Othello Week 1!

View Idaho Shax Tour- Othello in a larger map









Think'st thou I'd make a life of ... Traveling?

Feb 22: BLUE W/DOT (BOISE AREA)
March 1: PINK
March 8: RED
March 15: YELLOW
March 22: GREEN
March 29: BLUE W/DOT
April 5: PURPLE
April 12: BLUE NO DOT
April 19: SKY BLUE NO DOT
April 26: SKY BLUE W/DOT

May 1: NY, Peru!!!!

Othello Rehearsals

1: Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms

Even though we are doing Othello out here in Idaho, I feel the life and growth of this show as if it were the subject of Jacques' Seven Ages of Man in As You Like It. Shakespeare said it a million times: "All the world's a stage..."--lest we forget that all the stages are worlds too!

Rehearsal is Born!

When I auditioned back in December for a non-equity part in Idaho Shakespeare's touring production of Othello, I knew working with Sara Bruner would be a privilege. But I was doubly graced to be directed by both Sara and Charlie Fee, the artistic director here at ISF. Working with them both has left me at ease and inspired!

Upstairs in the dance studio of Boise Contemporary Theatre, our cast is cheerfully ready (armed with dispensers, presses, and mugs of endless coffee) to "work" 6 hours a day, 6 days a week for 3 weeks.

Meet our cast on page 8, see rehearsal photos on p 16, and see me get stabbed on page 3 of our PDF study guide!


Blocking the play--the stop-and-go test of patience--has never been more enjoyable! Everyone is so professional, efficient, and creative. Everyone has a voice, and everyone is respectful and punctual... "how strange; how sweet! You conquered me!"



Fight rehearsals are fun! But Zephyr, Rod's puppy worries for our safety--err, um... Rod's ...


The set creeps in slowly and excitement builds. We are crawling and trying to stand. We get a sense of what the play might feel like to walk, but we still can't stand... and yet judging by our mewling and puking, I can already tell that we'll be great at running.

She hangs, and pulls.... Oh, Bianca!!!

Getting Lost and Slipping Side by Side

Haaaaaaa! Blahaghaghahgaghalreighakdhgeo!!!!! I am lost again! Whoosh! Packooooooooh! (explosion noise) Aaaaagh!

dust settles in four o'clock sunlight and then

Where am I?

Eyelashes bruise, bones crumple like foil. Coffee shop chatter drums in every pore, sirens bewail a thousand dying sighs. The world's present woe is dyed purple on this slide and magnified. And I am one email click away, one unfriendly glance, one lighthearted joke at my expense, one line note, one parental reprimand, one sweet memory, one tampon commercial, one Casablanca kiss away from tipping into tears.

Yes, it may be may be hormones. But I think, rather it is...

my GETTING-LOST-HIGH halting. Triggered, no doubt, by my parents leaving Boise today. Triggered, perhaps by our director's departure tomorrow-- who took a chance on a girl at a random New York audition--now onto her new adventure. Triggered, sure, by those I love whose pain I feel across the distance, not to mention the pain of distance. Triggered as time goes by--by the problems of three little people on TCM, kissing as if it were the last time--because they know it is.

By letting the wild and whirling moment subside into stillness.

Like Rick and Ilsa, I see a change is gonna come --not even a molehill of beans worth crying over yet little deaths that I feel as if they were my own, moments passing as if they were people or pets. Death, stillness slips me out of the moment. I will be living in it again soon, but for now--this very now--today, and perhaps just this minute--I am utterly and completely lost in all the cold and quiet mountains of beans in this crazy, dizzy world.

"Sit by my side and let the world slip. We shall ne'er be younger" (Shrew, Ind.2)

This Valentine's weekend, my parents came to Boise. We drove up to Bogus Basin and learned what it "might be like" to snowboard. We slipped and slid and bruised our bums. We laughed and ached and relished the speed and resistance of snow. We had no idea what to do but try, laugh, and fall. But best of all, by sharing this new period in my life, we created a new exciting, fleeting moment our lives. They experienced part of my life that no one but we will know and like skin growing over jointures, they are again part of my body.

Time is the MOST precious gift to give or be given--sharing time slipping; sharing places side by side.

"it stops me here; it is too much of joy" (Othello, 2.1.209)

Mourning for joy, for dying, for getting lost again (which is also to be found), for losing, for slipping--together and alone.

Boy Oh, Boise

"Sometimes a person has to go a very long distance out of his way
to come back a short distance correctly."
- Edward Albee

A map of Boise, Idaho is not going to show me this.

---------------

1/30/10, 3 a.m.: Astoria, NY. scraps of my life are shredded or stuffed into boxes, cases, and crates, then drawn and quartered, scattered across the Tri State area. The King of the city makes me a bloody, dismembered example to all others who to deign to leave these boroughs.

1/31/10, 4 p.m.: Boise airport- Katie, a sweet Juliet with big brown eyes that scan a sea of travelers holds a sign: IDAHO SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL. (this means me). I have a sign! I am sign worthy! And I get a green minivan...

2/1/10 6.30 a.m.: I wake up in the basement of a giant house in a mountainside just outside downtown Boise. The American Rocky Mountains yodel in silence, ever in my periphery. We meet the cast and crew of Shakespearience. ALL the people are friendly, creative, exuberant, and inspiring.

2/2/10 10 a.m.: We get down to business blocking the first 10 pages of Othello's one hour version. Our input is valued and molded. We are truly an ensemble. I join the YMCA for $20 and take yoga. "Artist" perks.

2/4/10: Happy birthday, Dad, Sue, and Kathleen! More blocking. More inspiration. More Yoga. More nightmares of being chopped up in my sleep. First paycheck! I am getting paid to read and examine the characters fleshed out with words that hang weights upon my tongue.

2/5/10, 6.30 p.m.: The mini van breaks down. Othello, Iago, Desdemona and Emilia see Albee's "At Home at the Zoo" at the Boise Contemporary Theatre, where we rehearse 10-4 six days a week. Jerry is riveting and when we finally find the strength to talk, we can't stop talking about him. We drink locally brewed beer and eat locally grown potatoes that become the diversely chopped fries before us. The restaurant has its own farm and granary --to make its own bread and raise its own meat; it infuses its own vodka and serves water in recycled wine bottles cut in half and sanded down. Idaho is more green than any other city I've known (besides, perhaps Vancouver).

2/6/10, 9.35 p.m.: Still thinking about Jerry and his crazy-cut digressions. Who convinced me a bike was an acceptable replacement for the minivan? Wheezing uphill unearths anger. I want to scream like Jerry at a park bench. It takes me longer to push the bike 4 miles back up Bogus Basin Road, back to the mountain cave dwellings where I hide and hope I am not chopped into Desdemonian "messes." Will I be smothered tonight by my racing heart? I push the bike "back home"--someone else's Home. The air, full of a clean Idaho scent is not mine. It is someone else's memory. Someone who leaves the doors unlocked. Is Jerry sane? What's the difference between drifters and dreamers? Is this a dream? Why can't I sleep? Where do I go "back" to?

If I burn the map, can I follow the ashes?