Connecting Our Hearts And Our Hands - Do You Know Who You Are?

Knowing oneself isn't easy.  Every society, every community projects models of who we should be, what we should do.  When who we actually are, deviates from the social, cultural, political, religious, or economic ideal, those who don't fit the ideal perfectly are alienated from themselves, their community, or both.

I'm sure readers either know what I'm talking about or strongly reject that notion.  I suspect those who strongly reject it are likely to be the ones most denying their own true selves.

OK, let me clarify what I'm talking about.

I've recently finished Amitav Ghosh's The Glass Palace.  It starts out in 1885 in Mandalay, the capital of Burma then, just as the British are moving up from Rangoon to capture Mandalay and exile the King and Queen of Burma to a small town on the west coast of India.  The main character is an Indian orphan who has gotten a job on a ship that ended up in Mandalay.

The whole book focuses on the Indians who served the British empire and the fundamental question (for me anyway) throughout is, "What does it mean to be an Indian?"  Particularly if you are a soldier keeping order among your conquered fellow Indians, and conquering and maintaining order in other colonies like Burma and Malaya?

At times Ghosh is a little heavy handed in this discussion, not that he's wrong, but as a novelist, he could have handled it more subtly.  It's hard tracing the way a person slowly awakens to the fact that he's been a prisoner his whole life.  But it is a topic all people must ask themselves now and then.  Sometimes it's a very heavy burden, sometimes people fit well into the world in which they were born.  Or at least think they do as is the case of Arjun in the book.  ('Think' isn't even accurate, because Arjun is portrayed as taking things as they are and not even consciously aware of who he is.)

He comes from a well-to-do family and got into officer training school, much to his surprise, since this was not something Indians had been accepted into until just recently.  It was a job and adventure to him.   But WWII has started and he's sent to Malaya.  Skipping lots of details, a woman, Allison, he's attracted to abruptly breaks things off.

"Arjun - you're not in charge of what you do;  you're a toy, a manufatured thing, a weapon in someone else's hands.  Your mind doesn't inhabit your body." (p. 326)

He responds, "That's crap."  But the issue comes back very soon when the Japanese surprise the British and their Indian soldiers and successfully invade Malaya (as well as the rest of Southeast Asia.)  He's with a fellow Indian soldier, Hardy, a long time pre-military friend, who has thought these issues through much more as they face the fact that the Japanese have landed.  They've also bombed the Indian troops with leaflets that begin:

"Brothers, ask yourselves what you are fighting for and why you are here:  do you really wish to sacrifice your lives for an Empire that has kept your country in slavery for two hundred years?" (p. 337)

Their peril opens Arjun and Hardy to a probing conversation:

"You know, yaar Arjun, over these last few days, in the trenches at Jitra - I had an eerie feeling.  It was strange to be sitting on one side of a battle line, knowing that you had to fight and knowing at the same time that it wasn't really your fight; knowing that whether you won or lost, neither the blame nor the credit would be yours.  Knowing that you're risking everything to defend a way of life that pushes you to the sidelines.  It's almost as if you're fighting against yourself.  It's strange to be sitting in a trench, holding a gun and asking yourself:  Who is this weapon really aimed at?  Am I being tricked into pointing it at myself?"
"I can't say I felt the same way, Hardy."
"But ask yourself, Arjun:  what does it mean for you and me to be in this army?  You're always talking about soldiering as being just a job.  But you know, yaar, it isn't just a job - it's when you're sitting in a trench that you realize that there's something very primitive about what we do.  In the everyday world when would you ever stand up and say - 'I'm going to risk my life for this'?  As a human being it's something you can only do if you know why you're doing it.  But when I was sitting in the trench, it was as if my her and my hand had no connection - each seemed to belong to a different person.  It was as if I wasn't really a human being - just a tool, an instrument.  This is what I ask myself, Arjun:  In what way do I become human again?  How do I connect what I do with what I want, in my heart?'" (p. 351, emphasis added)

Somewhat later, the Japanese return and as the group flees, Arjun gets hit, but manages to get under cover and his batman, Kishan Singh, pulls him into a culvert where they are hidden.  His leg wound gets bandaged but he's in pain, thinking about what he's heard.

"What was it that Hardy had said the night before?  Something about connecting his hand and his heart.  He'd been taken aback when he'd said that, it wasn't on for a chap to say that kind of thing  But at the same time, it was interesting to think that Hardy - or anyone for that matter, even himself - might want something without knowing it.  How was that possible?  Was it because no one had taught them the words?  The right language?  Perhaps because it might be too dangerous?  Or because they weren't old enough to know?  It was strangely crippling to think that he did not possess the simpler tools of self-consciousness -  had no window through which to know that he possessed a within.  Was this what Alison had meant about being a weapon in someone else's hands?  Odd that Hardy had said the same thing too."(p. 370)

Then he asks Kishan to just talk and he talks about the fighting history of his village.  He says the soldiers went to fight out of fear.  Arjun asks, fear of what?

"'Sah'b,' Kishan Sing said softly, 'all fear is not the same.  What is the fear that keeps us hiding here, for instance?  Is it a fear of the Japanese, or is it a fear of the British?  Or is it a fear of ourselves because we don not know who to fear more?  Sah'b, a man may fear the shadow of a gun just as much as the gun itself - and who is to say which is the more real?" (p. 371)

Arjun is confused.  How could his uneducated batman be more aware of the weight of the past than he himself?  He thinks to himself, fear had played no part in his joining the military academy, becoming a soldier.

