The Rosalind Diaries; Entry Four: Shakespearean Healing

I suppose it shouldn’t be funny to me really, but I do find a recent discovery of mine rather amusing.

Without fail, no matter how crazy my day has been, no matter how discombobulated my state of mind is when I enter the theatre, a good rehearsal will always set me straight.

Today, for instance.  In an outrageous dose of universal insanity, I managed to double-

WHYYYYYY!?!?!?!?!?

book my lunch hour thereby nearly missing an important meeting for my show because I was at an important meeting for my podcast.  One phone call from my director and a frantic drive from Burlington to Somerville later and I was late, albeit intact.  Halfway through that meeting, the AD (a colleague of mine) mentioned we should wrap things up since we both had to be at another meeting that I had heard about but apparently didn’t put in my schedule.  Luckily, meeting two didn’t run up into rehearsal for show two (but these two surprise meetings did manage to eat what I thought was an afternoon which I had to myself and my writing or, more likely, my lines).  Luckily, I had woken up early to hit the gym before my day started so that I’d have the afternoon to do work.  Also luckily, I had hit my script pretty hard the day before so I was prepared for rehearsal.

I got to rehearsal out of breath, out of sorts, and out of my mind.

But Shakespeare.  The act of making Shakespeare.  Speaking the words, feeling the emotions, being in a real theatre on a real stage with my fellow actors grounded, centered, and utterly soothed the insanity that had been the day away from me.

It’s still a dream to be Rosalind.  I wake up in the mornings and can’t quite believe that I have this amazing opportunity.  Then again, my life tends to work this way; hazy hopes coalesce years later in ways that I never could have foreseen when I first hatched the aspiration.

Things are not-so-slowly clicking into place.  I managed the entirety of rehearsal tonight sans script in hand (though many calls of “LINE!” were made).  I am hoping to progress forth free from the tethers of the page, though of course will need to return to it between stage-times to really dig into my text and find the specificity that Shakespeare demands.

Today’s discovery: levity.  As I have previously mentioned, my ways tend to be bullish.  I see a target, I throw myself after it.  Onstage, this will manifest itself as flat and one-dimensional.  If I play one thing until I achieve my objective, I will be playing that one thing the ENTIRE SHOW since the point of a play is not to satisfy the characters (especially the main characters) until the very end.  As a result, the counter-points to any single emote or tactic will help to highlight that tactic.

This came into play in I.iii when Rosalind is banished by Duke Ferdinand.  At this point, Rosalind busts into some eloquent yet severe verse and demands certain explanations of the banishing Duke which he does not give her.  Hammering this with a constant aggression, even if that aggression builds, will only make the audience feel like they’re being yelled at.

And so, counterpoint.  Rosalind does stop herself twice to throw honoraries at the Duke.  These are good moments in which to show restraint, an attempt at calming one’s self, or whatever acting choice I decide to make.

Sounds simple and self-explanatory when I break it down that way.  Also sounds like something they teach you day one of actor training.  Funny how easy it is to forget the basics when you’re fretting about your lines, worrying about hitting your marks, listening to your scene partner, and trying to keep the scene fresh and not get stuck in the rut of “this worked, let’s do it again”.

Tomorrow; there will be not enough coffee in the world

In any case, I should to bed as it is currently half past eleven and, for some unholy reason, the university decided to hold a mandatory TA orientation at 8:30 AM tomorrow.  Let’s look at the logic of this for a moment: a mandatory gathering of graduate students during which one hopes to impart to them information which is vital to the rest of their teaching career.  This gather, clearly extremely important, to be held at 8:30 on a Friday morning the week before classes start so that their still-summer-sodden minds are awash with the blinking confusion of “semester hasn’t started yet”.  I wonder what the powers that are truly believe the attendance percentage of their incoming TAs at this meeting will be.  I assume this belief is nothing short of delusional else some semblance of sanity would have kept them from propagating the clearly inhumane treatment of already underpaid nearly-slave labor workers.

Yet another thing to add to my list of “won’t dos” for when the revolution comes and I instate myself as stringent but benevolent dictator over the ivory tower.

I’m wondering if I should order a large leatherback chair, or if I should go with the traditional crown and scepter to denote my status.

Maybe I’ll have the revelation tomorrow as I drive my still-sleeping carcass to orientation.

Goodnight!

