Happy holidays

Happy holidays and a peaceful new year.

what a year

I am having a year like my first year in theatre. Where I was completely absorbed, and could not get enough of THIS... even without really being able to describe what "this" was.

Looking back, I say, "That was my first year of theatre." At the time, I just knew I was studying acting, writing a play, taking improv & movement & clown & mask, producing a festival, directing a play, producing Leonid's troupe's visit, and going to Russia to see the Moscow Art Theatre on its 100th anniversary.

This year, since March, has been just like that. Booting, working on a booted team, connecting with the McCarthys, setting up the next bootcamp.

Slow good work, at an extremely rapid pace.

resting on a Sunday, bee, corpus christi carol

I am sitting in my office. It is clean, silent, empty; Sunday night, 8:37pm.

No, says my inner self. No work tonight.

Instead, I've been listening to Kelly Joe Phelps play the blues while driftily browsing. I have read about perfect numbers; the theory of relativity; how to calculate your net worth; Naropa's buddhism-based MA in Divinity; Jeff Buckley singing "Hallelujiah" in concert; a library of essential dlls; photos of Devon marshes & moors; the ruined abbey & crypt at York; Venice's red roofs & stone waterside doorsteps; and the inside of Andrew & Gennie's new house.

My underconscious is chewing on something. Not work.

This is the first rest I've had in weeks. I wonder why today is so restful.

I think because this phase has finished, and the winds are coming. My projects are in hand, the nights are icy, my relationships are cleaning up. Even the earth has shifted; it's winter now, and all my windows are open.

Cold air sheeting through, two loads of laundry done, dishes washed, oatmeal-chocolate-chip cookies baked, fresh tunafish with purple cabbage chilling in the fridge. I visit my mom next weekend.

Even my bones are relaxed.

--------------

Someday you will meet something that brings you to your knees, says Natalie Goldberg. And you will finally find your voice.

Theatre was that for me. I think intimacy, the intimacy I am now capable of, will do it again.

I took a quiz recently that asked, "How often do men 10 years older than you hit on you?" The answer is almost never. But men 10 to 20 years younger, all the time.

I find that when my days are full of theatre, I am liquid in technique; steeped in the difficulty of how bodies move and light falls, of how two people touch. Times like now, though, I know what theatre is about. The currents & complexities, intimacies & strangenesses at work illuminate Shakespeare's courts. It's never black and white. It's always interconnected, shaded, incongruous. Small fierce intact weather systems, marked with grace.

--------------

Today a yellow-jacket flew in my open dining-room window. Lumbering, mazed with cold, it buzzed and crawled on the window pane, heading away from the open air. I tried to shoo it out with a sheet of paper. It buzzed angrily and headed even more determinedly the wrong direction.

I cupped the paper a couple inches behind it. As I watched, it suddenly stopped buzzing and began furiously to wash its nose and face. I was reminded exactly of an old woman who, rushed and flurried, stops for a cup of tea and to powder her face.

I waited while the old-lady bee finished her toilet and got calm again. Then I slid the paper next to her, so she had to step backwards onto it. I poked it out the window and she sailed off. Or he; who knows with bees.

I'm heading home. I'll leave you with Jeff keening the Corpus Christi Carol. First read the lyrics below. Then click the link, lie down, shut your eyes, and let him sing to you.

He bare her off, he bare her down
He bare her into an orchard ground

Lu li lu lay lu li lu lay
The falcon hath bourne my mate away

And in this orchard there was a hold
That was hanged with purple and gold
And in that hold there was a bed
And it was hanged with gold so red

Lu li lu lay lu li lu lay
The falcon hath bourne my mate away

And on this bed there lyeth a knight
His wound is bleeding day and night
By his bedside kneeleth a maid
And she weepeth both night and day

Lu li lu lay lu li lu lay
The falcon hath bourne my mate away

By his bedside standeth a stone
Corpus christi written thereon

-- Old English, arranged by Benjamin Britten for male soprano, sung by Jeff Buckley

a teacher made of mud

Ever read The Mahabharata? There's a story about a boy who wants to be a warrior. He goes and finds a teacher but the teacher keeps putting him off. So the boy builds a copy of the teacher made of mud and he washes it every day, and he learns to do his thing. And the whole symbolism is that the teacher is inside. I made teachers out of Ray Charles, Billie Holliday, Dylan, Judy Garland. I learned about phrasing, pitch, everything.

-- Jeff Buckley, 1993

Some of my teachers are made of mud. See-through mud. Jeff Buckley is one of my teachers made of mud.

I have a Eugenio from his books, made of mud of sun and moonlight. I have a Eugenio who is a sharp, present man in sandals, blinking and watching the actors.

tracking mastery, Jeff Buckley

The first year of theatre, I was soaking & changing beyond recognition -- but it wasn't until a year later, when I began teaching, that anyone could see the change.

Right now at work is like that. Working on a booted team, I am absorbing task and product like they are the hidden word of god. My dreams are changing. My project is changing. My relationships. My perspective.

Alan Watts, one of the first western writers of Zen, says in his autobiography, "I have written 20 books, and they all lead to the same place. Each one starts from a different point on the hub, follows a different spoke to the center."

The easiest way for me to show what I'm learning would be to give examples from my work projects, which I can't do.

What can I tell you.

I work seven days a week. Sometimes I make myself stay away on Saturdays, but when I do, I pace for hours, thinking about work.

I track the work itself. But mostly I focus on the first derivative of the work -- on how the mastery of this compares to & informs the mastery of theatre directing & theCore/bootcamps. Any shift or illumination in one system ripples & radiates through two others. It is these systemic insights that are keeping me riveted.

I love talking to my brother; his masteries are of fishing, boats, wilderness, oceans, and children.

I am reading Jeff Buckley's biography. Jeff's story is like a Greek tragedy or a commedia -- I can scroll backward and forward, from laughing blond child with eidetic music memory, to the man vanishing in the undertow of the Mississippi river. Backward -- silver spandex pants at his first high-school gig. Forward -- renting a Memphis house to write in. Backward -- taking breaks from working at the cafe to get up & perform, crowds spilling into the street. Forward -- Half hour Kanga Roo jams at the end of each concert.

Backwards. Forwards.

My death awaits me as surely as my birth. Between, I balance on this green moment.

Backwards: Working in Carbonated Games, just after she had moved into that new office. Listening to country music that night she was lonely, when Jason, Joshua, Rich, & Brett were out of town.

When Jeff Buckley sings he transfigures, an artist lost in the labyrinth of the song, finding his way inward & upward to the holy end. Lost, lost, lost, true, true, true.

It looks like what I am doing is creating software, but actually I am following a Song as alluring and mysterious as Jeff Buckley's.

It is 1:00am. I am stopping now. I will write two project status reports, a group status, a monthly update, and a project doc before I go home. Today has already had 9 hours of meetings and writing three other docs. Tomorrow begins in 6 hours.

Whatever feels like prayer, I like to do constantly.

On my left hang the Medicine Buddha thangka painting; an iron tibetan gong engraved with conches; a photo of a prayer room with Jerusalem buildings painted on its wooden walls, its crossbeams overhead latticed with wisteria, open to the sky; and a picture of my last bootcamp's v1 painting that looks like primordial interstellar fire.

you are made in the image of what you desire

A life is either all spiritual or not spiritual at all. No man can serve two masters. Your life is shaped by the end you live for. You are made in the image of what you desire.

Solitude is not something you must hope for in the future. Rather, it is a deepening of the present, and unless you look for it in the present you will never find it.

