#pretty sure that first person said i look jewish because i have my dad's italian nose 😬
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shalom-iamcominghome · 7 months ago
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Person who told me I look jewish versus person who told me I don't look jewish: Fight!
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janiedean · 7 years ago
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Hey, personal Q but may I ask why you’ve had a somewhat hard time being an atheist in Italy? Is it bc your family is really religious? Is it bc you’ve encountered a lot of older Italians like Italian professors or your Italian work colleagues? Bc I know tons of Italian atheists (all over Italy, in Sicily, Veneto, Naples, Florence etc,) and none of them had a problem w it not even with their families, they’re all fairly young 16-22 but yeah they’ve not even faced remarks from their old relatives.
hahahahahahahaha
*clears throat*
my immediately close family is thankfully not religious, or better: my parents are both atheists and haven’t baptized me or anything and on my dad’s side my aunt is somewhat practicing and no one else does or cares. on my mom’s side though everyone in the older generation is and like I didn’t have issues because of that per se, but in order (count that I live in *rome* which means there’s the vatican beyond the corner):
my grandmother has I think gotten it but once in a while the immortal ‘I hope you convert because I don’t want you to go to hell’ shows up again and good luck explaining her that the last three popes at least said that it’s not a guarantee, and I’ve had endless discussion with one great-aunt on the topic but that’s minimal;
the problem is everything else ie: when I was like, seven or eight and I didn’t take religion classes people tended to look at you weird because hOW ARE YOU NOT BAPTIZED AND HOW DO YOU NOT GO TO CATECHISM WAIT YOU AREN’T GETTING SACRAMENTS????, which ended up in two fairly crappy years when I was... 8-10 yo I think where I felt like shit for not fitting in and I actually actively tried to buy it and I wanted to be baptized THANK FUCK MY PARENTS DIDN’T LET ME DO IT or I’d have sorely regretted it and I felt like a complete idiot because I didn’t really feel it but I thought I was supposed to, and meanwhile I was taking the infamous religion classes in elementary school and man it was not a good idea let me tell you;
anyway at that point I pretty much made up my mind and realized it was Not My Thing and that I wasn’t a spiritual person in the slightest and so I went into middle school not taking the religion classes (it’s one hour per week at every level of obligatory school but you can opt out of it) and I spent three lovely years with my italian teacher (the main one) talking about how I should try to take them/*try religion out*/’but why are you assuming you KNOW EVERYTHING WITHOUT HAVING TRIED’ in front of the entire class which was part of a series of things that lovely woman ended up doing which eventually caused me a shitload of issues in the long run, I always stood my ground, she didn’t quit until I sent my father to tell her to do it. I took alternative classes every time but I was the only person in the school and most teachers I ended up with were pissed off because they had to do something with me rather than having their free hour, every time I got asked if I was jewish/buddhist/muslim/WHATEVER otherwise why wouldn’t I take the religion class? I replied that I was atheist, I always got ‘oh but then why don’t you try it out?’
yeah, I did, didn’t work, thanks.
anyway, that was the reaction I got half of the time I told people older than thirty. and it was good because other than that I’ve had people straight up ask me the following ie: ‘but how do you live without the knowledge god’s over there’, ‘how do you get out of bed in the morning’, ‘so you think stealing and killing people is okay???’, ‘but why don’t you believe in god’, a question that whenever answered truthfully caused in 99% of the cases people getting offended and calling me an asshole when they asked it first, and on top of that if I ask that question to someone it’s passed as rude, if the contrary it’s ‘just curiosity’;
when it came to people my age it was better, but once I had to hear from a fairly close friend when I was like sixteen ‘I was thinking about it and I’m pretty sure you’re obsessed with singers because you’re atheist and YOU HAVE TO FILL THE HOLE INSIDE YOU THAT IS THERE BECAUSE YOU DON’T HAVE GOD TO FILL IT FOR YOU’ and like yeah okay sure bro no;
on top of that, I had another friend (PAST) who... let’s just say that he’s an eight on the kinsey scale but at some point got really hardcore catholic and went back in the closet/started being completely incoherent about it who spent like five years of his life trying to drag me to church, then he managed lying about what we were gonna do, admitted that he’d have never done it if I had been jewish or protestant or any religion but apparently if I was atheist it was all cool, and that one time he dragged me there I ended up stuck in the most awkward situation of my life which included some little old lady who gifted me a rosary that I didn’t want adding that ‘oh, it’s such a pity that a nice girl like you is headed to hell, I hope the virgin mary enlightens you’ when she didn’t even know my name but she knew I was U’s atheist friend so obviously I was fucked already and that about pissed me off to the point that I stopped calling him and I think he still hasn’t realized why I did.
