Writing

Performance can be a choice, or a task, or a necessary component of a ritual. We perform in everyday life to a certain extent — compare how one might be around family versus in a doctor’s office waiting room, surrounded by strangers. It’s a catharsis when it happens inside imaginary circumstances. Performance in the context of the theater is a kind of summoning. I step into the world, or worlds, of a play or a piece, and with eyes on me, something happens. No matter how lost or swept up I become, there’s always some awareness that eyes are on me. I don’t know the exact science behind it, but it’s possible to sense where an audience is — what they’re receiving, and how. I’ve always said a piece isn’t complete until there is an audience. Performance is an exacting focus, and there’s a power in that focus, especially in today’s overstimulating, information-hyper reality.

Anxiety doesn’t always announce itself as a threat. Sometimes it arrives as weight — a gutting, weighted vest dropped onto you without warning. You brace for the sword of Damocles, and what falls is just a heavy coat. Then, right at the moment you’re about to throw up from it, about to cry over something entirely unrelated, the vest vanishes. You look up. The sword is still there, hanging — only now it isn’t touching you. You think: fuck this. And you put it out of your mind.

Two things can be true. It’s a loop, and it’s also intermittent. You can get everything you want in this life and still — if you’re honest — want it all and want nothing in the same breath. You are your five-year-old self and your eighty-year-old self and every version in between, all at once, all in one body. People will call that woo. But they know exactly what you mean. They’ve just gotten better at ignoring it.

Though Billie Whitelaw knows there is a simple rhythm to this text, it seems she started with the rote repetition and musicality and allowed the hammering of the repetition to bring forth an intention in her character. I would imagine the laser focus and repetition brought out a desperation as well as an acceptance of the ambiguous circumstances, and through the ambiguity, a story begins to seep in from behind the rocking chair. Re-reading the play over and over, I couldn’t help but feel Billie Whitelaw is in total control, manipulating the omnipotent voice to uphold her delicate world she needs in order to get her point across. The diction and intentionality of the hum-like steadiness and soothing timbre would put any actor relinquishing themselves to the repetition, into a world. In this world there is an urgency that begins to slowly reveal itself, but do not pity W, she knows what she is doing.

In regards to my own practice as an actor, I find myself consciously or unconsciously wanting to get to the end, and I find myself falling into remnants of old patterns that honestly feel like defending, and an exposure of my insecurities. Billie Whitelaw’s relaxation and presence has a power to it. Even if somebody has been abandoned, that doesn’t mean they don’t know what is really going on. Breathing, of course, is a huge part of it, but there is a playfulness. Beckett and Whitelaw together do not convey any sentimentality. Do not pity W. But respect her. Especially when she says “Fuck life” and it’s as if the air around her grins at the audience. Take her seriously.

In trying to build my life (at 36) post pandemic and now being forced to deep throat AI. im trying to start by getting my finances in order as are mILLIONNNNNS of other people but due to “protocols” and “agreements” or whatever corporate, deflective lingo, i don’t think there is anyone in the world or the US that can connect confidently and seamlessly allllllllllllllllllll their financial institutions through plaid, OR MX OR Finicity. and its about time. seriously. its about time. stress is a killer and money is stress is time is our true God. so I’m venting to nobody, because people mostly talk like robots too now....i have completely allowed my ego die, i am no longer afraid of fear and i just want one thing SOMETIMES just ONE thing, like connecting all my financial accounts through plaid to sofi etc. ALSO seems like someone in some building in a lil city called NYC might have some beef with another bro at another financial institution---hence “protocols” and “agreements” being the OH so ever impenetrable obstacle for facilitating these connections. Maybe that attention to detail with enhancing and optimizing connectivity routes would make people’s lives just a little bit easier. There are so many people sitting in a parking lot right now staring catatonic into the void because of teeny tiny stressors that compound and add up and come out as The Pain Body (look it up) hence much misguided rage and honestly the vaporization and atomization of unstructured time, and the incrementally, hyper-octane cacophony of information overload; the chatter of evil doers and humanity in pain, louder than silence, full of sound and fury...all signifying nothing. Thank you.

Hi, hello. If I have any immediate inclination, I’d say right off the bat, I’m exhausted, in the most thrilling way. My learning is still learning — maybe I’m in a trance. I’ve lived pretty hard, and I’ve learned from it, and some of it’s my own madness and undoing and some of it is people choosing to do things to me. I grew up with a single mother and a coven of really cool women. I have dealt with anxiety and panic disorders most of my life. I’ve always been a hyper-active kid. I was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and I have one picture of my dad, I met him once when I was six and he gave me a suitcase and a plush leprechaun. I did finally get to meet his Other family recently. My dad overdosed on meth. His family, spread thin out of Denham Springs, Louisiana, reached out to me and gave me his ashes in a black cross. When I met my half sister, we ate fried alligator and her sixth baby hung out with us. This all is slipping out of me and I want to stop writing this. Not to sound haughty, I just feel very vulnerable. My mom recently became very into stoicism. Smoking was very prevalent in my household. My mom gave me a magical childhood, she is a hairdresser, so I grew up listening to southern gossip with paraffin wax running down my arm. I was surrounded by storytelling essentially. We moved around Louisiana: New Orleans, Lafayette, Hammond. My favorite memories are when my mom fell in love with a man from Sedan, France. Somehow, we ended up in Sedan, France, and her wicked sisters scoffed at her. I admire my mom for this. It was quick and fleeting, and we lived in a rolling hazy village, and a patched house with his mom, and his name was Salem. We ate a lot of rabbits. It just didn’t work out, and so once we got back to Louisiana, we fled to Cincinnati, and I was held back one grade, so I repeated Kindergarten. I was obsessed with the old Universal Studio Monster movies. This is still pouring out of me, Bear with me. Alligators, Rabbits and Bears. We moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, with my grandmother and autistic uncle, he introduced me to the Exorcist when I was pretty young and I laid awake the entire night with my grandma’s pitbull and basset hound hopping on and off the bed. I carry a lot of tension, in hindsight. We moved back to Louisiana and I started Korean Martial Arts: Han Mu Do. My mom, very very luckily, got me into one of the new-first — magnet art schools in Baton Rouge. At one of the wicked aunt’s house, I double jumped and ariel flipped onto the metal edge of the trampoline and split my ulna and radius. This is all painting a picture that still heaves with me. Middle School was horrible, but along with Han Mu Do, I got into Swimming. I’m aware of my breath, and I’m aware my breath is constrained. High School ramped up and it was smoking weed out of Gatorade bottles and lots of Drama. I skipped, I’m realizing, my way into Acting. Right after France, I got essentially put, or added, into a production of A Midsummer’s Night Dream, it was very lucky. Because of that I was asked to be in Jesus Christ Superstar exactly one year later. Fade in, Fade out, high school talented drama and art led way into college, where I finally realized I was really excited about acting. Acting got me out of bed. College happened, and I went hard, Stella Adler happened and I went hard, New York hardened me. There’s a lot of undoing and in trying to keep this concise and a sense of privacy I will say, to quote my boss I assisted in New York, Elizabeth Ashley: “semper fi mother fucker.” And also, how eloquently Joan Didion put it, “it is entirely possible to stay too long at the fair.”