CODA's Dallas Adventures

This weekend, CODA departed from Memphis to Dallas. We drove in a 14 passenger van (which was an adventure unto itself) and arrived around 2:00 AM Friday morning (much to my mother's chagrin.) Being home for the first time was a bizarre experience. I walked into my house feeling very much like a visitor, luggage in tow. When we arrived, I felt like a visitor missing my home in Memphis, but by the time we left it was the reverse. I felt like Dallas was (once again) home and I was going off to camp in Tennessee. The honeymoon phase of college has officially ended, so this trip back was a bit of a rollercoaster.

There are things I definitely miss about Dallas:
1. Uptown/West Village
2. Mockingbird Station
3. Family (I'm unusually close to my extended family--they all live in Dallas near my house)
4. Closest Dallas friends
5. A plethora of indie-movie theatres
6. NorthPark Mall (which I completely took for granted before coming to Memphis which has the most miserable malls on the planet.)
7. The Arts District
8. Cafe Brazil (a small chain in the Dallas area--open 24 hours--13 flavors of coffee each week--bottomless cup at $2.69. Many significant/memorable experiences have occurred at the Cafe Brazil on Central. I found out I was accepted to Tisch at Cafe Brazil. I had my best conversations with close friends at this Cafe Brazil.)
9. Dallas Theatres--WaterTower, Theatre Three, Kitchen Dog, Echo, DSM, DTC, DCT...I love them all.
10. Whole Foods, Ulta, and all things Preston/Forest and Preston/Royal
11. Driving. It's terrible, but I was raised in a mass suburban metropolis with enormous highway intersections and insane traffic. I love it and I miss it. My high school (The Hockaday School) was about 30 minutes away from my house (without traffic.) If I left my house in the morning before 6:45 I could get to school in about 30 minutes. If I left after 7:00 it would take 2 hours. I love the freedom of waking up 45 minutes before class here, but I also miss driving. I think when I drive. I conduct when I drive. I discover new music when I drive. I rehearse and prepare for auditions when I drive. This fall, I had the opportunity to audition for the Rocky Horror show (which I didn't...) but I had no clue how to prepare for auditions without my car. In my car, I can belt and foible over notes, my voice can crack without anyone judging me...it's the perfect venue. Most importantly, if I was having a bad day, I could hop in my car and go anywhere. Dallas has more variety within the city than most places I've been. Memphis has distinct vibes within each area, but overall it has a pretty eclectic, artsy feel to it. In Dallas, every area has a vastly different feel purpose--Downtown, Arts District, Cafe Brazil, West Village, Mockingbird Station, Legacy, Addison Circle, Highland Park Village, Turtle Creek, Caruth Park, Garland, Irving, Plano, Richardson, Murphy...they are all distinctly different. I miss this opportunity to transport myself to a completely new environment. In essence, I miss driving on insane highways and I miss my car.

I digress-I apologize.

I really do love Memphis, but I am a big shiny city girl, and I do miss Dallas in certain regards. Dallas is a bit too superficial, but I love the affluent sprawling metropolis. I almost feel as though San Fransisco, Boston, New York, and even Chicago have these happy media--they produce a significant amount of original art, they have mass commercial centres, but they also have a great deal of history (and beautiful weather.)

At any rate, driving was not the most significant aspect of the trip. The symposium (how to be an effective arts leader) was rather enjoyable. I found two new heroes in Bill Lively (Founder of Dallas Center for the Performing Arts--a project I've been following and been excited about for a while now) and Ann Daly. Fellow CODA member Lauren Kennedy was a part of a panel on Sunday and was absolutely brilliant. She made a pretty remarkable role model for the CODA freshmen on the trip.

We also traveled down to West Village (to see the scariest film of all time), DMA, and the Nasher Sculpture Garden. I had already been to all these places, but they were (as usual) wonderful! I also had the opportunity to see some of my friends and family on the trip--which was wonderful. We happened to be coming to Dallas over Yom Kippur so I had the chance to see my best friend who attents Arizona University (but was visiting home for the Jewish holiday) while we were in Big D. It was pretty exciting.

