On (finally) becoming a teacher...

As you can see by the other posts in this blog, I've never really been able to decide what I wanted to write to the world about.  I suppose this will also tell you that I can never decide what face I want to show to the world.  Each time I pick one, it is authentic and very much a part of me, but I always feel as if I am leaving out something that is essential.

So, at the risk of leaving out more than I say, this is me:

This photo was taken during my last year of graduate school while I was directing my MFA production of Romeo and Juliet (with an all-male cast).  Since graduating, I've worked for three different theatre companies, briefly started my own, moved from one coast to the other, got engaged, worked retail, substituted, got married, moved three times, started work on a teaching credential, and finally, had a baby.  Phew.  Been a busy six years.

I decided I wanted to teach when I was in high school.  I was dead set on being a history professor like my grandfather.  Once I got into college, I changed my mind and studied theatre.  I bounced around for a while, but I always came back to teaching as the thing I wanted to do.  After being out of grad school for a while, and having applied for quite a few college teaching jobs only to be turned down every time, I gave up on my dream.  Once I started substituting and got into the classroom, I remembered why I wanted to teach so much.  The more I substituted for high school, the more I came to love working with teenagers.  After a long-term sub job working with 11th graders, I knew it was time to get a teaching credential and continue working with high school students.  For me, my path has always been leading me to teaching.  No matter how hard I tried, I was never meant to do anything else.

How did your personality affect your choice of content area?

Whenever I take any sort of personality test, my results tend to be all over the map.  And depending on the test format, my results vary.  The first version of the test had me as ESFJ:

And the second had me as ESTJ:
Extraverted (E) 71%           Introverted (I) 29%
Sensing (S) 64%                 Intuitive (N) 36%
Thinking (T) 60%               Feeling (F) 40%
Judging (J) 59%                  Perceiving (P) 41%

None of those results are massive swings on either side.  What this tells me is that my personality tends in a direction, but it's very easy for me to see (and sometimes experience) the other options.  I think this is why I enjoy the study of English.  I love books.  I love to see the world through someone else's eyes, to experience their story.

However, if you look at my profile as concrete, I really should be teaching math or science; subjects where there is one right answer or one correct way of doing things.  But I love English.  I love that, given enough space, we can justify any position using only our words.  And I'm about to move into things to do with students, so...

How does or will your personality affect your relationships with your students?

I love being able to tell my students that, when working with concepts like rhetoric and argument, there are no wrong answers.  If you have the idea, can find evidence for it, and back it up with reasoning, then it's correct.  It doesn't matter if it's the answer I would have come up with.  This confuses many students and they feel lost at first, but watching them learn how to justify their position on any issue through what we learn in class is such a pleasure.

Right, back to my personality type.  Being extroverted, I love being around people, so my time in the classroom (most days) energizes me.  There are days when I feel like I'm teaching into a vacuum that are less than great, but mostly I love interacting with people all day.  And fortunately, because I am fairly balanced, I have the ability to relate to most of my students.

How will your teaching and learning style affect your teaching and your students' abilities to be successful?

I am definitely and aural learner.  This is consistent with what the learning style test told me.  According to that test, I am conclusively and Active learning, marginally an Intuitive learning (note that this is opposite of my Myers-Briggs profile), a Verbal learner, and a Global learner (again note that this is the opposite result).  The part of this that affects my teaching most is the verbal part.  I like to talk to my students.  I have to work really hard to accommodate other learning styles and teach to them.  I suppose it's lucky that I already know this about myself, but knowing doesn't make it any easier to actually fix in practice.  I have to work really hard when lesson planning to vary up my teaching style and make sure I'm not just talking at the students all the time.  It's a constant struggle.

Below is my teaching profile.  I will tell you that I honestly have no idea what these results mean.  I would seem to pull my style from every category, but I don't really know what the categories mean, how they interact, or if this is a good or bad thing.  I'll leave the results here and let you be the judge.

expert

formalauthority

personalmodel

facilitator

delegator

So that's me.  Or at least the teacher-y bit of me.

Our First Production!

I've been so busy actually putting up a show, that I completely forgot to update the internet about it.

Savage Wilde Traveling Players just closed it's first ever production!!!
We performed Much Ado About Nothing in conjunction with Made Up Theatre in Fremont, CA.  MUT is an improv company with a small performance space.  They were kind enough to lend us their space (and one of their actors) for our first production.  More information on MUT can be found at www.madeuptheatre.com

I found six actors form around the Bay Area and put together a seven actor version of Much Ado.  We rehearsed in my garage!  I so felt like I was starting a garage band and we just happened to already have a first gig lined up.  It should have been a bit strange, but it was pretty cool.  It made the whole process very informal and fun.  The location, along with (I'm certain) my laid-back attitude, allowed all of us to play with the text and find new and different angles on the characters.

