Video!!!

frustrating, I know. I will repost tomorrow when I hopefully have a stronger internet connection!

The story of Lisa Kron:

Lisa Kron, solo performer/playwright/writer, sits perched on a stool in an auditorium. Her notes are in front of her on a music stand and her partner is seated in the front row, studying "Auntie Ezra's Queer Elements," a periodic table of jokes I don't understand. Lisa is dressed fashionably in a red velvet skirt and a black net sweater, boots, and an age appropriate, well-colored hair cut. Adina's World Theatre professor introduces her as "the queen of shrewdly subversive comedy."

She starts off by telling us a story about her interactions with Enterprise Rent a Car. Apparently they have to answer the phone with "Enterprise: we'll pick you up!" which she found amusing because it is undeniably suggestive. So even though she lived four blocks from the nearest Enterprise, she said OF COURSE please pick me up. The kid who picked her up was trying to make it as a musician in New York. She said, "I don't usually do this but I thought to myself, I'm going to inspire the kid." So she told him how she had started out doing little variety shows in little clubs all over the East Side and now, 20 years later, she is living the life and a famous playwright and actress and everything. And the kid goes, "20 YEARS?!!!!!!"

So it goes. The rest of her speech was her story of those 20 years. She told us that her primary acting experience before college was Purim plays at her temple, where they still talk about her performance in "Gunfight at the OK Kibbutz." She told us that when she auditioned in college, they told her she was a "character actress," which was code for "a lesbian." She played the part of a black maid once in You Can't Take it With You, and the director didn't want to be racist so he changed the part to an Irish maid...without changing the dialogue. So she spoke like a black maid in an Irish accent. She is a Jewish lesbian from the midwest.

Over the years, she was cast in many different shows. A highlight: a musical about trees who wanted to become Christmas trees. She played in Babes in Toyland, but somewhere along the line, the script had been lost. A group of old ladies went to see the show every year though, so it was a weirdly disjointed play made from memory and at a random point, a giant bear in what looks like a carpet square runs in from the back of the theatre and the ladies all scream, "BILLY BEAR IS HERE!!!!!"

She showed us items from her one woman show: a trash "can-alog" where the trash cans available for purchase by mail order are personified, lounging on the dock or having a picnic. She showed us her hill billy kit, complete with a beard, floppy hat, and pipe. She showed us a pamphlet made for 12 year old girls about their changing bodies written in letter form between three girlfriends:

"What is a uterus? Write back immediately if not sooner!!!"

"I have seven pimples on my face!I'm going to have to scrub my face six times a day!I have hair growing under my arms!Ifinallyneedabra!!!!!!!...How are things with you?"

Then things got serious.

She talked about her show, 2.5 Minute Ride, about her a. visiting Auschwitz with her father, a survivor and b. going to an amusement park with her father. She talked about the Holocaust, she talked about family. She said, "What is that thing about being around your parents that makes you act like a 13 year old? You go to therapy, you learn about the world. You learn about yourself and get your angst under control. And when you go home, you think about how you can really help your family. But then you get there and you realize your parents live in an alternate reality where your therapy has no power."

It was funny and true. Then she talked about story telling. Why do we tell a story? We tell it to affirm some aspect of our identity. As we tell that story, the person we're talking to is responding, they are constantly reshaping what we're saying. It was interesting to think about WHY we do something as simple as tell a story, or what kind of emotion we put into it when we tell it. I'm no actress, but I certainly have a theatrical flair when conversing...but why? To what end? These are things to think about.

Then she concluded with this thought: we are all equal in our innocence of the coming moment. Like at a birth or a death bed or when we're all watching the Olympics, none of us can know what the future holds, and that is how to make our story telling effective: we have to tell the story in the moment, because the equality and the innocence and the excitement comes from not knowing what is going to happen next.

I wonder what will happen next!!!!!!