The Rosalind Diaries; Entry Three; Meeting Orlando

As I said before, As you Like it is a play which hinges on a few key relationships: that between Rosalind and Celia, that between the Dukes, that between Touchstone and Celia, that between Silvius and Phebe, that between Oliver and Orlando, that between Celia and Oliver, and that between Rosalind and Orlando.  Hit one of these wrong and the play falls flat.

Up until Sunday, I hadn’t met my Orlando.  He is a very busy guy (currently working on Fall Festival of Shakespeare with Shakespeare and Company – a company which, as you may recall, I have done a great deal of work with in the past).  Because our directors are brilliant and forward thinking, the first scene they set us to rehearse together was I.ii; the wrestling scene; the scene where the lovers first lay eyes on each other.  Because they also began rehearsal with that scene, I didn’t even get to introduce myself to Conor, we just dove right in.

Which was, perhaps, one of the most interesting moments of my acting career.  When I saw him for the first time, I actually saw him for the first time.  There was little acting involved in the surprise and inquisition in my voice; and that is something that I can definitely use as we progress into rehearsal.

Rosalind and Orlando have an odd relationship.  They meet once in the court.  Rosalind knows that her banished father loved Orlando’s dead father.  She also knows that both fathers have fallen into disregard with the current Duke.  Orlando doesn’t know much about Rosalind other than hey, girl who gave me a chain and who has really pretty eyes!

There’s two parts to their scene in the court – before the wrestling, and after.  Before the

Katherine Hepburn as Rosalind and William Prince as Orlando in a 1950 New York Theatre Guild production at the Cort Theatre

wrestling, Orlando speaks fairly fluently and is able to explain his motives in big, long, speeches to Rosalind and Celia.  After the wrestling, Orlando finds himself tongue-tied and unable to speak to Rosalind (though able to express these thoughts to the audience in an eloquent soliloquy).

So what explains that discrepancy?  What happens to make Orlando unable to talk to this girl he just met and was able to converse with a few moments ago?  Is it because he can’t really see her whole face?  Is it because he’s in “the zone” for the wrestling?  Is it because they haven’t actually locked eyes yet?

An interesting acting problem, and one that we’re exploring in rehearsal.  To see our solution; stay tuned (and, of course, come see the show)!

Another innate complication in the relationship between Orly and Ros is that, after this one meeting, they both fall head over heels in love.  Orlando is so in love that he decides to paper the forest of Arden with his (bad) poetry in honor of Rosalind.  Rosalind is so in love that she decides to trick Orlando into wooing her, while she is disguised as a boy, to “cure” his lovesick.  Rosalind, disguised as Ganymede, believes that Orlando has bought the disguise.  Never once does Orlando make direct reference to the fact that he may have caught Rosalind in her ruse.

But unless you play Orlando completely stupid (and some people do), you have to concede that he would recognize at least a touch of the woman he loves in the shepherd boy whom he meets in the woods.  Especially because the shepherd boy is role-playing with him as Rosalind.

So where is that moment?  When does Orlando begin to recognize Rosalind in Ganymede?  How certain is he of his discovery?  And why does he continue to play along?

More matter for a May morning.

Line-learning continues to progress apace, though prose is proving to be my worst enemy.  Rosalind’s rhetoric bounces widely as she speaks.  She’s extremely witty and always in control of a conversation.  Because of this, her lines seem to come from out of the blue and she frequently has to go back to explain what she meant.  In addition, she has a particular propensity for lists.  Lists are perhaps one of the most difficult things to memorize in the canon as they may or may not link together in any logical order.

Rosalind uses lists a lot.  So far, I’ve learned four long lists and at least two shorter ones… and I’m only about 2/3 done with my learning process.  I hope to be off book in the next two weeks (at least, preliminarily off book).

I’ve also come across one of the most difficult speeches that I’ve ever had to learn.  In V.ii as Rosalind attempts to explain to Orlando how she (Ganymede) may produce herself (Rosalind) for him to marry the next day, she begins with a ridiculously convoluted set of prose.  Check this out:

ROSALIND:

I will weary you then no longer with idle talking.
Know of me then, for now I speak to some purpose,
that I know you are a gentleman of good conceit: I
speak not this that you should bear a good opinion
of my knowledge, insomuch I say I know you are;
neither do I labour for a greater esteem than may in
some little measure draw a belief from you, to do
yourself good and not to grace me. Believe then, if
you please, that I can do strange things: I have,
since I was three year old, conversed with a
magician, most profound in his art and yet not
damnable. If you do love Rosalind so near the heart
as your gesture cries it out, when your brother
marries Aliena, shall you marry her: I know into
what straits of fortune she is driven; and it is
not impossible to me, if it appear not inconvenient
to you, to set her before your eyes tomorrow human
as she is and without any danger.

