I remember a time I knew what happiness was--

There are spans of time when I get hungry. So hungry. "My lunch on Friday was a quarter-of-a-dinner-plate pile of brown rice, a half-a-dinner-plate pile of collard greens and onions, and two pork chops" hungry. "My dinner Saturday night was six slices from an eight-inch radius pizza pie" hungry. The latter was made even more hilarious by the fact that my dining companions (who had been the ones to suggest getting pizza after getting groceries after work -- we're working on a project out of town and I'm the one with a car) apparently hadn't been aware of the fact that I'm a, shall we say, heavy eater.

I've always been a small person with a huge appetite. I won't lie -- I've sometimes played it up for laughs, I've sometimes gone further than I should out of a macho impulse. But while I might occasionally give it an extra push, it's not faked. And while it's a great ice breaker, a fun thing to be known for, and actually makes all-you-can-eat buffets good value meals for me, it's not always easy. I'll be the last to complain about having a high metabolism, but when you're hungry all the time? It's not cheap. All that food don't come for free.

And you know the word "hangry" -- hungry + angry, anger stemming from hunger? It's not a joke. What other people usual describe as the monster that is born from their not having had their morning coffee is what takes me over as my hunger grows, like a full moon rising to pull forth a rabid werewolf. And what that means is that I have to plan a lot of my life around food, the ease of which varies widely depending on where I'm working, when I'm working, etc.. It's also interesting being in a field where it's common for people to, at least during certain phases of a production, work rather than do things like eat, sleep, or shower, just in order to get the work done. I'm at the point in my life, however, when I don't apologize for needing to eat. I know what I need to function as a professional and just as a human being -- trust me, you won't like me when I'm hungry -- and I don't feel a need to apologize for that.

Anyhow, that's all to say... Here's another restaurant round-up! New York City this time, from places I've eaten within the past few months. Again, these aren't so much reviews as recollections and recommendations.

A song that hits you so hard--

I have a half-written blog post that had been intended to be for last week, but then I was in too much of a funk to finish it. It seemed like the perfect subject, the perfect timing: I was out of NYC for a while because of work and I had been ravenously hungry for a week, so I began writing a NYC restaurant round-up of places I had eaten in the past few months.

But that proved to be too depressing. I love food so much that writing honestly about my experiences produced a positive tone, while my mood was such the opposite that it felt nauseatingly fake. So I quit writing, drank wine, and got a health amount of sleep instead. Observing the experience now with detachment, it might be interesting to do a depressed food post, where ecstatic salivating over memories of food is used as a tool to create contrast with existential/situational despair. "See, how wonderful things once were! All that remains in my mouth now are the bitter ashes of loneliness."

I grew up in a rural environment, so unlike my city-boy director, I was not caught off-guard by not being able to stop by a bar for a few hours after work at midnight on a weekday. Timing aside, you would need a bar, as well as preferably a way of getting there that didn't involve driving. That, and the lack of other urban creature comforts, did not bother me a bit. But I was surprised by the effect of the combination of social isolation and lack of anchor. Sure, there might not be much going on in my native corner of the woods, but it's still mine. Being a stranger without a home in the middle of nowhere -- that is not nearly so idyllic. And rather than warming me with the glow of happy memories, even though I'm a cheap homebody who actually only goes out maybe three or four times per month, I found that reminiscing about food -- and the experiences attached to that food -- was making me homesick.

On top of that, I was absorbing a lot from work. Being a stage manager is sometimes a little like being a combination air quality sensor/air filter. You have to be able to take in and read the environment, and then be able to optimize it. But that can make it draining when there is bad energy, because striking the balance between being close enough but also far enough to deal with it can be difficult. And in this case, it wasn't the usual energy problems of personality difficulties or the like, but a series of tragedies at my current workplace -- four sudden, unexpected deaths within the span of less than a month, three of them young people. Outsider that I am, I wasn't directly affected, but a couple members of our cast very much were, and in any case, four people in a very small, isolated community dying within a month is enough to creep a person out. I've never actually seen any of the Final Destination movies, but I'm pretty sure that's kind of what they were about.

Did I mention that the place they're housing me in has a lot of creepy taxidermy?

