Author: dumsumla

grandparents

Posted on by dumsumla

Today, I’m remembering my grandparents. My paternal grandmother, Helen Maude (Walker Carter) Hoffman passed away last night at the age of 95 after battling dementia for over five years. Her passing just happened to fall on the birthday of my maternal grandfather, Delbert W. Lacy, who passed away ten years ago. I never knew my paternal grandfather, Edgar Carter. He died before I was born. Vera L. (Morrell) Lacywas the first of my grandparents to pass during my lifetime, and she did so after a long physical struggle, too.

Right now, I’m reading The Selfish Gene, by Richard Dawkins, and the current chapter I’m on breaks down how “connected” we are to relatives based on our genetic make up and our connectivity. The equation of my “relatedness” to my grandparents is 1 x (1/2)2 = 1/4. I have a 1/4 of each one of my grandparents as part of my genetic make up. Put all four of my grandparents together, and I am a sum of those people. Part of their genetic make up continues to survive in me. On a scientific level, it’s fun to know my grandparents passed on their physical traits to me. I’ve got my grandpa Lacy’s nose, my grandpa Carter’s eyes, my grandma Lacy’s lips, and my grandma Carter’s body type.
Beyond physicality, though, these wonderful people taught me great lessons. Through their faith, I learned loving others is the greatest reason for living. I clear my throat like my grandpa Lacy. It wasn’t practiced. It wasn’t taught. One day, I just cleared my throat, and it sounded like my grandpa Lacy. My mother almost fell of her chair, it was so like old D.W.. He also taught me to fish. I don’t fish often these days, but when I do go on a lake, I remember how because grandpa Lacy taught me. My favorite pie is strawberry rhubarb, and that comes from my grandma Lacy. She made the best strawberry rhubarb pie in the world. I believe the secret ingredient was Jell-O. My mouth is watering right now. Grandma Carter taught me sensitivity. She was one of the most empathetic people I know. She could sense when things weren’t going well, and she knew how to give good council. My big heart for others comes directly from watching her care for her others. Like I mentioned, I never had the honor of meeting my grandpa Carter, but from what I know, the gregarious nature my father has was passed on to him from grandpa Carter. I’m sure everything I know about socializing and congregating with others comes from my grandpa Carter via my own dad.
It’s pretty great, when I think about it, to know how many wonderful qualities I have because of these four awesome people. I’m a pretty sentimental guy, and I know I often reflect that here on the blog. Sometimes, it feels a little self indulgent, but I hope what I share here is always universal. We all have grandparents. Whether we knew them or not, they’re a part of who we are and how we live our lives. As we get older and grandparents slip away, it’s easy to forget the influence they had on our lives. Today, I’m honoring my grandparents, thanking them for the traits I inherited and the things they taught me. Blessings to Helen, Ed, Vera and Delbert. You make up who I am.

doctors, pharmaceutical manufacturers & priorities

Posted on by dumsumla

This past weekend I worked with students at Kaneland High School to create a new play, which they’re producing in November. It’s pretty exciting, and I’ll write more on the process tomorrow.

But, today, I received an email from the director, my mother, and I want to address it. The question regarded how I characterized doctors in the play based on one line:

“The videos he left behind for me to learn were FAC-inating! Legalizing, regulating, doctors sharing with patients! That’s me. A regular Dr. Like Seuss…only I make the things he wrote about HAPPEN!”

This character talks about his father, who was a pharmaceutical manufacturer (the target here, not the doctors), and he taught his son how to make more drugs (after all the adults died). The character’s created a place where he enslaves other teenagers to create “chemical candy” for his own personal pleasures. I’m not trying to say all doctors are “bad.” That’s a gross generalization, and it’s not what the play is about. The note took issue with the idea that I’m demonizing doctors as people don’t provide any real service, or who are only feeding patients medicine that doesn’t really help them.

Doctors do “share drugs with patients.” General practitioners put people on anti-depressants all the time as a “band-aid” for bigger problems (or for people who don’t have problems at all). I’m certainly not suggesting we get rid of doctors. This whole scene, which takes place in an old pharmaceutical manufacturing plant, is a commentary on the Pharmaceutical industry focusing all their time on making drugs like Zolft, etc., spending all their money marketing these drugs, and not spending the same time and money on vaccinations for HIV or H1N1 flu virus. There is no reason we shouldn’t have a vaccination for either of these viruses; however, people are chomping up Prozac and Paxil like candy.

