Buzz, Balls & Hype

THE DOCTOR IS IN

All of Me

Last week my musical theater teacher directed me to create the role of "Susan the temptress, Susan the seductress" as I worked on my torch song. As noted, I have pledged to do everything she says, no matter how anxious or ridiculous it makes me feel. So, in addition to compulsively rehearsing the song, writing out the answers to the six questions, etc., I looked at obstacles to feeling like a temptress, and tried to find ways to address them.

Basically, I am a skinny, gray-haired 59-year-old klutz who tends to dress like a fifties-era kindergarten teacher.

I asked myself, WWRHD?
 
Rita Hayworth, I decided, would tackle one issue at a time. So: Skinny we could reframe as "stylishly slender," right? My age we could do nothing about, but look at how sexy Elizabeth Taylor, Simone Signoret, Barbara Cook, and so on, were well into their sixties, often beyond. Okay. And by some alchemical miracle I don't begin to understand, "klutzy" tends to translate into "hilarious" onstage.

So we were left with the hair and the clothes, and the attitude.

Rita guided me toward a tag sale in my neighborhood, where a much younger woman was unloading a black dress that, as my mother would say, left nothing to the imagination. For $5.00, it was mine.

Now the hair. I decided, partly as a tribute to Rita, partly to help me get into character, and, okay, partly as a joke, because if people were laughing with me, they wouldn't be laughing at me so much, to temporarily color my hair red.

This is where Rita deserted me. In the drugstore, I found a "glaze" that promised to wash out in a single shampoo. On Sunday afternoon, I did a trial glaze, in preparation for the real thing on Monday.

It turned my hair bright pink, the color of cotton candy. And it wouldn't wash out.

I started frantically IMing friends, most of whom were, unfortunately, too busy having hysterics over my predicament to be of much help. One of them did suggest a henna rinse. "It will cover the pink, and they fade quickly," she said. So I ran out with my troll hair to the health food store.

It did cover the pink--with bright orange. Another friend suggested a "corrective" rinse that then turned it a luscious shade of swamp green.

My son was posting instant updates on Facebook: "My mom's hair is green now! How badass is that?" I drank a lot of wine with dinner and went to bed early.

I awoke hoping it had all been a nightmare, or at least that I had overreacted, but when I looked in the mirror, it was definitely still green. I washed it about six times, then applied a hot oil treatment, recommended by another friend, that was "guaranteed" to remove the color. After that it was both green and greasy.

I had to decide whether to keep washing and miss class, or to just go green. I thought about what Lorraine, my teacher, had said the previous week: "You need to come up here convinced of your character, your situation, and your objective--and fuck everything else." I had committed to listen to her. I got on the train, green hair, skimpy dress, and all.

Onstage, I reminded myself of Lorraine's instructions. I reviewed my character's history: the hot, steamy affair with my classmate Peter's character; the burning need to get him back. "Just take your time," Lorraine coached me. John, the accompanist, would vamp until I was ready. "Get in touch with the emotion, and sing from that place." I embraced, him, caressed him, and teased him--and when I opened my mouth, a big, sexy voice came out.

At the end, the class cheered and hooted. Lorraine rushed up, grabbed my
hands, and cried, "You did it!"

Later, I played the Billie Holiday version for my son. "You know," he said, "you actually sound better than her."

I stared at him.

"No, really. You have a better voice, and you're always on pitch. She went off. But she sang better than you because you can tell that for her whole life people were always telling her how fabulous she was. That's in the way she sings; it makes you pay attention. You never had that."

I don't think I sound better than Billie Holiday, even at her lowest points (and this recording was not one of those). I think the same mechanism was operating that has me convinced that my son is a better guitarist than Jimi Hendrix. But I hear the truth of what he was saying about confidence and conviction.

What I'm discovering, though, is that I can make that happen for myself, by creating a character who has the attributes I need for a particular song, and then inhabiting the character with full commitment--with all of me.

 Susan O'Doherty, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist with a New York City-based practice. A fiction writer herself, she specializes in issues affecting writers and other creative artists. She is the author of Getting Unstuck without Coming Unglued: A Woman's Guide to Unblocking Creativity (Seal, 2007). Her Career Coach column appears every Monday on Inside Higher Ed's Mama, Ph.D. blog, and she is a regular guest panelist on Litopia After Dark. Send your questions to her at Dr.Sue at mindspring dot com. 

