Filed under: carter-thor, halifax, sbux, toronto, video | Tags: a beautiful mind, adventure, artists, beginnings, bianca, dogfight, dvd, elle smith, fiona reid, food!, frederic, gigi, good will hunting, i claudia, impromptu, insomnia, james, joanna newsom, judith thompson, kaypee, me, paper journal, party, puke, ra-kell, skye, soy bacon, sylvia plath, tarragon, tennessee williams, video, wine, work, zuppa
Here’s a looksie back on the first 25% of the year that is passing by oh-so-quickly.
2009
January
Well the New Year started in a snow-storm, and included ‘House’ and chickpea casserole and cuddling with Gina and Lesley. Shabby? Not at all.
LEARNED: All about being a gym-rat. I hired a personal trainer. Like, for actual. My quest to not being so scrawny began last year.
DISCOVERED: ‘Bringing Up Baby’…Joan Baez…ok I’m a few decades behind here. And I was taken to the magnifique Comedy Bar.
SCENE STUDY: 2-part series of ‘DOGFIGHT’…I got to cuss a lot in the first one. And make-out a lot in the second, which also marked my first ‘good-bye’ scene.
SAW: ‘East of Berlin’ at the Tarragon Theatre. Droool.
FACEBOOK STATUS OF NOTE:
-meghan’s favorite customers are the charming gentlemen who pay for the newspaper and then let meghan keep them. the papers, she means.
-meghan accidentally ate the sticker off of a kiwi. twice.
-meghan is going into cardiac arrest because she just fucking talked to JUDITH THOMPSON omgomgomgomg what the what?!?!?!?!!??!?!?! FANGIRL OMG.
NEW YEAR’S EVE!
FEBRUARY
LEARNED: about my bio-siblings! Well, MORE about them.
DISLIKED: North York Hospital.
DISCOVERED: Just how difficult class was going to be on my heart.
ADVENTURED: To UTM where I was puked on by my dear Alison. No one had ever puked on me before nor have I been puked on since!
SCENE STUDY: A BEAUTIFUL MIND.
Also…’50 First Dates’…my second good-bye scene. There is about to be a trend in class of me crying and kissing.
FACEBOOK STATUS OF NOTE:
-meghan is stock-piling for her life!
-meghan is dick van dyke’s valentine
-meghan read once that craving spicy foods is a sign you are emotionally empty and need the spice to fill up. meghan eats a lot of curry after acting class
siiiiiigh
MARCH
“don’t go fighting against the spring”
LEARNED/DISCOVERED: The difference between ‘theatrical’ and ‘dramatic.’ And ‘art’ and ‘entertainment.’ Or how I personally would express this. Now when I go to see plays I think about the theatrical aspects, sets costumes lights physicality…and dramatic, the innate mythic (hopefully) STORY. Story story story. And ART, an expression of feeling, taking us to places and emotions we have been and felt before, and entertainment, which in contrast is an escape from reality. Escaping versus facing.
SAW: ‘Ubuntu’ at the Tarragon…which is what got the conversation of theatre vs. drama going in the first place. ‘Poor Boy’ aka Zuppa Theatre came to Toronto and brightened my life.
ALSO Rebecca Higgs at the Horse Shoe…epic frigging fantastic amazing.
DISLIKED: Epic nights of insomnia. TORONTO. I got reeeaaall mad with the city. And real home-sick.
ADVENTURED: To ImpromTuesday, a drop in class at the Second City. Kayla Lorette was teaching, fucking rad. It was my first time doing any sort of improv in a long time. I liked.
SCENE STUDY: 2nd pass of ’50 First Dates’…first work of ‘AMERICAN BEAUTY’…finally, a FUN scene and I don’t have to kiss anyone! Plus this lead to the friendship of Bianca and I. Rad.
FACEBOOK STATUS OF NOTE:
-meghan is trying to figure out what pair of underpants to wear in front of her scene study class today
-meghan – oh soy bacon, you are my only friend
-meghan is wishing for the dick van dyke to her mary tyler moore
here’s something that happened in march!
APRIL
SAW: Fiona Reid improvise a Tennessee Williams play with 2/3 of The National Theatre of the World. Pardon me? Your life sucks and my life is amazing? Yes. That’s what I thought you were saying. Oh, Fiona Reid, no one can compare to your Martha in ‘Who’s Afraid’.
SAW: UM OH I ONLY JUST SAW KRISTEN THOMSON PREFORM ‘I, CLAUDIA’…fucking…unreal…
ADVENTURED: To ImpromTuesday once more. This time we did long-form. Matt Baram sort of kicked our asses. I improvised giving birth to Frederic’s still-born baby.