"He had never thought of his life as different from any other, he had never experienced the slightest doubt about his personal sovereignty;  never imagined himself to be dealing with anything other than the full range of human voice.  But if it were true that is life had somehow been molded by acts of power of which he was unaware - then it would follow that he had never acted of his own volition;  never had a moment of true self consciousness.  Everything he had ever assumed about himself was a lie, an illusion.  And if this were so, how was he to find himself now?"(p. 372)

It does seem to me that the author, Ghosh, is helping Arjun articulate his thoughts.  But the points are important ones.

We know that African-American soldiers in WWI and WWII began to question their treatment in the US after being in Europe.  Here's a quote that sounds very similar to Arjun's struggle from Philip Klinkner and Rogers Smith, The Unsteady March: The Rise and Decline of Racial Equality in America 167 (2002) cited on the Equal Justice Initiative website.  (The piece starts with civil war veterans and moves up to WWI and WWII.)

“It is impossible to create a dual personality which will be on the one hand a fighting man toward the enemy, and on the other, a craven who will accept treatment as less than a man at home.”1

 Throughout the 20th century women continually questioned their treatment - demanding the right to vote, to own property in their own name, equal pay, access to universities and to jobs.  Gay rights are another obvious example, and listening to Scott Turner Schofield last night telling stories about his transition from female to male I also couldn't help but think of this passage.

But those are obvious examples.

What about white soldiers and veterans, recruited to overseas wars to 'protect American freedoms'?  What happens when they see how much of war is to protect corporate interests overseas, to keep the arms industry profitable?  When they see how many civilians are being killed?  When the realize that their fellow recruits are disproportionately less educated and poorer than the average American?  And when they get home and they can't get adequate help for their war caused physical and mental problems?  Do they start thinking about their true identity and who and what they've really been fighting for?

[Consider the rest of this to be a draft application of the ideas above to current American situations.  I don't want to omit it completely because the points from the book do apply to nearly everyone and I don't want readers to feel they are only relevant to history or to other people.  They're part of being a human among other humans.  But I don't think I've made my points as clearly as I'd like.  So consider the following to be rough notes and any support or thoughtful criticism is welcome, which is always the case.]

But this is really about everybody.  Because as individual people we have individual interests that aren't consistent with what others expect of us.

What about the people who voted for Donald Trump?  How many will ever see how they've been duped for years and years by Fox News and talk radio that panders to their inadequacies and their sense of victimhood?  That they've been baited into hating other victims instead of the perpetrators of their problems?   How do they square their own sense of victimhood with their ideal of personal responsibility?  How do they come to believe that the system is stacked against them when the system has, for so long, been structured to favor them over women and people of color?  They never worried about those injustices.  They're only upset when the playing field is being made more level and they now are losing their advantages over women and people of color in getting jobs and power.  The dysfunctional president we have today was evident throughout the campaign.  There's no way anyone should be surprised at the American disgrace in the White House now, unless their hearts were separated from their hands, as Hardy put it in The Glass Palace.  

But liberals aren't immune either.  I don't want anyone to think I'm setting up a false equivalency here.  From Reagan on, conservative ideology has been part of the national oxygen.  Being liberal takes more effort than being conservative, more consciousness of inequity and of the gap between American ideals and reality.  One has to move beyond an individualist Ayn Rand view of the world and understand the power of mutual cooperation.  (Yeah, I know that's an assertion  that needs lots more back up.  For now let me assert it but I'll need to offer more evidence.  I think it's true and if anyone has some support for me on that, let me know.  Or proof to the contrary.)  But I would argue that people get to their political stances more through environmental influences - family, personal experiences, education, etc. - than by careful, conscious, reasoning.

But group-think infects every group when there isn't active debate and dissent.  And much of the separation of heart and hand is related to personal issues and beliefs that are accepted without analysis - like the myth of the magic of the work ethic to allow anyone to succeed in America.  What America would look like if everyone became a millionaire (in 2017 dollars).  How would all the minimum wage work get done?  And at most (not counting deaths in office) only 25 people can be US president per century.  What happens to the other 10,000 who believed they could be president if they only tried hard enough?  I don't hear work ethic believers talking about how that would actually work if everyone worked hard.

I'm starting to ramble - on topic, but not in a well organized way.  The key here is to think about our own conflicts between self and societal models.  A certain amount of compromise is necessary for people to live in groups, but how much of that is organized oppression of differences for the benefit of those in power?  That, I think is the basic question raised in this Indian/British debate from the book.

"He has comic timing tattooed to his genes" Scott Turner Schofield Saturday Night At Out North

Tonight night - Saturday, July 1,  7pm - Out North will be presenting  Scott Turner Schofield in "How I Became A Man."   Out North has transferred their old home in Airport Heights to Cyrano's and Out North is moving to the Alaska Experience Theater.  It will be there - 4th and C Street.

There's a lot of unsaid in that first paragraph.  I don't know the details, but the ADN had a story two weeks ago.  And Friday's paper had a story about Scott's show.

I just think that Scott is an amazing performer and I'd go see anything he was doing.  But let me give you some background on how my admiration for Scott came about through some links to old blog posts.

 I like to think that I have a good eye now and then, and with Scott I did.  I first saw him acting as an MC at OutNorth introducing the Under 30 acts.  That was Jan 3, 2010.  I wrote:

The performances were introduced by Scott Turner Schofield who is a visiting performer who will be putting on Debutante Balls Jan. 14 -17. He seemed totally comfortable onstage and I'm sorry we're going to miss his show, but we leave for Juneau on the 11th.

