling in love with HEDWIG leads me to write a paper about Plato's Symposium as a sophomore in high school. My teachers aren't expecting that.

2007: Theatre, my love of RENT in particular, and my affinity for New York cause me to apply early decision to NYU. I never consider anywhere else, and get accepted and placed in Playwrights, at my own request.

Fall 2008: I arrive in New York just before the closing of RENT, in time to see it for a ninth and tenth time in its last week. Incoming Tisch kids are each given a ticket to Spring Awakening. I see it with a friend who knows someone in the cast; I end up backstage at a Broadway show within a week of living in New York. Around Halloween I go to a not-quite-authorized one-night performance of HEDWIG at the Highline Ballroom.

Spring 2010: Second semester of second year I direct a piece of HEDWIG for my directing class (the scene including Origin of Love). I desperately want to do the whole thing, but I still haven't managed it. Spring of 2010 is when rumors first start flying that JCM is bringing HEDWIG to Broadway. (I've been waiting for this production for four years.)

April 2010: I meet you at a moderated discussion with Bob Vorlicky at Tisch. CAP girls ask about Spring Awakening, PHTS kids ask obnoxious but intelligent questions about collaboration. I ask you after about working with Michael Krass. You diplomatically don't say much.

July 2010: I see American Idiot for the first time. I listen to the soundtrack nonstop for the next six months.

October 2010: I see American Idiot for the third time with a talkback when BJA is in it for the first time.

November 2010: I go to a panel that Kevin Adams is a part of. I make sure to ask him a question (because no one else is and I want him to see me) and I talk to him afterwards. We meet up once for dinner a couple weeks later and I ask a million lighting questions. I subsequently see everything he works on (having already seen Hair and Next to Normal).

January 2011: A friend and I spend 36 hours in Boston to see American Idiot twice, the eighth and ninth time I'm seeing the show.

April 2011: I write a paper for Bob's gay and lesbian theatre class (my third class with him) about Hedwig and authentic performance beyond gender and genre.

May 2012: You speak at Tisch salute. It's an incredible speech, an extremely satisfying blend of inspiring and being honest about the faults of the institution that we love and hate and the cruel mistress of a business we're trying to be a part of. I record the whole thing for Bob, by now a dear friend, who can’t make it.

June 2013: Announcement of HEDWIG coming to Broadway with NPH directed by you and lit by Kevin. I start freaking out immediately.

October 2013: I attend an early screening of Broadway Idiot. And remember my love for rock musicals and your and Kevin’s work.

February 2014: I start working for an amazing woman who is part of the production team for the tony awards and a sometimes Broadway producer. I make sure she knows I have never been so excited about a show as I am about HEDWIG.

April 2014: She has press seats to HEDWIG. She takes me.

That was about 24 hours ago. I still barely have words for my feelings about the production. The themes of this show, of love, why and how we love, that search for wholeness, have echoed through my life for the last decade since I first met HEDWIG in 2004. The idea of duality, but that somehow duality is not synonymous with binary, is one I can never escape. I have seen these themes arise in my life, in projects I've worked on, and in everything I'm inspired to create theatrically, including a magical-realism play I'm writing about Berlin in the 1970s.

I was nervous, because the combination of you plus Kevin plus Neil doing this show put my expectations higher than anything. It seemed impossible that you could live up to what I needed this show to be, based on my love of it and all three of your individual bodies of work. (I'd never seen Neil live before yesterday, since he hasn’t been on Broadway in the almost-ten years since I started seeing shows, but I've loved HIMYM from the beginning, and Dr. Horrible, and followed his LGBT advocacy.)

I left the theatre speechless in the best possible way. The show had all the heart that it should, and it takes a lot of heart for one person to fill up that big of a space. It didn't feel lost, or small, or like it was trying to be something it wasn't. I think it's delightfully updated for today. I think using the Hurt Locker and being able to throw a mention of 9/11 into the show is brilliant. 9/11 is, in many ways a contemporary parallel. "Where were you when?" I went to Berlin in 2011 and became obsessed with history that is still present. Hedwig's history is still present on her body, and she has to come to terms with that.

I read something amazing Neil said in the interview with Out magazine last month. He said that there was a moment in his mid-20s where he came to the conclusion that he would always be alone, but that it wasn't a sad realization, just a fact as far as he was concerned. And I realized I kind of feel the same way, and my love of Hedwig to an extent come out of the idea of how love is ancient and beyond our control and all we can do is love those who come into our path, whether they love us or not. We only control how we deal with not being loved. Love has to be selfless because it's bigger than the self, it's the bit of the universe in you reaching out to a bit of the universe in someone else. Hedwig understands that and eventually gets through the pain of it to a point of acceptance. Loving deeply means hurting deeply and then letting go.