-- Thomas Merton, Trappist monk

the Tarot said November

On my birthday I got a tarot reading for the upcoming year. The general arc was: "May through October is about integrity; doing the right thing, which will also be the hard thing. November it all comes together -- everything flowers in November."

working hard, growing lots

I am spending 90% of my attention and time at work. Working hard, growing lots, never home. Getting strong.

a tree in my livingroom

Friday they trimmed the branches by the powerlines. I found a magnificent vinemaple, as large as a small tree. Its trunk is the girth of a flagpole, spreading gracefully into 4 or 5 branches of delicate small Japanese-maple-like leaves, reaching 15 feet high and 18 feet wide.

I have been having this vision lately that my inner self -- whom I often visualize as a house -- has sprouted a tree from its floor, is peeling its roof back, and is growing the tree up through the center of the house toward the sky.

I couldn't wait to try it out.

I brought the tree inside, and did slowtens carrying it for two hours.

I felt like Dunsinane woods incarnate. When I moved, the whole tree moved with me, leaves trembling. Looking up, I gazed through a crown of leaves. Tadashi Suzuki says, When you turn, turn the whole world with your spine. I turned like a flower opening, mesmerized, watching the tree wheel above me, my house insubstantial behind it, for the length of a CD.

After a while I stood the tree in a bowl of water, standing upright against the cathedral windows. It is almost two stories high. Then I did slowtens inside it looking out; entwining between its branches; lowering until I was lying on the floor gazing up through its leaves. I saw:

- two leafy branches in the foreground; beyond them, dappled with leaves, my wall of theatre books. The tree looked real, the books looked like a dream. Like standing in green Narnia, looking back through the wardrobe
- a tree inside a window inside more trees
- a tree more real than my house, bursting with life inside the house
- a tree more real than my art table, standing stiff & pale beyond the leaves

It was the first theatre I have made in a long time. How do I put the spectator inside a tree? Can the spectators be Dunsinane? From which vantages does a tree retain this incredible impact? What would be better than a tree? How could I imperil a greek chorus?

A day later, the leaves had lost their fragrance. Two days later, they crisp and droop.

Last night I made art for hours, listening to U2's Rattle & Hum video over and over, drawing myself as a flowering tree.

I am working at the meta level almost constantly. Work projects and home ones look translucent, as if they are part of a play I don't realize I am creating, but which is shimmering into being.

Burn team

I have a friend, Danielle, who acted in my Medea a few years back. She works a lot in Seattle, and has since also become part of a professional burn team. If your movie or outdoor event needs someone, a professional stuntperson, to be set on fire, you can hire their team. She is the one who burns -- who is dowsed and set alight. There are four other people on the team, each with specific responsibilities to make sure the fire is safe, and that she is. The worst that has ever happened is once she singed her eyelashes.

An actor's resume has:

- all their stage roles
- all their film roles
- any backstage, design, or tech roles
- education & training
- Special Skills

The Special Skills section gives directors an idea of the actor's unique skills. If the actor can play guitar, for example, or juggle, the director might put those in the production.

The audience often does not realize how much training actors have. Here is the Special Skills section of Danielle's resume.

Special Skills
Singing, scuba diving (cold water/drysuit, wreck diving, rescue diving), swimming, footfalls, fire burns, stair falls, air ram, fighting for the camera or stage, high falls, bulldogging, ratchet work, riding jet skis, intermediate Spanish language, typing, computers, trapeze/aerial dance, horseback riding, skiing, softball, volleyball, yoga, dog training, basic wire work.

Passed basic proficiency with the Society of American Fight Directors in single sword and unarmed combat (2003), smallsword, broadsword, rapier and dagger, knife fighting (2004), and Quarterstaff (2005).

Her amount of stunt training is specialized & unique -- but almost any actor you see at the Rep or the Intiman likely holds similar Fight certification.

what are slow tens & shakuhachis?

Suzuki training with sticks

This is a brief overview -- a glimpse, not a full description.

Suzuki Training is a physical theatre training created by theatre director, Tadashi Suzuki. From the SITI, Saratoga International Theatre Institute site whose artistic director, Anne Bogart, is a long-time colleague of Tadashi Suzuki's:

SUZUKI METHOD
Developed by internationally acclaimed director, Tadashi Suzuki and the Suzuki Company of Toga, the Suzuki Actor Training Method's principal concern is with restoring the wholeness of the human body to the theatrical context and uncovering the actor's innate expressive abilities. A rigorous physical discipline drawn from such diverse influences as ballet, traditional Japanese and Greek theater and martial arts, the training seeks to heighten the actor's emotional and physical power and commitment to each moment on the stage. Attention is on the lower body and a vocabulary of footwork, sharpening the actor's breath control and concentration.

Slowtens are essentially a form of radiant ultra-slow walking. You only do these after you are dripping with sweat from an hour of hard physical movement. Like classical ballet floorwork, which is only begun after an hour of barre, slowtens are only done after the body is supple and hot from an hour of Walking, Marching, and Statues.

When you see people doing slowtens, they look like driftwood moving. Their glances are fixed, their gaze luminous, their bodies caught in windswept positions. They seem to not so much wade through space, as drift through it. They move like underwater statues. You want to, and can, examine the actors very closely when they are in such a state. They are like a suspended moment of a person, transfixing.


Slowtens used in performance


Robyn Hunt, my Suzuki teacher, in slowtens in The Water Station

Moving inside this form makes your thoughts as radiant and slow as the movement. You are not thinking, but slow truths arise.

Don't think, don't think, don't think. Don't know, don't know, don't know. Don't think.

One point of the training is that power for an actor arises from the earth. Connected to the earth, an actor can do anything.

Another point is to learn how to let the truth arise in each moment. Don't plan. Don't know before you get there. The truth of each moment discovered in that moment is far more wondrous and real than any forethought.

If you can learn to move this way, you can learn to live on stage, and in the world.


Performers at the end of a shakuhachi

Shakuhachis -- so-called because the song to which this part of the training is taught is played on the shakuhachi bamboo flute -- are the same ultra-slow-mo, moment-to-moment movement, but these begin with the actor lying collapsed on the floor.

When the music starts, the actor 1) slowly oozes upward to standing, 2) drifts to the front edge of the stage, 3) drifts back, and 4) sinks infinitesimally slowly all the way back to the earth. Extremely difficult and exacting.

As Roberta Carerri of the Odin says and Robyn Hunt, my Suzuki teacher, would agree, "A fall of even a millimetre is a fall."

Medea was a Highwayman

I did slowtens last night, using work projects as my visualizations instead of Hamlet & Ophelia, to the soundtrack of my Medea.

The thing is before my eyes
Learned from no rumor or lies:
Medea, without city or friends
And nowhere where pity extends --
O how you must suffer

Let a man rot
in an odious lot
if he never unshutters
his heart to the cleansing
esteem of another --
he'll not be my friend, no never

I did slowtens last week at work, in the room where we'd just finished a long team meeting. I moved like a drowned statue, wading in ultra-slow-motion from one corner of the room to the other. Flipcharts, tables, walls wavered, became flimsy in comparison to the pouring slowtruth, the keening vocals.

Whatever you want to memorize, do slowtens through it.

I have done slowtens through my mother's kitchen while she was cooking; from the back wall of the ghost-lit Seattle Opera House to the stage.

Last week I did them from one end of our small conference room to the other, amid bamboo stalks, leopard glass, orange gladiolias, stickybacked flipchart papers, cokes, tablets, markers, diamond-patterned chairs, whiteboards, turquoise fabric, The Timeless Way of Building, and Lorenna McKennit singing my father's favorite poem.

The road was a ribbon of moonlight
over the purple moor
when the Highwayman came riding
riding, riding
when the Highwayman came riding
up to the old inn door

Medea was a Highwayman. I am unshuttering my heart.

Slowtens are, for me, a harbinger of change. When I start to move physically, life moves are not far behind. I am doing slowtens, paying my bills, cleaning my house, running four projects at work, and dancing.

