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Mark and Melanie go to New York. So Melanie can study with SITI Company and write her next one-woman show. So Mark can take kick-ass photos and train for Ironman Canada. And so they can live in a 350-square-foot studio without killing each other. Hopefully...
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Melanie "Calamity" Jones
Mark
Fail Inside The Box
I have exactly no time to be writing this. It's a crazy week of work, grant deadlines and houseguests, but something happened last night that so perfectly describes the way of being I rant about on this blog and elsewhere that I had to share.
I've been invited to take part in an Interactive Performance Workshop run by Jeff Wirth, a guy who has been studying, practicing, teaching and writing about interactive performance for around 30 years. He's a mad genius.
He created something called Story Box which is, at its simplest description, a square stage. Performers (interactors) and audience (spectactors) work in the box, in a kind of theatre in the round idea. In last night's workshop, Jeff played the part of the spectactor, giving us interactors various common 'types' or responses we'll come across working with spects (as they're known).
My colleagues and I lined the outside of the box and I could feel the anxiety cranking itself up to 11. Eventually, I'd have to get in that box. I'd have to improvise and come up with scenarios and be smart and think on m feet and guide the scene and make this spectactor person feel good and like they were winning and make them want to play with me and and and and and.
"Fail inside the box," Jeff said. "Don't stand outside the box spinning in your head. Step in. Fail inside the box, don't fail outside of it."
I instantly relaxed.
Fail inside the box.
Not only was I being invited to fail, but I was reminded I would fail either way. Failing inside the box meant jumping in with both feet and learning by doing. It meant I would learn faster (MUCH faster), get out of my own way earlier and cut through fear and anxiety with a much sharper knife. Failing outside the box? Festering in my own anxiety and then slinking away, reminded of all the other times I didn't risk and get better at something that scares me.
YOU WILL FAIL EITHER WAY. But failing outside your comfort zone means you'll learn so much faster.
This is the secret sauce to moving forward in quickly in your creative life: constantly and consciously failing inside the box. Putting yourself out there (in there?) and forcing yourself to learn by doing. I do this over and over and over again. The more I leave my comfort zone, the easier it gets.
And it asks us to do something really subversive in this achievement-oriented, security-obsessed culture we live in: embrace failure. Dive into failure as the single BEST way to learn something and get good at something. (Watch a baby learning to walk and you'll see the power of "failure" in all its glory.)
Fail inside the box. Don't fail outside of it. Happy Monday.
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by Melanie "Calamity" Jones
The Four Best Things On The Planet (According To Me Right At This Moment)
We're only 16 days in and 2012 has been a big year. Almost everything feels brand new. I started a new (part-time) job – my first go-into-the-office job since, oh, 2007. I taught my first workshop. And then my first webinar. I worked on a real-live off-Broadway production for one of my favourite playwrights. I discovered that off-Broadway was different but not that different (more seats, more staff, more ass-kissing, but other than that...pretty much the same). I discovered that hugely successful people need help, or are willing to offer it, just like everyone else. All you really have to do is call them.
I've been invited to take part in a series of workshops on interactive theatre, so I'm doing that. I've received a budget for my London 2012 Olympics (and the Edinburgh Festival) idea for ENDURE. I have a $50,000 fundraising job ahead of me and I need producing/presenting partners in the UK. I don't have time to be nervous or hesitant or scared about those things. I have to dive in and get things done because it's basically six months away.
I've learned that a show about marathons is interesting and exciting to booking agents during an Olympic year. I've learned that happy accidents and coincidences happen when you're willing to try new things, meet new people and talk about your idea wherever you go.
Mostly, I've learned that the three best things on the planet are:
1. Trusting my gut,
2. Leaving my comfort zone and
3. Taking responsibility for myself.
Amazing, amazing, amazing stuff happens when you have the balls to do those three simple things.
What do I mean by that?
Well, end of last year, I was in a pretty heavy victim place. Poor me, the Extraordinary Alien who can't legally work in a coffee shop. I was so fixated on what I couldn't do and what wasn't going for me that I couldn't see what would happen if I just sucked it up and (as my friend Cathy says) put my big girl pants on.
