Marvelous Medicine

Not too long ago, I got the most fantastic message on Facebook from a woman I met when we were both in the fourth grade:

Eevin-I am reading an old copy of George's Marvelous Medicine to my daughter and your name is written on the inside front cover. Must have left it at my house 25 years ago!

I was so tickled.  I've always LOVED Roald Dahl - I read and took complete pleasure in all of his books as a kid - and it felt exactly right that somehow from faaar away I was part of someone else reading (and hopefully enjoying) him.  (When we were dating, because he had read absolutely NONE of Roald Dahl's books, I encouraged my husband to read James and the Giant Peach.  He would pick it up to read at bed time, get through about two and a half sentences and fall asleep.  I married him anyway).  Even more, I have such a strong memory of reading George's Marvelous Medicine because I read it (probably around third or fourth grade) all in one evening, out-loud, to my mom who laughed so loudly and enjoyed it so much that the book has been a life-long favorite, and the memory of reading it together like that was one we shared and savored together periodically over the course of the intervening years. 

As it happens, my mom died not too long ago and this message from my old classmate - with this wonderful memory that it brought along with it - was such a gift.  Over the past few weeks I've received a number of deeply lovely notes and letters of condolence but this totally unrelated message was more magical because it brought her back just a tiny bit.  Just for a second. 

Medicinal indeed.

The Power Of Genetics

It seems I've passed down the rare crooked helmet gene to my son.

(That's W scooting in the park this weekend and me on a bicycle trip in 2006. Our big smiles just make our crooked helmets all the more ridiculous)

Sorry, kid.

Beautiful Summer Snow Storm

Today is a Snow Day.

The meeting I had - and was dreading - was cancelled this morning due to illness.  It's tantamount to an extension on a big paper - gorgeous relief.  It also meant I got to spend the morning with my husband and boy, going to the park and soccer and the cute new bakery we discovered and back to the park.  We wore ourselves out with sunshine and walking around.

After the boy went down for his nap, eyes rolling back in my head, I took a nap too.  I never do this; there is no time to nap.  There is no time to stop working for a second because there is too much to care about getting done.  But today is a Snow Day, as it turns out, so I napped and I read, did some teeny-tiny chores that hardly took a second.

Then, just a minute ago - in the middle of all of that - the doorbell rang and it was our neighbor.  Last weekend, he and his college-age girls had been looking for their favorite childhood book.  They couldn't find it so he'd gone to the store to buy a new copy - they love this book that much - and he got one for us, too.  (I read it right away and it's pretty great.)

Soon I will go to a meeting that I have been looking forward to for weeks and for which I am fully prepared.  It hasn't happened yet, but I know it's going to be great.

When I come home there will be take-out sushi.  We will read the new book all together and put the boy to bed.  Then there will be more resting and relaxing ' till bedtime.

Snow Day.  On the first day of summer.

Originally posted 6/21/2014 at http://eevin.wordpress.com/2014/06/21/beautiful-summer-snow-storm/

Who will have the Last Laugh?!? (I'm not telling)

So, here's a cool thing: Two weeks ago (5/31) I spent a loooong day shooting a short film as part of the 48 hour film project.  My friend Matt Scott directed and it was absolutely the most fun I've had all year.  (Here's his winning entry from last year which also took him to Cannes this year!)

Less than a week later (6/6) the film screened in NYC. It was one of about a dozen short films in its screening package which was one of four packages - so roughly one in fifty.

Now the film has made it to the BEST OF screening this coming Thursday (6/19).  I had to miss the screening on the 6th, so I'm excited to go see the other "best of" shorts and celebrate with other members of the cast and crew.  Here's the cool movie poster they made:

Making stuff with great people is awesome.

But it's people . . . IT'S PEOPLE!!

You guys. Do you know that there is an actual product being sold called Soylent that is a food-replacement product that got its name from the same book that inspired the 1973 film Soylent Green named for the food-replacement product featured in the story? The real-life product just started shipping commercially this past May. If you're not agog and incredulous at this moment, I'm guessing it's because you're not familiar with the big reveal in the film:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IKVj4l5GU4

What boggles my mind is that anyone thought giving the new product the same name, in light of these past associations, was a good idea. The current enterprise seems to be run by the company founder who developed the product and the initial production was crowd-funded so I guess there were no investors or outside marketing folks weighing in . . . ?

I have no particular agenda against the real Soylent (although I enjoy actual food too much to want to use it myself), I just can't get over what seems like a total denial of/obliviousness to the pop-cultural association with the name. To me it feels like naming your brand new bed and breakfast the Bates Motel.

