Thursday, February 18, 2010
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
In Loving Memory of Gerson Katz (1922-2005)
"His life was gentle, and the elements
So mix'd in him that Nature might stand up
And say to all the world 'This was a man!"
~ Mark Anthony; Act V, Scene V. Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare
Today marks my maternal grandfather, Gerson Katz's fifth yarzheit (the anniversary of his death). My grandfather died of leukemia in February 2005. He was eighty three years old and I was a freshman in high school. My grandfather was the first person to introduce me to Shakespeare and ironically enough, I was working on a production of Love's Labour's Lost at the time of his death. I was playing Holofernes.
My grandfather was not an easy man to get along with. He was stubborn, aggressive, and old fashioned. He had experienced devastating loss in his life and I think he found it difficult to get too attached to anyone. He was not always able to express his love as easily as he would have liked. But my grandfather was very loving and was utterly devoted to his family. Every time he hugged me and told me he loved me, it felt like he meant it from the bottom of his heart. In my our fourteen years together, my grandfather and I were able to make a connection. And I have William Shakespeare to thank for that connection.
Whenever my family would convene in our hometown of Johannesburg, my grandfather would make my cousins and I gather around the living room television to watch old videos of Shakespeare films. Some of these videos were very dated, but some were utterly captivating. When I was eleven or twelve, my grandfather showed me Franco Zephirelli's 1968 adaptation of Romeo and Juliet. I didn't know that Shakespeare could be that passionate and, well, sexy. My grandfather lit a spark in me and subsequent Shakespeare classes at summer camp fanned the spark into a flame.
My grandfather never loved the idea of me being pursuing a career in the theatre. I remember, when I was nine or ten years old, my grandfather asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I answered "An actress, or maybe a lawyer." My grandfather immediately replied: "I think you should be a lawyer. I could see you presenting your case with great poise in a court of law." Of course, I wanted to be an actress and I still do, but my grandfather was more than definitely against the idea. That is, until I fell in love with Shakespeare. I think he loved the idea that I could become a Judi Dench or a Helen Mirren. So he took to teaching me everything he knew about Shakespeare.
As my grandfather lived in Johannesburg, I didn't get to see him often. But when we were together, I was able to learn a great deal at his side. When I was enamored with Hamlet, my grandfather forced me to watch the lesser known Shakespeare plays like The Winter's Tale and The Merchant of Venice. He insisted that I watch Laurence Olivier's performance of King Lear. He showed me John Barton's Playing Shakespeare documentary series. For the first time, I was seeing the connection between the scholarship involved in interpreting Shakespeare and actually putting that scholarship into action. I was addicted. But unfortunately for me, a lot of people didn't quite understand my addiction. Let's face it, it's not exactly normal for a thirteen year old girl to obsess over a 300 year old playwright. But my grandfather understood and that made a world of difference to me.
When my grandfather passed away, I was angry. I felt that I hadn't had enough time with him. There was so much more he had to teach me and now I would never be able to learn directly from him ever again. I would come to learn in the months to come, that this was only the beginning of my grandfather's lessons. After he died, the stories poured out. I learned about his excellence in his profession as a surgeon and his devotion to his medical students. I learned about how difficult his childhood had been, how he had struggled with poverty and anti-Semitism to carve out a life for himself, his wife, and children. I learned about how hard he worked to provide for his sister and mother after his father died. I learned how romantic my granfather was and how deeply he loved.
My grandfather kept something called a commonplace book in which he collected quotes and recorded his private thoughts. In the years before his death, he wrote this:
I have not visited my grandfather's grave since we unveiled his tombstone in January of 2006, but I have tried to make it my life's work to truly be his stake in immortality. I live each day of my life attempting to be what he would want me to be. I work hard to help my parents and I work hard at school. I have filled my life with poetry, art, and music. I have devoted almost all of my career as an actor to performing, and now directing Shakespeare. I thought that when my grandfather passed away, that I hadn't had a chance to learn that much from my grandfather, that we hadn't had enough time. But I realize now that my grandfather left me with so much. I owe so much of my character to him, but I also owe my love of Shakespeare to him. And I would not be half the human being I am today without those two things.
My grandfather may not be with me in the physical world, but he is still with me in spirit, however corny that sounds. Every time I pick up a Shakespeare play and read those weighty words, I feel my grandfather just over my shoulder looking down and smiling.