Joel on software

Paul, one of the developers on my team, turned me on to this guy Joel Spolsky, who writes a column called "Joel on software." The straight scoop.

I borrowed Paul's book, Joel on Software: And on Diverse and Occasionally Related Matters That Will Prove of Interest to Software Developers, Designers, and Managers, and to Those Who, Whether by Good Fortune or Ill Luck, Work with Them in Some Capacity.

006. booted team-PMs

Cymbeline

In theatre I learned best when I was:

- assisting or studying with a master director, while also
- directing my own play, while also
- teaching an acting class.

"Theatre is a received art," said Bart Sher during a Servant Of Two Masters rehearsal one afternoon. "Theatre is a received art," I told the students that night whom I was directing in Electra, and promptly taught them commedia techniques.

There is one chair in a rehearsal room for the Assistant Director. It is reserved for a young director to absorb the ecosystem of rehearsal. I love this chair. I sat in it for years, watching Mark, Leonid, Burke, Andrew, Lee, Bart, Vanessa, Nicolette, Robyn, Joseph, Jennifer, Eugenio.

The first day of rehearsal I would shiver, imagining that god had created the entire universe to give me this moment. The whole earth, all humans who have ever lived, theatre, Shakespeare, my parents; educating every person involved, creating this building & theatre, paying everyone, and bringing them all to this room this Tuesday, to incinerate in the truth of this text -- just to teach me.

Rachel. Meet Cymbeline, whispers god.
You do not meet a man but frowns: our bloods
No more obey the heavens than our courtiers
Still seem as does the king.

When I was assistant-directing, I would cover my paper with notes & sketches of what the director was doing. In the margins, I would write the principles I was abstracting.

PRINCIPLE: When teaching actors to sing, stand in a circle close enough that the song vibrates your body.
PRINCIPLE: When teaching actors to sing, don't talk. Sing.
PRINCIPLE: 1.5 hours of open voice-work/exploration in rehearsal triggers more breakthrough than 8 hours of straight rehearsal.
PRINCIPLE: Lining up shoes neatly outside the rehearsal room door shapes rehearsal ethics.

I'm doing the same thing now for a team of booted program managers, who are team-PMing their projects. The form changes, but the Work is the same: How to create ultra-high-performance ensembles which incarnate & create the Mystery.

PRINCIPLE: When doing something you don't know how to do, say "I don't know any other way to do this, other than to just start and go through the whole thing."
PRINCIPLE: Boot the team then boot the product.
PRINCIPLE: Have a booted team boot the team.
PRINCIPLE: The more unknown the task, the more iterations of studying it you should plan in the investigation phase.
PRINCIPLE: To understand a system, examine three levels of its meta plus a fourth to verify.
PRINCIPLE: Finish the biggest thing every meeting.
PRINCIPLE: Begin finishing the project before you start it.

Those apply precisely to directing a play.

005. a booted team is like having a computer

The difference of working on a booted team and an unbooted one is like the difference between having a computer & the internet, and not having it.

It is almost indescribable, the difference in the kind, quality, and rapidity of work.

I feel like Johnny Appleseed. I can plant two kinds of apples. Green apples, which grow up into theatre ensembles. And reddish apples, which grow up into booted teams.

That is a fun and funny thought.

Maybe there's a third kind of apple coming. Something less structured, more intimate, more rawly alive. Something that is being born in an office with a small round table, a steady stream of people, visualizations as I fall asleep & wake, and many walks to the river.

phase 2 ends here, the Odin crouched like a cougar

The previous post with the painting completes phase 2 of this blog. It represents a v1 integration of art, theatre, software, and wealth.

I almost ended the blog there.

But the Odin is crouched like a cougar on my shoulder, its gleaming gaze on the moonlit path before me.

There are lessons of the Odin I have yet to fulfill.

"Phoenix 11" - team painting

The team & our painting


Jason, Peter, Rachel


Left


Middle


Right

This is a team painting by a booted, i.e. ultra-high-performance, team. This is the 7th version of the painting. It is 15 feet long x 4 feet wide, acrylic on watercolor paper.

yesterday, today

Yesterday I watched a DVD of Yo Yo Ma (cello), Daniel Barenboim (piano), and Itzhak Perlman (violin) playing Beethoven's Triple Concerto. It was like a strange chamber music piece for 70 players -- 3 soloists and an orchestra. Daniel conducted from the piano, a Steinway grand with its top removed. They all followed each other by listening. Barenboim had his back to YoYo & Itzhak. Yo Yo Ma followed Itzhak intently, and Itzhak, so lame he had to haul himself to his chair with crutches, both legs in braces, led peremptorily.

It was the crutches that did it. Everyone there was playing in the face of death. Yo Yo as always, listened attentively. He listens to Itzhak. He listens to Daniel. In the beautiful soft beginning to the third section he listens even to his own cello, to hear the melody emerge.

Bootcamp has finished. I have the familiar hunger, hollow, & bleakness that follows a closing performance.

Yesterday was glory and joy.
Today, a blackened burn everywhere.
On the record of my life,
these two days will be put as one

-- Rumi

I have keys to three houses

Mine, plus two I'm housesitting. I could sleep in Seattle, Bellevue, or Carnation tonight. I slept in Mukilteo last night. Went up to visit my brother, who is in town from Alaska for work training. Had a great steak dinner, looked at the water, caught up.

004. go to your studio and make stuff (to BenS)

Dear Ben,

Talking with Ania was my first calibration in a long time. I had expected to feel a longing, an envy, that she is immersed in a rich & vibrant theatre company and I am not. Instead, I felt a profound equality. I am incredibly involved with my own theatre company -- with founding it, creating its second performance, shaping its form.

"You know how, when you're making a play, you are only fully alive in the rehearsal room?" I said. "How any time away from the rehearsal room is just waiting until you can return to it?" "Yes," she said, heartfelt, alight. "That is how I am with this bootcamp," I said. "It is the most real thing I'm doing, the edge of my work."

We had gone to Snoqualmie Falls that afternoon. Sunny, swarming with tourists. We climbed out to the foremost rocks, looking straight across the water to where twin falls crashed. "That is you and me," I said, gazing at the two. "What are we becoming?" Where the water falls, there is great spray, a deep pool, a broad and shallowing river coursed with rocks, the winds away.

She sang lightly an ancient Greek song, a ululation, as we stood in the spray. I stood beside her, shoulders touching, so I was within the song's small circle. I sang an underharmony, a bass with wail-attack that then droned. I cannot follow this kind of singing, only find its ground. I took pictures of her in front of the waterfall. The best was one without the falls, of her leaning against a rock higher than herself, looking like a piece of the rock.

That night we ate steaming mushroom spaghetti over fat ravioli, with sharp white cheddar cheese, toasted bread, cold carrot slaw with pepper, hot peas & corn, chilled water, tea.

She is the first guest I have had for a meal -- for whom I have provided the meal, where we sat at the dining table, and ate.

"Are you always like this?" she asked, as we drove to the airport a few days later. I nodded. "Whenever I am making a performance," I said. More accurately, whenever I am making a company that is making a performance.

Microsoft is itself an orthogonality. Making games for Microsoft is like the monastery making bread to sell in the town; not its primary work, but necessary.

"Find some work to do for the town which is not theatre," said Julia Varley, at the Odin. "Find another way to connect."

Meeting Anis is the first time I have met someone from an Odin, who although away from their Odin, like me carries their Odin within; and is, in fact, their Odin. We were a little piece of god meeting a little piece of god, as particles of god.

You wrote, "Just do it. Find the space any way you can. Just train." Mine is the same -- "Just do it. Find the space & the people who want to transform into a company, any way you can. Just train & make a company who is making a performance."

