Returning to Manhattan From the Woods

This essay of mine was originally published in the lovely Quail Bell Magazine on January 18. I thought it was the perfect first post of 2015 for my Calamity Joe blog, too. Enjoy!

Returning to Manhattan from the Woods

By Jeanne Joe Perrone
QuailBellMagazine.com

January is rough for lots of us; it’s cold, we spent all our money on the holidays, it’s hard to adjust to a work schedule again, hard to say goodbye to loved ones and leisurely days spent eating whatever we want. Yes, January is a quiet month. Someone told me once that if January were a color, it would be blue.

For me, January has an added layer of post-holiday blues: a serious “home for the holidays” hangover, where the ghosts of Christmas past and present and future linger, uninvited and inappropriate and utterly at odds with the date on the calendar.

I realize that the holidays have been over for most people for a while now, but I only just got back to New York City, and I just got back from Del Norte County, California: a place that couldn’t be farther from New York City either physically or spiritually. It’s the place I went to high school, fell in love for the first time, joined the abstinence club, and did a lot of other ridiculous things – like driving my car into a table that was inside a building, driving my car into a fence, and driving my car into a dirt road in the mountains where no one could find us, to kiss for hours and look at the stars.

Del Norte County is a place where people wear plaid and beards without irony, tack the Confederate flag on the back of their pickups, and listen to the country station non-stop. It’s a place where people deer-hunt, prospect, surf, kayak, fish, whale-watch, and live off the grid. It’s a wild place. A wooded place. An isolated place that, this time, took me 35 hours to reach via plane and car. It’s the place about which my mother always said, though she loves it and still resides there, “You can’t stay here. You will go to college.” You will go out of the woods, and into the world.

Her town has maybe 500 people. My borough has maybe 1.7 million. When I am there, I am lonely for people. When I am here, I am lonely for trees.

When I visit my mother and step-father for Christmas, I am also visiting the woods. Literally. Figuratively. We sit together, drink wine, and unwind the spool of our desires, struggles, and history through conversation, and all the while the trees outside rustle in the wind, listening.

There’s a bay tree on the top of our hill that I’ve sat in and talked to for eighteen years now, ever since we moved there. It guards the waterfall that we only have in the winter. It guards most of my secrets. It saw my first kiss, and the mountain lion that could have eaten me alive when I was fifteen. It survived my ill-laid plans for a tree house as well as several epidemics of Port Orford Cedar root rot. I hope it will survive me, survive the plans upriver to install a nickel mine that would destroy Del Norte County as I know it. I hope that bay tree will be around to watch the sun turn red.

Into the Woods just came out, and my mother and I drove two hours to get to the nearest movie theater screening it. She fell asleep after the prologue, and I chuckled to myself all through the lyrics: 

“The way is clear,
The light is good,
I have no fear,
Nor no one should.
The woods are just trees,
The trees are just wood.”

The trees are never just wood. Anyone with half a brain knows that. Not in any woods I’ve ever seen.

The woods of Del Norte County are many things to many people, and for me they’ve gone from woods to solace to retreat to playground to dungeon to padded cell to hostile territory to symbols and back to woods again. It struck me this holiday that somehow, over the last ten years of being outside the woods, I’d come to fear them in a strange way. Not just in a New Yorker vs. nature way: I’d come to fear going into the woods, for fear of what the trees would remember to me.

Each time I enter the woods, I am my twelve-year-old self writing a poem, and my sixteen-year-old self scaling a mountain with my friend Amy who I never see or hear from anymore, and my twenty-one year old self at odds with the world for the first time. The woods play tricks, bend time, and whisper. The woods change color with the twirling light of day, going from laughter to silence.

Del Norte County is the northwesternmost county in California, bordering Oregon to the north and the Pacific Ocean to the west and Humboldt to the south. It’s an isolated corner of the state, sparsely habited and poor. Most of the land is protected as National Park, National Forest, State Park, or reservation land of one of the two local Native tribes. There’s a sad history of war and racism. There’s a sad present of poverty. And, within that, there are all the joys and blessings of human life. Families. Schools. Beaches. Most of all, there are the woods.

When I went to school there, Del Norte was the methamphetamine-production hub of the state, smack-dab in the middle of the notorious “green triangle.” It’s easy to hide a meth lab in the woods. It’s easy to do drugs in the woods. When a high school buddy of mine bought a house in Crescent City, she found a recipe for meth written on the inside of a cabinet door in pencil. Apparently the previous owners had forgotten that graphite erases. It was scrawled there, carefully, like lovers’ initials in tree bark.