About a month ago I saw a video for the show in which you called HEDWIG universal. And I think you're totally right though plenty of people (my boss included) would disagree. It brought tears to my eyes to hear you say that; it gave me faith that the show wasn't just going to be an NPH spectacle machine. Watching the show yesterday (it's taken me an entire day to find actual words to articulate myself instead of just flailing) I was reminded of everything I love about Hedwig, the combination of aggression and vulnerability, heart and strength. It's what I'm working on myself in a new piece I'm currently calling "Stardust and Iron," about what people are made of. This show is that - ancient and cosmic and strong. I managed to behave myself pretty well, I only let out one "oh yes" out loud when the back wall opened up into the wall of lights. Everything was so smart. The evolution of the set, the lights (duh), the modernization of the script for the time and location. Midnight Radio was perfect. I cried.

I've seen a lot of bad theatre lately. And ever since I started theatre school I've said there's something to be learned from bad theatre too. But I've been reaching a point of stagnation in my own work, and frustration with the bad work I've been seeing, so I cannot tell you how inspiring, energizing, refreshing, fulfilling, and rewarding it was to see this yesterday and feel like theatre can do important things and tell important stories and broadway can take risks and be loud and not fit neatly in a box.

So in the end all I can say is thank you. My story is my thank you, because I have to believe that what we all want most as artists is to touch the lives of others, and hopefully affirm a belief in something bigger than ourselves (whatever we call it). Art is bigger than us. This production didn't change my life. HEDWIG's presence has affected my life for the last decade. This incarnation wasn't going to change any of that. But it affirmed the beliefs and values I've cultivated as I've grown up, and that's something really valuable to a 24-year-old artist hoping that what she's doing matters, or will someday. So thank you. I could talk about this show forever. I'm sure Bob and I will talk after Tuesday. And I'll be back again soon.

Rage, love, glitter, and glam,
Lindsay Hope Simon

Life in New York

So as most of you probably know, among the theatre-y things I do is lighting design. And I'm starting to have meetings with people outside of NYU to work on things in downtown New York spaces. So I made a portfolio of sorts with my lighting work. Here's the link if you wanna take a look:

http://lhsdesign.wordpress.com/

It's only a few hours old, so nothing exciting yet, but it's finally a collection of some of my work in one place. (I'm hunting down the directors whose photos I don't have access to, because there's some good work missing still.)

Hope you enjoy!

For Halloween I was a Berliner

We continue the Berlin saga with Monday. Halloween, which isn't a big deal in Berlin. I got a slow start Monday morning (because it was cloudy and there was no reason not to) but eventually went out to start my day, following an itinerary I had created the night before to make the most sense of the many things in many different neighborhoods that I wanted to visit.


I went first to the oldest Jewish cemetery in Berlin which was closed in the mid-19th century because it was full and was destroyed in 1943 by the Nazis. Because they destroyed literally everything that they couldn't make money off of or directly benefit from. Outside of the cemetery is a memorial to the murdered Jews of either Germany or just Berlin, I can't remember which exactly. Anyway the only thing remaining in the cemetery is a replica of Moses Mendelssohn's grave, as he is buried there. It is a very pretty place, though, as it's been declared a green space and has many trees and the ground is covered in ivy. Plus, as it was fully autumn in Berlin, the trees were all a beautiful gold and there were leaves all over the ground. That's where I wrote one of my Unnamed Poems for Berlin. (There may be more to come in that series.) Berlin felt like a really good place to connect with my Jewish heritage - I wasn't raised Jewish, though I sometimes observe the holidays, moreso as I've grown older, but I feel a connection to that part of my family's history. One of the things many UUs (at least of my generation) talk about is feeling a lack of religious heritage or historical identity. I think that's also sort of a symptom of being American, part of such a young country. I'm American, but nobody's heritage is really American; mine is German and things that could be German like Russian and Polish, or as I usually describe it, Eastern European things that don't tan. So being in Berlin, and especially in a quiet, empty, beautiful place like that cemetery was really an incredible time for reflection and meditation. Yeah I need to write another poem that captures some of that, because really not everything about Berlin was depressing.


After the cemetery I walked to Kunsthaus Tacheles. I don't know what "tacheles" means but kunsthaus means art house. It was a huge building entirely covered inside and out by graffiti, and the top floor had an art exhibit on canvas too. There was also a sculpture park behind it that I explored that reminded me of Socrates Sculpture Park if it was put into a trash compactor and moved to post-Cold War Berlin. Kusthaus Tacheles reminded me a little bit of PS 1, so it was kind of like being in Queens for an hour.


For lunch I went to a French restaurant, recommended by the guidebook as cheap and delicious (and apparently where Jessica and our friend EV went all the time when EV was studying in Berlin last semester). It was a three course meal for 7.50. I had pate because I didn't know what it was but now I think I might know (please don't actually tell me) and I won't be eating it again. The main course was some kind of meat and potatoes in a really delicious mushroom sauce, and dessert was a tasty chocolate cake. The place is owned by a guy named Jean-Claude who's really friendly and sounds French no matter what language he's speaking (I heard French, English, and German). He says magnifique a lot. He made me smile and sitting in that restaurant I felt so grateful for my luck, to study abroad, to travel, to be learning so much in Berlin, including about myself, and to have found such a great place to eat. This semester is really teaching me to be grateful for food. I told Jean-Claude that his meal was better and cheaper than anything I ate in Paris, and that was true. (I probably couldn't afford really good food in Paris.)


