The Bitter Fruit of "Osage County"

Drugs. Denial. Deception. Suicide. Abuse. Incest and infidelity.

The Weston family has it all, in Tracy Letts' Pulitzer-Prize winning tragic-comedy, "August: Osage County."

Every so often, we come across art, after which are not the same, nor would we be the same without having had the experience.

Oregon Shakespeare Festival Director Chris Moore's rendition of this play is exactly that art. From the opening music to the skeletal set and carefully-cast characters, every element of "August" is rich, significant.

Why am I liking this? we wonder in the dark. What about this is so compelling? And what does this say about us as viewers?

Tension. It's piled up high, like mashed potatoes and gravy. Each character has conflict with every other. There's sharp wit and sharp tongues, and we want to see the actors unravel, to see their resolve. We want to know that we could survive all this, too, should it happen to us. We learn that our lives are not as bad.

We are all human is the message the play delivers. To what degree is unimportant. "There is a little bit of the Westons in each of our families," Moore writes in the playbill.

Pain. Love. Lies. Commitment: "August" explores what makes us family.

Crickets, cello, Violet's creep down the stairs: the exceptional irony in this play is Moore's tying together all the little details to show one family's falling apart.

Can It Be About Secondary Characters?

Several months ago, I was talking with one of my writing partners about how we both loved our secondary characters, far more than we liked our MCs.

What's with that?

Is it okay?

Well, I finally got around to watching "The Black Swan" last week while Man Down with a kidney infection, and I realized why I had put it off for so long: I am not a fan of Queen Amidala (Natalie Portman). Yes, I do respect her long hours at training for the part--the ballet she took, the weight she lost, the craft she honed. But, simply, I am not in love with her, and have never been, not even in "Where The Heart Is."

Instead of going into all the blab about why I'm not a Portman superfan, I'll tell you that I am head over heels for "Swan" secondary characters Mila Kunis (who had me at "Book of Eli") and the talented and gorgeous Frenchman Vincent Cassel, who can give one look that can win an Oscar. So for me, these two carried me through the movie. Them, and plot, and setting.

The other night, my little family went to see Bill Rauch's rendition of Gilbert and Sullivan's "The Pirates of Penzance" at the outdoor Shakespeare theater. It was magic: the sword fighting and swashbuckling and disco dance breakouts. The female lead sang way too high, though, and none of us could understand what she was saying (though she did have her some swanky kimono PJs), and the lead male was meh.

But the Pirate King! Aye, my friends! This lad was really something!

And Ruth, the nursemaid, was equally fantastic. And the rollicking Modern Major General? Unforgettable!

It probably shouldn't be so that a reader or movie watcher or play goer not like the MC. But it does seem to happen, and if it does, it's better to have some really amazing sidekicks to go with it.

Who Is Valedictorian?

Your odds are better at being one of Ashland High School's valedictorians if you're female, from a two-parent family, and have worked hard enough for 12 years to want to take a year off.

AHS, which consistently ranks in the top 3% of US News & World Report's "Best High Schools," has a legendary Speech & Debate Team, an honorable Math Team, a Quidditch Club, a Gay-Straight Alliance, Knit Wits, Model United Nations, Multicultural Club, Pagan Club, and Crew. Every year, the Drama Department partners up with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival to produce, direct, costume, and choreograph a professional-level musical. (This year's performance of "Chicago" rivaled the production I'd seen on Broadway of Sacramento.)

According to the Medford Mail Tribune, of AHS' 14 Class of 2011 valedictorians, 12 are female. Eight of 12 are listed with parents of the same last name. Many scholars are in Honor Society, have math honors, played soccer, are musicians.

And several are planning on taking advantage of the new trend; they'll take a "Gap Year" of travel or volunteer service, or dabble in the arts before heading back to the books at Stanford, NYU, Pomona, or George Washington to study neuroscience, physics, engineering, or journalism.

I know some of their parents: professors, doctors, authors, entrepreneurs.

This morning at breakfast, Dave and I sat by an AHS grad from a few years ago. She went to Harvard for a year, and returned to work at an Ashland coffee shop.

A simple, quiet girl from my own high school in California went to Berkeley and is now the headmaster of a private school in Marin County.

You never can tell, I guess, who will succeed, and at what. Part of the fun mystery of life is the element of surprise.

Maybe it will be an AHS 2011 valedictorian who cures AIDS, or maybe it will be the kid who sat in science in the middle row, who graduated 60th in a class of 200, who went to community college first.

Instant Gratification: The Current Trend in Introduction

My kids and I were eight chapters into reading To Kill A Mockingbird (so we can see the OSF production of it this spring), when sixth-grade Daney groaned, "What is this book about, anyway? There is no plot, there is no conflict."

She was right.

Harper Lee took her sweet Southern time aquainting her readers with Scout's tiny life in Maycomb County: her admiration for her older brother, Jem; her relationships with summer visitor, Dill; the ladyfolk; the ghostly man-child, Boo Radley; her father.

We get the hot, dry dust, the simple-minded, struggling townspeople.

