Working through revisions and having some pride

I'm currently working on the revision of a book chapter that I've been asked to contribute to a new arts-based research handbook edited by Patricia Leavy. I've written chapters before, and it's always the same: arduous, terrifying, exhilarating. And the list goes on. But always #grateful for the opportunity.

Writing anything for me is difficult, because I have a really loud inner censor that screams, "That's shit!" a lot of the time as I write. That voice sometimes yells at every sentence. It even happens when I write for this blog. I've gotten better at ignoring that censor voice on here and in my creative writing. Now I wait until it's all out of me, and then I declare out loud that what I've written is shit. Some would argue that it's just as bad, but at least I'm letting the ideas flow.

In drafting this chapter, I tried to apply a similar technique: just let my thoughts on this topic come out of me, then go back and refine. I'm in the process of doing that now, already working past the agreed upon deadline that Patricia very graciously extended.  When I go back and read what I wrote on all those days when I was working in the fall, I shudder at a lot of it, and start to try and pare away at the excess of words and the awkward constructions. And then every once in awhile, I happen upon a sentence that I actually like, and it feels good not to have to do anything to it. At least this time around. I enjoy the drafting process, but I find that I make lots and lots of changes every time a new draft emerges. It's probably a good thing, but also maddening in a circular sort of way.

As someone who reads a lot of student writing, I think we've got to get better as teachers at encouraging our students to embrace the revision process. Just like everything else, we now complete assignments at breakneck speed without really paying attention to what we've been asked to do. Our work and the quality of it when we hand it off to someone else needs to send a prideful message about how we feel about what we've been asked to do and how we've tackled the task. That's why I'm trying to revise this chapter very carefully. The content is obviously very important, but if I've poorly executed the mechanics of the writing, then I convey a strange message about my level of care and investment in the project.

Just something I'm thinking about. Another way of considering why paying careful attention to our writing is important.

Thinking about classroom inclusivity

In the shadow of the protests last semester regarding campus climate issues, I've been thinking about ways that I could deepen my practice around inclusivity in my classrooms. For a number of years I've included an "Open Door Policy" statement on my syllabi, encouraging students to speak to me if issues come up in the classroom, particularly if those issues are the result of something that I've said or done.

Given all the media coverage of student demands coupled with stories I've heard of student experiences in classrooms, I expanded the statement this semester and re-titled it "Open Door Policy & Shared Responsibility." The additions I've made ask students to engage in conversations with each other if something occurs that upsets them, and I continue to encourage students to speak to me if something happens that has upset them. I'm also explaining in my first class meetings that I believe that there's a difference between an unsafe and an uncomfortable classroom environment. I often feel uncomfortable when I'm in a learning situation because I'm being challenged to consider new ideas, new perspectives, new ways of doing things. In my mind uncomfortable does not equal unsafe. It could be argued that this distinction is based on a person's perspective, and I certainly agree with that. However, if a person doesn't communicate their perspective, we have no way of knowing that there's an issue. By including this statement, I'm trying to create space where students feel comfortable sharing their perspectives.

The revised statement also acknowledges that mistakes, misunderstandings, and miscommunications occur, which gets at something a colleague of mine brought up when I asked him to review this statement: the difference between intention and impact. My intention might not have been to offend anyone with my comment, but the impact of my comment may be entirely different from my intent. Again, partially related to the idea that a classroom contains a spectrum of experiences that I don't always have knowledge of as a teacher. I try to stay open and aware to as much as possible, but I'm not infallible. I have to take responsibility for that, but I also hope that students and colleagues can accept that infallibility with some sense of critical generosity.

Below is the statement that appears in my syllabi this semester. If you have thoughts about ways to improve it or have questions about it, please reach out to me. I'm open to continued dialogue about how to strengthen the statement in subsequent semesters. Also, if it resonates for you, please feel free to adopt it or adapt it to fit your needs.

Open Door Policy & Shared Responsibility
As the instructor for this course, it is my intention through my words and actions to create an inclusive learning community for everyone in the class. I encourage all students in the course to work for inclusivity as well, with the understanding that none of us are perfect and sometimes mistakes, misunderstandings, and/or miscommunications can occur. If at any time you have questions or concerns about the classroom environment, please feel free to address these issues with me. I would suggest setting up a time to speak with me during my office hours, and if my available times conflict with your other obligations, please email me with other possible times that might work for you. In the spirit of shared responsibility for our learning environment, I would also encourage you to help each other toward being more inclusive by remaining open to sharing and receiving feedback with peers in this area.

