It's always nice to hear from old friends.

It's always nice to SEE old friends.

Today I could both of those VERY unexpectedly on my new HTC 4G phone when D.G. called me up on Skype and we had a video chat on my phone.

It was like a conversation straight out of The Jetsons.  We were talking (well, I was...) on some electronic device the size of a Triscuit.  I could walk around the room with him in my hand as we briefly caught up, shared intentions to get a beer together very soon, and...well...let him tell me how much he admired me in graduate school (he was an undergrad then), and has admired me ever since with all the stories he's heard of what I've been up to in the last few years.

Funny.

I've had all these people who keep coming up to me in the last few months telling me how much they admire me, or are jealous of me...and all I ever usually think is how far behind I feel in my life...like I haven't caught up to another runner in an ultra-marathon that I've been running since 2006.  To tell the truth, I've always felt like I've been running that ultra-marathon...so...since...1980?  Maybe I just don't know how good I've got it, or how much potential I have to make something happen...?

I always feel and think like what I'm doing is not enough.  Not enough for what?  Who knows...

D.G. seems to still think I'm the bee's knees.  M.K. from Taffety also emailed me today to tell me he and the company are considering doing Oxygen...and wants to know what I'm doing during the next couple of months. I've been waiting for that email/correspondence of some kind for months.  Now...  I don't know what to do about that. Direct it?  Act in it?  What...?

D.G. believes in me.  M.K. believes in my proposition.  My students, as I found out before winter break, seem to believe in me.  Maybe I can start to believe in myself...  Maybe.

In other news, got out of "that house" today.  Pat and Chairman Diem helped me move out of there today.  Pat had the quote of the day as we were lugging out the last of my stuff from there:

"Bye, bye, Crazy House!  Smelled like Cup O'Noodles and weed all the time."

Well...yes.  It also did my head in to live there for the last month or so...especially since "the confession."  I never felt safe, and am now living with P. and A. in their basement apartment.  That works for the time being.  I was able to organize that move quickly...and it was done in a day...all because of my new Jetsons-like phone.

The future is amazing.

Maybe Mr. Spacely will call me soon to offer me a job with Spacely Sprockets.

Christmas Mutant Powers

Everyday the principal of the school where I work sends an email to everyone in the faculty and staff with a "Question of The Day."  The question two days ago was the following:

Tis the season to be gifting!

If you could give just one thing to your

students/faculty/peers/school

what would it be?

I don't normally respond to these questions for various reasons (the main one being that my office computer at the school is probably operating at the same speed of a Windows 98 computer and it's not worth the hassle of sitting around for 5 minutes trying to open a second email).  However, seeing as it is the holiday season, and I was looking to avoid work, I thought I'd take the time to write a thoughtful response.

I would give them the Christmas miracle of Santa’s sleigh flying overhead…and having the sudden burst of energy from his reindeer taking off from the continental United States (in order to reach Europe in time for his Christmas Eve appointments) send out an electromagnetic pulse across the land that would wipe out all computer systems, electronic devices, and social networking websites (that one is for the kids), so we could all have a holiday free from appointments, stress, unwanted constant cell phone “Merry Christmas” and “Happy New Year” messages on our Blackberrys and smart phones (followed by the obligatory, “Why aren’t you responding?” messages…),  and holiday TV advertisements that for some reason ALWAYS seem louder than the TV show I’m currently watching, or casually trying to ignore as background white noise as I try not to think of the gifts I forgot to get, or all of life’s responsibilities in general.  Then, in the buzzing peace left in the wake of Santa’s fluctuating magnetic field, we would all remember the true meaning of Christmas: PEACE ON EARTH & GOOD WILL TOWARD MEN…and just one quiet moment to ourselves, or with our loved ones.  AND, as an added fringe benefit, I bet the gamma rays left over from Santa’s sleigh’s explosion would give us magical Christmas mutant powers.  Who wouldn’t want that?