In late December, I ended up applying for and getting a tutoring job. It wasn't a job I really wanted or had passion for, but it was about owning the fact that if I wanted to be able to pay my rent, I might have to drop the line about how sad it was that my show didn't make enough to pay me and just get a friggin' job already. So I did that.
And then (because I was open and willing) a job I could REALLY use came along. A job grant writing where I can learn, practice and get PAID for a skill I need as a self-producing artist. The job is 15 hours per week and when I got it, I made myself a deal. The deal is if I'm giving someone else 15 hours of fundraising effort, then I commit to giving myself the same thing.
I also decided to teach the workshop and webinar. I've wanted to teach since I started blogging in 2008. But working within my comfort zone of copywriting for dollars, I was never pushed or forced to try teaching. Being in the U.S. and in a position to completely re-define my income-generating life, I figured now was the time. I love it. I am totally addicted.
And about trusting my gut? Well, let's just say that the plan to take ENDURE to the Olympics started out as a secret, private dream – one that was actually met with sniggering and eye-rolling when I told a few people. Something in me knew that the show needed to go there, so I just took the idea underground for awhile and then, when the time was right, I brought it back out and fought for it. Now, we've got more presenter interest than we've ever had for the show and momentum is happening. Because OF COURSE this show should go to the Olympics! OF COURSE.
But I also had to face one big reality. That if I want to take the show to the Olympics, it's my responsibility to get it there. I have a team of support, yes, but they are all busy with their own lives and projects. So the onus of passion, drive and energy is on me. I know that if I build it, they will come. But I have to build it. I have to start.
Okay, wait, there's a fourth most awesome thing:
4. Drop perfectionism like it's hot.
You'll never try anything new if you think you have to be great at it the first time. Teaching the workshop and webinar fall into this category, but this story is more fun...I ran into Rufus Wainwright at the airport on my way home for Christmas. I was horribly nervous, but I forced myself to talk to him. After all, we're fellow Canadian artists living in New York – and I make theatre in collaboration with musicians! So I go over and say, "Hi." And he turns and I say, "Rufus Wainwright?" Only all those Rs and Ws got jumbled up in my mouth and it came out all fucked: Woofer Rainwight. And I made REALLY SPECTACULARLY AWKWARD conversation for awhile, sounding like a total fangirl even though I'm not actually a fangirl, and then he ran away into the terminal.
The end.
(One of my New Year's resolutions is to practice talking to famous people.)
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by Melanie "Calamity" Jones
Creative Kickstart 2012 And Some Really Great News
Okay, three things.
One.
Apparently my New Year Manifesto really hit home! That thing is making the rounds all over the Internet and for that I am both tickled pink and praying to the little baby Jesus there weren't any typos.
I am also really happy this thing has spread as far as it has because...
Two.
I'm running two workshops! My New York friends get to attend Creative Kickstart 2012 live and in person on January 7th for the low-low price of $50. My international friends get to attend the online version on January 14th for $25.
And next year, I'll try not to cannibalize my live events with lower-priced online options. (Insert winky emoticon here.)
This year, I'm cannibalizing FOR YOU, dear friends, because I really, really, really want you to set your year up for getting your creative work done. I think by now you know how life-changing it's been to prioritize my creative work. Lucky for you, it's become my new obsession that every artist I know gives themselves that same gift.
What's wild is this applies not just to aspiring artists but to working artists as well. I know a ton of artists who get so wrapped up in making a living or working their artist day jobs (teaching, admin, marketing, working for other people's creative projects/companies) that prioritizing their OWN work slips through the cracks.
No more, friends. This is the end of getting 'close enough' to your dreams. This is the year you let them come first.
If you need more convincing, how about the whole Mayan calendar thing? No time like the countdown to the apocalypse.
I want you to register* as soon as is humanly possible because I have a New Year's ritual to share with you that you will love. It started on January 1st, but there's still time to make it work for you (it goes until January12th...intrigued yet?).
