Afterwards

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It’s difficult to know what to say in the wake of tragedy.  This kind of thing effects different people in different ways and, not being someone gifted/cursed with a great deal of empathy, it’s double difficult for me to come to any conclusion about something appropriate to relate.

The last lines of Shakespeare’s tragedies are generally attempts by his very human characters to break the impossible tension of the play’s events.  Often these words are uttered over a stage strewn with corpses; the trail of ruin that true tragedy leaves in its wake.

Instead of trying to come up with something to say myself, I thought I’d take a moment to survey these lines for you in hopes that they will provide something more profound than any axiom I could utter.

Stay safe, everyone.

“My rage is gone;
And I am struck with sorrow. Take him up.
Help, three o’ the chiefest soldiers; I’ll be one.
Beat thou the drum, that it speak mournfully:
Trail your steel pikes. Though in this city he
Hath widow’d and unchilded many a one,
Which to this hour bewail the injury,
Yet he shall have a noble memory. Assist.” –Aufidius, Coriolanus, 5.6

Aufidius, seeing Coriolanus dead, feels sorrow for his nemesis.  His tenderness towards Coriolanus and willingness to honor his mortal enemy in death shows a true humanity to Aufidius; the man, not the soldier, closes this show.

“Let four captains
Bear Hamlet, like a soldier, to the stage;
For he was likely, had he been put on,
To have proved most royally: and, for his passage,
The soldiers’ music and the rites of war
Speak loudly for him.
Take up the bodies: such a sight as this
Becomes the field, but here shows much amiss.
Go, bid the soldiers shoot.” –Fortinbras, Hamlet, 5.2

This one has given me particular cause for ire over the years due to directors purposefully misinterpreting it to mean “take Horatio out back and shoot him”.  I’ve already expounded upon why this is a bad idea so I don’t feel the need to hammer it home here.

“The weight of this sad time we must obey;
Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.
The oldest hath borne most: we that are young
Shall never see so much, nor live so long.” – Albany, King Lear, 5.3

Perhaps the most profound of the end-tags; I’ve always had a special fondness for this one since it can apply to not just a tragedy, but also to many other aspects of life when politics is involved.  For example: it was an utterance first delivered me by a professor when we were in conference before a talkback with an important director whose work we had just seen.

“Gratiano, keep the house,
And seize upon the fortunes of the Moor,
For they succeed on you. To you, lord governor,
Remains the censure of this hellish villain;
The time, the place, the torture: O, enforce it!
Myself will straight aboard: and to the state
This heavy act with heavy heart relate.” – Lodovico, Othello, 5.2

Lodovico’s instinct to take charge of the situation and his burden to inform the people of what has transpired is a burden that many leaders will feel during such times of crisis.  Having to stay strong for other people makes us strong within ourselves.  Lodovico, rather than break down completely, takes it upon himself to be a pillar for the people.

“A glooming peace this morning with it brings;
The sun, for sorrow, will not show his head:
Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things;
Some shall be pardon’d, and some punished:
For never was a story of more woe
Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.” – Prince, Romeo and Juliet, 5.3

Perhaps one of the most famous last lines, owing perhaps to the Reduced Shakespeare Company’s Romeo and Juliet portion of Complete Works of Wllm Shkspr [abrgd]…. Or maybe that’s just how I remember it.

My most profound sympathies go out to the people effected by yesterday’s events.  Stay strong, Boston.

Feelings, Nothing More than Feelings

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Here’s something that folks don’t normally talk about: studying art can be extremely emotionally draining.

Investing one’s full self into anything is draining.  If you have a career which you are passionate about, you will go through phases of utter and complete investment (of course followed by “down time” to recover yourself in order to push for the next accomplishment… it’s inevitable; we can’t give 150% of ourselves at every single moment).

When your career is centered around dealing closely with bodies of artwork that you, personally, find meaningful, it means that every reading or encounter with that artwork has the potential to move you.  I’m not saying it will; simply that it might.  And when you are dealing with art on a daily basis from a critical perspective, there are some things you must read at certain times.  You can’t avoid it.