What do you think? Can I get an "Amen?" Or do you think I'm being silly - that the pop-culture association is meaningless? What's your take on this particular branding issue? Leave a comment!

Highlight Reel

This weekend I . . .

• Saw Wil Eno's The Realistic Joneses on Broadway (RECOMMEND!!).
• Shot a short film as part of the 48 hour film fest (up 'till 4am! tired!) which screens this coming Friday (click link for details; I'm in Group A). The script was great. Everyone on the project was wonderful. I'm really excited about the film.
• Went out to dinner with my husband and son (simply delightful).
• Hung out with my brother, talking social media and making the hashtag symbol with our hands WAY too often.

Hope your weekend was also excellent.  What were your highlights?

Time-Sensitive Culture Alert: "Next Year Jerusalem"

Hello! We (the Royal "we") interrupt the scheduled postings for this blog to tell you about the FABULOUS movie I saw this past Saturday night.

The film is Next Year Jerusalem.  As it happens, I know about the movie because I know the filmmaker personally.  But, before you start thinking that I'm just pushing my friend's project because he's my friend: stop thinking that!  If you've ever known anyone who's made something truly excellent, you'll know the feeling where on the one hand is the regular guy you know and make jokes with and then there's this other really talented artist who created this amazing thing and you're honored and surprised to realize that you know him too.  It was like that.

Anyway, here's what you need to know:

1. Next Year Jerusalem is currently screening in NYC through May 22 at Quad Cinema, 34 West 13th Street, New York, NY - (212) 255-8800.  Tickets are available for purchase at movietickets.com - search zip code 10011 for the Quad and select appropriate dates and showtimes.

2. The film will screen in Los Angeles May 30 - June 5 at Laemmle Cinemas, Locations and Showtimes TBD - (212) 255-8800.  (If you live in or near LA, please consider going to see the film in honor of my June 4 birthday. Seriously!)

3. You can see a trailer for the film here!

The movie is about eight residents of an old folks' home in CT who take an unlikely but inspiring trip to Israel.  Honestly: I'm not a fan of old people.  I do not swoon for Young @ Heart, Dr. Ruth never made me anything but uncomfortable, and while I just tolerate Santa, I see Scrooge as a fairly accurate portrayal of the majority of people in his age group.  So, I expected to appreciate this movie but not to really like and enjoy it.  But I did!  That is how good Next Year Jerusalem is.  Because it's really about how we choose to live our lives - the classic Viktor Frankl: “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

I do hope you'll see the film - or, if you can't, that you'll sign up for news about future screenings and the DVD release - and then leave a comment with your thoughts.

Rick Moranis is my patron saint

Gretchen Rubin's blog first introduced me to the idea that I could choose/identify my own patron saints.  These people don't have to be actual saints (they probably aren't), but they do somehow speak to or inspire you in a personal and meaningful way.  It's kind of like "who are your influences?" but much better.  Gretchen's blog about it is here and mine is here.

A couple of weeks ago, I turned on the radio to listen while I washed some dishes and I caught the middle of Jessie Thorn's interview with Rick Moranis.  As someone who spent what must amount to days - if not weeks - of my youth watching Spaceballs and Ghostbusters (and Ghostbusters 2) over and over and over (and over and over . . .), I've long been a big fan. Still, I hadn't realized that he'd actively taken himself out of "the business" in order to raise his kids after his wife died.  In the interview, (this part's around 20 minutes in) he says "Stuff happens to people every day and they make adjustments in their lives for all kinds of reasons.  There was nothing unusual about what happened or what I did . . ."  Later, when Jessie Thorn asks about his giving up being a creative person when he gave up his show biz career, his response is perfect: "I was the same person. I didn't change. I just shifted my focus."

Listening to him talk about the choices he made and living his life, writ large, as a Creative Person felt like talking to a mentor.  I worried so much when I got pregnant about what it would mean for my career - that any let-up in the pressure I was applying to my career in a constant attempt to move it forward spelled doom.  And as major life events have continued to unfold even after (and independent of) the birth of my son, I've continued to worry in a similar way about what my inability to give 100% effort to my career 100% of the time will mean.  Of course I don't know what it will mean and of course no one can know.  But it sounds like Rick Moranis wasn't afraid to do what he had to do - and what he wanted to do - and didn't apologize for making choices in line with his values.  I think he's a fine example and an excellent reminder for the rest of us not to let that death-grip-of-fear - "what will happen if I change or deviate?!" - dictate our behavior.