The woods were where I spent my time in order to avoid the drugs and poverty. My friends and I would bodysurf in the Smith River or forge our own trails behind Stony Creek. We’d lie in the sun and talk about books, or not talk at all, and let the trees do their thing. Once or twice we’d climb to the top of a mountain with no path, and then to the top of a tree on the top of the mountain, and spend the afternoon staring over the velvety-green folds of the foothills of the Coastal Range or the Klamath Mountains, I could never tell where one ended and the other began. I could never tell where the ocean began and the rivers ended, or where the trees and the mountains split into definitive articles.

It’s hard to explain these things to New Yorkers. Most of them have never spent an afternoon in a tree, in the woods. It’s a different breed of tree than park trees, like cats and dogs: park trees are there to please you, forest trees don’t give a damn. They just see you, like another insect picking its way over the bark of the earth’s crust, small and temporary and tame. The trees see, but they are not your friends.

There are dangers in the woods. The woods back home were my escape but also a wild place, like the time my girlfriend and I stumbled into someone’s pot field in the ravine we were playing in and received a shotgun-blast in the air as warning to make ourselves scarce, or the time my dog Teddy disappeared from the trail barking, only to scare two bear cubs out of the bushes to my left that ran straight at me, wild-eyed, afraid of my 50-pound dog, while I looked at them, wild-eyed, afraid of their not-yet-seen but presumably nearby mother, or the time my mother fell and dislocated her hip and had to lay there in the woods for an hour before another human could answer her cellphone call. She's lucky there was another human. She's lucky she had reception.

The woods look down on book-nerds and hippies drug addicts and loggers alike. They look on memories and the present alike. There are voices in the woods.

Not all the people I played with in the woods survived. Drugs and poverty ate up a lot of the kids and neighbors that I knew. A girl who had once been my best friend had a baby in 8th grade. Our charming, handsome class joker was dead my sophomore year of high school, drunkenly playing chicken on the highway that wound through the woods. When I was in junior high we had the highest teen pregnancy rate in California: my high school graduating class started with 418 students, but by the time I walked across the stage as salutatorian, our total numbers had dropped to 214. But me, I had a great time in the woods, even though they didn't belong to me and I didn't belong to them. I knew I couldn’t stay.

To get out of the woods I moved to Manhattan. Except for two years in Brooklyn and a half a year in Ireland, I’ve been in Manhattan ever since. When I go back to visit Del Norte, it seems strange that I am a professional artist, that I spend my time in skyscrapers and sidewalks and not in trees anymore.

Some people never got out of the woods.

I’ve gone back to Del Norte County every single Christmas since I moved away. It’s a ritual. A pilgrimage. A re-opening and healing of a strange wound I only found a name for this year: my innocence. I thought I left it in the woods, when I was in love with them and in love with a boy from the woods, when I was still able to shut out the bad things about the world and rightly whisper to the trees that I was good, back in the time when I'd crush the moss under my feet breathlessly, half expecting to surprise God behind those next huckleberry bushes, eating his fill, always preparing what I'd say if I found him.

When I left the woods and the boy behind, I told myself I was heartsick and broken and that the better part of my heart was lost in the woods forever. I’ve been afraid of wandering through the woods ever since, convinced that at any turn a Hemlock would confront me with my mushy heart, or a Douglas Fir would drop my innocence on my head, and force me to take it up again. It seemed like too great a burden to risk. I didn’t have time or bravery for my innocence anymore. I needed to move fast and light and heartlessly to succeed. And so I’d dread the woods, not wanting to be confronted with bravery, sticking close to my mother’s living room instead.

This Christmas, I realized I hadn’t actually lost anything in the woods. The woods are what you make of them.

Last night I had a long, elaborate dream birthed out of my extended 3-week holiday at my mother’s house. In it, I had a long conversation with my high school sweetheart that was polite and impersonal and devoid of emotion. We were at his parent’s house, or mine, or in the Redwoods – it could have been all or any of those places, they are the same. For the first time in years, I woke up grumpy about dreaming of him, because he had nothing to tell me I didn’t already know, nothing pertinent to add. His kind words didn't mean anything. What’s the point of that? I wondered. I could have been dreaming of Toby Stephens or Benedict Cumberbatch or Jason Momoa. And then it struck me: I’m free, not afraid anymore of going into the woods, going into myself. I can take the woods with me this time.

Then I woke up in Manhattan.

I crossed five items off my 2-page to-do list and submitted for 24 acting parts. I made couscous and pondered how little I have in common with the world I just left behind yet again, and how this particular Christmas somehow shifted and transcended the stormy relationship I’ve had with the river, rocks, and trees of Del Norte County over the years: how very much I am out of the woods, how I no longer dread going there, or leaving. How it’s no longer home or my dream of home, but instead the beautiful place in the woods I go to in order to sit on the couch and drink wine with my mother and contemplate the escape I made from the woods and the yearly escape I make back to them. We stare at the trees through our kitchen window, watching the mist dissipate in the morning and the sunlight dissipate at night and the moonlight dissipate at dawn and time dissipate in our hands. My mother is my haven, not the woods.