THE DOCTOR IS IN

Doing the Thing I Think I Cannot Do 

I am more than a little intimidated by my new musical theater class. The teacher is brilliant, witty, and a highly accomplished performer herself; and most of the other students seem Broadway-ready to me. After the first few classes, in which I performed well enough, but far below the level of the class, I thought seriously about transferring back to my old class, where I was comfortable. 

But the teacher is warm and encouraging, and the other students are friendly and supportive—and I remembered how frightened I was in my first class, and how I thought about dropping out, and how glad I am that I didn’t. It’s because of that class that I was able to even walk into this one, and actually get up and sing on request in front of a new teacher and a bunch of accomplished strangers, even though my voice and my knees shook a bit. 

Besides, as Lorraine, my new teacher, said to me, what I’m seeing in these students is a finished, polished product. They didn’t come to her like this; they came, like me, with vocal training, good potential, and hope. She sees that I have the first two, and assured me that if I keep up the third, we will do wonderful, exciting work together. 

So I committed to do everything she tells me to do. Which is turning out to be harder than I thought. 

Last week, she told me I was done with the song I’d been working on. She said, “Next week, I want you to bring in a song you really love, that you can engage with on a deep emotional level.” 

At home, I went through all of my music. I talked to friends. I couldn’t identify a song in my range that I feel that way about. I like all of the songs I sang in my previous class, but for the most part, I chose them for technical reasons—to stretch my range, to learn to belt, to conquer my fear of Sondheim, etc. 

So I emailed Lorraine, outlining what I saw as the problem: the music I really love is totally inappropriate for me: Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughn, etc. The songs for someone like me leave me lukewarm. Did she have any suggestions? 

She wrote back immediately: Why not Billie Holiday? Why not Sarah Vaughn? If you truly love a song, it is the right song for you. 

Okay. That is a challenge, but that’s what I enrolled for. I emailed back that I would bring in “All of Me” this Monday. 

She wrote back that she wants me to prepare it as a mini-scene, to dress in costume and set the stage, and cast myself as “Susan the temptress, Susan the seductress.” 

My first reaction was, I couldn’t possibly. But I made the commitment, and I will. I’ve already written a short scene to play out with a fellow student, in which he, a married man, has returned to his wife, and I’ve asked him to meet me to “talk things over,” but really to get him back. I’m practicing what I would do to make that happen. 

And I’ve decided not to feel ridiculous, a scrawny 59-year-old gray-haired woman staging a seduction scene and singing a torch song. This is theater, where anything can happen. And it will do me good as both a singer and a writer to stretch myself this way; to get into the head of such a different character. Besides, I promised. 

I’ll let you know how it turns out.   

 Susan O'Doherty, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist with a New York City-based practice. A fiction writer herself, she specializes in issues affecting writers and other creative artists. She is the author of Getting Unstuck without Coming Unglued: A Woman's Guide to Unblocking Creativity (Seal, 2007). Her Career Coach column appears every Monday on Inside Higher Ed's Mama, Ph.D. blog, and she is a regular guest panelist on Litopia After Dark. Send your questions to her at Dr.Sue at mindspring dot com. 

A Long Time Ago

An interview I did over at Joe Konrath's blog - about the early days of self publishing and what the landscape is like today. 

THE DOCTOR IS IN

Uta Hagen’s Six Steps 

In A Challenge for the Actor , Hagen asks actors to answer six basic questions for themselves, in relation to each new part or scene. In my Musical Theater class we are learning to adapt them for each song/routine. Recently, I have started looking at the characters in my stories with these questions in mind. It has been illuminating in a few instances—highlighting areas of fuzzy thinking or unconscious “cheating” to make a point. I thought you might find them helpful as well:
1. WHO AM I? What is my present state of being? How do I perceive myself? What am I wearing? 2. WHAT ARE THE CIRCUMSTANCES? What time is it? (The year, the season, the day? At what time does my selected life begin?) Where am I? (In what city, neighborhood, building, and room do I find myself? Or in what landscape?) What surrounds me? (The immediate landscape? The weather? The condition of the place and the nature of the objects in it?) What are the immediate circumstances? (What has just happened, is happening? What do I expect or plan to happen next and later on?) 3. WHAT ARE MY RELATIONSHIPS? How do I stand in relationship to the circumstances, the place, the objects, and the other people related to my circumstances? 4. WHAT DO I WANT? What is my main objective? My immediate need or objective? 5. WHAT IS MY OBSTACLE? What is in the way of what I want? How do I overcome it? 6. WHAT DO I DO TO GET WHAT I WANT? How can I achieve my objective? What's my behavior? What are my actions? (P. 134.) The last three are, of course, the “meaty” questions in terms of narrative—but what fascinates me is how answering the first three in scrupulous detail can deepen my understanding of a character’s motives, obstacles, and choice of actions. The whole book is a treasure for a writer.

