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I didn't grow up in the theater, but I did grow up in New York in a way that left me with a very particular theater education that either had thematic aspects remarkably relevant to the work I do now, or was just varied and odd and has stuck in my memory in a manner simply inevitable and obvious.
The first show I remember seeing is Camelot on Broadway. I remember Mordred sprawled on Arthur's throne; I remember, even then, Guinevere as the girl I would never be. I remember the great parting of Arthur and Lancelot, friends once, on the battle field. And I remember the call to the young page before the reprise, Run, boy. I was four, and men still wore tuxedos to the theater sometimes; I remember that too, all that covered flesh.
After, I remember seeing a number of classic musicals performed on stage by the union of my school and our brother school. My parents took me to these at five and six and seven: they were Brigadoon (and never will a version strike me as more sinister and compelling than that one; the movie always disappoints me for having less power in its darkness), Damn Yankees! and Annie Get Your Gun.
Later, there was 42nd Street -- I always talk about this: knowing David Merrick's daughter, Gower Champion dying, my parents giving me an autograph book -- but wow, Jerry Orbach effectively playing the metaphorical devil on naughty, bawdy, gaudy, sporty, Forty-Second Street! They show the footage sometimes on Great Performances. It may be on YouTube; if so, run, do not walk to check it out: Suddenly I was eight and wanted to be an understudy and always wondered why we never see the girl explicitly sell her soul. Or sell something. I knew things as a child, and when I didn't I made them up.
There was Cats and Les Miserables; my mother had a passing fannish friendship with Terrance Mann for a while because he pulled her up on stage when he was the Rum Tum Tugger, and it was him we saw on stage as Javert. At the stage door, he remembered us.
Sadly my parents refused to let me see Evita or Chess. Not for children, they said, when I felt like I had never known how to be one. Which is weird, because I was a really innocent kid in a lot of ways. Believed in Santa too long and all that.
But I also remember knowing Arthur and Lancelot's parting for what it was when I was four; and understanding that my music and dance and theater courses at school were meant to train appreciation, not performance. That the desire to show my talents on a stage was -- in the world of the class I was not but was educated for (Marry up, darlings, marry up!) -- was deeply uncouth. It's one reason why I went to the Martha Graham School as soon as I was old enough to be eligible; I needed to dance my wrath.
Dance was the first language I learnt to tell stories in. In dance I was not shy, nor in possession of an ungainly mouth. Where my tongue tripped, my feet did not, and I wrote the world.
Later, when my life was something such that dance was not the only thing I had, it was still recourse: dancing all night in clubs alone; spinning on the streets in the dark; casting an arm out behind me in a certain manner, when I could not find words for desire, longing, exile and loss. I studied ASL in college both because it was very useful living in DC, but also because it struck me as the body made text. If I am particularly distraught, I will sometimes switch to it, panicked and unable to vocalize, as if it is somehow a more polite version of my urge to dance.
I told my first stories with my body. Now I also happen to tell stories about the flesh. This is not merely a neat circle, but debt and trade. Martha Graham said it takes thirty years to make a dancer: ten to train, ten to perform, ten to teach. I apply this symmetry of gratitude to everything for which I can possibly find a way. She taught me circles. She taught me power. She taught me death.
And it may seem, on the surface, a long way from musical theater to Martha Graham and back again, but to me it is so simple, so true, it aches. For this is a map of apprenticeship and of desire. Of honoring the body through use, through worship, and through lament. And that I've grown up to love stories about actresses and write stories about whores is a simple mirroring of the symmetries and judgments of my childhood amongst Time Square's lowest buildings, the theaters of New York.
There is, in and adjacent to this tale, another set of circles about dance and story and also film. After all, my first credited role in a major motion picture was as a dancer. But that's another story for another time. And like this one, I'm still writing it.
[ Dogboy & Justine is a New York story, not just because of its setting, but because of the creative lives that myself and Treble Entendre co-founder![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mithrigil carved out of our childhoods adjacent to New York City.
