what comes next.....

I wrote an upsetting and slightly hysterical post last week. Slightly removed from it, I am first of all mortified that I was so careless and let my shame spill out.  That I let people see, however clumsily and ineffectively,  how hard I struggle, most days, to just appear happy and stable. I am also deeply touched by some of the responses and grateful for all of the love that came my way.  I think, in re-reading it, that I made it all seem petty and silly and narrowed down to a lack of a partner or a secure job, to the same loneliness that bedevils most single women.  There is truth in those things.  I am lonely most of the time and my career is not anything like I dreamed it would be.  I haven't been on a date in years.  Literally years.  These very concrete holes in my life do exist, yet that is not the gnawing I feel ripping through my chest and into my fingers.  I feel myself spinning into a familiar yet uncontrollable place and it frightens me.  I don't know how or even if I have the will to fight my way back.  I don't know if all of the work on coping and the training that I have done over the last two, five, ten, the last twenty years is enough.  These are old battles, ones begun in the years before adolescence. I have once again made food an enemy.  I have an almost uncontrollable urge to rip off my skin.  I am exhausted during the day, yet can't sleep at night.  None of this stems from the day to day.  My daily life is, if I look at it objectively, better than it has been in a long time.  I had an amazing year in 2012 and have so many wonderful projects in the works for 2013 and beyond. Beyond that, I have gained knowledge and skill, especially over the last two years. I know how to move from this spiral of shame and hate.  I  know how. I wrote a post about a year ago to a friend's brother and said, life doesn't get better, you get better. You get stronger and smarter and you find what makes your heart sing.  I believed what I wrote then. I still want to believe what I wrote,  but there is this nagging voice. What if I was wrong?  What if I had it backwards? What if, even when life does gets better, I don't? I walk around with this false confidence that doesn't quite reach my eyes and an eternally broken heart which does.  I pretend that I am smart.  I pretend that I have healed, whatever the fuck that means.  I talk and talk and talk about eating disorders and cutting and depression and suicidal idealization, as though they are completely defanged; foes long dead and buried. I buy into the "act as if" school of thinking.  And I am lying. I know in my core that I am lying.  But, there is this; my core could be wrong.  I hang onto this one little thread of hope that says that core fear of not ever being okay is wrong and I will, once again, dig myself out of this spiral and get to a place where I can talk of wanting out as a long ago memory....of it being something I just felt once....as something from then and not from now.  I am just hanging onto that thin shiny strand and hoping, hoping that I am wrong.

I question the intelligence of writing this, in the throes of the spin. After this entry I won't continue to post about it.  Although there is a value in writing for an unseen audience, of attempting to clarify your thoughts enough for others to understand, possibly empathize a bit, and maybe, just maybe see themselves in your struggle, at this point I feel that this discussion needs to once again become private. It probably should never have left that realm. It is hard to put on your public mask when you know people are reading about your private shame and I need to be able to wear that mask, to smile and say I'm fine and have it end there.  So for now, I'm fine.  Thanks for asking.  We'll talk soon.  Love, Nancy

And here we are again.....

Night:
For a person with as many friends as my Facebook page or my phone tells me I have, I am shockingly alone when it gets dark.  This statement is not meant to denigrate my friends. My solitude is not their fault.  I create it myself.  I carry it almost as a badge of pride, yet I can, tonight when the future seems so unbearable, admit that it is killing me. When  I am alone  at night and the world closes in and I am literally unable to breathe, I do not have someone to hold on to. I am so so so so afraid of being held, yet in these moments I look that fear in the face and know that of which I am most afraid is the only thing that is going to save me.  This sounds ridiculously melodramatic, but isn't all psychic pain ridiculously melodramatic and incomprehensible to anyone not in the throes of it?  I have, on some level, admitted it and have even been taking action in my own messed up way;  by trying to fill that relationship place with spiritual or career guides, with mentors, with people who I think will be there because I pay them to be.  This is, once again, proving to be an absolutely terrible system.