All in all, I am a very fortunate person who is in a bit of a funk. And I'm treasuring the homesickness that means that there is someplace to which I am bound to return and be glad.

I'm reviewing the situation--

Welcome to my first day without work since February 12! I'm currently one week into my newest project, which is working with undergraduate theatre students on a crazy-pants American premiere of a crazy-pants play. My brain is still decompressing itself from jumping straight from one ship to another, so this week is just the time for some scattered miscellania... which has turned out not to be so scattered after all.

I'm in rural New York state for this job, so it feels a bit like I'm back home. Lots of trees, lots of snow, lots of white people. Coming full circle, I had cribbed a chunk of my blog post about Les Misérables and me for a Facebook post the other week, and now I'm cribbing the Facebook post for the blog, as selection and framing tells its own story.

Today was my last performance. The show has extended through next weekend (go see it!), but I already had another project lined up. It feels weird. I've never before left a show before it closed, let alone one I've been with for nearly six months. I started working on it as soon as I moved to New York, my first show here, and I couldn't have asked for better work or better people to do it with. A bunch of you have probably heard a variation of the following story, but I need to repeat it again, because of this show and the article I linked.

I grew up as an adopted Korean kid in a white family in a predominantly white town (97.66% white, according to the 2000 census), going to a predominantly white school through fifth grade (out of approximately 500 kids in grades 2-5, at the most diverse point, I was one of six non-white kids). And it doesn't take a Ph.D. in media studies to know that representation is an issue in mainstream entertainment and culture, particularly prior to the turn of this century. However, I wanted to be in Broadway musicals. In fact, I had devised a practical plan for the rest of my life, completely sincere and free of cynicism or bitterness: I would find a production of The King & I, join the chorus of the King's children, age up into Tuptim, go back into the chorus as one of the King's wives, and finish my career as Lady Thiang.

That was my America, and how I existed within it.

My life was changed the day that I turned on the television and saw Lea Salonga performing the role of Eponine in the Tenth Anniversary Concert of Les Misérables on PBS.

That was when I made the first step, to "in spite of." Where I could do what I wanted to do, and not be limited, in spite of being who I was. It would take many more years until I reached "because of" -- when I would know in my soul that I could do what I wanted to because of who I was, that every aspect of me played a part in my being able to make my own unique contribution -- but I needed that first step, and just seeing Lea Salonga's face on my television like that changed my life.

So, storycreators and storytellers: you never know whose lives you may be changing, or how.

I hadn't been expecting the response that the post received -- from myself or others. It's a story that I've tossed off often in the past, a tale for self-aware laughs with rueful but amusing pointedness. I found myself feeling surprisingly emotional when I sculpted it into that smaller post, however, in a way that I haven't in the past (and certainly didn't when it had just been one small section of a larger essay). And it apparently was very emotionally resonant for others as well. I had tagged my show-mates in the post, so I even ended up with responses from a lot of friend-of-friend Asian theatre people I didn't know personally.

So here I am back in rural New York state. The only non-whiteness that I've seen anywhere so far has been on our stage management team -- myself and my three P.A.s, who are one Asian woman and one black woman (as well as one white woman). I've made dry comments about it, and to which my director has responded with ruefully aware grimaces. He'd wished for a diverse/international cast for this show, which wants to be on a world-scale, but he only had one non-white student audition and unfortunately, they weren't a fit for the show's demands. And just as a culture, it's odd. The school I attended for undergrad was also a small, rural, elite private institution, but I don't recall the student body as being anywhere near this homogenous. I think that one factor might be that this school's campus is so spread out, so we basically see only the performing arts students, who are clearly overwhelmingly white.