The Mock Marriage of Orlando and Rosalind, Walter Deverell, 1853

Pretty thick, right?  As I was learning it, I kept tripping myself up at the beginning.  I still have trouble remembering it up until “Believe of me, then…” because that’s where the speech truly gets rolling.  What this says to me is that Rosalind is trying to buy time.  She’s not speaking pointedly, in fact she’s meandering.  She repeats herself several times over, she uses needlessly thick language to say what she’s trying to say, and she has to preamble the real meat of what comes out of her mouth.  She’s thinking.  But since this is Shakespeare, she has to keep talking while doing it.

I’m off to rehearsal again tonight.  We will be working more on the relationship between Rosalind and Orlando and giving the final scene our first shot.  It will also be my first time onstage with Silvius and Phebe, and I can’t be more excited to forge forth.

To liberty, not to banishment!

The Rosalind Diaries; Entry Two: First Rehearsal

So we had our first “real” rehearsal last night.  By “real” rehearsal, I mean we were up, on our feet, with text, doing things and playing around.

We worked I.ii, I.iii, and a little bit of IV.iii.  What this meant was a lot of work with my Celia.

There are several keystones of a good As you Like it and one of them is the relationship between Rosalind and Celia.  These two ladies rack a great deal of stage time, and almost all of it is together.  If their relationship is off, it can throw the entire play off kilter.  Suddenly, the plan to go into the forest no longer makes sense.  Suddenly, the cross-dressing is just a hackneyed attempt at a laugh.  Suddenly, the play lacks real heart.

So it was really important to me that I do my best to make this relationship work.  Luckily, I didn’t have to work too hard since my Celia is spectacular.

Her name is Ashley, and she is a tiny tiny woman.  This is great because it makes me look “more than common tall” (which the texts demands that Rosalind be and which, at 5’5”, I most certainly am not).  She’s also a fire cracker; feisty and sassy one minute, and soothing and lovely the next.  She brings real heart to Celia while still bringing the fire that so often can get lost in a wash of dumb blonde.  I’m really enjoying working with her.

Another great thing about this production is that we are actually getting to work in the space from day one.  Since the Winthrop playmakers own the theatre, and since we are the only show they are producing right now, we have the run of the place.  This is an extremely uncommon arrangement.  One of the most expensive things about producing is renting space and, as such, space is rented for as little time as possible.  Time in the actual theatre is generally limited to a week’s of rehearsals before the show goes up (if you’re lucky; if you’re unlucky you may only get a day or two).

This is the first time I’ve been in a show since my high school days that I’ve actually gotten to work on the stage starting day one.

I can already tell some of the challenges we are going to face.  It’s a proscenium house,

The outside of the theatre. Told ya it was a church.

which is automatically limiting since it means that any stage picture we create will be two-dimensional.  Luckily, there are some nice roomy aisles in the house and convenient steps for us to use, so the house itself becomes viable playspace.  Still, making dynamic scenes that don’t pattern and re-pattern themselves is going to prove challenging.

The acoustics in this house are particularly good since it’s relatively small and a converted chapel.  In my experience, converted holy spaces tend to have the best acoustic resonance since the only thing that makes a Latin sermon more snooze-worthy is not being able to hear half of it.

My line-learning efforts have proved fruitful and I’m off book for three acts now.  I’m beginning to delve into Act III which is extremely challenging since I’m onstage for most of it, and driving the action of most of it.  The good news is that I’ve seen many of the scenes from this act done before, so I have some sense memory of them.  Learning the first half of III.ii was like coming home to embrace an old friend.  I can’t even begin to tell you how many times I’ve seen this scene done in classes and workshops and wanted to be part of it; it’s just so fun and light-hearted.  There’s so much joy in it.  I’m extremely excited to rehearse it.