The next time I wrote about Scott was July of that same year.  Again, he introduced the act - Wu Man and Friends- and this time I was really impressed.

Scott Turner Schofield

"On the right is Scott Schofield, Out North's new artistic director after the performance.  Preparation for the performance began just as he arrived at OutNorth.  His introduction Wednesday was a pleasure to listen to.  His words were good, his delivery fluent, and he effortlessly rotated to acknowledge the audience members sitting behind him on the stage.  (See, there are some things I feel have some basis for evaluating.)  We're lucky to have him here and I look forward to continuing great nights like Wednesday at OutNorth."

Then that October, he mc'd Out North's coming attractions show.  I caught a bit of it on video and posted it here.  This was just a random couple of minutes, but even then you can see that he moves his body and expresses himself with a lot more fluidity than your average person.

The following September, 2011 Scott has been busy at Out North for a little over a year and here's a post about the introduction to the year.  It was a full house.  There's some underlying tension as Out North had lost some grant money.

Here's some video of that night. The first four minutes is Scott talking about Out North's evolution.



That November Scott performed 'Two Truths And A Lie."  It was his story.  Up until then I'd seen him only as an mc, but that night he performed and confirmed my original gut feelings.  Here's that post "He has comic timing tattooed on his genes" - Scott Schofield Performs at Out North, 
and it explains a lot of what tonight's performance will be about.

And then he quit suddenly and somewhat mysteriously.  Eventually he came back and did a show that explained it all.  I can't find a post about it, but it was powerful and for many of us an important closure and explanation of why he'd left.

In 2015,  we got news that Scott had gotten a role in the tv show "The Bold and the Beautiful."  My post on that was called My Fantasy:  Jim Minnery and Amy Demboski Meet Scott Turner Schofield.
Wouldn't it be great if they came tonight?

I'm excited we get another chance to see him perform.  As I mentioned, Scott has performed this in Anchorage already.  It's called, Becoming a Man in 127 Easy Steps.  At that time, it was Two Truths And a Lie.  As I recall, he was already talking about the 127 Easy Steps and each number between 1 and 127 had a story attached.  The audience got to pick numbers and he told the stories of those particular steps.  So each performance is different.  The ticket agency for the show tonight says he's done this all over the US and Europe and it will be made into a movie.  So this is an opportunity to see the movie before it becomes one.

Tickets are available here for only $25 which is a deal considering how good Scott is and how close you'll be to the stage at the Alaska Experience theater.

My Fantasy: Amy Demboski and Jim Minnery Meet Scott Turner Schofield

[REPOST due to Feedburner* problems][Scott was the artistic director of Anchorage's Out North for about two years.]

Melisa Green, posted a link to this New York Daily News article at Bent Alaska Facebook page. 

"The Daily News exclusively learned the latest transgender person to make a splash in the world of mainstream television is Scott Turner Schofield, who has joined the cast of CBS’ long-running soap opera “The Bold and the Beautiful” and will make his first appearance May 8 — bringing a real-life verve to an already controversial storyline.
Schofield is making his TV acting debut on the Emmy Award-winning daytime series, after winning raves in regional theater throughout the years."

Thanks to writing a blog, I can tell you when I first met Scott - January 2, 2010.  He was at Out North as a visiting performer and introduced the Under 30 production.  I was so taken by how he held himself, spoke, what he said, and his warmth, that I mentioned him with a shaky photo  in the post I did of Under 30 that he introduced that night.

In July that year, Scott had just become the artistic

Scott Turner Schofield at Out North Anchorage July 2010

director of Out North.  Again, he just introduced the main act, but it was one helluva good intro.   Here's what I said about him then, as part of a post about the performance he introduced - Wu Man and Friends.

"On the right is Scott Schofield, Out North's new artistic director after the performance.  Preparation for the performance began just as he arrived at OutNorth.  His introduction Wednesday was a pleasure to listen to.  His words were good, his delivery fluent, and he effortlessly rotated to acknowledge the audience members sitting behind him on the stage. "

It was only later that we saw him perform "Two truths and a Lie." and even later when he came back to perform his resurrection piece.

I try not to say "I told you so" but in this case I'm delighted to.  And I have the blog posts to prove it.

And while the Supreme Court uses the law to argue their personal takes on the issue of same-sex marriage and the Anchorage mayor's race is once again discussing LGBT rights, I think it's important for as many people as possible to watch Scott Turner Schofield's Ted Talk.

My fantasy is that someone gets Jim Minnery and Amy Demboski to watch this Ted Talk until they get it.  Maybe they can dig deep enough into themselves - the way Scott did - to discover why LGBT folks make them so crazy.   Those of you who didn't have the pleasure of seeing Scott while he was in Anchorage, this will help show you why I was so impressed.


 



*Feedburner note:  Feedburner relays new messages to subscribers and blogrolls so that they know there is a new post.  Usually it works fine.  But too often it doesn't.  Sometimes it's clear that there is lengthy code in something I've copied from somewhere else and if I get rid of it, Feedburner works.  Sometimes it's just mysterious.  Like this post.  I posted it yesterday, but it didn't get to blogrolls.  I posted it again last night.  This morning it still wasn't on blogrolls.  So I did it again this morning and it worked.  The only people this might irritate, besides me, are subscribers who actually do get notified several times for the same post.  My apologies to them.  This is why I'm writing this here.  It's a particular problem when I'm posting something that's time sensitive - like election results, or a note about an event coming up soon.  