The next level is to "Just do it" for the highest level -- for clear upfront contracts, for solid support, for the beautiful space in nature, which this work requires. Which I require, to generate this work.

I am readinga writings on nature by Thomas Merton, the Franciscan monk. The sections are: The seasons... the elements... the sentinels... sanctuary. The sections each have several chapters, except Sanctuary which has only one: the forest. "The forest is my bride," he writes. At one point he is walking through a 2-mile forest which someone has just given the monastery. Deep in its heart, he says that just being here is enough to bring any human to enlightenment. To center, to peace.

I live on 5 acres of land. My house, garage, woodshed, & yard are all crept near the road, on the front part of the first acre. Behind, the other 4 acres slant down to a stream, then stretch up a long wilderness hill. My land ends at the top of the hill, where I have only been once, the day I bought it. My neighbors have left theirs wild as well. In the woods between us live a bear, several deer, raccoons. I love being part of a silent complicity, sanctuary for a bear.

Last week I discovered a well-worn trail across my land. It leads up from the stream, wends beside the house, then out through the tall-grass & blackberrries to the pond. I follwed it, bemused, to where it vanished into the reeds by the water.

"That's not a pond," observed Aric two years ago. "That's a big hole in the ground that will eventually widen out until its flat, and everything will fall into it." He is right. The bench has fallen in, and the bank, and it's heading for the trees. "Fix the pond" is on my to-do list.

When Staniewski was ready to found his theatre he rode all over Poland, rural and populated, on a motorbike, looking for the place most conducive for a theatre. He eventually chose Gardzienice, in the most rural of eastern Poland. The next city to the east, I believe, is Kiev. "His motorbike broke in Gardzienice," said Ania.

That is the phase I am entering. The search for where to found this company. I am already founding it, by doing the work.

The biggest thing different about this bootcamp is how saturated with reality it is. In a usual bootcamp, people create paintings; performances; things you can create in a week-long offsite. In this one we create things in the real world.

Do we need a consciously metaphoric form, like theatre or bootcamp, as a lens for reality? Or would any form do? Again, I return to the monastery as my model.

I am a monk of theatre. As are you. Of theatres which do not yet exist, because we have not yet created them; or, are creating them each time we go in the studio. But monks in a lineage, nonetheless.

You say your work in the studio is to prepare the space for the one who will come. You are the one who will come. Being in the studio, you are already beginning to arrive.

Go to your studio and make stuff, says Fred Babb.

rachel

003. completing, changing form (to BenS)

dear Ben,

I feel half-embodied.

I enter this work through chakras 1, 2, 6, and 7 -- base of spine, pelvis, third-eye, and crown. My central three are almost missing -- stomach, heart, voice.

I need my stomach, heart, and voice.

This bootcamp completes next week. I feel I have worked out with only my right side for two months. My left side did not get exercised. It will not, until the form changes. I will change the form next bootcamp.

Radmila brought Saint Andre's cheese. A strong brie the colour of butter, with warm French bread and fresh peaches, which we ate on white-iron tables behind the cafeteria.

In bootcamp, we are making a painting 20 feet long and 4 feet wide, all of us painting on it together. It will go through 5 versions. We used up all my paint, bought more.

There is a point when a phase of work completes. Whether I am done or not, I feel a small click in my chest, saying "That's finished." I ignored the theatre click for more than a year, but it was finished that whole time. "This is my last bootcamp," it said today. Click.

I need a new form, or to extend this one. Something is completing beautifully. Many somethings.

Tomorrow I am going to Snoqualmie Falls. I'll hike down to the water, walk on the rocks, & get my first massage. The massage is the heart of the sun -- the door I never go through which is the only door remaining.

My body is the door remaining. Pulling blackberries and washing windows. I left my house where I left my self.

The hot sweet cup of tea made at home, barefoot on wood floors, in forest silence, restores me.

At the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, there were only so many hours a day I could practice piano, before piano thinned out and I needed to walk, to eat, to sleep, to swim, to go hear McCoy Tyner play, to talk. After a year, I left the Conservatory completely, walked into the Oberlin Dance Company, and stayed for 2 years.

I wonder what it is, that is completing.

On the round table in my office sit a broad-leafed plant; 3 bamboo stalks in an earthen vase with shiny dark green dragonflies; a Polish bowl of tangerines, peaches, apples, and oranges; my Tibetan mala; a tablet; a color printout of our painting; and a bag with crackers, ham, & cheese.

rachel

002. actors & software developers (to Joseph)

I am really writing all of you. Anyone can comment. Picking a specific person helps me write freely.

dear Joseph,

That said, actors go much farther in the work than booted people. Booted actors outdistance both by nearly an order of magnitude.

Actors feel and move. Actors know the cellular precision of the body. They understand kinesthetically and spiritually, the spectrum of human strangeness. They can enter & traverse the Mystery. An actor knows the difference between the truth, and any shade of falsity. An actor lives the levels of evocation, knows how they arise, where they root in the body. An actor IS the search. An actor craves & is nourished by the astonishing and poetic layers of truth.

Software developers think and talk. They know the atomic precision of thought. A thinker gazing at the entire map of reality, can illumine & shift it with an insight. A thinker knows the power of meta. A thinker scales; any problem can be comprehended, entered, sifted. A thinker is an instantaneous zoom lens. What they see, they comprehend. A thinker IS the search. A thinker craves & is nourished by the astonishing and poetic layers of truth.

I have one system that gets to truth through bodies. Another that gets to truth through thought. I am both -- a kinesthetic who can think. I think with my body. I solve my hardest problems by moving, by having physical contact all over me, or both. I am delighted & fed by thinking. Receiving thinking from a gifted thinker is like standing in a waterfall of god. Thinking feels like wet light.

I want run labs to combine the two.

I need a company that craves both. The Microsoft people in my acting classes are gorgeous -- brilliant, hungry, gifted, soft, fluent in languages & skills. Once they stop trying to squeeze everything through the tiny pipeline of their minds, and start using their whole human sentiences, they are amazing.

Recursive ideas are the most powerful.

How do you get people to own a theatre? Give it to them. Those who cleaned the Odin, owned it. I own the Odin still. I wonder if I own Microsoft. Not in the same way.

=====

My game team created a stunning presentation last week. We transformed an entire space -- furniture, fabrics, plants, music, Tibetan temple rug, antique wood carry-box from China, prayer flags, slate ikebana vase, green and orange 20-sided dice, a clear glass pendant with the diamond sutra engraved on it in Chinese, green & yellow folders of handouts, agenda on the whiteboard, luminous 8" x 11" color photos of each team member caught gazing away from the camera, projector, laptop, network, good speakers, working code to demo, and -- "Here's the progress on our game, here's the options we recommend, here's the guidance we seek."

I dressed up. Black coat, white cotton blouse, tight faded jeans, black boots, hair pulled back, red glasses, silver necklace; and on my left wrist, a string of worn tibetan mala beads, a red watch, & a blue rubber bracelet saying COURAGE.

Version your way toward the vision.

=====

A monastery is the closest analog I have for a theatre laboratory. The Odin is the closest I have experienced. In a monastery, the monks are both cast and crew; there is no duality.

There is no duality between mind and body. There is no duality between product and process. If I change how I think of these, all will melt into something slicingly precise. Naming a thing creates the thing.

Microsoft resembles monastic life in its spartan nature. We are focussed on our practice of thinking and doing, and we are strong at it. We don't, however -- in my opinion, that is; I do not speak for the company on this or anything -- have the pure shared vision that connects straight from the core of the earth, through all sentient beings to god, that a theatre does. There is something good and pure here, though; a skein of light emanating from the people. An innocence.

=====

Sometimes I think I am constructing labs to learn how to love. Some people just know how to love. I am off studying it, wending my way toward it. I suspect that my brother, holding any of his children, knows more than I with all my theatre. He knew when he was five he wanted babies. I knew when I was five I wanted to be an artist.

