If you think you're going to get 'round me that way...you are.

 So...that Irish dance class I started taking? Taught by a seventy-something woman who Knows Her Shit, and is also The Shit in the Greater Bay Area Irish dancing community?

It may be leading to something which I had sort of vaguely imagined it might, but hadn't completely thought through...

I've had four classes, right? I've learned three out of the four soft shoe dances you're required to learn. Apparently this is Not Normal. Thanks to my extensive dance background, I'm well ahead of the curve. At this rate, I expect I'll be up to snuff on all the required material--soft and hard shoe--and starting to put together my own steps, which is what you do once you've got a grasp of the basics. And after that, well, Irish dance is heavy on the festivals and competitions. 

In fact, as we were doing some technique exercises across the floor last week, our instructor, who I will from now on refer to as 'The Business', or 'The Biz', was lecturing on all the things the judges look for in competition. Turnout. Pointed toes. Crossover. A high demi-pointe. Straight legs. This entire lecture was delivered with her eyes on me. Then she launched into her 'competition is your choice' spiel, eyes still glued to me. As we were leaving that night, she very slyly mentioned that there was a feis (pronounced 'fehsh', a traditional Gaelic arts and culture festival) on Saturday and perhaps I'd like to come along and see what it's all about.

I speak fluent dance instructor. I know exactly what the woman is thinking. She wants me competing.

I did, in fact, go along to the feis on Saturday to see what it was all about. It was held at the Irish Cultural Center in San Francisco. I braved public transportation for the first time in well over a year because I really don't like driving in the city, and once you've driven there, you still have to park, which can be a real pain in the you-know-what. It was a good time, really. Live music for the dancing competition. An interesting building full of neat cultural stuff I didn't really have time to look at because I was watching the dancing. A shop full of lovely treats that are more difficult to come by here than they were when I lived in the UK. A few of my classmates were competing, and I found them quickly enough so I had people to hang out with. It's always nice to support your people! I found The Biz, too, and made sure she knew I was there. (Hey, a little brown-nosery will get you a long way.) It was a good time. Two of my classmates--sisters, as it happens--placed fourth and third in the adult division. 

Now, given the time and a decent amount of practice, I find I'm not entirely opposed to the competition idea. (Especially since I found out that the adult division doesn't require those ghastly dresses and wigs!) It might be a giggle.

And somehow, I think The Biz won't halt her not-so-subliminal messaging campaign until I give in.

"Every inch a king."

Last week, the Royal Shakespeare Company released a statement that Artistic Director Gregory Doran would be taking an immediate compassionate leave to care for his husband, Sir Antony Sher, who has been diagnosed with a terminal illness.

Some of you may remember a while back when I spent half a post fangirling over receiving a copy of a book written by Messrs. Sher and Doran which upon arrival revealed itself to be a copy signed by them both. This particular book came as part of a final push to obtain all published material by Sher—the result of a renewed interest in the creative process. There may also have been an underlying ennui spurred by my own nostalgia for certain portions of my college days when basically all I did was create all day...and, you know, throw some Pandemic Malaise in there for good measure. I was complimentary of Sher's work in that post. Enthusiastic. But that was the proverbial tip of the iceberg insofar as my regard for this truly remarkable man.

Year of the King, Sher's diaries kept during the duration of the RSC's 1984 production of Richard III in which he played the title role, was a revelation to college-me. Of course I was aware that creating a role was far more than learning the lines and delivering them in a convincing manner, but here was someone's process laid out piece by stumbling piece—but it was far more than that. It was a human being living a life while at the same time attempting to bring a whole other being into temporary existence with as much finesse as possible. There were intersections of life and work. There were setbacks. Dead ends. Eureka moments. Moments of personal turmoil coiled around professional successes in that seamless way that most of us exist through but don’t memorialize.

