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A Theatre Reviewers Time Travel through Covid 19
Hello.
I’m back, after a ten-month, life altering, time travel to Theatrius.com, and to a world of theatre reviewing and beyond. Oh, yes, and learning how to maneuver the many tricky pathways of media. Quite the exploration! Tough navigation, too.
Haven’t posted a lot of my 27 reviews because they find their way on Theatrius.com, Facebook, twitter, and now Instagram … all those direct electronic lines to many people’s computers.
My last review, “The 7th Voyage of Egon Tichy”, represent the isolated, yet expansive sojourn through Covid 19. The voyage took to space when COVID 19 invaded our lives and incarcerated us in own homes amid a world-wide pandemic. Like Egon, (Joshua William Gelb) we were flying “where no man had gone before.”
Every once-in-a-while, while I was away, I thought about blending my own experiences about writing these reviews into my blog–not actual impressions and opinions and snippets of the plot. But how the particular review relates to my experiences and thoughts, and maybe some of yours.
Actually, my true feeling is that all written reviews relate to the universality of human nature, and how the human, in nature, is achingly slow to change. But that’s not new.
Covid is. And how it quickly altered many of our lives, all aspects of our existence, is also new.
My change is very much like “Egon Tichy’s” life voyage: a causal time loop blowing all aspects of ourselves asunder, then somehow, through exploring each clone in life, each day of the week, we manage to reunite with ourselves, the new us.
But what we realize through this experience is that many of us, through the quarantine, have expanded, have grown, like the many Egons! And quickly.
I’ve written reviews for many streamed theatres in the Bay Area and throughout the world. My favorite has been the Australian theatres, but I have watched awesome shows in theatres in Ireland, and of course, the bigger theatres in England, and add New York to those streaming list. It’s a true cultural learning experience.
But now as theatre houses begin to open their doors in England, that avenue has closed to me. And soon the doors will shut to my Australian favorites, and then Ireland and Scotland, and then the one theatre in Wales! And New York! One of the playwrights in Australia wrote to Theatrius and thanked us for reviewing their show. That was like a hug from around the world! Soon I will be confined to reviewing Bay Area shows. As wonderful as that is, the world-wide stages will be in-person, non-streamed, really what we miss the most at home, the realness of live theatre. However, I’ll feel quarantined again, alone in the Bay Area, yes, but renewed, yes, a different me with a different perspective on theatre, and culture.
My friends who work remote, with children at home, feel the expanded change of freedom, but confined. Many say they have spent more valued time with their family than ever before. They have organized their time, share the load, and the children benefit also. Of course, there is craziness, but they have united to expand their options; car rides, games, camping, hikes. They, too, like Egon, have to expand their chambers.
Freedom is an odd word, isn’t it? We can feel free in the mandated confines of our homes. Several of my friends do not want to venture out to the ball-and-chain rituals that bound them for years: family members, work, gyms, driving the kids to soccer and birthday parties.
Like Egon, having the rocket-shattering difficulty of fixing a rudder, we have altered the direction in our lives, and found healthy solutions in the horrible universe of a deadly disease.
On Becoming a Reviewer
Theatrius, a review website for plays, has added me to their team! Exciting doesn’t quite fit the elation of receiving free tickets to plays you most want to see, free parties that accompany “Press Nights,”discussing the play’s value with other theatre reviewers—who possess a huge repertoire of plays at their fingertips and can pull any play for comparison from their creative minds.
Thanks to the mentoring of Barry Horwitz, creator of Theatrius, I’m seeing plays with a different eye, allow myself to unite thoughts and feelings I experience during the play, and produce an essay, of sorts, that can enlighten theatregoers on the relevance of the play to today’s world and people. In “Stomp,” below, I emphasized the drums as the heartbeat of humanity, and draw the reader into how the play, the noise, grew from a primordial single beat to the birth of a community.
I thought I would share my second review: We keep our views to 500ish words. Many reviews go on and on and on. Theatrius gives you the quick pulse and breath of plays. TRY US. www.theatrius.com
“Stomp” Plays the Heartbeat of Humanity, at ACT, S.F.
Cresswell & McNicholas Create Community with Sound
by Patricia L. Morin
The long running New York hit show “Stomp” introduces us to a group of eight street-wise percussionists and mimes, six men and two women, dressed mainly in rags. The floor-to-ceiling, two level stage sets the mood—filled with thousands of instruments and household tools, along with traffic signs, car parts, and brooms.
