O Lost! say the poets

2013

It is the year of the snake-my year. Here’s what’s going down!

MARCH: My cousin AJ’s birthday (3/4) My Uncle Charlie’s birthday (3/8) My birthday and my mother’s birthday. 24 and 44, respectively. (There was some summer loving going on in the family!)

I’m rehearsing for Seattle Public Theater’s Edith Can Shoot Things and Hit Them and the show opens March 28th and running until April 21st. Here’s a synopsis for you:

“Three kids — Kenny (Jose Aboag), his sister Edith (Sara L. Porkalob), and their friend Benji (Tim Smith Stewart) — are all but abandoned on a farm in remote Middle America. With little adult supervision, they feed and care for each other, making up the rules as they go. But when Kenny’s relationship with Benji becomes more than friendship, and Edith shoots something she really shouldn’t shoot, the formerly indifferent outside world comes barging in whether they want it to or not.”

This is the smallest cast I’ve ever had the privilege to be in and already, the process is open, honest, caring, inspiring and challenging. I’m ready to shoot stuff!

APRIL: My Aunty Lily’s birthday. Spring!

I am collaborating with my immensely talented and inspiring friends: Kathleen Le Coze-a set designer and installation artist and Rachel Levens-a multi-disciplinary performance artist. We’ve secured The Closet Gallery at Cornish College of the Arts and are in beginning talks about an installation/live performance piece in the vein of avant-garde performance, breaking the boundary of audience and performer, evoking an oscillatory relationship between performance and presence, etc. Kathleen will be the installation artist, Rachel will be performing and I will be directing but we all have equal say in all aspects of the piece, from its inception to composition and finally, performance. I’ve VERY excited and ready to challenge my aesthetic as a director. Plus, working with these ladies is a gift itself.

I am auditioning for 12 Minutes Max at On the Boards. I have lengthened my solo piece, Dragon Lady, and I hope to perform it for an audience of multi-disciplinary artists. Dragon Lady has definitely changed since the first showing last May at The Solo Showcase at Cornish. Since May, I’ve performed the piece for small groups of friends, as an opener for a friends solo show at the Little Theater on 19^th and at Washington Hall for a Pinay Sa Seattle event. Here’s hoping that I get in!

MAY: Aunty Jill’s Birthday!

The LIVING ROOM PROJECT BEGINS! Last month, my friend Madison Mabbot had a marvelous idea: Since securing rehearsal/performance space is such a pain in the ass if you’re not an established company or if you don’t have the necessary moolah/clout, why not use the space we do have? LIKE OUR HOUSES?! OR OTHER PEOPLE’S HOUSES WHO ARE OPEN TO IT?! GENIUS!  So we-meaning Cornish people/current students/alumni-got together to brainstorm and what we’ve come up with is this:

Beginning May 5^th, we will curate/produce/act/direct/write and ultimately perform an original piece of work in someone’s house-a new piece for every weekend. Locations will change every week and all performances will be open to the public. If we choose to continue this process into June-there will be opportunities for newer spaces, site specific work, collaboration with location, etc. It’s all very exciting and of course, it’s happening all over. Check out this rad sight: http://www.hometheaterfestival.com/

My lovely friend and band mate (more on the band later) Stacy Lynn Gilbert, is a playwright and performance artist. She is in the process of writing a one act play comprised of ‘scene-let’s-2 to 3 person scenes that are or can be ten minute plays, able to stand on their own. Stacy blends razor sharp Dali inspired imagery, Pinter pauses, witty dialogue and her own dash of sparkling whimsy to create plays that are downright absurd and gut wrenchingly funny. We’ve taken three of these scene-lets, If you give a Peach a Perch, Raising a Romulus and Cocoon, and are going to stage them in our house in Ravenna. Outside, dining room/living room, bedroom. They will be performed promenade style, with the audience split into three groups. All three plays will be happening at the same time, repeated three times so that each group will see all scenes but in a different order than the other groups. Exciting, no? And hell to organize, what with timing and crowd control but I don’t care, we’re doing it! I was inspired by a senior show I saw last year at Cornish, Fefu and Her Friends By Maria Irene Fornes, directed by one of my friends and mentors, Paul Budraitis and featuring a cast of some of the best acting I’ve seen at Cornish. It was a promenade piece, executed with such care, grace and skill-even as I was moving from location to location, I was in the play-I felt as if I had left behind a part of myself in each of those rooms and even as I type this, tears are coming-that play moved me so much, more than any other play I can recall seeing in the last five years-I was mentally and emotionally exhausted after it was over but felt rejuvenated-I came back a second time, I loved it so much. So, yes, it inspired to me experiment with the promenade style. We’ll see what happens but I embrace the challenge. After the show, we’re planning a ripping rad BBQ in our back yard! We’re draining the pond and making a fire pit, oh yeaaah. ALSO, there will be a live performance by The HoneyChurch Sisters!