I am my own woods, now.

“Into the woods and down the dell
In vain, perhaps, but who can tell?
Into the woods to lift the spell
Into the woods to lose the longing

Into the woods to have the child
To wed the Prince, to get the money
To save the house, to kill the Wolf
To find the father, to conquer the kingdom

To have, to wed, to get, to save
To kill, to keep, to go to the festival
Into the woods, into the woods
Into the woods, then out of the woods”


*Lyrics from Into the Woods by Stephen Soundheim and James Lapine

I Peace-Out New York City

Lots of reasons to love New York City today.

1) Conversation at work included, "So this is random and hilarious, but speaking of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ..." Also, I went to work with one purse and left with one purse and two giant bags of gifts. Church ladies are the nicest. Also, all Hershey's kisses are gone.

2) Witnessed TWO verbal altercations that almost became physical. The first was while looking at the Saks Fifth Avenue holiday window display, and two chicks were getting into it over a dude. Holiday cheer, people...HOLIDAY CHEER! The second was on the train, when a woman started shouting "Hey pervert, stop staring at my titties! I don't like it and you are making me uncomfortable." Her shouting "titties" made everyone else uncomfortable, especially the older gentleman I accidentally made sustained eye contact with - a mood only compounded when her boyfriend then proceeded to remove his rings, threatened to pummel the pervert, and whipped the headphones from his iphone so we could all hear the uptempo ditty that he presumably meant to be the soundtrack to the Pummeling of the Pervert. To be fair to the pervert, the lady with the titties did have a rather large, inscrutable word tattooed on her cleavage that I myself was tempted to spend an inordinate amount of time deciphering. Odestinated? Marikesh? Orelia? It is actually impossible to say. And I'm sorry, I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable, lady. I just was really trying to read. I'm sorry literacy and intellectual curiosity offend you.

3) Speaking of reading, I got to be a reader for auditions tonight and there is NEVER a dull moment on either side of the table, that's for sure. Note: the right answer to "can I touch you?" is always yes. No exceptions.

4) Pretty sure the apocalypse happened and we all missed it because it's 70 degrees and the humidity/B.O. factor is at it's summer high. I always hoped I'd at least see Jesus riding by on his white horse when this happened, but I guess I'm left behind...ugh...sigh.

5) One of my best friends lives literally two blocks from me and I was able to swing by on the way home while she gave me tea and edamame while debating the ethics and morality of dating. Meanwhile, her horny cats made parrot noises as if to challenge everything we said. Somehow I left feeling as if they know something we don't.

6) I'm leaving tomorrow. Which makes everything about New York City better. Beautiful-er. Brighter. Tolerable. Endearing. Gross.

BOOM. I love my adopted home. Merry Christmas, crazies.

Black Friday Night, Starving Artist Style

You realize your already open bottle of wine won't keep during the coming week, (the week you had vaguely resolved to abstain from all alcohol - you know, to cleanse), but since you like to economize and hate to waste foodstuffs of any kind, you decide you can't just throw away that open bottle. That's disrespectful, you know, to the starving kids in those remote places in the world you hear so much about. Once it's gone, THEN you can cleanse. Yeah, you could offer it to your roommate...but...reasons not to...

So, you pour a glass of wine or two for yourself whilst cleaning your room. It's Friday, after all, and shenanigans are in order. You deserve it and that's how you roll because you're a young vigorous beast. You're gonna clean that room cleaner than clean has ever felt before. Brace yourself, world.

As things progressively get more wild and crazy with you and your room, you're filling up that bag for goodwill like a boss and rocking out to Christmas music like a LEGEND, you suddenly realize that all of your belongings have either holes, wine stains, or both holes and wine stains.

This isn't surprising, really. If you are honest with yourself, you sensed the truth deep in the core of your being and felt it coming. Somehow, though, halfway through the second mason jar of wine and elbow deep in your t-shirt drawer, it becomes distressing. My god, everyone in the world must know you're covered in holes and wine stains all the time. Why haven't your friends told you before? Do they secretly laugh at your holes and wine stains after you leave parties? Yes, your work uniform is all black, but SURELY they can all see the wine stains. How can you face them again? THEY KNOW.

You must fix this. You can't remove the stains because that requires practical homemaking skills and some serious hand-eye coordination.

There is only one way out. You must shop. Yes, shop.

But you can't. It's too late for you even though there are technically 15 minutes of Black Friday left, because even the online Black Friday deals don't change the fact that you already spent your potential shopping money on wine. You already spent two hours online canceling an order because you couldn't afford it. You already spent your day not trampling people to death in BestBuy because, let's face it, you don't know how to use an iPad yet.

You need another glass of wine.

Wine...wine...there was something you had decided about wine...to finish the bottle tonight? Right?

