Getting There From Here

A Tuesday evening in Potomac, Maryland, and I'm settling down to a few hours of concentration and study. Django Reinhardt's Danse Norvegienne comes through the speakers, and the setting of the sun is a ways off...

97º today, and I'm still doing fine. My bum shoulder doesn't ache, and those splits come easy and fast. I always suspected that a warmer climate suits me best when, in 1988, I spent the summer in Albuquerque. I always chose to do my daily run at about 3pm. I welcomed the flexibility and quickness of my muscles, the profusion of sweat, the way my lungs felt seared by the scorched air. Perhaps I am destined to live in a hot locale, one that babies my stiff sinews and creaky joints with the balm of high temperatures. Still, I miss Northern California. I can't shake off the place that reared me, with the ocean in my nostrils and the gentle, perfect, enormous trees within view. Sigh...

Within the last couple of weeks the middle schoolers have come a long way in terms of daily practice. Some of them complained bitterly when we first began the Krienke-DAI regimen. I was dumfounded by just how unfit and uncoordinated most of the children are, in general. They don't know where their limbs are, they've all reverted to a kind of lazy shuffle, and exercise to them smacks of tyranny. Slowly, however, as they began to realize what a physical workout their play is, they became less and less discouraged, they became determined to muddle through and master things, for the sake of their work. Mark Jackson, in his book Theatrework, comments on watching the 1996 Olympics. "I have been watching more of this summer's Olympics than all past summers' combined. If only more theatre artists strove for such excellence as these athletes do! All that work for thirty seconds of perfection!" As my kids performed animatedly their one and only dress rehearsal wearing layers of padding, wigs, and woolen trousers in the unrelenting heat and not complaining one bit I couldn't help but think they were on their way...