#for most of elementary school i studied people's faces and workshopped my own by getting feedback from others and testing them in the field | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

theatredirectors · 7 years ago

Text

Brandon Woolf

Hometown?

Port Washington, NY

Where are you now?

Long Island City, Queens, NY (I recently moved back after living in Berlin for six years).

What's your current project?

There are a few things in process:

In 2017-18, I will be a fellow at LABA, the Laboratory for Jewish Culture at the 14th Street Y. The focus of this residency will be to create a new performance inspired by the five pages of the Babylonian Talmud that tackle the “Messiah.” Psychically stunted by the “what the fuck do we do now?” of our current (geo)political situation, it seems that many (or is it just me?) are hoping, waiting for messiah – in some form or other, religious or secular. Messiah, that mystical political force that will, should, must relieve the pressure of our current chaotic calamity. AND/OR: Messiah, that excuse to do (virtually) nothing while we wait. But what are we waiting for? What should we do while we wait? What beauty arises (or not) out of the ashes of destruction? It all sounds a little serious, no? I mean, is Rabbinic exegesis suitable fodder for performance? We’ll have to see; but it is clear that one major formal challenge of this performance-in-progress is to find the associational meeting points of Talmudic hermeneutics and its pop-cultural-analogues, scenic leanings, cartoonish moments, song-and-dance numbers, etc. The Talmudic text-fragment itself is so rich with dialogue, debate, parable, philosophical reflection, social commentary, apocalyptic conspiracy theory, etc. that it can’t help but provide an exceedingly rich archive of stimuli for a new work of devised performance.

For the last two years, I have also been developing The Summer Way, a new play created with my Berlin-based collaborator Maxwell Flaum. Sequestered in a Tony Soprano-style basement, ravaged by binge consumption of contemporary television and under threat of imminent drone strike, Torn (white) and Timbre (black) wrestle with major issues of the day in an attempt to make a broadcast that “speaks to people.” During the course of their mind-bending skirmishes, the two would-be media gurus come face-to-face with the “Golden Age” of TV in the form of a 1967 broadcast-battle-royale between Norman Mailer and Marshall McLuhan, which quantumly entangles itself into the fabric of their flagging podcast. Torn and Timbre must therefore reckon with a bygone era in the American media when public intellectuals, rock 'n' roll stars, and politicians were all go-go dancing in the same corporate miniskirt; a brazen and audacious time when white people could say just about anything, as long as it was entertaining. This descent into an older, black-and-white America on the brink of a personality crisis, leads to a host of questions Torn and Timbre must face up to: What is the role of the public intellectual in contemporary mainstream culture? And how do we effectively speak to each other without getting bowled over by technological feats of restive schizoid chatter at a Trumped-up time when people will say just about anything? We were Next Stage artists-in-residence at the Drama League with this piece in March 2017, and are currently in workshop to continue developing and refining both the text and the piece’s directorial vision.

A few other things are at the very beginning stages as well: a song-cycle about Black + Jewish relations (in collaboration with Stew) and an olfactory piece of “Culinary Theater” in the “outer” boroughs (in collaboration with Ben Gassman).

Why and how did you get into theatre?

Not sure I can precisely pinpoint one “how” or “why.” It is some mercurial admixture of that first role in the elementary school musical, working on weekends as a cashier at my stepdad’s record store smack in the middle of the theater district, high school and college theater-club-like-activities, and that stumble and fall head-over-heels into the theater and theory of Bertolt Brecht. It was with Brecht that all-things-theater first “really” clicked, and my life took a pretty dramatic turn. Fascinated by the power and the faith he found in the theater as a social practice, I co-founded two performance ensembles – first in Berkeley and then in Berlin. Between 2010 and 2014, Shake im Park Berlin, our playfully (ir)reverent take on the Papp model, created site-specific performances that drew thousands of audience members to Berlin’s Görlitzer Park in order to rethink its dynamic spaces as sites of multi-lingual and inter-cultural performance, (post)dramatic experimentation, and participatory art. Between 2009 and 2011, UCMeP engaged performance as a tactical means of “creative protest” and mobilization against the austerity measures that beset public education in California.

What is your directing dream project?

My mother served four years in federal prison between 2010 and 2014. During that time, we corresponded mainly by handwritten letter. During that time, we also lost our family home. I dream of (and hope I find the guts) to explore these writings as investigative fodder for a not-yet-existing performance work. I want to put these texts in conversation with related legal documents as well as Brecht’s classic Mother Courage. I want to (re)read his play with my own mother and other mothers I have met whose lives and homes have been (re)shaped by the prison-system and by various financial and housing “crises.” Together we would begin with the question: How might we collaboratively reconstruct tales of Mother Courage, who worked relentlessly to provide for her children by “living off” yet another 30 Years War – for American prosperity, which came to an abrupt close with the housing crisis of 2007?

What kind of theatre excites you?

I say something else about “excitement” and political/civic/social investment below, but from the perspective of the types of theater aesthetics that most excite me, I am drawn to theater practices and artists that/who embrace theater’s fundamental interdisciplinarity. I am deeply invested in modes of performance that de-hierarchize “the story” as the only mode of story-telling. Instead, I understand performance as a productive meeting point of multiple intelligences and media. Performance (through a park, within a protest, at a rehearsal, on a stage) provides an explosive site of parataxis: text and body and environment and music and… Of: simultaneity, dream-image, spectacle, hallucination, intimacy, immediacy, and collage. Of: pop-culture and obsolescence, real and play, aesthetics and ethics. The kinds of work(s) I am most excited about are those which strive to challenge our inherited assumptions: about agency, spectatorship, identity, and community. I am inspired by a theater of big ideas: curious, probing, intransigent (when necessary). I think the great power of performance lies in its capacity to promote and provoke controversy, critique, even discomfort and antagonism, just as much as it promotes and provokes exuberance, laughter, amusement, and joy. And I am deeply invested in the power of irreverence; but an irreverence that serves reverence in an effort to tease out – aesthetically and politically – intangible truths about belonging, collaboration, and civic responsibility.

What do you want to change about theatre today?

I don’t dare offer prescriptions because, after all, who am I? But here are a few hopes for and dreams about theater as a social practice that are important to me and which I am trying my best to make manifest in my own little way:

As a public laboratory of existential experiments, I believe theater is one of the most vital civic institutions we have. It helps us to reckon with the state of things as they’ve been, but also as they could be. Theater helps us – or even forces us – also to reckon with each other, in our similarity and difference, as a citizenry, and as a public.

I believe that theater makers have a unique opportunity to provoke us all – sometimes gently and sometimes not so gently – to reimagine just what “public” means.

I believe in theater as workshop, as process: never (quite) finished, always fleeting, exploratory, and improvisatory – and yet always also striving for formal precision.

I believe in the power of collaborative ensemble, of the embodied practices of mutual exploration, interdependence, and critical generosity that performance demands and facilitates.

I believe in a theater of desperation – a theater that demands we ask “why are we at the theater?” every time we walk through its doors.

I believe in a theater that demands we reckon with the question: what is essential about live performance – and what does it do that TV or cinema cannot?

What is your opinion on getting a directing MFA?

Since I don’t have an MFA, again, I won’t dare to offer an opinion. Instead of the MFA, I pursued a Ph.D. in Performance Studies from UC Berkeley. While this was a rather (or radically) different path, Performance Studies has helped me in so many ways to understand, clarify, and even experiment with the kind of theater maker I want to be. As an interdisciplinary field, Performance Studies has supported my diverse explorations into both the practice and theory of “performance” in its many incarnations. Performance Studies has also afforded me incredible opportunities to work across languages, cultures, and continents, across different communities of artists and thinkers, across different theater worlds and economies of art.

Who are your theatrical heroes?

An obviously impossible question. But I am teaching a course at NYU this semester on “Experiments in 20th Century Performance,” and here are some of the artists we’ll be spending time with: M. Duchamp, G. Stein, A. Artaud, J. Cage, M. Cunningham, A. Kaprow, Y. Ono, Y. Rainer, C. Schneemann, J. Malina & J. Beck, R. Schechner, S. Sanchez, E. Bullins, J. Grotowski, P. Bausch, T. Kantor, H. Müller, R. Wilson, E. LeCompte & S. Gray, and F. Castorf.

Any advice for directors just starting out?

Since I feel like I am still “starting out” in many ways, I can only say that, for me, to continue to believe in theater is to believe in the enduring persistence of radical possibility.

Plugs!

I’m teaching another course this term that takes us to see theater across NYC every Thursday evening. Here are some of the pieces we’ll be checking out. Maybe we’ll see you at the theater?!

A Doll’s House, Part 2, Groundhog Day, Hear Their There Here, 7 Pleasures, Sam’s Tea Shack, BLACKOUTS, The Siege, The Treasurer, Bronx Gothic, Miracle, Measure for Measure, 17c, The Fountainhead, Home, and Race Card.

There are more words, pictures, music, and video from me at: www.brandonwoolfperformance.com.

And if any of the above resonates with you, and you’re interested in talking further or collaborating on something, please do be in touch.

#Brandon Woolf #ask a director #theatre directors

1 note · View note

ladystylestores · 4 years ago

Text

U.K. Sanctions, Facebook, Jair Bolsonaro: Your Tuesday Briefing

(Want to get this briefing by email? Here’s the sign-up.)

Good morning.

We’re covering Britain’s new sanctions on human rights abuses, discrimination against Europe’s Roma and a revival of Italy’s pawnshops.

They are the first sanctions that Britain has imposed since leaving the European Union in January — a move officials hope will cast the country as a human rights defender.

Among the 47 people who face travel bans and frozen assets in Britain: Russians accused of having involvement in the death of Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, and Saudis accused of assassinating the Saudi columnist Jamal Khashoggi. The list did not include any Chinese officials.

What it means: Being blacklisted will probably not change the lives of those named and many are already blacklisted by the U.S. But sanctions are a weapon that Britain could use in the future on Chinese officials who are involved in Uighur internment or the crackdown on pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong.

Officials cite medical risks. But for many Roma, the lockdown exemplifies a centuries-old bigotry that has deepened in parts of Europe during the pandemic. Other places with similar caseloads in Bulgaria, they say, have not had such restrictions.

Quote of note: “It’s pure prejudice,” said Angel Iliev who tried to collect water at a spring beyond a checkpoint but was turned away by the police. “The discrimination was already bad, but now it’s even worse because of the pandemic.”

In other coronavirus news:

The U.S. is still in the pandemic’s first wave, its top infectious disease expert warned on Monday, with more than 250,000 new cases announced nationwide in the first five days of July alone. Deaths have surpassed 130,000.

Jair Bolsonaro, the Brazilian president and noted coronavirus skeptic, said Monday that he would take a new test for the virus after developing symptoms of Covid-19.

Israel closed bars, gyms and pools and curtailed gatherings as positive test results reached new heights.

