And I'm back for a post
Most of you have probably forgotten who I am, all but perhaps my sister, and it's been so long since I've actually posted that even she might be like, "Psychotic WHAT??? I'm calling the fucking police." Grad school has taken its toll on me. Either that, or just getting older in general. Every semester...every other day, even...the situations I exist in in the classroom and the theatre in general provide me plenty of fodder to write. I could write my memoirs on how ridiculous the people I'm around are, and perhaps I will someday, but I often find myself either not having the energy to do it, or thinking my time is better spent stabbing a life-size mannequin repeatedly so that I don't do it in real life.
11th_letter: "Okay, now I'm DEFINITELY calling the police on this Jester freak."
If grad programs were 5 years long instead of 2 or 3, you'd be able to make a very successful television series out of it. Maybe you would do it with a class of undergrads who spend five years getting their degrees. It would be totally piggy-backing off the success of "The Office," where you have a couple "normal" (well-adjusted) people in an environment full of ridiculous character-types; those who are incredibly full of themselves, stupid, inadequate, uncommunicative, bizarre, quirky, awkward, laughably pathetic, self-involved, stubborn, childish, or just try too damn hard. When you watch it on TV, it can be hysterical. It's a show that capitalizes on the humor of situations made by obnoxious people. You think, "Man, I can't believe people could actually be like that." But it's not fiction...people actually are like that. Yes, even to the extremes presented in shows like "The Office." If they aren't in your workplace, then they probably ended up in mine, because I've got all those adjectives covered in a wide selection of artisans and teachers of the theatre arts.
I have people who laugh heartily at their own jokes while everyone else sits there awkwardly, wondering if they should write in a harassment complaint. I have people who giggle uncontrollably after EVERYTHING they say, whether it's funny, irritating, or simply informative. I have people who try to listen in on everyone else's conversations and then find a place to slip in their 2 cents, but since they didn't really get what the conversation was about, their comment makes no sense at all. I have people who interrupt. People who sing and dance frequently, badly, and without warning. In the wrong situations. People who complain and whine. People who point fingers. People who make excuses...and get away with it. People who show up late, or don't show up, and produce less work, and get higher grades anyway. People who repeat themselves over and over and never have anything new to offer. And many, many people who have incredibly inflated egos, especially those who are the worst at what they do.
I guess that's what I get for picking a collaborative art form as my profession. Artists are crazy as is, whether they're good at what they do or not, and even after I graduate, I'm going to run into and work with a lot of obnoxious people who think they are God's gift to the theatre. What they don't realize is that theatre has been going on for thousands of years, across the globe, and in a single country, every decade has perhaps a dozen or so people who really made history with their work, and then hundreds of other practitioners who may have been successful in their own right, but no one will remember their names. That's a shit ton of people. The theatre has gone through so much, and with us having been born so late in the game and seeing such an extensive history, what gives any of us the right to be cocky bastards when we're designing a show for $5,000 or less at a university in the midwest? Or building on it? Or hanging a freaking light? Whoop-de-doo. You're no Adolphe Appia.
That doesn't mean I'm going to go through my profession with my head down. Certainly not; one has to have enough confidence and, I suppose, enough ego to know what's best for a production, but that's the thing. It's about the production, not about the individual actor, director, or designer jizzing on the stage and expecting everyone to be amazed at the individual. I'd like people to be amazed at my work, eventually, but if I really wanted to go down in history, I wouldn't have chosen the theatre. I'd have killed the president. Winning a Tony would be cool, but no one knows who set designers are. I'm in love with the theatre, and it's not my bitch, I'm its bitch. Everything I do, I do for the theatre, and thereby doing it for myself.
Wow, this post went into places I didn't really expect it to. I got all philosophical for a minute there. And I guess a little bit pretentious. It makes me think that those people I spoke about must say the same things about me as I do about them. Only I'm right. That's the difference. Suck it.
11th_letter: "He said he would kill the president! Let's S.W.A.T. team his ass! I'd better tell my brother to watch his behind from this Psycho-jester son of a bitch."
11th_letter: "Okay, now I'm DEFINITELY calling the police on this Jester freak."
If grad programs were 5 years long instead of 2 or 3, you'd be able to make a very successful television series out of it. Maybe you would do it with a class of undergrads who spend five years getting their degrees. It would be totally piggy-backing off the success of "The Office," where you have a couple "normal" (well-adjusted) people in an environment full of ridiculous character-types; those who are incredibly full of themselves, stupid, inadequate, uncommunicative, bizarre, quirky, awkward, laughably pathetic, self-involved, stubborn, childish, or just try too damn hard. When you watch it on TV, it can be hysterical. It's a show that capitalizes on the humor of situations made by obnoxious people. You think, "Man, I can't believe people could actually be like that." But it's not fiction...people actually are like that. Yes, even to the extremes presented in shows like "The Office." If they aren't in your workplace, then they probably ended up in mine, because I've got all those adjectives covered in a wide selection of artisans and teachers of the theatre arts.
I have people who laugh heartily at their own jokes while everyone else sits there awkwardly, wondering if they should write in a harassment complaint. I have people who giggle uncontrollably after EVERYTHING they say, whether it's funny, irritating, or simply informative. I have people who try to listen in on everyone else's conversations and then find a place to slip in their 2 cents, but since they didn't really get what the conversation was about, their comment makes no sense at all. I have people who interrupt. People who sing and dance frequently, badly, and without warning. In the wrong situations. People who complain and whine. People who point fingers. People who make excuses...and get away with it. People who show up late, or don't show up, and produce less work, and get higher grades anyway. People who repeat themselves over and over and never have anything new to offer. And many, many people who have incredibly inflated egos, especially those who are the worst at what they do.
I guess that's what I get for picking a collaborative art form as my profession. Artists are crazy as is, whether they're good at what they do or not, and even after I graduate, I'm going to run into and work with a lot of obnoxious people who think they are God's gift to the theatre. What they don't realize is that theatre has been going on for thousands of years, across the globe, and in a single country, every decade has perhaps a dozen or so people who really made history with their work, and then hundreds of other practitioners who may have been successful in their own right, but no one will remember their names. That's a shit ton of people. The theatre has gone through so much, and with us having been born so late in the game and seeing such an extensive history, what gives any of us the right to be cocky bastards when we're designing a show for $5,000 or less at a university in the midwest? Or building on it? Or hanging a freaking light? Whoop-de-doo. You're no Adolphe Appia.
That doesn't mean I'm going to go through my profession with my head down. Certainly not; one has to have enough confidence and, I suppose, enough ego to know what's best for a production, but that's the thing. It's about the production, not about the individual actor, director, or designer jizzing on the stage and expecting everyone to be amazed at the individual. I'd like people to be amazed at my work, eventually, but if I really wanted to go down in history, I wouldn't have chosen the theatre. I'd have killed the president. Winning a Tony would be cool, but no one knows who set designers are. I'm in love with the theatre, and it's not my bitch, I'm its bitch. Everything I do, I do for the theatre, and thereby doing it for myself.
Wow, this post went into places I didn't really expect it to. I got all philosophical for a minute there. And I guess a little bit pretentious. It makes me think that those people I spoke about must say the same things about me as I do about them. Only I'm right. That's the difference. Suck it.
11th_letter: "He said he would kill the president! Let's S.W.A.T. team his ass! I'd better tell my brother to watch his behind from this Psycho-jester son of a bitch."