Calling all Theater companies and performers!

Open Call to Theater companies, performers, researchers:
I would like to hear other voices besides my own on this blog. If you'd like to write about your TLP experiences here, e-mail them to me and I'll put them up.
Topics can include dramaturgy to staging to personal responses to the play. Anything goes!

Monday, July 1, 2013

Measuring the time

How does one measure the time?  It has been a strange two years for me, which I am still trying to figure out.  Originally, the things I needed to sort out in my head brought me back to the foot of Telephone Canyon, and so I blogged on Laramie, and TLP, and LGBT acceptance as a way to sort them through.  Then came the shift: I have had other things on my mind, and it has led me away from blogging for awhile-- things like, do I really want to finish this Ph. D.?  Am I willing to bail on this career if it it's the only way I can go home to the Rockies?  How do I balance the dictates of a full-time career and a chronic disease, both of which tend to make ridiculous demands of my time and energy?  These questions have taken me away from the blog and elsewhere, and it was hard to justify continued academic interest in The Laramie Project when, according to my prospectus, I'm an Anglo-Saxonist.  Then I looked up to find that two years were gone. 

Life has a way of going in circles, however, and the last few months are bringing me back here.  For one, Grandpa Wolf, my last surviving grandparent, died in May.  I missed the last week of classes to fly back for his funeral in Montana and the return trip brought me back to the land I miss and the family questions I can't escape.  My nieces, who never knew Grandpa Wolf in the days of teeth and claws, were devastated to lose their great-grandfather.  I envy them a little-- they only knew him in the good times.  I still remember the broken bones, the fur and feathers. 

In a weird way, I almost feel like I understand him better now that he's gone.  I can look beyond the old man I hated in my youth and pitied in my adulthood to see at him more objectively.
Church steeples of the high plains: at Lewistown
From the old stories the locals told and the papers in his cabinet, I learned that Wolf was an "accident" baby, and after a traditional German shotgun wedding his parents hopped the border as far as Ypsilanti, North Dakota to escape the infamy.   I also learned that the US Army took my desperately claustrophobic, tractor-driving farmboy of a grandfather and made him a tank driver in the Philippine campaign in World War II.  How he survived the terror I will never know, but he never drove anything smaller than a Cadillac during my lifetime.  His mother died shortly after he was injured overseas, and so he came back from the Pacific Theater covered in scars from the napalm burns, now the main breadwinner for the two younger siblings which his teenage sister had taken under wing.

As I marked the decades between the grain silos stretching from North Dakota to Montana, the more Grandpa Wolf made sense-- he isn't excused, but at least I can fathom how he came to be the man he was.  Wolf was brought into the world as the "mistake" that led to a hardscrabble, loveless marriage between second-generation German immigrants; they came to Montana in the hopes of starting their own farm, only to discover their land wasn't arable.  During the Depression, they labored on another man's land until Grandpa Wolf lost his father when he was ten and his mother a decade later.  When the draft came calling, the Army stuffed him in the smallest hole they could find and waited for him to go crazy.  I'm fairly sure that Wolf's own father was an abuser.  Without anything else to hold onto, he slipped down the same road: insecure, obsessive-compulsive, and violent.

Grandpa Wolf's hometown,  population 125.
It doesn't end there, however. Something else has happened between those decades stretched out between the grain silos.  My mother Goose wanted to hold the reception at the senior's apartments where Wolf had lived up until last year.  I listened to the stories the old timers had about him, and I was perplexed.  This Wolf was personable, easygoing-- even sociable.  He could laugh at himself.  He actually had friends.  There was no way this man, who was once awarded a medal for "lady chasing" by one of the wags at the seniors home, was my grandfather.  Or was he?

I eventually realized that, in the decade that I swapped snow fences and sagebrush for magnolia trees, things had profoundly changed.  The last four years since he lost my Grandmother had utterly wrecked him.  He was not yet a "good" man, whatever that means; but he was trying to become one.

In the last year my mother took care of him at their home in Wyoming, as he could only eat through a gastric tube.  I would have thought that a year of taking care of the man who terrorized her as a child was my idea of hell;  My Mama Goose, however, confessed to me that she was glad she did it.  The man she buried in Lewistown, Montana was not the same one who wrecked her life, she said.  Spending all that time with him, caring for his feedings and medication, convinced her he was different.   And, while he was still far from perfect, she insisted, he was forgiven.   If it weren't for his illness, she might never have known-- and she never would have had closure.  