Once we finally opened, the cast really came into their own.  Their audience interactions and the fun they found once people with an audience in the house was just amazing to watch.  They really took it to another level.  I only wish that we had gotten more people into the house to watch their incredible work.

I could not have done this show without the help of my amazing cast.  Here's the photo we took at closing:

From left to right: Mylissa Malley, Jeff Opine, Stephanie Whigham, Shannon Schultz, Bobby August Jr., Elizabeth Finkler, Tanya Benitez

It was such a fun experience.  I can't wait to put together our next show next Summer!  And this time... we take it on tour!!!

Becoming an Artistic Director

For those of you that have been paying attention, you'll note that many things about this blog just recently changed.  It's no longer about me, but about my company.  It will be a home and space for folks both performing in and working on our shows to talk about their experiences.

So, let me get the ball rolling.  Most of what I'm about to tell you you'll be able to find on the website (once I add profiles).  But because of the change in blog focus, it seemed like a good idea to post it here as well.

As the artistic director of this newly minted company, I feel like I should let you know a little of my history with Shakespeare and what drove me to start my own company.

My love affair with Shakespeare began when I was in 8^th grade and a production of MacTragedy (you will never hear me name that show by it’s proper name) toured to our school.  I was so fascinated I begged my mom to go see the full production.  Later, in community college, I took Shakespeare Acting twice because I couldn’t get enough of the language and the scenes and these amazing plays.  Once at my four year university, I was required to take a history of acting class that included a Shakespeare unit.  We were asked to scan a particular sonnet so we could discuss it.  I did the assignment and then proceeded to have a friendly debate with the professor about how a particular irregular line of 11 syllables should be broken up.  Is there a feminine ending, is there a word or words that’s contracted, or is one of the internal feet three beats instead of two?  As we were talking about all this, all the heads in the class turned toward me with the same look on their faces: “How the hell do you know all that?”  With their looks, I realized I had retained absolutely everything I learned in my two previous classes at community college.  

It gave me an idea.  If I retained all the knowledge, I must really love it and I wondered if you could get a Masters in Shakespeare.  So I started researching.  I found a few around the world that interested me, all English and not Theatre based.  I was ok with that, except I wanted to explore the work more onstage and wondered if those programs would afford that opportunity.  After graduating college, I did a summer as the assistant stage manager for the Marin Shakespeare Company.  Their Managing Director told me about a program in Virginia that sounded exactly like what I was looking for.  I did a bit more research, took the GRE, and applied.  Miraculously (and with a little help from some friends in high places), I got in.  

I moved to Staunton, Virginia and spent the next three years at Mary Baldwin College getting an MLitt (Master of Letters) and an MFA (Master of Fine Arts) in Shakespeare and Performance.  After graduating, I spent a year working for the American Shakespeare Center as their Playhouse Manager before moving back to California.  Since moving back, my work in theatre has been all stage management, so I decided to take matters into my own hands and start a theatre company.  

The Savage Wilde Traveling Players are dedicated to performing small cast fast paced Shakespeare in parks.  Literally right on the grass.  In a phrase, it is in essence, Flash Mob Shakespeare.  The name comes from my favorite line from my favorite Shakespeare play, Romeo and Juliet.  In act 5, scene 1, Romeo says “The time and my intents are savage wilde.”  No line better says what that play is about.  But, more on Romeo and Juliet in a future posts I am sure.  

Savage Wilde’s first production will be Much Ado About Nothing with 7 actors.  Most of our venues are still pending, but we will be performing in March and April.  Audition information is now available on our website!

So, I've become an artistic director.  It's scary and daunting and I've never had more fun putting something together in my whole life!  Here's to a "wilde" ride!!!

An Update to get Re-Started

I realized as I was posting on Bad Quarto's blog today that I've neglected my own blog for quite some time.  And I've been involved in some projects too.  Shame on me.  So, here's the update:

Since my last post, I've been involved in 3 projects:

1. Hamlet (for the second time).  This time I played Guildenstern and the Player Queen.  The twist to this project is that I got cast as a last minute replacement and only had a week and a half to prepare before we opened.  Most people thought I was crazy to take on the project, but I wanted to see if I could do it.  Could a learn a show (and Kabuki type mask) in a week and a half?  Lo and behold, I totally did it.  And, I think, managed to turn out a pretty great performance all told.  I have to admit it was a lot of fun getting to jump in that late in the game.  The phrase, "getting tossed into the deep end" just about sums up how it felt.  Everyone else had been on the project for more than a month when I got handed a script.  There as a "well oiled machine" aspect to the whole process that I had to (very quickly) find my place in.  In any case,  lots of fun was had by me.

