Last week I had invitations that both relate to homelessness. Not my temporary, seeking-a-house-to-buy homelessness, but the serious kind, often symptomatic of mental illness, poverty, or addiction. Two vaunted organizations, National Alliance on Mental Illness and Union Station, sponsored their annual fundraisers.
NAMI hosts an October walkathon in Santa Monica. A dear couple I know whose daughter suffers schizophrenia invited me to join the walk. The local NAMI chapter rented a yellow school bus for the trip across town. Riders included "consumers" (who have been patients or those who live in board and care) and "supporters" (who are everyone else). Really, it wasn't that apparent as to who was in which category. But it did cause me to think back to my college job as a "mobility trainer," teaching developmentally disabled adults to ride the public bus system. How confounded I felt back then, trying to navigate the RTD as it was called. How do people cope, I have since wondered, when they are disabled or hallucinatory or ill and need to commute?
The NAMI walk drew 3500 participants this year. I walked with my friends' daughter, and we chatted away about spirits, reincarnation, food, geography, and more random topics threaded by the most delicate of skeins. But this young woman with the blue marble eyes is so much healthier now than she was when psychotic breaks ravaged her and her family. Some credit must go to the tireless support and education offered by NAMI volunteers, as well as her extraordinary family who never falters in trying to provide a high quality of life. Mental illness affects all of us to varying degrees. Depression, addiction, organic brain problems: I saw the placards reminding us THERE IS NO HEALTH WITHOUT MENTAL HEALTH. NAMI's work will never end. But the solace and the information for supporters, consumers, and anyone else will be its legacy. The bus rolls again in October, 2011. All are welcome. Check out nami.org
That same night I was lucky enough to return to our beloved Pasadena Playhouse for Union Station's 11th annual benefit. Hector Elizondo, the USC Thornton Jazz Orchestra, the Yellowjackets and others donated their talents. Entering the Playhouse is its own happy homecoming. But since 1973 Union Station has given succor to those who find themselves in a rough patch or worse. Union Station's services include emergency and transitional shelter, meals, substance and mental illness outreach. The Pasadena Playhouse partnered with Union Station on this twinkly night so that others might not suffer colder nights in times to come. If you ever wish to contribute, there is a range of possibility and participation. See for yourself at info@unionstationhs.org
Sunday, October 10, 2010
The Glass Menagerie
Dateline: Alhambra, 10/5/10
Twenty-seven students and three teachers headed to the Mark Taper Forum to see a Young Audience Program of "The Glass Menagerie." Beforehand I must confess I sweated out the roll-taking, the body-counting, and the alphabetical lineup to the bus. But hadn't the kids signed my homemade Pledge of Conduct, agreeing to sit for the duration of the play; to carry no gum or contraband; to leave electronics at school? We were ready for our public test of behavior.
Tennessee Williams' play is a family case study, actually more comic than any of us realized despite my enforced classroom reading. Right before the lights dimmed in the theater, I reminded the boy next to me, "If you do fall asleep, that will be me pinching you quietly. Do NOT reflex-punch me because it's just me, your teacher who loves you." "Don't worry, Miss," he replied, "I don't snore," which wasn't the answer I wanted. On to Act I. Thirty minutes into it, two shadowy forms from my class rose and exited left. My shoulders sagged. The Pledge of Conduct was already showing its fault lines! Over the next thirty minutes, two other students stood and headed to the restroom. Now I was breathing hard. Hadn't I hammered theater etiquette properly? I consoled myself until intermission by recalling that only one of the entire class had ever been to live theater. Still...
After intermission I hissed at everyone, "Stay in your seats for the remaining hour!" I have to say, however, that not one of our students hooted or vocalized during any part of the play as other students may have been doing. As one of the girls observed on the way back to the bus, "Miss, making noise was so immature in there!" Thank you, I didn't say aloud. Some remarks are best left with a profound nod.
Field trips are no longer the norm in our fiscally strapped school world. Our principal's resourcefulness pays for the bus and the $50.00 attendance fee. She gilded the day for the students by providing breakfast food at the start and pizza upon our return. Because we are a Title I school (a measure of poverty), transportation and food issues loom over our students all the time. If staff can somehow guarantee some solutions, then we have inducements that make participation all the more logical. These particular kids have to be reassured time and again so that they can become the learners we expect. Teachers have to make every step palpable. We want them to understand that this is their Los Angeles too, that they can enjoy its offerings even moreso if they know how to behave. For any field trip we deliberately assign one teacher to ten students. This time our retired art teacher, current art teacher and I were the ones who watched over the students while they watched the play.