New up-and-coming coronavirus tests, like the gene-editing tool Crispr, can spot the virus in less than an hour. But it will most likely be months before these tests hit clinics.

For millions of low-paid workers from Asia and Africa running Arab households, the pandemic has exacerbated the dangers of conditions that rights groups say can lead to exploitation and abuse.

The coronavirus is accelerating the shift to cashless transactions, with governments in India, Kenya, Sweden and other countries promoting digital payment for public health reasons.

Here are the latest coronavirus updates and maps of the outbreaks.

Facebook won’t turn over Hong Kong user data

Facebook and its messaging service WhatsApp will temporarily stop processing Hong Kong government requests for user data while it reviews the national security law imposed by China.

The company said it would consult human rights experts to assess the law. The decision is a rare questioning of Chinese policy by an American internet company, and targets the question of how the security law will apply online.

Telegram, another popular messaging app, said on Sunday that it would refuse requests from the Hong Kong authorities for user data until an international consensus was reached on the new law.

What’s next: Facebook’s move puts pressure on other tech giants, like Apple, Google and Twitter, to clarify how they will deal with the Hong Kong security law.

Related: Xu Zhangrun, a Chinese professor at the prestigious Tsinghua University, was arrested on Monday in Beijing — one of the few academics in China who have harshly criticized the ruling Communist Party.

Russia: A Russian military court on Monday convicted a freelance journalist on charges of “justifying terrorism” in a 2018 text critical of the security services. It tightened the screws on free speech, and even the Kremlin’s human rights council denounced the charges.

If you have 8 minutes, this is worth it

A pawnshop revival in Italy

Italians are turning to a safety net they have relied on for centuries through plagues, sieges, wars and downturns: putting up their valuables as collateral for loans. Pawnshops, above, an official part of the Italian banking system, saw activity increase from 20 to 30 percent immediately after the country’s lockdown because of the coronavirus.

“When things are going well, you can buy your stuff back,” said Claudio Lorenzo, who had pawned his and his wife’s wedding rings. “When things are going bad, you can’t.”

Snapshot: Above, a conductor on the Tshiuetin line, the first railroad in North America owned and operated by First Nations people, that runs through rural Quebec. Named after the Innu word for “wind of the north,” it is a symbol of reclamation.

Gentrification fight: When a developer tried to evict Nour Cash & Carry, a beloved grocer in south London, customers organized to save the store, saying its fate symbolized broader changes in the lower-income neighborhood.

What we’re listening to: The “Floodlines” podcast from The Atlantic about Hurricane Katrina. It “traces the racism-driven response to the Big One with the clarity of 15 years of hindsight,” writes Shaila Dewan, a national reporter and editor covering criminal justice issues.

Now, a break from the news

Cook: This mayo-marinated chicken with chimichurri is perfect for cooking on the grill or in a cast-iron skillet indoors.

Watch: “Grand Designs” is a bit like “The Great British Baking Show,” but in this series, the goal is to build dream homes, not frangipani and iced buns. It’s also deeply human.

Read: “Too Much and Never Enough,” an exposé about President Trump written by his niece, and a memoir from the poet Natasha Trethewey are among the 16 books to watch for in July.

Staying safe at home is easier when you have plenty of things to read, cook, watch and do. At Home has our full collection of ideas.

And now for the Back Story on …

Teaching about racism

Jane Elliott, now 87, came up with a lesson in 1968 to force children to experience prejudice firsthand. She split up her class into two groups based on an arbitrary characteristic: eye color. Those with blue eyes were superior to those with brown eyes, and were entitled to perks, like more recess time and access to the water fountain. Quickly, the children turned on one another. She reversed the roles and saw the same thing.

The anti-racism educator spoke with our In Her Words newsletter about how things have and have not evolved since 1968.

For the past few decades, you’ve been giving anti-racism lectures and workshops around the country. Have you noticed a shift in how they have been received?

I’ve been doing the exercise with adults for about 35 years. But in the last few years, I’ve only been doing speeches about it because we now live in a situation where people turn off immediately if they think they’re going to learn something counter to their beliefs, and I don’t want to be threatened with death anymore. I’m tired of receiving death threats.

Where did you grow up, and when did you come to truly understand the problem of racism in this country?

I was raised on a farm in northeast Iowa. When I went to school, I started to learn the standard elementary curriculum, which is that white men did all the inventing and discovering and civilizing.

Then I went to college, and in my first social studies education class, the white professor stood up in front of that group of students and said, “When you get into the classroom, you must not teach in opposition to local mores.”

A lot of white people are trying to reassess their own biases. Based on the work you’ve done, what can white people do to actually help in this moment?

First of all, you have to realize what I do isn’t hard work. What Black people do is hard work. I get paid for the work that I do.

And second, white people need to stop referring to themselves as “allies” — as if we can make it all right. They need to educate away the ignorance that was poured into them when they were in school and realize that they are the reason everyone is so angry.

That’s it for this briefing. Tips I needed for keeping good habits post-lockdown. See you tomorrow.

— Isabella

Thank you Theodore Kim and Jahaan Singh provided the break from the news. You can reach the team at [email protected].

P.S. • We’re listening to “The Daily.” Our latest episode is about new insights on how the virus takes hold in the body. • Here’s today’s Mini Crossword puzzle, and a clue: Guacamole ingredient (five letters). You can find all our puzzles here. • Kim Perry, who has worked on major digital initiatives in the Times newsroom, has been named director for international strategy and operations.

Source link

قالب وردپرس

from World Wide News https://ift.tt/38AwAla

#World Wide News

0 notes

how2to18 · 6 years ago

Link

CRABAPPLE, PRICKLY GOOSEBERRY, bittersweet, and devil’s walking stick — are these the names of thorny old monsters in some dark children’s fairy tale? Nope. They are simply the flora that vine the paths of the forests and hollers of the Smoky Mountains. A brave five-year-old girl named Ernestine must journey through these persnickety snatchers in the early morning shadows in order to deliver mason jars full of fresh milk to the neighbors who live far away. It is 1942, and the husbands are away at war. The wives and mothers run the farms, raise the children, milk the cows. These country neighbors take care of one another in their time of need.

This is the framework for Kerry Madden-Lunsford’s Ernestine’s Milky Way, an achingly poignant tale of independence, resourcefulness, and good old-fashioned neighboring as seen through the eyes of a strong-willed little girl in the wartime South. The illustrations, by Emily Sutton, brush the pages like the powdered wings of butterflies. There are sturdy rock houses and old wooden fences, hand-sewn blankets and dusty banjos, everything surrounded by watercolor bursts of soft country colors — trees, leaves, grass, and plants. Flowers and vines are like their own characters. The facial expressions of the people make you ache for home. Any city-dwelling child is bound to look up at the parent, or teacher, or sibling, or babysitter reading them this story and ask, “Can we please go the woods tomorrow?”

I met Kerry Madden-Lunsford during my first MFA in Creative Writing Residency at Antioch University in Los Angeles. I was immediately drawn to her; she emanates a warm and welcoming vibe, with sparkling blue eyes and a wide, down-home smile. She dresses like a hippie teenager from the ’60s who has met her future self, an older, wiser earth-mother. Currently she directs the Creative Writing program at the University of Alabama-Birmingham, where she covers the desks and tables of her classrooms with books — dozens of picture books and chapter books, and middle-grade and YA, and, sprinkled in between, weathered copies of classics, like cherished relics from a magical library. Reminiscent of your favorite elementary school teacher, she actually writes out the lessons — infused with words of wisdom and anecdotes — in a comforting cursive on the board. She connects with everyone. She connects with their work. She was my first workshop leader, and her editorial letter about the 20 pages I had submitted told me everything I needed to know about her — namely, that she was a very old soul with a very young heart. You can sense this about her. You can feel it flowing from the pages of her books.

I recently visited Kerry at her home in the hills of Echo Park. We sat together over bagels and coffee with her husband Kiffen and their dazzling little dachshund, Olive, to talk about her latest release, the aforementioned Ernestine’s Milky Way, as well as her prior work.

She is the author of eight books, including the lauded Maggie Valley Trilogy set in the Smoky Mountains of Appalachia. The first in that series, Gentle’s Holler (2005), was a PEN USA finalist in Children’s Literature, and it’s easy to see why. The book shares some strands of Ernestine’s world as it explores the life of a 12-year-old girl and her adventures, with her eight brothers and sisters, in the Smoky Mountains in the early 1960s. It’s heartwarming and heartbreaking at once. Imagine a mash-up between A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and Coal Miner’s Daughter, and you’re nearly there. Mountain country folk ridden with worries about money and bellies swollen from hunger are the characters that anchor Madden-Lunsford’s work. But the families in her stories rely on mutual affection and a resourcefulness that flows like pure mountain spring water to get them through the rough times.

Her December 2018 essay in the Los Angeles Times, “The Christmas Suit,” is a blistering meditation on family addiction — a deeply caring mother’s despairing attempt to stave off the crippling inertia of frustrated emotion. It’s a different side of Kerry, a flip of the coin. It reveals something tender and truthful about a majority of authors who write picture books, middle-grade, and YA: that they are seasoned individuals whose brave flights of fancy trying to survive adult life are the pearls of wisdom hidden in the sealed-shut shells of books that celebrate innocence, or the end of it.

TIM CUMMINGS: Where did you grow up?

KERRY MADDEN-LUNSFORD: That is a complicated question, though it shouldn’t be. The short answer is that I grew up the daughter of a college football coach, and we moved all the time. For years I said that I lived in 12 states, but my daughter, Norah, reminded me that it’s actually been 13 states. Alabama is lucky number 13. I used to remember all the states by mascots and teams rather than towns. My father’s first coaching job was for Father Lopez’s Green Wave (High School). He married my mother in between football and basketball season.

He was both the coach for both outfits, so he had the basketball season printed on the wedding napkins to build up team support. “Follow Janis and Joe on the Green Wave.” Always the coach, he informed the principal, Sister Annunciata, that the school dance should be held in the library, so the students wouldn’t mess up his gymnasium floor in fancy shoes. He only told me this story a few weeks ago or it would have been in Offsides, my first novel about growing up the daughter of a football coach. Sister Annunciata shut that suggestion down flat, and the dance was held in the gym. I asked him if he chaperoned, and he said, “Hell, no.”

Because some people are going to think that I am the daughter of John Madden, which I am most definitely not, I finally had to write an essay called “I Am Not John Madden’s Daughter.” My father has recently been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s dementia and he sometimes wakes up from naps, talking old football plays or what defense he ran at the Sugar Bowl in 1977 as the defensive coordinator. He did this while we were in Rome a year ago, and my mother said, “Snap out of it! You’re in Rome!”

How did you come to writing?