#starvingartistblackfriday

Garden

my mom's sunflowers

 I am in northern California. My mom is recovering from a surgery, and we are using that as an excuse to essentially be on vacation together in her home, doing very little, sitting in the sun, escaping from reality for a while and creating an alternate universe of our own.

My mom is an awesome, lovely, sweet woman who is currently reading a book called, "Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can't Stop Talking." She is not quiet at home. I am a cranky New Yorker readjusting to clean air and kindness, reading a book by Goethe called "The Italian Journey," and find myself saying very little in this holiday world. My step-dad is jolly and hard of hearing, occasionally popping in to shout jokes at us before disappearing to read a book called, "Chasing the Wild Pendulum: a History of Consciousness." It's been in the 90s all week and there are about 30 hummingbirds fighting over 3 feeders hanging from nearby cedars and bays. And that I think sums us up admirably.

mom's butterfly

We've realized through talking this week that I've been in New York City longer than I've lived anywhere else, and I'm not sure what to feel about this accomplishment. My mom's current house was my pre-teen and teen haven, but I've slept in New York City longer than I dreamed in the corner room with the writing desk. My step-Dad has been driving my old Mazda protege longer than I ever did, and now it smells distinctly of dog and cigar. It's not my car at all any more, even though the Japanese prayer my brother brought back for me is still hanging from the rear-view mirror.

There's been a slight paradigm shift under my feet as I've sunbathed in the rocking chair, a gentle ah-ha, settling-in feeling; the comfort of being around family, looking out the window at a tree-covered mountain, having nothing on today's schedule. Obviously one can't be on vacation all the time, but I dare to hope that this feeling of support and peace can be cultivated everywhere I go. And I think I will go other places. Having hit a record in NYC, I feel a release to dream new dreams and learn new things. That city doesn't have to be my comfort zone, because that place is here in my mom's garden.

her other butterfly

She waters it every day, even if she needs a cane. She let me help her with it a couple of times, but frankly she doesn't like being helped. We talk about the amount of time and water it takes to keep her plants alive, and I confess that I would feel rather oppressed if I knew I had to come home to an hour-long watering chore every day. It's a big commitment, cultivation. Mom agrees that I lack the natural knack, but she insists that standing still with a hose in your hand is a kind of a meditation, a cycle of nourishing at a pace I have grown incapable of keeping. She feeds her plants and they feed her, there's a symbiotic understanding between them more subtle than shade or scent. Slowing down is tricky for me, but it really is all I want right now. So I take up the hose.

The squashes and the sunflowers are hard for me, nothing but leaves, but once I make it to the tomatoes and the hot sweet smell of them hits me, my imagination chimes in. The tomato plants transport me to Marlon Brando's death scene in the Godfather, where he's chasing his grandson, and the memory of sharing the film with my Dad. Their earthy, bright smell takes me back to another garden mom kept in another county, another life when I was half my size and surrounded by all the people I loved in the world (it was a smaller world then). The tomatoes we pick for our salad are small and still hot, and taste like the Amalfi coast in Italy, where my mom daringly took me to celebrate graduating from High School.

might just stay here...

I still don't think I am ready to knuckle down and devote myself to a garden as vast and lush as my mom's, but that is only because I haven't built up the patience or the land yet. I understand now how she can devote herself to it, how it gives itself back to her, how it becomes it's own world of memories and thoughts as well as living forms. There's a small succulent plant on my windowsill in Harlem that my roomie is keeping alive for me at this very moment. I explained to her that if I can keep this plant a live for a year, maybe then I can trust myself with pets, children. She pointed out that recovering addicts have the same process, which I think is hilarious. I am not a recovering addict, just a bit of a workaholic space cadet. Why is it so hard to keep other things alive? That succulent of mine may have company soon, because I really want to take my mom's garden with me when I go back. I want to spend time and energy in the garden, to tend and garner results. I want to slow down. I want to live at the pace of plants.

happiness

Well...at least, sometimes...

Momentum and Memorials

April showers bring May flowers, and the downpour can be my only excuse for neglecting this blog so long. April saw a boom of work for me both in and out of the entertainment industry, and on this rainy start of the Memorial Day Weekend Festivities, I am relishing the chance to slow down, hole up, catch my breath and gain some perspective for a minute.

me and my stunning prom date Larissa

April and early May saw one of my year-long goals accomplished, as I got to appear in a fantastic production of "12 Angry Jurors" with the AlphaNYC off-off broadway. My first episodic TV gig came through in the form of Mysteries at the Museum on the Travel Channel, and I had my first pilot reading with Brown Dog Productions. Whew! What an awesome month. I also got to attend the Private Theater's Prom, an epic fundraiser that knocked the socks off of all my previous prom experiences, even the year that I went with the Prom King. It's great to be busy in New York City.