Next I headed to the Deutsche Guggenheim because it's free on Mondays. It was a total disappointment, just a one-room exhibition and a gift shop. Good thing it was free. The exhibition was vaguely interesting, but it was literally smaller than most of the galleries in Chelsea so I moved on pretty quickly.


Having got my art on, I went back to my history lessons and returned to Checkpoint Charlie, which we had kind of breezed past during our walking tour. I really knew nothing about it, since we don't really learn about the Cold War in school. We would generally get through WWII, maybe the Civil Rights Movement, and then spend like one day on anything after 1968, mostly mentioning that Nixon and Reagan existed and the space race happened, and then it was time for finals. So I learned a ton about the Cold War on this trip and I'm kind of obsessed with it now. Probably going to end up watching a bunch of movies from the 60s. I've never seen Dr. Strangelove.


After visiting Checkpoint Charlie I embarked on a visit through an open air exhibit called Topographie des Terrors, which is located on a block that used to be full of Nazi-occupied buildings, most of which got severely destroyed during WWII and all of which got demolished in the 1950s. As early as 1987 this exhibit opened (in West Berlin, right against the wall, before it fell) and it consists of a lot of empty space and informational plaques showing you where you stand and what used to be in that exact spot and what the Nazis did there. It was really intense, as the site included a prison and there is a section of the wall remaining there which includes graffiti that says things like "madness" and "why." There's a documentation center inside that traces the history of WWII from 1933 to 1945, but I couldn't read that story again that day so I just looked at the special exhibition, which was a series of newly-discovered photos of a town of Jews being deported to a ghetto and several property auctions of the deported people's possessions. Cheerful stuff.


When I finally got out of there I went to the Jewish Museum, which Jessica told me was great. And it was probably the most impressive museum I've ever been to. It was also the scariest. Recently a new building was designed and attached to the old building, and this new building was created by a genius architect. The building is designed to be disorienting; none of the rooms are perfectly square, the floor slopes (slightly) through most of the museum, and there are no windows, just glass gashes in the facade of the building. (And I went at night, so it was just dark anyway.) The lowest level of the museum is composed of three "axes" which represent Jewish history - the axis of exile, the axis of the Holocaust, and the axis of continuity, which is the only part that leads to the rest of the museum. The axes of exile and the Holocaust were full of items left behind by people who got deported, letters sent, photos, etc. And at the end of the axis of the Holocaust was the tower of the Holocaust. I didn't know what this was, but I went in it. It was an unlit, unheated space spanning the four floors of the museum. Once the door shut it was completely dark and cold and I could hear sounds from outside. It was quite possibly the scariest place I've ever been in my life, and that's probably the point. Once I figured out where the door was I got away from there as fast as possible and went through the rest of the museum, which was very interesting, thorough, and well done. I probably went through a little quickly and it still took me two and a half hours.


Then I went home and talked to Jessica about the museum and then went to bed and thankfully didn't have nightmares.


Tuesday was a beautiful day and I began with a visit to the East Side Gallery, which way east, and is the longest remaining section of the Wall, over a kilometer (metric systemmm). It was painted by several artists in 1990 and restored in 2009 for the 20th anniversary of the fall. I'm really glad I went, because it was refreshing and joyous to see something so expressive and powerful and artistic coming out of something so oppressive and horrible. I took lots of pictures so I'll say more when I get those uploaded.


Then I went to the Berlin Wall Memorial and the Reichstag. Though I couldn't actually get in to the Reichstag, because you have to make a reservation or something, but the guidebook didn't tell me that. So I took some pictures outside, and then headed back to Jessica's apartment to get some work done before going out for the night. I got (not as good) currywurst by Jessica's place, packed as much as I could, then tried to accomplish some reading of my Spanish play. I did, a little.


And then I went out for one last theatre event in Berlin. The Rocky Horror Show. A confession: I had never seen it live before. Sacrilege, I know. But now I get to say the first time I saw it was in Berlin, so whatever. I paid a little more for a seat than I had planned but figured it evened out with my 2 euro seat at the Berliner Ensemble and ended up with a great seat. I thought the whole thing might be in German, which wouldn't matter since I know the story, but it was almost entirely in English. The narration (performed by a man who looked an awful lot like John O'Hurley) was in German, but all the songs and dialogue were in English so I got to sing along and had a great time. I realized it had been a very long time since I had seen a drag queen, and then realized how it might be weird that I generally see drag queens on a fairly regular basis. A nice joke for me to laugh at while the narrator was sharing snide remarks in German with the audience. All the performers were very talented and had incredible voices, and the sets and costumes were great. The only thing I really didn't like was that the musical direction seemed to lean so pop-influenced and lost some of the harder rock edge I'm used to hearing. Also I counted and I think the lighting designer used a total of twelve stationary lights in the show; 99% of it was lit with moving lights which is just ridiculous and unnecessary even if you have the money. He did a few cool things with filling space (as in literally the air) with color, but most of it seemed show-offy and arbitrary, which occasionally fit the aesthetic of the show but was mostly just annoying. For me. As a lighting nerd.