and other similar stuff. I mean, obviously I didn’t get discriminated openly or anything but the above stuff is more or less the norm, these days less also because I think a lot of people don’t practice (less than they used to back in the day) but late 90s/early 00s it was like that almost everywhere and I’m actually lucky that my parents can’t give a fuck about the topic because I know people with extra religious parents who didn’t even consider telling them they actually were atheists period because they’d have taken it fairly badly X°DD but like if your friends had no issues then it’s a very good thing, but it’s... not a universal experience X°D and most atheist people my age that I know had at least some experiences in common X°D that said I think back then it was a lot more common to send your kids to the nuns in kindergarten/elementary school and I’ve met I think one person who attended a school run by nuns who didn’t have some horror story to tell so there’s that too, but like, this ain’t scandinavia. not yet. xD and on top of that I’ve had a bunch of people assuming that ‘well but if you’re not religious why does it even bother you BE MORE TOLERANT’ when I said I didn’t want to go inside churches period in the six months after The Mass With The Above Friend (it wasn’t usual mass, it was some subgroup of people who did things... DIFFERENTLY let’s say) Where I Was Dragged When I Didn’t Want To, but of course no one said that he had been an ass because he completely disregarded my wishes/my belief system (or lack of belief system). naaah, why would I be upset?
tldr: most of my experiences were like the above stuff. later it’s became less bad admittedly but I also am not really interacting with people like my middle school teacher and every place I worked at for now was THANKFULLY secular so X°D but I mean. I wish no one ever gave me shit for it xD
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theatredirectors · 7 years ago
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Sarah Elizabeth Wansley
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Hometown?
My dad was in the Army, so I moved around a lot as a kid (Nebraska, Kansas, Georgia), but I mostly grew up outside DC. I went to a science and tech (public) magnet high school known as TJ. Our mascot was a T1-83 calculator. We lost every single football game.
Where are you now?
New York, NY. I moved there for undergrad at Columbia, and except for a couple detours for gigs and grad school, it's been home ever since.  
What's your current project?
I'm currently in upstate NY working as the Artistic Associate at Chautauqua Theater Company (ctcompany.org). After a couple years of freelance directing, I'm loving having an artistic home for the summer, leading talkbacks and doing a lot of community engagement work. One of my co-workers at CTC, Jess Kahkoska, and I just started developing a new piece together. We're reimagining Iphigenia et Aulis in a rural fundamentalist American town. Re-reading the Euripides play we were struck by how contemporary the story is. It’s of a young woman's radicalization (not due to any deeply held religious or political belief) but rather in a desperate plea to have a voice, to do something that matters. Iphigenia’s radical turnaround raises the question: what is the value of a woman’s body, voice, and choice in a fundamental society? Our adaptation explores radicalization and fundamentalism in a contemporary southern gothic context.
Why and how did you get into theatre?
I'm the second oldest of 15 grandchildren (I have a big New York Italian family), and I'm pretty sure I directed my first play when I was around 12. I used to make all of my little cousins perform fairy tales at our family reunions. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs worked especially well with all the little ones. So the truth is I can't really remember a time that I wasn't making theater.
I do, however, specifically remember a moment that led me to commit to working in theater professionally. When I was in undergrad, I saw Danai Gurira's In the Continuum and was blown away by it. It was this incredibly theatrical but minimalist play about two black women in different parts of the world struggling with HIV. I loved the way the actors conjured such distinct worlds through movement and gesture and how the show was simultaneously dealing with specific socio-political situations, and yet was also about the universal experience of being human in a deep way. I thought, "Ok, yep, I want to make theater like this."
What is your directing dream project?