Great Story Behind Incredible Lace

click to enlarge

As I looked into the gallery at OutNorth

my eye was drawn immediately to the lace. 

It was incredible.  I'm not a connoisseur, but when something is this good, even I notice.   My camera slipped itself out of my pocket and into my hand and started trying to  capture the exquisitely detailed beauty of this lace.  My camera and I were only moderately successful.  Between the light, the detail, the reflections, and how high up on the wall some of the lace was, and no tripod, this is the best we could do. (I saved the top photo in higher resolution than normal, so click on it for details, but I didn't want to make this page too slow to open, so the others are lower res.)  If you're in the Anchorage area, you can go see these masterpieces yourself.

Nothing was up about the exhibit except the labels with the name Beverly Bronner and descriptions like "Bobbin Lace (Belgian Binche), 140 cotton."  What did that mean?  I found Ryan who gave me the email of curator, Keren Lowell.  And she promptly sent me this reply:

"The lace was made by Beverly Bronner. She lives in Anchorage, and is an incredible person. She's older, and she got it into her head to learn how to make bobbin lace, which in its simplest form involves tracking the interlacings of dozens of little tapered spools of thread.

"The beginnings of the lace are pinned to a special pillow, which keeps the order of the threads in place while it is being made. Coarse lace is difficult to make even for someone used to the complex patterns of weaving, knitting and crochet.

"Beverly took a workshop in basic Belgian lacemaking techniques, and then taught herself how to make the work you saw in the gallery. It is made with the finest (thinnest) cotton thread made (140 count).  [For an interesting history on thread count, see Anichini.]  The piece that had a border of swans intertwined with lace took her three years to make. It was all done by hand, and as far as I can tell, is indistinguishable from lace made by masters.

"After she made the lace, she had to locate the cloth for the center. A place in Belgium sells the antique fabric, but would not sell it to her until they saw the lace in person, so she flew to Belgium to gain their approval.

             This piece was about 4 inches across

"After she bought the fabric, she had to find a lacemaker who knew how to stitch the lace to the fabric, and she found a woman in her 90s who agreed to do the work (for no pay). The rest of the pieces in the gallery have equally interesting stories, and Beverly would be glad to relay them. She is amazing. She just took up weaving and her first woven piece was something a weaver with several years of experience would be proud of.

So, there you have it.  Lucky folks in Anchorage can see this incredible work for themselves.  OutNorth is on Primrose and DeBarr (3800) - kittycorner from Costco DeBarr.  Their website gives their hours:

Gallery Hours
12-6pm Tues-Fri
and during events

 Thanks Beverly for sharing your passion, and to Keren for putting this show together and taking the extra time to give me that background. 

Some people might wonder about my breathless posts, but we have such talented folks in Anchorage who do such amazing things, that there's lots to be breathless about.  And I'm convinced that Scott Schofield, the artistic director, somehow manages to pull a lot of them into OutNorth.  And I tend not to write about things I didn't like.  There's enough good stuff to keep me busy.

By the way, the other fabric work in the exhibit was also worth looking at.  Here's a scarf by Clydene Fitch. 

And a yarn basket offered by Sherri Rogers.

There's Magic Happening at Out North - Season Kickoff

[Looking this over, I realize it gets a bit gushy.  But I'm convinced it's accurate.  There really is something special happening at Out North now.]

The very first time I saw Scott Turner Schofield at Out North I knew this guy was special.  That feeling's been reinforced every time I've seen him in action.  Last night the years of work that Gene Dugan and Jay Brause put into clearing the land, planting the seeds, watering, fertilizing, keeping  the wild animals from trampling it all, are now turning into the magical arts incubator and stage they cultivated.

That's not to say a lot of special performances haven't already happened over the years.  But Scott seems to have sprinkled his own magic dust on Out North.

The season preview attracted a full house to bid on silent auction items, eat and drink, and then to watch Scott emcee the preview show spotlighting Out North Art House residents he's gathered to Primrose and Bragaw.

It's an amazing collection of talent - from Hmong youth musicians, Hispanic Hip Hop, a therapy theater group from Akeela House, youth rappers, a writers' group, 20 something actors troupe, a non-profit that works with disabled students, a dance group, local arts magazine, to an FM radio license - from such a variety of local communities and media.



I have no doubt that the kind of talent we sampled  last night exists in every community.  The difference is that here everything has come together just right to provide the nurturing and mentoring to hone one's craft and confidence, the space and time to  practice and perform, and an administrative infrastructure to get the bills paid and the audience to attend.  That infrastructure includes a lot of volunteers and a charismatic performer/organizer who contributes a special energy and excitement. 

I haven't had time to edit all the video I took of last night's event, but here's part one.



I've added the second part of the video here.
Part 3 is here.

Bridgman/Packer Ticket Contest

Myrna Packer

I got to talk with Art Bridgman and Myrna Packer at a gathering tonight at SubZero.  And with Scott Schofield, the Out North executive director.

So, Scott has given me a free ticket for one of you readers.  Since you all know there is no such thing as a free ticket, here's the deal.

Art Bridgman

Simple contest rules:

First person to email me a copy of your receipt for nine tickets* to Bridgman/Packer gets a tenth ticket free.  But you have to buy them after this post is published.  Just get nine of your friends (enemies are ok too, but after this they may not be enemies) to pool together to buy tickets as a group, and I can add the tenth ticket if you are the first to email the receipt showing you bought nine tickets after the time of this post.  Include a name, email address, and phone number.