But, being a human being, you have a personal life outside of your work.  And sometimes your work and your personal life clash in an unpleasant way.  This is particularly upsetting when you may be going through an emotional crisis.  In his book Will and Me (a great read, by the way, for anyone who has a remote interest in Shakespeare geekery), Dominic Dromgoole admits that certain plays of Shakespeare tend to find him when he is emotionally available to them (he specifically mentions reading Hamlet after the death of his father).  This kind of personal connection to the work brings new revelation both about the piece in question and about one’s self.  Really, I can think of no better guide to the human spirit than my man Will.

Every time I have encountered a play of Shakespeare’s in this way, I have been absolutely

a shot I took of working in the hotel lobby while at CDC... sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do

a shot I took of working in the hotel lobby while at CDC… sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do

astounded at how accurately his characters behave in circumstances similar to mine.  I have continually wondered at how one man could encapsulate such a great spectrum of the human emotional experience (as, by the way, have countless other scholars – this is one of the arguments that the heated authorship debate is based in).  Whomever Will was, I can assure you that he knew things about living; he knew people, he knew pain, he knew heartache, he knew love, and he knew desire.

So how is it, then, that we are able to compose ourselves through whatever it is we’re dealing with and focus past it into the work that’s presented itself to us?  Certainly a degree of critical distance is helpful – if you can view the text before you as text rather than an emotional journey, it will help you to detach.  If you can focus on the minutiae of what’s going on rather than give a general reading, it can assist in this; when you’re looking at the mechanical functionings of something, it’s much more difficult to become attached to an artistic whole.

Put your theory glasses on.  Try and put the piece in context and then pull it out of context.  Deconstruct the art; really break it down into nuts and bolts.  Again, if you’re looking at pieces, it’s harder to become emotionally involved with it.

If you really can’t see past the big stuff, take a moment, walk away, deal with what you need to deal with (I find that journaling is generally good for this), then come back.  When you come back, make it business.  Change out of your pajamas if you have to (yes, I know, the cardinal sin of academia: working in real-people-pants while in your own home).  I find it’s a lot more difficult to invest emotionally while wearing pants.

Remember this: at the end of the day, this is your job.  You may love it, you may be devoted to it, it may overflow into many other aspects of your life, but it’s what pays the bills.  Show me an engineer that weeps over robots on a daily basis, think about how ridiculous that is, then remind yourself that getting caught up in your work (while very easy to do) is equally ridiculous.  It’s not sustainable, healthy, or good for you in any way.

….This does not, by the by, mean that I will be able to restrain myself from weeping every time I reach the end of King Lear.  It does, however, mean that I’ll at least acknowledge the ridiculousness, allow myself to be human, and eat more ice cream when I’m working on Lear.

Notes from the Road

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A few passing remarks about CDC 2013 composed from an airport because the minute I hit the ground in Boston I have to deal with the mess I left on my desk in order to accommodate being at this conference:

There’s something to be said for conferencing in packs.  I’m fortunate enough to attend a

walking into the Fells in Baltimore; lovely!

walking into the Fells in Baltimore; lovely!

program that hits certain conferences en force.  CDC is a favorite of the Tufts crew (or, as we were dubbed by one of our dinner companions last night, the Tuftskrüe) for a variety of reasons: the timing for both its abstract deadline and the conference itself is ideal for our projects, the subject matter/conference theme fits our projects well, it’s close enough to home to not be a ridiculously expensive trip, and the general level of discourse is nice and comfortable without being over or under whelming.  It’s a very friendly conference and one that welcomes graduate students with open arms (which we appreciate).  Because there are many of us, we tend to make an impression.  So not only is it neat to be recognized as “oh, you’re one of the Tuftskrüe!”, but it also helps your recognizability and memorability; basically your conferencing street cred.  Also; it’s great not to have to dine alone if you don’t want to.

My panel was extremely well attended and there were some great ideas tossed around the room.  It was, dare I say, fun.  While I always enjoy giving presentations of my work, I don’t always enjoy the presentations of others on my panel.  This panel was assembled of myself and a paper on the usage of excrement in Jarry’s Ubu Roi so, really, it was a recipe for awesomeness.  Many thanks to those who were there, those who spoke to me after the panel, and those I ran into over the course of the weekend who complimented my work!  It was great to have met all of you and I look forward to seeing you again in the future either here or somewhere in the great big conferenceverse outside.