I've always wanted to do a site specific project on an epic scale. The first time I encountered Iphigenia et Aulis was in grad school, when I tried to pitch the UCSD faculty that we should do the show outside on the cliffs in La Jolla, and I wanted the army camping below on the beach. To give UCSD credit, they actually took the idea seriously and we discussed it for a while, but ultimately it was too hard to bring power to the cliffs. Also, the whole play is about waiting for the wind and the cliffs in San Diego are very windy, so that might have been a dramaturgical disaster.
I've been developing a new play with music about Cain and Abel called Cry Eden with my longtime collaborators playwright Patrick Barrett and composer (and my husband!) Tommy Crawford. As a director, I love being involved in the creation of a piece from the ground up. Patrick, Tommy and I started by researching the Cain and Abel story in Christian, Jewish and Muslim tradition and asking, what is it about this story that is so fundamentally human? I was obsessed with the fact that Genesis lists Cain's descendants and among them is the first musician. What does it mean that the first artist is a direct descendent of the first murderer? So we put a rock band on stage called the Descendants of Cain (pretty good name for a band, eh?) and set the story in an abandoned playground. Our set designer Reid Thompson created a see-saw for Cain and Abel, which I thought was a beautiful metaphor of their relationship.
We developed the piece through a series of workshops with an incredible ensemble of actors and then put it up on its feet with a killer design team and choreographer. The piece uses many different forms of storytelling: music, text, movement, design and there's a very playful aesthetic of a group of actors creating this epic story out of a simple elements: a painter's ladder and some plastic curtains. We've developed this aesthetic we lovingly call "shithole chic." In some ways, of course, we are all descendants of Cain, and as Americans particularly, we inherit a history of violence. The piece is this our way of grappling with ideas of inheritance, the impulse towards violence, forgiveness and love. My dream directing project would be the opportunity to do a full scale production of Cry Eden (Intrigued? Check out the music here: www.thecainandabelproject.com/music and then let's talk!).
What kind of theatre excites you?
Highly theatrical work - work that utilizes what is unique about this art form. Radical adaptations. New plays with live music and concert plays. Work that experiments with form. I am a fan of bold choices. As I tell my students at Fordham - I always prefer a choice that is strong and wrong over a choice that is cliche or general. My mentor in grad school used to say that genius is right next to failure, and I love work that takes (thoughtful) risks.
What do you want to change about theatre today?
If you cannot answer the question, "why this play, why now?" don't do it. No more museum plays! I believe theater must always be about today - and that doesn't mean every Shakespeare production has to be in contemporary dress, but just that the work needs to have a strong point of view and explore something that is essential to the society we live in now.
What is your opinion on getting a directing MFA?
It's not the only path - but for me it was key. I went to UCSD and studied with Gabor Tompa, a Hungarian-Romanian director who exposed me to kinds of theater I had never seen before. He fundamentally changed the way I view the art of theater and how I work. I also had a huge learning curve going from the NYC downtown new play world - small spaces with shoe string budgets - to working with the incredible spaces and resources of the La Jolla Playhouse. I'm so glad I had three years to fail, fail again and to grow. I met classmates who have become life-long collaborators. UCSD also gave me three years of teaching experience, which was great because I've always known I wanted teaching to be part of my practice as an artist. And it was 100% free (in fact, I was paid). That being said - I think it is possible to have this same learning outside of the grad school environment if you assist directors you love and are able to find a mentor to give you rigorous feedback on your work. Personally, I wouldn't have been able to afford a grad school that was going to burden me with debt, and I would really caution against programs that aren't financially supported. It's hard enough to work as an emerging artist and pay your rent without grad school debt.
Who are your theatrical heroes?
Artaud, Meyerhold, Tadeusz Kantor.  Thomas Ostermeier, Emma Rice, Simon McBurney, Ivo van Hove. Tarell McCraney, Danai Gurira, Anne Washburn, Sarah Ruhl.
Any advice for directors just starting out?
Rather than just directing plays your friends write, or plays you loved in school, ask yourself: What do I need to speak about as an artist? What problems or topics do I need to explore here and now? Make a huge list of plays - classic and new - that deal with those themes and then read those plays and see what you are drawn to. And if you don't find what you are looking for, grab a playwright friend and create it. Make the work personal. Don't be afraid of having a voice.
Plugs!
www.sarahelizabethwansley.com
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