Love has many names.

"You know all these tricks with people," said a friend at work. "The trick is love," I thought slowly the next day.

The softer I become toward myself, the softer I am toward others. One of the requirements of a buddhist monk founding a monastery, is that they must feed and nourish themselves first. Not to the scarcity point, but past that, to one of gentle abundance. "In this way, you will develop lovingkindness, and be able to spread it."

The tibetan monks say "mind" and they tap their heart. "Lovingkindness," the lamas say, tapping their heart. "Train the mind," tapping the heart.

Actors become parched, worn to the bone, by financial poverty. Although they are immersed in sacred practice, in meaningful work, their spirits erode under the constant financial stress. At this point, they can no longer make truthful art. They become crippled, skewed, and their work fails to nourish.

Software developers, by contrast, become parched & worn by time poverty. Although immersed in financial plenty, and engaging work, their spirits erode under the constant stress of too little time. They do not have time with their families, their bodies, their dreams, their friends, or their communities. "When can you come to dinner?" I asked a friend at work once. "In 20 years," he said, not joking. They become crippled, skewed, and their work fails to nourish.

Or, rather, in both cases, *I* become crippled, skewed, and my work fails to nourish.

The human spirit needs its full mysterious sustenance.

The Odin has enough money, enough time, enough space.

"What would you create, if you had the gift of creating sanctuary?" I asked Juval. "A sanctuary of sanctuaries," he said.

How do I create a sanctuary for me? Which is, in turn, a sanctuary, a spiritual foundry, an oasis & fresh spring for the world, a ceaseless source of spiritual renewal & financial wealth -- with a company of gifted and evolving artists/thinkers/makers?

How do I make a company that enables me to grow up all the way, become one of the great-oak, fully-realized humans -- and so, the company, and so, the audience, and so, the world?

Working with my bootcamp team at work is transforming me. A tiny instance of a company, for a tiny fraction of time -- but a source of radiant light & power, nonetheless. I am yeast. If I am added to a group of people, we all become something incredibly more, unpredictable, different. I can't do it alone.

Before Brett and I moved in together, we were both isolated. We kept our doors & shades closed. The day we moved in together, our door opened, the shades opened, plants sprang up everywhere, and a round table appeared for guests. Who is the yeast? Who can tell.

It's fractal, of course. ("Isomorphic," says Jim.) Cleaning my kitchen is cleaning the company is cleaning the world.

With that, I'm now turning to cleaning at Microsoft -- write my review; write meeting notes; and write v1 of how two people can form an infinitely fractal & recursive shining school of greatness, creating great games & great teams.

Tomorrow I go see Ania. I don't have your home number, Joseph. I left a message on Zhenya's cell, to see if we can hook up tomorrow, Sunday afternoon. Let me know. Work (best) = 425-705-8405, or email realrachel@aol.com.

"Garrrrr-DZEH-neet-seh," says Ania, rolling the r's.

rachel
ps. There is no duality between actors & software developers either. There is no duality in me.
pps. Booted actors are the fullest expression of me, that's why they go farthest -- they are getting the very best of what I know. It's only my fear that stops me from making everyone I teach a booted actor.

fractal music

001. booting (to Joseph)

I am going to try the, "Write to one person & let everyone else listen in" method of blog posting. Anyone can comment. This is just a technique to write more freely.

Dear Joseph,

You know how an actor works and works, and then one day enters a phase of transition, where masks and blocks start melting away? Day by day, the actor is more supple, strange, fresh, true. I watched Laurence, doing dance-theatre by day and Suzuki training by night, transmute. He became molten. "You are almost ready to work naked," observed Lee. There was no "no" left, just a steady radiant "yes."

That's where I am.

Much is asked, then more is asked.

After 18 years of developing software, I found myself in a small start-up, McCarthy Technologies, running week-long team labs called Bootcamps. These were conscious experiments in how to reliably & reproducibly create ultra-high-performance teams. Students had to form a team, use the protocols, and ship something Great in a week. Assignments were recursive, the results astounding. Stanislavski's ideal lab.

We gradually evolved a system of protocols called "theCore," that worked. Lithe, angelic, brutal, joyful teams -- as carelessly interactive as a pack of 10-year-olds, with the maturity & grace of adults -- were intentionally creating Greatness.

The basic effect of "booting" is a huge "first reduce noise, then send signal" clarity. Rapport improves by an order of magnitude.

Think of the difference between rehearsal and daily life. The purity & sacred rigor of rehearsal. How clearly signal is transmitted in a deep rehearsal, versus how noisily & muddily signal is transmitted in normal life. Now imagine that people in daily life were working in the same aware & heightened state as rehearsal; that they could do ANYTHING as well as actors can walk & sing. That's what booted teams can do.

This is bliss on earth, to work & create with people in this state.

"Our problems were created with our current way of thinking," says Einstein. "To solve the problems, we must think in a different way." Booted thinking is thinking in a different way.

"As a director, you have a different complicity with the actors than with the staff," said Eugenio. "You don't have to," I said. "But it is very unusual." "I have never seen it," he said.

People working on a meta-level, a heightened level, are working much more powerfully than on the direct level. When you focus on the meta-level, you get the direct-level results almost for free.

You think it's hard to describe Grotoswki's work, try describing this.

But oddly, of everyone I've met in theatre, Grotowski is the closest to what I'm doing. "I walked out of paratheatre into theatre," I told Eugenio.

What do you call it when all of life is theatre? When a wild human can, just as an actor stands naked in the work, stand naked in their life and work in the same aware-yet-surrendered way an actor works?

I have found that any Way requires scrupulous protection, a classical system of training, meticulous practice. In scripted theatre, the actor is scrupulously protected by the text; in physical theatre, by the form & levels of evocation. Here, the protocols of theCore provide that scrupulous protection, make possible the stunning release.

It lets people be gods & mortals at once, to simultaneously BE the entire fractal system in their own bodies. I stumble on earth, I stumble in heaven, I stumble in my karma, all at once.

It's the endless knot. Everything IS all connected, all the time. It's Indra's net.

========

One day I was thinking about how to do a perfect clap. The most authentic Rachel clap possible.

First I visualized directing an entire production of Hamlet, ending with Fortinbras surveying all the dead bodies and clapping once.

Then I thought, no -- MY perfect clap is I walk into the theatre. The stage is empty. The house is full, expectant. The whole audience stands up, performs a play they have never done before, spontaneously & perfectly, and as one -- claps.

That's the Rachel clap. That's what I can create.

========

I have created software since 1979, computer games since 1989.
I have created using theCore & led bootcamps since 1997.
I have created theatre since 1998.
This year, 2006, everything is combining.

I can work with wild humans with the same presence, force, Art talks, laughter, compassion, & results, that I work with actors. Everyone looks like actors to me.

My true image of me at Microsoft right now, is an ultra-slow-motion film of a match falling into a lake of gasoline. My level of awareness & work, when applied to this quality & brilliance of minds, is compoundingly incendiary. Not fire, but wildfire.

Let us burn.

========

Such work requires a pristine foundation and self-care.

I started booting people at work. I am now in a group where everyone in it is booted, and working at that high pure level. I have a waiting list of people who want it. I am choosing by who wants it the most, and who, in my archaic bootcamp/rehearsal eyes, is likely to stay the course.

I am booting for my own joy.

I am booting like I rehearse.

In a month, or six, I will have better language for this.

This is why you have not heard from me. I am engrossed in the most fascinating rehearsal process, and I have no language to describe what I am doing. "What is this system?" asked Ania. "It is... mutuality," I said, a correlary from Staniewski's Gardzienice philosophy.