During the two days following "The Glass Menagerie," we had our students write thank you notes. They wrote to the principal, to the home-school coordinator, and to Center Theater Group. I told the kids I would act as censor for quality control; I've gotten 48 notes so far. On Monday we will send some emissaries to deliver the on-site notes. I've just mailed the first wave to CTG. Writing thank you notes is a staple of our field-tripping. It wraps up an event; it provides an informal evaluation; and it exercises our civility. I just want every kid to feel equipped to cope in public situations. Father Greg Boyle is fond of saying, "Nothing stops a bullet like a job." I tag along with, "Nothing builds confidence like a guided cultural experience." It's but one day of school, yes. But I hope it becomes a day they will remember.
Twenty-seven students and three teachers headed to the Mark Taper Forum to see a Young Audience Program of "The Glass Menagerie." Beforehand I must confess I sweated out the roll-taking, the body-counting, and the alphabetical lineup to the bus. But hadn't the kids signed my homemade Pledge of Conduct, agreeing to sit for the duration of the play; to carry no gum or contraband; to leave electronics at school? We were ready for our public test of behavior.
Tennessee Williams' play is a family case study, actually more comic than any of us realized despite my enforced classroom reading. Right before the lights dimmed in the theater, I reminded the boy next to me, "If you do fall asleep, that will be me pinching you quietly. Do NOT reflex-punch me because it's just me, your teacher who loves you." "Don't worry, Miss," he replied, "I don't snore," which wasn't the answer I wanted. On to Act I. Thirty minutes into it, two shadowy forms from my class rose and exited left. My shoulders sagged. The Pledge of Conduct was already showing its fault lines! Over the next thirty minutes, two other students stood and headed to the restroom. Now I was breathing hard. Hadn't I hammered theater etiquette properly? I consoled myself until intermission by recalling that only one of the entire class had ever been to live theater. Still...
After intermission I hissed at everyone, "Stay in your seats for the remaining hour!" I have to say, however, that not one of our students hooted or vocalized during any part of the play as other students may have been doing. As one of the girls observed on the way back to the bus, "Miss, making noise was so immature in there!" Thank you, I didn't say aloud. Some remarks are best left with a profound nod.
Field trips are no longer the norm in our fiscally strapped school world. Our principal's resourcefulness pays for the bus and the $50.00 attendance fee. She gilded the day for the students by providing breakfast food at the start and pizza upon our return. Because we are a Title I school (a measure of poverty), transportation and food issues loom over our students all the time. If staff can somehow guarantee some solutions, then we have inducements that make participation all the more logical. These particular kids have to be reassured time and again so that they can become the learners we expect. Teachers have to make every step palpable. We want them to understand that this is their Los Angeles too, that they can enjoy its offerings even moreso if they know how to behave. For any field trip we deliberately assign one teacher to ten students. This time our retired art teacher, current art teacher and I were the ones who watched over the students while they watched the play.
During the two days following "The Glass Menagerie," we had our students write thank you notes. They wrote to the principal, to the home-school coordinator, and to Center Theater Group. I told the kids I would act as censor for quality control; I've gotten 48 notes so far. On Monday we will send some emissaries to deliver the on-site notes. I've just mailed the first wave to CTG. Writing thank you notes is a staple of our field-tripping. It wraps up an event; it provides an informal evaluation; and it exercises our civility. I just want every kid to feel equipped to cope in public situations. Father Greg Boyle is fond of saying, "Nothing stops a bullet like a job." I tag along with, "Nothing builds confidence like a guided cultural experience." It's but one day of school, yes. But I hope it becomes a day they will remember.
Friday, September 24, 2010
The Questions
"Miss, don't you ever get mad?"
"Miss, does a crime record hurt you for college?"
"Miss, you're wearing different shoes! Does that mean you got a place to live?"
Every day students ask me the unexpected. Every day I answer as honestly as I can.
