; )
Originally uploaded by Spybee(gone for awhile).
One of the Christmas Carol kids told me this joke after our 10:30am matinee preview and I just about peed:
Two snowmen are standing in a field. One turns to the other and asks, "Do you smell carrots?"
Ahh... I am blessed in so many ways. I am choosing the charm of life rather than the irritation!
happy halloween
Originally uploaded by eag.
My first time handing out candy on Halloween! I have worked every Halloween since I moved out of my mom's house until now. Per and I went and bought some plug-in lawn pumpkins, stocked up on candy and picked up KFC. .
Since we live on a cul-de-sac next to a busy street we've only had a handful of cutie patootie Trick-or-Treaters--the highlight was a tiny witch who couldn't wrap her little, drooly mind around what was happening. She managed to take a candy bar from me and drop it into her bucket, but I think it was a first for her.
You and me both, tiny witch, you and me both.
Now for another first: watching a scary movie. A for real one. Drag Me to Hell. I'm not sure I'll make it through. Maybe I'll knit at the same time.
Hope more Trick-or-Treaters come.
sheldon's various bits
Originally uploaded by eag.
I seem to have quite a few pregnant friends right now. Since I can't do anything about the raging jealousy in my uterus I'm knitting Sheldons! Holy crap, is he a cute pattern or what?
Starting Christmas Carol tomorrow and will have to return to the endless wedding afghan knitting, but for the past few days I have been in knitted turtle heaven.
Crossing fingers, eyes and toes that the employment fairies will smile on Per and he'll land the newest job he applied for.
... and so, here are some photos of crafty projects from the last year, that have been trapped in my camera!
Last year during the Ivey Awards we had a performance of Vinegar Tom. So I made everyone in the cast and crew an Ivey. Naturally.
Hello loves!
I am a movie star! I'm in a little film that will premiere tomorrow night at the State Theater. (It's been a big couple of weeks for the State and me.) Below are a couple of fun thingies to view... and by thingies I mean the trailer and an interview for mspmag.com.
I was recognized on Monday with the Emerging Artist Ivey Award. It was such an honor. I know people always say that, but it was! I shook a lot, dad and Kim sobbed, Per called my mom and held up the phone... when I thanked Per for making my life possible, he got his own cheer from the audience! That was my favorite part -- such a testament to the strength of our marriage and the support of our incredible community. This has been such a hard couple of months, wading through Rachel Corrie and all the feelings that go with it, that this recognition from my community meant the world to me.
I think I finally crashed today. Resting on the couch, sleepy from my IBS meds (the inevitable IBS flare-up from letting the adrenaline drop), watching Chappel show with my beautiful husband and a farty kitty sleeping beside me. All is right with the world.
I struggle with this piece as a play and I worry that it's a vehicle for politics. But our aim has always been to tell the story of Rachel as a human, not as a martyr. I'm so, so pleased with what Graydon saw.
+++
Inside the mind of an activist
A detailed and wise performance helps explain the activist's psychic underpinnings.
Media shorthand feeds the impulse to consider activists on political terms -- regardless of what those politics are.
"My Name is Rachel Corrie" allows actor Emily Gunyou Halaas to reveal the deeper, universal nature of an activist. Politics is but an implement selected by a person so driven by passion, sensitivity and awareness that activism becomes its own destiny.
"I don't believe in fate," Corrie says early in the 100-minute play, which was crafted by Alan Rickman and Katharine Viner from her writings. But whether Corrie believes in fate or not is immaterial. Her actions and reactions -- not her ideology -- determined her path in life.
Corrie, who grew up in Washington State, was 12 when her consciousness drove her to speak out against hunger. Perhaps jealous of her siblings' conventional success, she followed her instincts into social-justice causes. At 23, she traveled to live with Palestinian refugees in the Gaza, as part of the International Solidarity Movement. Her efforts might have been remained those of a single person, but in 2003 Corrie was killed when she knelt in front of a bulldozer driven by an Israeli soldier. As happens with martyrs who leave a written legacy, her efforts assumed mythic proportions.
As directed by Emigrant Theater's Jessica Finney, Gunyou Halaas gives us a heroine who is proud, sometimes precious in her wishes for the world, but never smug. Indeed, her self-deprecating precocity has the effect of refreshing a sense of youthful freedom, that time before we learned the wise but stifling discipline of compromise.
In Gunyou Halaas's hands, Corrie is honest enough to be inspired by naïve idealism -- not a silliness but a belief in the basic decency of humanity. When she ultimately questions that assumption, the actor expresses a moment that goes way beyond self-doubt and becomes a question of life's purpose.
Gunyou Halaas is such a good technical actor. She builds her character from within, certainly, but she has the knack to translate that instinct into gesture, expression, uninhibited movement. It's a guttural, visceral performance -- acting that is felt in the belly -- yet simultaneously very heady.
That is why we learn something about the human impulse. You may disagree with Rachel Corrie's politics, but this play is about an activism that goes deeper than politics.
Graydon Royce • 612-673-7299
