Here is my Secret Dream of the moment. I don't do this so often because as soon as a Secret Dream is shared, it never happens and people raise eyebrows. But this one, well, if I want it to happen I have to tell people.
Next spring I want to direct David Auburn's Proof. I want it to be a small show, and I want it to come out way under budget. To do this, I need to find a stage manager, I need to find crew people, I need to submit all the forms convincing the producers I am worthy, and that a small show is worthy.
I don't think I could be thought of that way- too many people seem to have little use for most of what I say, but I want to be. I want to do something simple and beautiful, and I think that could be Proof.
Our next year's season is David Lindsey-Abaire's Wonder of the World, Our Town (need I even to say Thorton Wilder?), two one act operas, and In the Heart of America by Naomi Wallace. I would love to assistant direct or to be Jay's assistant for Wonder of the World. I probably ought to read the play and talk to him about that.
Speaking of reading plays, I am at the top of Jesus's Ladder of Literacy (patent pending) with a total of 16 plays. Friend Kym is right behind me with 14. The cutoff is April 22nd.
This summer I am considering working perhaps three jobs and taking two classes. I can work in the roadhouse theatre Box Office for better than minimum wage; I have an opportunity to be the publicist and Box Office Manager for the Youth Theatre for a month; and I may be able to get an internship with a few of the historical sites in the area. There is a summer playwrighting class I want to take, and to get financial aid I would only have to take one more three hour class, so I could get my science class out of the way in one month rather than a full term.
I need to stop thinking and take action. I read too many books about heedless girls who are forever being advised to think before they act or speak. Jo March, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Anne Shirley- today they would be the most popular for their impulses and manners, except for having too many morals.
One of the books that has most interested me recently is Bette Bao Lord's Spring Moon. Lord also wrote the children's book The Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson, which I read in fourth grade, but Spring Moon I read for the first time three years ago when I found out I was going to have a Chinese roommate and all I knew about Chinese history was from Pearl S. Buck and somehow I felt that to be not quite fair.
I cannot say that the book is my favourite, but it has a peculiar draw. It is as though I cannot look away from it. Lord has a talent for involving readers in a world with which they are not familiar. She uses descriptions of Chinese culture without explaining them, but I still seem to understand what she means.
I can't tell whether it's romanticised or not. Buck varnishes her subject because of her inability to thoroughly understand and the fact that she is communicating to an audience she does not want to understand, merely to pity. Lord, in a way, speaks from the other side of the Boxer Rebellion. She is not among the Harmonious Fists (such a better name than Boxer), but she knows where they come from. That's the tone of Spring Moon, do not pity, merely listen and try to understand.
But more than a review, I bring up the book because it speaks so often of the need to yield. It is a sentiment I have taken to heart, and yet realise that in this world I should not. This world seems to believe that everything is to be fought for. I take up the opposite because I fought for too long to no purpose. But the world wants me to ripple the pond again, should I dare?