Showman/Shaman - Actor's Way

The Citizen Actor's Year

nospam@example.com (Benjamin Lloyd) — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 14:21:00 -0800

I do not desire to prove anything. I do not wish to convince anyone of anything. This is only what I have come to believe. This is a choice I make.

As a Quaker, I listen. I listen to the sounds, and I listen to the quiet where I discern the rustle of God’s great robe. I am touched. I witness. I sense God everywhere: in the patterns of my life, in other people, in the music I listen to, in my students, in my family. But I must choose to be present, watch and listen, and I choose to give divine import to what I witness.

As an actor, I feel, move and speak. I reach across empty space towards other beating hearts. I move them and am moved by them. I serve the community I live in with my art. Each new role is the most important role I have ever played. Each new role is world premiere.

As a teacher, I walk the walk. I let my life speak, and I fill my students with hope and possibility, helping them find the necessary virtues in themselves to begin walking the beautiful and preposterous road of the American actor.

As a husband and a father, I am ever vigilant, never taking these three lives for granted, choosing again and again to be a loving presence in their lives, moving them always back to the center of everything.

As person in recovery, I am reminded that every day free from addiction is a gift and a miracle. I honor that miracle by taking care of that gift.

What I want is to change the world. When I am creative, I am closer to God, and when I am witnessed being closer to God, I am a minister, and when I am minister I am helping others get closer to God too. I have faith that when I am acting, teaching, worshiping and loving my family I am a minister and I am changing the world. I work on letting that be enough.

I cannot stop the war. But I can make people laugh. I can soften people’s hearts. I can bring people together where they can feel each other’s heat. I can give the young hope. I can raise strong and peaceful children. I can lift up an amazing woman. These are extraordinary powers. They are from God.

Here is a pattern I witness in my life: I am led by continuing revelation to explore new territories of Quaker worship. This leading is part of a larger whole, involving a love of youth, of the Society of Friends and of the divine mixture of actor and Quaker in my heart. I sense a chafing at our customs, and a need for new expressions. I am mindful of our traditions that lead us away from adherence to empty forms and rote rituals. I seek the courage to join others in choreographing Godly dances and composing new Spirit songs.

Another pattern: I sense a hunger in the artists I meet for a way to discover and embrace their own holiness away from conventional churches. And yet, I sense a slow growing closer together of my unconventional church – the Quakers – and our evangelical brethren.

And another: I begin in the middle and move to the outside looking in, yearning to be in the middle again. My life is an on-going movement from the center to the edge. Or maybe I am always at the edge, trying to pull the center towards me. In loving the eccentric, the anarchist, the prophet, the outcast, the maverick, I am loving this aspect of myself. It is an essential aspect, one I came in to the world with, and one that was groomed by the circumstances of my life: an only child of divorced parents, raised in a family that was never really mine. My transformation from defeated drunk to worker in the world was due in part to my decision not to be at war with this part of myself. I am no longer ashamed of who I am or where I’m from. This is huge.

My mother and father still continue to teach me: my mother about art, my father about family. I love and honor them. I witness them both in me in so many ways. I am glad I chose them.

And another: I mend the wounds of my real and imaginary exiles by burrowing into community and family. I am led to jump up and down like a silly cheerleader for both my communities – theatre and Quaker. I like to gently mingle those communities, it makes me happy. This is one of the things The Rooms taught me: let us love you until you can love yourself. I love you loving me, and I love me loving you back. I sense that my work is here where I live, and that in naming and celebrating that work – and the work of others here – I am breaking new ground.

And yet I have a strained relationship with institutions. I’m working on this, trying move from the edge a little bit back to the center, trying to ease my wounded suspicions.