The last time that I was struck by such overwhelming whiteness was, funnily enough, when I attended one of the Brooklyn live shows of Welcome to Night Vale. I actually refer to the live show as "Welcome to White Vale" in my mind. It was pretty darn dramatic. There is no exaggeration when I say that I looked around as the room filled up and said to myself, "...damn, look at all these white people!" Because when you look around and except for you, the black guy a couple seats in front of you, the East Asian woman over there, and that maybe-Hispanic dude, the entire fucking room is full of white people -- that does not reflect real life. And I say "funnily enough" because, in comparison to mainstream U.S. arts and entertainment, Welcome to Night Vale is one of the most diverse shows out there, with some of the most well-written representation that I've encountered to date, and it even actively deals with the issue of cultural appropriation (i.e., it's asshole behavior, don't do it). I really am curious about Night Vale live shows elsewhere. Is it just a Brooklyn thing? Is Brooklyn just swarming with white people? Or is it a fandom culture thing? Sci-fi and fantasy have never been high scorers on diversity and representation. And when I've attended fandom conventions (anime, specifically) in the past, they've been pretty much entirely white and East Asian people. Really, it's just something I'm curious about.

And from here, here are some links to and quotes from things I've read in the past week or so, which, presented collectively, all seem rather related.

Run, freedom, run--

I used to have dreams about not being able to run. Usually, I would be trying to elude capture, but the fastest that I would be able to muster was the speed of someone trying to run in water. I'm sure there was something deeply psychological in this -- like those dreams where I'd try to talk but no sound would come out, or where I'd "know" that I had a superpower, such as flying, but it would fail me while I was using it and it would be a losing battle between my active belief in my power and "reality." Fact of the matter was, however, that I also just couldn't run.

I'd always had a competitive spirit. Classmates would fear me in gym class, as I was generally considered ferocious. It was very much a willing spirit more than an able body, though. I would hurl myself down the soccer field and frustrate the efforts of my opponents, and I would be furnace-red in the face and feel like I was about to throw up after about ten minutes. I would never let that stop me from putting forth the same effort each time, of course, but it was always so much mind over matter.

I think that, in general, if you're a girl and you're skinny, nobody cares beyond that.

Which isn't to say oh poor little princess me. I won a number of genetic lotteries when my biological parents' gametes combined, and I'm well aware of that. But in a similar way to how patriarchy gives power to men but also hurts them, our fat-shaming body culture gives power to the thin but also hurts them. The systems choose whom to give benefits by reducing people into boxes that are inevitably inaccurate, ill-fitting, and restrictive, to varying degrees. We'd all be better off without it.

I'm sure there are a lot of fat people who were a lot more fit than I was back then. Society wouldn't treat them that way -- oh, you're fat, absolutely everything in your life could be made better by losing weight, didn't you know? (that's sarcasm, by the way) -- but my burning, constricted lungs that made my legs slow beneath me, my noodle arms providing no help, seem evidence enough to me. But hey, she's skinny -- why would she need to actually be in good shape? I mean, she eats right and her numbers seem good, I'm sure she doesn't need any exercise. And if she's sluggish and depressed, I mean, she just needs to relax from all the stressful things she's doing, right?

They smile when they are low--

Or, How To Almost Not Open An Off-Broadway Show (Just In Case You Were Curious)

12:30pm
It's the last rehearsal before our opening performance at 7:00pm. Staying in compliance with union rules, we could start rehearsal as early as noon, but while we have a lot of notes on our work list, they're mostly tiny acting notes, with just a couple moments specifically for tech (and those are small notes, too). It's been a long week -- today is Friday, we started tech last Thursday, worked a ten-out-of-twelve (i.e., a twelve-hour long workday with a two-hour actor dinner break in the middle) that Friday, had Saturday off, worked a ten-out-of-twelve on Sunday, had a full (but normal) length rehearsal on Monday, and then had been rehearsing from noon to five followed by shows at seven each night since then.

Tech had gotten a rough start, too, with load-in falling behind schedule and the lights giving us lots of technical problems -- things weren't not working in the artistic sense but, rather, in the "they won't turn on" sense. Our lighting designer had maintained the patience of a saint, and somehow never snapped or yelled during each additional hardship that fell upon him through the entire process. (Though he did drain a large number of whiskeys at impressive speed when we went out to the bar after work.) When he had gone back home to Minneapolis yesterday night, he probably felt like he couldn't get out of this theater quickly enough.

Anyhow, people are tired, so even a half-hour's respite is not something to be scoffed at. And at least it's an easy day's worth of work. Without any big tech fixes on our to-do list, it's just the actors, one of the directors, the crew, and me.