Three.
2011 ended with a really great and validating surprise. ENDURE was named one of 2011's Most Memorable Theatre Moments by The Calgary Herald!
Delightful times a hundred and all the confirmation I need of the power of finishing creative projects and letting them out into the world. (Which is, really, the only part of this I had control of.)
When I first chatted with him for the preview he wrote, the Herald writer (Stephen Hunt) told me that two of his favourite things were solo shows and running. I almost dropped the phone when he said that because not only do 'one woman shows' normally fill me personally with ovary-shriveling dread, but I wasn't convinced theatre reviewers would give a show about marathoning the time of day.
Happily, I was two for two with dear Mr. Hunt and, once again, convinced that making work about whatever you're passionate about and fascinated by matters. It MATTERS, people. Now, get at it.
*How to register: go to PayPal, click the 'Send Money' link and fire off $25 (for online workshop) or $50 (for live workshop) to collision at melaniejones dot ca. Use an email address I can reach you at and I'll send you this amazing New Year's ritual and also one about MONEY. Yeah baby. Money.
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by Melanie "Calamity" Jones
This Is The Year
This is the year.
The year you drop the weights that have kept you down. Those old not-true truths, the stories about how hard it all is and the ways you aren't up for it. It's the year you put all those on the ice floe and send them out to sea.
It's the year you clean house. The year you remember that it's not what happens but how you react to it. That you are what you eat and who you're friends with. That the way to really free yourself is to look directly at the hard stuff and to forgive everyone involved. Because you want to be free not because they were right.
It's the year you take 100% responsibility for your life. The year you stop complaining about it and blaming other people and start figuring out what you have the power to change. Because as soon as you do that you see that you aren't trapped and never have been. It's the year you cut the shit.
The year you get things done. The year you act on things rather than worrying about them. Or avoiding them. It's the year you act.
This is the year you finish things. The one where you drop perfectionism like it's hot. The one where it no longer matters if you're good enough or smart enough or talented enough because none of that has anything to do with the work of simply bringing something to completion. It's the year you experience how difficult and how satisfying 'finished' is. And how that immediately makes you want to do it again.
It's the year you remember there are no shortcuts and that good things take a really long time. It's the year you cultivate patience. The year you let go of timelines and expectations and the hope that someone will save you or discover you. It's the year you save and discover yourself.
It's the year of small actions and big ideas. Bigger ideas than are comfortable because the only person who decides the size of your life is you. And because up until this point you've been thinking too small. It's the year of thinking too big. Too grand. Too magnificent. Too...impossible.
It's the year of being okay with being uncomfortable.
The one where you stop trying to be cool. This is the year where you look people in the eyes and tell them the truth. It's the year you stop pretending.
This is the year you trust yourself. It's the year you trust where your intuition is asking you to go. It's the year you remember that the path you're on is 100% yours and will not look like anyone else's no matter what. It's the year you stop following other people's paths and follow your own.
It's the year you let go of needing that path to be straight.
It's the year you laugh more. It's the year you're more grateful. The one where you remember that it wasn't a series of catastrophes that got you here but a series of gifts. It's a year of more gifts. It's the year where you notice them.
Happy 2012 everyone.
PS. NYC folks should sign up now for the January 7th workshop. I'll be sending out a free/bonus New Year's ritual tomorrow to those who have registered. Non-NYC friends: Creative Kickstart webinar will be on Saturday, January 14th from 2-4pm Eastern. Registration details coming, but if you want the New Year's ritual as well, email your interest to melanie @ melaniejones dot ca.
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by Melanie "Calamity" Jones
Do Your Dreams: Creative Kickstart 2012
I'm teaching a workshop! It's going to be amazing. You should be there.
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by Melanie "Calamity" Jones
On Getting My Ass Handed To Me
Okay, so, I need to admit to you that the fall run of the show did NOT go how I imagined. I should also admit that 'how I imagined' included Jennifer Aniston (or Drew Barrymore, I wasn't picky) attending the show and deciding to produce it and me suddenly becoming the new Off-Broadway 'it' girl.