Nowhere do I burrow more deeply than with my little family. In making them so very important to me, in choosing them over other things I might have done, I have missed some opportunities and compromised my professional possibilities. I now see this as an intentional choice, and when one of my children leaves their place at the table just so they can thrown themselves at me and hug me, saying I love you so much Daddy, I am certain of that choice. And when I am able step back from the chatter and the frustrations, and witness what my wife and I are doing in the world together, when we come together in embraces too deep for words, when I feel myself humbled by who she is and that she chose me, and that she keeps choosing me, I am certain of my choice. But I have to remind myself to pay attention. This is the only way to work through the doubts. When I pay attention, even in the darkest place, I can crawl back to gratitude. Then I can stand again.

Speaking of gratitude:

Three shows performed: eight total roles.

Forty or so meetings for worship. Ten to twelve meetings for theatre.

Two workshops created and offered: one on Quaker/actor creativity, one on teaching acting.

One book, one article, one pamphlet and two blogs published.

Four classes taught: one high school, two college, one adult.

Three workshops taken: Long Form Improv, Commedia, Psychodrama.

Two children raised: Griffen and Ella.

One wife loved: Susan.

And the water rises . . .

One car lost: Ellex (the Accord).

One car purchased: Little Blue (the Civic).

Song of the year: Speed of Sound, Coldplay. (Runners up: Clarity, John Mayer; Give up and let it go, Francis Dunnnery, Fix You, Coldplay)

One bridge mended.

And the water flows.

One father aided.

No toilets trained.

Birthdays celebrated.

Anniversaries squeezed in.

Important moments overlooked.

Mistakes made, apologies offered.

Moments of transcendent meaning seized and released.

Bitchy vendettas enacted.

Movements begun and left dangling.

I am the faucet . . .

Awesome circles of community created.

Whispers of quiet affirmation passed along.

Sleepless nights of anxiety passed through.

Doubt and despair wrestled with.

Doubt and despair vanquished quizzically.

Poems written and tears shed.

Gales of laughter.

Farts and awkwardness.

Faith considered and pursued.

God under all, through everything,

and I am the faucet

turn me on turn me on

be with me, be through me,

up from mother earth, Your water,

I am the faucet, you are the Source,

be through me, flowing,

running down streams,

filling ponds to drink from

and the heartbreak of emptiness everywhere,

filling us all to overflow,

so our waters mingle and roll

in great warm rivers,

one water

out -

out into the unfathomable sea.

On PYM Residential Yearly Meeting 2006

nospam@example.com (Benjamin Lloyd) — Thu, 27 Jul 2006 10:43:00 -0700

Residential Yearly Meeting, DeSales University, Allentown, 7/26 – 7/29

Residential Yearly Meeting is a time for the Quakers in my Yearly Meeting to make some decisions and also to mingle, to socialize, and maybe – though we don’t do this well yet – to plan for the future. I’m running two workshops and doing and Actor’s Way reading here, as well as just being a part of it all. It’s my first time, and what with going solo with kids (Sooz is locked into her teaching gig at People’s Light), it got off to a rocky start today.

It’s 10:30 p.m. and I’m sitting in a little prison cell of a room in a dorm at DeSales college, where Philadelphia Yearly Meeting is holding this year’s gathering. We arrived this afternoon, and Ella and Griffen are finally asleep in a bunk-bed next to me. DeSales is a small Catholic college buried in the corn fields around Allentown. The priests plunked down East German inspired brick housing units and classroom buildings in the midst of swaths of lawn the size of soccer pitches. In the sweltering summer heat, getting from one building to another feels like an act of contrition – but maybe that’s the point. Do you think I have a little thing about Catholic colleges? It might be a the framed pictures of sour old Jesuits which greeted me and my harried children when we arrived. Or maybe it was trying to make the beds with sheets that a) didn’t fit and b) slid all over the rubber mattresses the inmates sleep on here during the year. Or maybe they’re just worried about Quaker bed-wetters. After hours of driving, Griffen whining and Ella clinging like a barnacle, I freaked out. What a weird place to have a Quaker gathering. But I guess the price is right.