#newyorkvalues: Are we wasting our energy?

Last week during the most recent Republican presidential debate, Ted Cruz made some comment about Donald Trump's "New York values," insinuating something negative about New York City and its general support of things like socially progressive ideas, consumerism and big business, and whatever else Cruz was lumping under his vague description. He said the following: “Everybody understands that the values in New York City are socially liberal and pro-abortion and pro-gay marriage and focus on money and the media.” Of course, politicians with New York connections came out swinging, including Trump and Clinton, and actual NYers started a hashtag (#newyorkvalues) and let their NYC flags fly in a storm of social media responses.

Maybe interesting to read and potentially amusing, but overall, a gigantic waste of energy.

All of this hoopla just kept Ted Cruz in the spotlight for more time than he deserved. First Amendment: Ted Cruz can say whatever he wants to say about New York City and its values. Thankfully, he doesn't live here. Just like I don't live in Texas. (No offense to my Texas friends, it's just where Cruz has done a lot of his work.) I have all sorts of thoughts about the values held in other places, and I've often voiced them. So be it. I choose not to live in those places.

We have to get smarter about how we respond to comments that these politicians make right now, as they're working very hard to get and keep our attention. If we buy into it and waste our time responding, we may be making a big mistake. There are far bigger problems and actual threats to address than how Ted Cruz feels about so-called "New York values." Cruz knew exactly what he was doing, as that comment kept his name flying around the media for two or three days after the debate. We should not give him the satisfaction or the benefit of our attention.

When I first started teaching at NYU, I team taught an integrated arts course for childhood education majors with some colleagues in the Department of Teaching and Learning. One of them introduced me to a small booklet called Winning Children Over by Francis X. Walton and Robert L. Powers. The pamphlet dates back to the 1970s (I think), but I found its message particularly useful, as it identifies four common goals for students to misbehave in class.

1. Attention
2. Power
3. Revenge
4. Inadequacy

If we really consider what politicians are saying right now and analyze their actions, can't we apply some of the above goals of misbehavior to explain some of the reasons for their statements and actions? I mean, really. Some of them are behaving like the child who continually acts out in a 4th grade classroom. They resort to tactics that garner them attention and thankfully for us, also point to their inadequacies.

Rather than resorting to the same tactics every time one of these politicians says or does something inane, which at this point is like every day, multiple times a day, maybe we would gain some power by IGNORING a lot of what they're saying. They say offensive things about people, communities, ideas that I care about, but if I write a response to every single one on Facebook, I'm wasting my time and I'm just drawing more attention to them. Not productive.

Two key points:

1. Notice I say "politicians." This is happening with Republican and Democratic candidates
right now, and it's embarrassing. No one is above it, and it's sad that they're modeling this kind of behavior for anyone who aspires to be a leader, especially a young person.

2. I'm not advocating that we ignore all statements and actions. There are some truly disturbing proposals flying around right now, and that's where we should be focusing our efforts. That's where we need to exercise our agency, not in #newyorkvalues.

The moment we get embroiled in the inanity of something like a pot shot at "New York values," we're losing the fight. And we risk democracy slipping further and further away from us.

Taking stock of 2015

As we come to the end of another year, I think it's a worthwhile practice to take stock of memorable and important professional and personal experiences from this sometimes turbulent, yet often inspiring 2015. Here's a list of some of the more important things that went down for me this year.

Collaborating with Jenny Macdonald on Enthroned

Skype rehearsing with Jenny, December 30, 2015.

Working as a dramaturg and director on this project has certainly been a highlight of this year, and I can't wait to witness Jenny share her show with audiences in just two weeks! We're doing Skype rehearsals in anticipation of the January 14th opening as part of Dublin's First Fortnight Festival, and scenographer Troy Hourie and producer Michelle Cahill are busy sourcing props back and forth across the Big Pond. Can't wait to get in the room with all the team, including Sorcha Shanahan who holds down the fort there in Ireland when I can't be there in the studio.

We Were All Young Once at the Chapin School

Piecing together the script with Sarah Bellantoni.