I got a response back from someone in the mass chain who wanted to know if his/her Christmas mutant powers could include flying?  I wrote the following response to that:

I’ll contact the North Pole’s envoy at the United Nations and see if he can get his country the freedom to develop an elf-run nuclear program without fear of diplomatic sanctions.  Their scientists have told me they can install a portable nuclear reactor in Santa’s sleigh and it could be up-and-running by the end of the week.  You should be flying by Boxing Day.  Warning: I’m told the side effects include smelling of peppermint bark and leaving a red-and-white candy vapor trail everywhere you go when in flight.

With work properly avoided in the moments it took me to write those responses I think that all was put right with the world. 

Merry Christmas everyone, and enjoy your new mutant powers!

My Wat

Every so often I'm asked by a friend to work on a new independent project.  Currently I'm reading (or trying to read, anyway...) Alexander Wat's My Century:  The Odyssey of A Polish Intellectual, which was given to me by R.B.  He also gave me a copy of Wat's Lucifier Unemployed, a collection of Wat's short stories.  We're talking about possibly putting some sort of script, performance piece, or...whatever...together about these texts.  Reading through My Century a few passages instantly connect with me about my artistic process, my life, and my thoughts in general about life lately.  Considering it's so difficult to find the concentration to write lately, I thought maybe taking down someone else's words might set off a few sparks.


From the introduction by Wat's interviewer for the book, Czesław Miłosz, I found a few statements that seemed to be more about someone working on an artistic process rather than an intellectual statement of his life:


"It was not Wat's intention to be a chronicler of his centrury; what he sought was the secret, hidden meaning of events."
-  p. xx


In the last few years especially I've become less concerned with addressing the implicit and inherent political statements out of various theatre pieces.  I've come to appreciate writers like Samuel Beckett who wrote about such things as the "secret, hidden meaning of events."  His writing doesn't seem to be tied to one particular political context, or way of thinking, and his dramatic writings seem to live somewhere out of time...in all times.  If only I could achieve something like that with my work.  My writing.  My acting.  Anything.


On living in a different culture Miłosz notes about Wat's experience in America:


"As of now at least, more good people are to be encountered in America than Europe.  Theirs is, however, a somewhat seemingly careless goodness because there is a low level of psychological intensity in human exchanges here, both of the good and the bad.  If Wat, a typical Central European intellectual, had expected debate, deference, an attentive and devoted audience, he was sadly mistaken.  He soon realized that no one had the time for long conversations here, that everyone was on his own.  You want to give a lecture, fine, give it. You want to write, write; you don't want to, so don't.  All this creates an impression of indifference, of the individual vanishing into a landscape and masses of people, both of which dwarf him.  This impression may often be mistaken ,but it can be depressing."
- p. xxi


I often feel this way, and I was born and raised in the Untied States.  I can remember a graduate school professor, M.C., commenting that I "seemed to be carrying the weight of a thousand years of history" on my shoulders.  It was in that same conversation, in that awful pizza joint across the street from Meadows School for The Arts, that he tried to reassure me about my inability to get along with some of my fellow classmates, or to make any sort of meaningful connections with them by saying, "You know, Mark, not every conversation, every social interaction in your life has to mean something deep...right?"  Those are words I've tried to hold onto since then...especially since leaving school for the arena of the working world of theatre.  There are more and more times when conversations seem like they're just skirting the surface of even superficiality...even with those who call themselves intellectuals.  And those who don't...?  Well, there's a sort of animosity that comes from anyone who perceives someone else as one...as if they're angry that they were denied some access to that knowledge. I find myself at times avoiding interactions with these types, but completely nixing them out of one's life does expose one to, like Wat, feelings of vanishing into the landscape and masses of people.  However, the standards seem to have changed since Wat's day.  Being an intellectual in his day, or his social group was defined by reading philosophy and intimately knowing the inner workings of a totalitarian regimes prison systems.  Today, simply watching some other TV program than a reality show makes one a pseudo-intellectual.  The intellectual bar has been lowered, but the feeling of isolation remains the same.