We're in our fourth week of school. The familiarity of routine is established. We're a lucky school in that we don't have fights; the staff is always vigilant for any signs of tension or dispute between students so that we can glide in and intervene before something gets hot. Because of this vigilance, we all cultivate techniques for keeping kids engaged. We give them the space to ask and express what may be bottled up inside, even if it's "off-topic" or seemingly disconnected from classwork. Usually our adult responses involve mild banter. Effective teachers have learned not to use sarcasm or threats. Students don't take to either, and in fact they will drift out of our orbit of influence if we are not mindful.
Bringing a student closer to graduation is much harder than you would think. Right now I am very excited about the turnaround of one young man who used to bedevil me no end. Last year I could not convince him to sit all period; he hovered by the window "Looking out, Miss," so regularly that I nicknamed him VENTANA. He scowled at me for that, but gradually he began to smile a little. He's the one who called our word game "Scramble" despite my puny insistence that it be Scrabble. His pacing, the intractability, the attempts to slip out of class that colored last year have all vanished this fall. What happened? Because even our summer school time remained a struggle of wills. I wanted this student to work through an English text and he was hellbent on tracking the World Cup. I know we met in the middle and he wrote me an armload of soccer essays while I tried to step back from hovering and micromanaging.
In our school lexicon we have a small category called "Superseniors." These are kids who are in the fifth year of high school, so the stakes are high. It is expensive to keep Superseniors in the system until they can graduate, but it's even costlier to cut over-18s loose without doing everything possible to help them earn diplomas. Superseniors can be tough to work with--some drag it out and some just have had such a tortured school history that it's a slog to the final credit. The happy news is that some Superseniors rekindle the spark they may have felt in kindergarten. This is what happened with my soccer fan. It was not my doing. It lay hidden within him, and in some inexplicable way, we've gotten to witness the change. This boy is my right-hand man right now. One of my coworkers got him to organize, photograph, and issue the school ID cards. We entrusted him with necessary school tasks and gave him the freedom to move about campus to accomplish them. We got the blessing of the school principal to put him to work in an unorthodox way. We listened to his concerns and we accepted his suggestions. During these past four weeks I've checked with his other teachers to see how he's doing. Each teacher has marveled over his ability to knuckle down. One teacher remarked, "He told me he just wants to graduate."
Just-wants-to-graduate is a very ambitious concept for students who have skittered along the margins before we meet them in continuation school. The process of coaxing students into scholastic life is freighted with open-ended questions. I never feel I know the answers until I've seen them graduate. But I know I am going to bawl on the day this particular young man finishes, and the principal escorts him to the classrooms as the P.A. system blasts "Pomp and Circumstance," and she throws confetti to mark his passage.
"Miss, does a crime record hurt you for college?"
"Miss, you're wearing different shoes! Does that mean you got a place to live?"
Every day students ask me the unexpected. Every day I answer as honestly as I can.
We're in our fourth week of school. The familiarity of routine is established. We're a lucky school in that we don't have fights; the staff is always vigilant for any signs of tension or dispute between students so that we can glide in and intervene before something gets hot. Because of this vigilance, we all cultivate techniques for keeping kids engaged. We give them the space to ask and express what may be bottled up inside, even if it's "off-topic" or seemingly disconnected from classwork. Usually our adult responses involve mild banter. Effective teachers have learned not to use sarcasm or threats. Students don't take to either, and in fact they will drift out of our orbit of influence if we are not mindful.
Bringing a student closer to graduation is much harder than you would think. Right now I am very excited about the turnaround of one young man who used to bedevil me no end. Last year I could not convince him to sit all period; he hovered by the window "Looking out, Miss," so regularly that I nicknamed him VENTANA. He scowled at me for that, but gradually he began to smile a little. He's the one who called our word game "Scramble" despite my puny insistence that it be Scrabble. His pacing, the intractability, the attempts to slip out of class that colored last year have all vanished this fall. What happened? Because even our summer school time remained a struggle of wills. I wanted this student to work through an English text and he was hellbent on tracking the World Cup. I know we met in the middle and he wrote me an armload of soccer essays while I tried to step back from hovering and micromanaging.
