Blue Stockings at The Globe

from here

Suddenly you find yourself

Inside The Globe! 

The detailed recreation

Of what once was 

Shakespeare's playground

There is a feeling of exhilaration

The theatre has been beautifully re-created
The whole thing is utterly stunning
The grand columns
The box seats

The wide open space on the floor for 

The "Groundlings" 

The long and narrow thrust stage

Cutting through the middle 

The floor is concrete

You try to imagine layers of straw and dust and dirt and grime

At the apex of the stage
A balcony,

Its windows closed for now
It seems Juliet could fling them open and lean over the railing and "ah me" at any moment

The boxes right above the stage with their richly coloured frescoes 

You can imagine royalty sitting there

Sitting to be seen 

Even from the position of the pleb

You really can see everybody 

The audience watching each other

Playing a game of being

The audience 

The way you see sky when you look directly up

There's something dramatic about Shakespeare and sky together

The sky is pale blue

Translucent thin whispy clouds
It's the end of the day
Mild, not too hot, not too cold

Tonight's play is called Blue Stockings

Rear centre stage a small drum kit and a music stand
A small balcony above, more music stands, a trumpet, lights for the musicians

(You forgive the modern intrusion)

The columns have been made to look like book shelves

The play is about the fight for women's access to college education

And the fight

At the end of the 19^thC

For the right for women attending college to graduate

There is something tongue-in-cheek

About a feminist play being produced

At the Globe

It is beautifully produced
It is refreshing to see a genuine issue discussed, dissected
The relevance of women's education
The prejudice we faced
Still face

Through the play we see their struggle

And sacrifice

And we are heart broken

It is easy for a modern day, predominantly white, presumably educated audience to laugh at history

“I can’t believe he just said that!!”

Chortle.

But in this year, the year 2013

University fees are so prohibitively expensive

Many will not be able to attend university at all

Last year a teenage girl was shot in the head

For daring to speak out and fight for her right

To an education

And even still, today, right now

Men continue to try and ultimately control women

Deny access to basic human rights

Blue Stockings offers no solutions

Only that we must go on

Must continue learning

For the sake of learning

To inspire great minds

To allow people to go out into the world and achieve their fullest potential

To understand and to dream

I am incredibly aware of the privilege

That has bought me to be standing in the middle of The Globe

One night at the end of summer

The fact that I am a university graduate

With two degrees to my name

The fact I got to go to school at all

Is a fight

That was won

Before I was born

But is still being fought

In a treacherous warzone

History and story-telling

The stories that have resonated throughout

The Globe

To demand an understanding of history

So that we may imagine

The meticulous re-construction

Of a better place

The end. 

And the Music Plays

by Woolley World

Year 5 or year 6

At school we learnt to play the recorder 

I loved learning an instrument

Loved learning to read music

Teaching myself out of a book

The logic of it making sense

The order of dots and lines

A kind of reading that translated into something heard

I wanted to play a “proper” instrument

Aware that the other kids had lessons

And instruments 

Later, year 8. 

Our music teacher took us into a room

Filled with instruments

Choose one 

She said 

I wasn’t drawn to percussion

Or strings 

(My sister had played violin

Popcorn and candy

The learnt sounds of experts

Betraying the difficulty of starting out) 

I could make a noise 

On all the wind instruments

I was worried about the reed instruments

They would require ongoing purchases 

You needed to prepare the reed so it didn’t crack

I felt it was a level of difficulty beyond me

But really

I chose the flute

Because it was the lightest instrument

Back then

I commuted to school

By bus and train

And was worried about schleping my instrument to school

Or being able to practise at home 

I hired the flute for six months 

Or a year

The way time and space merge

Become blurred in memory 

Then I moved schools

And my friend who also played the flute

Recommended her teacher 

And suddenly 

Some fourteen or fifteen years later 

I’m standing with three other flautists

And we’re playing a quartet 

Written by one of the players

And it feels strange 

And lovely

To be part of this

Shared knowledge

Understanding how the dots on the page

Correlate to the placement of fingertips 

To create synchronized sound

Started in another lifetime 

The end.

Mary Wollstonecraft

Mary Wollstonecraft, by John Opie

Mary Wollstonecraft
Wrote 'A Vindication on the Rights of Woman'
In 1792
And stated that
That the low status of women
And the way in which
Society, and women themselves,
Perceived women
As individuals, and as a sex,
As weak and inferior
Would be done away with
If women received a decent
Education

But today we find
In 2013
That even educated women
Are still relegated secondary status
Are still perceived as weak and inferior
Because the society in which we live
Says that women
Are mere sex objects
And things for looking upon

We live in a time where educated women
Choose
To be viewed and judged
By their looks and sexiness
Appear spread eagled and naked in magazines and videos and online
Use sex
As a way to pay for their education

We live in a time
Where even if you have a college degree
You have to stand up and say
No.
My body is my own
And not yours to oggle and coddle
Please listen to what I have to say
Not how I look as I say it

Where does this leave
A Vindication on the Rights of Woman?
Yes, we must educate girls and women
We must learn maths and science
And drama and music
And history and English
And languages and sport
We must be equipped with knowledge and skills
We must go out into the world

But we also must educate boys and men
To treat women with respect
To not fear women with power
To learn how to speak with women
(And about women)
With terminology that doesn't involve sex or beauty or derogatory statements

Women are still weak and inferior
Because the misogynistic system
That has been in place
For millenia
Has not yet been replaced
With a system
Of education
That teaches compassion, and respect, and humanity
Above looks and impressions and sex

So yes
Teach girls and women to be strong
But teach boys and men
To be okay with the shift
That says women are no longer inferior
But equal
That is the vindication I seek.