This enthnodrama marked my first collaboration with high school students using this form, and it allowed me to collaborate with friends and colleagues Sarah Bellantoni, who co-created and directed the show, and Daryl Embry, who designed the scenic elements for the show. They were students a decade ago, two of my first at NYU. I've been working with Daryl for years, and it's always a great experience. This was my first collaboration with Sarah since our NYU days, and she taught me many lessons as we created this project with her students. I love when the roles reverse, and I'm grateful to Sarah for her patience and generous spirit.

In Real Time at NYU Steinhardt's Program in Educational Theatre

Image of full company by Chianan Yen.

In February and March of this year, I worked with a company of student directors and actors to produce six of my short one act plays under the umbrella title In Real Time. It was a great experience to see the plays come alive on stage, and I had the opportunity to learn from the students and collaborate with some of my favorite theatre professionals: Andy Hall (scenic), Emily Stork (lighting), Márion Talán (costumes), and Talia Krispel (PSM). And I had the great fortune to meet and work with Sam Crawford (sound).

And one of the plays from In Real Time, Bromancing the OK, will be produced in a festival of short plays in New York City in April 2016: Mindflood produced by Torrent Theatre. Stay tuned for more information!

Animating the James & Ann Whitall House at Red Bank Battlefield

Actors performing in the herb garden behind the James & Ann Whitall House, National Park, NJ.

This site-specific performance project on a Revolutionary War Battlefield in southern New Jersey took three years to come to fruition, but it was one of the most gratifying projects I've ever worked on. A great team of actors and designers (Traci DiGesu and Márion Talán) carried the project to its pilot performances in June 2015, but none of it would have been possible without the amazing contributions of my four primary collaborators, Diane Robinson Macris of the Gloucester County Cultural and Heritage Commission, Sarah Misch, Robert Stevenson, and Liane Tomasetti. Another very important learning experience that helped me to understand where I want to head in 2016.

Ga(y)ze on 14th Street in Manhattan

Learning choreography for ga(y)ze.

Without a doubt, this project represented one of the highlights of my career as a theatre artist, so it certainly tops the list for 2015. A thrilling collaboration with my longtime friend and colleague Troy Hourie and choreographer Caleb Teicher, and continued work with designer Márion Talán and dramaturgs Keith Huff and Sarah Misch. Five great performers took a gigantic risk with us, made this piece in a weekend of workshops, and then shared it with voluntary and involuntary audience members on 14th Street between 3rd Avenue and Irving Place. It was one of the most exciting projects I've ever been a part of, and it taught me that fast and furious can yield deep and profound results. Special thanks to NYU Steinhardt's Forum on Site-Specific Performance for supporting this project!

A website overhaul

I've wanted to do a redesign of my website for quite some time, and I'm so grateful to Christine Carforo for her fantastic work. What a gift!

A PR in my last 15K

2015 started off with my long time running partner Anna Schmidt-MacKenzie moving to Oregon for an exciting new job. I thought that her move might spell the end of my running, but thankfully that was not the case. I miss running with Anna, particularly when it's hot and humid, as we both suffered together through those runs, but I've discovered a new appreciation for the solo run. And that translated into a new PR for me in the Ted Korbitt 15K: 1:11:38. I'll take it!

Developing a writing habit

I've been wanting to get my writing back on track for awhile now, and the relaunch of this blog and some advice from my trainer Jonathan Angelilli have allowed me to do just that. I publish on the blog three times a week, and I write every morning for 30 minutes in a notebook. Sometimes I just ramble, other times I plan my classes, and still other times, I just "work stuff out." I've been at the morning pages for four months and the blog posts for three. Hoping to get the blog posts up to five days a week in 2016. I have a rough draft of a full-length play, and I'm in the throes of writing the next one. I don't know if any of it's good or not, but I don't really care. Writing is something I both dread and look forward to, and I think that's what creation is: hard but gratifying work.

Less is more.

In the spirit of those three words, that's all I'm going to write. Take it for what it's worth.