In our school lexicon we have a small category called "Superseniors." These are kids who are in the fifth year of high school, so the stakes are high. It is expensive to keep Superseniors in the system until they can graduate, but it's even costlier to cut over-18s loose without doing everything possible to help them earn diplomas. Superseniors can be tough to work with--some drag it out and some just have had such a tortured school history that it's a slog to the final credit. The happy news is that some Superseniors rekindle the spark they may have felt in kindergarten. This is what happened with my soccer fan. It was not my doing. It lay hidden within him, and in some inexplicable way, we've gotten to witness the change. This boy is my right-hand man right now. One of my coworkers got him to organize, photograph, and issue the school ID cards. We entrusted him with necessary school tasks and gave him the freedom to move about campus to accomplish them. We got the blessing of the school principal to put him to work in an unorthodox way. We listened to his concerns and we accepted his suggestions. During these past four weeks I've checked with his other teachers to see how he's doing. Each teacher has marveled over his ability to knuckle down. One teacher remarked, "He told me he just wants to graduate."
Just-wants-to-graduate is a very ambitious concept for students who have skittered along the margins before we meet them in continuation school. The process of coaxing students into scholastic life is freighted with open-ended questions. I never feel I know the answers until I've seen them graduate. But I know I am going to bawl on the day this particular young man finishes, and the principal escorts him to the classrooms as the P.A. system blasts "Pomp and Circumstance," and she throws confetti to mark his passage.
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Me and Mrs. Jones
"She bore her burden because she did not wish to be a burden." I'm paraphrasing from an Isaac Bashevis Singer short story, "The Washerwoman." It's one of those anthology selections for ninth graders that kids never take to, a story that eventually resounds for those who live long enough to have the stuffing kicked out of us a few times. The titular washwoman is a birdlike Gentile who launders for wealthier Jews in an early 20th century Polish shtetl. Her frail build belies tenacity and pride in her lowly occupation--an occupation both arduous and invisible. I guess I'd call it a story where stature trumps status.
Often I've thought of that very story over the the past ten years since I've known Mrs. Jones. She is a longtime Pasadenan, living in her home since 1951. She's raised a family and worked at the legendary FEDCO on Colorado Blvd. until she retired at about 70. That must be when Mrs. Jones started fueling her next career.
Mrs. Jones takes in ironing. I can say it no other way. She is a word-of-mouth phenomenon who can starch a flaccid shirt into respectability. She transforms a jumbled basket of laundry into prete-a-porter. For as long as I have patronized Mrs. Jones, by gum, my creases have been straight and my cuffs crisp. Mrs. Jones is all business and no play at her ironing board.
Just last week we were chatting about my house hunting trials. Mrs. Jones handed me a xeroxed policy statement written in her elegant hand:
Dear Jean-
I'm going to give myself a 90th birthday present and raise the price of ironing
to $8.00 per hour starting Sept. 1, 2010. I hope you will still let me do your
ironing because I love doing it.
Sincerely,
Mrs. Jones
All I could say was, "90? Mrs. Jones, you don't look a day over 82!" I get such a kick out of her professionalism and her product too. Ninety years old and still keeping Pasadena/Altadena unwrinkled? That to me is stature.
Often I've thought of that very story over the the past ten years since I've known Mrs. Jones. She is a longtime Pasadenan, living in her home since 1951. She's raised a family and worked at the legendary FEDCO on Colorado Blvd. until she retired at about 70. That must be when Mrs. Jones started fueling her next career.
Mrs. Jones takes in ironing. I can say it no other way. She is a word-of-mouth phenomenon who can starch a flaccid shirt into respectability. She transforms a jumbled basket of laundry into prete-a-porter. For as long as I have patronized Mrs. Jones, by gum, my creases have been straight and my cuffs crisp. Mrs. Jones is all business and no play at her ironing board.
Just last week we were chatting about my house hunting trials. Mrs. Jones handed me a xeroxed policy statement written in her elegant hand:
Dear Jean-
I'm going to give myself a 90th birthday present and raise the price of ironing
to $8.00 per hour starting Sept. 1, 2010. I hope you will still let me do your
ironing because I love doing it.
Sincerely,
Mrs. Jones
All I could say was, "90? Mrs. Jones, you don't look a day over 82!" I get such a kick out of her professionalism and her product too. Ninety years old and still keeping Pasadena/Altadena unwrinkled? That to me is stature.
Monday, July 12, 2010
Homeowner Once Removed
I've lain dormant for the last eight weeks since my Pasadena house sold. More accurately, I've laid my head in a number of different homes because I've become a housesitter. I didn't foresee this lifestyle. Somehow it sought me.