So: delusions. And: country mouse naivete. And let's face it: this show is more off-road than off-Broadway.
Anyhoo. What really happened is that I learned in visceral detail what it means when people tell you New York is a tough city. It mean you put your heart and soul into something and pretty much no one comes.
My savvy and experienced collaborators have been experiencing this for more than 10 years. They know the drill, but the whole thing hurt my feelings. And so my little inner artist has been nursing what can only be described as a broken heart. Or if you want to take it the 'lost innocence' route: a broken hymen. (Gross. Sorry.)
I've been casting about for several weeks sad, tired and despondent. And angry. I've been angry.
But then I went for coffee with a beautifully and relentlessly positive artist. She's a visual artist who's been here, doing it, for 18 years. She is totally cheerful about things and her simple solution has been to keep making work and sending it out and constantly believing it's all possible. When she first got here after grad school, this lovely lady made 25 copies of her portfolio and sent them all out. She made a deal with herself that as soon as one came back, she'd ship it off again. And again. And again.
At first when she told me this, I felt exhausted at the thought of it. But this week I wrote a grant from scratch and sent it off. And I just sent another one off this afternoon. I feel totally energized because you know what? I'm being proactive and I'm taking matters into my own hands. The more I engage in acts of optimism, WITHOUT BEING ATTACHED TO THE RESULTS, the more I'm able to see how awesome things actually are.
Besides expectations, the other thing I've needed to detach from is this city. Not that I'm leaving NYC, but I no longer want to seek its approval. It is a big, big world, and I've got lots of dreams for myself and this show. (One of them involves a major international sporting event in a certain UK city next summer. Hmm. What could it be?)
So I'm leaning into my dreams. I'm leaning into acts of optimism. I'm finding rest and pleasure in my creative work and gratitude for the people who surrounded and supported me as I got my NYC cherry soundly popped. (Gross! Sorry!)
A few days ago, I was ready to pack my bags and head home. But I'm going to stick it out. Not in spite of New York, but because this city, in its own weird way is teaching me what it means to be an artist and keep being an artist.
And I'm not entirely confident Jennifer Aniston could have taught me that.
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by Melanie "Calamity" Jones
Season Of The Bitch: On Creative Work And The Downward Pull Of Mediocrity
A year ago right now, I was breathlessly sprinting to the FedEx store before it closed, hoping to get my Alberta Foundation For The Arts apology/appeal/re-vamped proposal to them as soon as possible, hoping they'd approve it (and not take my funding away) and hoping that I could, in fact, make ENDURE. I was frantic. Nothing was certain. All seemed lost.
And if that makes me a bitch or a bad friend or a shitty party guest, so be it. I'll drink bourbon with you when my draft is done.
And yet, in the face of that – funding threatened, no income whatsoever, visa not yet approved – I decided to give myself permission to do nothing but write. My entire life, my entire existence was organized around my creative work. It was Priority #1. Period. Full stop.
My life shaped itself around my goal. I rose at 5:30am every day, meditated, swam, wrote, ate salad, wrote more. I had almost no social life, I read reams, watched inspiring documentaries and went to bed on time. I modeled my life in many ways around how I functioned as an athlete when I was training for my first marathon and my Ironman. It was a model I knew. And I model I knew that worked. Limit distractions. Submit to structure. Keep your eyes on the prize.
Is this how I could live my entire life? No. A person needs times to eat pie, drink bourbon and go a bit crazy. But when it's time to get something done? When the season you're in is that of focused effort? This is how I like to live.
I love to shape my life around a goal. It makes me feel like a warrior, like I'm the hero in the story and this is my training montage. The point where my ego falls away and I commit to the rigor of practice. Where I prove I have what it takes.
It is that time again.
But, last week made me crazy. Too many meetings crammed into a short week and a holiday right in the middle there. Just as I prepared to re-enter the monk-like ascetic season of my practice, everything went pear shaped. I was frustrated. But I still wrote every day, forcibly shoving everything aside to get words on the page.