Note for  whiners and troublemakers (not that any read this blog): One receipt for nine tickets, not several receipts that add up to nine tickets.  Let's not make this complicated, though I know that people can think up all sorts of contingencies I haven't thought of.  If you do, I reserve the right to determine the fair winner. 

(Note:  if no one sends in a receipt for nine tickets, I'm guessing Scott might let me give that ticket to the first person to email me a receipt for the biggest block of tickets over five or six. For example, someone sending a receipt for seven tickets at 5pm on Wednesday will beat a person with a receipt for six tickets at  2pm Wednesday.  The contest ends when I verify a purchase of nine tickets or about 4 hours before the performance of the largest block purchase below nine.  So, if the biggest block is for 8 for Saturday, I'll announce about 3pm on Saturday.)

Think of this as a party with your friends.

And as I was preparing this I found some Bridgman/Packer video.  I wasn't going to post video because the best way to go is with no expectations, but watching the video I was reminded why I am so excited about seeing them again and I thought it might spur some folks to get their friends together to see the Friday and/or Saturday performance.  I'd recommend Friday, because when you see how amazing they are, you'll still have a chance to see them again on Saturday. 

This video is from a piece they did last time they were here.


Bridgman/Packer Dance: "Under The Skin" (composite video) from Bridgman/Packer Dance on Vimeo.



 Ticket information here.

 What's in it for me?  First and foremost, I think it would be a waste if the Discovery Theater weren't filled up both nights.  The only reason someone shouldn't be trying to buy tickets is that they don't know these performers are in town.  And I want Out North to make money off this so they will take similar financial risks in the future to bring great performers to Anchorage.



And there were light tricks coming home along the Chester Creek bike trail.

Why Missing Bridgman/Packer This Weekend Would Be a BIG Mistake

Here's part of what I wrote after seeing Bridgman/Packer the first time in 2008:

You should go if you like at least three of the following:

Watching water ripples in a stream.
Magicians doing really amazing tricks.
Shadow leaves dancing on your sunlit white walls.
MC Escher.
A cello dancing with a human voice.
Surprises.
Precision.
Optical Illusions.
Hand drumming.

Wait. There is no rippling stream in the show. I'm just trying to give you a sense of this show without giving anything away.

If you took this list literally, maybe you shouldn't go see it. Or, if you can't stand stuff that is NOT:

Linear.
Predictable.
Melodic.
Clear and straightforward.

I didn't want to spoil it by giving more details.  What they do is AMAZING!!  Going in without knowing anything about them, other than you should go, is the best way to do it.

Out North just keeps selecting stuff they think is good even if it is on the edge or financially iffy. 

I got this comment from Australia this morning on a 2009 post about Out North's production of Man in the Attic:

"This play won the Patrick White Award, one of Australia's major playwriting awards. Good on you for staging it when not one company in Australia bothered to do so! Congrats"

We have this tiny little theater that does cutting edge local productions and also brings the most interesting and challenging Outside artists to Anchorage where you can get intimate with them.  The theater is so small all the seats are in what would be the $100 and up section in bigger venues Outside.  Not everything works perfectly, but still, you are there with the artists as they push the limits of art.  You can talk to them afterward and ask questions and answer their questions. 

But this Friday and Saturday, they've got an act that doesn't fit in that tiny space.  In fact, last time Bridgman & Packer were here, they performed at the Alaska Dance Theater, where I got to see them and become a fanatic fan. 

This year (this Friday and Saturday to be specific) they will be in the Discovery Theater.  So there will be room for a lot of folks. 

Do you live in or near Anchorage?  Then you should be there too. And bring the kids.  Unless you are bedridden or out of town, you have no excuse for not going to see Bridgman & Packer.  You don't like dance?  Trust me, this is way more than dance.  This is magic. 

Do I sound enthusiastic?  Are you suspicious of my motives?  Am I getting paid to write this?  Actually, after I did a short breathless plug attached to a post on another Out North performance, Scott Schofield, Out North's Executive Director asked me to invite all my friends and offered me a free ticket even.  But that would compromise my blogger ethics so I won't take it.  But, I'm thinking I should offer that ticket to one of my readers.  OK, I'll think about  some sort of contest here - and you can give suggestions.  I'll check with Scott and see if the offer is still open. 

So what are my motives?  This is two humans (plus their helpers) showing what incredible things humans can do if they stretch their minds, train their bodies, and break the rules. I just want everyone to know this is happening in town so they don't miss it.  I also want Out North to make some money on this so they'll keep doing this sort of thing. 

When I first saw Bridgman/Packer I wondered whether I was just an Anchorage hick who just didn't get out much, but it turns out people who know about dance think they are pretty amazing too.  Mike Dunham's ADN story lists some of their glowing comments.


So, if you don't trust me or you don't like surprises, check out the ADN story on Bridgman/Packer.  When Dunham and I are both equally breathless, you know something has to be special. 

To get tickets or just to learn more about Bridgman/Packer and see a video, click here.

And here's a link to Bridgman/Packer's website.

"He has comic timing tattooed on his genes" - Scott Schofield Performs at Out North

Scott in January

I first saw Scott Schofield last January when he introduced the Under 30 performances.  At the time I was surprised by his easy presence in front of the audience.  There was something special about him, though I didn't quite catch what he was doing here, something about being a visiting performer.  We missed his performance of Debutant Balls because we went to Juneau.