The following is a statement I think, if properly reworded, could help my theatre students understand something about their processes, but I'm not quite sure how to phrase it in a way that could help them:


"Stature is not easy to explain.  It is not measured by what is called talent, because the talented are not always deserving of respect.  Neither is it measured by intelligence itself, for various uses can be made of that faculty.  Stature is like authority, and when granting it to someone, we do not doubt that we are giving that person any more than is deserved by nature."
- p. xxiii


Finally, for tonight at least, there is a statement directly made by Wat that was about the 20th century, but could be about today's general climate...about my general internal climate...


"I don't know if it was an advantage or a disadvantage, but we had begun to realize that the old had come to an end.  Some absolute change had occurred and you had to make changes; it didn't matter how, what, to where, but you had to break things, change. ... First and foremost, there was a need, intellectual but emotional as well, for a total renewal, a feeling that some sort of earthquake had occurred, an absolute earthquake..."
- p. 4


That about says it for me.  


Who knows if we'll end up creating that theatre piece.  I need to finish hacking up a lung before I can deal with a creative process, or the earthquakes happening all around and within me lately.  There's only so much thinking, or considering one can do when dealing with annual bout of bronchitis.  


God my lungs hurt.

A Man And His Hat

Long night.


Longer day.


I was rehearsing  A MAN, HIS WIFE, AND HIS HAT by Lauren D. Yee the last few days in Washington DC at Theatre J with some really fine actors.  Yet another process where I was absurdly racing back-and-forth between Baltimore and DC in my car...which I am convinced will either break down for good soon, or (for some reason or another) flip over somewhere on the highway leaving me hanging upside down by a seatbelt and having my final thoughts be, "Boy, I wish I had cleaned out my car so my mother would think I had, at last, become somewhat neater in my life.  Ah crap.  Here comes an 18 wheeler full of potatoes and olive oil."  And there the end will be.


Nightmares of becoming a lame highway salad aside, the reading went well.  It was performed at The Greater Reston Arts Center in Reston, VA, a town that resembles some smaller squares in New York...if those squares had been put together by by corporate interior designers from Wal-Mart looking to entice the upper and upper-Middle classes to their digs.  Anyway, it marked the first time that, after 4 years of friendship, I finally got to read/perform-at-all with the fine-and-talented TBR.  She played my wife in the piece to my cranky-and-lazy-and-sloppy Slavic/Jewish Hetchman.  


There's more to write about with this whole process, but noting the first night that I got to perform with a good friend is good enough for today.


The thoughts swimming around my head today about other things will take some more time to write about...and seeing as it's 1:15AM and I have to be up by 6AM (at the latest) this wouldn't be a wise train of thought to disembark.  Best to leave that engine in the station...for now.

Hypnotized (Hopefully) by A Dream

"“It would...be a beautiful thing,” [Pierre Curie] wrote, “to pass through life together hypnotized in our dreams: your dream for your country; our dream for humanity; our dream for science.”

"The separation of radium from the alkalines required thousands of tedious crystallizations. But as she wrote to her brother in 1894, “one never notices what has been done; one can only see what remains to be done.” After four years, Curie had accumulated barely enough pure radium to fill a thimble."

- from "Madame Curie's Passion" in the online version of The Smithsonian Magazine

I recently read this article on Marie Sklodowska-Curie in The Smithsonian Magazine upon the urging of my mother.  Our Polish pride usually pulls us toward any article, TV show, film, or random insurance commercial remotely mentioning our heritage.  This time the source material, written by Julie Des Jardins, proved to be quite rich and thought provoking.

Mostly it has me thinking about how Marie Sklodowska-Curie suffered a great deal for her scientific work. She dealt with slow-and-steady radiation poisoning, long bouts of isolation, and the self-denial of many pleasures.  I won't go into describing the article any further than that.  Ms. Des Jardins does an excellent job all by herself in having written it.