I had to vacate my home by May 18. Once the sale fell into place, the sorting, discarding, and packing demands punctured my reverie and pricked me until I finished. Do-it-yourself storage! Pink Transfer! Annual city bulky item pickup! These agencies and the kindness of friends emptied a big old house of 24 years of stuff.
The devil lurking in the details was where would I go next? Luckily I was so fatigued from the pack-out that my usual over-planning tendencies were blunted. I can say that a dear couple was heading out on a trip May 18 into June and I slid right over to their commodious Altadena home. Another friend then introduced me to a family from southwest Pasadena who were vacationing for ten days. From there it was a night at my sister's. Then back to the first homestay. In another week I will head to a new family's poolhouse. It's a daisy chain of accommodations--all of them lovely, summer-y, imbued with a tensile strength of unexpected generosity to me. The serendipity of all these people offering ME places to stay while I complete summer school and sort out my future is the gift.
You learn things about yourself when you are itinerant. Every now and then you'll reach for something familiar, only to realize it's packed in storage or a friend has it at her home for safe-keeping. My computer, for instance, lives in a private home in Monrovia. My potted plants moved to El Monte. My favorite dictionary is in, er, uh, word limbo somewhere. But certainly I am enjoying the chance to see how homes reflect the organization of our lives. It's an education in itself to see an efficient cook's kitchen or where it's best to store the pet food or how to set up a discreet laundry system. Maybe once I find my own new home I can remember to emulate some of these principles. In fact, later today I am looking at houses in Altadena.
I had to vacate my home by May 18. Once the sale fell into place, the sorting, discarding, and packing demands punctured my reverie and pricked me until I finished. Do-it-yourself storage! Pink Transfer! Annual city bulky item pickup! These agencies and the kindness of friends emptied a big old house of 24 years of stuff.
The devil lurking in the details was where would I go next? Luckily I was so fatigued from the pack-out that my usual over-planning tendencies were blunted. I can say that a dear couple was heading out on a trip May 18 into June and I slid right over to their commodious Altadena home. Another friend then introduced me to a family from southwest Pasadena who were vacationing for ten days. From there it was a night at my sister's. Then back to the first homestay. In another week I will head to a new family's poolhouse. It's a daisy chain of accommodations--all of them lovely, summer-y, imbued with a tensile strength of unexpected generosity to me. The serendipity of all these people offering ME places to stay while I complete summer school and sort out my future is the gift.
You learn things about yourself when you are itinerant. Every now and then you'll reach for something familiar, only to realize it's packed in storage or a friend has it at her home for safe-keeping. My computer, for instance, lives in a private home in Monrovia. My potted plants moved to El Monte. My favorite dictionary is in, er, uh, word limbo somewhere. But certainly I am enjoying the chance to see how homes reflect the organization of our lives. It's an education in itself to see an efficient cook's kitchen or where it's best to store the pet food or how to set up a discreet laundry system. Maybe once I find my own new home I can remember to emulate some of these principles. In fact, later today I am looking at houses in Altadena.
Sunday, May 30, 2010
COME OVER TO "LA MISSION"
"La Mission"
Written & directed by Peter Bratt/starring Benjamin Bratt
Some ten years ago at UCLA I heard Raymund Paredes, Ph.D., state, "The universal lies in the particular." His context was multicultural literature and how the stories of lives far beyond our own can illuminate your very situation or mine. I've since adopted his observation and it lives with me daily in my classroom. It also lives in the excellent independent film, "La Mission."
Peter and Benjamin Bratt have collaborated on a story set in their hometown of San Francisco in its Mission District. The story line: bus driver-recovering alcoholic-single dad Che Rivera abruptly learns that his cherished son Jesse is gay. Che's troubled ability to cope with this shock and his threads of connection to others lattice the plot. The "particular" of the film is its Latino community life. The universal is its painstaking process of sloughing off a father's angry, deflective layers of hurt in order to reveal his tender core, his corazon, for his beloved boy. The brothers Bratt coax Che's transformation without ever slipping into the maudlin. They recreate a milieu of working-class car aficionados, neighborhood tensions of gentrification and homosexuality, and urban violence so authoritatively that all of us viewers can understand Che's anguish.
