Filed under: carter-thor, rando, toronto | Tags: bicycle, dreams, eve, film buff, food!, gaga, garbo, hepburn, quessica, slacker, stars, tenenbaum, vulnerability
The worst part of my day is usually biking home after going to the gym. The gym is located in the basement of a huge building, filled with many restaurants, bakeries, and a whole food court. How is that fair, life? How? Why did you put the gym under the movie theatre that always smells like delicious popcorn?
Plus on my route home I have to bike past that new poutine restaurant.
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Dear boys that work at Film Buff,
You are so, so cute. And always able to make me chuckle, giggle, blush, or smirk. But why were you so mean to me last time I was in? Were you weirded out by my yoga pants, bike helmet, and the fact I rented ‘Diner‘? I can’t always be wearing nice dresses and renting Katherine Hepburn movies. Katherine Hepburn is way more intimidating then Kevin Bacon, by the way!!
Were you upset because when you pointed and said the movie I was looking for was by Clint Eastwood’s face, I didn’t know which row to look? Did you assume I don’t know who Eastwood is and then decide to judge me?
You are crazy, attractive FilmBuff boys! Perhaps you were disappointed because my cute step-sister wasn’t with me this time? I don’t know what it was, but you were inexplicably short with me, and I didn’t appreciate your tone. It made you not so high on the hot-schedule.
Please go back to being charming and helpful next time I come in. Which may be soon – I need a Garbo fix.
Yours,
Meghan.
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A few Thursdays ago, I was cycling home from class, over the DVP bridge, when a fellow biker pulled up beside me to say, “You’re an amazing biker! You own that road bike! I was behind you thinking wow, she’s really fast and she’s wearing jeans and hilarious 80’s flats but you seriously own it!”
I told him it was my first road bike and he said “Well, you really know how to ride. You have amazing leg speed!”
Thank you kind sir.
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Dream analysis tells me my dreams have been saying this:
“You’re feeling exposed, or forced into a vulnerable situation in real life somehow…someone is crossing your boundaries, taking advantage of you, or “intruding” on your life somehow in real life.”
I’ve had dreams that represent “the health and well-being of [my] mind, body, or spirit—especially through cleansing and releasing of the old, decaying, or toxic elements in your life” but that the “cleansing and releasing outdated or toxic thoughts, emotions, beliefs, judgments, or physical toxins or decay” needs more attention. I am also apparently “thinking about a frank, straightforward interaction with someone in [my] life.”
This was all from the Curious Dreamer, which reminded me “the subconscious mind may not see much difference between a seeing a person in the media and talking to them in person.”
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NEW LIFE GOAL: become the Lady GaGa of Canadian Theatre.
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I like this:
most tweeted words
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My scene for this Thursday’s class is from The Royal Tenenbaums. Parfait. I’m Margot Tenenbaum. The adopted daughter/playwrite. OOOHHH WAAAIT A MINUTE.
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I want this song to be a tattoo on my body.
(blue, songs are like tattoos?)
Filed under: halifax, toronto | Tags: artists, beginnings, femfest, halifax, luna/sea, magnetic north, mauralealee, mirv, vulnerability, win, winnipeg, work
This afternoon I had a very unique and interesting experience. I sat in on a forum discussion/focus group between what I believe to be many prominent Winnipeg theatre artists and Ken Cameron of the Magnetic North Theatre Festival. It opened up my eyes to how similar Winnipeggers and Haligonian writers, directors, creators, feel. We’re from small cities that DO produce great work, yet are clearly underrepresented when our country’s theatre world is being defined. The sense I gathered was, artists feel isolated and unappreciated by larger cities. Example: If something amazing happens in Toronto, everyone knows about it. But what about exciting things like FemFest (did you know women can write plays, too??) which is all Female, Canadian work (not just Peggers) or Luna/Sea’s BRILLIANT “To Capture Light” in May 2008? Ask someone in Toronto about THOSE!