Seriously, graduate students, stop dressing like you’re trying to be a grown up without actually committing to the role.  Put down the jeans, put on a pair of slacks, and leave the sneakers at home.  When you have tenure, you will have plenty of time to dress however you want; but for now for the love of all things bardy it won’t kill you to look nice.  Also, if your paper is selected for a conference, that’s wonderful.  Congrats!  But now it’s your job to figure out what a conference paper should read like.  Here are a few hints: it shouldn’t be a fifteen-minute plot re-hash of some lesser-known work without any synthesis whatsoever, it shouldn’t have enough fifty-cent words that you lose your audience in the process of “enlightening” them, and it shouldn’t be dry, monotonic, or snooze-worthy.  I would love to hear more papers from people who sound like they’re actually excited to be working on what they’re presenting.  It doesn’t make you less intelligent if you have some enthusiasm for your own work.  I promise.

CDC is a really great conference because it attracts a wide array of scholars from various areas: English Lit, Theatre, Comp Rhet, and Translation Studies just to name a few.  Because of this, I always wind up meeting a variety of interesting folks with a variety of interesting fields.  Also because of this, my ideas resound differently here than they do at ASTR for example.  I come to CDC to hear a multiplicity of opinions from some extremely intelligent and diverse intellects.  For that, this year was very Shakespeare-heavy!  How neat!  The only downside to this is that because one can’t actually count on speaking to a room of folks whose expertise closely matches our own, we spend a great deal of time engaging a listening audience with current discourse surrounding our ideas.  I heard a lot of plot summaries, theory primers, and overall exposition over the course of the weekend.

Lovely chandeliers in the theatre where our conference play occurred

Lovely chandeliers in the theatre where our conference play occurred

It’s a fine line to walk here between “not enough” and “too much” and I think, unfortunately for those already acquainted with the subject areas discussed, that folks tend towards the “not enough” which sometimes doesn’t leave room for arguments to fully develop.  I don’t think there’s a real way around this because of the layout of the conference, and I suppose that the real answer is to catch up with speakers in the hotel bar and ask more detail about discussed arguments, but I can still lament that there will always be more unsaid in this kind of format.

A few conference faux-pas that I saw enacted this weekend which annoyed me enough that I will reiterate their gaucheness here: when the moderator stops you because you’ve run over time, don’t question it.  The moderator is just doing his/her job and you should have timed your presentation.  If you are using technology in your presentation, make it a point to arrive in your room ten minutes before your panel and TEST the technology so that you don’t hold up the entire panel because you can’t get an adaptor to work with your mac.  Rehearse your presentation and eliminate speech disfluencies like “like” or “uhm”.  Especially when there are going to be theatre people in the room whose job it is to beat this sort of thing out of wide-eyed undergrads and thereby will be doubly annoyed that you, a so-called “professional”, can’t give a fluent presentation.

Alright; it looks like my flight will be boarding in short order.  I truly did have a marvelous conference and, as always, hope that next year will be even better than this year.  See ya, Baltimore!

Pre-Conference Panic

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At its best, conferencing is both draining and stressful.  It’s also wonderful, horizon-broadening, and fun; but we cannot forget the fact that it involves many particulars which can be disruptive to the life of an average graduate student.

I love to travel and flying is a special treat.  It’s probably good that I chose a profession which allows me to do so on a regular basis (since I’ve been in the PhD I’ve averaged about 2.5 trips a year for various things).  That said, it always takes me a night to adjust to sleeping in a bed that’s not my own in a city that’s not my own away from my schedule, desk, library books, and on the whole away from my life.

It can be very unsettling to attend a conference when your life is bustling and the things

A shot I took last year of the conference hotel. Pretty snazzy, no?

A shot I took last year of the conference hotel. Pretty snazzy, no?

you’re flying away from to spend a few days in an actual manifestation of the ivory tower are large and stressful.

Which is probably why I’m having such a hard time this week.  I’ve so far managed to recover from every little blunder (forgetting my iPad at home, nearly missing meetings, making minor scheduling errors which could have huge rippling effects on certain committees I’m chairing, etc.)  The worst part?  It’s only Tuesday.  I have plenty of time to make all kinds of crazy mistakes which could impact my future as I know it.