I need to be held.  I need to mirror my self worth in someone's eyes, and not in a someone who is paid to mirror it back. I've been pretending to be done with therapy, while simply making someone who is trying to do a different job fill that space.  It has now blown up in my face.  I can so easily use this to fall back into a place where I am struggling to live.  I can feel that pull.  I want to end things tonight.  I am acutely suicidal and if I weren't so damn worried about everyone else and the unintended but absolutely predictable pain that (even) my suicide would cause, I would do it.  I'm exhausted by the fight.  I literally cannot see to tomorrow.  Which proves to me once again what an ungrateful and pathetic person I am.  Because this pitiful and self centered way of dealing is contrasted by what others are fighting.   A friend, who I care for deeply but with whom I have not been in touch, other than the occasional like or comment on Facebook, passed away suddenly, at least it was sudden to his friends.  He had kept his illness quiet. It is heartbreaking and I am heartbroken--for his loss and for the loss of his future.  He leaves a college age daughter and so many friends and colleagues dumbstruck.  He was still young enough for this unexpected death to be tragic. On a personal level, he was one of the first people to reach out to me in LA and to value me as an artist.  I will always hold him in my heart.  Yet, and I am not proud-- indeed I am disgusted to admit this--deep inside, where I am filled with shame and self hatred,  I am jealous.  Again jealous of someone who got out early.  That is reprehensible. I don't have an explanation. It's been a rough start to the new year. My commercial agent dropped me, and in trying to do so in a way that was kind, basically said that I am untouchable as an actress.  A job I was counting on to help get me out of debt is ending.  I don't have a theater gig.  My production company feels like a pipe dream.  These things are unrelated, and in no way on equal footing, yet my broken spirit feels them the same.  People die, people abandon you (even though I have learned through many years of therapy that you cannot be abandoned as an adult), careers don't happen, relationships evolve/dissipate/fall apart.  Failure exists over and over.  I know this. I know it as a successful person who has fought over and over again through depression and anorexia and cutting and has also experienced moments where I've been overcome with happiness and love and the joy of sharing the experience of life.  So where does that leave me tonight?  Alanis Morissette manages to make music out of these feelings.  I know that is what I should do....make art, elevate it to something worthy, but all I can feel right now is a primal urge for self destruction....

Morning:
After writing this, and a few restless hours of sleep, I'm actually at a new day. Choked down  2 pieces of toast and a cup of  coffee.  I am embarrassed to read the words above. There is nothing more self centered than someone circling their own emotional shit. Yet, I don't think I am able to retract it. I still feel the truth, no matter how sadly distorted to my own reality, in those words.  I wish I could say that I awoke to a new day where the sun is shining (it is in actuality raining) and I feel inspired to tackle the world in new ways.  I don't. I feel hungover, though I did not drink last night.  I feel completely defeated.  I want to crawl back into bed, though I awoke well before my 6:30am alarm. Instead, I will go out into the world.  I will go teach my classes and praise my students, and admonish them to always give me 100% of their energy, to breathe, to love what they are doing.  I will meet with my business partners and believe in my projects.  I will read a script and prepare for an audition. I hope that by engaging my students and friends in my battered dreams, a little inspiration will come back to me and I will once again climb out of this spiral of self loathing.   I'll go hug some puppies on my break and listen to music and maybe go into an empty studio and dance or sing.  Somehow I'll fight my way back. I always do. I will just keep telling myself that I always do.

Accomplishments

I am not one to sit down and assess what I've accomplished in a set amount of time. I go directly to ALL THAT NEEDS TO BE DONE right away.  While there is a certain amount of motivation in such an approach, there is also a lack of pretty much everything else.  How can you find satisfaction or success in your work, or really in your life,  when you never stop to actually see what it is that you have finished and how that finished project makes you feel?  So, in the spirit of a new year, and a new approach, I am going to list my accomplishments from 2012.  Because I have not had a complete mind/body transplant, I will also make a list of things I hope to accomplish is 2013 and beyond.