========

Radmila is in Tibet. "I went to see the monks," she said. "I asked a blessing for you and your bootcamp."

Hope you are well. Love to Zhenya & Catherine.

rachel

rehearsing at work

Teaching bootcamp at work is like rehearsing at work. Exhilerating. Creating conscious people to work with -- and then working with them -- is fantastic.

francis dancing

"Walk me to get coffee," I said to Francis, one of the developers on my team. "Okay," he said. We walked down, talking about programming languages. While we waited for the barista, I noticed Francis was swaying. His eyes were glazing off into space, his white t-shirt hanging limp, and his feet moving in an absent-minded slow crossover.

"Are you dancing?" I asked. He goes dancing & kung fu 5 times a week. "Yes," he said, still staring at the ceiling, moving dreamily through the steps.

sleepless, Ania, joy, Uma

I wake up at 5:38 every morning, with no alarm. I leave work between midnight & 3:30am. I need more sleep.

My officemate, Brett, said he'd go to the gym with me. We start tomorrow. Then I'll sleep more.

I bought a dayplanner today.

I feel spread across the galaxy. Worn thin with ecstasy, with lack of container, with weariness. Teaching bootcamp at work is like acting in open air. It takes forever to build a paltry fire, compared to the crucible of an offsite.

I have moved to new level of integrity, and now lots of things grate on me. I made of list of "THIS needs to be destroyed..." "... so that THIS can be created."

I am keeping a budget.

Ania is here, Gardzienice incarnate, and I have only seen her the first weekend when Seattle was unholy hot -- which, Kipley, is an exception; we're generally not humid, and YES you should move here, move everyone here, Carmen & Cornel too -- and I was dripping with sweat and she was not. She is liking the Skinner intensive. Ben, write me -- or write her -- and get the phone number where she is staying.

I feel like a sailboat that is turning through the wind. Where you point straight into the wind, the sails lose their force, luff, then just lay horribly limp while you saw with the tiller, until finally, faintly, you have come through it, and the cotton begins to billow again. That's what I feel like -- like I have come through some great laxness, and now the sails are starting to fill.

My alignment -- my personal tuning fork right now -- is Joy. I am focussing on what brings me joy. Turns out, there's a ton of clean-up to wade through to get to Joy.

Katagiri Roshi says the purpose of structure in our lives is to outgrow it. "We create it, we use it to support us through a very specfic stage of growth -- and then we must destroy it, to create the next one." He also calls this, "Pouring our snake spines into a bamboo pole."

I have many structures that have served me for years, which it's time to destroy.

Scott Peck, author of If you meet the buddha on the road, kill him says we put ourselves in pickles, to force ourselves to grow.

I have created a great pickle for myself right now. If I were just living in it, it would make me crazy. But looking at it as a lab which I have created -- "How DO I deal with this person at work? The same way I always have, leading to the same results? Or try something new?" -- lends it interest.

Life is like a dream I keep forgetting I'm dreaming. Only the bootcamp parts, my family, and my most intimate friends seem real.

I saw My Super Ex-Girlfriend. In all of Uma's last few movies, I keep having the same feeling -- I can't look away from her, and yet she is SO much bigger than this part. I wish someone would write a part that wreaks her.

I wonder if I could write a part Uma couldn't play.

I'd have to give her a partner she couldn't keep up with.

two of my teams at work

associate core director

I am now an Associate Core Director of the McCarthy Technologies system. Only one step away from the top certification, Certified Core Director. The only thing I'm lacking is having booted an entire organization.

interviewed for a book, I write best by speaking

Fran Fisher, founder of The Academy for Coach Training, is writting a book on the Living Your Vision process, working title: Release Your Brilliance.

She sent me the list of interview questions. I responded in writing, then today we had a phone-interview to follow up. She and I are surprisingly aligned.

I noticed the difference between my written answers -- which were careful and edited -- and my spoken answers in conversation, which were boundless, authentic, true. It's the same thing I've noticed in this blog.

Maybe I should be writing my book by talking it.

Bono - there are stories to tell that are not songs

I was looking for people who are fully expressed as a team, fully expressed as themselves, and fully expressed in the world. People like I am becoming.

Reading Kipley's blog turned me on to U2 and their lead singer Bono.

I just read a great book of interviews with him, BONO in conversation with Michka Assayas.

This is a stunning book. It's someone who's made it all the way to rock-and-roll stardom, change-the-world activist & ethicist, and family guy who takes his kids to school. A man and an artist who has grown up all the way, and is fully himself.

Bono knew Michka well. This is their liesurely & reflective conversation over three years.

"I don't think of U2 as a band that makes music for 20 thousand people. I think of us as a band that sings to one person in their ear, in their headphones, as they are going to sleep."

"I don't want to be naked and vulnerable on stage. But I can't hit the high notes unless I am."

"Ordinarily, I would not make a book like this. I would rather go be with my kids. But if I can make this a book for my kids, it's worth it."

"I'm a person who actually doesn't like to look back in my work, in my day, in general. But maybe this is the moment. There are stories to tell that are not songs."

-- Bono

bootcamp & theatre

People who have learned theatre from me first go way further with theCore. They enter hungry, soft, limitless, trusting, true.

Whatever I'm headed toward, I need to teach theatre first.

home, work, bootcamp, i am the eightfold path

Jeff has moved out. I changed the answering machine to my voice.

I made the livingroom into an art studio. It has a big white table at one end, and couches opposite for gazing. I sleep in the small bedroom downstairs. I have no vision for upstairs. The winds are still settling.

Work is absorbing. I am doing my game project. And I am leading a Bootcamp to teach the McCarthy shared-vision system, "theCore," to two other program managers. I called it a cross-divisional best practices group. Like a great-winged seabird, it is lifting. Everything is converging. Theatre, bootcamp, vision teams, life-coaching, software. It feels like one big rehearsal room, except what we are making is our lives.

I am, finally, trained.

Ania arrives this Friday. I pick her up in the evening.

In my office, eight yellow flowers spray from the shale base.

Morgan, my life coach, graduated from the Academy last week. I went. It regrounded me with the Academy. And with Morgan, who lives in Oregon.

I have new eyes to see with, but no words for what I see.

joy, wisdom, instinct --
paint the wall yellow, make way for
babies; all lives change

i am the eightfold
path, iron arms outstretched, shiva
fingers mudra-soft

the electric bill
and the monastery are
equally my own

sanctuary makes
a sacred place to breathe; built
new each fumbling day

if i went to Tibet
i would only miss the
blond boardrooms of home

where souls like starsails
furl and catch, bellying to
terrifying skies

Fixed the Odin Teatret links

I fixed the links in the post with all the Odin links. This has many of my favorite writings, especially the "Odin zero" thru "Odin 7" posts.

I've lost 18 pounds in the last 6 weeks

It doesn't show yet, but I can feel it when I move and sit. I fit in my slimmer jeans again.

My pattern is, I do all my growing ahead of time -- over a long time, typically -- then make all the changes fast & easily. I think that is happening with my body. Suddenly I don't feel heavy any more. I feel long and lean and like my body just needs to catch up with the rest of me now. Weight is melting away.

It has coincided with greater alignment at work. I am doing meaningful work of great joy, that requires and extends my theatre & team skills.

rachel and her portrait

rachel

dowser, team lab meets theatre lab

I feel like a dowser looking for water.

Through inexplicable grace, I am getting to teach a small team at work "theCore", the McCarthy system for ultra-high-performance teamwork. I studied teams in labs with the McCarthys for 6 years. I studied ensemble theatres in labs for 7 years. Doing a new lab that extends this work, I feel joyful and strong.

My next experiment will be to teach a group of software folks theCore AND ensemble theatre techniques, and make a piece.