It was a wonderful trip. I saw old friends and really became better acquainted with the CODA kids who came on the trip. I also had the opportunity to see Dallas from a quasi-visitor's perspective, which was pretty foreign and interesting. Thanks to John Weeden for making it all possible.

Farewell, friends--I'm off to jazz cultures. Have a lovely day.

Thoughts on the Purpose of Traditional Art

Ladies and gentlemen, I am annoyed. I write to you from my dorm room, angsty and confused, stuffing way too many shortbread cookies into my mouth, desiring to get a message out to the public (particularly the college crowd): there is beauty and merit in classically performed theatre and music.

College has been a divine experience. I have received much of the independence I have craved for years and I have run with it. I am over committed (which is both my greatest joy and burden) and I am doing what I love nearly all the time. However, I have found myself supremely frustrated by my peers and colleagues in this new environment.

Art does not have to be experimental. Art does not have to be angsty. Art does not have to beat you over the head with a "shocking/thought provoking" message.

What is it about college students (and even the college environment) that makes them think something isn't art unless it's shocking? While they may find my appreciation for classical musicals and music dull and close-minded, I argue that they are equally if not more close minded in automatically rejecting the more traditionally performed pieces of art.

A Dallas friend sent me a package of reviews and playbills of many performances occurring in Dallas right now. I traveled to Dallas this weekend to attend an Arts Symposium (which was phenomenal--but more on that later...), and she intended for me to receive the package before our trip so that the CODA kids could see some great Dallas theatre. Sadly, I did not receive the package until I returned to Memphis. Happily, it has made my day and renewed my faith in traditional theatre. A recurring theme I found in the reviews was that many productions of modern shows were simply trying to hard. Contrarily, two of the more classical pieces (Pride and Prejudice and the musical Carousel) received rave reviews and wide acclaim from the city’s harshest critic.

The McCoy theatre at Rhodes College prides itself on doing more experimental pieces of theatre. I have not had the privilege of seeing any shows performed by the theatre (my first trip will be with Rocky Horror on Halloween), but it seems that there is the misconception that just because something is artsy and experimental, it is great art. This is a popular belief among my peers.

I adore classical musical theatre. Give me Cole Porter, Rodgers and Hammerstein, and Jeanine Tresori—I love it all. Just because their musicals aren’t set in modern times discussing abortion, the war on Iraq, or transvestites doesn’t mean that they aren’t getting a message out at all. Carousel, for instance, discusses domestic abuse. The Sound of Music raises issues of remarriage and loyalty to your nation and your beliefs even in the most difficult circumstances. Oklahoma is the classic story of jealousy and rage completely out of control. West Side Story centers around kids with varying economic and racial backgrounds and illustrates the subsequent clashing dynamics of these kids. These musicals were written decades ago, but their themes are prevalent today (possibly even moreso than they were when they were written.)

Besides this, there is such beauty in the performances of these musicals. They must be put together well or not done at all. When done properly, these shows are simply glorious. What is wrong with theatre that simply makes you happy?

Is this why arts audiences in the 18-24 range are so small? Do my peers feel so strongly about the “shock factor” that they can’t appreciate anything else? Just because theatre is classic doesn’t mean it’s not getting out a message. Just because modern theatre is edgy doesn’t mean it’s effectively getting out any message at all.

This past spring I directed The Sound of Music. I put it together in just a few weeks and I was working with 40 high school kids. It was not the perfect show—the 7 von Trapp children had to be in high school so they were (maximum) four years apart rather than eleven. The sets could not be elaborate. New costumes could not be made. Nonetheless, I have never been prouder of anything in my life. The essence of the show was beautiful, and even in its rawness, the actors believed the characters they portrayed—something phenomenal for high schoolers. The Sound of Music is undoubtedly my favorite show of all time. I had boys in my show who had never seen the musical or cared for it at all, and they left loving it. If the actors you see portraying this family truly believe their characters, it’s impossible not to love the sincerity of the performance.