I’ve told this story once or twice, but I really do credit my fourth-grade teacher, who told me I was a good writer. It was the first time a teacher ever said any such thing. They usually said, “Aren’t you a nice tall girl who listens well?” They said this because I was shy. So it was a relief when a teacher noticed more than height or shyness. That day, I walked around my neighborhood of Ames, Iowa (Iowa State Cyclones), noticing everything, and wrote a story called “The Five Cents,” thinking it was about the “the five senses.” I never was a good speller. I remained a shy kid, and later some of the nuns began to suggest I might have a vocation to join the convent. I wrote about everything, but mostly I read — I read all the time and that absolutely formed me as a writer.

Who are your greatest influences?

My parents were great influences for humor and resilience, but I rebelled quietly because I was not a girly-girl or an athlete (unless field hockey in ninth grade counts, along with golfing on the boys’ team in high school), so I set out to find ways where I could create my own identity away from the gridiron.

I was definitely influenced (terrified) by Helen Keller and facing her fate when I had to get glasses in third grade. The doctor told my mother, “she’s blind without them,” to make a point. When I sobbed in my father’s arms about my horror of going blind (I think I also threw up in the bathroom), he shouted, “By God, nobody is going blind in this house!” I cried, “But how do you know?” “Because I said so!” It made no sense whatsoever, but I believed him.

I adored my babysitter, Ann Kramer, who was a wild tomboy in Ames, Iowa. I loved the coaches’ wives because they were such good storytellers. I was incredibly influenced by my first best friend, Pattie Murphy, in high school because she was so funny and irreverent, presenting a good girl persona to the powers-that-be and then whispering to me filthy things that were horrible and hilarious. We got caught cracking up laughing in the worst places — in class, at midnight Mass, on stage in Ten Little Indians. She was the first friend to make me laugh. We were miraculously “the new girls” at almost the same time in a school, Knox Catholic, where the kids had been together forever; even their parents and some grandparents had attended Knox Catholic.

I was very influenced by my Aunt Jeanne, who gave me books, and my Uncle Michael, who taught me about art. I lost them both to suicide when I was very young, and I wrote about them in Offsides as a way of atoning for not paying more attention. I wrote an essay about that this past summer.

I do think I was most influenced by getting to study abroad at Manchester University my junior year in college. A group of British drama students adopted me and showed me a whole world of art and theater, and I worshipped them for their hilarity and brilliance. I also had wonderful professors in England, who paid attention to me in ways I had never experienced during my first two years at the University of Tennessee. Plus, nobody in England cared if I went to church or watched football. They wanted me to write plays and “drop the grotty trade school occupation of journalism,” and I was very happy to oblige. I’m now writing a novel inspired by that time called Hop the Pond, which also has themes of addiction and features the Brontë sisters and their brother, Branwell.

When I returned to the University of Tennessee from Manchester, I often pretended to be a British exchange student (yes, I was insufferable because I couldn’t bear leaving England for Tennessee). I changed my major to theater, and I came to know my professors in Tennessee who taught us theater history, acting, directing. I was grateful for the encouragement and attention they gave me as a student (and a girl in the South) who wanted to write plays. The only contemporary playwright I knew of at that time was Beth Henley, and I hadn’t yet heard of Wendy Wasserstein.

Our theater department was still cranking out suggested scene study pairings of mostly Inge, Albee, and Williams, and maybe, once in a while, Lillian Hellman. I wanted to write plays, so I stayed in Knoxville after graduation and began an MFA in playwriting. I was the only student in the course at the time, but it gave me two years to learn to teach “Voice and Diction” and to write plays while working at a bookstore. Those two years in Knoxville influenced me because that is when I fell in love with Southern literature. I dropped the faux British accent, and my patient friends were grateful.

Finally, I think my greatest influence just happened this year. She is my cousin, Maureen Madden O’Sullivan — or, simply, Mo. We met for the very first time last May; her grandfather and my great-grandfather — Patrick and Joseph Madden — were brothers in Roscommon, Ireland. Mo and I have lived parallel lives in Los Angeles for 30 years, with many friends in common. She has been sober since 1982, and I have a family member who suffers from addiction, so she has taught me how to really let go — to breathe, to meditate, to eat better, to make gazpacho, to take walks by the sea. She also has stage-four cancer and is doing everything to live and take care of herself, from chemo to acupuncture to meditation to plant medicine to sound therapy to massage to simply taking joy in everything. She is the light of my life, and when I complain about us not meeting sooner, she says, “We met at the perfect time.” She is more evolved than I am.

I have gathered all the letters and texts we have written to each other since May in a compilation, and it’s currently 440 pages. It’s ridiculous, I know, and I don’t know what the project will be, but I am so grateful for Mo. I know I’m a mother, and I love being a mother, but around her I am not a mother. I’m just me again. A friend said I should call the book or whatever it’s going to be: 23 and Me and Mo.

Could you talk about your dual life as director of Creative Writing in Birmingham as well as a working author, teacher, and mother in Los Angeles?

I’ve been living this unplanned dual two-state life since 2009. I wrote an essay about making the decision to accept a tenure track teaching job in Birmingham, Alabama, and living on an air mattress for a while. I came alone the first year; the second year, my sixth-grade daughter, Norah, joined me and she was like a little cultural anthropologist. She came home from school the first day and said, “We played the name game and we had to say what we liked. And all the kids said they liked only Auburn or Alabama. I know they like their state and ‘auburn’ is a very pretty color, but what I am supposed to choose? When it was my turn, I said, ‘I’m Norah and I like books.’” I realized I had given the child no information about Alabama, so we had a crash course in football so she could catch up. Whenever I hinted at wanting to return to Los Angeles, she would say, “You can go be with Daddy. I like it here. I love it here. All my friends are here. Alabama is great!”

When I realized we were in it for the long haul, we got a rescue dog, Olive, who flies back and forth with me to Los Angeles. I had a terrible flight before we got Olive, awful soul-sucking turbulence, and Norah thought I was crying out “Hell Mary’s” instead of “Hail Mary’s.” After the trip, I vowed to drive or take the train, but it only took a four-day train ride from Los Angeles to Birmingham sitting up in coach class to get me back in the air. Then I got Olive. She has rescued me in countless ways every single day. And she truly is my emotional support animal on planes, along with the occasional emotional support Bloody Mary or glass of red wine.

I love my job as the director of Creative Writing at UAB. I love my students. I learn from them all the time. They come from all walks of life and many of them are first-generation college or they are returning to college later in life. I do miss living with my husband, who has four more years until he retires from LAUSD, but we get to spend summers and holidays together. We also cook and watch movies together. We do this by saying, “One-Two-Three — Go!” and then we hit play at the same time and mostly we’re in sync on Netflix. And because he is a wonderful man, he also goes to visit Mo, and we all have dinner and Skype together.

Our son is in Los Angeles, our middle daughter is in Chicago, and our youngest lives in the dorm at UAB. During the academic year, I live with Olive in what I call my “Alabama Retreat House.” Lots of sweet students and kind faculty drop by from time to time and other friends, too. Birmingham is such a cool city — a bright blue dot in a big red state. One of my L.A. friends visited, and she looked around the house and said, “You’ve created a little Echo Park in Birmingham.” I have filled the place with books and art from mostly “Studio by the Tracks,” where adults on the autism spectrum make art. Started by Ila Faye Miller in what used to be an old gas station, it’s a fantastic studio located in Fannie Flagg’s old neighborhood of Irondale.

I’m currently working on three novels — two are children’s books and one is for adults. I’ve adapted Offsides into a play, and I’m writing a little poetry and always picture books. I am thrilled that Ernestine’s Milky Way, written in this Alabama Retreat House and edited in a 1910 bungalow in Echo Park, has found a home at Schwartz & Wade.

What are your thoughts about the MFA Creative Writing programs these days?

I think they’re valuable because they allow students to find their people. I didn’t find my people in an MFA program, because I was the only student in my program at the time. However, I kind of made my own MFA with a writing group in Los Angeles — we met for 15 years, regularly. Those writers are still some of my dearest friends. I’ve also joined an online group of children’s picture book authors, who are brilliant, and a wonderful local group here of smart women writers. I find I need the feedback and connection with other writers — a kind of forest-for-the-trees thing with all the teaching I do. We also show up and support each other when our books come out.

That is the most valuable aspect to me of the MFA program — finding our people and getting to teach upon graduation. I feel incredibly fortunate to have taught in both a traditional BA and MA program here at UAB and a low-residency MFA program at Antioch University in Los Angeles.

What’s the most important thing you relay to your students?

I hope I encourage my students to trust themselves — to know that they do have a story to tell. I use play in the classroom (storyboarding and making book dummies) and I get them to take risks or chances with writing sparks, exploring narratives. I also talk about the importance of showing up for each other when success comes along. In other words, go to the reading, buy the book, go to the play — it’s such a long and lonely road to go alone, so I encourage them to cheer each other along the way and offer a hand. It’s so much better than being competitive and harboring jealousy.

Of course, it’s natural to feel envy, but I have been so fortunate to have friends who show up and are genuinely pleased, and I hope I do the same for them. I encourage my students to be good literary citizens and also to spend less time online. I offer the advice I need to listen to myself, especially when I fall into the online rabbit hole.

Can you tell us about your love of picture books and children’s literature?

I read to our three kids all the time. My son’s favorite book was Where the Wild Things Are. I even read that book last year to a group of incarcerated men at Donaldson Maximum Security Prison who had never been read aloud to before. I wrote an essay about that experience.

Anyway, I loved reading to our children when they were small, and my husband was a fantastic reader, too. I used to seek out books with great writing and stories. I hid the Berenstain Bears from the kids because I hated books where we had to learn a lesson. I never really thought of writing for kids because I was writing plays and novels for grown-ups. But I began falling in love with stories like Swamp Angel by Anne Isaacs, and anything by William Steig. The kids loved Chris Van Allsburg, as did I, and of course we loved Eric Carle, Margaret Wise Brown, Ruth Krauss, Roald Dahl, Ann Whitford Paul, Cynthia Voigt, Eve Bunting, Jacqueline Woodson, and Lane Smith’s The Happy Hocky Family. There are too many to begin to even name. One of their favorites was “What Luck A Duck” by Amy Goldman Koss, who later became a friend.

We read stacks of books, and as they grew older, they began to tell me what books to read. My son, Flannery, begged me to read The Giver and The Phantom Tollbooth. My daughter, Lucy, fell in love Laurie Halse Anderson’s book, Speak. She wasn’t a huge reader at the time, but she liked that book a lot and said after school one day, “Mom, I felt like reading it at the lunch-table with all my friends around. What it is up with that?”

I read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn out loud to them and we watched the movie together. Norah used to have a little shelf of books in the minivan, because she was terrified of finishing one and not having another at hand. She used to ask me, “Can I bring three books?” and I would say, “You may bring them, but I am not carrying them.” When we moved to a different house a few years ago, we donated 20 boxes of books and it still has not made a dent in all the books we have.