However, it's the two quotes I posted in this blog that have me thinking...

As an artist always trying to strengthen, deepen, rediscover, or maybe even discover for the first time, his process, I am particularly struck by that second quote.  "...one never notices what has been done; one can only see what remains to be done."  Having just closed Arms & The Man at Constellation Theatre in Washington DC I have to admit I am in the post-show-closing-malaise that happens to most actors.  I told a few friends recently that coming down off a show   I ask myself simple questions like:

"Did I really just do that...for 11 weeks?"  

"What's next?"

"Do I need to create a performance to feel complete?"

"What the hell happened to the rest of my life while I was lost in this constant commuting between Baltimore and Washington DC, between teaching and rehearsing, between bouts of performing as a teacher and Sergius Saranoff?  I mean...do I actually have a 'rest of my life?'"

"What's next?"

"What am I teaching tomorrow?"

"What happened to my plans to live and work in Texas?"

"What happened to my plans to live and work in Poland and Slovakia?"

"What's next?"

"Do I keep this bloody moustache I grew out for the show?"

"When did I appropriate all of those British-isms into my daily speech?  Did I do that when I lived in England?  Was that really 9 years ago?  Is there a future THERE for me?"

"What's next?"

"Should I find a doctor...a dentist...an optometrist...a chiropractor...a specialist for my left wrist...?"

"Should I move...again?"

"What's next?"

"Should I begin writing with Paul?"

"What do I do about these classes I have to take for teacher certification?"

"What about this personal life of mine?"

"What about all these people who seem very angry with me, that seem to be coming out of the woodwork every other day...and hour some days?"

"What's next?"

I sift through all these questions, and more, and find there's not even enough of whatever is my radium to coat a pinhead, let alone fill a thimble.


"What if...?"

There are several of those in my life...the "What if..." questions.  I could go into hundreds of those.  Here I have to quote the first non-academic show I ever did, The Lion in Winter.


"'What if' is a game for scholars.  What if angels sat on pinheads?  What if I were king?  It's your game, Geoff.  You play it."  

It is a fruitless game.

Still, I find myself drawn to thoughts of starting a family...and having a wife?  An irrational life mate?  A long-term girlfriend/partner?  Children?  


Maybe it's not a romantic partner?  A long-term collaborator?  

I left a good kind of that last one in Spišská Nová Ves, Slovakia back in May.  My friend, Peter, on the night before I left to head back to Poland, drunk on Slovakian Fernet liquor he said, in a broken Slovak and Polish, "My God!  Why is it the only person I feel like is my true artistic brother lives several thousand miles away in America?!"  I felt similarly.  However, I feel that connection with several "artistic brothers" around the United States and Europe.  

Are they elsewhere?

"What's next?"

That pesky question immediately comes up.  The search for who is next inevitably brings up the what.  It's best to take up John Lennon's advice here.

"Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans."

Is that advice?  I guess so.  Anyway, that kind of thing can't be planned...romantically, artistically, or professionally.  The opportunities present themselves and one must jump at them...and it's why I end up on Pierre Curie's quote:

“It would...be a beautiful thing...to pass through life together hypnotized in our dreams..."

It sure would be.  I look forward to being hypnotized by a dream rather than questions.

Perhaps I'm already in a dream and I don't even know it...

Why People Stand to Applaud

On June 16th, 2011, my friend Katie Molinaro posted the following note on Facebook.  It's called "Sit your ass down!"

I'll be the first to admit that at times I can be a tough one to please and when it comes to seeing theatre, I can be a pretty harsh critic.  Let me just make something clear right now:

Not every piece of work deserves a standing ovation. 

In almost every performance I see, there are usually 5-6 assclowns in the first couple of rows who find it necessary to stand up at the end and clap their little theatregoing hearts out.  These unnecessary ovation-ers make it difficult to see, causing the people behind them to unnecessarily stand and clap as well, making it awkward for me, the one person sitting and looking around uncomfortably.