1. I directed my first full production, War Bride at SkyPilot Theatre. Not only did I survive, it was a commercial and critical success, garnering killer reviews and forming the basis for .....
2. The founding of my new production company, Weyward Sisters Productions, with my co-creators and dear friends from War Bride, Samantha Macher and Heidi-Marie Hostetler.
3. LOTS of choreography in almost every medium:
On stage: Working for the Production Company at The Lex Theater and The Snow Queen for Blame the Clown Productions at The Fremont Centre Stage
On the Web: Squad 85 Web Series
On Film: Surrender To The Mystery, produced by Weyward Sisters Productions.
4. Work as a performer on camera: Not as much as I would have liked, but a few cool projects: the web series hIMPERFECT, City Bus; a short for James Franco's film project at UCLA, as a dancer in my own film Surrender to the Mystery and in a wonderful anti-violence music video for UNICEF.
5. I had my first starring role on stage, in Richard Raskind's The Bridge Club at Deaf/West Theater and garnered some amazing reviews.
6. I grew as a teacher and have a wonderful group of students who are both serious and passionate about dance.
7. Outside validation: all of my work this year received wonderful reviews and even some awards.
8. I did my first Serial Killers at Sacred Fools and will be forever known there as the singing mouse. This is both immensely gratifying and slightly distressing.
9. I grew my outside businesses, jewelry design and styling, back up in a way that feels supportive of rather than destructive to my ultimate goals of creating and performing.  I feel inspired by both of these parts of my creativity once again. 
10.  I stepped out of my comfort zone and contacted complete strangers in my field who I admire and want to work with.  Two have become trusted mentors and even more importantly, friends.
11. I stuck with my personal work with Marcela, even when it has been hard and ugly and combative. I am making progress. There is so much to do, but I am putting this under accomplishment. I am a much stronger person than I was even one year ago.
12. I am on the road to some sort of financial stability. Like the above statement, there is much to do, but I am once again putting it under accomplishment. I am not there yet, but I am gaining ground and have a clearer understanding of what action needs to be taken.

On the books for the coming year:
1. More performing. Period. On the AEA stage. On film. On the small screen. On the web. And please, just one commercial would be really freaking awesome.
2. Health insurance.  Preferably through one of my performing unions.  See above.
3. I would like to direct and choreograph a fully produced musical.  I would like to direct more in general, but this is my specific goal.
4. Successful completion of the Weyward Sisters Agenda:
   -Nevada Line  (music video: as singer, choreographer, producer)
   -St. Mary's School For Girls (short film: director and producer)
   -The Matador (stage production of our future feature: Actor/dancer, co-choreographer, producer)
5. On a personal level: I am opening myself up to the possibility that I may not be completely dead inside and that a romantic relationship may be a lovely and enriching experience. Just open to the possibility.
6. I am growing my hair out.  I need to stick with it, through the ugly phase. This seems important, though I am pretty sure that it is not.
7. Increased political action.  On gun control, gay rights, education and arts accessibility.
8. To not take myself so freaking seriously all of the time.

Happy Holidays.  I wish everyone a wonderful and peaceful 2013.

I am stuck. I feel jealous and petty and ungrateful and small.  I see the success of others and rather than send love and admiration, I am seeing green.  It's making me angry. Angry at everyone.  Angry mostly at myself. I am too old to be jealous.  I am tired, as a clear eyed person observed recently (which also made me angry) of being stuck in misery.  I know that the anger is sourced somewhere.  It doesn't create itself.  It is created from disappointment, from inertia, from the feeling--however unjustified--of powerlessness.  And that is where it can turn. Because I am not powerless.  I am strong.  I am not young, but I am certainly not old  So, that green monster can become energy and I can put that energy towards what I want.  Just put all of that fucking energy into the WANT. And there I stop dead in my tracks.  Because in the middle of the night, when all of the demands and pressures of the day are distant and I ask myself what that deep desire that eats me up inside is, I come up empty. I have no idea. I see a black starless sky and it holds no answers.  I know what society says I want.  I know what my actions say I want.  I know what I am ostensibly working towards and that I should build upon the considerable success of the recent past.  I SHOULD want that but, what is it?  What is the actual thing or state of being or space that I yearn for....I cannot identify it. It remains this aching void that I keep trying to fill; with work, with movement, with the occasional purchase of a blouse or scarf or a fierce vegan leather jacket (an oxymoron if ever there was.....). And that makes me mad.  That constant attempt to fill enrages me. A circular rage that returns, because I don't deserve to be angry.  There is nothing to be angry at or about, which is infuriating.  The truth is that much of the time I do feel inspired in the moment of creation or while teaching or running or certainly while dancing. When I let that inspiration in, it feels great. It's later that there is that gnawing ache and vague sense that it is all worthless or hopeless and that sensation that pricks at my heart is accompanied by a whispering voice that says that I'm failing. That whatever it is that I am reaching for, it won't work. That no matter how fast I run, dance, teach, create....it will not be enough. That cannot be true. I must want something real.  There must be something or someone or someplace that I will get or meet or be and that THING will touch something deep inside my being and say yes.  Yes, this is it. That tiny whispering, taunting, insufferable voice cannot be the last word.  I am too angry for that.  I am determined to slow down and prove that fucker wrong.