This was a life. An actual human life with all its idiosyncrasies. All its fears. All its dreams. Year of the King was, and is, so much more than dry, 'how I decided to play this character' procedural. It was over a year of Sher's soul written out in a tangible form. The sheer vulnerability of that was so astonishing, so exhilarating, so utterly terrifying to me that I was hooked. All I knew was that I had found something so radically different than everything they loved to shove down your throat in acting and dramatic theory classes that I wanted more of it. I first read this book twenty years after it was originally published. I went on a hunt for similar material by, well, anyone, and never found anything that struck as deep a chord with me as Antony Sher did.

From that time, my appreciation for Sher only deepened. I read and reread Year of the King. I sought out recordings of his performances (an activity which yielded lackluster results, it still being the early days of YouTube and other limitations such as the extent of library collections and region-coded video tapes/DVDs.) There were alternatives available and I devoured those even though none of them quite scratched the itch like Sher's book had. This was the point in my life where I was gearing up for my first year abroad in England, and I was determined to Shakespeare myself to death. I spent hours in the media center in the basement of U.C. Irvine's main library watching the Playing Shakespeare series the RSC had produced with the BBC in the early '80s. I discovered, through an acting professor, a book series published by the RSC called Players of Shakespeare which consisted of volumes of essays by actors on their personal processes in creating key roles—Sher has an essay in the second volume on his portrayal of the Fool in the 1982 production of King Lear, with Michael Gambon in the title role. Basically, if it had any connection whatsoever to the RSC, I had to have it.

I couldn't have asked for a better year to be in the thick of Shakespeare country. The RSC devoted their 2006/07 season to Shakespeare's complete works. Every play, every sonnet, every poem—all of it was produced in some form or other by the RSC and other international theatre companies in venues in either Stratford-upon-Avon or London, and for some productions, both. I tremble to think about how much I shelled out on theatre tickets and train tickets back and forth from Surrey to Stratford that year, but it was so very worth it. One of the last things I did before I had to return to the States to finish out my undergraduate degree was to attend the RSC's 2007 Open Day. It was a day full of workshops and talks and symposiums and all manner of other activities—think ComicCon, but for Shakespeare nerds. There was a football match between the houses of York and Lancaster (the casts of the Wars of the Roses plays) on the lawn outside the main RSC building. At one point, between talks, I happened to turn a corner and run bang into a queue for Cicely Berry, the RSCs most prominent vocal coach, to sign copies of her books. The highlight of the day for me, however, was the quiz at the end of it. Two teams of seasoned Shakespearean actors squaring off against each other in a Shakespeare trivia death match. (Okay, not a death match, but, y'know, it was exciting.)

I'll spare you the details, mostly because it was fourteen years ago and I can't remember them, but Antony Sher's team won. Between him, Judi Dench, and Donald Sinden, they had an almost grotesque amount of knowledge about the plays and the history surrounding them. This is where Sher blindsided me again. He went down a very particular and obscure rabbit hole of explanation while answering one of the questions, my jaw hit the floor, and I'm not sure it came up again until I was halfway home on the train that night. That, friends, is called scholarship, and it is something to be celebrated.

Fast forward a decent number of years, during which media became steadily more available. I read Sher's novels. I watched recordings of his productions. I kept a loose finger on the RSC pulse. My life took a more realistic turn and I sold out to corporate America in order to keep myself fed, but old habits die hard, and inside me there is still the twelve year old girl who got Sonnet 18 shoved into her hands by her elementary school theatre director, started reading aloud, and had a transformative experience right there in the multi-purpose room. Shakespeare is never too far from my mind.

