Back!

I've been away for a good while from the blogosphere, and I'm dipping my toe back in it.

Actually, the last few months have been a time for me trying new activities artistically, all of them collaborative, some with dance, some with theater, and some with visual art. Of course, all of these activities take me out of my own comfort zone, and I know I'm not very good at them, but they do stretch me, remind me how difficult accomplishment of any value is. More importantly, they have brought me to working with some wonderful, amazing, positive, joyful people.

Currently, I am playing a super creepy psychiatrist in Barry Cavin's Live Blog: Apocalypse, a dense, rather beautiful, and distressing multi-media piece. It's been one of the hardest things I have done in the arts, as I haven't acted before, and the role is one that's both a stretch and a familiar one for me. What's been tremendous, though, has been working with the other actors, who are so absolutely lovely, devoted, brave, and playful in their own work. And they have been so generous with me, as well, that I wish I could become something like a familiar to them when I pass from this life, something like a happy animal spirit, something avian and flock-like and feathered.

Anyway, this image is of Katelyn Gravel fixing Melinda Velasquez's hair. Melinda plays the puppets Judy and Violence/Death/Power/Famine, and Katelyn is Apocalypse; both are FGCU students. Katelyn's character is my nemesis (my character's name is Kerch, a little too close to Joseph Conrad's Kurtz), which means she's the cleansing heroine, and I'm the last bit of scum that she has to sweep offstage. It's a lovely little moment really.