commas and ampersands

Gotta say, I'm not really a fan of winter. It's not my favorite season--that distinction is reserved for summer. (Ah, summer, with your long, long days; your lazy lethargy; your warm sunshine... but I digress.) It may not have been the main reason I moved to L.A., but the weather has certainly been one of the biggest perks of living here for the past two years. For the past few winters, I've gone back to Calgary for 3 weeks in December, and that's enough time to get my fill of snow and cold--and, more importantly, to drive on icy roads long enough to not become a wimpy driver who can't handle winter.

That's the thing. I may not love winter, but I can handle it. I come from hardy, Canadian prairie stock. I know what to do when it's -40 degrees Celsius out, but I love the Chinook winds that invariably mean that I don't have to deal with the -40 weather for very long. I know how to drive on ice, and I don't freak out if there's a skiff of snow that doesn't even stick to the ground, and thankyouverymuch, I plan on keeping those skills.

I have yet to wear a winter coat (or gloves, or a toque) while living in Southern California, because it has yet to get cold here. I see people around here get all bundled up when the temperature hits 50 degrees Fahrenheit, and the Canadian part of me laughs at them for being such wimps, while the American part of me gloats at my family and friends who live where they really have to bundle up. It gets chilly, yes. It gets cold enough that I don't want to sleep with my window open all winter, cold enough that I'm not wearing sandals all the time, cold enough that I can actually use my sweaters and fall jackets--but it doesn't get cold, and that's one of the things I love about this place.

One thing I don't love, however, is the assumption that just because I'm Canadian, I've never experienced hot weather before. I could do without all the comments about how this must be the hottest weather I've ever experienced, and I must be so out of my element, and isn't it just so different from the frozen north, and it must be freezing up there. (My favorite is when that last comment comes in August.)

Winter and I have a complicated relationship. I may not like it, but that doesn't give others who have never lived with it the right to knock it. When Calgary's weather doesn't cooperate with the season, I feel like the city is a misbehaving small child, embarrassing me in front of all my friends, even though I know it's not doing it on purpose. But that doesn't mean I won't defend it. "It's not always like this." "This isn't really seasonal." "Wait a few days; a chinook will hit and the temperature will jump 40 degrees overnight." "At least we're not like some places, where winter doesn't leave until spring."

And, you know, there are things about it that aren't all that bad. While it's all well and good to curl up in bed with hot chocolate and a book on a windy, rainy, chilly day in Los Angeles, it's even better to do it on a blizzardy, blustery, freezing cold day in Calgary. And if you've never experienced a midnight snowfall on Christmas Eve, you don't know what you're missing. And just like any other season, it's the change that's the best part. The first crisp, cold day; the new sweaters, jackets, and corduroy in stores; the first snowfall; those bright, cold, sunny days that are still good days for a walk outside. As long as those days don't come before December first.

When it comes to winter, I'm picky. I want it on my terms, when I want it. I'd be happy with a winter that lasted for the month of December. No more, no less. Give me a winter that goes with Christmas, and I can handle that. But by February? You and me, winter? We're so over, and while I still may not like other people smack-talking you, I reserve the right to badmouth you all I want.

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This has been an entry for therealljidol season 6. Read the rest of the entries for this topic here.

It's the responsibility of any artist to champion the creation of art that he or she disagrees with, doesn't understand, or is offended by.

This is a theory that I've been mulling over for a while--about a year now, I guess--and I think that I can fairly confidently boil it down to that statement.

( Let's explore that statement, complete with footnotes. )

Goodness. I haven't posted a real summary of the weekend yet. I was too busy getting over the cold that I caught from Colin that he caught from Jakob.

It was a busy weekend (surprise, surprise), but a really good way to officially kick off the Christmas season. Thursday night, we went to Rocky Mountain College's Christmas concert (you know, with the whole "small world" thing with the director, who was the director at my church in California last year), and Friday and Saturday, Colin, Mom, and Dad sang in Ambrose's production of Messiah. Saturday afternoon, we went to a baby shower for Scott, Heather, and Martin; Sunday, we went to church in the morning, and then had two rehearsals in the afternoon before heading off to the airport. And somewhere in there (mostly after midnight), we still managed to find time to finish watching the first season of Arrested Development, which we'd started at Canadian Thanksgiving but not finished.

And, of course, there was the time with Kat, Aaron, and the kids, but that's already been well-photographed and posted about. :)

( A review of sorts of AUC's production of 'Messiah' )



Sunday, there was a rehearsal after church for Colin's cantata, which I'm going to sing in, despite only having one rehearsal with them. I've had the music longer than anyone else in the choir (I helped pick it), and I've been working on it on my own, so it'll be fine. After that, there was another rehearsal for the Christmas show at Foothills Alliance, which was my only chance to hear any of that show, since it'll close a few days before I get into town.