"La Mission" takes a cue from opera when it uses signature music to identify each major character. Watch for that touch. Two scenes that employ music are among my favorites. In the first, for about 90 seconds we see Che ironing his clothes for an evening out. Now I admit to having spent many a Saturday night ironing to Art Laboe's Killer Oldies, but Che vaults ironing up to Olympic stature in this scene. How he summons perfection from an iron deserves major props. The other exemplary scene is the lowrider outing set to "Stop, Look, Listen," the magnificent 1971 Philly Soul cut. As far as I am concerned, this song is the apex of the Stylistics' catalogue; the pairing of this music with Che and Lena's date is sublime. It made me cry. It was that beautiful.
Another interesting motif is the presence of shrines. The Bratt brothers are ever mindful of both the leadership and confluence of indigenous and conquering peoples. The opening montage of murals illustrates this tension from the get-go. Repeatedly we see Che pause at the shrine he keeps of Our Lady Guadalupe and her red roses. Meanwhile, his neighbor Lena maintains her own shrine to feminine power with a goddess from India. Much later at a Dia de los Muertos memorial, Che finally experiences the integration that has eluded him. What are shrines but memory made palpable? We can feel the ache in Che when he holds the photo of his late wife. The tattoos on his body, the image of his mother on his prized ride, the regular offering of groceries to his aged neighbor--Che is a memory-curator in his own particular world.
I hope "La Mission" will find a viewership in and beyond Los Angeles. I hope it reaches Phoenix, Tucson, Santa Fe, Albuquerque, Las Cruces, El Paso, San Antonio. And it's an unusually potent film that deserves a rebirth once dvd time comes along.
Written & directed by Peter Bratt/starring Benjamin Bratt
Some ten years ago at UCLA I heard Raymund Paredes, Ph.D., state, "The universal lies in the particular." His context was multicultural literature and how the stories of lives far beyond our own can illuminate your very situation or mine. I've since adopted his observation and it lives with me daily in my classroom. It also lives in the excellent independent film, "La Mission."
Peter and Benjamin Bratt have collaborated on a story set in their hometown of San Francisco in its Mission District. The story line: bus driver-recovering alcoholic-single dad Che Rivera abruptly learns that his cherished son Jesse is gay. Che's troubled ability to cope with this shock and his threads of connection to others lattice the plot. The "particular" of the film is its Latino community life. The universal is its painstaking process of sloughing off a father's angry, deflective layers of hurt in order to reveal his tender core, his corazon, for his beloved boy. The brothers Bratt coax Che's transformation without ever slipping into the maudlin. They recreate a milieu of working-class car aficionados, neighborhood tensions of gentrification and homosexuality, and urban violence so authoritatively that all of us viewers can understand Che's anguish.
"La Mission" takes a cue from opera when it uses signature music to identify each major character. Watch for that touch. Two scenes that employ music are among my favorites. In the first, for about 90 seconds we see Che ironing his clothes for an evening out. Now I admit to having spent many a Saturday night ironing to Art Laboe's Killer Oldies, but Che vaults ironing up to Olympic stature in this scene. How he summons perfection from an iron deserves major props. The other exemplary scene is the lowrider outing set to "Stop, Look, Listen," the magnificent 1971 Philly Soul cut. As far as I am concerned, this song is the apex of the Stylistics' catalogue; the pairing of this music with Che and Lena's date is sublime. It made me cry. It was that beautiful.
Another interesting motif is the presence of shrines. The Bratt brothers are ever mindful of both the leadership and confluence of indigenous and conquering peoples. The opening montage of murals illustrates this tension from the get-go. Repeatedly we see Che pause at the shrine he keeps of Our Lady Guadalupe and her red roses. Meanwhile, his neighbor Lena maintains her own shrine to feminine power with a goddess from India. Much later at a Dia de los Muertos memorial, Che finally experiences the integration that has eluded him. What are shrines but memory made palpable? We can feel the ache in Che when he holds the photo of his late wife. The tattoos on his body, the image of his mother on his prized ride, the regular offering of groceries to his aged neighbor--Che is a memory-curator in his own particular world.
I hope "La Mission" will find a viewership in and beyond Los Angeles. I hope it reaches Phoenix, Tucson, Santa Fe, Albuquerque, Las Cruces, El Paso, San Antonio. And it's an unusually potent film that deserves a rebirth once dvd time comes along.
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Parsing the Parson's Nose Productions
Tonight was yet another winsome evening of readers' theater sponsored by the Parson's Nose Productions. This is a South Pasadena-based troupe whose motto is "introducing classic theater to contemporary audiences." Husband and wife duo Lance Davis and Mary Chalon are the mad creative geniuses who direct and devise all things Parson. They would also like a bit of our help.
