You Have to Move On/ Il Faut Avancer

Theatre du Chatelet, renowned Paris institution headed by Jean-Luc Choplin, recently presented Stephen Sondheim & James Lapine’s award-winning and heartbreaking SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE. Lucky for those of us that weren’t able to hop on a plane to Paris during its run, the production was filmed and broadcast by Mezzo TV. And now, this new version is available to download for free, albeit for a very limited time.

The original Broadway production of SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE, directed by James Lapine, starring Mandy Patinkin and Bernadette Peters, was similarly filmed and quickly became a staple in the collector’s canon. For those of you who haven’t seen any of the original cast, or for those that could always use a refresher, enjoy the two duetting on “Move On.”

In this number, Dot appears to her great grandson (that of her lover George Seurat), also named George, who is struggling with his art

Look at what you want,
Not at where you are,
Not at what you’ll be-
Look at all the things you’ve done for me

When Worlds Collide

Next project on the slates is a musical entitled The Pokemusical – which promises to be a ridiculously fun romp as 90′s nostalgia takes the stage. 

Thrilled to begin telling this story to those that knew and loved the Pokemon craze/those that ask Polka-what?

Looks like we’re not the only ones who are fans of the mash-up. Pokemon Fashion blog PokeXFashion slams the world of high fashion into the slightly more animated one as pocket monsters hide surreptitiously behind models or grab the limelight instead.

Even more at PokeXFashion

Some Years Ago — Never Mind How Long Precisely, Tilda Swinton Read a Tome

How many of us can say that they’ve actually got around to reading Melville’s novel, easily considered a treasure of world literature?

Peninsula Arts with Plymouth University have made the daunting task a little easier with their 21st century-friendly project, the Big Read. Readers such as Tilda Swinton and Stephen Fry embellish a chapter of Moby Dick each with their voice and skill. The project also curated 136 artists to create an accompanying illustration for each of the chapters of the book.

No better way to revisit a classic than by bringing it to the arts-hungry culture in such a digestible format.

Should you need me these next few days, I’ll be diving into these deeper waters.

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Get Used to Listening

An important tidbit from Silverstein this Monday:Image Source

Article Worth Reading: “Find What You Love and Let it Kill You”

James Rhodes gave up the piano for 10 years, trading it in for the promise of the City and searching for some sort of security. Then decided his dream of becoming a concert pianist trumped all.

From the Guardian’s recent article:

“What if rather than a book club you joined a writer’s club? Where every week you had to (really had to) bring three pages of your novel, novella, screenplay and read them aloud?
 
What if, rather than paying £70 a month for a gym membership that delights in making you feel fat, guilty and a world away from the man your wife married you bought a few blank canvases and some paints and spent time each day painting your version of “I love you” until you realised that any woman worth keeping would jump you then and there just for that, despite your lack of a six-pack?”

Read on

Image before editing: Alan Cleaver

How to Become a Better Writer, Friend, and Person

- Get up early, go sit down and write
- Journal without editing yourself
- Find seeds of great ideas in the piles of subconscious ones you’ve just laid out for yourself
- Repeat until it no longer feels like a chore, but a part of your day you anticipate with excitement
- Continue ad infinitum

- Make time for people that matter to you
- Send a note to let them know you’re thinking about them what big or little life events pop up (“Good luck on that interview!”, “Hope you fly safe!”, “That recipe you gave me is le bomb.”, etc.)
- Show support when good things happen to them, and even more support when the bad sneaks in
- Refuse to let distance be an obstacle. There are a million ways to stay connected nowadays. If Facebook isn’t cutting it for you, agree to start writing each other postcards. No one gets real mail anymore – just think of what a treat it would be to get something worthwhile in the mailbox.
- Continue ad infinitum

- Stop comparing, stop complaining, stop selling yourself short
-Continue ad infinitum

Image Sources (before editing): Human Writes Performance, Geneva, Jesse757, GuiseppePortale

How’s Your Heart?

For even the smallest hole may feel bottomless

if carved out by another’s less than gentle hand.

Every fluttering page, brick, case, or feast

that you’ve used to mend the hollow

only makes weary walls creak

beneath a pressure never invited,

now a (not so welcome) guest.

You’ve even learned to ration your love

into morsels no larger than pencil shavings,

feeding your ravenous craving with meager meals

not fit for any budding soul.

Were you to just abandon the dread

that you think keeps you from a famine,

you would find that full banquets of love

never diminish from returning visits,

but only surge and grow

as you help yourself to more.

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READ this line, read THIS line, read this LINE

A young Ian McKellen works through a line from Merchant of Venice in the RSC’s Playing Shakespeare from a few decades past.

The director seen here, John Barton, was asked to write a book about his robust knowledge of the Bard but promptly refused, stating that it was impossible to talk about Shakespeare without having living, breathing actors available to demonstrate the subtleties and poetry of the text. The result is a party full of some the acting greats taking apart classic texts piece by piece and uncovering centuries worth of subtext in the process.

If You Always Want to Be Right, You May Not Have the Pleasure of Just Being

Next time you’re worried about doing the “right” thing, realize there are countless definitions of the word.

Right may mean safe, supportive, consistent, tiresome, expected, unwarranted, quiet, boisterous, vigorous, brave, subservient, vocal, judgmental, caring, the list goes on.

Remember the Salem witch trials? Judges thought they were doing right by the community. Hurt a whole lot of people out of fear.