Tim Cummings holds an MFA from Antioch University Los Angeles. His recent work has appeared in F(r)iction, Lunch Ticket, Meow Meow Pow Pow, From Whispers to Roars, Critical Read, and LARB.

The post Echo Park in Birmingham: An Interview with Kerry Madden-Lunsford appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

from Los Angeles Review of Books https://ift.tt/2CMGjGb via IFTTT

#Blogger

0 notes

hellosaltysaladcollectionstuff · 6 years ago

Link

TIM CUMMINGS: Where did you grow up?

How did you come to writing?

Who are your greatest influences?

Could you talk about your dual life as director of Creative Writing in Birmingham as well as a working author, teacher, and mother in Los Angeles?

What are your thoughts about the MFA Creative Writing programs these days?

What’s the most important thing you relay to your students?

Can you tell us about your love of picture books and children’s literature?

Tim Cummings holds an MFA from Antioch University Los Angeles. His recent work has appeared in F(r)iction, Lunch Ticket, Meow Meow Pow Pow, From Whispers to Roars, Critical Read, and LARB.

The post Echo Park in Birmingham: An Interview with Kerry Madden-Lunsford appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

from Los Angeles Review of Books https://ift.tt/2CMGjGb

#Blogger

0 notes

ixvyupdates · 7 years ago

Text

The Racial Achievement Gap Can’t Be Fixed With a #BlackLivesMatter Sign in Your Yard

“How can I be sexist? I have a mother, a wife and daughters!”

If you’re a woman reading that sentence, you almost certainly won’t have a problem finding the flaw in its all-too-common reasoning.

There are plenty of men in the world who love their mothers, wives and daughters while sexually harassing their work colleagues or offering women lower pay than men. There are even more men in the world who love their mothers, wives and daughters and have no idea their female work colleagues are being harassed by the boss or getting paid much less than they are for similar responsibilities.

Yet, somehow, when someone makes the parallel argument about race, it gets harder for most White people to notice the false logic. “How can I be racist? I have a Black friend, Black co-worker, or Black spouse” does not seem to prompt counter-arguments as quickly.

Just like being anti-sexist, being anti-racist isn’t something you can prove by your own word. Nor can you prove your lack of racism and sexism by citing your relationships with people from other races or genders. In both situations, actions speak louder than words. It’s the data surrounding your actions—both quantitative and qualitative—that prove the truth of your claims. There are White folks who aren’t racist (Tim Wise, Jane Elliot, Dr. Robin D’Angelo, to name a few) but they didn’t become “not-racist” by declaring it so. It took lots and lots of personal, professional, scholarly and uncomfortable work.

The Gap Between Words and Actions

When it comes to equity in schooling, Oak Park, Illinois, offers an example of the gap between words and actions. Like other “liberal utopias,” Oak Parkers are proud to put up their “Dump Trump” and “Black Lives Matter” signs and fly their rainbow flags. But that inclusivity is only surface-level, while examining and eliminating racism, both institutional and individual, is a non-starter.

Racism isn’t something that can be fixed with a #BlackLivesMatter sign in your yard; eliminating racism requires a lot of work that most White liberal people aren’t willing to do. My case in point is the racial achievement gap in Oak Park’s District 97, which serves elementary students.

For many years, Oak Park District 97 has acknowledged that there is a racial achievement gap. However, most of the work towards closing the gap has been focused on “processing” workshops, focus groups and “diversity pods” that allow residents (mostly White liberal people) to express their feelings about racism.

They want a change, and they will say so. Yet, like other White liberals, their words don’t come with mandates to take a hard look at themselves—either individually or institutionally—to change practices that don’t promote equity and provide reparations for Black families that have experienced racism.

Facts Are Still Facts

This year a 40-point gap exists between Black and White students across the district. Though that’s an improvement over the past few years, the gap remains huge.

Oak Parkers tend to explain away the gap by saying it is a gap about differences in income, not race. They offer a simple formula:

race + low-income status = racial achievement gap.

But income does not explain everything. Harvard researcher Ron Ferguson once estimated that only about half of the Black-White achievement gap could be explained by differences in income.

While low-income students do face barriers to educational equity, there are also middle-class Black students who are experiencing barriers to equity in their educational experience. Oak Park is not alone in this. Researchers like Ferguson and John Ogbu have examined racial achievement gaps between middle-class White and Black students since the late 1980s.

While older research tended to focus on cultural and family differences, recent research is finally beginning to examine issues like teachers’ unconscious biases toward students who are different from them by race and gender.

Black students are falling behind in academically, not simply because of their socioeconomic status, but because of a combination of racist institutional policies set in place by district leadership and individual racist actions by teachers, staff and administrators. Racist actions may be overt and deliberate, but they are also much more likely to arise from implicit, unrecognized bias against people of color.

We Need to Call It When We See It and Fix It

It is important to me to use the word racism because that is what it is. In order for us to truly eradicate racism, we need to know it, we need to speak it, we need to call it when we see it, and we need to work on fixing it.

White fragility makes it difficult to discuss solutions to racism because of White people’s inability to name and identify their personal racism.

Factual examples of racism—both individual and institutional—in Oak Park District 97 include:

On average, Black students are 40 points behind White students in nearly every subject in every grade at every school.

According to the Illinois School Report Card, Oak Park 97’s teachers are 80 percent White and 76 percent female. Research finds that generally, White teachers are likely to hold implicit biases against Black students, and that low-income Black boys benefit most from exposure to same-race teachers. It closes “the belief gap” in expectations for their futures.

Data suggest there are inequities in discipline in Oak Park 97 schools. For example, at Julian Middle School, while overall rates of suspension were low, Black students were seven times more likely to be suspended than White students and Latinx students were 13 times more likely to be suspended than their White peers.

Research shows the established practice of admitting students to gifted programs based on teacher referral discriminates against children of color. Although there is currently discussion about changing the delivery of gifted education in Oak Park 97, changing how students are identified has not become a focus of discussion. Broward County, Florida, pioneered the use of universal screening to identify gifted children, and saw the percentages of Black and Hispanic students accessing services skyrocket. Florida’s Orange County followed suit in 2012. By changing how giftedness is identified, Oak Park 97 could do a much better job of finding and supporting gifted students of color. Eventually that could put an end to high school Advanced Placement classes with only one or two Black students, as is too often the case today in Oak Park River Forest High School.

Instead of asking what Black families and Black students are doing wrong, why aren’t we asking what White teachers and school administrators and district officials are doing wrong?

If we are serious about alleviating the racial achievement gap, we have to be serious about alleviating racism. Racism is not a personal moral failing—it is the consequence of living in a society that has been steeped in racism, and White Supremacy, for the last 300 years.

Being non-racist requires intensive study of institutional, historic, systemic racism and White privilege, and being able to identify personal (implicit and explicit) racial biases. It also entails examining the effect of different kinds of policies—such as teacher recommendations vs. universal screening for admission to gifted programs—and making the commitment to stick with policies that promote equity, even when they are more expensive or time-consuming.

It’s time to get serious about doing the hard work to shift implicit biases within White people’s minds and change racist policies in White institutions, especially public schools that educate children of color. If we don’t acknowledge, understand and work actively to eliminate racism, then we won’t be able to fix the racial achievement gap in schools.

Photo by Mike Maguire, CC-licensed.

The Racial Achievement Gap Can’t Be Fixed With a #BlackLivesMatter Sign in Your Yard syndicated from http://ift.tt/2i93Vhl

0 notes

netpeter1244-blog · 7 years ago

Text

How To Beginning A Business With educator

Turn Your instructor Into A High Executing Equipment.

Although you pay your goji cream ára standard real estate tax your property tax obligation expense may appear abnormally high particularly throughout this real estate crisis and also economic situation you could have a Unique and/or Straight Evaluation on your house. This teacher cover letter procedure is exceptionally effective and will certainly put you light years in advance of the competitors. The picture has evidently been removed from Miller's page, but John Hammond, Corrine's father, posted it on his page-- accompanied by a message that tore right into the educator for his activities. POSSIBLE NEW INSTRUCTORS - Get paid to teach while taking coursework to make your credential! Although, officially, schools have extremely inflexible code of conducts, in technique several educators find the trainees unrestrainable and also do not enforce discipline whatsoever. One typical issue instructors encounter is in taking care of the home visitor books, that is which books are currently on finance and to which trainees. It is not that the teacher has to understand everything on the face of this earth but, the moot factor is that, he must not bluff the youngsters into thinking that his expertise is definitely complete. Compared with employees in all professions, preschool and also elementary school instructors had a higher percentage of employees that came from a union in 2014. In senior high schools they will be educated by different subject experts each session during the week as well as may have ten or more different teachers. It holds true that piano educator software may be available in a wide array of attributes, types and structures. And also God Bless You Lady_E and also every educator that devotes themselves in ordering to help others. Although I am not a teacher by profession, I do educate trainees at my existing setting, as well as have educated in small doses and also workshops in the past. Teachers need to be careful when educating English to the students whose vernacular is various. You must see being a Sunday institution teacher as one of the greatest things you get to do each week. This will certainly not guarantee that you, your kid, or the instructors will certainly comprehend as well as develop your youngster's toughness. Obviously, the unfavorable instructors discovered every need to make the situation a failure. It is additionally one of one of the most undervalued factors in being an efficient instructor. Introductions from a teacher in South Africa and several thanks for the inspirational quotes.

Discover how to (Do) educator Like A Professional

Like all normal kids they vary from each other in regards to their age, character, capability and discovering nature and also this is why Unique Education and learning teachers are such an essential part of whole special education system. The more musical capability your teacher has, the much better their capacity to share their knowledge with you as well as reveal you to the music world correctly. I have no idea if the teacher was a Loafer (could not be bothered to follow his very own formula) or a Rambler (messy). I might distinguish the stares and rumors of me doing medicines that. commonly got back to me. Although I had my teaching qualifications: I began instructing with my Master of Arts in Teaching, something that some teachers did not have, however it did not appear to matter.

Now You Can Have The teacher Of Your Dreams-- Cheaper/Faster Than You Ever Envisioned.

The internet can be a teachers best and most convenient method to discover premium quality details, lesson plans, printables, coloring pages, craft/project concepts, teacher suggestions, the latest research study in the field and even forums if you have the moment to get involved. As instructors and also instructor instructors we know with mentor and observing lessons which do not reach their end, to puts it simply we or the instructor we are observing run out of time" prior to reaching the last one or two stages. The program does nothing to prepare would-be The golden state instructors to protect or KEEP a training task, all the while taking cash from the hopeful's paycheck (meager as it is, after the unions take their due as well). I likewise worked for several colleges as a field manager for pupil instructors. The faster pupils could start positive routines, the higher the opportunity that the instructor will certainly run an efficient class for the remainder of the year. Furthermore, all sorts of people intended to speak with me - out of all other days it needed to be that day - Murphy's Law was ending up being an idea, just a thought. You need to find an area that intrigues you one of the most and also sign up. Also if you cannot make a conference monthly, this will aid you start to see the input and also influence that teachers could carry educational program decisions. Fortune College of Education interns comprehend the level of dedication and also sacrifice that it takes to be a California school teacher in the most tough of setups.