I love “Stomp”!
It’s visceral. The raucous street sounds touch the primordial streak that connects humanity. We can feel the pounding in our solar plexus—everyone in the Geary Theater feels it, at the same moment.
The sounds sometimes culminate in a harmony of loud beats or a cacophony of clashing garbage cans—while the performers dance in syncopation. The swishing invitation of the lone broom holder attracts more broom holders. They begin striking the brooms in a complex rhythm of bangs and movement.
In one scene, Cade Slattery, dressed in slacks and shirt with a hat, is sitting on a stool reading a newspaper alone. He is soon crowded by his newspaper-reading friends. A chorus of newspaper tapping and scrunching breaks out.
When high on the second level, the lights dim, I, too, sway on a thin thread of rope with the performers, beating the many sized drums. My heart pulsates with the deafening bangs. The drums speak to us. The pounding of an orange industrial garbage pail unites us in fellow-feeling, as Joyce Joyner wields a hammer handle. Joyner’s beat resonates with an African festival dance amidst a chorus of sound.
Invited by the leader, Jordon Brooks, into the performance, the audience responds. Brooks claps, we clap in reply. He snaps his fingers, we snap our fingers, too. He claps multiples times, and we communicate. A conversation has started, the community has reached out and we join them in acceptance.
An hour-and-forty-five minutes fly by in seconds. I am amazed Phillip Meyer’s complex use of lighting to change the mood. Co-Directors Luke Cresswell and Neil Tiplady awe us with eight performers in constant motion, flinging items at each other, dancing, and then catching and banging them on the floor. Amazing.
Do not miss the opportunity to be WOWED! “Stomp” reignites the deep, resonating heartbeat of our tribal ancestors, uniting diverse peoples. “Stomp” reconnects us to a universal pulse.
“Stomp” by Luke Cresswell & Steve McNicholas, directed by Luke Cresswell & Neil Tiplady, at A.C.T., The Geary Theater, San Francisco, through Sunday, November 10, 2019. Info: act-sf.org
Cast: Jordon Brooks, Joshua Cruz, Jonathon Elkins, Jasmine Joyner, Alexis Juliano, Riley Korrell, Cary Lamb Jr., Serena Morgan, Artis Olds, Sean Perman, Ivan Salazar, and Cade Slattery.
New Reviews: “Stomp” and “Driven”
Read Pat’s latest reviews for Theatrius:
Writers and Psychic Energy
My friend was discussing psychic perception and writers.
“I was talking with another playwright the other day and we got onto the topic of how when your writing is in full flow you feel like something outside of yourself is actually doing the writing, and at the same time you can get frequent “psychic ” events– like premonitions, predictive dreaming, synchronicity events. It’s like going to an unconnected event and someone who is an expert in the field you are writing about just happens to be there. We wonder if playwrights in general are more psychic than the normal population? So I said I’d ask here and check if any of you have had similar experiences.” Margaret McSeveney to ICWP connect list.
As it turned out, several of the playwrights responded that they had. One had called it fate’s intervention, like writing a psychic book and then meeting a psychic at the grocery store … similar occurences. The universe’s way of saying, “This was supposed to happen.”
In Psychology, there is a syndrome where we can feel like a “Participant” and “Observer” at the
same time. The observer watches the participant. The observer, the other worldly judge, and the participant, the person moving through the action. An example would be when you went to a party you didn’t want to attend. You moved through the party watching the people, maybe not participating in a conversation at first, just observing those around you. Then you interact with a fellow party goer, maybe someone you know. But you have stepped back, into a world of observing, half-attentive, and you can watch the people around you, take in their conversation while you are talking. It’s like angels picked you up and carried you in their arms above those speaking, away from you and your guest, but you are still interacting with the person speaking directly to you. At the same time you have a sense, a perception that you should leave. That all is not well somewhere, or the party may have trouble, or the world is going to shake. You leave. You find out later that someone in the party initiated a brawl that seriously hurt other party person.
Is that similar to the other-worldliness of the writer? Is that any different then the gas station attendant, the English teacher, the worker bee in any field that is working in full flow … and feel like something outside themselves is actually helping with their work and, at the same time, receiving a “psychic ” flash, like going to party and something outside of themselves tells them to leave?