Every year overdoses from prescription medications are growing, and it’s due, in part, to doctors over prescribing and patients having too much freedom to get whatever drug they want whenever they want. To wit: “1 in 5 teens has abused a prescription (Rx) pain medication. Cocaine, Ecstasy and methamphetamine are each roughly half as prevalent as prescription drug abuse.” These companies are poisoning our youth (and our adults).

The other problem I’m addressing is Americans (especially) eat fast food, sit in front of computers and televisions for hours on end, and when our bodies start falling apart, we wonder why we need surgical procedures and extreme diets to aid our ails. We need to maintain our bodies, not fix them when they break down.

If we continue allowing pharmaceutical and insurance companies to drive production based on “making people feel better” and “if you can afford it,” doctors continue being slaves to these companies. This is where I believe some doctors have gone wrong. They rely on quick fixes that only temporarily help – or worse yet, they make people believe they were helped when they’re only sedated (ironically, this sedation also contributes to the sloth-like society in which we currently live). They receive kick backs from pharmaceutical companies, and that is a real shady game.

Do I think doctors are generally good, save and improve lives? Of course I do. Do I think pharmaceutical companies have grip of addiction on many Americans and push their agenda through compromised physicians who are paying for a summer house, a speed boat or a new car? Absolutely. Greed drives the companies, and greed drives these doctors.

As far as the moment in the play, the note certainly made me think about this issue more in depth, and if anything, I realize I need to clarify what the scene says. That’s the best thing to come out of this. If the play gets better, this whole thought tangent was worth it.

play for students

Posted on by dumsumla

The past few weeks have been filled with writing my first new play in two years. Really, I’ve not written a new full length play in almost four years. There’s many reasons for that, not the least of which has been my focus shift toward curating and producing others’ work. It’s been great producing, but I’m extremely happy to return to the creative. A couple weeks back, I spoke to an artistic director/producer friend of mine at another NYC theatre company, and I asked her what she is doing these days. She said she is getting back to acting and directing, which was what she originally got into the business to do. We laughed that we started our companies so we could create our own work, but the administrative rigors of producing and fundraising have kept us from creating original work of our own. She was very happy to be back in the creative saddle again.

So am I. Recently, I received a commissioned from a high school in Elburn, IL to write a play for their students. It was doubly exciting to have this request come from none other than my own mother, Ilene Carter. For eight years she’s taught theatre at Kaneland High School and she’s directed the fall play and spring musical. She has her Masters in Theatre Education from NYU, and she’s been inspiring teenagers to enter the business of theatre for over ten years. She spearheaded a campaign to build a new 750 seat auditorium at the high school, and the referendum passed, which afforded the district to build a beautiful palace of a theater. It’s larger than most Broadway stages, has state of the art sound and lighting (better than that in most professional New York theaters) and a hydraulic lift on which an entire orchestra can lower down and up into the pit. It’s pretty sweet. And my mom was a big part of it coming to pass. She’s retiring from teaching this year, and after saying we were going to do this year after year, it’s finally happening. You can imagine my anticipation as I prepare to fly to Chicago today and work for three days with her students.

My biggest concern on writing a play for students (aside from certain “moral” restrictions…read: no swearing) was writing something distinctly for their voices. I didn’t want to write some glossed over After School Special issue play, and I didn’t want to write a play where teenagers were playing adults. It had to be about them…for them. How to do this? Easy. Create a world in which adults don’t exist. I devised a story that takes place in the not-to-distant future where everyone aged 9 years and older was wiped out by a world-wide pandemic. The play, itself, unfolds 10 years after all adults were wiped from Earth, and the children, who are now teenagers, live at outposts created by their parents who hope by leaving the few remaining children video lessons (they use power from solar panels for power to view the videos, but don’t have enough real electricity to run much other than small household appliances) hopefully, they will learn what they need to rebuild humanity.

At the top of the play, the tribe receives an S.O.S. distress signal from another outpost in Old Chicago. Nothing else. No audio, no video, no written communication. Only S.O.S. After much debate, the tribe sends a band of seven out to determine who or what may be on the other end. Through the trials of their quest, they learn more about themselves and humanity itself.

Mom cast the play last night with all 31 students who auditioned. I wrote it with large group scenes so as to include as many students as possible, so I’m glad she was able to incorporate everyone who wanted to participate in this unique experience. I’m heading off to catch a plane now, and tonight we’ll have our first read through of the script. I hear they are very excited to be working on a new play. Some are hypothesizing how the play ends. Some are science fiction freaks geeked about the future setting. Some are aspiring playwrights and will just be sitting in to learn about process. It’s very cool.