0 notes

fundforteachers · 7 years ago

Photo

Silencing Students’ (and personal) Inner Critics

Kate More (Citizens of the World Charter Schools - Kansas City. MO) used her Fund for Teachers grant to explore at a Creativity Workshop in Reykjavik, Iceland, the concept of creativity. Her goal in attending was to support diverse thinkers and learners and implement strategies to help students, staff and the community hone creativity despite fear and discomfort. Along the way, she faced her own fear and discomfort, as well.

Iceland totally amazed me. I attended the Creativity Workshop in Reykjavik and had the opportunity to work with some of the greatest minds in education. We discussed obstacles and hurdles that keep us from stretching our students’ comfort zones in the classroom and how to pull beauty from chaos - which is a pretty good description of most classrooms now and then - chaos.

Like a lot of teachers, I have a side-hustle that keeps me busy after school. I have a small photography business that grew from taking family portraits of my low-income students who otherwise wouldn't have such memories captured. It just grew from there. Part of my own personal journey with this fellowship was to challenge my own notions of perfection and creativity in photography. It is the medium in which I feel I am the strongest, but also that which I am the most critical of myself. I had a tougher time with this than I thought. Iceland is full of ridiculously picture-esque vistas, and my inner critic was screaming much of the time: "Kate, you are not giving this justice. Way too over exposed. Crappy composition. You didn't bring a filter for long exposures at the waterfalls, are you kidding?"

I gave myself a pre-test of sorts when I arrived and again at the conclusion of my trip after attending the Creativity Conference. The biggest change I saw: I was noticing my critic and allowing that quiet voice to fade out to another ear. As an art teacher, I do not expect or want perfection from my students. A fantastic book called "Beautiful Oops" helps prove this point in my classroom: mistakes can create something amazing, something new, something we never knew was possible.

I realized I have to practice this same philosophy in my own artwork, despite carrying the "I'm an art teacher, therefore my artwork should be pristine" mindset. I am still working on this, as any habit takes time, but taking what I learned from the workshop to apply to my OWN work really set the concept and its significance into stone for me and jazzed me up for the new school year. And let's be honest, that is tough for everyone after two months of eating slow-cooked omelettes, going to the pool and watching Ellen :)

Check out Kate’s photography here.

I also learned a lot of small things by simply talking to locals and having the awesome opportunity to visit a family's home and dine with them and their children for a night. Here are a few big categories that resonated with me and make me want to return to this amazing country:

Iceland & Animals:

Bugs: Almost none. No mosquitoes. No ticks when hiking. No screens on windows. It's glorious.

Horses: Everywhere. And their hair is always photogenic and luscious in the crazy Iceland winds. They are used for farming, hobby, transportation and touring.

Sheep: This is a big industry here, both for wool and for meat. Farmers let them roam free all summer - truly all over. You see them in little families climbing mountains, drinking from glacier streams and hanging out by waterfalls. In the Fall, at least one farmer from each farm is required to help wrangle up all of the sheep to return them to their homes for the winter months. They are tagged, so after they are all herded, they are then sorted by farm. Horses are used most often, but some farmers now use drones so they can have more of an idea of where to put their herding efforts.

Puffins: Puffins are both beautiful and edible here. However, the country monitors these populations really closely with strict regulations. If there is ever a dip, hunting puffins becomes illegal nationwide until they return to a healthy population. Puffin is usually described as a gamey taste.

Miscellaneous Info I Learned and LOVED:

Mr. and Mrs. are just not used here. People refer to you by your first name if you are a friend, neighbor, teacher or even the Prime Minister.

Speaking of, the Prime Minister's address is well-known to the public, and it isn't uncommon to run into him at the grocery store, walking his dog or to just visit at his home.

When you have a baby here, mothers get 3 months guaranteed paid leave, fathers get 3 months, and the couple gets an additional 3 months to divide up to whoever needs it. We just had dinner with a local who has 7 weeks of vacation to burn in addition to his baby leave.

There is also a dating app to check if you are related to people in Iceland! Since the country's population is so small, if you meet someone at a party or a bar that you're interested in, you want to double check if you are related in any way before pursing them.

I would highly recommend the Creativity Conference to any teacher who feels stagnant or that they want to reach students who strive a little too hard for perfection or to the student who feels lost in numbers and reading does not come easily. This conference can be a benefit to all types of classrooms. And Iceland, of course. Definitely go, but go to Costco ahead of time to bring snacks because a cup of soup is $25.

Kate works in urban education in Kansas City, MO, where she teaches elementary art. Prior to teaching art, she taught English as a second language, writing and social studies at a dual language school. While born and raised in Wisconsin, Kate attended Iowa State University where she received a Bachelors of the Arts in Art and Deign with a minor in Spanish and Psychology. She received her Master's in Education from the University of Missouri St. Louis in 2015. She has 3 pet free frogs who are regulars in her classroom named Sam, Brown Sugar, and Reina.

#Fund for Teachers #FFTFellow #Iceland #Creativity #Creativity Workshop #photography #teaching #profdev #teacher grant #fellowship

0 notes

everydayinferno · 7 years ago

Text

Gabriel Interview: Lizz Hudman, Director

For one night only, Everyday Inferno Theatre Company presents Gabriel By Francesca Pazniokas Adapted from George Sand (a workshop performance)

What even is gender anyway? In Gabriel, playwright Francesca Pazniokas' updated interpretation of George Sand's classic play, a bright, perceptive teenager feels trapped in the confines of society's unyielding approach to gender. His family wants Gabriel to be one gender, while her lover wants Gabriel to be another. A rarely-produced romantic drama of misgendering, female repression, and discovery of personal identity, Gabriel is primed to speak to our modern world and current political climate.

McAlpin Hall, West Park Center 165 West 86th, NYC May 25th, 8:00pm Free / Suggested donation: $5 Space is limited, reserve your free seats

What made you interested in developing an adaptation of George Sand’s “Gabriel”? I first learned about Gabriel in an undergraduate course taught by Dr. David Powell about gender-bending in French literature and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. It is a play about a person who was born a woman but was told they were a man and now as a young adult they have to choose which gender they would like to identify with. Their family forced a gender upon them that was different from the one the midwife forced upon them at birth and none of those options seem to align with how Gabriel actually feels about their own gender, mostly due to the fact that most of Gabriel’s upbringing consisted of teaching them that women are terrible and inferior.

Simone de Beauvoir famously said, “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.” (which I believe is also a quote that I learned in that class). Additional quote: Amy Poehler says in her book Yes, Please, “It takes years as a woman to unlearn what you have been taught to be sorry for.” What these two quotes have in common is the idea that gender is something that is taught. After discovering the sex of one’s child, one must paint their room a certain color and buy a certain kind of toy for them and sign them up for certain kinds of activities; all these decisions are different based on which gender someone says this child is and almost none of them are rooted in any sort of fact except for “because that’s what you do.”

How do you see the director’s role in the development of an adaptation?When Gabriel was introduced to me in school, I was the only student in the class who was studying theatre at the time. Consequently, I was the only student to consistently point out why this play is impossible to put on a stage. George Sand was a brilliant novelist, but not a very practical playwright. The original text is full of impossibly long monologues, elaborately difficult scene changes, and a dog (named Mosca, who was actually used as a way to move the plot along). Though she tried and tried, this play was never produced in her lifetime because every theatre company rejected it due to its practical restrictions.

My job as a director and this production as a whole would be impossible without our brilliant playwright Francesca Pazniokas who took Sand’s fascinating characters and wrote them in a way that gives me something that is possible to stage.

I guess what I mean is my role as a director on this adaptation is to say, “this is why this story is important, these are the relationships that should be seen on stage, and these are the lessons the audience should learn from it.” Then I have an open discussion with Francesca and the rest of our creative team to figure out how we can make that work.

What questions would you like answered through this workshop? There are so many questions this story brings up: what is gender? Does gender really matter? Is it easier to be a man than a woman? Is the idea of “woman” something that society has made up? Is there really any measurable difference between being a woman or a man? How important is it to have a public identity? Is one’s own gender anyone else’s business? How much of one’s own personal life has to exist as public domain in order to be considered a human being? Is being forced to choose an identity simply a tragic component of becoming an adult? Why is it that becoming an adult can’t fix an unfavorable childhood?

Oh, you want answerable questions? The biggest question I want this workshop to answer is: Can it be possible to retain the beauty of Gabriel’s tragic journey without George Sand? Can this story have more impact on an audience than a reader? I believe that this story can be just as beautiful (maybe even more?) when it is performed live and this workshop exists for me and our team to measure exactly how to accomplish that.

Identity and people's perception of identity is one of the themes that binds the plays in our season. What does identity mean to you? One day in class, Dr. Powell called on me saying, “for example, Lizz, I noticed something interesting you wrote in your last paper.”

I, slightly panicking because I couldn’t remember anything I wrote in my last paper, responded with, “oh yeah?”

Dr. Powell says, “Yes, I noticed you spell your name with two z’s. Can you tell us why you do that?”

I proceed to tell everybody that when I was a child people mostly called me Elizabeth. Sometime in elementary school I decided I wanted to start going by Lizz and the first time I wrote it out on a piece of paper it simply looked better to me with two z’s. I didn’t mean to ruin his teaching moment by revealing the superficial origin story of my name, but I told him it really wasn’t a big deal.

“Ah but it is a big deal!” he says. He pointed out to me that that was the first time in my life that I, as a conscious being capable of rational thought, chose a piece of my personal identity and made it public.

Since then, I have been less shy about correcting people when they innocently spell my name wrong, but I can’t stop thinking about how life is made up of a series of those identity-building moments. For example, studying music and playing an instrument is a fact about one’s own personal identity; labelling oneself as a musician is an act of one choosing to turn that personal fact into a public identity. Believing in the equality of the genders is a fact about one’s own personal identity; labelling oneself as a Feminist is an act of one choosing to turn that personal fact into a public identity. Knowing that one is sexually and/or romantically attracted to more than one gender is a fact about one’s own personal identity; labelling oneself as Bisexual is an act of one choosing to turn that personal fact into a public identity. Feeling as though one is a woman is a fact about one’s own personal identity; labelling oneself as a cis-gendered female is an act of one choosing to turn that personal fact into a public identity.