The kids in my show bonded more quickly and intensely than any I’ve ever seen in any show. They all remain friends and support each other in all endeavors. Seniors are friends with sophomores, Juniors with freshmen. And regardless of the outcome, as my theatre teacher/mentor expressed, “although great theatre is certainly what we all strive for, sometimes what happens off-stage between the real-life humans is what really brings everything together.”

My dance teacher/advisor/friend Beth Wortley from Hockaday emailed me after I described how one of my Von Trapp kids cried for nearly an hour after the last performance:

“People are hungry to do something that makes them feel good about themselves and they love connecting with others...something that doesn't happen often enough in today's world.”

I couldn’t have put it any more eloquently.

My friends, I dare you to appreciate, perform, or enjoy classic theatre. Go see Pride and Prejudice. Go see Carousel. Dare to be traditional—you just might enjoy your experience.

Dissertation on Book-Learning as a Catalyst for the Re-Identified Artist

During my annual summer cleanout this year, as I rummaged through miniature ballet shoes, crinkled photographs, and various other scraps of memories from my childhood, I stumbled upon a journal from my 3rd and 4th grade years. These years, and all others which fell between pre-k and sixth grade, were spent at St. John’s Episcopal School. In this journal I depicted my effervescent teachers, loving friends, and miniscule, petty problems that only a nine-year-old would deem challenging. I molded clay. I played in the sandbox. I ran with scissors. If an assignment was due on Thursday and Garfield the Guppy’s fishbowl needed to be changed Wednesday evening, it was acceptable to turn the work in on Friday. Or Monday, if I could conjure up a new excuse. Life was fabulous, and school was entirely burden-free.


Unfortunately, my education did not continue in this simplistic fashion. In seventh grade, I entered The Hockaday School. At Hockaday, creativity was praised, but algebra problems and grammar studies took precedence. Unlike at St. John’s, students were expected to lead class discussions rather than the teachers. This horrified me. You mean these fifty-year-old “professors” are just going to sit around and watch their class do the work? (At this point, I decided that perhaps the profession of teaching merited some consideration.) Nonetheless, I missed the tranquil, lazy days at St. John’s and resented Hockaday for making me truly think. I know—a school forcing a student to think--What a horrifying thought. For the longest time, I could not comprehend the use of all of this “book-learning,” as Richard McKenna coined it. That is, until my junior year.

Junior year at Miss Ela Hockaday’s School for Girls certainly lived up to its formidable reputation as being the most difficult year in high school. It was sheer and total hell.

I loved it.

Every minute, I was thinking, re-evaluating, and re-defining. I was dissecting the anatomy of sharks and frogs. I was pulling my hair out, sweating anxiously over the outcome of “The Minister’s Vigil” in The Scarlet Letter. I was taking risks. I was drained both mentally and physically by the end of each day, but I anticipated the next. Had I not experienced a plethora of mental breakdowns and constant chaos, I would be an entirely different person today. Hockaday’s hardships have acted as catalysts for my redefined identity. I am religious. I believe family is the most important aspect of life. I love all mediums of music, I am much better suited for the 1940’s, and I adore reading. How Hockaday, a secular school which emphasizes the individual and self-promotion, did this to me is truly bizarre. But it did.

My hardships evoked changes in me physically, mentally, and spiritually. Hockaday mutilated and destroyed all self-esteem, confidence, or courage I had as a child by the time I was fifteen. By the time I was seventeen, Hockaday had challenged me to re-build that confidence on my own. My mother could not help me. My best friend could not help me. I was no longer puppeting my peers or elders' thoughts. I reconstructed my identity uninfluenced by those who had previously directed and controlled my life.