 

Since we did play with IV.iii tonight, I was again reminded of the importance of a Stage Combatant in the cast of a show like this.  “Violence” onstage is not limited to sword fighting; stage violence is any moment in which an actor comes into physical contact with another actor.  If you know the play, you will know that in IV.iii Rosalind faints.  When we arrived at that point in rehearsal, I received no instruction on how to do so and was expected to pull something out of my bag of tricks.  Luckily, I have the training to accomplish a vast array of faints and falls without injuring myself, but there’s the very real possibility that a Rosalind might not know how to fall.  It’s harder than it looks, trust me.  And making it look convincing without the “ow” takes practice and a mat for your first few tries.

In any case, there was a bouquet of options I was able to offer my director: straight or silly?  Prat fall or Victorian Lady faint?  A little more thud, or a silent fall?  All things which must be carefully considered in crafting what turns out to be a pretty comical moment in the scene.

 

My good friend Angelo (Oliver) and I decided to take a swing before rehearsal.

I’m also lucky in that my Oliver is a dear old friend, and so we were able to work the physical portions together and add to them as we go along.  And Celia was along for the ride, just like a pro.

On the whole, I’m very happy with how things went last evening and I’m very much looking forward to more.

…except it means I need to learn more of this darned prose…

…drat.

To Rewrite, or not to Rewrite?

Today, dear readers, I write you from the brink of an age-old academic quandary.

I will be giving a paper at this year’s ASTR conference.  ASTR follows a work-group model rather than a conference-panel model, and this will be my first experience with such.  What this means is that every individual in a given work group has written a paper.  This paper is sent around to the other individuals in the work group.  Everyone in the work group reads all the papers.  Then, at the conference, we all sit down and talk about the guiding idea of the panel in hopes of coming to some kind of higher understanding of this idea.

On the whole, I think that this round-table style is much more productive than the

no matter which model a conference goes by, coffee is a necessity. This is a life truism though, rather than a conferencing factoid.

traditional read-and-listen model.  What it does mean, however, is that I need to send my paper to a group of academics who have never met me before to read, critique, and be ready to discuss my ideas.

This is an extremely daunting proposition.  Compound this with the fact that the work groups consist of a vast range of scholars – from graduate students to department heads.  My work group is particularly large and particularly vast in range of experience.  There will be people reading my paper who have been in the field much longer than I have and who know much better than I do what they are talking about.

The paper I’m presenting is a paper I wrote for a seminar this semester past.  I did a lot of research and put many man hours into this paper.  For that, it most certainly needs some work before it can be sent off to aforementioned group of scholars.  As I sit here, cradling its pages between my hands like the body of a newborn infant, I am faced with an important decision: To re-write, or to re-vise?  That is the question.

William Fualkner famously said of revising, “In writing, you must kill all your darlings” (though he was likely quoting Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch).  Stephen King later agreed with him (“Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when I breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings” On Writing).

Yes, yes, I know I must be ruthless, but so often I feel like completely scrapping something is the cheater’s way out.  While it may seem less time-consuming in the long run, in reality to just burn what I’ve written is to invalidate all the work that I’ve already put into it.  So while, at this moment, dashing the brains out of this poor pile of pulp only to allow a bigger, stronger, faster model to emerge from the slurry seems like perhaps the most advisable solution, I have to remember something: I spent a lot of time on this.  I edited.  I slaved.  I wrote and re-wrote.  All that time and energy must have produced at least pieces of a finished product.

So, generally, when I’m feeling like just starting over would be best, I take a moment to recall the hellish process of editing.  I allow myself a moment of silence for the many many stacks of pages of drafts that were fed to my fireplace.  And then I realize that no, there must be something in here worth saving.

I start with my abstract.  I go through it and write myself a clear logic train.  A rhetoric map.  “Fact: X.  Fact: Y.  Following in this progress, you reach my inevitable conclusion which is Z.”

abstract outline on right, prep to red-pen on left

Then I proceed into a harsh red-penning of my previously-produced paper.  What do I absolutely need?  What can go?  Ignoring the length of the final paper, I cut and slash my way through the prose jungle until I’ve boiled things down to their essence.

Then I take those bits and I re-arrange them.  Sometimes I physically cut and move them around on a table until I have something that makes sense.

Then I reverse-outline what it is I’ve wound up with.  I boil things down to topic sentences; what am I saying?  When am I saying it?

I compare the reverse outline to my rhetoric map to discover where my holes are.  Do I need a bit more research on weird fact B?  Do I need to explain logic leap C a bit better?  What do I need to do to ensure that we all wind up smoothly at the station of my final destination?