Scott after Wu Man

In July he introduced Wu Man and friends.  This time Scott was introduced as Out North's new artistic director.  Again, I was impressed.   Enough to write this as a side note to a long discussion of Wu Man and the evening's music:

His introduction Wednesday was a pleasure to listen to.  His words were good, his delivery fluent, and he effortlessly rotated to acknowledge the audience members sitting behind him on the stage. 

I'm giving all this background to just say, there was something special about this guy which I picked up from the time I first saw him.  Friday night I learned that he is an established performer who has performed all over which was brought home when in one of his pieces he mentioned that he'd 'just played to a packed house in Brussels."

So, my gut was right.  Out North has pulled a minor coup by snagging Scott as the artistic director.  He's closing in on his 30th birthday (this also came out - I think in the Q&A after the performance) and looks like he's approaching 20.  But he's been performing a long time and knows lots of people beyond Anchorage, a number of whom he's going to entice up here and introduce us to.

Friday night (and he does this again Saturday - tonight) he was on stage at Out North as a performer, though he confessed afterward that he couldn't completely get his administrator role out of his head  asking himself, as a performer and an administrator, "Is this show going to go well?  Is this going to help or hurt our future box offices?"

He didn't have to worry.  This guy is a natural story teller. He says raconteur, which I can't write unless the spell checker has it. (Phew! It did.) And his material is compelling.  The program says,

Two Truths and a Lie. . . is a collection of three autobiographical solo performances which have toured nationally to critical acclaim:  Underground Transit (2001), "Debutante Balls" (2004) and "Becoming a Man in 127 EASY Steps (2007).  

After Show Q&A

He gave the briefest of introductions - I'm not even sure what he told us.  Enough for us to know that he was born and raised as a girl and the title "Becoming a Man" meant just that, literally.  So, he had 127 steps.  Our job as the audience was to give him numbers and he'd find that particular step and perform it.  Or, as it turned out once or twice, show us the video.

I don't know a lot of people who have changed genders and the couple I can think of switched from male to female.  And it wasn't something we talked about.  I listened to Tafi's presentation focused on male Samoan children who are early identified as Fa 'afafine at UAA's Diverse Voices presentation.  I've read Middlesex.  My favorite documentary at the Anchorage International Film Festival last year was Prodigal Sons told by a woman returning to her rural home town for her 10th high school reunion who left for college after being the quarterback of his HS football team.  I'm sympathetic to the idea, but the male-female dichotomy is still one of the most rigid we have.  Homosexuality still causes many people grave distress.  The idea of being a woman and then a man or vice versa challenges our brains' flexibility.  We think it has to be either/or.

In the book - Two Truths and a Lie - Scott writes about coming up with this performance.

"Okay," my partner-in-crime S. Bear Bergman sighed as ze [sic] always does when calming me down on a late night, long distance phone call.  "So you have about 127 stories to tell and an hour in which to make sex change EASY, step-by-step."  I made notecards from memories, ruminated, and typed.  Then I found one of my old Choose Your Own Adventure books from elementary school.  Later, on tour in New York, T Cooper and Felicia Luna Lemus left Joe Meno's book The Boy Detective Fails by the couch they made up as a bed for me.  There I found the decoder ring.  With such random origins, how could I write any linear play?  The elements of chance that structured my process had to be reflected in the product.

Scott performs Two Truths and a Lie again tonight (Saturday) at 8pm at Out North.  Tickets at the door.  It will be a different performance from the one we saw because the audience isn't likely to choose the same numbers.

Now, as much as liked this, I think it could have been even better.  The lottery aspect of the audience choosing which scene he's going to play means there are a lot of missing parts and the actor doesn't know which scene is up next. 

Even with that caveat, Anchorage folks, what I'm saying here is WE'VE GOT THIS WORLD CLASS PERFORMER TELLING THIS MESMERIZING STORY AND NO ONE KNOWS IT.  So go now and see Scott.  In ten years when he's moved on and he's famous, don't kick yourself because you didn't see him 'way back when' in an intimate little theater in Anchorage before the world discovered him.

As Judith Jack Halberstam, Professor of English and Gender Studies at USC, wrote in the front of Scott's book,

Scott, it should be said up front and often, is simply a mesmerizing performer.  You could listen to his voice all night.  He has comic timing tattooed on his genes, and he can make the trip from irony to sincerity in 3 seconds flat. 

Why Cars Kill About 160 Moose a Year in Anchorage

We were coming home from Scott Turner Schofield's performance of parts of his book "Two Truths and a lie" at Out North tonight and the car in front of us turned soooooooooo slooooooooowly at the green arrow onto Northern Lights.


You can really tell who doesn't have studded tires, I was thinking.  Then as we were almost home another car put on his right turn blinker (that's good) and then turned into a cartoon slow motion car for half a block before the turn.  Then J said - there's moose.

 I was barely moving when the car turned right to reveal a moose and calf barely visible in the dark.    You can see why so many get hit.  Or maybe I should say you can't see.

I'm always amazed at how these huge brown animals can blend so well into their surroundings.  I've passed moose while jogging and not realized they were there until I sense something there, and look over to see one eating ten feet away as I pass.  It was a good thing the car in front of me took so long to turn right and I was barely moving.

The ADN Won't Review This Play

Seafarer at Cyrano's before Act I

We only got back to Anchorage late Wednesday night, but I was getting emails already in LA inviting me to give money at receptions Thursday night, for about five or six candidates, there was a talk at UAA, and an email from Cyrano's about The Seafarer.  