APRIL was also the month in which Amanda, Skye and I sat in Fran’s for 10 hours.
DISCOVERED: SYLVIA PLATH POETRY. I had read a few before but in April I bought her complete poems…Life hasn’t been the same since.
LIKED: Kim visiting me!!! There was never more wine drank in my apartment than that glorious 4 days. Best night of all: Frederic and Raquel coming over while she was there. Good good night. ALSO LESLEY CAME TO VISIT…so many shades of necessary! (Necessary?!)
SCENE STUDY: First work of “White Oleander”…and then my partner left class. I’d love to do that scene again…OH! YEAH! Then I did “Hard Candy” which was my first POWER SCENE. Oh…and the GOOD-BYE SCENE FROM HELL…”Good Will Hunting.” The flightiest fight for my life. When I think back on that scene I just see Kit’s arms, his back, his angry angry eye…glass shattering, a shoe flying, and then I stop remembering and feel like weeping all over again.
FACEBOOK STATUS OF NOTE:
-meghan – torturing pedophile, brb
-meghan gets weepy about a club foot, laughs into her wine glass thus the wine explodes into her eyes, then gets on the street car really late
-meghan is the only person who could show up at the gym having forgotten her socks.
The Stones
By Sylvia Plath
This is the city where men are mended.
I lie on a great anvil.
The flat blue sky-circle
Flew off like the hat of a doll
When I fell out of the light. I entered
The stomach of indifference, the wordless cupboard.
The mother of pestles diminished me.
I became a still pebble.
The stones of the belly were peaceable,
The head-stone quiet, jostled by nothing.
Only the mouth-hole piped out,
Importunate cricket
In a quarry of silences.
The people of the city heard it.
They hunted the stones, taciturn and separate,
The mouth-hole crying their locations.
Drunk as a foetus
I suck at the paps of darkness.
The food tubes embrace me. Sponges kiss my lichens away.
The jewelmaster drives his chisel to pry
Open one stone eye.
This is the after-hell: I see the light.
A wind unstoppers the chamber
Of the ear, old worrier.
Water mollifies the flint lip,
And daylight lays its sameness on the wall.
The grafters are cheerful,
Heating the pincers, hoisting the delicate hammers.
A current agitates the wires
Volt upon volt. Catgut stitches my fissures.
A workman walks by carrying a pink torso.
The storerooms are full of hearts.
This is the city of spare parts.
My swaddled legs and arms smell sweet as rubber.
Here they can doctor heads, or any limb.
On Fridays the little children come
To trade their hooks for hands.
Dead men leave eyes for others.
Love is the uniform of my bald nurse.
Love is the bone and sinew of my curse.
The vase, reconstructed, houses
The elusive rose.
Ten fingers shape a bowl for shadows.
My mendings itch. There is nothing to do.
I shall be good as new.
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, toronto, video | Tags: 11:11, 30 rock, artists, beginnings, bicycle, falve, family, frederic, john, macivor, me, neptune, quessica, slane, tea, video, wine, work
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.
Filed under: halifax, sbux, toronto | Tags: adventure, alice in wonderland, fosse, paper journal, red hair, shakespeare, skye, sparling, video, work
1. put gym membership on hold.
2. read more shakespeare than you could shake a speare at (see what i did there…!!)
3. see ‘awake and sing’ at soulpepper…and ‘the glass menagerie’ at red barn theatre and ‘school’s out‘ at the bathurst street theatre…
4. (re)learn original Fossee Choregraphy to ‘All That Jazz’ (I drunkenly tried to learn it when I was 15…)
finding these videos are making me totally into CHICAGO once more…15 year old Meghan is fangirling the hell out of Ann Reinking.
5. eat the most indian food as i can before going home to white old halifax.
6. debate getting tattoo…i kind of want something alice-in-wonderland-esque, which sounds SOOOO cliche and hipster and blahblahblah but alice is actually so dear to my heart, for so many nostalgic and psychological reasons…oh wait, do i sound like a crazy person? anyway i found my acting journal from 2005, and it;s an alice notebook with gorgeous illustrations and quotes inside. i stumbled on the following quote and it spoke to my heart so strongly i almost cried upon reading. (but didn’t…because the quote told me not to!!) one of those moments when the universe knows you need something, and so you get it:
Consider what a great girl you are.
Consider what a long way you’ve come today.
Consider what o’clock it is.
Consider anything, only don’t cry!”
-The White Queen (fr. ‘Through the Looking Glass & What Alice Found There.)