The end.

What do you do with a BA in English?

Sitting in my robes in Royal Festival Hall
Graduating with a Masters
I feel like I'm six years old playing make believe
The robe keeps slipping off my shoulders
The ridiculous hat keeps sliding down my forehead
It doesn't feel real
This past year. I still can't quite put it into words.

I thought that with my Masters
I would be amazing,
But I still don't feel like I am.
I still can't belt an E
I have worse stage fright now than when I started
I want to be brilliant yesterday
I want to be wonderful super fantastic coolness remarkable
Right now!
What does it mean exactly to "have potential"?
What do they see that I, still, after all this, can't access?

What do I want to be when I grow up?
I want to be Mary Poppins and Maureen Johnson and Miss Honey
I want to sing and dance and act and write
What I really want is to play roles I've written myself
Perform my own material
I want to travel
I want own my own house
I want to live in the same continent as my love
I want to sing and be able to write good music
I want the praise of my superiors and my cohort
I want to feel accepted
I want to be happy within myself and proud of my own achievements

What do you do with a BA in English (/History)?
You travel the world
You fall in love
You have visions of living in happily married bliss on the leafy north shore
And you have your heart broken
And you re-assess
And you say "fuck it".
And you leave everything you know and move to a whole other country
Where everything is the same but different
And you deny that you're experiencing culture shock because you are already
Widely Traveled
and Older than the average student
And have Life Experience

But really, you're still young
You're still at the beginning
Even though actually you're already part of the way
And actually,
No one knows what is next
No idea.
It's what makes people scared, greedy, snide, arrogant
Everything
Because none of us knows what is next
Yes we can dream, we can plan,
VITAL!
But actually, we have no idea
It doesn't scare me
(actually it does, but, in this moment, it's liberating)
I can do whatever I choose.

The Principal of the School at Graduation
Do something every day that scares you
Today, again, I choose to blaze a trail of my own
To remember to stop looking around me and totally freaking out that the other peoples paths look better or different to mine
In the words of Elle Woods
I've got to find my way 
In the words of Sondheim
It's our time, breathe it in, worlds to change and worlds to win

What do you do with a BA in English (/History)?
You get an MA in Music Theatre,
You take a deep breath
And -

Storm Time

from http://www.wfsb.com/ 

I love storms.

The smell,

The fizzle crackle in the air,

And the sound of rain.

But tonight I was nervous. 

Warnings of flash floods and tornadoes across the state,

And being a grown-up in a place of children,

I felt a responsibility. 

A couple of the campers I work with

Are afraid of storms,

And I came across one of my theatre babies

In the theatre,

Huddled over

Tense and barely breathing.

I sat with her,

Offered my hand

And she clasped it tight.

And every time the thunder roared

She held her breath and shivered.

We sat together,

And chatted through the storm.

I joked about singing My Favorite Things

It seemed appropriate. 

And we giggled at the thought of becoming the cliche. 

And to help her breathe

I told her breathing deeply would be like practicing diaphragm exercises. 

If she wanted to play Elphaba, she’d better get practicing. 

It made her laugh. She breathed, and trembled a little less with every thunder clap. 

The storm passed. 

I ended up sitting in the Music Shed with a couple of campers

And my friend with a beautiful wooden flute.

Occasional patters of rain danced across the roof.

My friend played his flute.

And I felt calm. 

And I felt that this is what being a grown-up must be like.

To be put your own fears aside

And help the smaller ones around you. 

The end. 

Getting to Know You

It's a very ancient saying
But a true and honest thought
That if you become a teacher
By your pupils you'll be taught 

I've learnt that in spades these past few weeks
Every moment of jaw tension
Every freak out at "not being able to"
Every moment of self-imposed fear
I see myself in my students
Understand what they're going through
It's exciting to watch them make progress
It's frustrating when they repeat the same mistakes over and over
It's wonderful when they have their own "ah ha!" moments
They lead me to my own

Getting to know you
I'm learning Me
Realizing everything my own teachers were drilling into me over the past year
The only thing holding me back is myself
How many times do I have to discover that?!
Again, and again, and again it seems

The strange relief of it.
It's not something I'm not getting
It's not something impossible and out of my reach
It's the voice in my own head that keeps saying
You can't, you can't, you can't because.
Because of X. Because of Y. Because of Z.
It's all the same.

Tell the voice it's not serving you right now.
Focus on the work.
Do the exercises.
And trust, trust, trust that you'll get there
Eventually.