Then I set to work.  Sometimes this involves more research; a trip to the library, some ILL articles.  Sometimes this just involves a few days in the bunker holed up with my previous research and a fully loaded French press.

Then, a few drafts later, I have something.  It’s very different from what I started with.

Then come the external eyes.  Always always vet your writing by an outside party if you can possibly manage it.  Work out paper-shares with folks in your department.  Find a friend willing to proofread in exchange for dinner.  The more outside eyes you can have on a piece, the stronger it will become.

After this step, I generally have to go back in for a draft or two and adjust a few things – generally not a complete overhaul at this stage since I’ve already spent so much time living with the paper.

And then I have something.  Is it finished?  Well, it will never be finished.  But at least it’s evolved.

So that’s what I’m facing down now.  The next step in the evolution of a paper.

Well, hey hey and away we go.

The Rosalind Diaries: Entry 1

So I had my first rehearsal yesterday.

Boy oh boy am I rusty on being an actor.

First things first: It’s been approximately four years since I have taken the stage, and much longer than that since I’ve played a role of any particular note (my last role was Antonio/the Captain in Twelfth Night).  I’ve only played a leading role once or twice and at least one of those times was when I was young enough that my age registered in the single digits.

My current directors had requested that we make an attempt to be off book by the first rehearsal.  An attempt was made, but I only accomplished two fifths of the goal.

The process of line learning is an arduous business made even more arduous when you are learning Shakespeare for a few reasons.  Reason one: you need to be word perfect.  Reason two: the strange sentence structure will mess with your head and cause you to add/subtract random words that you think should go in there but in actuality have no business with the bard.  Reason three: because of aforementioned bizarro sentence structure, there exists no parallel structure in what you are saying and, since the human brain likes patterns, you can easily find yourself falling into the trap of creating parallel structure (see reason one).  Reason four applicable to Rosalind: so much of what she says is in Prose.  Prose is approximately ten times more difficult to learn than Verse.

Today’s brief lesson in Shakespeare: knowing the difference between Prose and Verse.

Verse is the more familiar poetic form that we often affiliate with

my script all marked up. It will be more marked up before this is all over.

Shakespeare.  It’s written in meter, sometimes written in rhyme.  Identifying Verse is extremely easy as each line will begin with a capital letter, and the lines themselves will be shorter since they have to conform to the structure of poetic meter. Here’s what verse looks like:

ROSALIND:

 My father loved Sir Rowland as his soul,
And all the world was of my father’s mind:
Had I before known this young man his son,
I should have given him tears unto entreaties,
Ere he should thus have ventured.

(As You Like It, 1.2)

In the case of Shakespeare, the poetic meter used more often than note is Iambic Pentameter.  Iambic Pentameter refers to a line which contains five (Pent) Iambs.  An iamb is a series of two syllables – the first unstressed, the second stressed.  Like this:

ROSALIND:

I pray / you, do / not fall / in love / with me,
For I / am fal / ser than / vows made / in wine

(As You Like It, 3.5)

What this means is that the line has a heartbeat.  Da-DUM.  When you are speaking a line written in Verse, you can feel when you’re adding or subtracting words because the line has a natural cadence and rhythm to it.

Prose, on the other hand, is a completely different story.  Prose is written like modern sentences; flowing together one after the other.  Like this:

ROSALIND:

 No, faith, die by attorney. The poor world is
almost six thousand years old, and in all this time
there was not any man died in his own person,
videlicit, in a love-cause.

(As You Like It, 4.1)

“Rosalind” by Robert Walker Macbeth, 1888

Prose has no set rhythm (though, it is Shakespeare, he often plays word tricks with his lines).  Since Prose isn’t spoken under the pressure of iambic pentameter, it doesn’t conform to anything by way of regularity.

Guess which form most of Rosalind’s lines are in?

Now, Verse is a form of speech most often used by courtly characters, learned characters, characters who are in love, characters who speak directly from the soul, or characters who need to express something complicated.  Because Rosalind spends the majority of the play in disguise, she also dumbs down her speech to Prose – the form used by clowns (not fools, fools generally speak in Verse), commoners, and normal people.  Rosalind is capable of speaking in Verse, and does so when she is in the court and when she is dealing with Phebe (a mark of her inextricable snobbery), but 85% of her lines are Prose.

This has made her a ridiculously difficult part to learn.  Compound this trouble with the fact that I learn best on my feet and tend to prefer learning my lines while doing scenes rather than in a vacuum at home, and this endeavor has been immensely challenging for me.