I miss you Grandpa Guggy, and I love you.
So mix'd in him that Nature might stand up
And say to all the world 'This was a man!"
~ Mark Anthony; Act V, Scene V. Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare
Today marks my maternal grandfather, Gerson Katz's fifth yarzheit (the anniversary of his death). My grandfather died of leukemia in February 2005. He was eighty three years old and I was a freshman in high school. My grandfather was the first person to introduce me to Shakespeare and ironically enough, I was working on a production of Love's Labour's Lost at the time of his death. I was playing Holofernes.
My grandfather was not an easy man to get along with. He was stubborn, aggressive, and old fashioned. He had experienced devastating loss in his life and I think he found it difficult to get too attached to anyone. He was not always able to express his love as easily as he would have liked. But my grandfather was very loving and was utterly devoted to his family. Every time he hugged me and told me he loved me, it felt like he meant it from the bottom of his heart. In my our fourteen years together, my grandfather and I were able to make a connection. And I have William Shakespeare to thank for that connection.
Whenever my family would convene in our hometown of Johannesburg, my grandfather would make my cousins and I gather around the living room television to watch old videos of Shakespeare films. Some of these videos were very dated, but some were utterly captivating. When I was eleven or twelve, my grandfather showed me Franco Zephirelli's 1968 adaptation of Romeo and Juliet. I didn't know that Shakespeare could be that passionate and, well, sexy. My grandfather lit a spark in me and subsequent Shakespeare classes at summer camp fanned the spark into a flame.
My grandfather never loved the idea of me being pursuing a career in the theatre. I remember, when I was nine or ten years old, my grandfather asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I answered "An actress, or maybe a lawyer." My grandfather immediately replied: "I think you should be a lawyer. I could see you presenting your case with great poise in a court of law." Of course, I wanted to be an actress and I still do, but my grandfather was more than definitely against the idea. That is, until I fell in love with Shakespeare. I think he loved the idea that I could become a Judi Dench or a Helen Mirren. So he took to teaching me everything he knew about Shakespeare.
As my grandfather lived in Johannesburg, I didn't get to see him often. But when we were together, I was able to learn a great deal at his side. When I was enamored with Hamlet, my grandfather forced me to watch the lesser known Shakespeare plays like The Winter's Tale and The Merchant of Venice. He insisted that I watch Laurence Olivier's performance of King Lear. He showed me John Barton's Playing Shakespeare documentary series. For the first time, I was seeing the connection between the scholarship involved in interpreting Shakespeare and actually putting that scholarship into action. I was addicted. But unfortunately for me, a lot of people didn't quite understand my addiction. Let's face it, it's not exactly normal for a thirteen year old girl to obsess over a 300 year old playwright. But my grandfather understood and that made a world of difference to me.
When my grandfather passed away, I was angry. I felt that I hadn't had enough time with him. There was so much more he had to teach me and now I would never be able to learn directly from him ever again. I would come to learn in the months to come, that this was only the beginning of my grandfather's lessons. After he died, the stories poured out. I learned about his excellence in his profession as a surgeon and his devotion to his medical students. I learned about how difficult his childhood had been, how he had struggled with poverty and anti-Semitism to carve out a life for himself, his wife, and children. I learned about how hard he worked to provide for his sister and mother after his father died. I learned how romantic my granfather was and how deeply he loved.
My grandfather kept something called a commonplace book in which he collected quotes and recorded his private thoughts. In the years before his death, he wrote this:
I thought again about how much I had experienced of death, from the moment I watched my Father die to now in my work with my patients. I thought about how we all develop our own inner pictures of death and an afterlife from the stories and words we hear as children which form our first image. As we pass through life, we redraw these images hoping that at the end we will be prepared for what awaits. My childhood concept of death came from conversations with my Father. He had subscribed to the most ancient Jewish concept, that there is no heaven or hell, no state of conscious existence similar to the one we enjoy in this life, and that what awaits us on the other side of life is vague and indescribable. The focus was on memory, that existence is perpetuated in the hearts and minds of the people who remember those who are gone . I say “I will live on in my children”. They are my stake in immortality . After my Father died it was impossible for me to imagine him as disintegrating into nothingness. Perhaps for that reason I rarely visited his grave. It was too painful , too stark an image in my mind, that his body, the warm loving body that had held me in the water when I was learning to swim, that had embraced me with surprising strength when I succeeded and with even greater strength when I failed; that body was now inanimate matter dispersed in the soil, and nothing more.