Came back to Jessica's apartment on a theatre high, packed up all my stuff, planned to leave at 5am for real this time and not wake up obscenely late, chatted with Jessica a little, and went to sleep. Oh it should be noted Tuesday was the first day I managed to get everywhere I wanted to go without ever getting on a train going the wrong direction or to a completely irrelevant place. Finally. On the fifth day. That's how complicated their system is.


And I successfully woke up on time and made it to the airport just fine and got back to Madrid in time for my 12:30 class. Bonus points for me.


Photos and possibly more poems to come about Berlin.


Tomorrow I'm going to Toledo, because it's fiesta - Nuestra Señora de la Almudena, the patron saint of Madrid. Weee!

Beginning in Berlin

So as you've seen Berlin was a bit of a sobering trip for me. I'm really glad I went; I did have some fun, but a lot of my time was very somber.

I flew out Friday morning - after almost missing the flight. My alarm that was supposed to go off at 4am so I could pack my clothes that were still drying when I went to sleep 3 hours earlier never went off. I woke up at 6:25 for my 7:45 flight. I threw clothes into my bag and ran out the door to the airport express bus ten minutes away, waited anxiously for the bus and ran into a couple other NYU kids (whose flights weren't until 9) and made it to the airport at about 7:05. Ran through security, rushed to the gate, and made it onto the plane, somehow landing a window seat in the 9th row even though I was in the last ten percent of people to board the plane. I slept most of the way to Berlin, an almost three hour flight.

Upon arrival at Schönefeld Flughafen (I cannot take a language seriously with words like that), I got to start following the page-long essay of directions sent to me by my friend Jessica, with whom I was staying. She gave great directions but unfortunately didn't know about some construction that affected one of the trains I had to take, so as I was watching for Warschauer Strasse, I ended up at the other end of the line in Pankow. So then I tried to understand the Berlin metro map, took a train halfway back to the airport, changed trains, went one stop, changed to a different train, and finally arrived at Jessica's apartment a mere two and a half hours after the plane landed. On the bright side this meant Jessica was already home from school and I didn't have to find a cafe to hang out at in the meantime. I was also really lucky that it was fairly sunny and in the 60s the whole time I was there. This was the weekend it snowed in New York and elsewhere, and it had previously been a lot colder in Berlin, but I got a weekend of beautiful fall weather.

Jessica went to PHTS for a year and a half, then did a semester abroad in South Africa, and has been living in Berlin since March. Her mother is German and she grew up speaking the language right along with English, so Germany is an easy place for her to be and study theatre for cheap. Fortunately for me it meant I had a free place to stay for five days (ouch, potential hostel fees), and a theatre person to chat with. This also meant she was really busy and didn't have much time to show me around, but we spent Friday together, grocery shopping, planning my weekend, and that night we went to a senior showcase of scenes at the so-called best acting school in Berlin. It was all in German, so I can't say too much, but there was a lot of yelling, and not healthy yelling, which made my throat hurt in sympathy. I also got to meet a few of Jessica's theatre friends from school, and it was really fun to be around crazy actor types for a bit.

One great thing about Berlin was getting to eat food that doesn't exist in Madrid - my first food of the day on Friday was cheap noodles from a place called Asia Box right around the corner from Jessica's apartment. With the exception of that vaguely-fancy-French-Japanese food in Paris, I hadn't had Asian food since August. Normally I get cheap Chinese food in NYC all the time, so it was so great to get a box of take out noodles for 2.50. I also got salami at the grocery store for sandwiches, because while they've got a lot of meat here in Spain, they don't seem to have salami. So there's that.

Saturday I did the New Europe walking tour of Berlin, but didn't run into Arnaud, my tour guide from Paris. My guide was named Rob, who is originally from Manchester, England (England, across the Atlantic Sea... sorry, Hair moment.) The tour was really interesting, again almost four hours long with a coffee break in the middle, and though it felt shorter than the Paris one I didn't like it as much. It seemed like a lot of what we saw was at a distance, and, of course, there's no way to make the history of Berlin less depressing than it is. We saw parts of the wall, the parking lot that is over where Hitler's Bunker is (it still exists but is sealed off), a memorial to all the books that got burned on my birthday in 1933, lots of architecture I can't remember, the Brandenburg Gate, the Reichstag, the Berliner Dome, the Holocaust memorial, the lust gardens, Checkpoint Charlie, and lots of squares and parks.

After the walking tour I did a lot of wandering around, happened upon a march that I think was shouting about freeing Libya and/or Syria, checked out the Berliner Ensemble (founded by Bertolt Brecht), decided there was no way in hell I was watching a Chekhov play in German (as it's hard enough in English), and eventually worked my way back to the Holocaust memorial because I wanted to go to the exhibit that we had skipped on the tour. It was fascinating and, of course, depressing. But very well done.

