Literary Updates for January 2010

Dear friends,

The first month of the new decade has been exhilarating. I decided to try something different on my Open Salon blog. All of the posts during the month of January had something to do with the theme of “The Body.”

If you want to catch up on the posts, here’s a list:

1/5 This Is My Body
1/8 “Cat” (A Flash Fiction Story)
1/12 Exploring the Body (A Poem)
1/15 Misbehaving Body
1/19 Dear Body (A Brief Letter)
1/21 Body Language: Inside the Mind of a Playwright
(A Guest Blog by Julie Ann Seals)
1/25 Oo La La: Sexual Pleasure and Body Image
(A Guest Blog by Laura Anne Stuart)
1/26 A Portrait of the Body as a Young Woman (Part of a Joint Blog Post)

Thank you for reading and responding to these intimate musings. I truly believe that writing is communication. The circle isn’t complete if no one is reading. So thank you very much. I wanted to especially thank my guest bloggers for giving of their time and experience. This has been a wonderful collaboration.


Peace.
~Gwen

P.S. I now have an author page on amazon.com and you can check it out here.

Your hand opens and closes and opens and closes.
If it were always a fist or always stretched open, you would be paralyzed.
Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding, the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated as bird wings.

- Rumi

Body Language: Inside the Mind of a Playwright

Julie Ann Seals is my guest blogger today and she is one of the enchanting people that I befriended at Oral Roberts University. I think we became friends because my roommate was a friend of hers and we had an apartment off campus with a washer and dryer. I would come home from work on Saturdays to this blue-eyed nymph doing her weekly laundry in my home. We soon bonded over our adoration of Kurt Vonnegut and a shared weakness for worn-out jeans.

Julie is a playwright and actress (although she won’t call herself an actress) at the Nightingale Theater in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It’s one of the best local theaters that I’ve ever been to. When a place is hidden in the shadows of extreme religiosity, sometimes it breaks forth and shines like a diamond. I watched my first lesbian love story, complete with partial nudity, at this theater.

I asked Julie to write something the body and the art of acting.




Body language is the often subconscious enhancement or explanation of our verbal communication. Beyond facial expression and vocal intonation, the body gives social cues regarding the underlying intent and emotion of individuals. Often, along with the subconscious expression of the communicator, there is a subconscious interpretation by the receiver. So what exactly is going on when an actor--whose words and sometimes actions are dictated by another entity--is onstage attempting to convey an imaginary character to a theater full of strangers? How much of the subconscious is moved into the conscious? How self-aware can a gesture be before the audience recognizes the forgery?

If the answer to those questions, particularly the second one, were cut and dry, I imagine we could elevate the likes of William Shatner and David Caruso above pop culture self-parodies: every smoldering removal of sunglasses beckoning an Oscar nod. Alas, there are as many schools of thought on this as there are actors (and directors...and writers...and so on). Furthermore, not all characters require the same physicality, nor do all plays call for the same level of naturalism or theatricality. So, there is some disparity even within the individuals who address this issue.

Personally, when I am onstage (at an all-volunteer community theater in Tulsa, Oklahoma, so you know you can trust my expertise), about the only thing I'm thinking is, "Don't look like a jackass. Please, don't look like a jackass." My greatest acting weakness is my physicality. I know how to sound good. I'm excellent at memorizing lines. If a role requires me to be lying in bed paralyzed, I'm golden. I'm just too self-conscious to express myself very well with my body.

Anyone who has seen me in a show may hesitate to call me self-conscious, considering that many of my roles have required minimal clothing. (Remember: it's community theater. In Oklahoma. We gotta do something to keep its doors open.) I'm not embarrassed by what my body looks like; I'm just limited in what I can do with it. It does not matter if the director leaves me to my own devices or if the piece is highly choreographed: I struggle if it requires gross motor skills. The audience can tell I'm acting (which is great when we do Vaudeville), whether I'm operating consciously or subconsciously.

However, I am not really an actor. I'm actually a playwright who performs sometimes because I've got the sweet ass and the moxy to give it a shot. Of the real actors I work with (I do not consider a humble venue to be a limiting factor for talent), I have noticed that they do not all approach material in the same way, nor do they all share the same strengths. One thing that always impresses me with them is that they are capable of fully committing to whatever action they take, whether they have consciously chosen it or the theater gods have bestowed it upon their worthy forms.

I mostly make my way in the theater as a disembodied voice in my actors' heads, and I leave it to them to make everything look right (with, perhaps, some gentle nudges). I provide them with the sounds, and they in turn grace me with the action. Of the talented, working actors I know, many operate within a fairly narrow physical vocabulary. Rarely are they asked to stretch beyond their comforts zones, and I'm not suggesting they should be if the result is not stage-worthy. At my home theater, the Nightingale, we've learned and are still learning how best to suit our material to the strengths and limitations of our ragtag players. Often the limitations of a specific actor become the very quality we exploit in writing and onstage, as if we're collectively struggling with and celebrating the eccentricities of our individual natures. Because we do not have the luxury to rely solely on our strengths, we find a use for the whole turkey. The bar is low, the house is half empty, and we have each other to lean on and learn from. As we continue this process, self-correcting as best we can, we find that we are able to dive ever deeper into the language of our craft and of our own bodies, eventually awaking and then shaping the voice within, the one residing in our muscles and our minds, immeasurable and unknowable even to ourselves, no more real than the stories we serve, but true and undeniable in the mind of the audience. Bravo, Caruso...Bravo.

Happy Holidays!

A few years ago, David and I created our own set of holiday cards featuring a penguin couple.








However you're celebrating this year, have fun and be safe!

Tis the season to be merry!

Wishing you and yours a magical holiday season and a glorious new year!


~Gwen, David, & Jasper

December Updates and Wintery Greetings

Dear friends, family, and fans: The weather outside is frightful, so it's more important than ever to cuddle up, huddle together with friends and family, and enjoy the light in each other.

Whether you're up late with anticipation for holiday festivities or simply have some free time to read, I wanted to tell you about some interesting blog reads. David posted an insider's view into being a bipolar hero and a funny note on Chicago squirrels. I wrote about my second reading of CTFS and a fellow OS blogger, Jim, wrote about sharing the experience at The Book Cellar. I had my first guest blogger, Bob Messerli, on my OS blog. His post is quite intimate and beautiful. (If you're interested in being a guest blogger, please let me know.)

I'm writing feverishly to finish this draft of Invisible Elephants, which is one reason why I haven't been blogging as much in the past month. I hope that you will continue to check in on both blogs. I try to post several times a month.

There is a new press page on my website thanks to my web master genius, David. This includes book reviews and the few blog interviews that I have had so far.

In case you're still looking for holiday gifts, I would like to recommend two fantastic redheads, Kelli of Greenie Bean Recycle and my sister Tiffany of Blessings by the Book. Kelli creates tote bags out of all recycled materials, including t-shirts. Tiffany hand makes delightful scrapbooks. Both are very affordable.

Wishing you a merry and magic holiday season to you and yours.

Peace,
Gwen