Here’s what’s amazing about art – we begin to create it for ourselves and it ends up being for others. One of the production designers on my play, Sing After Storms recently told me, “I feel like this play was meant to be. It’s exactly what I need in my life at exactly the right time.” These words met me like a brick wall. They made me look up and take notice. I thought I was writing and producing this play because it means something to me when actually I wrote it for so many others, some of whom I’m just meeting now and others I have yet to meet. And that feels damn good. It’s a gift that keeps on giving to everyone it touches.
The Cosby Show – one of my favorites, then and now
There are a lot of people who bemoan TV as wasting the minds of America. I’ve never understood that mindset because TV literally saved me. As a kid, it taught me to dream. It taught me about relationships, friendship, and the many options that were available in the world of work. It showed me that I could live my life differently than those around me. It gave me a very small window into a very big world.
As a child of the 80’s, I looked up to and learned from characters in The Cosby Show, Family Ties, Growing Pains, The Facts of Life, Different Strokes, Cheers, Who’s the Boss?, and The Muppet Show. I loved reruns of The Honeymooners, I Love Lucy, Laverne & Shirley, Happy Days, M*A*S*H, All in the Family, The Jeffersons, and Mork & Mindy. I remember seeing the very first episode of The Simpsons and deciding to play the saxophone so I could be like Lisa. Saturday morning cartoons were my favorite event of the week. I watched the news morning and night to learn about far-flung places around the globe. From my tiny little town that didn’t hold much hope for me, TV gave me the idea that there was a lot more to the world than what I was experiencing. It made me laugh and it gave me an escape.
Somewhere inside me, that little girl is still there, her eyes glued to that small shiny box, her smile wide, and her face lit up by the light of pictures that showed her she could carve her own path. TV didn’t waste my mind. Quite the contrary – it bolstered me up. I wouldn’t be who I am without it.
Are you wondering when you’re going to make something happen? When it’s going to be the right time to make your move, make your mark, and live exactly the way you want to live? It’s now. It’s always now. The only thing we know for certain is that we have this exact moment. Spend it wisely.
In exactly two months the media will turn its attention to Boston to commemorate the one year anniversary of the Boston Marathon bombing. My friend, Mary, a runner and proud Bostonian, is in the midst of some incredible work that I want to share with you.
Many of the Boston Marathon bombing survivors were treated at Spaulding Rehab Hospital. Mary ran the 2009 Boston Marathon for Spaulding Rehab as a mobility impaired runner and this year was at the Mandarin preparing to celebrate the Race for Rehab Team’s triumphant crossing of the finish line when the bombs went off.
As Boston and the world count down the days until the start of the 2014 Boston Marathon, Mary is honored and proud to co-host two phenomenal fun(d)raising events to benefit Karis Antokal and Greg Gordon who are running with Spaulding Rehab’s Race for Rehab Team in Boston 2014:
Karis’ Karaoke for a Kause happening on 2/20/14 from 8:00-10:00 pm at the Limelight Stage and Studios at 204 Tremont Street Boston. Suggested minimum donation is $20 and you receive a Take a Chance ticket to be entered to win an autographed Tom Brady Jersey. And don’t worry if you’re too shy to step up to the mic. They’ll have plenty of people singing strong. Cash bar and appetizers will be available. Read Karis’ story on her fundraising page. Silent auction items include autographed books by Bob and Lee Woodruff, a Cape Getaway Weekend, Celtics and Red Sox tickets, and gift certificates to Stapleton Floral Design and Marathon Sports.
An Evening of A Cappella to Benefit Spaulding Rehab will take place on April 4th at Boston University. Terpsichore, Boston University’s all-female a cappella group, will be your host from 7:00pm – 9:00 pm at Sleeper Auditorium located at 871 Commonwealth Avenue. The evening features performances by Terpsichore, the BU Dear Abbeys, BU’s In Achordand Bostonality, a post-collegiate a cappella group. Minimum suggested donation is $10. Make your donation to Greg Gordon’s fundraising page and in the comments section note that it is for the benefit concert.
No matter where we call home, let’s show Boston and the city’s residents the love they need to heal and get through this difficult milestone.
Dear Valentine,
I don’t know your name yet. I’m not sure what you look like, where you’re from, or what you do. I’m not even sure where you are right now. To be fair, you don’t know these things about me either. Here’s what I do know: you’re getting here as fast as you can, you’re not giving up on finding me, and I’m not giving up on finding you. And when we do finally meet, I’ll know and you’ll know and we’ll marvel at what took us so long to sync up our timing. We’ll be glad we didn’t settle for someone else. We’ll be glad we spent so much time and effort improving who are individually so that we can be good to each other. I’m spending this Valentine’s Day with good friends, good food, and plenty of wine. I hope you are, too. I have a feeling by this time next year our paths will have crossed and we’ll realize that actually we’ve been on the same path all along. We just started at opposite ends of it. I’ll meet you in the middle and then we’ll decide where to go next. Together. It’ll be an adventure. Until then, happy Valentine’s Day.
A long time ago, I had a dream of being an artistic director of a theatre company. I was the chair of a theatre group while I was an undergrad at Penn and it was one of the best experiences of my life. My first theater job in New York was at the Roundabout Theatre Company and I greatly admired Todd Haimes, the Artistic Director at RTC. Like me, he came from a business background and traditional education outside of the arts. (He’s also a Penn alum.) He applied those skills effectively and built RTC into a powerhouse in the theater world. I wanted to be just like him.