If you enjoyed this post, please consider contributing to Dogboy & Justine's fundraising drive on Kickstart.com. We need to receive at least $6,000 in pledges by December 21st in order to receive funding. As of this writing, we're 38% of the way there. Without you, the audience -- whether that's here or in our future theater -- there is no show. You can help by contributing money, boosting the signal, or just hanging out here and joining the conversation. Thanks for reading! ]
The first show I remember seeing is Camelot on Broadway. I remember Mordred sprawled on Arthur's throne; I remember, even then, Guinevere as the girl I would never be. I remember the great parting of Arthur and Lancelot, friends once, on the battle field. And I remember the call to the young page before the reprise, Run, boy. I was four, and men still wore tuxedos to the theater sometimes; I remember that too, all that covered flesh.
After, I remember seeing a number of classic musicals performed on stage by the union of my school and our brother school. My parents took me to these at five and six and seven: they were Brigadoon (and never will a version strike me as more sinister and compelling than that one; the movie always disappoints me for having less power in its darkness), Damn Yankees! and Annie Get Your Gun.
Later, there was 42nd Street -- I always talk about this: knowing David Merrick's daughter, Gower Champion dying, my parents giving me an autograph book -- but wow, Jerry Orbach effectively playing the metaphorical devil on naughty, bawdy, gaudy, sporty, Forty-Second Street! They show the footage sometimes on Great Performances. It may be on YouTube; if so, run, do not walk to check it out: Suddenly I was eight and wanted to be an understudy and always wondered why we never see the girl explicitly sell her soul. Or sell something. I knew things as a child, and when I didn't I made them up.
There was Cats and Les Miserables; my mother had a passing fannish friendship with Terrance Mann for a while because he pulled her up on stage when he was the Rum Tum Tugger, and it was him we saw on stage as Javert. At the stage door, he remembered us.
Sadly my parents refused to let me see Evita or Chess. Not for children, they said, when I felt like I had never known how to be one. Which is weird, because I was a really innocent kid in a lot of ways. Believed in Santa too long and all that.
But I also remember knowing Arthur and Lancelot's parting for what it was when I was four; and understanding that my music and dance and theater courses at school were meant to train appreciation, not performance. That the desire to show my talents on a stage was -- in the world of the class I was not but was educated for (Marry up, darlings, marry up!) -- was deeply uncouth. It's one reason why I went to the Martha Graham School as soon as I was old enough to be eligible; I needed to dance my wrath.
Dance was the first language I learnt to tell stories in. In dance I was not shy, nor in possession of an ungainly mouth. Where my tongue tripped, my feet did not, and I wrote the world.
Later, when my life was something such that dance was not the only thing I had, it was still recourse: dancing all night in clubs alone; spinning on the streets in the dark; casting an arm out behind me in a certain manner, when I could not find words for desire, longing, exile and loss. I studied ASL in college both because it was very useful living in DC, but also because it struck me as the body made text. If I am particularly distraught, I will sometimes switch to it, panicked and unable to vocalize, as if it is somehow a more polite version of my urge to dance.
I told my first stories with my body. Now I also happen to tell stories about the flesh. This is not merely a neat circle, but debt and trade. Martha Graham said it takes thirty years to make a dancer: ten to train, ten to perform, ten to teach. I apply this symmetry of gratitude to everything for which I can possibly find a way. She taught me circles. She taught me power. She taught me death.
And it may seem, on the surface, a long way from musical theater to Martha Graham and back again, but to me it is so simple, so true, it aches. For this is a map of apprenticeship and of desire. Of honoring the body through use, through worship, and through lament. And that I've grown up to love stories about actresses and write stories about whores is a simple mirroring of the symmetries and judgments of my childhood amongst Time Square's lowest buildings, the theaters of New York.
There is, in and adjacent to this tale, another set of circles about dance and story and also film. After all, my first credited role in a major motion picture was as a dancer. But that's another story for another time. And like this one, I'm still writing it.
[ Dogboy & Justine is a New York story, not just because of its setting, but because of the creative lives that myself and Treble Entendre co-founder
mithrigil carved out of our childhoods adjacent to New York City. If you enjoyed this post, please consider contributing to Dogboy & Justine's fundraising drive on Kickstart.com. We need to receive at least $6,000 in pledges by December 21st in order to receive funding. As of this writing, we're 38% of the way there. Without you, the audience -- whether that's here or in our future theater -- there is no show. You can help by contributing money, boosting the signal, or just hanging out here and joining the conversation. Thanks for reading! ]