I then went to the English Berlin Theatre and bought a ticket to a new play called The Man of Shadows, performed by a Berlin theatre company comprised of English actors. Before the show I then walked to what the guidebook (and later, Jessica) said was the best currywurst in Berlin. Currywurst is the typical food of Berlin, you can find it on practically every block. It's a lightly spiced sausage with ketchup (that isn't like American ketchup) and a dusting of curry powder. I got mine with pommes frites (French Fries, served with mayonaise because that's how they do it in Belgium?) and I asked the guy what a good beer was. He gave me a Berliner Kindl, and it was pretty tasty, as was the currywurst. (I had it again on Tuesday at the place by Jessica's, and it wasn't as good.) So then, very full and happy, I walked back to the theatre for the show. (I even drank a little of my beer on my walk, because real Berliners seem to drink everywhere all the time.) This was the first time I've seen theatre in English since August, and the production was well done and well performed, a good time, and the tickets were cheap. I then hopped on the train and after chatting with Jessica went to sleep.

Sunday I slept in (a luxury of having five days in a city instead of three) and then headed off for a day of museums. I went to the Musical Instrument museum, a curious little place that has a bunch of really old every kind of classical instrument imaginable including a piano played by Bach and a glass harmonica made by Ben Franklin. I then walked to Kultureforum, which is four museums in one, for four euros (as a student). I spent a lot of time looking at really old things that seemed a little irrelevant considering all the modern history right outside. The best part was the art museum, the Gemeldegalerie, which seemed to be kind of like the Prado of Berlin. I don't think I saw anything particularly famous, but they have works by a lot of famous artists, from the 14th to 19th centuries. Kultureforum also has a print and drawing museum which had a Rembrandt exhibit, and a library, which just confused me.

After Kultureforum I was all museumed out and headed back to the Berliner Ensemble, to see an actual Brecht play in German at Brecht's theatre. (Sort of the equivalent of seeing a Renaissance French play at the Comedie Française.) On the way I got cheap Asian food again, this time from a place called Noodle Box. (There's only about four words involved in any of these places - Snack Box, Asia Snack, Asia Noodle, etc.)

I got distracted when changing trains on my way to the Berliner Ensemble theatre by a section of the wall in Potsdamer Platz (platz means square, I think). I was reading all the information about conservation of pieces of the wall and whatnot, and then found on the other side a stand with two guys dressed up as soldiers. There's a lot of that in Berlin and it kinda weirds me out - guys dressed in period uniforms of the US and Soviet army, at Checkpoint Charlie, at the Brandenbugur Tor, at this part of the wall. Anyway, these guys, for a small fee, would stamp your passport with the seven - count them, seven - stamps that one had to get to cross the wall when it existed. There's the US stamp, the other allies stamp, the DDR stamp, a visa stamp, I can't remember them all. But now I have eight stamps in my passport. And seven of them mean nothing in 2011.

I still don't know what play I actually saw. Because it's Brecht's theatre, they don't just do Mother Courage.  I showed Jessica my ticket and she said she'd never heard of it. Anyway, I got there at about 6:15 for a 7:30 show, and there was a line waiting for the box office to open at 6:30. When I got up to the window there was only standing room left, but that suited me fine as it was only 2 euros. I have no idea what it was about but it was thoroughly entertaining the whole time. The main character seemed to be an aspiring actor and behaved like what I imagine you'd get if you mixed Porky Pig and Hitler and threw in a dash of neuroticism. Exactly. The production was great, all the design and everything. I'm so glad I went. The lighting was pretty interesting, which isn't always true for a play. But the designer seemed to be trying some things with white light that were new.

After the play I went back to Jessica's apartment but she was still out at rehearsal. I tried to wait up, but I was simultaneously trying to do some homework - reading an entire play in Spanish - and I just couldn't keep my eyes open and fell asleep.

Time for me to make dinner, after all this talk of food. Perhaps tomorrow I can report on Monday and Tuesday's adventures. Wish me sunshine! It's been raining ever since I got back!

Life Between the Weekends

Okay so I'll write probably three essays about Berlin soon, but in the meantime I thought I should catch up on oh, the last month of my life. When last I wrote of something that wasn't my travels, other than Fuerza Bruta, Brian was still here. And that was the first week of October. So let's see how fast I can tell you all about my life considering I'm obsessed with details.

Okay. Flashback to Wednesday, October 5th. I had class in the early afternoon, but I met up with Brian after for lunch again at Los Rotos. We tried a couple new dishes but of course ordered muerte por chocolate once again. Still perfectly delicious. Back to the apartment for a short nap/rest, then off to the theatre! We went to see a play called Venticinco Años Menos un Día, a play about an English play called The Tea is Ready. It was about the final performance of the play (one day before the 25th anniversary of its opening, hence the title). Because it was about an English play, a lot of it was actually in English, and there were some theatre jokes. I enjoyed it a lot. And we had great seats, for pretty cheap, in a beautiful theatre. And yet another theatre within ten minutes of my apartment! I had actually walked past it before and didn't even know...

After the show we stopped for drinks and snacks at 100 montaditos (the mini-sandwich place) for Wednesday's euromania - where everything on the menu is a euro. I had my usual tinto de verano, Brian had a classic Spanish beer (Mahou), and we both sampled various sandwiches before heading home. In general quite a successful day, I'd say.