Perception to me is fascinating because I live on that fence between “this is me loud and proud” and “this is none of your business go away.” But I can’t stop thinking about how every day you end up revealing a part of yourself to someone and then the parts you choose to reveal end up becoming your identity. Does your public identity really define who you are? *cue soundtrack to Disney’s Mulan

What current theatre artists are on your radar? What excites you about their work? I really need to jump on that Spicy Witch Productions train. Last year, their writer-in-residence Annette Storckman wrote an 80s slasher film version of Middleton’s The Revenger’s Tragedy called Bonesetter:A Tragislasher (directed by the always perfect Anaïs Koivisto) and I loved everything about it. I’m not being hyperbolic either; I loved everything about it.

I don’t know if I’ve ever told her this before, but Laura Hirschberg wrote the first Everyday Inferno play I ever saw (Heart of Oak) and I have been such a fan of her work ever since. Shameless plug: you should make plans to see Supertopia for free in the park this summer.

Go see Paula Vogel’s Indecent and Lynn Nottage’s Sweat on Broadway.

What do you wish the theatre had more of? Women.

What is the biggest challenge this piece has posed to you? The biggest challenge has been trying not to turn this into a capital T Transgender man’s story. It would be completely insensitive for me to ignore the parallels between Gabriel’s story and the struggles Transgender persons face, but it would be equally as insensitive for me, as a cis-gendered woman, to claim to know what those struggles are. It is easy for a modern reader to say, “oh so Gabriel is Transgender (or Gender Neutral or Gender Fluid or any of those other beautiful words that exist under the trans umbrella),” but I don’t believe that was Sand’s intention. Gabriel spends their entire life surrounded by people who are actively forcing a label on them and the one thing Gabriel wants is to not choose one. I don’t want to label Gabriel any more than they want to label themself.

There are themes in this play that I think every human being can relate to, but I am trying to take my queer hat off in order to approach it from a women’s studies perspective. I believe George Sand’s original text was meant as a way to illustrate the toxic results of the societal restrictions that exist within this binary gender system.

What about the play are you most excited to share with the public and why? All of it. In the majority of cases, this isn’t a play that anyone has ever heard of before and you can count on one hand how many times it has been produced. There aren’t that many heightened language plays written by women being performed these days, which is why I brought this play to Everyday Inferno, whom I know enjoy both heightened language and women. I want the public to develop an appreciation for historical female playwrights because they did exist, their stories are valid, and they deserve to be heard.

What do you hope the audience will be talking about after the showing?Grey areas. I love pointing out how uncomfortable people get when confronted with a question that doesn’t have a yes or no answer. Not everything fits into the world’s perfectly labeled boxes and I want the audience to talk about that and be ok with it.

What else are you working on/are excited about at the moment? Oh shameless plug time again? Ok well I’m in a band now. I’m the drummer for Crowd the Airwaves. You can google us and we’ll show up. We have a show happening at Arlene’s Grocery on June 7th. Like us on Facebook and stuff for more details.

Oh and check out the SheNYC Summer Theater Festival in July. It’s a festival dedicated to producing full-length plays, musicals, and adaptations written by women. You can find more info on the great shows in the festival this year at SheNYCarts.org and Facebook and things.

Lizz Hudman is a Company Collaborator with Everyday Inferno. Recent directing credits include Doppleganged and Alice Blue as part of If on a Winter's Night..., an all-female adaptation of Measure for Measure with WEBroadway's Women's Work Festival, Noteworthy: A Night of Female Songwriters, and assistant directing Everyday Inferno's The Roaring Girl.

#Gabriel #WhatEvenIsGenderAnyway #WomenInTheatre #EITC2017 #Perception #Identity #EverydayInferno #IndieTheatre #ItTakesAVillage #FreeTheatre #FreeNYC

0 notes

raystart · 7 years ago

Photo

Aoi Yamaguchi: Breaking From Tradition

Japan has five main islands, and Hokkaido is the northernmost island. It’s known for its distinctive four seasons, beautiful landscapes, snow-covered mountains, rolling hills, and huge farms boasting fine dairy and cheese. In comparison to Tokyo, Kyoto, and more central areas of Japan, Hokkaido has a slower pace of life. Japanese calligrapher Aoi Yamaguchi was born and raised in Hokkaido, and trained under renowned Master Zuiho Sato from age six to age 19. Her mother holds the Shihan level of mastery in calligraphy, which certifies her to teach, and was eager to expose Yamaguchi and her younger sister to the craft from an early age.

Yamaguchi’s father was a high school teacher, which required the family to move every two to three years for new teaching assignments. In all, Yamaguchi at tended three elementary schools and two high schools. Regardless of how far Yamaguchi’s family moved from Master Sato, they consistently made time to continue advancing her calligraphy skills. And when Yamaguchi attended four universities in California before graduating, her calligraphy practice was the one constant in her life.

Since she moved to California in 2004, Yamaguchi’s work has blended traditional art forms with modern aesthetics. She merges calligraphy with live visuals for music festivals and down runways at New York Fashion Week. Yamaguchi also teaches calligraphy workshops, creates conceptual calligraphy installations and exhibitions, mounts live performances, and takes on custom logo design and commissioned art works.

Yamaguchi launched her studio in Berkeley in 2010, thanks in part to receiving an O-1 visa, which is given to people who possess extraordinary ability: typically actors, athletes, and musicians – not calligraphers. Here, she discusses what it took to become a master calligrapher, how she collaborates in the live performances, and the ways in which calligraphy bridges languages and cultures.

Yamaguchi photographed in and around Berkeley, California.

What activities did you enjoy as a child? And, how did you begin studying calligraphy under Master Zuiho Sato at age six?

My parents didn’t allow us to play video games, so my sister and I spent a lot of time outdoors. Growing up, I enjoyed hiking in the mountains and wearing tall boots to walk in the river. I started skiing when I was three, and was an active child. I also enjoyed listening to music, dancing, drawing, writing short stories, and took piano lessons after school. When I was six years old, my mother enrolled me in Master Zuiho Sato’s calligraphy school. She had been practicing calligraphy since junior high school, as Japanese calligraphy is a mandatory class in the public school system. I didn’t know anything about calligraphy until then, but it was fun, and I picked up the skill quickly.

“Calligraphy is like karate – until you get the black belt, you have so many ranks to move through.”

Walk me through a typical day studying calligraphy with Master Sato. And how many times a week did you attend class?

I would attend elementary school until 3 p.m., then I go to calligraphy school on Wednesdays. Master Sato converted part of his home into a calligraphy school that could house 30 students. Class was held from 4 p.m. to 5 p.m., depending on the student. Each week, you were given one assignment. The textbook, which is provided by the International Calligraphy Association based in Sapporo, gives you a set of words, like spring or cat, and you write them in Japanese calligraphy. Master Sato would also write other words for you.

All of the kids would gather around the teacher to watch how he moved the brush. Then you’d go back to your seat at the long, wooden table to practice. When you felt confident about your work, you’d take it to the teacher for review. Based on Master Sato’s feedback, you’d go back to your seat and practice further. You would stay until you completed it correctly.

At the month’s end, you would choose your best work with Master Sato and submit it to the International Calligraphy Association. There are 30 or more master calligraphers, like jurors, and they review your work and decide if the student passes or not. In the calligraphy world, there’s a ranking system, and you go through a total of 14 levels throughout the year to see how far you can rise. If you achieve the highest rank six years in a row, you will be become a master student or student master. I received this title when I was 14. Calligraphy is like karate. Until you get the black belt, you have so many ranks to move through.

Thinking back to your six-year-old self, what did you enjoy most about studying calligraphy?

Studying calligraphy is really physical, and I was a perfectionist. I would look at my master’s work and try to write it exactly the same, following his brushstroke. My work wouldn’t come out the same, so I’d get frustrated. However, I’m really persistent, so I would strain my back over a sheet of paper, practicing for hours until I could write something nearly identical to my master. I found this process very meditative. To this day, I love the smell of the sumi ink.

Was there ever a moment when you wanted to quit pursuing calligraphy?

Never. I envision myself being really old, listening to the birds chirping, feeling the sun and wind on my face, and I’m quietly writing calligraphy. I know masters who are age 90, while others start in their 60s or 70s. It’s never too late to start, and you can always quit anytime.

What sacrifices have you made for the craft?

School and life could get busy, but my mother always tried to make time for me and my sister to practice calligraphy together. Although we moved frequently, I continued studying with the same teacher for 14 years. When we moved three hours away from Master Sato, we continued our studies remotely. This was definitely a special case. My mother would teach me how to write a word, and then I’d practice the word and send my work in an envelope to my master. He would correct my work, and send it back to me. Sometimes, my mom would drive me three hours for a private session, and then we’d drive home. Every month, I continued turning in my work to the International Calligraphy Association for review.

Of calligraphy, it’s been said that, “the brushstrokes cannot be corrected, and even a lack of confidence shows up in the work.” Can you talk about the art of trying to achieve perfection in calligraphy?

The calligraphy you work on is the mirror of the self, and your mental state or emotion appears in your work. First, you have to know the movement and remember what comes next. Where is the start? What comes next? And where does the character end? You have to practice until you don’t even think about it. But if you are thinking about other things, like, “Oh, I have to go to the grocery store” while you are writing calligraphy, that unstable mind state shows in your work. It’s hard work to make yourself fully present.

My process is to take a deep breath, meditate, and really focus on the present moment. I’ll just sit there and the only thing I’m doing is thinking about the meaning of the character, and envisioning what kind of strokes I need to write. If I’m writing the character for “ocean,” then I have to become the ocean. Then I see a gray shadowy line appear on the paper, and I trace this in the moment. My mind and body become a conductor of that vision.

How did it feel when you represented Japan at the Fourth Hokkaido Elementary and Junior High Students calligraphy exchange sessions at the Palace of Pupils in China?

I was 14 years old when I went to China as one of 30 master student calligraphers with the chairman of the International Calligraphy Association leading the troupe. It was a weeklong trip where we participated in a calligraphy session with local Chinese students. The session opened my eyes because I didn’t speak Mandarin, and I was paired with a Chinese student to exchange calligraphy work. I realized that beyond our language barrier, art could connect people, because just watching the way he wrote taught me a lot about his culture, his upbringing, how he perceived art, and how he perceived calligraphy.

After the trip, we kept in touch and tried to communicate, but didn’t have the language skills. This was a pivotal experience, and made me think, Wow! This is beautiful and what I want to do when I grow up–be a bridge between cultures, through the arts and through Japanese calligraphy, to transcend language and cultural barriers.

“The calligraphy you work on is the mirror of the self, and your mental state or emotion appears in your work.”

What brought you to California in 2004?

After I graduated from high school, I applied to universities in the United States with my parents’ blessings. I wanted to step outside of Japan to see my country from an outsider’s view, and experience a multicultural environment. I actually attended four different schools in California as I explored majors. I eventually graduated from San Francisco State University in 2009 with a Humanities degree with an emphasis on cross-cultural studies.

Beyond adjusting to university, what was your experience like getting used to life in the United States?