How about you? Have you ever been spontaneously mentored? What was your experience and how did it help you?

Adieu, Pierre

I've eulogized fish before. After his successful run in the New York production of Laika Dog In Space, cast member and goldfish Patrick McGoohan retired to a comfortable bowl in my apartment only to pass away quietly some months later.  He was honored with a short play in Too Much Light which ran for just one weekend. But this is not a eulogy, per se.

I swear that Pierre was acting crazy yesterday.  He was staring right at me and frantically flapping around in the water, wriggling back and forth.  "Sorry, Pierre.  Here's some food."  But when I woke up this morning, he wasn't in his bowl.  Whether his suicide was intentional or not, he'd leaped out of his bowl and flip-flopped his way all the way to the window some 18 inches from his bowl.  He was folded over on himself and a bit dried up.  Still, when Pierre's predecessor, Maurice, pulled a similar stunt, although he was notoriously dried out - "his tail was like a potato chip" - my mom plopped him back into his bowl and he came back to life, fully recovered in about a day.  Maurice lived to be five years old.  We were, alas, not so lucky with Pierre who after a morning back in his bowl had still not un-folded.  Also, the whole situation really detracted from the pleasure of finally being able to actually sleep in a little this morning (7:30! woo hoo!).

As the saying goes: life throws curve balls.

As my toddler succinctly put it when asked to relate what had happened to Pierre: "the fish jumped out of the bowl and mama was sad."

NOT a quiz . . .

I can't believe what I'm about to type but . . . I saw something AWESOME on buzzfeed this weekend.  It's so awesome that I'm sending you to look at it right now.  Here it is: "33 Amazingly Useful Websites You Never Knew Existed." Don't get me wrong: I love knowing that as a New Yorker I should either live in Astoria or the Upper West Side, that I'm "Kevin" from Welcome to Nightvale, and "Willow" from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, that Pharrell's hat and I are soul mates, and that really, I should go live in Paris.  I am mostly but not entirely kidding when I say "Hey.  That Buzzfeed really gets me."  But it's because buzzfeed is usually a source for useless fun, that I was that much more excited to see this EXCELLENT post full of websites I really didn't know existed.

Anyway, next time you're trying to kill ten minutes, click over and take a look.  You'll find so many cool things (10 Minute Mail, Camel Camel Camel, Mailbox finder) you won't even feel like you're procrastinating (even though you are).  And make sure to keep scrolling down for my long-time favorite: The Rasterbator which, over the years has allowed me, among other things, to create giant Warren Buffet heads as props for a play (click link to hear the song; see photo below) not to mention giant heads of my then-one-year-old which were officially decorations for his birthday party but which had the bonus effect of making him look like a baby-dictator whenever he sat in his highchair (photo missing! I'll try to find it and post it here).

Credit to Gary Belsky for posting the Buzzfeed article to his Facebook.  He's an intelligent and discerning fellow.

Edgy Easter

It's a bit self-congratulatory, which is totally NOT how I mean it, but I can't help loving this audio from an Easter-themed play I wrote for Too Much Light back in 2007.  My husband helped me make the mash-up (which I could hear in my mind but couldn't execute without his expertise) and also did the VO.  I hear it from time to time in the shuffle of my iTunes and I'm always tickled.

[audio https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/107045296/He%20Is%20Risen.mp3 ]

(If you're curious, the visual featured Jeffrey Cranor as Jesus, frozen in an iconic pose of blessing, who is beset by two creepy rabbit figures who remove his Jesus costume and re-dress him as an Easter bunny like one of them and then exit. Hold on creepy blessing-pose-bunny-man.)

Nothing but sadness: loosing the Incubator Arts Project

I performed at the Incubator Arts Project (which was called the Ontological Incubator at the time) for the first time as part of their Tiny Theater Festival back in 2005.  Rob Neill cast me in his piece; it was a great festival and a great experience. Rob, my husband, Carl, and I created a piece together for Tiny Theater the following year.  Awesome again.

In 2009, Rob, Carl, Jill Beckman and I created and performed Laika Dog In Space at the Incubator.  This past fall, after a Too Much Light performance, and audience member came up to me and said "You did that show Laika Dog In Space, right? That was one of the best things I've ever seen." I replied, "It's one of the best things I've ever made."