Thursday, Brian's last day here. I had class all day so Brian did a bunch of sightseeing on his own and then met me at the Prado, where I have class every Thursday. My class gets over around 5:30 and the Prado is free beginning at 6, so we found each other and did some wandering through the galleries before heading to El Tigre for those famous giant mojitos and some true Spanish tapas, which Brian still hadn't gotten to try. We stopped for ice cream just up the street from me on the way and then headed home for the night a little early to sit around and chat before we both prepared for an early morning trip to the airport. Brian was flying back to China (via a night in Moscow?!) and I to Mallorca, having just booked my flight that morning and my hostel that night thanks to much toil on my mom's part to get my debit card unlocked. (They know I'm abroad, but apparently the card automatically locks if you try to use it for foreign airfare... Secure, but a pain in the ass.)

So up an at 'em, long before the sun, which rose while we were on the bus to the airport, and then you know the whole Mallorca story. :) It was such a bummer to say goodbye to Brian. I was really glad to have the weekend trip to distract me from being by myself once again.

So. Skip ahead to post-Mallorca... Just a typical week at school, I think, trying to get everything done and get some sleep and take in Madrid and whatnot. Hardly left the apartment over the weekend though, actually. Went grocery shopping, which is always an adventure - the closest chain supermarket (where prices are much cheaper) is a 15 minute walk away, so I can't go often. But that means carrying two weeks worth of groceries almost a mile home, which is a whole body workout, since I buy vegetables and that's where I get my less-than-a-euro-1.5-litres of tinto de verano. :) Also did laundry, lots of homework, yoga, cleaning. Productive weekend! AND I got to see Alejandro on Saturday, which was nice because it's hard to only talk via facebook - so much typing - or via skype, because I have a hard enough time understanding Spanish without internet connections causing more trouble.

The following week midterms began. I've never really had serious midterms like this before. I mean, I've had a few in some of my theatre studies classes, but we mostly just write essays about things we've read, maybe define a few theatre terms, no big deal. But I have four academic classes and four midterms this semester. Crazy. The first was my Lorca midterm, which was really easy, as all we had to do was write two essays about the two Lorca plays we'd read up to that point. And as we'd spent multiple weeks on each, there was plenty to write. (In my regular theatre classes, we usually read a couple plays a week and compare them in discussion and it feels like we never have enough time to talk about everything, but such is the pace of Tisch.) I got an A, but I think everyone did, because my teacher thinks grades are stupid.

My other midterms were all the following week, once one of them got moved, so I had three midterms to look forward to post-Paris. Remember in my Paris post how I talked about doing lots of studying for my midterms? Oh, no? Exactly. So Tuesday rolls around, and I have two midterms. For my Spain Today class I had to give an oral presentation of 15 minutes (in Spanish) with two other members of the class, again based on Spanish news articles. I haven't gotten the grade back yet for it, but I felt like it went pretty well. Then Tuesday afternoon I had the midterm for my art history class. This I did some cramming for both Monday night and Tuesday during the lunch break. Fortunately thanks to two years of art recognition tests in high school (hi, Rado), I have some practice studying for this kind of test. I felt like it went pretty well, though I wasn't totally sure... We got them back today though, and I am happy to report that I got an A-, which was a little better than I expected considering my last-minute studying. Though I guess PHTS has made me really good at doing things last minute. SECOND YEAR...

Thursday brought the Spanish grammar midterm, which I kinda refused to study for, as I thought I would just get more confused trying to compare tenses and endings and prepositions and things. My friend Isabella (my closest friend here in Madrid for sure) came over to study though, and I studied a bit by trying to answer her questions. I got that test back yesterday (really not much longer than the quizzes we have every other week, anyway), and I got a happy 88.5, which I'm pretty proud of considering we're trying to learn grammar of a foreign language in that foreign language, which is ridiculously hard.

Thursday evening after Prado Isabella and I went to a cute little cafe around the corner from my house to do some of our homework before we both traveled for the weekend (she to Paris, I to Berlin), and successfully got all our homework done for one of our classes. We read an entire four-page interview in Spanish and only found 25 words we didn't understand, so really we could understand the whole article without using a dictionary. We were quite proud of ourselves.

Thursday night I finally got my abono, which is this card you need to apply for in order to get a monthly travel pass for the bus/metro. I submitted mine on September 21st, meaning it should have been ready while Brian was visiting, but it wasn't. And a week later it still wasn't. And a week later, it still wasn't. It took nearly five weeks, and now I'm only using it for November, but at least I have it for this month. It means I can travel as much as I want on the metro, which is already nice, in just the two days I've been using it. It also means I don't have to pay an extra fare to go to the airport on the bus or train, which is important for all the traveling I'm doing. Woo!