It wasn't pretty, but I did it. And it proved something to me again. Something I already knew.
I'm thinking now about the Cocktail Party scene in ENDURE. That scene is about staying true to your own path. It's about not giving in to mediocrity (which so often takes the form of double rum and Cokes). It's about carving out a place for yourself and your dream in a world that seems hell-bent on making you behave like everybody else.
"Relaaaaax," people tell you. "Take it easy." And they don't mean to bring you down or take the wind out of your sails, but that's what ends up happening. "This is important," they'll tell you and the unspoken message is that their party/problem/project is more important than your dream.
I might sound paranoid. I might sound strident. But I know all too clearly that I've only got so much energy and so many hours in a day. Who I give my precious time and energy to is my business and my business alone.
Because, seriously, I have enough on my mind. It is hard enough to stay motivated when, a year and 700 creative risks later, I am STILL broke (broker, even) and everything is STILL uncertain. To learn that quote-unquote Success might come with a sense of satisfaction, but is completely devoid of guarantees. To know that as many risks as I took last year, I STILL have to walk to the edge of my comfort zone every single day because THAT IS THE JOB OF AN ARTIST.
That it doesn't get easier. The dreams just get bigger.
It is a hard enough job to wake up each day and clear away the fear and doubt that have collected in my sleep, to get present in my body and to wade through the layers and layers of psychology, habit, intellect, criticism and (still more!) fear that fill my mind in order to tap down into the pure, flowing water of creative truth from which I need to draw if I am to do good, or even great, work.
Because I guess here's what it boils down to: that truth is more important to me than anything else. Articulating what it means to be alive. Holding the space for vulnerability, uncertainty and hope. Validating the human struggle. Creating a sense of communion in a time of great isolation and confusion.
This is why I'm here.
And if that makes me a bitch or a bad friend or a shitty party guest, so be it. I'll drink bourbon with you when my draft is done.
Posted
by Melanie "Calamity" Jones
I'm Back. Let's Go.
I feel like I have a lot to tell you. A lot I didn't share over the past several months because I was a marketing person and marketing people aren't supposed to tell you how they fear failure every day and how things aren't turning out how they'd expected and how The Crazy visits like clockwork every Tuesday morning.
Ah.
It's good to be back.
I'm pretty much ravaged, energy-wise. Seven weeks of performing and hustling wore me clean out. And I get tired just thinking about how little rest I've given myself since diving into ENDURE full-time a year ago. (It's been a YEAR, people. Can you believe this?!) So, I'm wiped. But I'm not worried.
Because it's already starting to happen. My inner writer is starting to wake up and stretch her legs. She's making me play hooky at MoMA and take her to the thrift store. She's plastered a bunch of Post-its everywhere. She's coming up with weird ideas at weird times of day and taking me out to weird theatre. She's started staring at people again and eavesdropping on conversations.
She's saying it's time.
I've been thinking a lot about seasons. I know I've written about this before. How there's a season for everything. And your job as an artist or any other kind of human is to figure out which season you're in and do that season's necessary work.
Last late fall and winter was a contracted season, a time for laying the ground work, healing my injury, planting words in the ground in hopes they would grow into a show come spring. Spring was a heady, tumultuous time – huge risks, collapsing drafts, new directions, clarifying paths, nurturing this crazy green seedling as it grew into whatever form it wanted to take. Summer was the season of full bloom – the opening, the tour, a season of birthing and revealing followed by a time of market and harvest.
I have learned more from this past year than I've learned since I stepped back on the artist's path in 2008. If I have one message to you, one piece of advice (and I KNOW I've said this before, but it absolutely bears repeating): finish it. Whatever it is. Just finish it. Give yourself the gift of getting to 'complete' with something of your very own and finding out what it takes to get there and what it's like when you do. Then sell that thing you made. Get it out there and find out what that's about, too.
I guarantee it won't be anything like you expected it to be.