In 2018, I made a visit to see my friends from my Royal Holloway year. The beauty of the situation was that one of those friends now lives in Stratford-upon-Avon, so I didn't even have to make a separate stop along the way—which I would have done if necessary. There's no way I'd skip it. In my research ahead of my trip, I had discovered—to my eternal delight—that there was an exhibition of a selection of Sher's art in the main RSC building that would coincide with my visit. There may have been squealing and jumping up and down. My Stratford friend in tow, I spent the better part of an hour in a room surrounded by Sher's original artwork. Some of the pieces I recognized. Some of them were new to me. All of them were incredible, and I was in heaven. Later that afternoon, we caught standing room tickets to see Christopher Eccleston and Niamh Cusack in Macbeth. It was a fabulous day.

I think at this point I've driven home my admiration for Sher, which is, of course, inextricably laced with my love of Shakespeare, so I'm going to circle back to where I started.

We're going to lose him.

It's not the kind of news a person is ready to see on their Twitter feed first thing in the morning. Obviously I understand how biology works, but it's always tough to face. You see, over the years, Sher has become far more to me than just words on a page, or characters on a stage or screen. I was talking to someone after the news of his illness broke, and they asked me to choose some words to describe him. My list was: industry (verb), persistence, artistry, scholarship, compassion, and vulnerability. Industry because everything he does has clearly been planned, thought out, and worked through until it's as close to perfect as it can get. And then he writes a book about it. Professionally, I suppose Sher’s persistence is a subset of his industry. He will tackle a problem from multiple angles until he’s satisfied that whatever it is is going to be comprehensible not only to him, but to his audience. Personally, Sher and his husband, RSC Artistic Director Greg Doran, are naturally huge supporters of LGBTQA+ rights, always pushing for inclusivity and equality. They were among some of the first couples to declare a civil partnership in the UK when that option was made available to them. They did eventually marry, years later, when that was finally legalized. Artistry and scholarship I've covered already, so we'll move on to compassion. Sher looks for the most human motivations in every role he takes on. King Richard III has been played up to everything short of a cartoon villain mustache in innumerable productions, but Sher sussed out the 'why' of it all and made it sympathetic—something not everyone who attempts the role manages to achieve. And yes, in the end Richard was still a jerk, but he was a jerk in the pursuit of a goal, and that is something that even if people find it distasteful, they can understand. In 1998 he played Leontes, King of Sicilia, in an RSC production of The Winter's Tale—a tricky role for actors. Leontes turns on a dime from doting husband to raving lunatic, and Sher made that accessible. He made it make sense. He consulted a laundry list of mental health professionals to do it, but he did it. He found the humanity, and that is the most compassionate thing a person can do, even when the object isn't actually a person, but a made up character.

Vulnerability. Oof. That's a biggie. Suffering from a severe aversion to this particular emotional offering myself, I'm always impressed by it in others. Sher could have written his books—fictional and not—from a detached place, a place at arm's length. He didn't. There is so much of him in all of them. I'm not talking about a little sprinkling of anecdotes, I'm talking about chapters devoted to his sister's illness and death. First-hand perspective on the Jewish South African experience. His relationship with his husband. The intersections of upbringing and culture and sexuality and art. The incessant ramblings of his own rabid brain weasels. All of it. On the page. Either directly from him in his autobiographical works, or through the characters he's created in his novels and plays, but still ultimately there.

What this all boils down to is the fact that, in a way, I've spent a lot of time with a person I've never actually met. I have enjoyed every minute of it. I'm invested in Sher as a person, not just a source of entertainment, and I have been for a long time. He embodies everything I have ever wanted to be as an artist and more. He has given me so much. He has moved me. Made me laugh. Made me think. Consoled me. Encouraged me. Inspired me.

And now I know the days of us existing under the same sky are numbered, and it's breaking my heart.

I'm losing my Shakespeare Dad. I'm not ready for this.

Be the person

So here’s the thing.

I have not historically had much in the way of a support system. I suppose I should rephrase that. I’m sure I had more of a one than I thought, and had I ever thought to actually take advantage of said presumed support system, I likely would be a very different person now.

Not sure how I feel about that, at the end of the day.