Confronting my loneliness

The biggest challenge of 2015 is also the hardest to write about, but I think it deserves a shot. Particularly since that challenge created the largest seismic shift in my world that I've experienced in a long time. I realized early on in 2015 that I'd been battling loneliness for years, and I was losing. It was hard to see what I was fighting because from the outside I had no reason to feel lonely. I've got a great relationship with a person who I love and care about very much, loving families (both born into and created), supportive friends and collaborators, a good job, a nice house, a loyal cat, and the list goes on. That said, I felt like I was spending a lot of time by myself, and that alone time was playing tricks in my head. Being by myself has never been easy for me, and more recently I found myself falling into a lot of bad habits to try to combat those lonely feelings. I could see the bad habits, but instead of being able to change them, I just got depressed and they got worse. Thankfully, I eventually encountered a crisis, one that rattled my cage enough to wake me up and help me to see that the glass is actually way more full than it is empty, even when I'm literally by myself. From that moment forward, I've been able to embrace the time alone and put it to far more productive uses, even enjoy it, and I'm happy to say that life looks much better from this vantage point than it did a year ago. I'm grateful that I have patient people in my life, people who understand how to listen, to forgive, and to love. Without them, I'd not be able to write any of this yearly wrap up, much less this part of it. New York City may be a thriving metropolis full of people, but that fullness can also amplify feelings like loneliness. I think it's important to talk about, which is why I'm sharing it as part of this yearly wrap up.

Here's to an amazing 2016 with lots of exciting projects and opportunities for learning!

Happy New Year! 

On my Christmas list: A fraction of His humanity

Ever since I was a kid, I've appreciated Christmas as a holiday, largely because my parents have always made it an event of epic proportions. Lots of food, lost of music, lots of gifts, lots of generosity. It doesn't hurt that they also brought me home from the hospital on Christmas Day, 1971, three days after I was born. So I think there's something about "home" and the "holiday" that rings true for me in a very deep way.

Flash forward some years, and suddenly I was old enough to understand that Christmas had more to do with celebrating the birth of a very important child than it did about Santa Claus and getting presents. The evolution of my understanding of giving and receiving catalyzed largely through the exposure I had to the story of Jesus and his very humble birth. While I don't practice Catholicism anymore, I can't deny that much of my way of interacting with other people in the world has roots in the teachings of Jesus. And I don't mean the literal words of the Bible, but rather the interpretations of what this person had to offer through His stories and parables. If I take the Bible at face value, as a chronicle of Jesus' time on Earth, then He was one of the very best storytellers to ever live. He found ways to teach people by telling stories, and those lessons have influenced the world for generations. The very best kind of theatre artist.

Now, if you're reading this and you know me, you may be wondering what in the hell I'm going on and on about. I go to church once year, on Christmas Eve, I never talk about Jesus, I'm gay, I get offended by conservative Christian rhetoric around my so called "life choice," and the list about negative connotations I have about organized religion goes on and on. However, as I reflect this holiday season about my life and the state of the world, I can't help but feel an immense gratitude to this person, Jesus.

This Jesus and the people who chose to tell His stories after He passed away have left an indelible mark, and for me to deny that I've also been marked by His teachings would be silly. I don't believe that all of the stories that He told or are told about Him actually happened or are true in a literal sense. However, I believe in their messages: that human beings should treat each other how they themselves want to be treated; that a person born from humble beginnings can actually change the world; that goodness and humanity live inside all of us.

Those ideas are the key takeaways for me about Jesus and Christianity. All of the other rhetoric that accompanies Jesus, coming from the mouths of people who claim to speak for Him, to have studied Him and His book, it's just smoke and mirrors to cover the human need for status, power, prestige, influence, land, goods, services, etc.

"Let me tell you why everyone else is bad, but I'm good.  And here's how you can be like me. But to do that, you have to look down on other people, make them less than you. Then you'll be on top."

I'm no Bible scholar, but I don't think that Jesus ever said anything like that. Nor did He demand that people be like Him. Jesus was not about "Me Me Me." He asked people to be good to one another. Which I think is why we give gifts to honor His presumed birthday, to literally exhibit goodness to one another. It's also why people are asked to lay down their differences at Christmas, to cease fire, to come together as families, to forgive past wrongs.

Honestly, I'm tired of only asking for these "acts of goodness" to happen at Christmas. Maybe if the people proclaiming that they understood Jesus really paid attention to some of the things they think He said, we'd have a lot better world on our hands right now.  So that's what I'm reflecting on as we prepare once again to ritualize and celebrate His birth. How can I allow the teachings of Jesus, that I know are inside of me whether I like it or not, find their way to my surface? I'm not headed back to church, and I'm not searching for my salvation. I'm just trying to tap into a fraction of the humanity that this man Jesus somehow exhibited and articulated to those around him.  And then somehow changed the world for ages to follow. A fraction of His humanity. How can I find that?