I don't think I need to tell you I got neither rich nor famous this year. I sold out some shows. I had shows where nobody came. I got some seriously great press (a TON of seriously great press). I met some important people. I got paid for my work. Not a lot. But some. I employed other artists. Half a dozen of them, actually, and they got paid, too. I made a lot of people cry. Most of them in the good way.
But mostly I got the delicious sensation of making it to this moment right now, a year later, bearing witness to a process that bore fruit (my fruit! my weird, weird fruit) and the satisfaction of that cannot be measured.
I made something. I have a show. It fits in a suitcase and I can take it where ever I want. I made something and I like it. (And by "I" I mean "WE" because I've had help every step of the way. Except for the really lonely alone parts.)
And now it's time to start again.
Maybe you're interested in what I'll be writing. Maybe you'll be interested to know that ENDURE is not finished. Maybe it's interesting to know that in many, many ways I consider the piece many of you experienced to be a first draft.
There are other stories to tell. Other women out there on the course with other dreams and other dramas. More storylines, more performers, more music, more adventures for more audiences. There's more than one way to skin a cat and if the New York marathon told me anything, it's that there are at least 47,000 ways to run a marathon.
Besides, aren't you curious what the story is with Ponytail?
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by Melanie "Calamity" Jones
The Best/Worst Thing About Runners
We've been reaching out to running teams and clubs because ENDURE is an incredible way to stoke the fire of marathon motivation. In fact, our friend Hilary wrote exactly that: "You will not get any better marathon motivation than you get from attending ENDURE."
I challenge you to allow yourself to see your sport, your city and yourself in a profoundly new light. And, above all else, I challenge you to let go and have a little fun. Come on this adventure with me. You will not regret it.
(2) Not an overstatement. The New York Road Runners has 500,000 members. Count those zeros, man. That's half the population of Calgary.(3)
(3) The city where I used to live before I became a homeless vagabond in New York.(4)
(4) I'm no longer homeless, actually. I moved into my apartment October 1st after six weeks of sleeping on couches, living out of a backpack and smelling like a horse stable.
We've also been reaching out to clubs because the New York area has fourteen thousand of them(1) and some of them contain the population of small cities.(2)
But running groups are funny beasts. And the best part about them is also the toughest part about them (which is something I've been known to say about New York, actually).
In the case of New York, the best/worst thing is that IT'S ALWAYS GOING ON. Whatever it is: noise, theatre, people, art, cars. It's always happening. Relentlessly so.
In the case of running groups: they are tight communities. Great if you're on the inside, but tough if you're on the outside. Even tougher if what you're proposing is a little off the beaten path and might interrupt the sanctity of peaking for the marathon. Which is only 30 days away.
I'll give them that.
But on the other hand, I made this show especially for them.
ENDURE was created as a gift for runners. That is why I wrote it. That is how I perform it. And that is what I want to give to this running community as it counts down to its annual pilgrimage to the trial of miles on November 6th.
This show is a celebration and a validation of this probably-insane thing we love without measure. It's an homage to becoming a runner – because we were all non-runners once – and how far we've all come as a result. The things we've found in ourselves. The things we've healed in ourselves. The things running can't heal.
Because that's the other thing. The best/worst thing about runners is that they're obsessed. But, if you go too far down the running rabbit hole, your world shrinks into a tiny hamster wheel of eat-sleep-train and that's not completely cool, either.
There are some amazing things going on in the world besides running and it would serve you as both a person and an athlete to experience them.
And here's the best/worst thing about ENDURE: it asks you to notice those things. To experience this show, you have to be still for a moment. To stop running and reflect, for an hour or so, on this obsession, this pilgrimage, this strange calling to run a really, really long way.
It asks you to see running, yourself and even your city in a new light. And to do that, you've gotta be brave. Because outdoor immersive theater might be outside your comfort zone even if it is about running. And to experience it you might feel a little unstable some of the time.
It's a workout that asks new things of muscles you might not be accustomed to working. Muscles of perception, awareness, abstraction. Muscles that don't bulge up from under your skin; ones that flex and stretch deep inside you.