Boarding the plane now. More on the first read through tomorrow…

solonova applications online

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I’m very excited to announce that the applications for soloNOVA 2010 are now online at www.terranovacollective.org. It’s our 7th year accepting applications for this celebration of solo artists spanning multiple genres, including music, spoken word, comedy, burlesque, monologues, storytelling, traditional solo plays, dance, performance and visual art. When we started the festival through terraNOVA Collective in the summer of 2004, our intention was to bring attention back to a form too often considered therapy, indulgent, cheap or just plain bad. Aiming to foster nascent works, we open submissions as well as scouting new shows around town and in various other festivals. In August, I saw 17 solo shows in the New York International Fringe Festival. My hope is to hit Edinburgh next year. Our intention is to make soloNOVA the place international solo artists strive to be. Part of that plan is to begin submissions earlier so artists may attain visas in a timely fashion. This past Monday night, the New York Innovative Theatre Awards recognized a 2009 soloNOVA artist, Jeff Grow, for Outstanding Solo Performance and Outstanding Performance Artist. Additionally, 5 of the 6 nominees for Solo Performer came from soloNOVA. We were very excited soloNOVA was able to facilitate the journey of these artists to being honored. This coming year we continue our search for the next fantastic solo artist along with celebrating great performers with successful careers. It is important to us to sustain and encourage solo artists in all their glorious forms. Looking forward to seeing what comes down the pipe.

16 years

Posted on by dumsumla

16 years ago this week I moved to New York City. I met Jennifer Conley Darling at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. We had one of our first classes together – theatre history, the only “academic” class taught at the conservatory to lend legitimacy from New York State as an accredited school. Jen and I knew each other, but we didn’t really hang out. It wasn’t until the end of our second year at The Academy, when we were in a production of Feiffer’s People, that Jen and I bonded.

A little over a year later, post AADA, several of our fellow alums, including Jen and myself, banded together as thousands of other pie-eyed conservatory graduates do to create a new theatre company. We wanted to cultivate new work and change the face of American theatre. It was from that actors’ group terraNOVA Collective was born. terraNOVA produced new plays, discovered the business of show, and lost and gained many members along the way. The one constant was Jennifer. When Ray Yates, the original artistic director moved back to Dublin, Ireland, Jen took the company’s reigns, though she’d never held a position like this before, and steered several plays to production, including one tour.

After a few years of “down time.” I approached Jen about writing a play for her, she laughed, but I did it. We tried to get backers to support the play, but when it couldn’t find financial legs, it was Jen’s idea to use terraNOVA as a fundraising organization to produce the play. That’s just what we did, and in October 2003, terraNOVA Collective produced my play Baby Steps at The Lion in Theatre Row. The success of the play re-energized the company, and I came back on board as the associate director (I’d left years earlier to pursue other opportunities), eventually helping to create its main programs: soloNOVA Arts Festival, Groundbreakers and Subterranean.

All along the way, Jennifer has been a rock and center of this company. Last night, terraNOVA Collective, which is currently in residence in Union Square at the DR2 Theatre and D-Lounge, launched its 7th consecutive season of programming (and its 13th year in existence) with Subterranean, our monthly performance party. This past season found us nominated for 17 New York Innovative Theatre Awards, which was both exciting and humbling. There’s been many bumpy roads along the way, too. Fundraising continues to be our biggest struggle, and making it through this upcoming season seems daunting during this current climate. Still, I have faith. We’ve overcome struggles in the past, and I know we’ll meet whatever obstacles are ahead with strength, creativity and perseverance.

There’s a common bit of wisdom imparted to many a young actors starting off in this business: “If you can do anything else…anything…do it.” It supposedly speaks to the brutality this business of show brings to pie-eyed actors with dreams of fame and fortune. I’d suggest the only thing with more odds against it is starting and successfully running one’s own theatre company with any sort of longevity. Jennifer Conley Darling does that with grace under pressure and intense resilience. She idealistically continues to believe in making a mark on the face of the American theatre, and humbly, I believe we’ve made a tiny imprint thus far. The artists who’s careers launched to success and sustainability from terraNOVA programs is due to Jen’s commitment of nourishing live theatre in a time at which most people would rather veg-out on couches or play on computers.

It seems like a long time ago we blew off theater history class, goofing on the unqualified substitute teacher who rambled on about Uri Geller bending spoons and keys – anything besides the history of theatre. We’ve accomplished much together since then. I look forward to the stretch ahead.

We’ve come a long way, Baby.