In honor of our three-day weekend, our busy-ness, our heroes, our barbecues and our collective sigh of relief this weekend, I'd like to seize this moment to cherish the momentum that has picked up in my life and thank everything that came before that made it possible. Like our soldiers whose sacrifices have enabled us to live in freedom, our past experiences have created this moment for us to make the most of. Freedom isn't free, and opportunity is a responsibility. I certainly mean to make the most of my opportunities now, at this moment in my life, and not squander my freedom and youth. It is a great thing to be American, to be the recipient of all that came before - and it is also a job. I can't drop the ball now. The momentum has to keep flowing. I have to keep paying it forward. To remember and to honor and to move forward, creating - that is my Memorial Day Weekend plan and, if I can stick with it, my year plan.

Now off to movie nights, rooftop parties (if the rain stops), auditions, and frolicking in the Big Apple. And let's all remember to honor our men and women who didn't make it back to the land of opportunity.

Equilibria

ME! On set of Equilibria by Harley Brown's Cafe

This month I've been privileged and blessed to work with Harley Brown's Cafe on the new film Equilibria in which I play Marcus. Yes. MARCUS. As in, a male character name. As in, I had a beard and wig and a sock in my trousers most of the shoot. Am I transgender? An otherworldly deux ex machina? Triple agent? Who is the man behind the mask and who is pulling the strings - the mafia, the FBI, the church? You'll have to see the film to find out!

Director Norman Siopis, DP Shaun Jones and AD/renaissance woman Sara Gunderson

And let me tell you what, it's going to be a freaking beautiful movie. This cast/crew was a motley assortment of the most creative, loving, warm and fun people I have ever come across. Check out a sneak peak of the rich, gritty look of the film in these photos courtesy of Harley Brown's. It was one of the best weeks of my life - shooting a film all day every day with amazing people, accomplishing one of my life-long acting goals. Portraying a cross-dressed character has been a DREAM of mine since the first time I saw Shakespeare's Twelfth Night as a wee ten year old, and now I can say that I have done it. Check! So much to be thankful for! I am blown away.

FREEZING on set with director Norman Siopis, during his Hitchcock cameo

In the film my character Marcus is a force to be reckoned with, and there is a powerful theme of balance running through the story. Balance is something I have yet to master in real life. This Thanksgiving, I have a long weekend off from work - marking the first time I have a day off other than Superstorm Sandy since August. This week I am thankful of Equilibria's reminder of balance - of how important it is to find freedom in work, to prioritize artistic endeavors along with survival, to rest and eat and sleep as well as pound the pavement. Balance must be restored.

The universe has a way of self-correcting.

On set of Equilibria. The handsome gent with the beard is ME!!

In a season where I am extremely thankful for a moment's pause and reflection after working on a beautiful project with beautiful people,  I am also thankful for the world of entertainment and art that motivates me to keep pressing forward. I am thankful for the people I've been honored to work with along the way, and the new ones I have met this year. I am thankful for the jobs that allow me to stay in New York, and thankful for the reminder that these jobs are supporting a larger purpose. I am thankful to have a specific vision for the future, a clear desire and star to hitch my wagon to. I am thankful for the busyness before the pitch-perfect calm of balance. I am thankful for paying my dues and the perspective it's helping me to develop, even when I want to complain and stamp my feet like a tired toddler. I am thankful for the silly, tired mistakes I make that give me insight and help me learn my own limitations. I am thankful to know once and for all how important it is to find my equilibrium as an artist and a person, and I look forward to seeking that balance in every aspect of my life moving forward.

I love these people. Thanks Equilibria family!!

And you know what? I am looking forward to seeking balance, and to the balancing act itself. Because it is a blessing to be able to juggle along the tightrope. It's a blessing to be alive.

Happy Lent

“When you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show others they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that it will not be obvious to others that you are fasting, but only to your Father, who is unseen; and your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.  Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.  But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." - From The Book of Common Prayer, Ash Wednesday, 2012 (Matthew 6:16-21)
 

photo from blog "liturgical time"

Happy Lent everyone!  Last year, I gave up movies for Lent and was very cranky.  Hardest thing I've ever done, probably, and a HUGE lesson for me in the nature and purpose of fasting.  This year, I don't feel a particular pull towards any specific Lenten sacrifice.  Maybe hot air balloon rides?  Maybe group sex in public parks?...or inappropriate jokes?

Growing up, I spent most of my time attending "non-denominational" Christian churches with my mom and missed out on a lot of the the more ancient church-calendar practices of the Catholic and more traditional protestant churches.  As an adult, I've developed a sense of curiosity and respect for the mysticism and tradition of these practices and am still learning a lot about what's behind the thinking of something like Lent, for example.  Today I discovered Liturgical Time, a blog that tracks and illuminates the church calendar.  There's a great deal of peace and reassurance for me in following the footsteps of this cycle of meditation, grace, and mercy.  