I believe it is part of the human condition, a natural part of us that we are in the process of understanding.
LINEA: A Magazine of Short Fiction
Spring 2019 volume 1
My short piece, “Clay Horse Ashtray,” was selected to be part of the first release of the hand-stitched, limited copies, 180 worded pieces.
Clay Horse Ashtray
I love my room of four years, its flea market vogue. Vonnegut would be proud. A cockroach crawls up my desk as Beethoven’s Moonlight crescendos. Next to the desk, bamboo crates from the corner bodega holds my overdue textbooks, my NYU acceptance letter. The roach hits my clay horse ashtray choked with half-smoked Marlboros, wisely turns around. I stick a finger in the pages to hold my place in Vonnegut as the roach scurries over my exams, all A’s. I wish for nothing but my smokes, and, on special occasions, fresh water from one of those bottles that says its pure, two bucks a piece! Almost as much as I payed for my dying DVD player. Masters of Fine Arts: I try it on in the mirror. Moonlight Sonata ends. This summer, my framed NYU acceptance will hang at the entrance of my family’s diner, for all to see, before I come to their tables to take their orders. Pat Morin
Characters from our collective unconscious, or are we psychic?
We share:
But we also have: negative influences
and one of the conduit: dreams
and another: meditation
Then there are those realizations.
Stephen King once thought that many of his characters came from the deepest part of his unconscious, a collective unconscious- so many characters, so many lives, so many stories.
WT Jowett says:
The common themes of the collective unconscious are referred to as archetypes; like the unconscious mind, individuals do not have ready conscious access to the archetypes, but they are revealed through events and experiences in individuals’ lives. When an archetype is experience individuals unconsciously recognize it as what it represents and it appears as “mental forms whose presence cannot be explained by anything in the individual’s own life and which seem to be aboriginal, innate, and inherited shapes of the human mind” (Jung, 1978).
What does this have to do with being psychic, you may ask?
Rupert Sheldrake, (Morphic Resonance, The Nature of Formative Causation) has found statistical evidence of a psychic connection between every species that is evolving and growing.
“Ever have the feeling that you know you’re being watched? Or that feeling when you’re thinking about someone right before they call you? These feelings are sometimes thought to be merely coincidental or just happenstance. But the fact that these are common incidences and something that everyone can relate to, leaves open the possibility that there could be something metaphysical happening. Rupert Sheldrake says he believes that these occurrences are psychic phenomena that is evidence of an interconnected consciousness between all humans …”
Can the connection between us and the collective unconscious be that psychic thread?
To be continued …
next: Perception
Definition: Perception
Etymology: L, percipere, to perceive
The result or product of the act of perceiving. Kinds of perception include depth perception, extrasensory perception, facial perception, and stereognostic perception. perceptive, perceptual, adj.
Mosby’s Medical Dictionary, 9th edition. © 2009, Elsevier.
Perceptual reasoning is a category of reasoning skills including nonverbal fluid reasoning, spatial processing, and the visual perception.
Have some fun: copy and paste to search bar:
www.playbuzz.com/ashleystevens10/can-you-pass-the-perception-test
The five main stages of perception:
Stimulation: In order to perceive that something is happening, it must come to a person’s attention. Stimulation can occur through any of the five senses: smelling, seeing, hearing, touching or tasting.
Organization: To quickly disseminate large amounts of information, such as events happening, a human’s brain organizes the events by familiar components. Connecting familiar components with past experiences helps the person understand what is transpiring.
Interpretation: Once the key components of an event are recognized, individuals apply their own biases to it through interpretation, sometimes referred to as evaluation. Relating past experiences, beliefs, values and more, a person can decide what the meaning of the event is and how to react if necessary.
Memory: To remember a perceived event or moment, it must be stored into memory. Individuals use those previously formed associations with personal beliefs and experiences to remember events and their personal evaluations of them.
Recall: Remembering the perceived event later on will retrieve the most important details of it. Blanks may need to be filled in by thinking through the situation again. Persistent recall improves the accuracy of this step.
An illusion of what reality is.
Next post–more about the psychic perceptions–ESP
Intuition-quiz
How Intuitive Are You? Take The Quiz And Know Your 6th Sense Score
This quiz was created by Vishen Lakhiani (2015)–feel free to let me know how you do and what you think of it.