I have not visited my grandfather's grave since we unveiled his tombstone in January of 2006, but I have tried to make it my life's work to truly be his stake in immortality. I live each day of my life attempting to be what he would want me to be. I work hard to help my parents and I work hard at school. I have filled my life with poetry, art, and music. I have devoted almost all of my career as an actor to performing, and now directing Shakespeare. I thought that when my grandfather passed away, that I hadn't had a chance to learn that much from my grandfather, that we hadn't had enough time. But I realize now that my grandfather left me with so much. I owe so much of my character to him, but I also owe my love of Shakespeare to him. And I would not be half the human being I am today without those two things.
My grandfather may not be with me in the physical world, but he is still with me in spirit, however corny that sounds. Every time I pick up a Shakespeare play and read those weighty words, I feel my grandfather just over my shoulder looking down and smiling.
I miss you Grandpa Guggy, and I love you.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Embracing My Inner Russian
From December 28, 2009 to January 14, 2010, I was in Moscow, Russia, studying Stanislavsky and the works of Anton Chekhov at the Moscow Art Theatre School. I went with 18 other students from the Fordham Theatre department and 1 Fordham Theatre alumni as our mentor. Russia was intense experience, which I suppose is fitting for an intense country. Oddly enough, Russia didn't make me more intense, like I expected it to. Russia woke me up.
My life has not been kind to me over the past few years. I have not been healthy, physically or otherwise. My family has fallen victim to the recession. Last semester, it all felt like too much. I woke up in the morning and I didn't know why I bothered. I felt like I was sleepwalking, most of the time. Some days I felt nearly sixty years old. I felt mediocre. I couldn't remember what it was I loved so much about the theatre and acting. I decided that I wanted to go on this study abroad program and see if I could maybe try and remember.
All of my great-grandparents came from Russia, Lithuania, and Belarus, but mostly Russia and Lithuania. My great-grandfather Vladimir (yes, I'm that Russian), was from St. Petersburg. My father looks very Russian, and so do I. We both have very Russian temperaments. We're passionate, intense, and a little hot tempered. We're also fiercely loyal and we love very deeply. So, from the start, I was excited to go to Moscow and return to my roots. In some ways, I wanted to see if going to Russia could help me cope with some of my more Russian traits that I'm less proud of.
In a lot of ways, Russia was exactly what I expected it to be. It was brutally cold. It was mid-winter after all. By the end of the trip, we were dealing with highs of 4 degrees. Fahrenheit. Yes, the people are very intense and they have a longstanding love affair with vodka. This is a country where you can buy a pack of cigarettes and a bottle of vodka for under 5 dollars, but a few apples and a box of cereal will cost you about 3 dollars more than that. Food is always short in Russia and politically, things are constantly shifting. The people there live hard because it's the only way they can survive. You would expect in all this darkness, that I’d get dragged down too. That I’d turn more towards my inner dark, which is essentially what I’ve been doing since this past summer when Mom got thyroid cancer. But no. In the midst of all the darkness and cold of Russia, I embraced my inner light. I found in all the classes I took and all the theatre I saw while in Moscow, that the Russians don’t take themselves too seriously. All of our teachers reminded us that we got into theatre because we thought it was fun, not because we probably won’t be hugely successful or because it’s one of the most difficult professions out there. Theatre artists in Russia seem to have embraced their inner ridiculous. All of the activities and exercises we did in classes were intended to bring out our inner child, to get us to play and use our imaginations. For years, I have been so bogged down in the intellectual side of acting that I forgot to play. And I think that’s what my acting has been lacking recently. I’ve played so many roles that are way out of my sphere of experience, but I’ve been able to pull them off because of my imagination and my willingness to play. I don’t know why I let myself forget that, but I’m thrilled that I’m beginning to remember.