2. The Queens.  I got tapped to just do the pre-show music.  Around here we do live music before shows and during intermissions.  Normally, this music is performed by the actors.  In this case, the director didn't want to take up his limited rehearsal time with music learning, so I was asked to put together a band.  We called ourselves 4Legit and, I have to say, we rocked.  We got to rehearse completely outside the jurisdiction of normal rehearsals.  In fact, I made our rehearsal schedule and simply informed the director in case he wanted to drop in.  We started rehearsing the music right after the show was cast (in October) and the show didn't perform till mid-February.  So, we had quite a bit of time to get the music in good working order.  We all played various instruments and sang and generally had a lot of wacky fun.  The director couldn't thank us enough and we just kept telling him that he really shouldn't.  He allowed us to dick around and play music and like 3 hours a week.  We should be thanking him.

3. Mucedorus.  I just recently got done directing a staged reading for the American Shakespeare Center.  The goals of their staged reading series are two-fold: 1. Put up plays that have not been seen in a good long while.  2. Get a good look at shows for potential Renaissance seasons to come.  All in all (and I know I've been tooting my own horn quite a bit in this post), this was probably the most successful a staged reading as I've ever seen at the ASC.  The director of mission, Ralph Cohen, could not say enough how great he thought the production was.  What it really came of was getting a great group of people together and casting them in the right parts.

So, that's what I've been up to.  I'm currently directing a staged reading of the First Quarto of Romeo and Juliet.  More on that later.

A theatre practitioner's rant

So... here we are after a bit of a hiatus.  I've been cast as an understudy for a murder mystery dinner theatre (a paid gig) and those shows continue to go well... when I get to do them, which is few and far between I must admit.

Here's the real meat of this post:  why is it that English majors think that they can do my stuff, but they think that I can't do their stuff?!  I never saw this as a problem until I went to school to get an MFA in Shakespeare.  My program excepts folks from both English and Theatre backgrounds.  They take a little time to catch the theatre majors up as far as english skills, but no time to catch the English majors up on Theatre skills.  Seriously?!  When did it become that easy to know all you need to know about theatre?

These English major kids come into this program thinking they know everything because they were in more than a few plays in undergrad.  Well I got news:  there's more to know about theatre than just being in a play!  There are intricacies that you don't even know that you don't know.  And, as much as you think you don't need it, theatre history is important to understanding theatre and acting 1 classes ARE useful and can be very effective and helpful to honing your craft.

Alright... I won't go any further down my rant rabbit hole.  It only gets more mean from there.  Feel free to discuss. :)

Maid's Tragedy - 2 Weeks to Opening

So, I've been lax about posting to this blog since Romeo and Juliet ended.  I'm working out a system to keep up with it a little better, but for now I've got a full time job and two theses to finish and two shows going up.

First, Maid's Tragedy (by Beaumont and Fletcher) is going very well.  We're down to doing run-throughs which is a good thing, but I'm still having some trouble keeping up consistencies with my character.  I'm in a lot of scenes, but never say very much.  I seem to hate my brother, but I have his back starting two thirds of the way through the play.  As of right now, I'm just playing the scenes as they come and it seems to be working, but something still feels off.  We'll see if that sorts itself out over the next two weeks.  I'm crossing my fingers.

The other project I'm "involved" in is the Murder Mystery dinner theatre show that takes place every week up at Massenutten resort.  Involved is in quotes because I'm just the understudy for a couple of characters.  The likelihood that I'll ever actually go on is very small, but it gets me a foot in the door with a company where I can actually get paid to act in shows.  Now, I have no aspirations to be a full time actor, but it is something that I enjoy very much doing on the side. :)

More to come, hopefully in less time than it took to post this.

"I'll kill my horse so I will not fly!"

Performances of Henry VI, part 3 are going very well!  In fact, during their last performance, they got through the whole show without calling "prithee"!!!  I was so proud of all of them.  Is it really weird that I'm so excited to not be needed during performances?  This show came together so well and even though I had absolutely no artistic say what-so-ever, I still get giddy as a school girl when the audience has a huge reaction to something I was just in the room for when the actors came up with it.  I have loved this process and I am so happy that I get to continue working with this company after I graduate.

And now... on to "Maid's Tragedy" rehearsals.  More updates soon!