That's what the Incubator did.  It helped artists create superlatively great work.  No vision was too esoteric or singular, no message too full-throated or open-hearted. I found tremendous value in everything I saw there and always wished I could manage to see more.  Working there meant stepping into a highly functional (rare!) and highly enjoyable collaboration with the folks running the place, folks who always looked for ways to say yes to whatever it was you were asking for.  It may be my favorite space ever in which to create and perform theater  - I love that room, with its crazy support pole and it's metal steps to an ad-hoc balcony in the back corner, never mind that its square footage is of luxurious proportions.  Working there brought me in contact with so many other great artists in the community, I can't even begin to list them; so much imagination and talent and passion and the Incubator helped it all find its voice and an audience.

The Incubator Arts Project is leaving their space at St. Mark's Church, closing as of July 1 this year.  Their public statement is here.  The New York Times writes about the closing here.

While loss is constant and everywhere - a famous author passed away, an avalanche, a mudslide, an exploded building - we still have a few months to spend with this particular loved one.  Call it theater hospice.  Call it the eleventh hour.  Whether you've been to a performance at the Incubator Arts Project or not, make sure you go before you can't any more.  And then make sure you go support the art somewhere else.  It's what the Incubator would want.

Mickey, Gillian and Me

I worked with Mickey Rooney, who died this past week, when I was a little girl.  I remember doing not-much-at-all in one scene of something-or-other and being totally confused about which guy Mickey Rooney even was for most of the time, but I remember that it was a BIG deal to the adults in my family.  Mickey Rooney was a big deal and rightly so.  He was also the rare individual who managed to start acting as a kid and sustain that career into (and, in his case, through) his adulthood.

 

A couple of months ago, Gillian Jacobs (who you probably know from the TV show Community) was interviewed in Backstage and had this to say about her own transition from being a child actor to an adult one:

“I had a very difficult time at school. I think when you have some success as a kid, your notion of being a good actor is pleasing the director, doing exactly what they tell you to do,” she says. “Juilliard wanted me to realize I had agency in my role as an actor: It was important for me to make decisions and have opinions and not just do what they told me to do to the best of my ability. I think that’s a big paradigm shift.”

I've been thinking about this passage ever since I read it because it is such an excellent and succinct articulation of one of (THE?) biggest difference between going to auditions as a kid and going as an adult and why it can be so hard to find success as an adult after a childhood career.  I remember when I was re-embarking on an acting career after college, the adults around me - my parents, my childhood manager and agent - all said "you know what you're doing."  And, in retrospect, I'm not at all convinced that I did.  I've spent the intervening years trying to make sure I do know what I'm doing and discovering that I not only can but SHOULD have my own point of view as an artist - even as an actor saying someone else's words - is a more exciting opportunity on any given day than pleasing someone else.

Still, going in with that need to please - equating pleasing others with "success" - is a difficult habit to break, particularly when one has received so many positive strokes for that very thing growing up.  It's something I continue to work against - with mindfulness and practice - in the interest of being a truly excellent artist.  Even more, though, I don't think that this people-pleasing as an undermining factor in living a fully self-actualized life is limited to former young performers.  It seems to me that we get stuck in lots of roles we played as people growing up and that determining who we really are (and who we really want to be) is a huge part of becoming an adult and finding personal success for all of us.

Mickey Rooney had his share of ups and downs.  In his NY Times obit, Aljean Harmetz writes:

Although his career was one of the longest in show business history — almost 90 years separated his first movie from his last — it was crammed with detours and dead ends. (“There have been crevices, fissures, pits, and I’ve fallen into a lot of them,” he told The Times in 1979.)

It would be facile (not to mention presumptuous) to assume that those ups and downs all stemmed from a people-pleasing need, but hard not to suspect that that impulse wasn't at least one of the challenges in Mr. Rooney's mix.

What outdated aspect of your identity are you still carrying around or wrestling with?  How have you moved beyond that limitation and what has that meant for you?  Tell us all in the comments!