7/28

What a motley bunch we Quakers are. Aging hippies with pot bellies and stringy grey hair which needs a good shearing. New-agey pseudo wiccans with pentacle necklaces and extremely comfortable shoes. American Gothic types from the rural mid-state counties of Pennsylvania - the men in collarless shirts, suspenders and Captain Ahab beards, the women plump beneath blousy home-made dresses. And a wide assortment of urban and suburban liberals like me: slightly goofy looking and decidedly unstylish. Then there are the kids: gorgeous creatures in thrift shop fashion, some pierced, some dreadlocked, some eccentric to make a point, most just . . . casual.

The girls are interesting. They seem to have resisted the body image indoctrination so many young women are fall prey to. Some of these Quaker girls are - how shall I put this - healthy. They are zaftig, with roundness and substance. So many young women I meet in acting classes seem to be trying to imitate what they see in Gap ads and on sitcoms, all hip bones and insecurity. These young women are abundant and confident, and I really liked them.

Out of all these Friends something similar flows, something not sensed with sight. If you are fortunate enough to be present for our ministry, you will be able to discern God’s little joke at our visual expense. The contrast between the richness of our ministry and our homeliness – or is it simple beauty? - is God’s way of saying: it’s not the wrapping that matters, but the gift inside. And the unity we experience, even in our difficulties, seems so improbable given our various and scattered appearances. Here too God is saying: look, I can bind you together in love, no matter the color, no matter the style, no matter the persuasion. For you do not bind yourselves, but it is I sweeping through you and holding you which makes you brethren.

7/29

I read from Actor’s Way today for Quakers gathered here at Residential Yearly Meeting (RYM). I had a half an hour, and so chose one letter of Alice’s to read. It begins on page 43 of the book, and in it she covers a bunch of topics that I thought would give the small group gathered in the make-shift Quaker library here a taste of what I’m up to in it. I stood behind a small podium and read. About a paragraph or two in, I realized that I had never read Alice aloud before. Soon, I was overcome with emotion. A small wave of warm release crested and I had to stop, as my voice rose higher and higher, trying to keep ahead of the wave. I felt embarrassed, and I couldn’t look at the Friends in front me, witnessing. I kept reading, and when I got to the part where Alice describes her love for her dead father, I lost it a second time. Again, I paused, then forged ahead. When Alice describes her experience in meeting of witnessing the bird of many colors inside her, the wave crested a third time. Finally, I got to the end of the letter. I stated my own astonishment at being so emotional, then entertained some questions. I sold a few books, signed them, and left to meet up with Sooz, who was to whisk Ella away to the Cape. Sooz’s Dad has taken yet another downward turn.

Sitting in my cell writing, I think I know what happened. I think it was the fact of my reading Alice here, in the midst of my spiritual community of Quakers, and that Alice is a Quaker, and that I am to, that led to the Spirit spilling out of me in this way. I recognized that Alice is a tribute to the Way I have chosen, the Way these cheerful, motley Friends have shown me by word and deed. And so I felt such a deep connection to my witnesses today (Art Larrabee’s mother was there, an Alice archetype if there ever was one), that I was overcome.

RYM has been an eye-opening experience for me. I have felt a sense of spiritual community new to me, that I have been hungry for, that I have only begun to taste at my Monthly Meeting. RYM has widened my faith to include so many others, and deepened it by placing me in the midst of a collective seeking of spirit unlike any I have ever felt. There was an amazing speech by my friend Tom Gates, which dealt in detail about one of my concerns – vocal ministry in worship. There were new friends made over many meals in the big sunny dining hall (I’ve warmed up to this place a bit, though the sheets still SUCK). There was extraordinary ministry during business sessions, and delicate examples of the ineffable event we call “Quaker process”. There were suddenly intimate encounters with Friends which felt like small blasts of Spirit.

And I have watched my kids enjoy being here too – Griffen especially – who has bonded with other Quaker kids in a way that has made him seem suddenly grown up to me. He’s actually fallen in love for the first time with a girl named Moxie (how could he not?). Her parents and Sooz and I were in a birthing class together before Griff and Moxie were born, and now her Mom Christie is something of a Big Deal in our Yearly Meeting. When he isn’t with her, Griffen constantly asks me if we can go find Moxie so he can “chase her around”. You go, boy. Last night he said that if he didn’t marry her, he’d marry his friend Emma. I said it’s always good to have a Plan B, something my friend Annie Lamott taught me.