Thanks to those who responded to the last quiz. Being Psychic includes intuition and perception, along with trusting one’s instincts. We’ll be exploring these traits on our path to gaining an awareness of what it means to be psychic.
The Oxford American Writer’s Thesaurus: Intuition is the ability to understand something immediately without the need for conscious reasoning–the understanding comes from an instinctive feeling–hunches (from the bone) and inklings (suspicions), and from what is considered as “gut level”.
The Intuition Quiz:
Answer options. Write down your answers and tally up your points at the end of the quiz.
- Never (1 point)
- Sometimes (2 points)
- Often (3 points)
1.) You are more of a spontaneous and ‘go with the flow’ type of individual, rather than a planner or an organizer.
2.) You evaluate your decisions on certain situations based on your gut feelings, which often produces the right outcome even if it’s not always practical or logical.
3.) When you meet someone new, you get instant strong negative/positive vibes, which proves itself true in the long run.
4.) You have used your intuition to successfully invest in the stock market or enter contests and win.
5.) You know your life purpose or mission in this world
6.) Whenever you ignore a strong intuitive or gut feeling that’s trying to tell you something, you’ll tend to regret it later on.
7.) You rely on your intuition when making career-based decisions. This causes confusion among your co-workers as you always make the right decisions even with incomplete facts.
8.) You’re a creative person, and you have dreams of brilliant ideas for your art/plans/designs which you often execute to much success.
9.) You often feel worried/excited before something bad/good happens without prior knowledge that this incident was going to happen.
10.) You have had creative ideas for art/books/writing come to you from seemingly nowhere which you’ve acted on and gave you tremendous success.
11.) You can feel when a loved one is hurting, even if you don’t know yet that they are in pain.
12.) Your friends often describe you as “creative”.
13.) You often make major decisions against the advice of “experts” or your loved ones based on what you’ve “sensed”, which always worked out perfectly for you.
14.) You immediately know when someone is lying to you or telling the truth.
15.) You’ve had prior knowledge of a disaster, negative event, illness, or death that later came to pass.
16.) Whenever you feel confused about a direction you need to take or you need to make a big decision in life, you meditate, knowing that the right answers will come to you quickly through this.
17.) You feel a strong sense of connection with people you’ve never met or places you’ve never been to.
18.) You are a highly empathetic person and often ‘take on’ the feelings of those around you, whether you want to or not.
19.) You’ve had a premonition that saved you from danger.
20.) When lost, you’ve found the right path back or direction by using your intuition.
Intuition falls into 4 categories. While most of us are functioning at Level 1 or 2, we all have the ability to function at the highest level (Level 4). Our goal as human beings is to continuously grow from Level 1 to Level 4.
You score 20-30. Level 1 – Warning System Intuition:
At this Level, your intuition will usually warn you when your life is at stake.
Let’s take the September 11th incident as an example. On this particular day, an unusually high number of people have claimed that they experienced dread going to work at the World Trade Centre.
Other examples include those who’ve experienced overwhelming feelings of dread just before making a journey. If you take a look at the results of the intuition contest on our blog post, you’ll see that 60-70% of all stories were at Level 1 – Warning System Intuition. This is where most people’s intuition stand.
While intuition is something we’re all are born with, many people, including yourself, do not get the chance to develop it. Your intuition has saved you from emergency situations, but you generally do not listen to your ‘gut feelings’ which you’re paying dearly for.
Don’t worry though, it’s never too late to start training and growing your intuitive abilities. If you do, you’re in for some amazing insights and a whole new level of well-being.
You score 30-40. Level 2 – Social Intuition:
You mainly use your intuition to tap into the feelings of those around you and those whom you have close relationships with. You are a highly empathetic person and can easily understand those around you.
People at this Level have been known to finish the sentences of those they’re close to, sense danger that’s approaching them like a mother senses danger for her child and are even affected by the moods of their spouses or those close to them.
This Level intuition is common in close groups, but you are more attune to it than others. Being on this Level is greatly beneficial for leaders, families and those in close relationships.
While you use your intuition to relate to those around you, you may also be ignoring it within other areas of your life. You have to keep training and enhancing your intuition skills if you want to experience the great benefits that comes with it. If you keep ignoring these ‘gut feelings’ then they will no longer happen.
However, it’s not too late to get back in touch with your intuition. With a little practice and training you’ll be able to hear and trust that “little voice” inside your head in no time and progress in other aspects of your life, such as your career, life purpose, and wealth.