I’m trying to be methodical to head off any chance of large error; my paper is already printed, I’ve done the majority of my packing, my packing list is composed, I’m creating my usual conference redundancies (kits to deal with paper loss, bad breathe, bleeding, spills, etc.).  Despite this, I have the sneaking suspicion that I’m going to forget something and that something is going to be vital to my future as an academic.

I leave for Baltimore tomorrow.  If you’re at the Comparative Drama Conference, feel free to say hi and ask me if I’ve remembered my pants.  At this rate, there’s the very real possibility that I might be living that particular anxiety dream.

Learning to Float

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While I won’t be a real professor for some time yet, I have been a teacher many times in my life.

When I was in my undergrad, I worked as a swim instructor/lifeguard.  My father was a lifeguard.  My grandfather (though not his father) was a lifeguard.  It just seemed like the thing to do.  Despite this, and the fact that I am a strong swimmer, before getting my WSI (Water Safety Instructor certification) I had never been a technically proficient swimmer.  I wasn’t ever on a swim team, I only took the most basic of swimming classes as a kid, most of my swimming experience came from growing up in a lakeside community and spending summers paddling around the rafts there.  For a long time, I felt some innate guilt about this.  Who was I to charge for swimming lessons when I clearly wasn’t any kind of expert?

Then I got to doing it for a while.  I taught mommy and me classes, I taught kids, I taught adults who had never learned before.  I wasn’t coaching Olympic athletes, I was teaching people to float.  And to teach people to float, you don’t need to be an expert; you just need to be proficient and have an interest in seeing people get better.  If you’re a great teacher, you’ll have an interest in getting better yourself.

When I was getting my Master’s, I worked as a ballroom dance instructor.  Despite many

Dancing at the studio while studying for my instructor certification

Dancing at the studio while studying for my instructor certification

years of on-again/off-again dance training of different varieties and an innate ability to move gracefully, I wasn’t a technically proficient dancer (at least when I started instructor training).  Even after my time in ballroom boot camp, I certainly didn’t know everything there was to know about ballroom.  But I knew more than any normal person has any right to know.  And even as I was teaching, I was learning more and more.  I got better.

One day, my co-instructor expressed the same guilt I had felt at the 92nd St. Y so many years ago: she wasn’t a true expert.  She felt like a fraud telling people she was because she knew there were things she didn’t know yet.

I shared with her my philosophy: you don’t need to be an Olympic swimmer to teach people to float; just like you don’t need to be a champion ballroom dancer to teach people the basic steps.

On Wednesday, I gave a lecture to the class I am TAing this semester.  The lecture was on Augusto Boal as a theatre-maker and, since I’m at Tufts, included a great deal of historical context.  While I do know something about this subject (and, obviously, more than the average person on the street), I would not call myself an expert upon it.  But I wasn’t teaching forward spot runs.  I was teaching the box step.

So often we graduate students feel the pressure to know everything.  We’re thrown into a world with a lot of intelligent people where asking clarifying questions can be viewed as a sign of weakness and a sign of weakness is an invitation for the wolves to attack your soft underbelly.  It’s vital for us to remember that we came to graduate school to learn.  More importantly, we came to graduate school to learn to think.  More often than not, I know the answer to a question because I know where to find that answer rather than know the answer off the top of my head.  Oh, sure, you need to know some things.  I’m not advocating for the complete abandonment of knowledge as an institution.  But I am saying that it may be time to lighten up on ourselves.  We go through enough stress without holding ourselves to some unrealistic expectation that we are omniscient.

So, if ever you feel the pressure to know, just remember: being able to explain the three unities and Aristotle’s seven aspects of drama is more than most normal people will be capable of.  Knowing who the Duke of Saxe-Meiningen is and why he is important is a unique skillset (being able to spell his name even more unique).  Your undergrads will always come up with questions you can’t answer, but the important part is that you know where to look to find the answer.

I’m Back!

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Alright, here we go.

You may have noticed that I took a break last week.  This was inspired by the fact that it was, in fact, Spring Break for us Jumbos.