By Sunday afternoon, we were both well on our way to catching colds. Jakob, who was coming down with something, was all over Colin on Thursday, and then I think I got it from Colin by about Saturday. I stayed home Monday and slept, and that was helpful--it seems to be running its course really quickly.

And now, we're well into the home stretch of the pre-Christmas rush. I have five written assignments and two presentations to do in the next week, but fortunately, the presentations each correspond with a written assignment, so really, it's only five assignments. Also, a) some of them are already partially done and I just need to finish them up, and b) they're not all full-length papers. I don't think I have anything that will end up being longer than about 8 pages, which isn't bad at all.

Emmanuel Church's Christmas concerts are on the 13th and 14th, so we have our dress rehearsal next Wednesday. Colin has more in the way of rehearsals than I do (although I need to be in on some Borkman rehearsals in the next week, as well). He's finished with Messiah, obviously, but Foothills Lutheran's cantata only has a few rehearsals left, he's heading into tech for Foothills Alliance's show, and he has to finish the design for Steel Mags, which apparently is kind of a train-wreck of a show, in some ways.

I was going to try and keep this entry from being too epic, so I'll post pictures later, as well as a story about Amazon.com. In the meantime, my homework and my pillow are both calling me. The sooner I get to one, the sooner I can get to the other.

It's exciting to watch history being made, regardless of where I stand on the issues. On more than one decision, I was undecided until fairly late in the game -- a political stance is not always the same as a moral stance, even though the latter informs and influences the former, and for now, that's all I'll say about who/what I voted for.

I am, however, ready for this election to be over (and not just because I'm tired of the commercials, although that's a big part of it). It's a disheartening thing to lean towards the more conservative end of the spectrum in a state and city that is very liberal. It's not because I disagree with the people I'm in close contact with, because that doesn't preclude or negate friendships, respect, and effective working relationships, but because there's been such a sense of "conservatives are stupid, unintelligent, uninformed, biased, prejudiced, fundamentalist, bigoted..." (and it seems to go on).

I've heard ads stating that people who vote for [fill-in-the-blank] are obviously not thinking, because if they were, no one in their right mind would vote for it (and while the sentence as a whole may be a paraphrase, the last phrase is not). I hear--constantly--the put-downs and perceived stupidity of conservative voters.

And yes, I realize that it's not limited to the conservative side of the political spectrum, but around here, that's what I hear most, and I'm tired of it. I realize that it won't completely go away after the election, but I hope it dies down. For all the people who contribute to the perpetuation of the stereotypes about right-wing fundamentalists' narrow-mindedness, there is, in some people, just as much unwillingness to recognize that conservatives (and particularly evangelical Christians) can be informed, intelligent, critically thoughtful, and socially conscious -- and yet come to an opposite conclusion.

I expect that the derision will get worse for a few days before it gets better, but my philosophy throughout this election has been to lay low and not pick fights. I've discussed my stances and my struggles with both sides of the issues with anyone who's asked (ask Mariah, if no one else; I'm more than willing to discuss my thoughts with someone who disagrees with me on almost every issue), but I generally haven't volunteered the information. I'm not ready to fight those battles on a larger scale.




(And on a totally separate note, Colin and I were supposed to have a good, long phone conversation tonight, but he lost a power adapter for a piece of equipment that's integral to a project he's working on, so what was supposed to be an hour-long project turned into a long search of the basement for the cord and a partially-finished project [I'm assuming, since I haven't heard whether he actually found it or not], and we didn't get a chance to talk. Stupid power cord.)

I'm officially a size 6. Not that my clothes are a 6--most of them are an 8, and I still have some 10s and 12s kicking around, but they really need to go, because I put on a size 12 skirt yesterday, and it literally fell off of me. Last night, though, I was digging around in Mariah's closet for something to wear, and all of her pants are size 6, and they all fit me.

So, yay! And yes, I realize that upsizing and vanity sizing means that a size 6 now is not what a size 6 was in 1975 or 1945, but it's a size 6 compared to the size 12 that I was wearing 2 years ago, and that difference is a really good thing.

( Body talk this way )

Half of yesterday's post-mortem meeting was focused on coming up with ways to enhance the audience experience, train volunteers to be useful and to carry out the vision of the show as a whole, teach audience members how to behave properly, and teach parents how to expect proper behavior from their children.


I'm glad I'm not the only one who was focused on that issue for the entire run of the show. It came up in several departmental reports, and was a significant enough focus of the meeting that hopefully some changes will begin to be implemented. They may take a few years, because it takes a while for audiences (and volunteers) to learn that new standards means that they can't get away with "the way it's always been done," but eventually, the ones who don't want to change will get ticked off and leave, and a new group who is enthusiastic about the current state of affairs will come in, and the organization as a whole is better off.


