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So, as I approach my 30th birthday, growing ever further from the "emerging" 16-25 year old artist category, but certainly not yet "established" at least by my definition of the word, I am at a loss for how to describe my position. It is funny that we see such a need to rank and label everyone and everything - emerging director, young theatre practitioner, veteran actor - as if the label somehow justifies what we do. Can't I just be an artist? A moderately successful artist? Does that work? It is hardly a selling feature to write on my next grant proposal. I can see it now - "Kendra isn't quite young, nor is she old. She has done some work, but not a ton. Truthfully, she lives a life of artistic moderation." Not really going to rake in the cash.

I don't know whether I really have anything to say about this, beyond what is above....what do you think? What do you call yourselves?

Also related to the birthday, I'll be travelling to Paris in a couple weeks to celebrate my 30th. I thought that given my proximity now, and the elegance that is added to any task by doing it in French, I would turn 30 en francais. It is better that way. I have not been before, and am looking forward to taking in Montmartre, the Seine and all the public gardens, along with some French Gothic architecture at Notre Dame. I also plan to make a pilgrimage to Montparnasse cemetery. Unlike those who visit the graves of more popular figures (Jim Morrison, Oscar Wilde, etc at Pere Lachase) I plan to visit with Ionesco, Beckett, and Sartre, 3 minds with whom I have been engaging over the past 6 years or so. I do love cemeteries, but have never been one to visit "famous" grave sites (although my toy poodle once peed on Louis Riel's grave in St Boniface) so this will be an interesting and unique day out. Also, I love the idea of creeping out my daughter with an afternoon in the cemetery. I am a nice parent.

Berthe - Michel Tremblay

This quick little play packs in a multitude of ideas in only a few short pages. Berthe is the ticket girl at a late night cinema, the play is her monologue on the state of her life, lost dreams, and confinement by expectation. She is literally confined within the ticket booth, however this booth is a metaphor for her stagnant existence and inability to realize the dreams she enacts so vividly through the play. Interrupted only by the monotonous droning of the doorman with the same words over and over, she wrestles with her status stuck in between expectation and disappointment.

A lovely short one-hander that really illustrates what happens to us when our dreams die.

Dionysus

Decided I would re-read Nietzsche's Birth Of Tragedy after sitting in one of our Theorizing classes and getting really angry about the reductionism of art to symbols. It all felt very scientific and Appolonian to me, so on my next bookstore trip I grabbed a copy. What really struck me with this read (the first time read not in relation to trying to write a paper) was the poetry of Nietzsche's language, the beauty of his text. And maybe it is because I now know the ending (I have read most of the rest of his work, including The Twilight of the Idols which re-thinks this text) but I could feel the argument leaning more toward the Dionysian than the Appolonian, though on the whole arguing for a balance.

I have to agree with this argument after sitting through classes on semiotics.....I feel like as soon as we reduce so much to only appearances and imbue meaning that way, we have lost the flow, the "Music" as Nietzsche puts it.

- art is the highest task and the proper metaphysical activity of this life (Wagner - foreword)
- mysterious union, after many long and precursory struggles, found glorious consummation in this child, - at once Antigone and Cassandra. (p13)
- only in so far as the genius in the act of artistic creation coalesces with this primordial artist of the world, does he catch sight of the eternal essence of art; for in this state he is, in a margelous manner, like the weird picture of the fairy-tale which can turn its eyes at will and behold itself; he is now at once subject and object, at once poet, actor and spectator. (p17)
- the true spectator, whoever he may be, must always remain conscious that he was viewing a work of art, and not an empirical reality. (p21)
- they have perceived, but it is irksome for them to act; for their actions cannot change the eternal nature of things (p23)
- nearly every age and stage of culture has at some time or other sought with deep irritation to free itself from the Greeks, because in their presence everything self-achieved, sincerely admired and apparently quite original, seemed suddenly to lose life and colour, to shrink to an abortive copy, even to caricature. (p52)
- In spite of fear and pity, we are the happy living beings, not as individual, but as the one living being, with whose creative joy we are united. (p60)
- and when were we in greater need of these highest of all teachers more than at present, when we are experiencing a rebirth of tragedy and are in danger alike of not knowing whence it comes and of being unable to make clear to ourselves whither it tends? (p73)
- however powerfully we are touched by fellow-suffering, it nevertheless delivers us in a manner from the primordial suffering of the world, just as the symbol-image of the myth delivers us from the immediate perception of the highest world-effusion of the unconscious will. (p79)

I am reminded that Nietzche's account is of the historical birth of tragedy, but the rebirth, after empirical objectivity killed tragedy through Socratism. Tragedy was ended by this, but must be re-born, as it is the other half of our understanding and experience as humans.

Luigi Pirandello - Absolutely! (perhaps)

Oh. My. Goodness. I loved this play. The conversation of the characters, fixated on the lives of others, caught up in meaningless obsession paralleled beautifully with today's celebrity obsession, despite the play being nearly 100 years old. I couldn't help but imagine ways to stage this, my mind was racing as I read the play. The character Laudisi was hilarious trying to help the townspeople see the absurdity of trying to pin down "truth". This play presents a great opportunity to explore the ideas of watching others, judgement, and truth-seeking in a theatrical experience. I want to do more with this.

Why don't I read more Pirandello?