This is the problem with “breaks”: all they mean is that I don’t actually have to go onto campus.  Even though I didn’t have class, I was still working every day.  I was still struggling to unbury from the assortment of projects which managed to pile up on my desk.  I was still getting caught up on all of the work I had shoved to the side to get through Twelfth Night.

So, as a conceit to the fact that even I need to slow down now and again, I took a break from the blog.  I took a break from my diet and exercise regime.  I took a single day off.  And then hit the ground running.

And it worked!  I woke up this morning on top of my projects (as on top of them as I can possibly be at the moment), ready to hit the world hard, and on the whole refreshed and raring to go.

The rest of the semester is jam-packed with projects: I have a lecture to give this

Look! Spring is really trying to happen!

Look closely! Spring is really trying to happen!

week, a conference next week, a paper to submit as soon as possible, my German exam the week after next, an in-class project/lecture thing the week after that, then a final paper due two weeks from then.  Basically it’s going to be a tough pace, but so long as I can maintain it I will be fine.  And the good news is that, right now, the only thing on my desk is work.  I have no outside projects to distract me from putting this semester to bed and, with it, the coursework for my PhD and all of my qualifying exams before my Comps!

…talk about a feat.  Let me take a moment so as not to hyperventilate.

Today I’m right back in the thick of the action with meetings, class, a library trip, and an evening to review my spoils.  I would normally say “bring it, semester!” but I don’t really want to encourage any monkey business.  Things are going to be difficult enough without antagonizing the gods of academia.  So instead, I will say this: I’m ready.  Let’s do this.  Gently, though.  I’d really like to keep my sanity intact as much as humanly possible.

Some random mid-week thoughts

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With Twelfth Night behind me, I’ve dived head first into an insane-o week.

The midterms for the course I’m TAing have come due and are in the process of being graded.  This process is otherwise known as “Operation: dig yourself out of the avalanche of papers that just fell on you”.  I’m making pretty good progress (and, without saying horribly much about it, the class is turning out some impressive work – good job, team!).

All of the projects which I had pushed off until after the show are suddenly looming before

Plus side to having just completed a show: I get to wake up to this every morning. I love roses!

Plus side to having just completed a show: I get to wake up to this every morning. I love roses!

me like the chimeras and dragons they are.  This semester’s big projects consist of one paper (due ASAP), one paper (due in May), one more lecture for my TAship (in two weeks), my German qual exam (mid April), a conference paper that’s written but has yet to be conferencified (beginning of April), and a class presentation (end of April).  Basically I’ve got a series of staggered deadlines for big projects that are all screaming at me simultaneously.

Luckily, next week is Spring break.  If I can make it to next week, I can have the entire week to not be on campus and sit and work in my pajamas all day every day.

This doesn’t sound healthy.

…or it sounds extremely healthy.

One of the two, I’m not sure which.

I just finished translating Grimm’s Aschenputtel (Cinderella) yesterday which means I need to start in on a new piece.  I try to spend an hour or so every day with my German.  I’m thinking of going back to the German Goethe articles I had the library pull for me.  I should also probably return to my grammar book.  But translating fairy tales is so much more fun than learning grammar!

I have spent the last week steeping in Molière.  I’m writing a seminar paper on him and there are a LOT of plays to get through.  My professor loaned me some books so I’ve been trying to (with a moderate degree of success GO ME!) to get through them in a week so I can return them to her.  This means over-saturation in French witticism.  I’m continually surprised (to the point that it really shouldn’t surprise me anymore) about how much more pleasant it is to research something that’s enjoyable to read than to research something you couldn’t give a damn about (or is just torturous to get through).  Though he many not be my man Will, Monsieur Molière is slippery, witty, and wonderful and I’m having fun getting to know him.  I’d be grateful if you didn’t disclose this to Herr Shakespeare; he’s a jealous mistress (don’t believe me?  Read the sonnets).

I’ve had some wonderful professional opportunities fall onto my plate this week (details to follow; I don’t want to give too much away before things are finalized).  Suffice to say you may want to leave the evening of April 23 available (Shakespeare’s birthday) if you’re anywhere in the vicinity of Portsmouth, NH.

And on that note, I should return to the mountain to defeat the midterm dragons.  They’re becoming rather insistent and I’d rather not walk away smelling of scorched hair.