"...each member of the cast nailed it. I felt intoxicated myself just from watching the booze go down. The way they tossed those lines around, with that Irish version of the English language, was the best, most realistic conversational exchange I've ever seen in a play (didn't seem like I was watching a 'play')." -- Kerry Feldman

"The Seafarers is FANTASTIC. I'm super impressed with the acting. Congrats on a great show." -- Scott Schofield  [Note:  Everything else calls it The Seafarer.]

Sandy Harper, Cyrano Producing Artistic Director, post show

I've known Kerry for a long, long time at UAA, and I've met Scott a few times now at Out North and if they both gave such strong recommendations, I had better pay attention.  ( I didn't realize until I read the program Thursday night, that Kerry is a member of the Cyrano's Theatre Company and one of Scott's 'sustaining volunteers' at Out North was one of the actors in Seafarer.) 

I called to see if there were still seats left for tonight's show and there were.  

I'm not a fan of literature that focuses on dysfunctional alcoholics. (Are there functional alcoholics?)   It's painful to watch and it's not a world with which I identify.  But  these works take me into a world I don't know and can learn from.  If they're done well.  It took me a while to get over my bias, but as things progressed, the play had a lot more to say than I was expecting. 

Dick Reichman as Richard Harkin (after the show)

It turned out to be outstanding - five male parts, all with Irish accents - and the playwright, Conor McPherson is hailed in the program as "the best new playwright of his generation."  Of course, I had to check that.  Wikipedia says, "He is considered one of the best contemporary Irish playwrights."   The LA Times review of his recent movie "Eclipse" was very positive.





And I feel a responsibility to let Anchorage folks know this is really good theater and you have just Friday and Saturday evenings at 7pm and Sunday afternoon at 3pm to see it. I asked Sandy if there were tickets left and she said yes.  But tonight's show was pretty close to full, so I'd recommend you get tickets ahead.  Cyrano's is downtown at 413 D St.

Why a responsibility?  The play's program says:

So, here I am online telling Anchorage and beyond. 

You aren't allowed to take pictures during the performance so the ones here were taken before the play started - at the beginning and during the intermission - and after it was over.  So the actors I caught were out of costume.  Except Sharky's band aid which Rodney Lamb forgot to take off. 

The Guardian wrote about McPherson and this play:

Mark Stoneburner as Nicky Giblin (post play)

There's a distinctive sound Conor McPherson makes when he describes how he writes plays: a sort of viscous, splurting noise, like something gooey landing, splat, on a table. Plays come "very much from the unconscious for me", he says. "I describe it as coming from the body and your brain is catching up." It starts when an image arrives unprompted in his head; slowly the people it contains start to move and talk, then splurt: there they are on the page.

It's not an explanation that quite does justice to the poetry and magic of his work. Ever since The Weir opened in London in 1997, when he was just 25, McPherson has held audiences and critics spellbound with his tales of lost souls and troubled lives. Often, the trouble he depicts reflects his own: although he says he never sets out to write about his own experience, you can trace the path of his life in the stories of alcohol abuse, broken relationships, death and disappointed hope he depicts.

Rodney Lamb as Sharky (post play)

Next week he makes his debut at the National Theatre with The Seafarer, a fable about two brothers - one an incorrigible drunk, the other newly, tentatively sober - playing host to the devil on Christmas Eve. McPherson is the first to admit: "I'm all the characters in the play" - perhaps most especially the disappointed demon, Lockheart [all the other sources leave out the 'e'], who envies the men among whom he moves. McPherson wrote the play in fewer than eight months; it could be his most moving, accomplished work yet. .  .

 By the way, Wikipedia says the play's name comes from an old poem by that name.

The Seafarer is an Old English poem recorded in the Exeter Book, one of the four surviving manuscripts of Old English poetry. It contains 124 lines and has been commonly referred to as an elegy, a poem that mourns a loss, or has the more general meaning of a simply sorrowful piece of writing. . .

It is told from the point of view of an old seafarer, who is reminiscing and evaluating his life as he has lived it. In lines 1–33a, the seafarer describes the desolate hardships of life on the wintry sea. He describes the anxious feelings, cold-wetness, and solitude of the sea voyage in contrast to life on land where men are surrounded by kinsmen, free from dangers, and full on food and wine. . .  [There's more at Wikipedia The Seafarer.]

Just before Act II

 

 I probably better mention that Brian Saylor did the set design.  I worked with him at UAA  too.   

Out North Previews Their 2010-1011 Season

Here's another catchup post.  This was the Sept. 16, 2010 Season Preview at Out North Theater.  They are housed in the old Grandview Gardens Library building.  The evening began with a silent auction in the art gallery.  The exhibit was touchable art.

This bowl even has braille!

People were milling around the auction items, keeping an eye out for other bidders marking up the bid. 


















Republican House candidate from Spenard, Thomas Higgins was there. 

One of the auction items was this collection of Sarah Palin pins. 

Then the event began.  Out North has brought a lot of - I'm struggling here for the right adjective, like edgy, but that isn't enough cause it is generally provocative in a very substantive way raising important issues other venues aren't willing to touch - performances.  After tumultuous beginnings, Out North has managed after 25 years to become established as an important part of the Anchorage arts and theater scene without losing its daring.  Gene and Jay should be pleased that their baby is in good hands and growing up well now that the parents have left home. 

I was  impressed with the line up of coming events as well as how it was all presented.  It began with local Hmong kids dancing and playing the khaen - a wind instrument I came to appreciate while living in rural Thailand long ago.  But at first it had the same noise quotient as bagpipes have.  And there was a good deal of genuine and funny clowning around.  Just about at the end of the event, Scott pointed out that what he was reading his notes from was an Out North I Pad.