My senior year was an even greater challenge than my junior year. Junior year was, as I have stated, a time of personal re-evaluation. I allowed myself mistakes. Senior year, contrarily, was my year to prove to myself (and nine universities) how I could own this identity and use it to benefit my environment. This, of course, is where the arts come in. My junior year I directed a beautiful one act musical theatre piece-- The Last Five Years. This was a great challenge for me at the end of my junior year. The piece follows a man and woman (needless to say, over five years...) and their relationship for better or for worse. The depiction of this relationship is where it becomes exceptionally interesting. Cathy, the female protagonist, moves backwards in time from the end point of their relationship to the first date. Jamie, on the other hand, moves in normal time. The two meet in the middle of their relationship (and the production) in "The Next 10 Minutes." I didn't really mean to babble about this show, but the point is that I'm not sure I completely had my bearings when I directed this piece. I briefly mentioned some of my invovlements from senior year, but without a doubt, my most time consuming was the musical I directed at the same time I directed The Last Five Years the preceding spring.

I had intended to direct Fat Pig, a brilliant, thought-provoking show by Neil LaBute. I'm not sure how qualified I would have been to direct this; I've only been in a few plays myself (excluding musicals) and assistant directed one Moss/Hart production. However, the plotline intruiged me. It's not a Tracy Turnblad story; a guy falls in love with an overweight (but beautiful) woman. He becomes obsessed with the comments of two of his co-workers and ultimately cannot handle their relationship because of it's social implications. The audience easily recognizes that the overweight protagonist is the better individual, but she does not "get the guy." I think the show brings up a number of important issues, and it's always been a personal favorite. However, at my all-girls school (with eating disorders inevitably running rampant) they wouldn't allow me to produce the show.

Thus, I went towards its polar opposite: The Sound of Music. I know it seems like a ridiculous alternative to an experimental modern play, but it's a show I always wanted to do and it was a challenge in so many other ways. I had a forty person cast and crew. I choreographed the entire production. I did all vocal and theatrical training and rehearsals, and I did not have an AD. I also had an interesting space to work in--a lecture hall. This truly required me to think outside-the-box. Ultimately, the show was a success and I dearly loved my cast (who, I am proud to say, bonded more than any bunch of kids I think I've ever seen in my life...), but it was a challenge. Had I not rebuilt this personal confidence, I could not have handled directing this mass production.

I feel that as a director you have to know yourself before you can know others. A director not only has to dissect and discern everything about the character portrayed, but a director must also know the character of the actor they are working with. Sometimes, the combination of the two can be disastrous. If I weren't sure of myself, my beliefs, or my merit as a director, the kids would have run all over me and the show would have failed. I needed that freshly rebuilt identity to run a production.

In retrospect, I often wonder what would have been the outcome of continuing my education at St. John’s and at a more traditional, less strenuous high school. I admittedly yearned to be at such schools during those rough years at Hockaday. Still, I can’t imagine having gone anywhere else. What I never understood was that Hockaday never really cared how much precalculus I absorbed or if I would remember the structure of a rat’s intestines. By thrusting such demanding academic standards upon me, I was personally challenged. I was challenged as a student, artist, and educator (isn't that what directors are, anyway? all three?)

Richard McKenna, a graduate of the University of North Carolina, made certain claims about what he felt comprised a proper education. In his speech, “New Eyes for Old: The Quest for Education,” McKenna touched upon the concepts of book learning, moral education, and some vague third medium of education which he struggled to describe. Generally speaking, I agreed with his thoughts on “moral education”—that it does not (usually) happen consciously, but rather it is “thrust upon” a person ambling through life. McKenna further elucidates his thoughts by discussing his thoughts about a “completed moral education.” (I happen to believe such a thing does not exist.) McKenna then dissected the concept and importance of “book learning.” Originally, McKenna was reluctant to study at a university. As I had an affinity for art and creativity, so McKenna had an affinity for nature. Similarly, as I resented Hockaday for “taking away my creativity,” McKenna feared a University would reject his passion for the natural world and intangible concepts. Propitiously, McKenna stumbled upon Thoreau’s Walden, the epitomic synthesis of intellect and nature. The Last Five Years and the Sound of Music were my "Walden's." McKenna gradually learned to weave his creativity and passion into his “book learning” he had received from the school and, over the course of his four years at the University of North Carolina, he established the foundation for a proper education. This is what I strive to continue to do at Rhodes College, my current venue for re-identification.