My fifteen minutes

nospam@example.com (Benjamin Lloyd) — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 19:12:00 -0700

The other Disney movie Ella is obsessed with – even more than Lion King – is Beauty and The Beast. This was not on my mind when I wrote the Spring integration, but the Spring integration was on mind the other day when I found myself alone with Ella for a few hours, and we played “Beauty and The Beast.”

I screwed up face and jutted my lower teeth out. I dropped my voice in to a raspy growl. I lumbered around like a giant ape, and all the while Ella played Belle. I tried to engineer the scenes so that, for some reason, Beast had to take a lot of naps. Ella liked this, because it allowed her to play out the “going to sleep” scenario with her on the powerful end, as the one putting some else to bed.

“Go to sleep now Beast. No crying.” she would tell me, before planting the world’s most tender little kiss on my lips. Within a minute she would wake me up. Some nap. I would pretend to cry.

“I’m hideous.”

“No, no Beast. You not hideous.” And she would kiss me some more. She pronounced “hideous” remarkably well for a three year old.

At least I’m not so hideous I can’t be on the radio. I had an interview about The Actor’s Way last Wednesday. It was for a local public radio show called “Radio Times”, which Susan and I listen to a lot. So when I showed up at the studio and was greeted by the host Marty Moss-Coane, I felt as though I was going to hang out with my cool aunt Marty in the radio station where she works and chat about some stuff we were both interested in.

I had spent the previous two weeks “rehearsing” this interview: playing out questions she might ask and answering them with glittering charm and intelligence, fielding awkward subjects (like alcoholism and tenure) with aplomb. But of course, Marty was way too sensitive to ask anything approaching an awkward question, and the questions she did ask were so germane to the book and my concerns, my effort was to pare down the 14 responses which lined up in front of me to the one or two which seemed most urgent. Marty asked questions about psychodrama and the wounded actor, about the criticism thread in the book and about what happens in acting classes. We got some call ins from all over. I left feeling kind of high from whole thing.

In the hallway afterwards, I had a comical talk with Marty’s producer, the red-haired Devora, about toilet training. It turns out she has kids about the age of mine, and had some good advice for Ella’s challenging relationship to her own poop.

“Have you tried just letting her sit in her shit for while?” she asked with charming bluntness. God I love strong women. I replied that Ella seemed to not mind that, or at least preferred it to sitting on the potty. “How about rewards?” she asked. “One piece of candy for just sitting, two for pee-pee, three for poop.”

Marty and Devora are a part of the community I serve. How I love my community.

The next day, The Crucible returned in the form of a horribly mishandled “evaluation” meeting at People’s Light. The issue at hand was my conduct in those difficult rehearsals of 2.2, in the jail, and my attachment to my initial vision of Hale the shattered man. Without getting into the whole thing, the meeting was based on second-hand information – essentially “he said, she said” stuff – and had the wounding quality of a reproach, although Abbey and Steve kept telling it wasn’t. I left feeling very hurt and confused, and resolved to go back to continue the conversation.

That night, Sooz left me and the ids to go to the Cape to be with her dad again. The end is near, I think, and death is like the haze of hot day in our lives, draping us in discomfort, blurring our vision slightly and making us want to just stay inside.

I took night off from child care top go see a festival of ten minute plays downtown, one of them by friend Michael and directed by my friend Joe, another featuring Jenny, one of our babysitters. It was a festival of the smaller companies in town, and it had the quality of a plate of hors d’oerves made by different kitchens. Some made you wanted another taste, others didn’t. One of my favorites was Heavy Metal Dance Fag, pt 2 – a riotous piece of physical theatre in which the title character did comical choreography to the likes of Guns ‘n Roses.