Retail Therapy

I'm not a big shopper; I like to shop, there just isn't a lot of time these days. But this week I had not one, but TWO stand-out retail experiences. One. I found myself at the mall at 9pm the other night running a time-sensitive errand on behalf of someone else. I was looking for the Old Navy but first I was looking for a map so I could find the Old Navy. No map. So, with less than half an hour till the mall closed, I stopped some guy at a kiosk to ask where the Old Navy was. "There's no Old Navy in this mall." "Seriously?!" "Seriously." But then he gave me a face cream sample and a eye cream sample, so that was cool and I was about to be on my way when the subtle spiel began. I was tired. I was super hungry. I was vulnerable. He sat me down in a chair. He started to put some goop under my eyes. It was nice to sit down. The stuff felt good. The secret of the goop, he told me, is diamonds. There are ground diamonds in all of the products. "What?! That's insane! That doesn't even make sense!" He thought I was funny. I wasn't trying to be. He said something about how diamonds are the only material the body doesn't reject. Wha . . . ? I did not ask him if they're blood diamonds. That seemed a little too edgy for a mall kiosk. But maybe I should have because I needed to get out of there. Now he was exfoliating the back of my hand with facial cleanser. "Does it have the microbeads that are ruining the water supply?!" I asked. He didn't know what I was talking about, so I told him. He assured me no. What do the diamonds do to the water supply, I wondered. I told him I had to go. I had this errand to run. I had fifteen minutes left. "okay okay" he told me. He wanted me to have the product if i wanted it. If I would buy one set of products ($300), he'd give me the other set ($240).  It was a good value . . . if spending $300 on eye cream with diamonds in it makes any sense at all in the universe. I'm pretty sure it doesn't. A couple more back-and-forths and I managed to tear myself away.  We bid each other forlorn farewells.

Epilogue: I rocked out my errand at The Gap (where I also snagged a cute super-on-sale t-shirt) and Uniqulo in about 18 minutes (Uniqulo closed right before I paid).  And I still have the fancy diamond dust samples in my coat pocket. Win.

Two. The next day, I was running a couple of errands which brought me near a j. crew. I had a very old return to make so I brought it in with me thinking I'd pop in and end up with some store credit.  But, no.  My return was so old that the sales lady, throwing me a bone, told me I could do an exchange for something else BUT I had to do it right then for whatever was in that store.  Suddenly, I was on some fashion-themed game show - The Price Is Right meets What Not To Wear's first day of shopping segment.  She told me how much credit I had and about all of the sales and deals and, with only about 15 minutes to spare (I'd planned for this to be a quick errand) I was off. It was super fun. I left with a sweatshirt, two long-sleeved t-shirts (my favorite kind), a cute stripey top for going out, three pairs of socks and a t-shirt for my little boy.  Bam! Success.

Lately, whenever I have gone shopping, it's been so stressful - trying to find the right thing for an audition or trying to find the object I'm picturing in my mind - and often unsuccessful.  It takes forever, and the lack of success is compounded by the time lost.  In contrast, these super-quick and rather successful episodes this past week have me wondering if shopping fast might not be a good approach, or at least a helpful goal/modification.  I wasn't shopping for anything serious so I wonder how well fast shopping would work for, say, a fancy dress or nice pair of trousers, but I think I may have stumbled onto something . . .

How do you shop?  Do you have a plan? Pieces you go in needing or wanting? Do you just wander and see what you like?  What's your strategy?

Duh, you guys.

I shouldn't need to tell you, but I nevertheless feel negligent not having already encouraged (nay, demanded!) you to go see Wil Eno's The Open House at Signature Theater. If you haven't seen Wil Eno's work, you are seriously missing out. I truly think his writing is nearly perfect all the time*. He does an amazing job of creating characters and stories that are simultaneously universal and nuanced. His writing is so precise. The Open House is about being part of a family and, in particular, a family with aging parents. In the NY Times, Isherwood quibbled with some of Eno's choices but I respectfully disagree. I think what he's created is pretty spot-on and pitch-perfect; not always comfortable but absolutely insightful in the way that I think the best theater tends to be. And it's funny! And it's closing at the end of March, so go already!

While we're at it, you should also not miss David Henry Hwang's Kung Fu, also at Signature. This show already feels like it should be on Broadway - so polished and tight and compelling and just really GOOD - you'll save yourself some money and be an extra-cool kid if you go see it now.

If you've seen The Open House or Kung Fu, let me know what you think in the comments below and/or tell me what's your current must-see theater?

*I actually think his writing is TOTALLY perfect but I'm afraid if I'm too enthusiastic, you'll find my recommendation less credible and I really want more people in the world (ALL the people in the world?!) to go see Wil Eno plays.

Urban Gardening

dreams

The night before last, I dreamed that my mom's doctor was my son's pediatrician. Then, in the middle of the dream, he turned out to be an Indian man and we had a lively discussion about Bollywood. Last night, I dreamed that a bunch of mean girls took all of the clothes I wear most regularly. Then they pretended they hadn't taken them from me and they went through each piece telling me how bad it would look on me because it was so unflattering.

There's been some pretty consuming stuff going on in my personal life - stuff I wouldn't blog about because this isn't the place and because it would mean violating other people's privacy. I'm hoping that things will ease up and I'll be able to return to a more "normal" life - which includes blogging - soon. In the meantime, I'm thinking about you all out there . . .

What have you been dreaming about lately? Post it in the comments!