You score 40-50. Level 3 – Creative Intuition:
Thomas Edison once said, “Ideas come from space”.
Many scientists and investors get their ideas and knowledge from having Level 3 intuition.
Look at the case of Elias Howe, the inventor of the sewing machine. He was struggling for years to come up with the design for the sewing machine needle. One night he had a dream where he was surrounded by cannibals who were holding spears with holes in them. This gave him the idea that the thread hole for the sewing needle had to be at the tip of needle and not at the top. That was how the sewing machine was invented.
History is filled with countless stories of how Creative Intuition has aided in the creation of inventions, art, and designs. Even businesses have grown and flourished because of intuition.
As a Level 3 Intuitive, you are very attuned to your feelings as well as the world around you, which is an amazing skill. Being able to access your intuitive knowledge has helped not only you, but those around you get ahead in life as well.
You most likely use your intuition to not only improve on your relationships, but also your career where you use intuition to creatively solve problems, make the right business decisions or create beautiful art, music or design.
You are most likely a very creative person who is successful in business or the arts.
You score 50-60. Level 4 – Higher Purpose Intuition:
This is the most useful and the most amazing level of intuition. At this level, your subconscious mind works with you and your intuition guides you to move towards your life purpose.
People with this ability are amazingly successful in the stock market or business. Take a look at Sir Richard Branson; he works with over 300 partners, yet he knows within 60 seconds of meeting a person whether to establish a professional relationship or not.
As a Level 4 intuitive, you already know that you should never doubt your inner voice, which guides you through all areas of your life. You know the importance of honing and fine-tuning your intuitive skills and listening to your inner voice. You meditate daily, which helps you make all important decisions in your life instantly – from love to business to health.
You always listen to your intuition which is the reason why you are where you are today. You know that what your are doing now is your divine purpose. By finding your life purpose, you fully contribute to the betterment of society. Your subconscious mind gives you momentum and the push you need to help you complete your life purpose. You are a highly intuitive being that is making a maximum impact onto the world.
Next we explore perception …
Are you Psychic? Take the survey–let’s talk
Psychic experiences–we all have them … the phone call after you think of someone, the feeling like someone is staring at you from behind, and they are … so many more.
But before we get into all the swirling thoughts about mysticism, take this survey: It comes from a great book you may want to buy: The Psychic Pathway by Sonia Choquette.
#1 rarely #2 Sometimes #3 often Pick one after each question.
- When I am with someone, I am aware of how they feel.
- If I met someone for the first time, I draw an accurate picture of what they are like.
- I am able to make decisions easily.
- I am aware when someone is manipulating me.
- I can tell if someone is lying.
- I can tell if someone is giving me a true account of a situation.
- I get involved with other’s problems.
- I can see clearly why people have a problem with something.
- I can change my plans easily if I get a bad vibe.
- I can stand up to dominating energy.
- I am able to know what I want.
- I can say no to someone.
- I can express myself easily.
- I trust myself to make decisions.
- I ask other’s for advice.
- I conform to win approval.
- I take care of my body.
- I eat/drink/sleep to escape my feelings.
- I knew something was going to happen before it did.
- I think of people and they call me the same day.
- I sense things before they happen.
- I have vibes but ignore them.
- I am afraid of my intuition.
- My life has lots of coincidences.
- I believe I have a higher self watching over me.
Rate your questions:
1 point for number 1
2 points for number 2
3 points for number 3
If your score was 25-39– You are not in the habit of reflecting on how people and situations affect you. This will change if you open your intuitive self.
If your score was 40-59– You are already quite tuned to a psychic energy, although you may not call it that. You may just consider yourself “hypersensitive.” If you increase continue to open your intuition, you will have a increased sense of safety, guidance, and well-being.
If your score was 60-75– You probably are aware that your awareness is exceptionally developed, but you may not trust it completely. You need to develop confidence as you integrate your abilities into your daily life. You will, as Sonia says, learn how to drive you car instead push it.
Let me know your opinions about the survey, and how you did. Next meeting: Opening up to your psychic mind.
I’m learning more about psychic abilities for my psychological thriller: Moloch and the Angel (working title). I’d like to share what I know, get some feedback from you about your experience and how you reacted … might be another book in it, a non-fiction.