But It's MY Body!

For those of my friends who believe the State should have no business "legislating morality", some food for thought.

Vita Theatrum

So, having successfully finished out a year of theater classes at LBCC, crewing two shows and stage managing a third, I've landed a (non-paying) "gig" at Little Fish Theater in San Pedro as Assistant Stage Manager for their late-summer show (it was going to be Tartuffe, but now I think they're changing it to something else instead).

Anyway, it seems the theater bug has kept firmly attached even 3000 miles away from Eden Troupe, and it's not letting go any time soon. Thus, I'm fairly sure this is something I'm supposed to pursue further. I've signed up for more theater classes at LBCC next fall, with the hopes of earning enough credits to merit applying for a grad degree in techinical theater sometime next year.

In other words, I now have a plan. Or something like it. (Whether I'll have the money/time/job/etc. to implement the plan is something else altogether . . .)

A plan which makes me wonder whether I should've just gotten a degree in theater in the first place. PHC was, I suppose, central to my realization that I LOVED this stuff. And writing will always be my first love, I suppose. We'll see how effectively I can implement my writing skills in with my theatrical skills.

Anybody feel like producing the play I'm writing: The Good Dozen [working title], a play about the Twelve Disciples set in a contemporary context? :-D

My dark, low-sodium life . . .

I and my father share the same curse: we actually give a *&#^#!! what people think of us. I've been almost a year at LBCC now. I've gotten over my initial vertigo at being unexpectedly dumped in a secular environment after four years of PHC cushy-ness (and yes, it was extremely cushy by comparison). I talk to people. I volunteer for things. I flirt mildly with the guys. People like me, and I like them. And yet . . .

1. Why, when given the opportunity to talk about God's blessings last night, did I stupidly start spouting crap about "karma?"

2. Why, after having been subjected to an absolutely FOUL screenplay in screenwriting class, did I not say _anything_, even though I KNEW I wasn't the only one in the class who was uncomfortable?

3. Why do I always change the subject when someone asks me about the school I used to go to?

4. Why is it easier for me to admit to being a conservative than a Christian?

5. Why, when I hear my friends ridicule other, more-vocal (Christ bless them) Christians on campus, do I keep my eyes down and my mouth shut?

I am so ashamed of myself. But I don't know how to stand up for what's right without people thinking I'm a jerk (a consequence, perhaps, of growing up with a mom who _didn't_ give a $#!!% what people thought about her, and who constantly embarrassed my over-cautious teenage self...). God put me at this school for a reason. And I feel like I've majorly blown it.

I've been reading through old PHC quotes, and I'm crying. It all seems very far away... is it possible that the joy and friendship and virtue and love that I shared there really existed? It all seems rather like a dream from where I sit . . .

The angels are laughing . . .

So - after a week in which I had realized how rapidly povertous I was becoming (&%$#!!% health insurance!!), and a night in which I cried alot over my rapidly approaching poverty, I answered my cell phone today and who should be on the other end but an interviewer from the U.S. Census Bureau, calling about the application I sent them back in February (Uncle Sam: "We get the job done. Late."). Seems they want me to start work for them as a "Lister" starting next week (sounds like a position at Dickens' "Circumlocution Office"!! I think it mostly involves interviewing people and verifying addresses . . .)

I'm limp with relief. Of course, it doesn't solve all my problems (God knows I still need to learn how to Trust). Pray that the hours will be flexible enough to allow me to finish out the semester at school, stage-manage the Fight Show, and still get hours at my other job (Laundress Extraordinaire!).

God is good.

In Mundum . . .???

Can I spiritually justify being involved in a fun, funny, farcical play which is heavily sprinkled with sexual innuendo and adultery?

More on this later.

Bonum Verbum

It's odd. It seems like every late-winter for the past three or four years, I've found myself in spiritual darkness: depressed, struggling to hope, struggling to trust, susceptable to the curl-up-in-your-room-and-don't-come-out coping strategies. Sometimes it's because of personal struggles, sometimes because of things happening around me . . . but it always comes to a fore during Lent. I keep the Season, so to speak, but never in a very distinctive way, so I'm wondering why Satan seems to enjoy knocking little-old-foot-soldier-me out of commission anyway. Darnit, I really don't see myself as that much of a threat, especially these days.

Is it just 'cause he's bitter?

Anyway - while curled up on my bed the other day, crying my eyes out, I lit upon this verse, which I had never read before and which I proceeded to write large upon my forearm and memorise:

Rejoice not over me, o mine enemy,
When I fall, I shall rise;
Though I sit in darkness,
The LORD will be a Light to me. Micah 7:8

A goodly life-verse for those of us prone to darker melancholies. Late-winter will wane. Spring IS coming, and with it . . . RESURRECTION!!!

Ah, the Joys of Tech Week

So, 12 Angry Men opens tomorrow, and I am one of it's official Light Techs.

Which basically means I show up, sweep the stage, mop the stage, channel-check (push a series of buttons that cycle through the different light-chanells and pretend to know what I'm doing), then sit with an important-looking head-set on in the Tech Cave and push a button 34 times over our two-hour show :-)

There have been no ladders involved, so, I'm happy (though I did get to push my boss around on one while he balaced thirty-feet above my head, focusing lights). I did get a piece of wooden-riser embedded in my thumb, which I've been wearing around like a badge of honor for a few days.

There are sooo many things I know now that I wish I'd used back in my ET days!! How to adjust a source-4. How to put together a cue-script. How to organize and call cues. What the function of a Stage-Manager actually is (in ET, the Director actually did most of the things that a Stage Manager handles in professional theater. Think of all the work I could've delegated if I'd only known!!).

I love theater. Wish it paid ;-)