Here's a bit I caught on video - unfortunately it only includes Scott Schofield, the new Executive Artistic Director whose abundant energy and enthusiasm and imagination suggest an exciting year.  Two types of events he mentioned were particularly intriguing to me.  He's scheduling some new, even unfinished films and plays, that will include Skype linkups with the directors and playwrights so the audience can give them feedback.  All this technology allows Anchorage to be both far away and right in the middle of things.  

What Makes Music Good? Wu Man and Friends in Anchorage

Wednesday night at Out North was like being in an avant garde little theater in Berlin.  And yet we were here in backwater Anchorage listening to an exciting concert at OutNorth.  Where can you hear music composed by two Koreans, a German, a Chinese, and a Japanese for pipa, cauyaq, gayageum, saxophone, trombone, and marimba played by musicians from China, Bethel, Anchorage,  Juneau, and Canada via Fairbanks?  Not just musicians, but good ones, including an international star who recently worked with Yo Yo Ma. 

Wu Man is one of the most acclaimed pipa player in the world.  The Wikipedia entry on pipa says this about Wu Man:

Prominent students of Lin Shicheng include Liu Guilian (刘桂莲, b. 1961), Wu Man (吴蛮, b. 1963) and Gao Hong (高虹, b. 1964). Wu, who is probably the best known pipa player internationally, received the first-ever master's degree in pipa and won China's first National Academic Competition for Chinese Instruments. She lives in San Diego, California and works extensively with Chinese, cross-cultural, new music, and jazz groups. [emphasis added]

Here's Juneau musician (how little that conveys of her bio in the program)  Jocelyn Clark introducing a piece by German musician Karola Obermüller.  She warned the audience not to use normal music criteria, in fact, to just attend to the sounds in space.  Clark played the gayageum which the program describes as a Korean zither.



There were sounds from the marimba, then short breaks before other instruments threw out some sounds.  Now I happen to enjoy music that doesn't follow our standard conceptions of music, but I did begin to ask myself, how does one determine whether this is 'good?'  Later I asked several of the music professors there variations of this question - is there a difference that you could notice between a piece like this and something someone like me with almost no formal musical knowledge could produce in Garageband?   One said, "Maybe, maybe not."
Another responded, "How do you know if food is good?"

[Photo from left:  Wu Man holding the pipa, Jocelyn Clark, Morris Palter (marimba and other percussion), Stephen Blanchett (voice and cauyaq -Yupik frame drum), Richard Zelinsky (Sax), Christopher Sweeney (trombone).]

[Wu Man showing someone the music after the concert]



Does it even make sense to talk about good here?  Some of these pieces seemed to be more experiments in sound and silence which deliberately attempted to do things that were beyond the normal rules musicians might follow.  Whether the intent was to see what they could get by violating such rules or these pieces were in them and they simply had to write them even if they didn't follow standard musical expectations or something in between, I don't know.  I didn't think of that question until later.

One form of good, as one of the music professors suggested, would simply be whether the musicians actually played what the composer had written. And that was another question I'd had while listening to The Oort Cloud because the composer was in the audience.  You can see Yoriko Hase Kojima introducing the piece in the second photo above. Since she was there, I wanted to ask her if there were any points where she went, "Oh no, they missed that"?

And I got the chance to do that at the reception afterward.  Here she is talking with Canadian born percussionist and UAF music professor Morris Palter. 

 She smiled at my question and said, no, they did it very well and she was very pleased with the performance.  She had flown in from Tokyo and was headed back the next day.

But that begs the question of whether the piece itself is 'good.'  This music forces one to confront the socially constructed nature of good.  How much is good simply related to what we are used to?  Asian music such as Chinese opera isn't something that most Westerners can appreciate on first hearing it.  What if we had heard this sort of music all our lives?  It would sound totally normal.  One professor said he'd need to listen to it several times to start getting a sense of it. 

Alaska composer Phil Munger was one of the people who got to sit behind the performers close enough to watch the saxophonist's music.  Here he is talking to Morris Palter. 

[Update July 4:  Phil follows up on this post and addresses these questions about good and bad music in a long post at his blog.]

[Trombonist and UAA music professor Chrisopher Sweeney talking after the performance.  Anchorage saxophonist Richard Zelinsky is behind him.]

I need to say that a number of the pieces were more traditional music - particularly Chinese classical music for pipa, such as the second Youtube of Wu Man from wumusicpipa below.  Wednesday night's concert was being recorded and I hadn't asked permission beforehand to record any video so I have nothing from the concert. 


The concert was a collaboration of a number of organizations.  It's a little hard to put them all together from the program, but CrossSound in Juneau was one and OutNorth here in Anchorage was another. [Update: Actually there was a thank you page in the program but I missed it.]  On the right is Scott Schofield, Out North's new artistic director after the performance.  Preparation for the performance began just as he arrived at OutNorth.  His introduction Wednesday was a pleasure to listen to.  His words were good, his delivery fluent, and he effortlessly rotated to acknowledge the audience members sitting behind him on the stage.  (See, there are some things I feel have some basis for evaluating.)  We're lucky to have him here and I look forward to continuing great nights like Wednesday at OutNorth. 


This YouTube I found of Wu Man playing with the Kronos Quartet gives a bit of the sense of what I'm talking about in terms of the more experimental music we heard, though this sounds closer to more traditional music than a couple pieces Wednesday.









 I also found one that gives a sense of Wu Man playing a traditional Chinese piece.