For the past two days, it’s been in the mid-to-high fifties, and for the first time during winter since I can remember, the backs of my hands feel as smooth as my face, rather than cracked and dry and screaming for lotion. The sun has shown its pretty little head in Dublin, and since Irish air is clean air, soothing and moist, it feels good to breathe. The usual worry over nosebleeds is absent. My nasal passages are clear and thankful. Anyone with an hour or two to spare and any amount of common sense has spent their time outdoors, and I am no exception.
Yesterday, after meeting my playwriting professor for a late morning tea and a half-hour chat (similar to the Sarah Lawrence-friendly and -familiar conference, but every week), I grabbed a light lunch at Gruel, the soup and sandwich shop we met at, dropped my volunteer application off at Dublin International Film Festival headquarters, and headed to St. Stephen’s Green, the city’s scaled-down answer to Central Park. The early afternoon, it turned out, was a prime time for people-watching, eavesdropping, and doing all the writerly things I love to do, but have had to neglect due to other, more pressing academic commitments. A shame, really, because sometimes, such as on a day like yesterday, I’m reminded of why I love these little excursions into the public domain. Every city, it feels, has a rhythm to it. New York plays that game of hustle and flow, of stop and start, with speed and slow motion constantly tagging one another. Chicago is more at ease, aware of its breath, urban and raw but also consumed by that unmistakable Midwestern hospitality. It’s difficult to say what vibe Dublin gives off; I’ve been here for a little less than two weeks and have no desire to point fingers and ignorantly label. But what it felt like yesterday, at least, was calm. Happy. Resistant to the idea of taking anything for granted. Insert positive adjective or attribute here. The sun was out. Everyone seemed abuzz, with a smile on his or her face.
Everything felt just right, and I jotted down so many thoughts.
***Some St. Stephen’s Green photography, as well as from Trinity College, where I ventured after the park:
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the old library, home of the Book of Kells
statue of George Salmon, a mathematics professor and a chair in theology who, upon hearing that women were being considered for admittance into the college, said, "over my dead body"; on the day women were admitted, Salmon died of a heart attack
the arts center: kicking the ass of SLC's arts center tenfold***About halfway through playwriting class, Michael, my professor, decided we needed a change of scenery. We had just finished our discussion of two Stoppard one-acts,
After Magritte and
Dogg’s Hamlet, as well as acting exercises focusing on the economy of gesture and the idea of stage directions allowing, but also hindering, room for play. I cannot put into words how exciting it is to have a play, in essence, broken down into its barest parts, so that we might understand the how and why of what goes into the writing. It’s philosophical, really, forcing us also to think about things like inherence and representation. Last week, Michael used the example of the Eucharist to talk about the idea of theatre: transubstantiation is either believed on a literal level or on a metaphorical one, but no matter which, the belief leads to the same end of the road. Wanting us to discuss language acquisition, and language itself, and the proximity the playwright has to the control of language versus other elements of the play, but not wanting us to succumb to distraction, Michael led us back to Gruel, where he, once again, treated all six of us to tea, coffee, and, in the case of one of my classmates, hot chocolate.
Sitting in Gruel’s basement, a grotto of sorts, we riffed on just that, language, but also went back to the idea of stage directions, and what they, in the long run, mean. How do you use them to represent? How do you use them to tell the story? Are they guidelines for the people working on the play, or are they merely supplemental sentences to help the reader dissect the writing on a literary level? And then, the conversation shifted, and we began to talk about the danger of being the playwright, about when you lose control and how that affects you. These are all important things, and while I’m familiar with the concepts, I can’t say that up until this point, I’ve used my mind to delve into the meaning of everything. Because I haven’t. To claim so would be a lie. And this is why Michael is currently my new favorite person: he is challenging us to think. He is saying to us, Look, writing dialogue and coming up with plot and carrying that forward is all good and well, but this is a craft, so let’s allow our minds to soak up all the knowledge having to do with it. The craft as a thing to ponder—let’s pick at it until it bleeds.
Given that yesterday’s meeting revealed him as a person familiar with my background (his wife is from Evanston and he’s good friends with Jessica Thebus, thus he knows the ways and workings of the Piven Theatre Workshop, where I was trained and where I learned a good portion of what I now use today), I think Michael is going to be of the utmost help. I also cannot put into words how excited I am about starting something new, and coming home with a revised full-length play in my bag. It’s been a trying past few days (all my friends, most of whom are seniors, are back at school, and I’m not there to catch the last bouts of fun with them before they’re thrust out into the real world; this, I knew, would be hard), but I’m confident this will all have been worth it. The brief moments of melancholy are nothing compared to the prolonged periods of joy. And to even be able to say that is like falling into a fountain, swallowing its water, and inhaling all of the coins plucked from the pockets of the already-lucky.