I definitely experienced culture shock. Japanese culture is very reserved and mindful toward others. We are community-oriented and try to harmonize with others. In contrast, America is really individualistic, so if you want something, you have to speak up. In Japan, I was a naive girl who didn’t know how to say no to things. And saying something really straightforward could be perceived as rude in Japan. However, in America you have to be straightforward; otherwise, people won’t understand you or they’ll think they can take advantage of you. I had to learn how to be vocal about my own thoughts and ideas.

Even though my English was strong before I came to America, deciphering California slang and body language was tricky, so it took a few years before I understood it. Thankfully, I love meeting people and pushed myself to make friends.

Throughout university, did you continue practicing calligraphy?

Yes! I always practiced calligraphy on my own and started doing Japanese calligraphy performance. I even organized a Japanese art collective in San Francisco, and we’d have 20 to 30 Japanese artists, designers, calligraphers, and filmmakers hold themed art shows at a gallery four times a year, in the spring, summer, fall, and winter.

Why are the seasons an important theme in calligraphy?

Japanese traditional art has always been inspired by the four seasons. Haikus often describe the beauty of seasonal changes. In springtime, the cherry blossoms are everywhere. In summertime, there will be lush greens, bright greens, and forest greens around. In fall, everything will be covered in yellow, orange, and red colors. And in winter, especially in Hokkaido, everything will be covered in white. As seasonal food changes, so does our lifestyle. There are many visual inspirations in nature that can be expressed in the arts. This is something that I strongly miss living in California, and I seek to share the core of Japanese spirituality and aesthetics with people here.

In recent years, you’ve merged your calligraphy with contemporary dancers, models, Japanese taiko drummers, and contemporary music producers. What has this process been like artistically?

Doing these shows with other people is a collaboration of different spirits and energies versus me sitting alone in my studio. When I’m alone, it’s all about listening to my internal voice. On the other hand, when I do shows with musicians and models, I’m taking different expressions and energies from my surroundings, and I connect that energy and use it as inspiration in my own work. For example, when I started putting calligraphy performance to music, it came naturally to me because when I write a character, I hear a rhythm with each stroke.

Starting from a harsh stroke to stroke one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, it is very musical to me. This breaks the very traditional, two-dimensional discipline of Japanese calligraphy, which is to write using the ink, and then write on paper. However, I wanted to go beyond that by collaborating with musicians, live music, taiko drums, or writing with models.

How would your performance calligraphy be viewed in Japan?

Any practitioner from a traditional art sphere wouldn’t call it blasphemy, but it’s kind of like you’re doing something that you’re not supposed to do in a traditional sense. For example, using colors or acrylic ink instead of using sumi ink when writing calligraphy could be seen as taboo. Or writing on a wooden panel instead of writing on paper. I questioned myself many times, and essentially came to the conclusion that I am who I am, and I’m here to express who I am and what I want to see. Also, living abroad gave me freedom to explore without thinking about how those traditional masters would view these collaborations.

Do you feel like audiences in the U.S. and around the world appreciate calligraphy?

I let audiences interpret calligraphy in their own way. Creating artwork is typically done behind the curtain, alone in the studio. You don’t get to see an artist’s process, and then when you go to museums and exhibitions, you see the finished work on the wall. Therefore, one of my intentions of doing performance calligraphy is to show the beauty and the art of the process itself. Japanese calligraphy is so connected to spirituality as well as how you prepare the ink, and even the moment you dip the brush into the ink. And the meditative moment that takes place before those five expressive seconds writing one character is the art itself, too, because everything contributes to the final work.

When you graduated from college in 2009, did you immediately start running your studio?

No. After graduation, I worked for an art gallery in San Francisco for a year while awaiting approval of my 0-1 visa [Individuals with Extraordinary Ability or Achievement visa]. It’s common for actors, photographers, musicians, professional athletes, and graphic designers to receive this, but less common for independent calligraphers. Americans are unfamiliar evaluating the value of calligraphy on society. However, I received many recommendation letters from Master Sato, teachers, and the chairman of the International Calligraphy Association.

With this amazing support, I was granted my 0-1 Artist’s visa, and launched my studio in 2010. The chairman of the International Calligraphy Association told me, “I’ve written recommendation letters for one of my students before who wanted to move to Europe to be an independent calligrapher, and they came back after a year. I see this glow around you, and you might be different.” His words of encouragement further fueled my fire.

“Americans are unfamiliar evaluating the value of calligraphy on society.”

How do you make your calligraphy business work?

It really varies from month to month. I’m a calligraphy artist who does calligraphy in various formats to make a living from teaching, doing logo work for clients and businesses, and commissioned work for personal collections. I also develop my own performances and am commissioned for performances at corporate events and conferences.

How does it feel to share your culture through calligraphy and pass along the tradition? Will you ever take on a calligraphy apprentice?

I feel like this is my life’s mission. I have no doubt about that now because I’m so committed to it. I want to be known as a person who’s going to keep Japanese calligraphy alive. I feel very responsible for what I do and what I share and teach to people. But at the same time, I also remain true to myself. This resonates with people like a ripple effect. A few people have approached me to become my apprentice, but it’s hard to dedicate the time right now because I’m busy touring the world. However, the chairman of the International Calligraphy Association told me, “Everything has an expiration date, and you cannot do performance calligraphy forever because one day you’ll become old, and your body won’t let you do it.” When that time comes, I will pass the torch to someone else.

#startups #text #startup #advice #busieness #howto #news #tech #love

0 notes

tawportfolioemilienielsen-blog · 8 years ago

Text

Making Stories Come Alive

Application for TAW Graphic Storytelling 2017.

Link to my online portfolio: https://tawportfolioemilienielsen.tumblr.com/

My name is Emilie Hørup Nielsen.

I see the bachelor in Graphic Storytelling as a serious and business developing education, that can give me an opportunity to develop my talents towards a future career as a comic artist.

The study appeals to me, since I’ve always had a big passion for art - especially drawing and creating stories. From I was as little as I remember, to sit down and immerse myself in a drawing, has been one of my biggest interests. I began reading comics in the 4th grade, where I also started making my own stories, that could be about anything from horses, to girls, fantasy universes and what my other interests were at that time.

Especially the empty space between the pictures, that the reader brings to life with his or her own imagination, fascinated me. As I’ve grown older, the passion and fascination stuck, and I’ve found that comics and illustrations are what I want to do in the future.

By applying to The Animation Workshop, I get the opportunity to develop my creative skills in several directions, and also be in an inspiring, creative and international environment with other like-minded students. It means that I as a student, will be able to develop my skills with both the art of crafting, but also as a person, and that the education will give me useful tools for a future career in the comics industry. I see myself as a professional comic artist in the future, that controls every step of the process of making a comic, both creating stories and art, but I’m also open to other career opportunities, the education can open up for, such as an independent freelancer, illustrator, and/or as a cartoonist at a firm.

I’ve heard some positive mentions about the education. Partly from a couple of acquaintances, who knows students from The Animation Workshop, that says it’s a serious education. The emphasis is on hard work and personal development, which is something I personally strive for.

Moreover from former students, who’ve got interesting jobs at international firms after graduating at The Animation Workshop.

The professional and academic experiences I find most relevant for the education, I’ve primarily received through my years in school, through different drawing courses and creative camps, I’ve participated in, and my voluntary work as a comic artist at an online magazine.

My years in school

In the last year of school at the Rudolf Steiner school in Odense, I’ve wrote the final 12th year assignment about comics, where I’ve engaged in the different aspects of making a comic. Everything from the first ideas, to communication, visual instruments, symbols and the effects of the present time, has opened my eyes to the endless possibilities, the comic invites to. Along with the written assignment, I also developed and finished my first comic book, called “S.a.l.t. & Pepper”. It was a challenge relating to all parts of the process in the production of a comic book. (see Link to my portfolio, under Other Work)

At the Rudolf Steiner school we’ve worked with creativity in several subjects such as drawing, painting, drama, eurytmi (the teaching of movement), music, orchestra, woodwork, forging and needlework, but also integrated in other subjects. There’s been a rich opportunity to express myself on a high level.

I’ve played the violin in both school and in my spare time at the Music School in Odense. Both places I’ve received the responsibility as the concertmaster. The orchestra work and study trips around Europe has developed my ability to cooperate and work under pressure in group contexts, besides that it has given me experiences with leadership. Additionally, I’ve received an international outlook by participating in different exchange projects.

Creative courses and camps

In regards to drawing, I’ve often been chosen to make posters for different events, f.ex. plays, concerts and stalls at the annual christmas markets and summer festivities at the school.

During the last four years, I’ve been on a creative summer camp, called FLUKS, where I’ve learned about Street Art and sustainable art, I’ve been drawing at an evening course, where I’ve got familiar with croquis and anatomy drawing, and I’ve also been on a summer course in classical drawing at Borups Højskole in Copenhagen. These courses and camps have taught me to open my creativity in interactions with others and to be a part of groups with different types of people.

Voluntary work

Currently I’m working voluntarily as a comic artist, where I draw humoristic drawings about complacent leaders for a newly started online magazine, called ManageMagazine.com. It’s taught me to work independently, and to communicate with my business partners.

Digital skills

I’m familiar with different kinds of software, such as:

Adobe Photoshop - Medium userlevel

Adobe Illustrator - Basic userlevel

Bamboo Digital Drawing tablet with pen - Medium userlevel

Comics in a future perspective

In a business context there will be a trend of using comics and infographics as an external communication tool, f.ex. at meetings or conferences, in PR and marketing and also in internal communication. In public institutions it’s obvious to use the medium in an informative context, f.ex. in tutorials, manuals and in different kinds of presentations.

Secondly, I also see a development in the section of educational institutions, where the comics possibly will be integrated as a regular part of the education, both in the basic teaching in the elementary schools and to help pupils with f.ex. concentration and reading difficulties, such as ADHD and dyslexia, but also at high schools and other secondary and business educations in a more informative context, f.ex. in study presentations and in the context of academic learning.

I see an opportunity to reverse the development in an otherwise male dominated industry, by including more female shaped life experiences. I’ve already seen several examples of young female artists, who publishes their comic series through independent publishers. I hope it will continue in the same direction, so there will be a more neutral gender ratio. I think that more women in the comic industry means that comics in general will reach a wider audience and that it will create more demands in the market.

At last I hope that the small, independent publishers will expand, creating a wider range of comics with diversity, high artistic quality and strong storytelling depth.

My professional influences and inspirations

Hayao Miyazaki, one of my biggest inspirations, has made many genius animated movies, such as “Howl’s Moving Castle”, “Spirited Away”, “Porco Rosso”, “My Neighbour Totoro”, “Princess Mononoke” among others. In my opinion he’s a movie-genius, creating innovative, unique and mind provoking animations. Additionally, he’s one of my favourite illustrators.