There's something artistic and uncanny about Lent, and the church calendar, and indeed about church.  But Lent in particular, for me, is a creative act; a time of gestation and preparing the soul to be receptive.  For me, the season of Lent is a sense of smouldering embers, suppressed desire, boiling water stirred up and seasoned tightly under a lid (as my acting teacher might say), and of really facing truths that might be hard to look at.  

A friend of mine recently told me that one reason he no longer participates in the church is because of an involuntary epiphany he had one day.  Already an actor, he attended service and found himself looking at it from a professional theatrical point of view.  Like always, he saw priests and volunteers wearing costumes, standing on a stage, following a script, using music and cues, telling a story based on a book.  With a sudden, life-altering smack, he concluded that church is basically the same as the theater - all a big show.  He went on to conclude, differently than me, that it must be a fiction.  

I see his point, I really do.  There's an element of religion that's mass manipulation (pun intended), where church assumes the role of a big business playing and preying on peoples' senses of conscience and dignity, family and guilt to take advantage of them financially and, worse, spiritually.  I do see what my friend means about churches seeming an awful lot like theater - there's music and performance, the leaders use public speaking techniques to manipulate their audiences (sorry, I mean, congregations), and the entire teaching and message is part of a narrative/story that some argue is created, not divine.  I get it.  Sure.  A good church service - or any public event - will most likely follow Freytag's pyramid of dramatic structure, just like a good play or a good calendar year.  And I'm not going to say it's always a great thing that churches put on a show, but for me, in general, the theatrical elements of church can make it all the more beautiful. Indeed, I go to theater for much the same reason that I go to church - to experience the truth, to enter a no-bullshit zone where I can make some sense and possibly even some joy out of being human.  We can know God (I believe) as easily in a black-box or the subway as in a pew.

And if church is like theater, the church calendar spells out it's dramatic structure.  Lent is sort of the climax.  In Christian terms, it's the crucifixion - and now, everything is waiting for the denouement, the surprise reversal of Christ's resurrection.  But for now, the shit has hit the fan in Lent.  We have to deal with being human.  The beauty of believing in God is that our story doesn't end there.  Being human isn't limited by our humanness, but rather transcended and set free in infinity.  All of it is building, building, building....waiting, waiting, waiting...

"Remember you are dust and unto dust you shall return."  It's theater at it's best.  And then some.

Home

Treehuggers: me and my mom

"Love begins at home, and it is not how much we do... but how much love we put in that action." - Mother Teresa (from Brainy Quote)

As an actor and self professed gypsy, I have often made cavalier statements like: "I have no hometown," and "Home is wherever you hang your hat."  Whenever I say stuff like that, I obviously try to be standing mysteriously under a streetlight or smoking a cigarette or be backlit by the city skyline with sirens blaring eerily in the distance or something equally cinematic, epic, and devastatingly worldy.  Of course, I don't smoke, so I never look as noir in actuality as I do in my imagination.  And I am sure I never sound as cool when I say that stuff as I think I do.  Probably I just sound silly.  But I can dream.  I can pretend to be that hard-boiled femme fatale with no past and probably no future, with undisclosed secrets and seemingly invulnerable armor - a la Lauren Bacall.  I can tell everyone and myself that home is whatever I make it, but really, that's not entirely true.  All it takes is a Christmas back at my mom's house, and my tough outer shell crumbles like Santa's cookies in milk. 

As an actor, it's really most important for me to be honest with myself.  After 7-going-on-8 years in New York City, I finally am experiencing my first homesickness.  Took me long enough right?  I guess it's some consolation to me that this proves, once and for all, that I do actually have a heart.  Yes, I doubted it once.

Over Christmas, I was hit with powerful waves of sea-salt tinged nostalgia as I drove up the California coast north of San Francisco with my bestie from high school in a rented Fiat (!!) and caught up about our lives.  Over dinner with my mom, it hit me just how precious and rare our time together is.  In my teenage bedroom, whose walls have been re-plastered and painted past recognition, I fell asleep in luxurious 1,000 count cotton sheets with the recurring thought: "This is so great.  This is so wonderful.  I would love to live here again.  I want to stay home.  Life is so much easier and pleasanter and better here. How nuts do I have to be to leave all this behind for cockroaches, subways, and a rat to human ratio of 4:1?"

Like many actors (and, let's face it, most adults of any kind), the city I live and work in is far away from my family.  I see my crew usually once a year for the holidays, if I'm able to go back home - or if my mom is able to come visit me.  This year was special because due to my brother's wedding, my own reckless stubbornness in forcing vacation time into my schedule, and my mom's acquisition of a traveling buddy, I got to see everyone two or three times.  Maine, New York, Texas, Southern and Northern California - no point on the map was safe from my obsession with being physically present with my loved ones for a change.  I even made two trips to Texas to see my Dad.  Texas.  