 Susan O'Doherty, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist with a New York City-based practice. A fiction writer herself, she specializes in issues affecting writers and other creative artists. She is the author of Getting Unstuck without Coming Unglued: A Woman's Guide to Unblocking Creativity (Seal, 2007). Her Career Coach column appears every Monday on Inside Higher Ed's Mama, Ph.D. blog, and she is a regular guest panelist on Litopia After Dark. Send your questions to her at Dr.Sue at mindspring dot com. 

THE DOCTOR IS IN

Updated to fix an instance of bizarre syntax pointed out by a kind and tactful reader.

Not Sure I'm an Artist Like the Rest of You

The textbook for my fabulous new Musical Theater class is Uta Hagen's A Challenge for the Actor. In it, she discusses the qualities an artist/actor must possess. According to Hagen:

These endowments consist of high sensitivity and responsiveness to sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell, of exceptional sensitivity to others, of being easily moved by beauty and pain, and of having a soaring imagination without losing control of reality...[and] an insatiable curiosity about the human condition.

I've got that part down, except maybe for the losing control of reality bit, but then she goes on to say:

Once one is blessed with these endowments, it takes an unshakable desire to be an actor.

About her own training and preparation, she writes:

Every extra penny was spent on theatre, ballets, operas, and concerts, and I heard and saw many of the great artists of that time. Some of them became my role models, and I was continually reminded by my parents that their achievements were based on dedication and discipline as intense as those required to become a priest or a nun. My developing work ethic sent me rushing from a piano lesson to a modern dance class, back home to read a play, downstairs to hear an opera on the radio, back upstairs to practice making up, finally plopping into bed with satisfied feelings of accomplishment. Or conversely, going to bed with a slightly sick feeling, if I had goofed off or wasted a day and missed a chance to learn or achieve something.

Yikes. I know Hagen herself really was totally devoted to her art. I studied with, and adored, her husband, Herbert Berghof; he, too, lived for the theater.

I have clients and friends who, while they don't take the nun concept to that extreme, base the greater part of their identities and their energy in their art. They love their friends; if they have partners and children they are devoted to them; but they are always writing, drawing, composing, etc., if not in fact, then in their heads. As they wrap up one project, they are plotting the next. If they go through an extended period when they don't practice their art, they feel like they're going crazy.

I've never been like that. I love writing, singing, and acting, but I have never devoted myself to any of these arts exclusively, and I've allowed years, sometimes, to pass without practicing one or another seriously. I love studying and practicing, but I actually forget to submit my work, and I haven't auditioned for anything in over 25 years. I loved playing recorder in early music groups, but when I had the chance to "go pro" I declined. I realized that my enjoyment of the music was just that, not a passion, and that at least half of the joy I derived from playing had to do with interacting with my fellow musicians--not a promising insight for a budding performer.

Undoubtedly, part of this lack of drive is attributable to insecurity. But I am pretty good at pushing past my fear if I want something badly enough. I also have a fairly low tolerance for boredom and drudge work, which is what the business end of any profession tends to entail. Unless you have the discipline to devote yourself to that, you're not likely to get far.

I think the connecting thread is my fascination with exploring and articulating the human experience, especially social interactions. This fascination drives my therapeutic work, my reading and writing, acting and song delivery, and the lightning-quick improvisational exchanges that can reveal so much.

I don't know what this makes me--definitely not someone Hagen would recognize as a serious artist. But I am very serious in my commitment to continuing to learn and grow, and I'm having a blast.

Susan O'Doherty, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist with a New York City-based practice. A fiction writer herself, she specializes in issues affecting writers and other creative artists. She is the author of Getting Unstuck without Coming Unglued: A Woman's Guide to Unblocking Creativity (Seal, 2007). Her Career Coach column appears every Monday on Inside Higher Ed's Mama, Ph.D. blog, and she is a regular guest panelist on Litopia After Dark. Send your questions to her at Dr.Sue at mindspring dot com.