we are all magicians here

Heavens, the whole NIDA thing consumed how many months of my life and I just noticed that it's National Institute of Dramatic Art not National Institute of Dramatic Arts? Oh.... *cringe*

http://www.smh.com.au/news/Arts/Director-of-the-boards/2005/03/17/1110913718633.html
(read it read it read it)

Great article with one of the people I had the pleasure of interacting with, both at NIDA and outside of it, as he directed the production of Myth, Propaganda and Disaster I saw there. Amusingly, I ran over to see it after classes (they do an early Monday night pay-what-you-can) with Marinda, and then at intermission we look across the way and there's Aubrey with a waving-like-a-maniac Makiko (who he directed in Japan).

As my time at NIDA sort of receeds from the very very immediacy of everything I'm doing I'm continuing to realize two things, one of which I don't really know what to do with. The first is that -fuck- I sort of can't believe the who and the what and the how I got to interact with down there; the opportunities were huge, and I couldn't have possibly availed myself of them any more agressively than I did. The second is that I'm either not doing what I'm supposed to be doing up here, am not going about it in the right way, or, simply, am not supposed to be here. Pursuing an acting career in New York feels like war without strategy, and it's not stagnating my craft and creativity, but rolling me backwards down a hill of petty distraction and actorly dicksizing.

Maybe I'm still romanticizing Australia because I was only there for a month, and NIDA only made me truly insne for about two days (instead of all of the infamous year two). I know no place is easy or perfect, but I've spent my life thinking I was in perfect harmony with the way everything is done in New York, and I've woken up to discover that compatible neurosis and familiarity just aren't ever going to add up to either ease or the blinding wow, and truly, I am or should be clever enough to ferret out both for myself.

So the question isn't what the hell am I doing. The question is, alright, what the hell am I doing next?

short term fixes to a longer term problem

- stop being all *grab*grab*grab* must-have-a-new-project-every-month-at-any-cost
- focus on longer-term projects with development concerns -- making Cate's play happen (as it's an incredible showcase for me as an actor), my screenplay
- finally do the website Megan and I have been talking about since forever
- decide to audition for NIDA or not, doing a 2006 audition if I choose to (certainly, my age is a poor excuse not too -- I'm likely to live well into my 90s based on genetics, and I've plenty of time, as long as I never stop doing stuff)
- find a good audition class that isn't all Practical Aesthetics
- stop mocking myself about my directorial curiosity and really do what I need to, to figure out why my most satisfied moment of last nights show was standing in the back of the theater looking at the one scene I'm not on stage for, hands in my pockets and imaging other things/places/times and thinking "I made this".

- stop thinking about how many people I want to think about me how much, and start thinking about what it is I want them to say about me.

- it always seems to come back to a mostly unwritten project of mine (The Magician's Assistant), that I suspect will always remain that way, now that I realize it is the thread, metaphor and answer to nearly everything, not in my nature, but in my story.