I’m not meaning to point fingers at the Tdot because I live there now and I thoroughly enjoy heading out to shows and festivals there. It is an inspiring and exciting city. I am pointing all of my fingers at all of us, I guess? I had no idea the theatre community in the Prairies so closely resembled the one by the ocean’s shore…because I have never been here obviously and have never met anyone from here in Halifax, or Toronto. (Save Hope, AD of Sarasvati Productions, who pretty much rocks my world for giving me the yes my show needed and bringing me here and putting on a kick-ass festival…OH and Lee and Mauralea who taught me in Halifax, but by the time they taught me they had been away from Winnipeg for many years and living in NS.)
Blather, I am rambling. YES we all need to embrace our individual cities, cultures, provinces, etcetera. But my GOD it is just THEATRE can’t we all get along, and be friends?? Our challenge now is finding a way to perhaps tour more shows, or generate audiences from across the country, bringing people to where they would love to be, …or maybe more time can be spent workshopping and delving into pieces, brightening them up, polishing them off and getting scripts mounted across the country…
‘Hey Ottawa, check out this cool show out of Sackville, NB! Hey Calgary, check out this amazing Toronto improv group! Whaddup Winnipeg, here’s a pretty rad show from Halifax. Oh hey, St. John’s, have this new-age technical experiment piece from Vancouver.” ETCETERA ETCETERA.
How, how, how can we stop pitting cities against each other, and instead transfuse theatre from one place to the next? To CONNECT our whole COUNTRY, to stop feeling immobile, or like we all have to be in Toronto, or shunning out other cities or isolating ourselves to one spot like an angsty teenager who locks themselves in their room? IT’S ART, IT’S THERE TO MAKE LIFE LESS BLAND AND DULL AND HORRIFYING. Do we not create theatre to connect, to escape, to reflect, to FEEL LESS ALONE? I felt today that the artists in Manitoba want to share their work with other people (not just other artists) the same way the people of Nova Scotia do, the way many small-but-mighty groups probably feel. And shouldn’t we be open and welcoming to the things that come from far away?
Dear everyone in Canadian Theatre,
treat others the way you would like to be treated.
Dear Winnipeg,
you guys rock my world.
Dear anyone who read this,
I realize it’s just a lot of questions and pretty non-sensical. I’m running on tofu and peanut butter m&ms and so not enough sleep.
Filed under: video | Tags: adventure, artists, family, femfest, honey&jupiter, me, video, vulnerability, wi, winnipeg, work
THEY. NAILED. IT.
Kerri-lee Smith, who directed? Mother Effing Genius. GENIUS.
JUPITER – Hailley Rhoda, you are wonderful, you were divine. this girl is BRAVE beyond words. she rocks!!
AUTHORITY, Erin Hammond…still thinking about her in the ‘circus’ scene. Blew my mind. And she captured the last scene between mom&Jupiter so well…gorgeous.
HONEY, Amy Groening, is a fucking STAR. I want her in everything I write. She is SOOOOO BEAUTIFUL. & an INCREDIBLE dancer. She’s brilliant!
Ahhhh. Tonight I am going with my notebook and really listening to the words. It’s a work night for me, but that’s ok. It’s important work, work I am passionate about. This feels really, really right.
Filed under: video | Tags: adventure, artists, beginnings, femfest, food!, honey&jupiter, video, vulnerability, work
So I just woke up to day 2 and it is freeeezing and “the sky is as white as a clean piece of paper.” I am in major search of breakfast, and things to do in this city…I am so scared to wander around because I think the ‘bad’ part of town is nearby but I don’t know which way it would be. Blerg. In any case I have time to kill before 7pm when I see a workshop presentation at the fest called Quite An Undertaking by Veralyn Warkentin.