After six years in the Broadway world, I lost my way. I couldn’t see my way past the ugly underside of entertainment. The egos, greed, broken dreams, and flat-out cruelty. I was hurt by it and I saw a lot of other people get hurt, too. I went running from it as fast as I could. I wrote off theater as something that didn’t deserve my attention and effort. I was young. I didn’t understand that I could change a system I didn’t like. I didn’t know that there was another way, that I didn’t have to accept an industry as it was. I didn’t believe I could make something different. It took me a long time to realize that you could be part of a system and not be defined by it.
That dream of being an artistic director never really died. It was placed on a burner so far to the back that it almost disappeared but somehow it kept fanning its own flame so that I could eventually follow the light and find my way back to it. That’s what I’m trying to do now, and my play, Sing After Storms, is the first step in that direction for a branch of my content development company, Chasing Down the Muse.
I want to bring a more human approach, dare I be so bold as to say an approach with more kindness and a sense of justice, to an industry that is defined by anything but kindness and justice. I’d like to give people a way in based on their passion for and commitment to producing work that inspires people, a kind of haven that celebrates them and their work, and lifts them up rather than taking them down. This summer I’ll work on two new plays that I’ve started to create, and I hope Sing After Storms has a long, healthy, spherical life after the New York City production in June that leads the charge to build this new way of creating theater.
That’s the goal. That’s where I’m going, and I hope you’ll hop on board. Interested? Drop me a line at christa@chasingdownthemuse.com.
An unglamorous Matthew McConaughey in The Dallas Buyers Club
Matthew McConaughey was on CBS Sunday Morning to talk about his un-branding. In a world where branding in all its many forms seem inescapable, it was refreshing to hear someone talk about chucking it all out the window and what’s come of his efforts. Known as a guy’s guy / romantic lead, McConaughey is nominated for an Academy Award for his role in Dallas Buyers Club in which he plays a homophobic rodeo cowboy who is diagnosed with HIV and given 30 days to live. He meets, befriends, and starts an illegal business with a transsexual who also has HIV. In Texas. Based on a true story. What?!
While Dallas Buyers Club is now a contender for several Oscars, for a long time it seemed destined to never see the light of day. 137 potential producers turned it down over several years before it found the funding, and the week before shooting was set to begin, they still didn’t have all the money they needed. They pushed on anyway. They just wouldn’t give up.
McConaughey was committed to the making of this film and the remaking of his own career in the process. For two years he turned down everything that fit the image that made him famous because he wanted to send a clear and persistent message that he would only take challenging roles that scared him. He wanted a complete career shake-up. While that was a personal choice, he certainly didn’t want to be largely unemployed for two years. Yet, that’s what it took. Two years of no work to prove that he was serious about taking his career in a new direction.
When I first heard this I thought, “Big deal. He’s probably got so much money that if he never works again he and his family will be just fine. Was he really taking such a big risk?”
And then I thought about what a shark tank the world of work can be, to say nothing of the world of work in Hollywood. He could have kept right on doing what worked, what he was good at, and raking in the money in the process. No one would have batted an eye at that and he would have gotten plenty of pats on the back for a job well done. Instead, he risked failing in a big way and throwing away an image and a career that have served him well that couldn’t have been recovered. They just didn’t feel good to him anymore, so he tossed them in favor of the unknown, something that made him feel alive again. Dallas Buyers Club is the result of that work. Was it worth it? All signs point to yes.
When I grow up, I hope I’m as mature as my dog, Phineas. His resilience never fails to amaze me. As a dog who was mistreated and abandoned as a puppy, he still found a way to love and trust people without hesitation. Two weeks ago, he was bit on the ear by another dog in the park. After some veterinary TLC, he marched outside for his walk the next morning with gusto to greet his neighbors, human and canine alike, in that same park without a trace of fear nor anxiety. Yesterday, we saw the dog who bit him and though he didn’t go bounding over to say hello, he also didn’t let that dog phase him one bit.
I think of all the times I stopped trusting people and held onto fear because of past hurt and betrayal. Despite the size and complexity of the human brain, dogs have us beat in matters of the heart. They figure out, in very short order, how to heal, forgive, and love again. They don’t admonish others nor themselves for mistakes and injustices. They recognize that something happened, they learn, and then they move on without the malice, anger, and disappointment that often emotionally cripples people for years. If we could follow their lead, this world would be a happier, healthier place.
Have you ever had an idea for a project literally follow you around? That’s what happened to be with my play, Sing After Storms. I wrote it because the characters wouldn’t leave me alone. I couldn’t stop thinking about them so I had to work on their story. And they’ve been with me ever since. I turn their decisions over in my mind the same way I analyze my own choices. I never get tired of that project because those characters and the world they inhabit keep me endlessly fascinated. To me, they live and breathe as much as I do.
Maybe you have a project like that – something you want to do or make or try that just won’t leave you alone. You think about it, dream about it, constantly tinker with the idea of it. That’s what you need to work on. Maybe you’ll make some money with it. Maybe it will just have to be a labor of love. But don’t let the money, or lack there of, make your choices for you. There’s a bit of magic in things and thoughts and actions that nag at us, they force us to hear them and recognize them for what they. Let them be your focus for a while and see what comes of it. Give them a shot.
On a recent episode of How I Met Your Mother, one of the characters feels lost and unsure what to do with her life. She got some powerful advice from a stranger: “What’s the one thing you want to do with your life? Now let everything you do be in service of that.”
This is a question I’ve been wrestling with a lot lately. What’s your one contribution, the one thing you really want to point to and say, “I did that. That’s why I was here.” Don’t make any considerations other than what you want. This isn’t about what you can do, but what you want to do. Got your answer?
Mine is to create content in many forms that inspires people to live exactly the lives they want to live. I want to be known as someone who did that for every person who crosses my path in some way.
Christa Avampato 