On other fronts, my game project is going well. We're using the Agile project-management system, with monthly Sprints and daily Scrums, and progress has leapt forward. Once the team settles down, I will offer it theCore as well.

my new office

The view from the door


Our plants and Brett's desk


Rachel


Brett


The view out the window


My view

Akropolis's Oedipus shines

Oedipus and Jocasta


Oedipus and the Wheel of Fortune

[Photos by Julia Salamonk]

I saw Akropolis Performance Lab's Oedipus Saturday. I am seeing it again this Saturday.

Get tickets now; their shows are selling out. They have just added an 11pm show Saturday 6/16.

For tickets call Brown Paper Tickets, at 1-800-838-3006.

Full show info in this post.

More pix (& some spoilers) here, at www.myspace.com/akropolisperformancelab then click "Pics".

Mature audiences only; some nudity.

It was a double pleasure to see Akropolis -- with their Grotowski-lineage exactitude of physicality & harmony -- tackle something as infinite and iron as Oedipus. If you like Greek tragedies, you will love this production.

Akropolis productions are consistently world-theatre productions. It's like seeing one of Ariane Mnouchkine's or Robert LePage's productions -- the work is at a miraculously exacting standard of physicality and evocation which continues to nourish, stimulate, shock, feed, resonate for weeks afterward. Oedipus is no exception. It meets the shining standard established by Akropolis in their Dream of a Ridiculous Man, Jeanne The Maid, Song of Songs, and Macbeth.

The show is getting rave reviews. Look up this production on www.seattleperforms.com, and click the "Reviews" tab. I am overjoyed to see Akropolis finally starting to get the recognition and following it deserves.

The house in which this was performed was perfect. High-ceilinged, old wood floors, formal wallpaper, beams. It felt like the play had sprung, in living sprites, from the empty wood floor, to perform and vanish. Like a spring rain, saying "Oedipus was here."

I found it a surprisingly intimate production. There was not a lot of trapping or formality between me and Oedipus, the king. Instead, there stood this lean chiseled man, wrestling with his duty and his conscience, on a bare floor.

I heard once of an Antigone performed in the canyons of a National Park at dawn. "It felt not like a play, but like a ritual," said the spectator. "A ritual that takes place every dawn, somewhere in the world, and I had just happened to stumble upon it."

That's what this Oedipus was like. Somehow, between the cracks of the world, Oedipus sometimes issues forth and takes form, to ceaselessly try to solve the insoluble. Again he marries Jocasta. Again he discovers the truth. Again he vanishes. I wondered about the house we were in -- if it had older bones, older truths. Perhaps it is no coincidence where, on this earth, Oedipus appears; perhaps the cry can only ring forth where the cry has already been heard.

now is the time to give me roses

Now is the time to give me roses,
not to keep them for my grave to come.
Give them to me while my heart beats,
give them today while my heart yearns for jubilee.
Now is the time...

-- Mzwakhe Mbuli

writing to one person (Odin)

Most of the earliest posts of this blog about the Odin, did not start out as blog posts. They were originally emails, to some particular person.

I love those posts. They are deep, liesurely, filled with breath and grace.

I want to see if I can write like that here -- directed to one person, but for all to read. But not now. It is 10:44pm, I am wide awake -- and will be till 2:00am -- and I have much I want to write for work before tomorrow morning.

When work is not just work, but my own shining Work -- the latest Lab in the long line of theatre & teamworx -- it feels like worship.

one plus one is all
it takes to open
ten thousand gates of heaven

end of an era

Jeff Allen-Burkhart

Jeff is moving out Wednesday.

"We should have a ceremony," he said. "Let's burn down the house," I said. We only have one house rule -- Don't burn down the house.

I don't have a vision, yet, of how I will live there after he's gone. When he said he was moving out, my first impulse was for me to move out too.

When a relationship unfolds organically and truly, I feel peaceful no matter where it goes.

This picture is the only one I could find on the net of Jeff. But he doesn't look like this any more. He looks darker, clearer, more loose and true.

Intiman, Richard III, my evolving work

The Intiman Theatre just won the Tony Award for "Best Regional Theatre." This is in recognition of their good work, and also for how well that work travels to venues such as Long Wharf, Broadway, London. Bart's show at Lincoln Center, Awake and Sing!, was also nominated for several Tony's, including Best Director.



Bart's Richard III opens soon, running 6/9 - 7/15 at the Intiman. This is Bart's only Seattle show this year. It's Shakespeare, which is his sweet spot. And it's a play he has directed twice before, which means he is warmed up and can go places only possible after dived fully into the material twice before.

Here is a video of Bart talking about Richard III. Click either the High-Res link or the Low-Res one, depending on the speed of your connection.

Richard III is a show I recommend seeing twice. Once to let it wash over you. The second time to see all the things you missed the first time. This show is of the excellence we would normally need to travel to Ashland, Oregon to see -- but it's right here in town.

As always, Intiman tickets for people age 25 or under are only $10.

=========

So why do I write about this? Because watching the Intiman blossom & flourish, watching Bart's directing deepen & mature, is like watching a rosebush flower. Or watching a tree grow as its branches become massive, its trunk thickening to grandeur.

It's the same joy I feel watching Kipley's puppet theatre take off. There is no magic. Day by day, these are just hard-working people, doing what they love. Yet year by year, there is perceptible, sometimes startling, change.

Your job is to do whatever is necessary to get this work into the world, says Eugenio Barba.

It gives me hope. I am grateful for their constant effort for the good. The world is a cleaner place for such effort. Bart or Kipley making theatre; Rich or Brett making games; Lee making dance; Jeff growing as a person; Jim practicing therapy; mastery is just a by-product of their consistent work. The process feels juicy, whole, natural.

I don't have a name for my form yet. But it is growing as surely. It used to have a form, which was theatre. Now it is formless, but none the less massive, powerful, or continually-evolving, for being currently invisible. I am using this power shakily in team meetings, more surely with individuals. It is like riding horses of the wind, using reins made of wind, which dissolve and reform -- now solid, now moist air.

I don't know what I'm doing yet. But this is the first true follow-on to the initial work with Lyon, which was, in turn, the first true follow-on to theatre.

In the big picture, this is the part where I go sideways and paint for a while. I am literally painting, with Wes, and metaphorically painting, making videogames. Meanwhile, my theatre self grows and evolves, rippling in the free dark of the unconscious.

paint progress - 5/25

Wes has started working from photos instead of live models. He still likes live models, but this way we can paint at our pace, rather than waiting for our schedules to mesh with the models'. Wes's Mae West Fest plays have finished, so he has time to work. His drawing has leapt to a new level -- fewer lines, surer strokes, the essence captured. I went over this week, and he had more than 10 faces drawn, ready to paint. I was blown away.

I am going to get a duplicate palette and start painting at home, so I can paint more often. Also, then I can work on backgrounds while Wes works on faces. Then we can work together during our weekly seshes.

It worked well to take a few weeks off. I need regular breaks.

We're almost out of the Punjab paper, which Daniel Smith has discontinued. I'll look for a similar Indian Village substitute, 20" x 30". We want to stay with the same format for all 50 portraits.

I'm also working on the model release form, so we can get expectations & rights squared away.

In the last three weeks, Wes and I have both had our birthdays. This time next year, we'll be opening our show.

give your longing to wound

Give your longing to wound
and to own more things
away to the willow

--Basho (1644-1694), translated by Robert Bly

home from Bethlehem

tasting fore-echoes
of the dark god's Song, i
remember who i am

bigger than when last
i looked, nameless and less sure --
home from Bethlehem

my mother waters
pineapple sage, columbine,
with an old brown hose

john stands against the
sky, blue shirt, sweeping the roof,
crowned by green maple

pileated woodpecker
digs her claws in the sill,
bellies to the glass

i can no longer
tell the sacred from the plain --
all work is the Work

articles & Public Service Announcements

I notice my blog is a combination of articles -- posts about what I am thinking or doing -- and Public Service Announcements.