Perhaps it's the extra face time that's got me all homesick and mushy and showed me the cracks in my femme fatale facade.  Honestly, those cracks were probably painfully visible to everyone else all along, but I liked to think I was cool and aloof and, you know, worldly.  Worldy above all things!  But it was really good to see everyone.  I mean really really good.  There's no one like family - good or bad, crazy dysfunctional or sweet and loving.  Being around them, whether for a quick weekend engagement party or a extended Christmas sit-in, gave me a much-needed reminder of who I am and what makes me strong.  And there's no place like home.  No friends like childhood friends.  Yada yada yada.  I've been thinking today that this longing I have for family, for home, for an identity that is interdependent with others who know me intimately and is based on where I come from, is a great reminder of what it's like to be a human sojourning in this world.  

This world doesn't really feel like home a lot of the time - I am sure that must be true for other people in fields other than acting, too.  The world can be competitive, cold, difficult, unfair, all those things.  It can be, well, worldly.  It can make one feel small and disposable and overwhelmed.  Yet, this world can also be beautiful and lovely, so much so that there are moments and experience that make me absolutely ache with their beauty.  But for some reason, it seems to me that the times I see this world at it's most lovely are the times I feel the most homesick for another world, a perfect world, a heaven.  Perhaps human nature is a little bit like the nature of pursuing an acting career: we are far from home, and we're sojourning in a harsh and often dark city - but who we are, and what makes us tick, is still secreted away in a place that's full of love.  

We have to find a way to keep in touch with it somehow, in the absence of home.  We have to take our home with us, and recognize that there's more to this world and to ourselves than meets the eye.

This evening I attended Trinity Grace Church in Chelsea with a friend, and the main thing that struck me in the talk was when the preacher said, "Once you find that focal point of love, the impossible becomes possible."  It almost seemed impossible, this Christmas, to come back to New York.  It was quite tempting follow the path of least resistance and stay somewhere warm, safe, comfortable, and loving. But hold on, I can't give up.  I can't.  I love this too much.  And love is a big aspect of what makes a home.  Love makes acting my home away from home.  What can seem impossible in my pursuit of acting will be made possible by my love for it, and the love I receive from the people in my life that make my life possible.  That is the home that I can take with me wherever I go.  Love is what makes home home.  If I can put my love of acting into each audition, every cold read, every mailing and rehearsal and performance, I will have really achieved something.  I will have achieved a homecoming.

Be Jolly

Today I wake up in south Texas, basically Mexico, to the sound of Fox News blaring on the other side of the wall my bedroom shares with my Dad's flatscreen TV.  It has been a whirlwind week of all-nighters, packing, working, and wrapping things up in New York in preparation for the holidays.  I've been to see three movies and multiple friends and survived a night of the worst bar pick-up lines ever ("Have you ever solved a Rubicks cube?").  I've worn 4-inch heels to LaGuardia airport at 3:30am to catch my flight.  I've lucked out and used my empty row on the airplane to stretch out horizontally for the entire trip.  And I've just started to relax.  Shuffling groggily into the living room, I have just enough time to put on the tea kettle and yawn at the Republican debate recap on the tube when my Dad says, "I thought this morning we could talk about what you can do to fix your auditions so that you start getting what you want out of them."

Ah, Dad.  No one else can quite pull off the confront-you-with-heavy-business-before-you've-even-brushed-your-teeth-in-the-morning conversations like you.  No one can reheat bean soup for breakfast with a shot of ketchup because George Burns said it's good like you.  No one can hone in on what I'm trying to avoid but shouldn't the way you do.  No one can actually comprehend and talk about show business without being in it like you.  I love you, Dad.

As they say in The Godfather, "This is the business we have chosen."  It's not that I want to un-choose my path in life.  It's that every year right around Christmas I like to slow down, step back, reassess, and rethink my business.  I like to step away for a week or two, drink a lot of eggnog, and watch westerns.  I like to pretend that there's no work to do or music to face.  I like to recap my year, pat myself on the back, and not think about it.  But my Dad never really lets me stop, and for that I am very grateful because, ultimately, I don't want to stop.  My Dad has a gift for helping me combine my rest and recuperation with reinforcement, whether I like it or not.  "What can you do to book your auditions?" he asks, relentless, over our breakfast of ketchup soup.  George Burns was right.  Reheated soup is great with a shot of ketchup.  Who knew?

There are several things we come up with.  Have vision and clarity.  Know who you are.  Do your own thing.  Have a point of view.  Do something dazzling.  Make a big choice.  Walk in the room with positive energy.  Be genuine.  But my favorite thing we come to is simple.  It's something my Dad has been telling me since day 1 of my life: "Just be Jeanne Joe."  And have fun!