*      *     *

With all these things on my mind, I sat in the Casper Events Center next to my sister Sparrowhawk as I waited for my niece Kestrel to cross the stage as a certified high school graduate.  She's now eighteen and raring to fly the coop-- in fact, she reminds me so much of my sister at eighteen it's a little scary.  One of the co-valedictorians gave a fairly bland speech that made me fuzz out in boredom.  Then the second girl delivered her speech: she referenced Harvey Milk's courage and sacrifice, and the Stonewall riots, too, if I remember correctly.  My sister smirked and leaned in confidentially.  

"You see her?"  She said, indicating the orator on the stage.  "She had the worst crush on Kestrel in middle school."  This was said without disgust or discomfort, as it would have been just fifteen years ago.  It was simply a fact, one of many others as she reminisced about the other young men and women who walked over the stage-- who played games in her living room, or had their scraped knees bandaged in her kitchen, or were best friends only to grow apart in their teens. These were wistful memories for her, of happier times before the tension started and Kestrel, as beautiful and strong-willed as her mother, began to slip away. 

My sister has never been one to forget a wrong, but she has turned her powerful memory into something more useful than before: a way to mark change.  Even so, I don't know if she realizes how far she has come in the last fifteen years in her acceptance of gays and lesbians, even if her own daughter thinks she is still "back in the Stone Age."  If I use my own memory to mark the change, I can see it, too: slow, easy to miss, but still significant.   

And maybe the same can be said of a town where an eighteen-year-old lesbian graduating from Matthew Shepard's old high school can speak of Harvey Milk in front of her peers, their parents, and the Superintendent of Schools, and still walk out with both her pride and diploma in hand.  

Maybe.

~~Jackrabbit

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Friday, June 21, 2013

An open letter to Alan Chambers

In case you hadn't heard, the head of the nation's largest "ex-gay" ministry, Exodus International, announced that they would be closing its doors and offered an apology to the LGBT community for the damage they caused. You can watch the video below if you haven't seen it. 

For those of you who don't know, a friend of mine committed suicide after six months in a ministry affiliated with Exodus.  After mulling it over for two days, I felt the need to speak. I originally wrote this for an acquaintance, and now I am passing it on here.

~~Jackrabbit



Dear Mr. Chambers:

 Last night I read your apology after Exodus International shut its doors, and I was surprised at my ambivalence. For almost seven years I wanted to have this conversation with you. I have screamed at you in my mind in church. I have sparred with your shadow in my prayers and fought with you in my sleep. In the face of all the things I thought I would have wanted to say in this moment, I find that my anger is gone. The Lord, ever the reconciler, has long since settled the cold war between you and I; you are no longer the bogeyman I made you in my mind, and that has left me confused.

Instead of all the things I once wanted to say, I feel I have to tell you about James-- lean, lonely James, with the ice blue eyes and Jude Law good looks. His nervous, ecstatic energy, an infectious smile and irresistible charm. Manic as hell. An addictive personality that clung to things like static, cracked blue sparks at a touch. Like everything else in James' life, he craved God in ways only drowning victims comprehend: the cold, burning logic that says fill your lungs, swallow in the breath of Life or die. He was something to behold.

Wednesday, October 3, 2012

The Tectonic Uncertainty Principle: Now for Jackrabbits!

So, fall is here, and that mean that the theater season is well underway. How do I know this? Because I can watch the page counts on Flickr and Blogger tick upwards, like a little barometer, with people looking for pictures. 

It's a surreal feeling, actually.  My ultimate goal was to help people interested in The Laramie Project, sure, and I was aware that my stuff might actually end up in productions of TLP.  Sure, I always new that.  But now that I see it happening on more than just one or two productions...  Just, wow.  It feels strange.  On the one hand, it's nice to know I can help people out, especially with getting a fuller view of the Laramie community for their performances.  On the other hand, I'm having a bit of an identity crisis with this.  I've always been ambivalent about the buck fence as a symbol of torture and death, and now it seems that I have unwittingly helped people further this very discourse.  

Ladies and Jackrabbits, this is officially the most popular
picture I've ever taken.  I'm not sure how I feel about this. 
Let me show you what I mean.  According to Blogger, in the last month, three of the five most popular posts are the ones on the fence where Matthew Shepard was killed: namely, "The Buck Fence and Place," "The Fences of Laramie," and the second post of my "Fences" series.   My post on Matthew's memorial bench actually rounds out the top four.