Regardless, the point I’m making is that up until very recently—and still, most of the time, if I’m being truthful—my vestigial caveman DNA is very thoroughly coded to ‘fuck you, woolly mammoth’. “'Then I will do it myself,’ said the little red hen. And she did.” I was trained up for independence early, and well. So well it can be detrimental sometimes. I don’t like to ask for help. If I can’t figure it out on my own by bombarding whatever it is with logic and research, then clearly I have failed, and anyone consulted will point that out.

Okay, it’s actually not as bad as that anymore, but holy cats it used to be. I’m still an island, but I’ve loosened up my tourism policies. Somewhat.

The point here isn’t actually so much about me as it is about…well…me. (I know, right? Could I make any less sense? Don’t make it a challenge, friends. Not if you value your sanity.) Here’s the point. A very dear friend of mine happened to pop up in my texts at 7:12 AM last Thursday. They wanted to know how best to tell if they should go to the ER or just to urgent care for an experience they were undergoing at that precise moment.

When someone texts you something like that, you don’t sit on it. You call them.

Now, before you start panicking, everything is fine. It all worked itself out in the end, no one is too much the worse for wear, and the world has continued in its orbit. The emergency is also not the point.

The point is, this very dear friend is fourteen years my junior. They are in the very early stages of for-real adulting. They are smart enough to reach out when they need something.

At that age, I would have given my left leg to have had a ‘me’. A proper grown up who isn’t a parental substitute who would take me seriously but also jump in when I was floundering and point me in the right direction or, as was the case in this instance, keep me from spiraling into a panic by distracting me until official help arrived.

This is starting to sound egotistical. I swear that’s not what I was aiming for. I guess if we distill this, what we end up with is the Golden Rule. You know, ‘do unto others…’ etc., but that's also not really the point. I guess the point is that somewhere along the line, without having had a person like that, I have managed to learn how to be a person like that. Maybe it's because of endless hours of daydreaming up a person like that for myself. Maybe it's because I'm so well-versed in the opposite.

Maybe it's because when it comes to this particular friend, I will fucking end anyone who purposefully causes them harm, and whenever they are even marginally less-than-peppy I have an undying need to improve things for them.

Sometimes all that means encouraging them to dish the dirt on your shared hobby until their mom gets to their apartment to take over.

Be the person you needed. Apparently it's easier than you think.

P.S. For the record, if their mama hadn't been available, I would have been in the car and on my way in ten seconds flat.

Death, taxes, and...

In a 1789 letter to French scientist Jean-Baptiste Leroy, Benjamin Franklin wrote, "...in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.”

He missed something. 

Jury duty.

Yes, yours truly was called upon to do her civic duty this week, and do it she did.

I spent a few hours of my Monday at the court house in Martinez--a fascinating building in its own right--standing around waiting, and then answering questions. I was called in an afternoon group, then chosen as part of a group to go into the actual courtroom, and then chosen to be in the first group in the box. This would have been a trial I wouldn't have minded being on, actually, because it was a civil case that would have wrapped up in about three days total. In the end, however, I was excused by the defense, got my slip signed, and was able to go back to the office for the last hour of the day.

By the time I got home Monday night after work-jury duty-work-tap class-ballet class, it was safe to say that it already felt like I had had A Week.

And if Monday was A Week, Tuesday doubled it. I had a long-awaited medical appointment to have a couple of bumps in my right hand examined. One has been there for ages and I had always assumed that it was bursitis, because it showed up after a blunt force trauma to the area. (That sounds way more exciting than it was. I smacked it just right on an open drawer and it hit the soft space between some bones and BOOM, bump.) About a month ago, however, a second one appeared.

When you start growing bumps for no known reason, you go get them looked at, m'kay?