Parson's Nose is peripatetic, which sounds a lot classier than itinerant or heaven forbid, homeless. There is a mailing address, a phone number, a website; but at present there is no theatrical home. Gamely, Davis and Chalon have mounted a fine series of reading performances in Pasadena's Jameson Brown Coffee Roasters (260 N. Allen Avenue). Also, in January 2010 the company staged a successful run of the full-on production, THE IMAGINARY INVALID. This show inhabited the Pacific Asia Museum upstairs for its performance space. Certainly, the locations bloom merrily where the players perform each rendition. But it's not quite the same feel as having a room of one's own. Parson's Nose is searching for its own dedicated spot. Pasadena tops the wish list, in case anyone knows of a space available for regular rehearsals and productions.
"The Pied Piper of Hamelin" was tonight's hourlong adaptation written by Lance Davis. The coffee shop kind enough to host such a reading closes at 6 in order to be ready for this 7 pm performance. Entering a closed business with others in-the-know feels like we're melting into something exclusive like the Mattachine Society. I kidded with the reservations volunteer when she asked, what's the password? "Nonprofit organization?" I ventured. Now the super part about these readings is that they are FREE, though donations are enthusiastically recommended and received. Tonight I also noticed a ramped-up conviviality among the patrons in the full house. In fact, Davis and Chalon had to play school principals to coax the irrepressible audience back into their seats after intermission. My read on this level of interest is that Parson's Nose is starting to root in our town. And for an organization to succeed, there has to be an emotionally attached following. Davis tapped into that sensibility at the end of the reading when he spoke to us. He said that actors love their work, just as other professionals do. And actors wish to pay mortgages, bills, tuitions, and they deserve salaries steadier than what donations generate. Davis said that he wants to pay his players fair wages and that they are seeking a space in town where the classics will have a home. Brainstorms are welcome. The last readings of this season are scheduled for May 15 (UBU ROI) and June 19 (KING CYMBELINE).
Parson's Nose Productions
1325 Monterey Rd.
South Pasadena, CA 91030
626.403.7667
www.parsonsnose.com
parsonsnose@mac.com
Parson's Nose is peripatetic, which sounds a lot classier than itinerant or heaven forbid, homeless. There is a mailing address, a phone number, a website; but at present there is no theatrical home. Gamely, Davis and Chalon have mounted a fine series of reading performances in Pasadena's Jameson Brown Coffee Roasters (260 N. Allen Avenue). Also, in January 2010 the company staged a successful run of the full-on production, THE IMAGINARY INVALID. This show inhabited the Pacific Asia Museum upstairs for its performance space. Certainly, the locations bloom merrily where the players perform each rendition. But it's not quite the same feel as having a room of one's own. Parson's Nose is searching for its own dedicated spot. Pasadena tops the wish list, in case anyone knows of a space available for regular rehearsals and productions.
"The Pied Piper of Hamelin" was tonight's hourlong adaptation written by Lance Davis. The coffee shop kind enough to host such a reading closes at 6 in order to be ready for this 7 pm performance. Entering a closed business with others in-the-know feels like we're melting into something exclusive like the Mattachine Society. I kidded with the reservations volunteer when she asked, what's the password? "Nonprofit organization?" I ventured. Now the super part about these readings is that they are FREE, though donations are enthusiastically recommended and received. Tonight I also noticed a ramped-up conviviality among the patrons in the full house. In fact, Davis and Chalon had to play school principals to coax the irrepressible audience back into their seats after intermission. My read on this level of interest is that Parson's Nose is starting to root in our town. And for an organization to succeed, there has to be an emotionally attached following. Davis tapped into that sensibility at the end of the reading when he spoke to us. He said that actors love their work, just as other professionals do. And actors wish to pay mortgages, bills, tuitions, and they deserve salaries steadier than what donations generate. Davis said that he wants to pay his players fair wages and that they are seeking a space in town where the classics will have a home. Brainstorms are welcome. The last readings of this season are scheduled for May 15 (UBU ROI) and June 19 (KING CYMBELINE).
Parson's Nose Productions
1325 Monterey Rd.
South Pasadena, CA 91030
626.403.7667
www.parsonsnose.com
parsonsnose@mac.com
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