But I’m getting there.

Rehearsals go into full swing next week and I can’t be more excited.  It’s a talented lot we have, and I’m extremely happy to be able to have the chance to work with them.

Stay tuned!

The Great Flop

Well, I’m back.

And let me tell you, being back is rough.

I’m uncertain if I’ve yet documented the condition which I not-so-fondly refer to as the “end of semester flop”.  After the fall semester was over, after the last final was put to bed, and of course during the first few days of my real vacation, I was so exhausted that I felt sick.  I had to take several days to just lay in bed and sleep, not talk to anyone, and let the gigantic thing that I had just accomplished wash over me and through me.

It took me a while to realize that that was what it was: sheer exhaustion from

FLOP!

the emotional and mental fatigue I had sustained over the course of the semester.  For a while, I worried that I was incubating yet another unable-to-be-explained-by-modern-medical-science ailment.  Thankfully, after some quality time with my bed (or, rather, the hotel bed since I was on vacation with my family at the time), I was able to shake it off and be a real human being again.

I was prepared for a similar experience this semester.  Unfortunately (or, perhaps, fortunately), I had to meet a few publication deadlines hard on the heels of my finals deadlines.  What this meant was that the semester didn’t really end.  It rolled into the summer like blue rolls into indigo and, instead of being able to succumb to the end of semester flop, I just kept working.  Nights candles had burnt out and jocund day stood tip toe on misty mountain tops, but there was nothing for it.  I simply had to keep going.

Well, two weeks ago, the week before I left for my official summer vacation, I ran out of “gotta do it now”s.  I had a few little tid bits that needed cleaning up before I could leave my desk for a week, but on the whole if I really wanted to keep working I was going to have to re-open another big project (something I was loathe to do a mere week before I left it abandoned on my desk mostly because I didn’t want to be fretting over it my entire vacation).  So I took it easy.  I finished my bits and bobs and made it such that I could return to my desk with a clean slate.

And return I did.  Though I was technically home in the wee hours of Sunday morning, Sunday was essentially lost since I had slept for three hours and driven for the previous thirteen.  I spent the day doing laundry and unpacking with just enough naps to sustain my sleep-deprived self.  I woke up today and felt like I had been run over by a truck; my energy had bottomed out and I was barely able to think straight for the first half of the day.

At first, I panicked.  I had to hit the ground running.  I need to clean up my paper for ASTR.  I need to get together some things for my Measure for Measure director.  I need to learn my lines for Rosalind.  I need to hit the gym because I bet it forgets how much it hurts after I’ve had my way with it.

Then, I realized.  This was it.  The end of semester flop.  It had graciously delayed itself by about two months to give me the stamina to get through the first two thirds of my summer, but this was it.

And like it or not, I was down for the count for the next few days.

And I should just accept it and be grateful that I was going to be well-rested for September because darn it, I was going to rest.

So I took it easy Monday.  I did countless loads of laundry (finishing all of it that I came home with), took care of my tent which I had packed up while moist so it needed attention, sorted through a bunch of stuff in my basement, finished a few crafts projects, made dinner for a friend who had stopped by, cleaned my room, learned some of my lines, did a bit of writing, and attended to a few neglected household chores (yes, believe it or not, this is my life on easy mode… you don’t want to know what my hard days are like).

self-portrait taken during hour 6 of writing a paper during my Master’s

And tomorrow I will open up those projects and hit them hard.  I hope.  End of semester flop is nothing to joke about; it’s a necessary evil for the wanna-be-sane graduate student and without it, there’s no way I could be prepared for September.

The moral of this story: everyone deserves a break.  Especially after six months of consistent sixty to seventy hour work weeks.  I earned this flop with every till-midnight paper session and every Saturday that I said “sorry, I have to stay home and work”.

Enjoy your flopping!

A Brief PSA

Hello ladies and gentlemen!

I am writing you from my phone while on the road to adventure (otherwise known as a “vacation”). As a result of this adventure, I will be going off the grid for the week. I may check in, but in case I don’t fear not, noble reader! I will return next week!

Cheers!

And Now for Something Completely Different…

My partner in crime has informed me that, after this week’s previous post, I should probably also talk a little bit about the flip side of the coin.  So, as his advice is generally good, and lest you think that Graduate School is a long, dark, tunnel of stress and upset leading to nowhere positive, I would like to take some time to share a bit about the wonderful things that have happened to me because of (or related to) my experiences in higher education.