This is not a flattering self portrait.  I understand that.  In rereading it I see pettiness and dissatisfaction, qualities that I might judge if I saw them in someone else, and certainly judge in seeing them here.  There is an honesty though in saying I don't know; I don't know what I want or who I am, but this, this person who runs so fast during the day and is sad and alone at night, this is not my core and I will change that. If anger is the source of that change, so be it.

My dear friend Jamie wrote a similarly themed, but much more eloquent piece on this subject which was published on one of my favorite blogs.  You can read it here: Like Mad

War Bride Director's Note...

 

Xenophobia: noun

an unreasonable fear or hatred of foreigners or strangers or of that which is foreign or strange.

I remember asking my mother the meaning of the word when I was maybe 8 or 9 years old. I found the definition shocking.  Why would you despise people just because they come from a different place or have a different skin color?  I grew up in an extremely integrated community and had friends of every race and color growing up. My parents were part of a group that hosted international visitors and we often had foreign guests in our home.  I didn't realize until I moved away how unique an upbringing that was.

War Bride takes place in Merced, California in the fall of 1945; right after the War in the Pacific has ended. People are still scared and unsure about what happens next.  Japanese American citizens remain interned at Manzanar and at other camps throughout the Western United States (The last camp did not close until March of 1946).  Our title character walks into a world in which she is automatically feared and hated. Japanese books, literature; really any study of the culture at all are considered contraband and the possession of such things can result in incarceration or worse.  She also has a secret and needs an ally. The journey that she needs to travel, both physically and metaphorically, is tremendous.  The journey that Catherine makes in trying to understand her is no less arduous. 

I was drawn to this project on numerous levels.  First and foremost is the story, which I shall not spoil for you by sharing, but I will tell you that it is original and told in a unique voice, something that is sadly lacking in theater today. Women are also missing in much of American Theater. We are a small minority of the directors, playwrights, choreographers, producers, and yes, of the actors on stage.  Any project that brings us together and focuses on the female experience is one that I am very interested in being a part of! 

Finally, the Asian American story is one that needs to be told. The Japanese experience, especially during and immediately after World War Two is an enormous facet of it.  Approximately 46, 000 Japanese war brides came to the United States following the War in The Pacific. Our treatment of Japanese American citizens during the war is one of the darkest hours of our recent collective history, yet is repeated, in different degrees, whenever we as a nation feel threatened. I feel that whenever we can examine ourselves, as a people, through art, we have the opportunity to evolve.  Authenticity is an enormous element of this and I am proud of the fact we have roles for Asian actors that we have cast with Asian actors. I fully support color-blind casting when race is not central to the story. When it is, I think that every effort should be made to find actors of the representative group and am so thrilled with our group of Asian and specifically Japanese actors. 

This play has been a wonderful collaborative experience and I am so thrilled to have been a part of it. I am especially grateful to Samantha Macher for writing it and to Heidi Hostetler for being my right hand.  

To buy tickets, click here.

 

Butoh

While doing the research for War Bride, I read quite a large number of articles and watched numerous videos on both the history of Butoh dance and the current practice of it.

Butoh emerged in Japan during the late 1950s and early 1960s as an alternative dance and culture movement. Though it drew upon the traditional Japanese and Western dance, especially the mincing movement that is required when walking in a kimono, that existed at the time, it was in essence a rebellion against it. 

In Butoh, the body speaks for itself, though unconscious and improvised movement. This primal movement is combined with other dance, martial arts, and theater movement into an art form that seems almost other worldly.  The two videos below both blew me away.  The first is an Israeli dancer who is also an astonishing painter.  The second is a hip-hop dancer who was inspired by the Butoh and took it yet another direction.  I hope you enjoy them both.

War Bride: The Trailer!

 

Written by Samantha Macher, Directed by me, Shot and Edited by Heidi Marie, Starring Sachiyo K

I am so excited to present the trailer for our play, War Bride. The process of creating this was a blast. My first idea was way too huge, and Heidi laughed and was like, no. We then whittled it down to the essence of the play and what we wanted people to know; what would entice them to come.  I am hooked on this form of story telling. To be able to take the most basic props and turn them into something beautiful, well, that is awesome. I also really enjoyed working with these women and it made me even more excited to jump into rehearsals, which we did the following day.  The play is huge; there are so many elements, the scale of the story is grand and the history behind it immense. Shooting this trailer reminded me what I need to remember as a director.  Whittle each scene to it's essence. Tell this story simply and make it beautiful. Therein lies success. The joy of collaboration that accompanies the process is the gift that makes this crazy artistic existence worthwhile.