So. The final development of October is a wonderful one - halfway through the month, I got a job! I'm "teaching English" to a family of four kids. I put that in quotes because the oldest two, both girls, Marta, 16 and Iciar, 14, studied in London for a semester last fall, so their English is just fine. The ten-year-old, Nacho, has English in school and speaks quite well. Sometimes I have to repeat what I say, or he'll ask me how to say something in English (a constant test of my Spanish vocabulary, which is good for me), but he's great. He reminds me a lot of my cousin Josh who is the same age and looks quite like him, in addition to being similar in personality. The youngest, Jaime, is 5, and is hilarious. I mostly speak to him in Spanish, and it is certainly a test of my abilities to try to understand him, as he speaks very fast and like a five-year-old. Think about how little kids talk in English, and then try to understand that in a foreign language. Yeah. But he's a lot of fun, and his favorite phrase is "I'm fine thank you" which he says all as one word. He knows the English names of lots of animals and can count at least to 15. We played Simon says last week - his idea, not mine - and he seems to know body parts pretty well too. (Put your hands on your head, point to your nose, raise your right arm, etc.) The boys are both always fighting for my attention. I spend 15 minutes with Jaime, then 45 minutes with each Nacho, Iciar, and Marta. Jaime and I just play games, or I end up chasing him for some reason, Nacho always has something to show me that he made (he's really good at this lego engineering set he has), and I just chat about school and life and whatnot with Iciar and Marta. During which time Nacho always has to come by for some reason. And when I'm with Nacho, Jaime never wants to go away. That's always the time he must also be in the same room doing his homework (he's practicing writing letters of the alphabet).

They also have two dogs, Klaus and Lola. Lola is some kind of terrier, little enough to sit in my lap, which she does pretty constantly. It's quite a crazy house, but I love the family. And every time I come back from a trip, they ask me how it was, or tell me to have a good weekend before I go. Yesterday I mentioned that I ate lots of chocolate in Berlin, and I guess because now they know I like chocolate, my glass of water (because I'm always offered something to drink) was accompanied by three different pieces of chocolate. They spoil me, really. AND I'm getting paid to hang out with their kids and speak English. I'm so lucky. I can't believe it. The dad (also named Alejandro) does something with computers, and they're very well off - and four kids is a lot for a Spanish family - but I still feel a little guilty getting paid to basically just hang out. Not gonna complain though. :)

So. That's my life now! Berlin post soon to come, as well as Paris pictures, of course. The editing process has commenced. ¡Besos desde España!

¡Fuerza Bruta!

I will finish posting about Mallorca someday, I promise. Maybe tonight actually, because I have no homework. And I want to get it done before I go to Paris this weekend. But. More importantly.

I WENT TO FUERZA BRUTA TONIGHT AND I AM SO HAPPY!!! How to explain.

So there's that. I work at Fuerza Bruta in New York. It's a show that was created by an Argentinian company ("fuerza bruta" means brute force/strength) and it's been running in Union Square for years. I've been working there since last October, along with about half a dozen other Playwrights kids and some other cool people, including some Argentinian crew members. (Like my friend Gonzo who now likes every comment I make in Spanish on facebook.) I've lost count of how many times I've seen the show at this point, and I'm not tired of it yet. I'm really lucky to have such a fun job. Oh - to clarify - I'm not a performer in the show. I'm just a lowly usher who shoves people out of the way of moving set pieces, moves set pieces, pulls ropes and curtains, and folds hundreds of cardboard boxes.

Tonight was only the second time I've actually seen the show from a spectator standpoint - and the first time I had just been hired to work, so I was still watching it with a critical eye. It was so weird to be there without anything to do, and without all my usual PHTS (or pseudo-PHTS) coworkers. This was also the first time I came home without a mohawk full of confetti - my hair's too long! Tonight I went with my friend Yasmín and got to be one of those people all us ushers are always judging (at least a little). It was a little disorienting because I noticed every little thing that was different, but the familiar music fell right back into my body and I now know that I still remember exactly what my track (at least the first one I learned) does throughout the whole show. On top of it all, the first performer you see in the show, called Corridor, the guy running on the treadmill, was an actor from our New York cast, so I felt even more at home.

It was a party, I danced, I felt like I had escaped to New York for an hour. I was and still am so happy. Yasmín had never been before and had a really great time. I told her she's got to come in NYC, where it's (in my opinion) even better. And now I'm home, changed into dry clothes, out of my wet, confetti-covered ones. So worth the money I spent on it - the only time I've paid to see it. And if I divide tonight's ticket price over all the times I've "seen" it, it's still less than a dollar each time, and normally I get paid to be there.

I am one lucky lady. (Oh, AND I need to post about my amazing new English "teaching" job.) I am so grateful for all the blessings in my life.

That Eternal Question

We briefly interrupt the Mallorca saga (which I have to finish before I go to Paris this weekend) to bring more in the ongoing debate.

I don't mean what happens after you die.

I mean what is or is not theatre.

Friday night I had no plans and my roommate is gone for the weekend so I decided to go see a show. I picked one and headed to the theatre, but by the time I got there it was sold out. I was momentarily bummed, because I had taken the subway and walked a ways (and was wearing heels, so, there's that). But the ticket guy had asked me if I was specifically asking about Vereantes, which made it sound like there was something else showing that night.

There was. I still don't really know the name of it, but I read about it in their season booklet that they had on the counter. It said something about a piano and a machine, and didn't particularly sound like theatre, more like an avant garde concert, but I figured as long as I was there I would go, because I would never get another opportunity to see whatever the hell this was going to be.