Consider the previous post the warning label and this post the advertisement.  Real life, as always, will be found somewhere gently hovering in between.  Or, if you want a picture more true-to-life, real life is actually lived on the extremes.  The average found in the middle very rarely happens, but so long as your good days equal or outweigh your bad days, you can consider your life choice a sound one… at least, I do.

One of the nifty things about being affiliated with a university is that, as soon as you tag that affiliation onto your byline, folks tend to take you seriously.  Because of this (and because of the endless generosity of people willing to take time out of their busy schedules to gab with me about their work), I have had the good fortune of conducting field research at many exciting places this year.  I got to sit down with the man who inspired me to go into Shakespeare studies (a director at Shakespeare & Company by the name

Outside the mainstage at Shake & Co

of Kevin Coleman – he’s playing the fool in their Lear right now and he’s spectacular) and talk about his work.  I got to examine and photograph theatrical designs from a designer’s private archive.  I got to tour and photograph the Rebecca Nurse Homestead during its off-season even though visitors weren’t technically allowed onsite during the time in which I had to do my research.  Would a “normal” person have had these opportunities?  Difficult to tell… but I can certainly tell you that being able to point at a legitimate institution and say that I was part of it definitely helped my confidence by way of things that I was willing to ask for.

Archive access is another neat perk to academia.  The great thing about an archive is that it’s a repository of all kinds of shinies.  Sure, I love books as much as the next nerd, but something about holding a piece of paper older than one’s own country really gets the adrenaline going.  The Harvard Theatre Collection happens to be the oldest and largest Theatre archive in the United States… it also happens to be right down the road from my apartment.  This year, I spent countless hours in the archive digging for buried treasure.  I handled broadsides from the shows affiliated with the Astor Place Riots.  I paged through the Johnson/Steevens edition of Shakespeare (published 1773).  I tried to decipher John Adam’s handwriting off a letter he wrote to dear Abigail.  I (nearly) touched a First Folio (we have two native to Boston – one housed at Brandeis, the other at the Boston Public Library Rare Books room).

At the San Diego Zoo, I made friends with this peacock

I traveled.  This year, I saw two cities for the first time as I conferenced within them: San Diego and Baltimore.  In San Diego, I got to go to the San Diego zoo.  In Baltimore, I had an afternoon at the National aquarium.  In both places, I met graduate students from around the country who were working on projects that I never would have otherwise known about.  I got to be part of the greater academic discourse and understand a bit better what my peers are doing in other areas of the ivory tower.

I connected with my work in the field.  I saw so much theatre this year and, more than just seeing it, I was able to critically engage with it.  I reviewed a great deal of it, but even that which I didn’t review was always discussed with a traveling companion or two.  It’s important to touch the ground now and again and really understand what you’re working on.  In the case of theatre, it’s so easy to bury your head in the book-history and never come up for air.  I’m proud to say that the book learning fueled my desire to see more theatre and really made me pursue productions in the greater Boston area.  This drive to connect with the tangible has introduced me to some amazing venues, some wonderful companies, and some very interesting people.

I accomplished some pretty neat things.  I translated an article from Diderot’s encyclopedia.  I started my quest to learn to read German.  I produced six graduate-level papers (all of which have potential to continue on as larger projects).  I found a way to become involved with a few nifty projects for next year (including dramaturging Measure for Measure and acting the dream role of Rosalind in As you Like it).  I made connections and met people who were not only interesting, but also important to theatre studies.  I wrote a book review which is going to be published in a professional journal (details to follow).  I maintained a blog that has tripled its following over the course of the past year.  Even though I’m only part way to my grand goal, the little victories along the way have helped to sustain me with how truly thrilling they are.

I suppose, as with anything, the payoff of academia is only worth what

and if all else fails, find a bunny to help you with your homework. This bunny’s name is Rory Pond. She’s a she bunny. My friends are a little weird.

you’ve gone through to get it.  So yea, you’ll find yourself in the tunnel sometimes.  Keep calm, remember where your towel is, pour yourself some earl grey, and remind yourself that this is all totally worth it.  And if you begin to doubt that, head over to the archive and pull the oldest thing in the collection.  I guarantee that one look at whatever it is will remind you that your life is pretty cool despite its extreme trials.