But you're a runner! You know that pushing outside your comfort zone is how you get stronger and faster, how you become a better athlete. This is no different.
So, let's go. Runners Of The TriState Area: I challenge you.
I challenge you to take a an hour and a half away from your training to engage in some extra-curricular activity. I challenge you to see this as a workout for your mind and your soul and I challenge you to allow this to be the coolest recovery workout you'll ever have. I challenge you to let me, some weirdo chick from Canada, give you this gift that I spent years in the crafting. A gift I traveled all the way from Canada to give you. Farther even...I traveled to Sweden and slept on an air mattress to create the music with Christine Owman.(5)
I challenge you to allow yourself to see your sport, your city and yourself in a profoundly new light. And, above all else, I challenge you to let go and have a little fun. Come on this adventure with me. You will not regret it.
Get your tickets here – there are only a few weekends left. Please note: there are no shows October 8 and 9 due to a wedding in our team (yay! love!) but there are shows October 15 and 16, 22 and 23 at 10am and 3pm. (1) Possibly an overstatement.
(2) Not an overstatement. The New York Road Runners has 500,000 members. Count those zeros, man. That's half the population of Calgary.(3)
(3) The city where I used to live before I became a homeless vagabond in New York.(4)
(4) I'm no longer homeless, actually. I moved into my apartment October 1st after six weeks of sleeping on couches, living out of a backpack and smelling like a horse stable.
(5) This vagabond-waif gig is only a phase. I swear.(6)
(6) Probably an overstatement.
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by Melanie "Calamity" Jones
Athletic Performance vs. Theatrical Performance
Throughout the summer shows, I approached my performance of ENDURE as though it was an athletic event. Like a 10k trail race or maybe the Olympic finals of a 50-minute off-road gymnastic floor routine. Each show, I endeavoured to do what I've done for every race I've ever been in: leave it all out there on the course.
That's fine for the "A" race of the season, but doing that in the morning when I've got another at 3pm and then two more the next day, well...that's just dumb.
I came off the summer shows with a messed up ankle and a body that felt about 89 years old. I was sore and stiff all the time. I downed anti-inflammatories before I even got out of bed and hobbled around like I had stumps for legs. Coming back to NYC and facing an extended run with four shows per weekend scared the living crap out of me.
I was convinced I couldn't do it. And if I kept performing the way I had been, I'd be right.
My friend Donna, a contemporary dancer, has been telling me to "do less" since July. Each time she says it, my brain scrambles around trying to find the hidden meaning behind her simple words. 'Do less' doesn't make sense to me. Do more? Waaaaayyyyyy more? More than is necessary or even desirable? That's my style.
(And that's how I earned a left ankle made of broken glass.)
But if I continue on my usual path, I will crash and burn. So, I've been working on not working so hard. Finding ease and precision without killing myself every time I run the show. Understanding what it means to be a performer of athletic theatre as opposed to an athlete performing theatre. There's a difference. It's subtle but it might save my bacon.
I focus on being specific in my movement instead of filling every moment with as much effort as I possibly can. I'm trying to create a baseline physical state of relaxation, not tension. From a state of relaxation, I can make choices, but if I'm at 100% exertion at all times, there's nowhere to go from there.
It reminds me a little of this post, which I found through my brilliant friend Julie 'The Howitzer' Threlkeld, who I found through Google.
I need to give as clear a performance for my first show of the weekend as I do for the last. And I need to be ready to do it all again the next weekend. I'm one weekend and four shows into a long run. I gotta pace myself.
Also? I've been forbidden to do training runs outside the show to further prevent injury and burnout. This is making me insane.
And it underlines a really great conversation I had with this great lady and that cool chick and this keeper over here after Saturday afternoon's performance. There was something in the way that these women related to ENDURE that made me realize how giant a role running plays in my/our mental health. It might scare me how important it is. More on this later. Meantime, I better hit the pool.
And you better getcher damn tickets.
Posted
by Melanie "Calamity" Jones