You cross your fingers and hold your heart--

No post this week -- opening your first Off-Broadway production when technical issues meant that you were about two minutes away from not opening your first Off-Broadway production will do that to you, apparently.

But the show is open. And during today’s school matinee, the theater employee gave a pre-show speech, telling the kids that the way to let the actors know that you’re enjoying yourself is by applauding.

The kids applauded almost non-stop throughout the entire show.

Food, glorious food--

This past fall, I worked on a show that was co-produced by theatres in New York City and Minneapolis. The Minneapolis production took place then, and the New York production is in tech now. I'd never been to Minneapolis before -- never been anywhere in the U.S.A. longitudinally between Pittsburgh and Los Angeles, in fact. So I cut myself some slack in my budgeting, deciding to seize the moment by constantly asking myself when the next time someone would pay my travel to and housing in Minneapolis for a month and a half, and treating the time as a working vacation of sorts.

It really was a lovely place to visit. The company of the show was very friendly and well-bonded, and we did things like have apartment-parties and go to the Walker Art Gallery together. We took the light rail to the Mall of America. I spent a long afternoon with an internet friend in the Minneapolis Institute of Arts museum. I walked the streets and saw the grand Mississippi. But mostly... mostly, I ate. I ate a lot. And man, it was <i>good</i>. So if you happen to find yourself in Minneapolis, particularly in downtown, here's a brief overview of my experiences.

In My Life--

Last week, my Facebook feed was particularly frequented by a couple of different theatre-related things. One was photographs from a local (to my very-much-not-NYC hometown) community theatre production of Les Misérables. The other was people linking to the blog of bad theatre PR photos. Both of them featured a lot of people in the breed of "historical" costume that is typical of high school and community theatre, where "costume design" can mean "go to Salvation Army and find some things for yourself that matches some vague notion you have of whenever the show is set."

Now, I'm a great lover of amateur theatre and community theatre. I differentiate between the two. I consider "amateur" to be anything not professional, the choice to spend the time one has left to spare outside of the necessaries of making a living being put toward a labor of love -- the word itself literally comes from "love," after all. What could be more noble than that? "Community theatre," on the other hand, is specifically that classic Waiting for Guffman stereotype of overblown petty dramas, egos in no way equaled by talent, painful fifteen-minute scene changes, the same decade-old wooden flats being recycled for the scenery every year, and -- the Anchorman of the stage. It also happens to be where I got my start in theatre, something I wouldn't trade for the world, and something I believe to be of vital importance to society. Warts and all, it's a wonderful thing.

Nevertheless, looking at the pictures, with the clothes frozen into static images and stripped of the spirit that brings that Goodwill garb to life, can inspire some second-hand embarrassment. A wonderful performance can mostly sell most stories, no matter how little the design contributes or how much the design detracts. But still, it's a shame when the physical production becomes an element that must be overcome, that does little to assist the audience's suspension of disbelief, or is even a source of distraction. It's almost worse when the design earnestly tries and fails, like the painful sensation of watching a person in denial.

It was then that the idea popped into my head that I would rather see Les Mis in contemporary street clothes than with a blithely clueless, skill-less approximation of some person's idea of "historical." No changes to any of the words or music -- just losing the trappings of some sepia-toned vision of "The Past." Because Les Miserables is a story that doesn't want to be contemporary. Its tragedy is that it is contemporary.



On my OkCupid profile, my "most private thing that I'm willing to admit" is "Les Misérables -- the novel, the musical, the platonic ideal -- has had an enormous impact on my life. Enormous." It's not an exaggeration. And if I'm going to give myself any credit for being personally honest at all, I can't refrain from singing my old song of how Les Mis changed my life.

Having just a vision's no solution--

About a week ago, I met a friend for coffee. "Meeting for coffee" being the non-literal verbal phrase to denote "sitting at a table and talking in a relationally-neutral setting for an extended period of time" -- I don't drink coffee, but I assumed (rightly) that anywhere peddling caffeinated beverages in an environment that encouraged loitering was likely to serve tea as well. We've been friends since our undergraduate days, and we later became graduate school classmates. In both situations, we were prone to spontaneously striking up what would turn into long conversations that pleasantly wandered their way through whatever was floating on our minds, which was generally theatre, the latest developments in society and culture, and an overwhelming sense of existential doom. Now that I'm no longer reaping the benefits of being confined to an academic environment (which, as insular and suffocating as it could sometimes seem, strongly facilitated social interactions with one's peers by virtue of sheer proximity), I'd unsuccessfully tried to arrange a hang-out when I was back in New Haven in December and jumped on his reciprocal offer when he was back in town in between semesters.