It's not just a new trend, either.  The stats are historically largely the same for as long as Blogger has offered free site statistics.  A large number of people come to this site specifically interested in buck fences. 

To give you an idea of what that breakdown is, here are some lifetime stats on page views for my blog via Google Analytics:

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Coming Back Again

It's been a long year, friends.  It's time for the Jackrabbit to come back.

Dissertation writing is a funny thing: when it doesn't go well, you think to yourself, "I  just need to have more discipline to write on this." When I wrote on this blog, I felt guilty that I wasn't writing about early medieval dog-headed saints from Scythia.  And so I stopped writing here.  And in doing so, I stopped writing altogether.  That's how I learned a long, painful lesson:  You must write.  And if you smother the things you want to write at the expense of the things you must, you stop up the flow altogether.  I got the prospectus done-- eventually.  Now I must write chapters.  And if I am to write chapters, I have to unstop whatever it was I held back before, so that the words will come again. 

I don't know how much I'll actually be able to get back here and write-- but I figure that at least once a month is not too much to ask of myself.  And I hope I'll also have some help.  We'll see. 

So, a few things have happened in the last week or so that have made me decide that I need to start writing again.   The first (and exciting!) thing is that I have officially, finally passed my prospectus defense.  I had my defense last week, in an enormous conference room around a tiny table while four medievalists absolutely grilled me about codicology.  They were all very impressed with the work I did, I'm proud to say.  But then I asked them an important question:  "Do you think I can finish this by the end of the Spring semester?"

They all looked at each other, and my dissertation director shook his head.  "There's not a chance," Dr. H told me.  I looked to my paleography professor, and she just shrugged.  It looks like I am not graduating in the spring no matter how hard I work on this stupid dissertation.  So, if I can take my time, I figured, I might as well write. 

The next day I ran into "Jim" from our local performance of "10 Years Later" back in 2010.  I hadn't seen him in almost a year, even though we work in the same building, because he has new administrative duties in the Theater Department on campus.  I ran into him on my way to my shift at our Writing Center.  It was immediately as if time had never passed. 

"How are things going, Jackrabbit?"  he asked me.  I squirmed a little because I knew I hadn't been working on my blog.

"Oh, pretty good," I told him, and explained that I'd finally passed my prospectus defense.  He was pretty elated for me and even asked me to email him a copy of my prospectus.  I had to run because I was running late, but seeing a friendly face from my TLP past stuck with me for the rest of the afternoon.  

Then, tonight, this happened on Facebook.  I have a colleague whom I'll call "Rebekah," who posted this:


The short version is that I reacted rather badly to this.  I realize that expecting my undergraduate students to openly pay attention to things that happened before they were in school is a bit much, especially when they haven't been in the news.  I know that Matt Shepard doesn't get the press he did before the Shepard-Byrd Hate Crimes Act passed.  But really...?  As much as gay rights have been in the news in the last three years, none of them had heard of Matt Shepard? 

I'm still not sure how to react.  On the one hand, cultural memory follows a strict law of entropy; those things which do not actively impact cultural events die a slow heat-death and fade into the neutral background of the past.  And in many instances, that's a very necessary process for healing.  There have been times, especially when I was still an undergraduate and living under the long, black shadow of a buck fence, that I wanted it do disappear from memory, too. 

But now?  I realize that what I wanted to fade was the pain, not the name of someone who unwittingly became the focal point the greatest culture war of my generation.  And, in that ambivalence, I also realized that there's more to write. 

I don't think that The Laramie Project is finished with me.  Not yet.  So, maybe it's time for me to come back. 

Besides, I still have two performances I need to write about.  Their stories need written, too. 

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Just... two more days...

And I will be a functioning member of blogging society again.  Hooray!

In the meantime, I am well on my way to finishing the prospectus, and will be back with you shortly.

How's the writing going, you may ask?  Kind of like this:


On the other side of the coin, it's getting done. And that's the important part!

~~Jackrabbit

PS:  In case you were wondering, the other "Jackrabbit" gave her dissertation defense yesterday, and I am excited to report that she is now officially "Dr. Jackrabbit."  I couldn't be prouder of her.  Way to go, my friend!  

Friday, November 18, 2011

Six Things my LGBTA Taught me About the Gospel, part 2

Return of the Prodigal Son
I spent a couple hours last month experiencing something absolutely incredible: I was given the opportunity to talk with a loving Christian woman who struggles with the fact that her adult daughter came out as a lesbian two years ago.  She had initially reacted badly to her daughter's confession, and for a time their relationship was shattered.