After not blogging for a while, yesterday I caught up on my PSA's. Did you know that:

- Akropolis is performing their next show in an old mansion?
- Jerry Peerson's got a website with his tunes on it?
- Ana's company, Gardzienice, does transcendant rigorous work in Eastern Poland?

There's a lot of other processing going on.

I am having huge insights right now around:

- United 93, the glory of men, movies, community-based theatre, respect, Microsoft
- how to get More Joy Now, especially at work
- my life work, catalyzing growth & thereby growing, cocooning, destruction that is creation
- MFA koan, Teamworx, self-actualizing recursion
- it's not "Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's, and unto god that which is god's." It's all Caesars and it's all god's. It's all god/Caesar's. And we, also, are god/Caesars/temple-sweepers.
- how everything's connected
- life coaching
- doing it the new way

New therapy office

Jim Rapson

I have been seeing therapist Jim Rapson since October 1997. Well, today marked our last session in the building he's had all this time. The next time I see him, we'll be across town in his new digs.

It feels great. Like a huge snow day.


Where the old office was

Jerry Peerson -- check out his music

Jerry Peerson, songwriter/musician

Here is Jerry Peerson's website, the guitar-player/singer we painted, who performed at Wes's gallery opening. He performs around Seattle regularly. Check out his site, listen to his tunes. My favorites are Fidele Amour, Y, Tell Elizabeth, and in some nostalgic way because my dad would have loved this song, JRC. There is another that I loved in concert but don't see on his site, Tequila, that begins like a crooning lullabye, then gradually blossoms into a full-on power ballad.

There's also an email list on the site, to sign up for announcements.



Playing the Seattle Music Northwest Rock Folk Indie

Jerry has a couple gigs coming up this week, if you're in Seattle.

---Wed.May 17th-2006
Performing a few songs solo by the request of birthday girl India Turner. There
will be multiple artists performing so this should be an eclectic and enjoyable
event. Jerry will play around 900pm
Caffe Bella-located @2621 fifth ave 206.441.4351
http://www.myspace.com/indiaturner
http://www.caffe-bella.com/

---Fri.May 19th-2006
Jerry will be playing twice this night. First as a solo act then with the band
Altspeak. http://www.myspace.com/altspeak
Show begins at 930 Pm- 6$ cover
Located @ the Rainbow, 722 NE 45th St, Seattle http://www.therainbowlive.com/calendardesc.html

Hope to see you.

Best,
JLPeerson
www.myspace.com/jerrypeerson
www.jerrypeerson.com

Note -- our painting of him is on his myspace site. COOL!

Music map - Live Plasma

So check this out, with thanks to Rick Kolesar for the link: Live Plasma, at www.liveplasma.com.

You type in the name of a musician or band that you like. Up pops this "map" of similar artists. Kind of like Amazon's, "People who bought this book you're looking at, also bought these other four."

The map looks like this.


Musicians you might like, if you like the Indigo Girls

Paint progress - 5/16, moms, sales

Here's where we are.



Here is another format I was trying earlier, with thumbnails.



The top one is more visually accurate. And it includes our moms. You gotta paint your mom.

"I don't want to sell any of paintings," I said. "I'd sell them all," said Wes. "In a heartbeat." "You'd sell me?" I said. "I'd sell you. I'd sell my mom. I'd sell your mom." I started to laugh. "We both need the money," he went on. "We can always paint more." I began to get charmed. I realized I COULD sell almost any of them. Especially if we have the ability to make high-quality prints. Except Holly, we promised her she could keep hers. And I bet the moms want theirs.

Akropolis's Oedipus opens in 2 weeks

Oedipus, by Akropolis Performance Lab

Akropolis is about to open their new piece, Oedipus. With several new company members, the piece is being shown in a nontraditional site -- the historic, Beacon Hill estate house of the Washington State Federation of Garden Clubs. Definitely a show not to miss, as it only runs 2 weeks, June 2-17. NOTE: Some nudity, recommended for mature audiences only.

TICKETS: 1-800-838-3006
brownpapertickets.com
$15 general/$10 students, seniors

Plan extra travel time to allow for parking & finding your way, because... ABSOLUTELY NO LATE SEATING. Come early, bring a friend and a map, hit a Starbucks, and treat yourself to the full immersive experience.


The historic house where Oedipus will be performed


Beautiful indoor space for performance

Here is the full blurb from Akropolis's site.

“Nothing can escape the plague. It fastens on everyone.”
~ Seneca

CONTACT: Jennifer Lavy (206) 856-6925
13538 27th Ave NE, Seattle WA 98125
akropolis.performance.lab@gmail.com
www.geocities.com/akropolis_lab

Akropolis Performance Lab presents new adaptation of Seneca’s Oedipus

SEATTLE WA (May 1, 2006): Akropolis Performance Lab’s (APL) newest theatrical work, an adaptation of Seneca’s Oedipus, runs June 2-17 in the historic, Beacon Hill estate house of the Washington State Federation of Garden Clubs.

The natural and supernatural worlds collide in Seneca's version of the Oedipus story. With plague raging outside, the people of Thebes gather in the royal house for refuge from the terror paralyzing their society. There, they witness Oedipus who, determined to rid his land of the plague just as he previously rid it of the Sphinx, learns that the plague will continue until his predecessor's murder is avenged and the murderer banished. Oedipus's quest for knowledge and truth restores prosperity to his people with devastating consequences.

Into Seneca's telling, Akropolis weaves Latin meditations on fate culled from the Carmina Burana Codex and set to luminous, haunting polyphonic music inspired by the traditional songs of Ukraine, Macedonia, and Russia.

As in all of APL’s productions, the text, the song, and the action are inextricably linked. Only at the union of these elements is the story fully manifest. Striking physicality and saturated, complex vocal music are hallmarks of any APL event. Adapted and directed by Joseph Lavy, and featuring music devised and directed by Jennifer Lavy, Oedipus re-confirms APL’s powerful artistic range.

Because this production of Oedipus contains some nudity, it is recommended for mature audiences. The production runs 90 minutes with no intermission. There will be no late seating.

Akropolis Performance Lab, which is proud to be sponsored by Theatre Puget Sound, is now in its sixth year in Seattle. The company has mounted all-original work, including main-stage productions of an adaptation of Macbeth, Song of Songs, Jeanne The Maid: A Trial And Execution Of Jeanne D'Arc, and 2004's highly acclaimed Dream of a Ridiculous Man — which was remounted as part of the Theatre4Play Festival in conjunction with last year’s national Theatre Communications Group conference and was also the subject of a feature article in the winter 2006 issue of The Stage theatre magazine in Moscow, Russia.

WHAT: Oedipus, adapted from Seneca

WHO: Akropolis Performance Lab

WHERE: The historic Beacon Hill estate house of the Washington State Federation of Garden Clubs, 2336 15th Ave S., Seattle WA 98144

WHEN: June 2-3, 9-10, 14-17 at 8 p.m.
June 11 at 2 p.m. and 5:30 p.m.

TICKETS: $15 general public, $10 students and senior citizens
Purchase in advance through Brown Paper Tickets (1-800-838-3006 or www.BrownPaperTickets.com). Day-of, cash-only sales begin 30 minutes before curtain.

PERFORMERS: Elizabeth Erber, Holly Fowers, Margaretta Lantz, Jennifer Lavy, Joseph Lavy, and Andrew Loviska

ADAPTED AND DIRECTED BY: Joseph Lavy, APL co-artistic director
MUSIC DEVISED AND DIRECTED BY: Jennifer Lavy, APL co-artistic director

NOTE: This production contains some nudity.