Then at 8:30?HONEY AND JUPITER
Filed under: halifax, neptune, toronto | Tags: adventure, alice in wonderland, artists, brunch, dancing, family, femfest, honey&jupiter, hugs, joni m, kaypee, kelin, metric, neptune, shakespeare, sinclair, tea, vulnerability, winnipeg, work
life has been bundles of confusion, energy, mud, airplanes, pot, shakespeare, ginger ale and madness. there are not enough bicycle rides or journal entries or dance classes (yet!), but there are a lot of people to see and a lot of things to talk about.
biggest and best would probably be; Honey&Jupiter , my first play that I directed at the Atlantic Fringe Festival last year, is going to be preformed in Winnipeg this fall at FEMFEST. I am elated…first professional production at a festival run by the President of the Playwright’s Guild of Canada! I get to work on the script with a dramaturg and everything…so, so excited…and scared…and excited…
I am now home in HALIWOOOOD teaching me some Shakespeare. The students are two 15 year olds and four 14 year olds, all girls. They are all on very different maturity levels and theatre levels but they are all keen and hungry to learn, they make me well up with happy tears on an hourly (yep, hourly) basis.
I saw my favorite band live for free yesterday. METRIIIIIIIC. Yeah they are my favorite. I have been an anxious crazy the last week or so (lack of working out makes me want to cry all the time. No, but really…) and i feel like listening to Metric is one of the only things I can do to manage the blues. I love them bigger and badder than anyone else who loves them…yep, I went there. Unfortunatly me and Mic made some unwise choices we feel we’ll laugh about in 20 years before Metric played, so I spent the first half of their set paranoid, lost in the crowd, and with a ghost-white face&blue lip combination. But by the time Sinclair found me and we rocked our faces off together, I was rejuvenated by the magic that is besteverbandever.
tell me you aren't blown away by how fucking brilliant they are
Today I had brunch with Kim, who gave me a very Alice dress. This was perfect as I then went to dirty Dtown for a tea party at Kelin’s. Kelin is like every Joni Mitchell song blossomed into a beautiful blonde artist in a white dress and pearls, who gives the best hugs and makes the best cookies. Like that. I needed to see both of these ladies really bad, so it worked out well.
ANYWAY. I wrote a poem tonight called EDGE and it is going to speak for me now. Read and enjoy.
On the verge of on the verge of
Somethings on the verge;
Pain.
Words fester…
Silence,
Blank pages disguise pain,
It’s white noise.
On the verge of
Screaming tears.
I wish with all my made-up might
To uncloak the sorrow
Dig my nails in scratch off the mask
Uncover the words
Unbury the words
Scratching the surface
Where I sit so square
Play so safe it hurts.
Keep so quiet I choke.
Sit so still I ache.
Unable to
Get off the verge and
Dive in
Crash
Rinse refresh
Instead I let my mind rot
Words fester; Tangled language.
A rat’s nest sits where my heart used to wheeze.
i was just walking along queen east, in the rain rain rain, between church & sherbourne. 10 pm. i am emotionally sore, void and utterly gutted from my scene today in class. (from ‘good will hunting’…) feeling exposed, vulnerable, tired.
walking along with the wind blowing down my neck and my umbrella shaking, when i notice:
worms.
lots and lots of little worms.
and big ones.
round, long worms and they are MOVING.
i watch one of them slither and suckle itself down a grate.
i am ughing, i am oohing, i am trying to avoid them and then
i am crying!!
i am so grossed out, so wiped out, utterly utterly…
um, crazy? perhaps?
i feel like the worms are slithering into my rain boots.
i remember jock tickling my foot today at the beginning of our scene just because he’s a silly guy and i was barefoot.
i remember kit shoving the side-table to the floor today in the midst of our scene and my glass of water shattering…imagining shards of glass bouncing into my socks.
i cross the street at sherbourne, to the south side of queen.
the space between my shoulder blades, the space between my spine and chest…
is so sore.
i am so weary.
it is so wet.
You'll Never See My Eyes 