The end.

July 4th

My friend Helene and I singing the Swedish frog song.
Photo by Rene Macioce. 

The camp where I work was founded by pacifists, people who had endured the horrors of Nazi Germany. Today our place of work is staffed by people from all over the world Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, Ireland, Scotland, Canada, Poland, Czech Republic, Sweden... As a result, we don't celebrate Independence Day, we celebrate Diversity Day. In the evening the international staff and international campers share their cultures, their music and stories and tidbits of information that make their cultures different to the American one. But even Diversity Day makes me uncomfortable. I feel anxious around displays of nationalism. And so, I wrote and shared the following. 

Diversity Day. I don’t care where you come from. 

Allow me to explain. I am Australian. I am Spanish. I am descendent from Filipinos, Dutch, and Polish. I have blood relatives in Spain, Switzerland, England, America, Canada, the Philippines, and Australia. I speak un pocito Español. I grew up in Sydney, approximately 10,000 miles from this place. Where I come from we wear thongs instead of flip flops, the forest is called the bush. We eat lollies and not candy, and wear singlets instead of tank tops. We say it is hot outside, and not it is hot out. I call my friends on a mobile not a cell, We don’t walk upside down. Nor do our toilet bowls flush in the opposite direction... I don’t think. I never rode a kangaroo to school. I never owned a pet koala. I never met Steve Irwin. 

I’m rather uncomfortable with declarations of nationalistic pride. I grew up in a country whose national day of pride is Anzac Day, which commemorates the landing of Australian and New Zealander troops on the shores of Galipoli, Turkey, and were subsequently slaughtered in their thousands. Now we’re friends with the Turkish, and we eat their delicious foods and every year thousands more Australians congregate at Galipoli to remember the fallen from nearly a hundred years before. 

I’m a raging pacifist. I don’t get war. I really don’t. Once upon a time the British fought the Americans. Then they decided to stop. Now they are allies. Now they laugh at each other from across the pond. Seventy years ago my country was shooting Turks, and Germans, and Italians. Seventy years later I grew up eating pita bread, pretzels, and pizza. When my grandparents were teenagers they were sheltering from Japanese bombs and fearing death. My grandmother now drives a Japanese car, we all eat sushi, and my class at school almost had more Japanese students than Australian. 

I don’t get displays of nationalistic pride. They make me uncomfortable. I’ve spent the last five years traveling the world. I’ve been to Spain, Portugal, Morocco, Germany, France, Switzerland, England, Wales, and the US of A. Now I may have only begun to scrape the surface of the metaphorical travel iceberg but here’s what I’ve discovered in my travels. No one place is better or worse than any other. America is no more the land of the free than Australia is the land of sunshine. In all those places I’ve seen people going about their daily lives. They wake up, they eat food, they go to the toilet, they spend the day making ends meet, if they’re lucky they’ll have time to play. At the end of the day they gather with their families and then they go to sleep. There are variations on this theme. Yes, many people have less other people. Yes, you have the occasional people that spend their days plotting the demise of other people who aren’t their people. But you know what? Most people just happened upon this here crazy planet, and they’re doing the best that they can.

Diversity Day. I don’t care where you come from. I care that you treat me decently just because. I care that I can be open to cultures and traditions and foods and that aren’t my own. It may be naive. It may be simplistic. But we’ve got to start somewhere. I hope you’ll care less where I come from. At the end of the day, let’s just exist on this planet together. Let’s draw on several thousand years of human history and share the foods that our ancestors ate. Let’s find a way to share life, liberty, and the pursuit of happyness in all its rich diversity. 

The end. 

Beyond My Wildest Dreams

There once was a little girl in Sydney

And she used to dance around the living room

And it never occurred to her that she wanted to do anything else but be an actress 

But other things got in the way

Like school and boys and 

Other People’s Expectations About What Is A Good and Proper Life 

And so the girl went on her way

And skipped through life

And soon found she was very sad

Because she wasn’t doing what her heart told her she needed to be doing 

And one day she said, “Ohmygod, enough!”

And she packed her bags and hopped on a plane

And found herself on the other side of the planet

And traveling in peak hour and crammed into the tube

With all the three piece suits and briefcases

And people commuting to offices

And the girl thought, 

“These poor unfortunate souls!”

How many of them get to do what she does everyday?

Run around a room and play games and sing songs 

And dance 

And Live The Dream 

Dear People! 

It’s okay to live your dream! 

Why hold onto those doubts all those worries?!

If I don’t I just know I’ll turn back

I must dream of the life I am seeking

I am seeking the courage I’ve lacked

The courage to live life without reliance 

Face my mistakes without defiance

Show them I’m worthy,

And while I show them

I’ll show me! 

Because it IS so exciting

To be out in the world to be free

My heart IS wildly rejoicing

There is nothing the matter with me! 

I made a choice to be happy 

To let go of the angst and the pain and the worry

And I made a choice to go out into the world

And do whatever it is I’m meant to be doing

And hey world, here I am. 

A little girl from Sydney living in London

Spending her days learning all things musical

And it is wonderful.

The end.