Then I went to a fundraiser for two local companies a The Khyber, a notorious local dive bar and music venue. There I got hang out with my “tribe”, seeing friends from the theater community who I had lost touch with, and just be a part of the merriment. To my shame, I smoked a few cigarettes that night, I strategy I frequently employ to make myself feel more “with it” when I go to bars, but, of course, don’t drink.

While there, I had my first fantasy-author moment. I was talking to a friend when a young girl, moving through the crowd at the bar, suddenly turned and stared at me.

“You’re Ben Lloyd aren’t you?” she asked. I said I was. “OhmiGod! You wrote The Actor’s Way! I’m only half way through and that book is changing my life!” I grabbed her hands and told her she had just made my whole night. She told me her name was Amanda, she was telling all her friends about the book and we talked about it for a while. You know that scene in The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, when the Grinch’s heart grows three sizes to big? Yeah. That was me. Now I have to make sure the same thing doesn’t happen to my head.

Looking for God in the Academy of Music

nospam@example.com (Benjamin Lloyd) — Mon, 17 Jul 2006 19:08:00 -0700

On the day of Sooz’s “day off”, Mom and I took the kids to see the Julie Taymore production of the musical The Lion King – a big Broadway tour in Philadelphia through September. We sat in the nose bleed seats in the Academy of Music, seats so high up in the air you can inspect the giant chandelier on it’s own level and experience vertigo if you lean forward too much. Still, we loved it, especially the actress playing the Baboon Rafiki, the choral dances and the African music. There was some astonishing mask work in it, and Taymore’s life-sized animal puppets are breath-taking. Griff kept turning to me and saying in a stage whisper, “This is awesome!” Ella sat on my lap a watched with great seriousness. She was, of course, used to the Disney DVD we play over and over at home, so she couldn’t quite reconcile what she was seeing a half a mile away down there on the stage with what she knew in her head. She got a bit restless in the second act, after getting jacked up on a box of Swedish Fish at intermission.

Truth be told, Mom and I both felt the second act doesn’t hold up well compared to the first. But three things are worth noting. I thought, do we come to the theatre to find what’s working in a play, or to note what isn’t? And as when I saw Spamalot, I found myself worrying about how these actors would react to The Actor’s Way if they ever chose to read it. The actor playing Poombah, the farting Warthog, was someone I acted with in Philly in 1995. I think he would have a dim view of my book. But I also noted that many in the cast thanked God in their bios. And thirdly, Sooz had charged Griff to look for God as he went about his day that day. “So Griff, “ I said at the end as the house lights rose, “do you see God anywhere?”

“Dad I don’t want to do that now!” he said sharply. And I hugged him.

The next day in meeting for worship, a woman rose and praised the great Mother, who dwells within and whose name has been forgotten. Time passed and then I felt as deep tremor inside me. I rose to speak.

I spoke about a letter an elder in my meeting had hand-delivered to my children at my home the past week:

Dear Griffen and Ella,

God speaks in the meeting. July the second, two thousand and six, God spoke in the soul of your father.

Benjamin Lloyd spoke those words to us and they lifted us out of our confusion and doubt.

Griffen heard them, Ella was not there.

Our hope is that he will write them in this letter, that someday you will know that what God spoke was truth.

It was a blessed experience.

Barbara, a thankful witness

What I spoke about then was the difference between knowing and believing. I said that knowing can be proved but believing doesn’t need to. Believing is for the believer, because he feels it makes him better. But last Sunday I spoke about how Griffen has always felt God to be a She. This was unprompted, and Sooz and I heard it first when the three of us were walking around a beautiful lake in New Hampshire. “Hey Griff, you see God anywhere?” I asked.

“Yep. There She is.” And he pointed to an old mossy stump.

In my ministry I described Griffen’s refusal to look for God at The Lion King, and my recognition that it takes effort, and that sometimes life is just to be enjoyed. But that as Quakers, we are called to seek God everyday, in everyone. And last Sunday I asked God for help, because I was struggling with my shadow, and I wanted to be a light, like God, because if you think about it, a light shining has no shadow.