I was supremely proud of myself for this event happening. Once I had passed the playdates of elementary school, I had from that point onward pretty much failed at the art of purely social "hanging out." Between living at least a 30-minute drive from any of my new peers (with no local public transportation), not forming any strong personal connections until high school, and, while enjoying the company of others, being well content with solitude, it had never developed into a normal or regular activity for me. (When a friend was helping me move from New Haven, a particularly well-liked mutual friend came up in conversation, and I remarked "Oh, I really like that guy!" My friend replied with surprise, noting that the two of us never hung out. "Do I hang out with anyone?" I asked. To which he replied, "Point.") Also, meeting a friend at a coffee house in Gramercy to engage in bantering conversation seemed as though it would further me along the path of becoming an attractive character in a popular novel to later be turned into a hit television series, or at least a quirky indie film.

This isn't about how ridiculously accomplished having adult human social interactions makes me, though. One of the topics in particular that we touched on during our chat-and-caffeinate session was one that is often on my mind, and the particular neural pathways that were lit that afternoon haven't calmed down since then.

One of the things that I did over my holiday unemployment was attend the Welcome to Night Vale live show. For the uninitiated, Welcome to Night Vale is a podcast that started in June 2012 and takes the form of a local news radio broadcast for the small American city of Night Vale -- essentially a (mostly) one-man radio play. As for the city of Night Vale and its inhabitants, though -- well, the best description that I've heard of it so far was if Stephen King and Neil Gaiman created a community in The Sims and then just left it to run on its own for ten years, though I'd also add in a healthy heaping of late-night radio conspiracy theory. It's largely humorous, with what seems bizarre to the listener being simply mundane to the radio host and his local audience, but is also by turns touching, horrifying, and thought-provoking.

While I'm a fan of the show in the traditional sense of one who enjoys the content, I'm also extremely intrigued by its model as media and art. There are two episodes of the podcast per month, on the first and the fifteenth. It is completely free (though you can donate directly to the show and they have items available in the show's online store). It has no sponsors and contains no advertisements. It largely flew under the radar until around July 2013, at which point Tumblr got interested... and then it exploded. While still relatively small and niche in the overall world of popular culture, it was, for a time, the number one podcast in America, beating out NPR, and remains near the top. Their live shows sell out in thirty seconds (literally, speaking from the experience of trying to buy those tickets). The writers recently got a book deal. The fans are massively enthusiastic, supportive, and invested -- sites like AO3 and Tumblr show a lot of work (fic, art, crafts, etc.) being created and a lot of attention being paid.

Meanwhile, over in my industry, it feels to me as though we're in a near-constant state of low-level panic over trying to create demand that will support the work we are trying to do. And when I say "my industry," I mean theatre. (Which is a realm in which the writers and main actor of Welcome to Night Vale also reside, having made their initial connection via the experimental theatre group the New York Neo-Futurists.) More specifically for me, it's regional/non-profit theatre rather than commercial/for-profit (i.e., "Broadway") theatre. (Though Broadway Producer Ken Davenport just today gave highlights from and commentary on the Broadway League's report on Broadway ticket-buyers in the 2012-2013 season, which is both interesting and hardly irrelevant.) How do you keep your organization afloat when you see audience attendance stagnating or dropping? How do you get people to come see your little grass-roots show in a basement somewhere? On a practical/business level, it's necessary to bring in audience and/or donors to provide you with the resources to do theatre. But also, if you're telling a story that you feel is worth telling... don't you want people to see it? And the more the better? Without the people, theatre ceases to be culturally relevant, becomes a calcified tower of economic and cultural elitism. Or at the very least, it is limited -- it's seeing the same small demographic of people in the audience time and time again (we've all seen those audiences filled with the Old White Rich group), the creation of an echo chamber.