For the past few years, I’ve been forced to accept adulthood and responsibility. I haven’t really had a chance to just be young. I haven't really had the chance to act my age. I don't have much of a social life because I'm working all time. I'm not really allowed to make mistakes or get bad grades because if I do, I'll be out of school in a flash. My parents have so much to worry about, I haven't really been allowed to be another worry. And I've consciously tried not to be a worry. All this responsibility makes me feel really heavy sometimes. Sometimes it's just too much for me to bear. But, when I was in Russia, I felt liberated of all my responsibility. I gave myself permission to make as many mistakes as I wanted (within reason) and it was so liberating. I felt like my own age for the first time in three years. And it’s funny, we never got enough sleep in Moscow, but I’ve never felt more awake.
I’m glad that I’m going to be spending this next year producing a play like Love’s Labour’s Lost. It’s such an emotionally honest play, so full of the exuberance of youth. I feel like after my time in Russia, I have the energy to attack this play with the full force of my imagination, sense of humor, and youth. There’s still so much to do, but I feel ready. I don’t feel daunted. Not at all.
My life has not been kind to me over the past few years. I have not been healthy, physically or otherwise. My family has fallen victim to the recession. Last semester, it all felt like too much. I woke up in the morning and I didn't know why I bothered. I felt like I was sleepwalking, most of the time. Some days I felt nearly sixty years old. I felt mediocre. I couldn't remember what it was I loved so much about the theatre and acting. I decided that I wanted to go on this study abroad program and see if I could maybe try and remember.
All of my great-grandparents came from Russia, Lithuania, and Belarus, but mostly Russia and Lithuania. My great-grandfather Vladimir (yes, I'm that Russian), was from St. Petersburg. My father looks very Russian, and so do I. We both have very Russian temperaments. We're passionate, intense, and a little hot tempered. We're also fiercely loyal and we love very deeply. So, from the start, I was excited to go to Moscow and return to my roots. In some ways, I wanted to see if going to Russia could help me cope with some of my more Russian traits that I'm less proud of.
In a lot of ways, Russia was exactly what I expected it to be. It was brutally cold. It was mid-winter after all. By the end of the trip, we were dealing with highs of 4 degrees. Fahrenheit. Yes, the people are very intense and they have a longstanding love affair with vodka. This is a country where you can buy a pack of cigarettes and a bottle of vodka for under 5 dollars, but a few apples and a box of cereal will cost you about 3 dollars more than that. Food is always short in Russia and politically, things are constantly shifting. The people there live hard because it's the only way they can survive. You would expect in all this darkness, that I’d get dragged down too. That I’d turn more towards my inner dark, which is essentially what I’ve been doing since this past summer when Mom got thyroid cancer. But no. In the midst of all the darkness and cold of Russia, I embraced my inner light. I found in all the classes I took and all the theatre I saw while in Moscow, that the Russians don’t take themselves too seriously. All of our teachers reminded us that we got into theatre because we thought it was fun, not because we probably won’t be hugely successful or because it’s one of the most difficult professions out there. Theatre artists in Russia seem to have embraced their inner ridiculous. All of the activities and exercises we did in classes were intended to bring out our inner child, to get us to play and use our imaginations. For years, I have been so bogged down in the intellectual side of acting that I forgot to play. And I think that’s what my acting has been lacking recently. I’ve played so many roles that are way out of my sphere of experience, but I’ve been able to pull them off because of my imagination and my willingness to play. I don’t know why I let myself forget that, but I’m thrilled that I’m beginning to remember.
For the past few years, I’ve been forced to accept adulthood and responsibility. I haven’t really had a chance to just be young. I haven't really had the chance to act my age. I don't have much of a social life because I'm working all time. I'm not really allowed to make mistakes or get bad grades because if I do, I'll be out of school in a flash. My parents have so much to worry about, I haven't really been allowed to be another worry. And I've consciously tried not to be a worry. All this responsibility makes me feel really heavy sometimes. Sometimes it's just too much for me to bear. But, when I was in Russia, I felt liberated of all my responsibility. I gave myself permission to make as many mistakes as I wanted (within reason) and it was so liberating. I felt like my own age for the first time in three years. And it’s funny, we never got enough sleep in Moscow, but I’ve never felt more awake.
I’m glad that I’m going to be spending this next year producing a play like Love’s Labour’s Lost. It’s such an emotionally honest play, so full of the exuberance of youth. I feel like after my time in Russia, I have the energy to attack this play with the full force of my imagination, sense of humor, and youth. There’s still so much to do, but I feel ready. I don’t feel daunted. Not at all.
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