Stop it.

We are forgetting what standing ovations are for! Truthful, brilliant performances that move you from start to finish, not "Oh, Karen did a great job! Yay! Go Karen! She was acting a stuff...let's stand!"  I can only recollect four times I was at a show that was so brilliant I was compelled to stand and trust me, those four moments have a special place in my heart.  I remember the show, the space and the overall experience of pure joy and honest connection with the audience around me as well as the actors on stage.  Because of this ongoing standing ovation trend, I have made new rules for myself. The only way you're gonna get my booty out of my chair is:

a) you start shitting gold flakes (impressive)

b) my seat is on fire

c) I have a wedgie


I responded with the following comment (please excuse spelling and grammatical errors):

I have met middle-aged people who have never been to the theatre, and find the experience so jarring when they finally do go they have no idea how to react...so they stand. I have met fundamentalist Mormon plural wives who go to the theatre once a year in rural Utah just as the one day of "vacation" they get away from their families, and they find the experience absolutely liberating...so they stand.

I don't know why people stand at the ends of performances sometimes. I find it more and more perplexing each time I go. So most of the time I don't care...because I'll probably never understand why they do it. I don't know if they're standing for me, the quality of my performance, or something deep inside them that hasn't been stirred in a very long time, or hadn't been touched at all until that very moment. And I don't care. I don't know why people stand at performances I've attended...performances I thought were at best competent, or mediocre with smatterings of "tolerable." If they feel so inclined to stand, they may stand and should do it proudly.

I attended Catholic church most of my life. They told us when to stand, to sit, to kneel. I'm not going to tell anyone they can't stand when they want to at the end of a performance. They're not in a church. And I'm not a priest. They can do as they please. I'm not that reverential to the rules of "Applause Protocol."

I just ask that they keep their Goddamn cell phones off.

- Mark Krawczyk: Devil's Advocate

Kegel's Porn Cops

So I posted this brief mention of it on Twitter and on Facebook, but what happened this weekend was this...

I try to teach my students the importance of enunciation. This weekend, for example, I worked with young kids on simple commercials. 1 child kept misreading "Kellog's Corn Pops" as "Kegel's Porn Cops." I can't make this stuff up.

What was even better was when the teenage girls in class started asking, "Wait...what did he say?!" They started laughing and almost fell out of their chairs.

I couldn't stop from laughing a bit and said, "Leave it...please?"

The young boy who said it replied, "Wait! What did I say?!"

One of the teenage girls blurted out, "Kegel!" while laughing nearly hysterically.

ALL of the teenage boys turned and stared at each other in confusion saying things like, "What the hell is a Kegel?! Why is that funny?!"

The boy who had said it looked really confused and yelled, "Why can't anyone just tell me what I said and why it's so funny? And yeah...what's a Kegel?!"

I said, "We're not going into that."

"Are the girls laughing because he said 'porn cops?'" one of the boys asked.

A 16 year old girl answered, "No. Not exactly...but that was funny too."

I tried to get decorum back in the room and had the boy read the commercial out loud again...and again he misspoke with, "Kegel's Porn Cops" trying to correct himself as he went...and that's when one of the girls fell out of her chair laughing just repeating the word, "Kegel."

All four boys turned and looked to each other like a band of angry union workers and one of them stood up and said, "OK! Someone HAS to tell what this Kegel thing is!" 

I refused. We pressed on. I took my lunch break. I came back after an hour and the boys came up to me and said, "We looked up Kegel on our smart phones! That's what he was saying?!"

I replied something like, "Yes. Good. You're all very smart and better educated now. Congratulations."

"We all know what Kegels are!" one of them said as they high fived each other.

"Yeah. Great. The mystery of life is open to you. Wonderful. Now you can silently exercise too. Leave me alone." That was the last thing I said as I walked out of the room to hit the restroom before class.