JUNE,JULY,AUGUST: Tina’s Birthday (7/16/), Cousin Alix’s Birthday (7/21)

The summer is loosely structured but I am definitely taking a two week vacation and it’ll most likely be spent in CALI! I will visit my Aunty Lily and best friend Mark in LA, tan on the beaches and live it up. I’d like to save up and take my Mom will be, if she can get that time off of work. Since she’s moved back from Hawaii I know that she’s happy being closer to family but I know she misses the sun and beaches so maybe a mother/daughter vacation?  CAMPING! I WANT TO GO CAMPING DAMMIT. San Juan Islands, maybe? Doe Bay?! GARDEN! BBQ! FAMILY! FRIENDS! ART! SMOKEFARM! This year, I’d like to go as an observer. The last two years, I’ve been performing and haven’t been able to enjoy the full scope of the farm. This is the year!

(MIRANDA)!! I almost forgot! My good friend, Katherine Jett-a playwright, dancer and performer-and I have been mulling over an idea that is semi-solid on paper, amorphous in thought and gargantuan in real time perspective. We want to produce a site specific performance piece, taking place in a house scheduled for demolition, in the Capitol Hill Area. Collaborating with a talented scenic designer/installation artist, Christopher Mumaw-we would transform this house into the brain of Miranda, daughter of Prospero, survivor of The Tempest. A promenade piece drive by solo dance performance, interactive installation and audience participation-this piece will elucidate the chemistry of the brains electrical synapses, its symbiotic relationship with the id and how, under severe traumatic experience, the human spirit strives to save itself. Again, a giant of a project. Kat and I have been so busy with separate projects that we haven’t had a solid stretch of time to devote to this but this summer we’ll be working in workshop phase, exploring, playing, tuning our instinct and intuition. We’ll see what happens!

SEPTEMBER-NOVEMBER: My Uncle Ronald’s Birthday (10/9), My Best friend Romeo’s birthday (10/12)

I begin my online TEFL certification and begin the process of job placement in Latin America.

DECEMBER:

If all works out with job placement, I spend time with family and friends, bidding farewell. I pack. Give away my books and records.

JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2014:

Move to a different country, teach, live, experience.

I’m ready. Viva la fiesta!

November 6th, 2012

Met up with QuiQui and Akoni at Z’s Pizza on Broadway-They had calzones and me, a slice of Hawaiian.

Traipsed across the street to Strawshop’s ELECTIONATION party at BPH. Saw some of our friends; I claimed my two drink tickets at the bar. Quiqui’s drink was titled “A Moderate Republican” and mine, “Romnesia”. We met up with Jojo and his lovely wife, hung out for an hour or so, watched CNN on the projector with all of the other party guests. 

We decide to venture out to a bar to grab some food because, of course, we’re hungry again. Every place on Pike was full so Barrio was where we ended up-and Barrio had no TV, no coverage of the race! Luckily, I had my smarty phone with its handy app and we had taquitos, Mexican rice and sangria to keep us occupied. And then it happens-my phone says we hit 274 electoral votes-I double check CNN, then receive a confirmation text from a friend and I shout it out to the bar and people cheer and hug and cry and Akoni ordered us celebratory tequila shots and the bartender is making blue shots, in honor of Barack—Barack-o-shots! And then the gentleman next to us buys our next round of drinks and people are so happy and our check comes and we go find Jojo at the sports bar that used to be the old war room-and IT’S PACKED WITH PEOPLE-all waiting for Romney’s concession speech, Obama’s acceptance speech-it’s hot in there so we leave with new friends in tow, we end up on 10th and Pike where history repeats itself-a huge dance party in the street that lasts for hours…people are drinking and smoking and kissing and laughing and dancedancedancing-Jojo is taking pictures and documenting the event all via his iphone, Bacardi rum somehow makes an appearance and for a minute, we’re all pirates and then a man hands us a joint that is as thick as my pinky and is all, happy election night and we’re like WHAT and then his speech is blared through speakers and Whitney Houston stops playing and we listen to our President and people are crying then we dance some more and Akoni and I decide it’s time for Molly Moons-my first time ever having it, I wanted to wait until something special merited a visit-and we sit on the curb, listening to crowd a block over-cheering, screaming, dancing-I have Baracky-Road in my cone, it only seems appropriate-he has balsamic strawberry-I’m high from all the weed in the air and I know I’m drunk and with one of my best friends and we have four more years.