The universe has been offering lots of things I really need the past 2 or days. A night out dancing to sixties music with Skye, many a jolly jaunt with my visiting Ginger sister, late-night playground adventures, lovely people to give free cappucinnos and crispy marshmallow squares to, hugs and kisses galore, I’M BACK IN FILM CLASS uuuuughhhhh and will miss the hell out of it all summer….and two other huge exciting things that are not official or the details are not finalized yet so I shall not broadcast them on the world wide web yet, but let’s just say, my soul is going to melt and my mind is going to explode.
7. MAKE REAL TO DO LISTS THAT I DO INSTEAD OF POSTING ON THE INTERWEAB.
Here is something I will miss about Toronto, a huge amount:
Rexie, KCan, Ryan, Fletchface, &Edder. I will not miss looking like a tipsy baby dinosaur in photgraphs with them, though. Oh heck, yes I will!
Filed under: halifax | Tags: adventure, amanda carol, artists, beginnings, family, party, quessica, slane, work
this summer i will be teaching for 8 weeks at theatre school!
these are my classes;
SHAKESPEARE (Ages 14-18):
Shakespeare’s plays were written to be performed. Students will learn the skills to make classical text come to life in this intensive two week camp. Using scenes from the Bard’s scripts students will gain an understanding of classical verse and how to bring it to life. Join us and make the world your stage.
CENTER STAGE (Ages 14-18):
This advanced theatre camp is for students who want to perform. The two week camp will consist of morning voice and body warm-ups, exercises in acting technique and ensemble building. Afternoons will be spent rehearsing a play which will be performed for family, friends and the rest of the camp on the last day. Get ready to take centre stage!
GIRLFRIENDS (Ages 7-9)
In this camp we will use theatre games, art, poetry and a whole lot of fun to explore the world of being a girl. Using collaboration and imagination we will create a short play to share with family and friends on the last day of camp.
THEATRE JAM (Ages 7-9)
In this camp students will create an original piece of theatre in a collaborative setting. Students will become actors, playwrights and directors as they jam on ideas and are guided through theatre exercises, creation, rehearsal and the presentation of their very own performance project which will be shared with friends and family on the final day.
Expect updates of hilarious student quotes, exhausted and emotional me, and PHOTOGRAPHIC EVIDENCE of how amazing the summer will be.
3. I have a customer crush…and find him even more attractive when he comes into the store with his wife.
4. I don’t know how to put on liquid eye-liner.
5. I can literally spend hours in grocery stores. Hours.
“i love grocery stores so much…it’s like a sickness…too soon?”
-me, in a text to sarah d. last september
6. i think if you need coffee early-early, i am a pretty fun person to see at 6:00 am.
Filed under: rando, sbux, toronto | Tags: arcade fire, diet, s&a, steph, sugar, tea, twitter, work
well my trip home has come and gone…more on that later, i guess?
i am in the midst of a detox and lemme tell you, all i think about is naan bread, soy lattes and junior mints. (that was mostly what i thought about before but now it’s worse.)
here is what i can eat:
fruit, vegetables
rice, quinoa, amaranth, millet, buckwheat,
beans, lentils, unsalted nuts or seeds, nut butters (except peanut/peanut butter)
extra-virgin olive oil, vegetable salt, sea salt, vinegar, soy sauce or tamari, all herbs/spices,
green & herbal tea
water, lemon water, pure unsweetened fruit and vegetable juices, rice milk
i am not having coffee, wheat, sugar, dairy, gluten, yeast, alcohol, food additives and preservatives, or chocolate.
i had really bad headaches on friday and saturday, but today hasn’t been too bad. i think i even feel up for the gym tomorrow. i’m introducing things back in little by little…i think sugar and coffee will be last…right before food additives and preservatives.
i am also drinking more water than i have in the last year, i think. i also have to pee every 45 minutes which is quite embarrassing at work, to be honest.
THINGS OF NOTE:
-i am starting a playreading book club tomorrow. oscar wilde. DON’T BE JEALOUS.
-started watching ‘slings&arrows’ and ‘firefly’ at stephanie’s last night (over a bowl of rice and orange herbal tea)…’slings&arrows’ and i are going to get married. bob martin, how you be such a genius?
-claire eff threw a sausage breakfast sandwich at my knee today. (ok, so she dropped it off a plate and it hit the back of my knee. the best part was her first instinct was to try to wipe it off my white tights [!!] with my legwarmers. ahahhha….i love you, fletch.)
-arcade fire will never stop being amazing, ever.
–i fail at everything real
You'll Never See My Eyes 