The Secret

This morning via twitter I was asked a question that I cannot, in good conscience, allow to pass without blogging an answer: “What are some things no one tells you about Grad School?”

Buckle those seatbelts, folks.

The fact is that this is precisely the question which keeps me blogging.  There is so much that I didn’t know when I started this crazy thing (now my life) which I didn’t even think to ask about.  You know it’s going to be hard work, you know it’s going to be a serious time commitment, but I continue to prove to myself (again and again) that even if someone could have possibly described to me how very much toil went into being a full-time graduate student, I would not have believed them.

I’ve attempted to portray a realistic picture of the life of a Grad Student via this blog; the triumphs, tribulations, successes, failures, and everything in between.  But let me take a moment now to summarize these findings for you in hopes that it will help prospective Graduate Students, those spending their last “sitting duck” summer (i.e. have been accepted to a program and are making final arrangements to arrive and begin in September), or those who simply desire a better understanding of what it is that being a full-time Graduate Student actually entails.

First and foremost, consider yourself warned: you will work.  In fact, you will do so much

one of *those* people

work that you will become one of those people.  Those people who cancel on social gatherings because they have to stay home and work.  Those people who realize that they haven’t actually talked to a real person all day except for the poor undergrad library clerk.  Those people who, when they finish their primary gotta-do-it-now list, start in on their secondary should-do-it-soon list.  Those people who seem to subsist on caffeine and happy thoughts rather than sleep and positive reinforcement.

Prepare to become a machine.  A machine concerned only with your research.  How can you twist this weekend vacation into something you can write a paper about?  What do you find interesting about your hobbies and are those elements at all related to your work?  You will become single-minded; and that’s good.  It’s important.  Without a certain degree of tunnel vision, you would never be able to get through this crazy little thing called grad school.

You will become extremely stressed out about things that only a small subset of the population will comprehend.  Things of utmost importance to you, things which define your very existence for a week, a semester, a year, will be meaningless to those whom you care about the most.  They will not understand.  You will try to explain it to them.  They still won’t get it.  Make friends with your colleagues, they are your only hope for salvation.

You will need to find ways to satisfy yourself with small victories.  Most of the projects which you will work on will be long-term.  What this means is that, unless you find some method of self-validating during the process, you’re in for many years of banging your head against a wall and losing sleep over something which will only give by millimeters in any measurable length of time.  Without validation, you will not survive.  Figure out what you need to do to make yourself feel happy and fulfilled at the end of a long, tiring day of doing seemingly nothing.

You will be expected to know things that you’ve never been taught.  And no, it’s not fair, but it’s the way it is.  Find a way to understand what these things are, and how you can at least keep yourself from embarrassment (…nobody will tell you what these things are, by the way, that’s also left to you to discover).  Find a mentor.  Find someone on the faculty with whom you can speak candidly and with whom you feel comfortable enough to ask the awkward questions behind closed office doors.  They will understand exactly what you are going through and be able to give you the coaching you will desperately need.

my idea of a “day off” when I was getting my Master’s

This is a job.  This is your life.  This is what you are doing for the next two, three, four, five years.  It’s worthwhile, and will get you somewhere that you want to be.  If you don’t believe that with all of your heart; if that mantra isn’t something that you can turn to and depend on in your darkest, most stressful hour; quit now.  If you’re not excited by your work; if this is just something you’re doing to see some letters after your name or call yourself by a fancy title; you are never going to make it.  It takes passion, courage, creativity, the work ethic of Hercules, and the liver of Bacchus to survive grad school.  If you don’t think you’re up for it, you’re right.  If you’re lukewarm on whatever it is you’re studying, you will never be able to make it through the harsh times in store for you.

However, if you’re still reading this, if you’re still excited about buying books in September, if despite these warnings you simply cannot wait to get your hands dirty in the fall, you will find that Grad School is the most thrilling, fulfilling, and exciting adventure you can have.

And, in the interest of opening dialogue with my peers, I encourage you to blog, tweet, facebook, or somehow document your experience.  Get your story out there.  Answer questions.  The more of us doing this sort of thing, the greater a resource we can provide for the generations after us (including, by the by, our some-day students).  In the digital era, there’s no reason that we have to sit alone at our desks all day without anyone to sanity check for us.  Let’s have coffee; let’s keep each other afloat; if (after all) we’re not cheering for each other, then nobody else is gonna.