It took a lot of forgiveness on both sides, but they are on speaking terms now.  However, their relationship had stalled.  She had so many questions about what her daughter was going through, but she needed an interpreter to translate the Christian perspective through LGBT eyes and back again to show her why her overtures for a deeper reconciliation were getting rebuffed.

As we began speaking, I told her about Matt Shepard's death and James' suicide, and what that had taught me. Then I told her about all the wonderful things I was learning from the LGBT community, and I saw such a transformation in her body language as she moved from frustration and loss to real empathy.  For me, seeing that woman's love for her daughter break out unfettered by her suspicion of and frustration with the gay "lifestyle" was absolutely humbling. 

We had scheduled for a one-hour conversation at a local college ministry, but three hours later we left with a hug and a promise to check in with each other again.   She said she felt ready to pray for the well-being and safety of the entire LGBT community and to take a stand against hate in her church.  And, she said with some trepidation, she might even get the courage to meet her daughter's partner and be civil-- but she's not quite ready for that yet.  She still needs a little more forgiveness and time, as we all do, but I feel confident that their relationship is on the mend.  

So, as I finish out my list of lessons I have learned from the LGBT community, I wanted to end with the different perspective that the LGBT community has regarding my faith community, in the hopes of showing why so many well-intentioned evangelicals stumble around on two left feet when interacting with the LGBT community. And so, without further ado...

 4.  If we're all supposed to die to the self, then why do I have to go first?  

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Stop the ride, I wanna get off...

I love you Dr. L, I really do, but I feel like I'm arguing in circles with a congested, fatalistic turtle called "Prospectus."
Any pointers?

 So, I have a doppelganger in the English Department here who is also named "Jackrabbit" and is a year or two ahead of me in the PhD program.  When I passed my last exam, I was literally skipping down the hall when I ran into her at a desk in our computer lounge.

"Congrats on passing your specialized exam," she told me.   

"Thanks!  It feels so good to be ABD (all but dissertation)!"  I chirped.  "It's all downhill from here!"  She shifted her baggy, exhausted eyes from the disorganized pile of her chapter revisions on her desk to me with baggy, sleep-deprived eyes full of pity. 

"Jackrabbit, I love you and all, but don't you realize?"  She begged.  "You're done with the easy part.  The hard part is just starting.  This stupid dissertation is going to put me in my grave."  And thus, having completely deflated my naive, cheerful buoyancy, she turned back to her revisions with a groan.

"Oh," I answered.

 It only took a month to get to the same point that my friend the other "Jackrabbit" already was at.  I am officially done with the emotional toll of graduate school, and I haven't even finished my stupid prospectus yet.  I'm all for calling it "good enough" and rolling on with the rest of my life. 

Wipe that grin off your face and help me with a thesis
statement already, Falcor.  I'm desperate.
Unfortunately, my dissertation committee, like a certain stodgy turtle from an old movie from my childhood, has other plans.   One of those plans involves another three semesters in school and a grinding, hopeless weight that's pulling me underneath like Atreyu's horse in the Swamps of Sadness, and I'm still waiting to get pulled from the muck by the sudden arrival inspiration with big wings and floppy ears.  Stupid Luck Dragons-- never around until the last possible second.  I mean, look at that face; he's mocking me, I swear.

Some of my colleagues are a lot worse than me right now, however.  In the last month I've had three different PhD candidates crying on my shoulder in despair, and this afternoon I made a freshman burst into tears just by asking her about her paper topic.  To top it all off, yesterday I stepped on a roofing nail and drove the thing almost an inch into my foot, so I earned a visit to Student Health for a free tetanus shot.  Winter vacation in Wyoming absolutely can not come soon enough.   

What that means for blogging, however, is that I'm going to have to shift from regular posts and research on TLP temporarily to more of an ad-hoc basis.  Although, if I'm honest, that's been what I've been doing since April anyhow, so nothing will really change that much on everyone else's end.  It does mean, however, that I won't get near as much progress done on keeping up-to-date with everything as I would wish, but, hey, at least we'll keep rolling.  And, if anybody has a contribution they'd like to add, or advertise an upcoming "Project," or point me to something cool, I'll certainly have the time for that.

And so, do not despair, I am still fully committed to blogging!  I should have a few posts up over the next week and a half.  I find that blogging is a relaxing way to procrastinate from writing a dissertation proposal.  Just as long as Dr. L doesn't find out...