Instead of trying to find the “right” answer, find the kind answer. The one that saves you a headache, reinforces love and adds a dose of respect for yourself and those with which you’re dealing.

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Who Knew Seneca Was So Zen?

“I am always surprised to see some people demanding the time of others and meeting a most obliging response. Both sides have in view the reason for which the time is asked and neither regards the time itself—as if nothing is being asked for and nothing given. They are trifling with life’s most precious commodity, being deceived because it is an intangible thing, not open to inspection and therefore reckoned very cheap—in fact, almost without any value. People are delighted to accept pensions and gratuities, for which they hire out their labor or their support or their services. But nobody works out the value of time: men use it lavishly as if it cost nothing. But if death threatens these same people, you will see them praying to their doctors; if they are in fear of capital punishment, you will see them prepared to spend their all to stay alive. So inconsistent are they in their feelings. But if each of us could have the tally of his future years set before him, as we can of our past years, how alarmed would be those who saw only a few years ahead, and how carefully would they use them! And yet it is easy to organize an amount, however small, which is assured; we have to be more careful in preserving what will cease at an unknown point.

No one will bring back the years; no one will restore you to yourself. Life will follow the path it began to take and will neither reverse nor check its course. It will cause no commotion to remind you of its swiftness, but glide on quietly. It will not lengthen itself for a king’s command or a people’s favor. As it started out on its first day, so it will run on, nowhere pausing or turning aside. What will be the outcome? You have been preoccupied while life hastens on. Meanwhile death will arrive, and you have no choice in making yourself available for that.

Can anything be more idiotic than certain people who boast of their foresight? They keep themselves officiously preoccupied in order to improve their lives; they spend their lives in organizing their lives. They direct their purposes with an eye to a distant future. But putting things off is the biggest waste of life: it snatches away each day as it comes, and denies us the present by promising the future. The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow and loses today. You are arranging what lies in Fortune’s control, and abandoning what lies in yours. What are you looking at? To what goal are you straining? The whole future lies in uncertainty: live immediately. Listen to the cry of our greatest poet, who as though inspired with divine utterance sings salutary verses: “Life’s finest day for wretched mortals here/Is always first to flee.” “Why do you linger?” he means. “Why are you idle? If you don’t grasp it first, it flees.” And even if you do grasp it, it will still flee. So you must match time’s swiftness with your speed in using it, and you must drink quickly as though from a rapid stream that will not always flow.”

Known for being a titular Roman figure around 55AD, these thoughts come from his essay “On the Shortness of Life.” Ready, set, grasp the present – for all it’s worth.

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This Is What Judgement Looks Like

Measuring women by an unspoken sliding scale.

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Switching Up The Same Ol’ Habits For Better Ones

When was the last time you did something out of the ordinary? Shook up your ingrained habits for ones that were foreign to you? Studies show that breaking from your traditional mode is good for the brain – it allows synapses to connect in new ways, gets you outside of your comfort zone, and generally makes you a more well-rounded individual. What’s not to like? But how do you go from indecision to action? Here’s a quick list to start you off:

1. Dig deep to find why the habit has been elusive up until now. You may have continuously told yourself that you’re “not a morning person” or “can’t cook” or “just hate running,” enough that it’s fully reinforced. But is the reason you’re not able to rise early actually because you burn the midnight oil? You sleep poorly? You’re overwhelmed? Bed just feels way too good? ( Understand that last one completely) Unpack why you think that oft-repeated mantra is a fact, and you may just find that it’s much more open to interpretation and ready for change.

2. Set up habit tracker that reminds you to stay on track. My personal favorite is Habit Forge which helps you track new habits for 21-days (the scientifically proven amount of time necessary to implement most new habits). You miss a day? It resets. If you prefer the Benjamin Franklin model of keeping your own notebook to stay on track, give that a go.

3. Get ahead of yourself. If you know you want to accomplish ten little goals tomorrow, give yourself an extra hour in morning, turn off the phone for an hour, carve out some space to get things done. Because that lecture you give yourself when you don’t get through your checklist doesn’t do anyone any good.

4.  Break the status-quo. Our minds are often on auto-pilot. Take notice of when you’re about to go down a familiar path, and see if you can find 5 other alternatives. Follow any of them.

5. Make it fun. If life-hacking your way to a more rewarding day-to-day doesn’t sound like an adventure waiting to happen, reevaluate. Make sure you’re looking at the changes as opportunities to grow instead of tasks-you-have-to-follow-or-else. Life’s too short not to enjoy it.

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What Are You Afraid of…and Other Tough Questions

See Rock City and Other Destinations is up and running! This show investigates the intersection of expectations and reality, telling human stories across six distinct American landmarks. Posters with central ideas from each of the vignettes below:

Crazy Ideas, Monumental Results: 6 Rules for Maintaining Creative Sanity

Wilhelm Reich, a student of Freud’s and radical pioneer of early psychoanalysis, kept diaries of his observations of the world – often fascinating, often misunderstood – yet still able to influence a number of notable intellectuals from Saul Bellow to William Burroughs. A culmination of his journal entries, letters and laboratory notebooks,  Where’s the Truth?: Letters and Journals, 1948-1957, follows three other autobiographical installments making this book the forth and final collection of his work.

In a particularly thoughtful entry dated June 7, 1948, Reich attempts to distill the six conditions necessary for creative sanity. In so doing he reveals his own doubts and aspirations while painting an ideal portrait of a life with true purpose.

The last principle is especially moving and an apt reminder that the promise of the “easy life” does not necessarily come from always treading the easiest path.