Before turning to stage management professionally, I worked for an organization where our audience kept on decreasing -- and the year after I left, the organization was merged with another, effectively closing. That organization was a Roman Catholic parish where I was the director of the music department. At staff meetings, we'd hear local statistics about decreasing congregation sizes, how there were more funerals than baptisms and weddings combined. And indeed, fears were not misplaced, as the dissolving of that particular community evidenced. One would think that moving from the Church to the theatre would be one of the biggest industry changes that one could make, but I've found it to be quite to the contrary. It's not for nothing, it seems, that theatre's roots are in religious ritual.

So... how does this all fit together? Or, at least, how might it? I'm sure that others far more studied and directly involved than I am have thought these things before, but it's been so much on my mind that I'm curious to see where I end up just from analyzing my own observations and ideas in relative innocence, like a modern-day philosopher in the wild. And it's taken up so much of my thought-processes when I'm running and showering lately (when all of the best thinking occurs, of course) that I figure that I might as well put it down into written words.

Just keep moving on-

Welcome, Year 2014 of the Common Era! The Year 2013 kept me quite busy, and I hope that 2014 does the same – though perhaps not quite as busy. Self-evidently, blogging fell by the wayside as having finite amounts of time to allocate took its toll. I don’t regret any of the things that I did allocate that time to, though. Okay, that’s a dirty lie, I do regret some of those hours playing Marvel Heroes Online. Not all of them. Many of them. But not all of them. But most of those higher priorities were not regrettable things: finishing a thesis, receiving my Masters degree, building my career, being a healthier person, moving to the city of my dreams, learning how to have a social life as an adult who isn’t completely consumed by their work.

I’ll be doing a year-in-review post in my personal journal, but on a whole, I don’t wish to get bogged down in the past. Despite that, there are a few items from the previous year that I still want to share and will thus be revisiting at some future point.

Look forward to my expounding on such topics as:

• How the Les Misérables movie, which I saw about a year ago, still reduces me to incoherent ranting!
• Being a drag king among queens!
• Becoming a professional! Like, really!
• Eating all the food in Minneapolis!
• Doing all the exercise! (Please see previous item.)
• Welcome to Night Vale!
• Welcome to New York fucking City!

But mostly, I’ll be moving on.

Sometime within the first third of 2013, I was eating alone in the cheap-quick-and-delicious noodle house by my office at grad school, and while I usually used such opportunities to watch random episodes of Criminal Minds on the television over the dining area, I was drawn into eavesdropping on a conversation between two young men a couple tables over. One of them was explaining to his friend that each of his years had a theme. That year, 2013, was his year of connection. Things such as keeping in touch with family, setting work aside to go out with friends, replying to personal e-mails, being sure to have quality time with other people – those were prioritized. And when he did things, he tried to remember to ask himself if what he was doing improved connection.

Right then and there, I decided to totally steal his idea. Thanks, random dude.

And so, many months after that, near the end of December, I decided to go at it a little sideways and give myself a mantra, something that I could remind myself of very quickly and easily.

2014: The Year of Action.

Or: The Year of Just Do It Except Without Stepping On Any Trademarks.

Or: The Year of Shit Or Get Off The Pot.

Being true to my word, I actually began enacting my theme before 2013 has even ended. I didn’t let e-mails sit unread in my inbox, just building up anxiety. I entered a contest with the Trans-Siberian Orchestra where you had to submit a video – I can’t remember the last time I entered a contest that required the time and risk of a creative submission. I got myself tickets to a couple of Broadway shows that I really wanted to see but had been hemming and hawing about for months. I wrote that Welcome to Night Vale fan fiction idea that had been bouncing around in my head since November, after not having written any fictional prose in about four years and I’m pretty sure that the last thing I wrote was porn. I organized a karaoke party with friends. I put on my bowler hat. I finished the cover letter for that job application. I finished that bottle of champagne.

I’m here doing this.

And, of course, when I did each thing, I pumped my fist in the air, assumed a superhero pose, and yelled "ACTION!!" like I was about to rush headlong into battle.

So stay tuned: we’re going to get the blood flowing here again.