The truth is in life, in art, in acting, in business, the most valuable resource a person has is their own self.  It's what makes great performers amazing: they are who they are, and they work from there, and no one else can do what they do.  This is so simple, and sometimes so hard to remember in the midst of trudging up the mountain of your goals.  It's so easy to get derailed, discouraged, diverted into thinking patterns or behaviors that diminish and dilute your chutzpah.  It's so easy for me to forget to enjoy myself as I go about this crazy adventure of being an actress.  But that's what matters most!  AND it's what will make it all work, in the end.  These two words are the key...  

enjoy yourself.

Last night we're watching The Aviator and Dad turns to me and says, "Do you think you can do what Cate Blanchett does?" It's funny that he picks her as the measure to hold myself up against, as she is one of my all-time acting heroes.  When she performed Streetcar Named Desire at BAM a couple years ago, I shelled out almost an entire week's income for tickets to the special benefit show with a cast/member mixer gala.  After trying on, tearing off, accessorizing, and re-imagining multiple outfits, I took a day off work and wore my Gucci shoes (yes, I have a pair of Gucci shoes, don't ask how I got them - no one was hurt and that's what's important).  At the gala over the intoxicating post-show buzz and live New Orleans jazz, my date Shirin Tinati dared me to go talk to Ms. Blanchett.  Yes, it's true, Cate Blanchett was only ten feet away from us surrounded by bodyguards and BAM big-wigs, glowing with a super-human radiance that defies description.  All I had to do was put one Gucci heel in front of the other, look her in the eye, and form words.

Ahh!  I couldn't do it!  That's how in love with her I am.  Even her skin seems more expressive than ordinary skin.  Do I think I can do what she does?  How could Dad know to ask me that?  It's a moment of truth.  It's a soul-searching look in the mirror of my mind.  I think for a minute and reply, "I don't know if I can do what she does, but I can do what I do."

Dad smacked his hands together.  "Great answer."

The best way to refresh and revitalize my career and my self over this break is to remember this simple truth: I can do what I do.  Enjoy.  Myself.  Be me.  Have fun.  This is the business I have chosen, and I am thankful for a full and fun year.  When the going gets tough, I am thankful I have my Dad and my own inner voice to remind me of the simple truths.  Why focus on what I haven't done yet?  I get to do plenty of cool things, like this video I'll post below by Kings in the Back Row.

So, gentle reader, I share all of this with you today because I was in need of a pep talk and perhaps this will encourage you as well.  Whether your dream is to act, write, work, parent, love, farm, or drive a truck, your greatest asset (and sometimes your only one) is yourself.   What can I do to book my auditions?  Be myself.  What can I do to achieve my goals?  Be myself.  What can I do to enjoy my life?  Be myself.  It's that simple.  Yay for Christmas!  Yay for Dads!  Yay for reminders of what I knew all along.  Yay for us, gentle reader, as we take the time this holiday season (and beyond) to enjoy ourselves.  Let's get out there and get jolly!


Departures - KBR LAB from Kings in the Back Row on Vimeo.

No Place Like New York for the Holidays!

It's been an incredibly amazing, busy season for me! Now follows the info-blast-overload that I have been neglecting for weeks.

This month I signed with new representation - Archer King Ltd., with what looks like the beginnings of a beautiful friendship - and was invited to my first appearance as a finalist at The Actors Studio (brushing up my French accent and getting lots of butterflies in my stomach).

On top of that, I did my first background work, kick-started a comedy group tentatively named "Blood Pasties", and continued developing "Desire In Motion" - an innovative new physical performance piece (www.desireinmotion.weebly.com). I also did my first sketch comedy with Spare Change Theater - whew! Loads of fun.

AND Dec. 3, Occam Repertory Theater's one-act equity showcase I am blessed to participate in is opening: the "Suburban Motel" series by George F. Walker. Would love to see your faces there! Details are listed in this article:

http://offbroadway.broadwayworld.com/article/Occam_Rep_Theater_Presents_Plays_from_George_F_Walkers_Suburban_Motel_12317_20101123

Meanwhile, "Love Me Tender" has continued to show internationally, climbing to 20 festival premieres and winning "Best Short Film" at Mile High Horror Film Festival in Denver, CO. I had the opportunity to attend the closing screening at FirstGlance Festival in Philadelphia along with Director Matthew Morgenthaler and costars Max Rueben and Ben Levin and we had a blast! Literally ate our way through Philly. At FirstGlance, "Love Me Tender" won the award for "Best Cinematography." I am so jazzed at how well this film is doing, it's truly a great piece of work and I am honored to be a part of it. Check it out at www.lovemetenderfilm.com

Back at the ranch, we had a fabulous Thanksgiving. I got to be the one who brings the wine - one of my favorite jobs - and the Christmas music has been playing non-stop ever since. Truly, so much to be thankful for as I am overwhelmed with amazing new projects, roles, friends, neighbors and coworkers. Not so starving for a starving artist. Right now all I can see is fullness.