The Hernandez brothers, known for their comic book series “Love and Rockets” from the 80’s, has been a big inspiration for my drawing style in my later teens. They have a very personal and characteristic stroke, way of storytelling and a socially relevant approach to their stories, which have inspired me. I really like their way of picturing the 80’s punk and youth culture.

Scott McCloud, author of “Understanding Comics” and “Making Comics”, has had a great influence on how I see the comic as a medium. He’s taught me the basic principles and functions in comics, and how to use them in practice. I think he has contributed to revolutionize the way we see comics as a medium.

My favourite works

“Ghost World” by Daniel Clowes. I love Clowe’s very characteristic line, and how he pictures the two girls, Enid and Rebecca, and their last years as teenagers and how they’re searching for identity. The story is very appealing and I recognize many aspects of the plot from my own life. His peculiar way of depicting today’s youth, makes “Ghost World” a masterpiece in the graphic novels genre. The way he shows the two main characters having conversations creates a unique and natural flow.

“Maus” by Art Spiegelman. “Maus” has made a special impact on me. When I read it for the first time I didn’t like it very much because I found the mouse- and cat-faces terrifying and a bit intimidating. Reading the the book again, I became more and more obsessed with it and ended up reading it all the time. It’s one of those books, where you can read it again and again and still discover new interpretations and constructions in the story. By giving the characters animal heads, the author illustrates the inherent power relation between the cat and the mouse, between dominators and the dominated. I think, Art Spiegelman is telling terrifyingly authentic about the horrible events in the concentration camps during WW2, and his parent’s struggle to survive. At the same time, he manages to depict his complicated relationship to his dad in a very honest and raw way, which I find interesting.

“Spirited Away” by Hayao Miyazaki. He’s my favourite artist within the field of animation. Especially “Spirited Away” is a movie I can watch over and over again. There’s something unique about it, and a depth in it, I never get tired of. There are always new details and use of symbols to discover, that you didn’t notice before. Some aspects stay unexplained, which in itself seems alluring. The movie appeals to both children and adults in the same way as Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales. In addition, he’s incredible at drawing and making his universes alive and believable. A movie that makes me think, long after I’ve watched it. It’s in my opinion brillant.

My less favourite work

I’m very critical and selective in my selection process, when it comes to picking movies or comics, so I’m normally very quick to sort the stuff out, I immediately find bad.

A very low quality movie is “Whoops! - Where’s the Ark?”, about two weird looking creatures, a father and a son, who isn’t registered on the list to enter the Ark. You follow their struggle to sneak on board the Ark and survive the big flood. The creators completely left out the background music, you normally hear in animation movies. Also, the movie wasn’t animated very well, the characters had really annoying voices, and in general it was put together in a bad way, both compared to the composition but also to the whole purpose of the story. I didn’t finish the movie, because I stopped half way through.

Economy

I will apply for SU for the education, and supply the financing by getting a student job and work a couple of times a week.

My biggest strengths

My biggest strength is that I meet my surroundings with an open and creative mind, and a stubborn dedication. With my voluntary work as a comic artist, I’m experiencing what it means to work in a company that requires something specific of me and that I’m being challenged on my way of doing things, and thereby develops as a person. I don’t earn money by making drawings for ManageMagazine, but right now it’s okay, because I only do it for my passion for drawing.

You should choose me, because I’m passionate about getting the opportunity to study Graphic Storytelling and I’ve read so much about the education programme and heard so much good about it, that it will be the right thing for me. I’m dedicated; determined to develop my talents and obtain all the knowledge available. I accept every challenge, no matter what form and size it will take shape of.

Regardless of what the future brings, I know I’ll always dedicate my love to art and storytelling.

Sincerely,

Emilie Hørup Nielsen.

FYI: I’m travelling from March 18 to May 17. I’m doing voluntary work in Costa Rica, why I’ll only be able to attend an audition from May 18, or via Skype (name: millemus97)

Contacted person at The Animation Workshop, regarding my trip: Katrine Frausig, administrator.

0 notes

ixvyupdates · 7 years ago

Text

The Racial Achievement Gap Can’t Be Fixed With a #BlackLivesMatter Sign in Your Yard

“How can I be sexist? I have a mother, a wife and daughters!”

If you’re a woman reading that sentence, you almost certainly won’t have a problem finding the flaw in its all-too-common reasoning.

The Gap Between Words and Actions

Facts Are Still Facts

This year a 40-point gap exists between Black and White students across the district. Though that’s an improvement over the past few years, the gap remains huge.

Oak Parkers tend to explain away the gap by saying it is a gap about differences in income, not race. They offer a simple formula:

race + low-income status = racial achievement gap.

But income does not explain everything. Harvard researcher Ron Ferguson once estimated that only about half of the Black-White achievement gap could be explained by differences in income.

We Need to Call It When We See It and Fix It

White fragility makes it difficult to discuss solutions to racism because of White people’s inability to name and identify their personal racism.

Factual examples of racism—both individual and institutional—in Oak Park District 97 include:

On average, Black students are 40 points behind White students in nearly every subject in every grade at every school.

Instead of asking what Black families and Black students are doing wrong, why aren’t we asking what White teachers and school administrators and district officials are doing wrong?

Photo by Mike Maguire, CC-licensed.

The Racial Achievement Gap Can’t Be Fixed With a #BlackLivesMatter Sign in Your Yard syndicated from http://ift.tt/2i93Vhl

0 notes

ixvyupdates · 7 years ago

Text

The Racial Achievement Gap Can’t Be Fixed With a #BlackLivesMatter Sign in Your Yard

“How can I be sexist? I have a mother, a wife and daughters!”

If you’re a woman reading that sentence, you almost certainly won’t have a problem finding the flaw in its all-too-common reasoning.

The Gap Between Words and Actions

Facts Are Still Facts

This year a 40-point gap exists between Black and White students across the district. Though that’s an improvement over the past few years, the gap remains huge.

Oak Parkers tend to explain away the gap by saying it is a gap about differences in income, not race. They offer a simple formula:

race + low-income status = racial achievement gap.

But income does not explain everything. Harvard researcher Ron Ferguson once estimated that only about half of the Black-White achievement gap could be explained by differences in income.

We Need to Call It When We See It and Fix It

White fragility makes it difficult to discuss solutions to racism because of White people’s inability to name and identify their personal racism.

Factual examples of racism—both individual and institutional—in Oak Park District 97 include:

On average, Black students are 40 points behind White students in nearly every subject in every grade at every school.

Instead of asking what Black families and Black students are doing wrong, why aren’t we asking what White teachers and school administrators and district officials are doing wrong?

Photo by Mike Maguire, CC-licensed.

The Racial Achievement Gap Can’t Be Fixed With a #BlackLivesMatter Sign in Your Yard syndicated from http://ift.tt/2i93Vhl

0 notes

ixvyupdates · 7 years ago

Text

The Racial Achievement Gap Can’t Be Fixed With a #BlackLivesMatter Sign in Your Yard

“How can I be sexist? I have a mother, a wife and daughters!”

If you’re a woman reading that sentence, you almost certainly won’t have a problem finding the flaw in its all-too-common reasoning.

The Gap Between Words and Actions

Facts Are Still Facts

This year a 40-point gap exists between Black and White students across the district. Though that’s an improvement over the past few years, the gap remains huge.

Oak Parkers tend to explain away the gap by saying it is a gap about differences in income, not race. They offer a simple formula:

race + low-income status = racial achievement gap.

But income does not explain everything. Harvard researcher Ron Ferguson once estimated that only about half of the Black-White achievement gap could be explained by differences in income.

We Need to Call It When We See It and Fix It

White fragility makes it difficult to discuss solutions to racism because of White people’s inability to name and identify their personal racism.

Factual examples of racism—both individual and institutional—in Oak Park District 97 include:

On average, Black students are 40 points behind White students in nearly every subject in every grade at every school.

Instead of asking what Black families and Black students are doing wrong, why aren’t we asking what White teachers and school administrators and district officials are doing wrong?

Photo by Mike Maguire, CC-licensed.

The Racial Achievement Gap Can’t Be Fixed With a #BlackLivesMatter Sign in Your Yard syndicated from http://ift.tt/2i93Vhl

0 notes

ixvyupdates · 7 years ago

Text

The Racial Achievement Gap Can’t Be Fixed With a #BlackLivesMatter Sign in Your Yard

“How can I be sexist? I have a mother, a wife and daughters!”

If you’re a woman reading that sentence, you almost certainly won’t have a problem finding the flaw in its all-too-common reasoning.

The Gap Between Words and Actions

Facts Are Still Facts

This year a 40-point gap exists between Black and White students across the district. Though that’s an improvement over the past few years, the gap remains huge.

Oak Parkers tend to explain away the gap by saying it is a gap about differences in income, not race. They offer a simple formula:

race + low-income status = racial achievement gap.

But income does not explain everything. Harvard researcher Ron Ferguson once estimated that only about half of the Black-White achievement gap could be explained by differences in income.

We Need to Call It When We See It and Fix It

White fragility makes it difficult to discuss solutions to racism because of White people’s inability to name and identify their personal racism.

Factual examples of racism—both individual and institutional—in Oak Park District 97 include:

On average, Black students are 40 points behind White students in nearly every subject in every grade at every school.

Instead of asking what Black families and Black students are doing wrong, why aren’t we asking what White teachers and school administrators and district officials are doing wrong?

Photo by Mike Maguire, CC-licensed.

The Racial Achievement Gap Can’t Be Fixed With a #BlackLivesMatter Sign in Your Yard syndicated from http://ift.tt/2i93Vhl

0 notes

ixvyupdates · 7 years ago

Text

The Racial Achievement Gap Can’t Be Fixed With a #BlackLivesMatter Sign in Your Yard

“How can I be sexist? I have a mother, a wife and daughters!”

If you’re a woman reading that sentence, you almost certainly won’t have a problem finding the flaw in its all-too-common reasoning.

The Gap Between Words and Actions

Facts Are Still Facts

This year a 40-point gap exists between Black and White students across the district. Though that’s an improvement over the past few years, the gap remains huge.

Oak Parkers tend to explain away the gap by saying it is a gap about differences in income, not race. They offer a simple formula:

race + low-income status = racial achievement gap.

But income does not explain everything. Harvard researcher Ron Ferguson once estimated that only about half of the Black-White achievement gap could be explained by differences in income.

We Need to Call It When We See It and Fix It

White fragility makes it difficult to discuss solutions to racism because of White people’s inability to name and identify their personal racism.

Factual examples of racism—both individual and institutional—in Oak Park District 97 include:

On average, Black students are 40 points behind White students in nearly every subject in every grade at every school.

Instead of asking what Black families and Black students are doing wrong, why aren’t we asking what White teachers and school administrators and district officials are doing wrong?

Photo by Mike Maguire, CC-licensed.

The Racial Achievement Gap Can’t Be Fixed With a #BlackLivesMatter Sign in Your Yard syndicated from http://ift.tt/2i93Vhl

0 notes