Same hand, but in my wrist this time. Smaller, but visible without having to look very hard. Same feeling when I poked it. Except this time, I couldn't link it to me having thumped myself on something. (I would like to point out that I know better than to jump on WebMD for this kind of thing. WebMD would have told me it was late-onset malignant Stage 17 Lympho-leukemi-melo-carci-CANCER with a side of tennis elbow, and that I should have been dead yesterday.) In any case, I was finally getting these goofy things looked at--and they weren't bursitis at all. They're ganglion cysts. How delightful.

"You can leave them alone, I can send you to ortho and they can remove them surgically--though they may come back, or we can try to aspirate the one on your wrist because that one bothers you more."

We aspirated.

It was really very unpleasant. Do not recommend. 

She only did the one on my wrist because the one in my metacarpal isn't visible, so she'd have had a hell of a time trying to hit it just right, and nobody likes to play pincushion. So she stabbed me once, I went on my merry way, and finished my day out with a couple of dance classes.

Y'all. Remember how I told you that I added an Irish dance class to my mix? I'm taking SEVEN CLASSES A WEEK right now. I am questioning ALL MY LIFE CHOICES. Everything hurts, I'm exhausted, and my laundry has tripled.

It's good fun, though.

One-two-three-and-off-you-go!

Y'all! I did a NEW THING!!!

Sometimes I forget I'm a grownup and can basically do whatever I want. I got a notion last week to find a way to try something I've always wanted to try, and very quickly found a way to do so. 

On Tuesday night, I took my first ever Irish dance class.

It was delightful. Because of my years of ballet training etc. I'm a quick study, so the learning curve was flatter than it would be for anyone walking in blind--a fact for which I am exceedingly grateful. I managed to learn a decent chunk of a reel in one class. Most of you are looking at that going, "Yeah? So?" Trust me, it's trickier than you'd think, especially when your body keeps trying to do it balletically (yes, I know that's not a real word. It is now.) 

It's certainly a different class atmosphere than I'm used to. Ballet etiquette is as starchy as you'd think it is. You pay attention, don't talk when the instructor is talking, take direction and correction with a 'thank you', and stand nicely to the side when you're waiting for your turn. Oh, and don't take it personally when you get smacked. Now, I have it on authority that the class I experienced wasn't exactly normal. There had been a competition a week or so before, and the lady who runs the school had much wisdom to impart, so there was a great deal more talking in time that would usually be spent dancing. Also, her daughter wasn't there, and apparently the daughter tends to run a much tighter ship, so once she's back I'm sure things will play out a bit differently. That said, the lady who runs the school is THE BUSINESS. She is legit, my friends. Like, smoky-pubs-of-old-Dublin legit. I may be ever so slightly in love with her. I could listen to her talk all day. There's something soothing and homey about the lilt of the Irish accent. But I digress. The point is, this class was mostly-controlled chaos for several reasons, but not all of them had to do with classroom management.

The thing about Irish dance is that you learn sets of steps for different types of music--reels, jigs, hornpipes--and run them together. You just keep building and adding variations until you have something that lasts a whole piece of music. At least, this is the sense I'm getting from one class. I don't think my observation is too far off the mark, though. The class that I'm taking is an adult class, but not-being-children is the thing we have most in common. The range of experience runs from my one class to a literal lifetime, so you can imagine the differences you'd see in one go-round of 'everybody do your reel'. And that's exactly how it's done, by the way. In small groups, everyone cycles through and does their sets a few times, then the tempo changes and they repeat, but with a jig instead of a reel, and on and on.

Now, where does that leave me?

Standing at the back, actually. BUT, I had the good fortune to be adopted by a couple of the proficient dancers and they got me started. It was odd, though. I'm so accustomed to the rigidity of a ballet class, where there is absolute order to everything, and even the less-rigid-but-still-frameworked tap classes I attend that this whole 'just start dancing' thing was a left-field shock. No warm up? No set exercises? Not even a 'we're all going to learn this thing now' section? It was weird, my dudes. Weird. 

But I loved it. I'll be going every week.

And it means I need more dance shoes.

Oh, darn!