I really didn't need the opportunity. There was a piano, and someone played it, quite well, and there was also a strange machine made of a lot of mundane objects that sometimes banged and whistled and tooted and had an organ in it? to the rhythm and in tune with the piano, and other time it was completely dissonant. And sometimes there was just a lot of banging. And every once in a while the other three people who seemed more like sound techs than actors (literally plugging in amps and stuff during the show) would play an accordian or an electric guitar or a keyboard. And every once in a while all four of them would yell in some language that wasn't English or Spanish. I couldn't even trace an arc through the music, and trust me, I was desperately trying to find something to cling to as a thread I could follow.

For the first ten minutes, it was kind of funny. I thought, great, I'm finally at one of those weird European theatre productions that my design teacher always used to talk about, and I have no idea what's going on and that's okay. And then for about the next 45 minutes, I was just really annoyed I had spent money on watching people make noise.

I hate to bring up Peter Brook, because he generally annoys the crap out of me, but dammit he has a point. (For non-theatre people: Peter Brook is a really pretentious British (redundant?) guy who is a really important theatrical theorist. We had to read his book, The Empty Space, the summer before we started at Playwrights, and I hated it.) Anything can be theatre. Theatre is, simply put, a live interaction between an audience and an event, even if that event is just observing an object. It doesn't even have to be framed on a stage, though this was. I would probably put something involving the word "crafted" in my definition, but that could be argued. I'm not sure anymore what the difference is between theatre and any other kind of performance. If you go to the symphony, the musicians aren't playing for you to watch them; they're playing for you to hear the music from their instruments. But you can still watch the faces, the looks of concentration, and in that way it's still theatre.

Side note, I was all excited to go see something at "Teatro de la Abadia" which is in an abandoned church, and the space was kind of cool, but they didn't use the architecture of the space at all and I therefore spent the entire time thinking about how much better PHTS kids would use the space. And then I was grateful for my education, even if I was being subjected to an hour of noise that I paid for.

¡Teatro Extraño!

This post is 90% theatre review, 10% about me.

Okay so tonight I went and saw legit "weird" theatre. As in no narrative, very little text, mix of circus/magic show/acrobatics/dance. I was hoooome. The show was called Crece, and based on what I read has had three previous permutations. It was great. The best way I can describe it, which will mostly only make sense to the PHTS kids reading this, is that it was like a Witness Relocation show if they used a dozen teenagers instead of Will Petre and Laura. So much form and content action. You Can Get An Idea Here.

So for the rest of you, I'll try my best to put almost no words into words. The themes that I saw were about bodies in space, the fluidity of motion and human relationships. (Colleen - it wasn't really about gender!) There was some trapeze, a little tight rope, a lot of impressive jumping and flips and Cirque du Soleil type acrobatics.

I was never bored, but I did get pulled out of the performance a lot by the audience clapping, so I spent a lot of time thinking about design elements and everything I was seeing and hearing in front of me. The lighting was trying to be interesting, there were some cool instruments used, including some free-standing strip lights, fluorescents, and a huge hanging flood light, but I felt like there were a lot of missed opportunities and most of the lighting was really simple and not ideal to show off what the performers were doing. I think I also only noticed about two moments when it made me feel something, and generally lights always make me feel something. I spent a lot of time focusing on the sound because it was really aggressive, loud and ominous and strong and angry. Sometimes it felt like the sound was embodying the strength of the performers, but it felt too heavy for the space, especially because all the performers were so young and joyous. I didn't think about costumes a lot, because it all seemed to be mundane clothing from their closets, but I liked that it didn't detract from what they were physically doing.

The theatre is in the round, with maybe 10-20% of the circle cut out to make a bigger backdrop so that there is sort of a "front" of the circle. And it's also only a 15-minute walk from my house! AND I got my ticket for half-price because NYU gave us this "Madrid Cultura y Arte" card that gets us discounts at lots of things. In fact their newsletter is how I found out about this show and why I decided to go tonight. I got seated next to a family with three little kids who were really cute and fun to listen to. Sometimes they laughed for no reason, and at one point I heard the little boy ask his grandma who was sitting next to me if she was scared. My row was fun people.

This theatre will be housing Fuerza Bruta soon. I think I might go, because it will feel like home, and I also want to see how it will be different here. I don't think they can get rid of the seats in the theatre, so it could be a very strange experience if we're sitting through the whole show. (I work at Fuerza Bruta in New York so I've seen the show countless times.) This is Fuerza: (Brute Force/Strength). You can get a pretty good idea of the show just by watching the intro before you enter the sight. The show was originally created by a company from Argentina, so I actually work with a number of native Spanish speakers in NYC. I'm looking forward to being able to talk to them in Spanish when I get back, though of course they all speak English just fine.

More theater news soon to come, I'm sure. Before I left tonight I took every postcard on the table to find out what else is going on (plus it's free wall decoration). Even in Spanish I feel so at home in the theatre but I miss having my hands in the process. I want to be doing something. When I go to Berlin (Halloween weekend!) I'm staying with a PHTS friend who lives there who said she would house me though she'll be in the middle of rehearsals. I told her I'd like to come one day, because I am going through severe rehearsal withdrawal. Usually it's all day, all the time, and now I haven't had a show to work on since mid-May. Maybe I'll write a play and do a whole production in my head. I'm already directing in my head every Lorca play we read in class...