Later that day, after a not-so-miserable meeting for business, Friend X and I helped each other with a small chore. Friend X has been at the nexus of my bad feelings about my meeting. But in this small act of collaboration, I felt a bridge begin to be built. She asked about Sooz’s Dad. We chatted.

Looking for God in everyone is hardest with those we are estranged from. But in those searches God’s miracles are most profound, and Her movement is smallest, so our attention must be sharpest. She will meet us half-way, and pull us over. But we must reach. We must reach.

Follow the Drinking Gourd

nospam@example.com (Benjamin Lloyd) — Sat, 20 May 2006 18:37:00 -0700

The light was shining brightly from the stage of the Heritage House Gym on Tuesday morning this week. Griff and his 16 classmates performed my adaptation of the story Follow the Drinking Gourd to a large audience of parents, students teachers and staff. They were marvelous. His kindergarten teacher embraced me after, tears streaming down her face: “I’m so amazed at what you got this group to do”. Griff’s class has been problematic. For a Quaker school which prides itself on peaceful interaction, Griff’s class has been, well, ornery. But in their excitement about and success with the play, I saw again the theatre’s vast potential for teaching things far beyond staging, projection and memorization. These kids learned to work together and cooperate, supporting each other even during the performance (“It’s the Barn now!” I heard them whisper to one another during a scene change). They each had a role, and each also brought to life inanimate objects, buildings, environments, bodies of water and the like through their work as an ensemble. They learned about giving and taking, listening, staying focused, and about working towards a goal while serving a higher purpose.

“Why are we telling this story?” I would ask them during rehearsals.

“Because slavery is evil!” one of them would invariably respond.

I did very little with them that I wouldn’t have done with a group of adult actors. We read the script. We tossed around ideas. We tried some out and kept the ones we liked best. They exhibited the same concerns about status and hierarchy as adult actors do, the same worries about the number of lines they have as opposed to so-and-so, the same anxieties about “getting it right”. They were similarly soothed when I said they didn’t need to fear my judgment. I occasionally intervened in crises and used my authority as director to steer the wayward boat. They rehearsed on book, then off book. Before they opened, I told them the show was theirs, not mine. Same process, different age. One variation I used with them though, was that we began each rehearsal sitting in a circle with moment of quiet. I wonder how that would go over with an adult cast. Here is an excerpt from the script, Griffen played James:

Georgiana: Grandma, I’m hungry.

Sarah: Me too!

James: Follow me into this forest.

The Grave Stones become pigs in the forest, snuffling and snorting.

Molly: Goodness! Look at all these pigs! (A Girl Farmer comes forward with bacon and corn bread.)

Girl Farmer: I have bacon and corn bread for my pigs. But you may have it if you’re hungry.

Georgiana: Are we ever! (The Family eats. The pigs look sad and walk away. They become a river. Peg Leg Joe comes forward.)

Peg Leg Joe: You’ve made it to the Ohio river. Get in my boat and I’ll row you across!

As they row across the river, all sing:

The river ends between two hills,
Follow the drinking gourd.
There’s another river on the other side,
Follow the drinking gourd.

3. The Barn

Ensemble makes barn with floorboards for Family to hide beneath. Master steps forward with Slave Catcher. Family is afraid of them.

Master: Slave catcher, my slaves went this way. Go get them back!

Slave Catcher: I’ll find them! (He begins to look for Family.)

Old Hattie: Oh Lord, what will we do now? (A Mom Farmer and a Dad Farmer come forward.)

Mom Farmer: Family, you have found the Underground Railroad! We hate slavery and we will hide you!

Slave Catcher: Who’s that talking!

Dad Farmer: Quick! Come and hide in our barn! (The Family and the Farmers go “into” the barn.)

***

I worked with this group of six and seven year olds for about a month, one to two hours per day, entirely as a volunteer. The head of the school liked it so much, we are doing it again for the Quaker retirement home down the road called the Quadrangle, the same place which served as inspiration for The Quad, Alice’s home in Actor’s Way.