Little by little, we'll teach people that they're watching theatre, not a football game, and that their behavior needs to reflect that fact.

Here we go, into weekend #2... a show tonight, and then shows tomorrow and Sunday afternoons. And then a week of strike, beginning with the post-mortem on Monday morning.

I'm still so disillusioned by the audience of this show. I realize that it's partly because we have an average audience of 2000 per show, so the cross-section is going to be much larger than the educated, intelligent theatre-goers who go see other forms of theatre. Most of the audience, proportionately, is fine, but there are those few people who just ruin it.

I honestly don't get it.

The show is unamplified in a natural amphitheater, in which sound carries very well. Even with 2000 people in the audience, the dialogue can be heard, and the natural mix and balance between the choir (who sits behind the audience) and the actors means that the choir becomes an underscore, but it can always be heard.

This leads to a few issues. I mentioned in my last audience rant that there are parents who take their kids to the back. The thing is, if you, in the audience, can hear the choir--who is behind you--while you're sitting in your seat, do you really think that people won't be able to hear your child and your footsteps on the gravel paths when you're behind them? It's such basic common sense, but it's amazing how many people don't think of that. Taking a child out of the line of sight of the audience doesn't take them out of earshot. It's just as distracting to have a noisy child at the back as it is to have a noisy child in a seat.

And then. Today, I wished that I could ban someone from my theatre. There was a quiet scene (as in, just a few actors, as opposed to a large group scene), with some dialogue happening onstage, and one woman yells, from across the amphitheater, "Speak up!!"

She. Yelled. It. In. The. Middle. Of. The. Show.

I was speechless. I absolutely cannot fathom that level of inconsideration and rudeness. How stupid do you have to be to think that behavior like that would ever, under any circumstances, be acceptable? It just floors me.

Last week, at the very end of Sunday's performance, it started to get chilly and windy. It wasn't raining, but the weather was getting nasty, and about 10 minutes before the end of the play, people started to get up and leave. And then more. And more. And more. And for the last 10 minutes of the show, there was a stream of people heading to the exit.

Again, I couldn't believe it. You don't get up and leave during a live performance. It's just not right. Not only are you being rude and disrespectful to everyone onstage who is still doing the show for you, but you're also standing up and walking out the middle aisle between the front and back, thereby blocking the view of half the audience. And again, in what world is that acceptable? Just because we're outdoors, people seem to think that the same protocol applies to this as to a sports event, and it really affects the quality of the audiences that we have.

Seriously. I give the audience the benefit of the doubt when I'm directing. I try not to over-explain my symbolism and my allusions, because I give the audience credit for being able to take something from it and either get what I'm going for, not getting it at all, or getting something else out of it. That's part of the beauty of theatre--it's interpreted differently through every set of eyes. A director and the actors can only take the audience so far; after that, it's the audience's responsibility to engage and respond.

However, this show is making me question that faith in people's intelligence. I mean, if people don't even have the common sense to not yell out in the middle of the show, how can they view the show with an artistic sensibility?

I'm not a theatre elitist. Like I've said before, I think that teaching children to be responsible, responsive, invested, vibrant, interactive arts patrons (music, dance, theatre, visual arts--the whole works) is one of the most important social skills that needs to be passed on. I am fully supportive of making the arts accessible to everyone, through education, through schools, through free and cheap events, through increased visibility--whatever. I think that the arts are one of society's most important legacies; far more important than sports and equally as important as scientific advances, in my opinion. If we didn't believe that, Colin and I wouldn't make the arts our careers, because trust me, it's not about the money. People need to be engaged in the arts, but that also means that people need to learn to be patrons, not just audience members.

Like I've said before, too, being a considerate audience member doesn't mean being silent. Reactions are what make live theatre special. It's what the actors thrive on. However, being a considerate audience member also means not getting up in the middle of the act to go to the washroom, opening a bag of snacks during the performance, whispering your "revelations" or pointing out obvious observations (or asking questions) to the person beside you. (I swear, at every show we go to, we end up in front of or beside someone particularly stupid who feels the need to maintain a running commentary for the people they came with. We mock them mercilessly.)

I feel helpless. How do we, as artists and patrons, educate people? Leading by example doesn't seem to work, because people don't notice the audience members who aren't being disruptive. People get offended when their mistakes are pointed out to them, and they get snippy when it's pointed out directly. When it's announced at the top of the show, people either don't listen, or they tend to do the whole, "Well, I'm just one person getting up and moving, so obviously it doesn't apply to me; it's for everyone else" mindset. I think that maybe the only way to solve it is to get everyone up on stage with a rude audience, so they know what it feels like.

I realize that rants like this (on my livejournal, at least) are mostly preaching to the choir, but I need to get it off my chest (to someone other than Colin, who rants with me because he gets it, too).