It seems people often refer to the end of education as the end of college, but I believe McKenna would agree with me in saying that college is only the beginning. School does not teach you calculus. (Well, perhaps it does for some, but it certainly isn’t for me.)

School teaches you how to learn.

School establishes the fundaments for a lifelong education. With the help of trials and tribulations, art, friends, enemies, and all other vicissitudes of daily life, I suspect McKenna and I will be just fine. Oh! And how could I forget books? We must have books—the opportunity to delve into someone else’s psyche. I do love to read. I'm reading a brilliant book by Daniel Levitas right now, actually. In fact, I believe I’m going to go read right now. Goodbye.

College Essay in Retrospect

My friends, I present to you the labor of 16 drafts and hours of breakdowns. It is my college essay. After drafting essays about conducting, directing, and even about my eyebrows as a metaphor for my personality and mannerisms, I sent in this sad little conglomeration of 500 words. So, for those curious, this is how I sold myself to nine schools in one page:

Diminuendo: The once-blazing house lights cool to a reverent blue. Subito piano: the volume of an excited audience crackles and diminishes abruptly. It’s a concerto—the conductor, the soloist—disguised as a Rachmaninov symphony. My neighbor precariously teeters on the edge of her seat and eventually leans over so far that her threatening elbows encroach on my personal space, and I’m fairly certain the gentleman to my right is sweating profusely although the current room temperature is approximately sixty degrees. It could have been the Mexican food he’d consumed for his dinner. It could be Rachmaninov (after all, I am no exception to this falderal—I am in tears within minutes). But I’m fairly certain it is Kwamé Ryan that is the root of our emotional turbulence. Never, in my extensive symphony-going career, have I witnessed a man snatch an audience so quickly or with such force. He is our conductor.
Ryan sends us into a rapturous maelstrom from exposition to recapitulation. He is unconventional. He conducts sans baton. He closes his eyes, barely consults the score, and sways with the music. My heartbeat unabashedly becomes dependent on each pulse of his wrist to the three-four rhapsody. As absurd as it may seem, this clean-cut man clad in a freshly-pressed tuxedo, is one of the most radical conductors of our time, and my most prevalent intrigue.

My love affair with music began at a very young age. I danced as soon as I could walk, sang as soon as I could talk, acted and told stories as soon as I knew the meaning of a lie. Nonetheless, it was piano that ignited my obsession. Although I’d taken dance lessons since the age of three, it wasn’t until I could interpret the music that my insatiable curiosity swelled. Dance lead to choirs, choirs to musicals, musicals to plays. Yes, I consider theatre an aspect of music. People create such music each day: new rhythms by the pattern of steps on the street, the syncopated banter among friends, the fortissimo chaos of brassy traffic.

The natural course of action would be to quit piano once I began to love choir, quit choir after discovering musicals, and quit musicals after discovering plays. Needless to say, this is not my case. Sophomore year, I became the student conductor for my school, in addition to performing in the dance company, continuing piano, and performing in the musical. I am still the student conductor, but I have, since, composed a French choral piece for our choir, joined show choir, orchestra, and dance theatre, have directed a musical (The Last Five Years) and am currently assistant directing The Man Who Came to Dinner while choreographing two pieces for the dance company.

And don’t you dare think I’m about to slow down. I refuse to select one passion and eliminate all others at age eighteen. Instead, I pursue them all with a hearty amount of gusto and curiosity, and a dose of patience and persistence. My life is so heavily enriched by all of these romances that I often myself thinking in narrative—where even the most mundane tasks merit full-scale film scores and majestic sets.

The world, to me, is a symphony—lovingly and impeccably sculpted by others older and smarter than I am. But I am its conductor, its Kwamé Ryan—capable of choreographing others’ work the way I please—scherzo to quicken the heart rate, andante to appreciate the moment, fermata for the revelations and awakenings.

I’m not done yet. I’m already anticipating tomorrow, and I’m anxiously awaiting next fall: a new symphony hall, greater stakes, a larger audience.

Ladies and Gentlemen, please take your seats.