But it's not until page 85 when conflict rips us from the slow days of Scout's scounting about, and throws us into the political upheaval that becomes the essence of the book.

"This is like Dracula," Dominic (13) agreed. (He's reading the 500-word tome for his spring book report.) "It didn't get good until page 300, when stuff started happening."

"What did Bram Stoker write in the 300 pages of 'nothing?'" I'd asked.

"Setting," Dominic said. "And setting. And setting. He took a long time setting it up."

So right now, my kids are seeped in two worlds: in 1930s Alabama, and 19th Century Transylvania. And though they're finally capitivated, it cost a lot of hearing them complain in getting them here.

We writers could never do this today. We could never "waste" a third of our stories on establishing setting. The present trend is to drop blood, or mystery, or vengance, or some kind of conflict right on page one.

What does that mean?

What are we missing out on?

Giving Ol' Will A Chance

So, after 16 years of living here in Ashland, I finally hit up a real Shakespeare play -- "Twelfth Night" last night.

What was keeping me away? you might ask.

I mean, I've seen almost all the other OSF plays, and nearly everything Off-Bardway (isn't that the funniest word? it means all the other theaters in the area.)

Anyway, it was the language.

I just never felt driven to sit for three hours and decipher mid-sixteenth century English.

But I don't know what I'd been worrying about.

The language was so not a problem!

I want to go again! I want to see everything -- the dramas, the comedies.

And the setting -- the open, outdoor theater, with bugs and bats and the teeniest breeze!

And the costumes -- the lace and brocade and rhinestones!

Oh, and the actors! They were charming, funny, incredibly pro! Veteran Michael Hume is always a treat to see. And "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" director (and my new friend) Chris Moore made the perfect Malvolio.

Okay, I was home late (11) looking up words like "pestilence" and "accost" and "usurp." And I still can't figure out why the whole thing was titled as such.

But now I know where this comes from: "If music be the food of love, then play on!"

Oh, and this little gem I tucked under my shiny belt: "Be not afraid of greatness: some are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them."

No Limits

Last night before the Oregon Shakespeare Festival plays started, we watched the Green Show, a free 30-minute performance every Sunday-Tuesday.

It's different every night: taiko drummers, washboard bands, Thai dancers, acapela, comedians...

Yesterday, we were lucky enough to see Jen & Nate, acro/arial artists, who have performed for Brittany Spears, Prime Ministers, and at Disney World.

Jen and Nate spun, swung, and bounced. They narrated between acts.

There's something really extraordinary about this duo. Check out this link to see what it is, and to be truly inspired.

Marriage is Hard

It is.

In fact, there's a whole industry, and we writers are part of it, that capitalizes on this.

Take "Sex & the City 2," for example, in which Carrie tries to define and adjust to the concept of marriage. She can't do it. So she gets her own apartment changes her clothes twenty times and hooks up with another guy. And her husband rewards her with a big diamond while they snuggle up on their new sofa.

Okay, bad example.

Take the play I saw the other day, Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Now that was an interesting perspective on marriage: 1955 Mississippi, where the women were oppressed, and expected to have broods of children, but where they were beginning to voice their dissatisfaction and longing for better relationships. Maggie (the Cat) craves attention and love from the washed-up athlete. She scrambles for security--emotional, economic--and clings desperately to her uninterested husband.

In both stories, there is sacrifice. There is conflict between maintaining autonomy and preserving tradition.

But we girls don't need to go to the movie or the theater to know this.

We live it every day.

Dave and I have been married almost 18 years. (Yes, we were young. Incredibly.) Believe me, when you fall in love at 8, there's some stuff that has to get worked out, though, and it seems to take years, no, decades.

It's been good, most of it, but it's been hard, too. Last summer we hit a rough spot that took some serious work and commitment (and a big setting aside of egos).

Like Carrie and Maggie Cat, (I think) I sacrifice quite a bit. But Dave definitely gives up a lot, too. I have to remember this. It's my job. (It's literally my job. I teach Critical Thinking, which is considering plural perspectives.)

It's easy to take marriage--husbands--for granted. What's hard, what's better, is to see them for what they are: men, strong but fragile, putting forth effort but falling short, hoping to achieve perfection but falling short.

Human.

Just like us.

Field Trip!

My friends, give your fingers and your brain a little rest. Because WE are going on a field trip today! Yay!

WE will be touring Ashland, Oregon, where I've lived (off and on--another story) for sixteen glorious years. Dave and I looked all over the nation for somewhere to move from California. I liked Boston; he liked Montana. Because we couldn't find the place we both loved, we decided to stay one more year in Sacramento, and we headed to Oregon for a plain old vacation.

When we hit Ashland, a town 14 miles north of the California border, we loved it! Nestled in below the Cascade Mountains and consistently at the tops of "Best Places to Live" lists, Ashland hosts the internationally acclaimed Shakespeare Festival--and is home to cattle farms.

It was culture for me, and cows for Dave. Perfect!

But, since this is my field trip, we'll be skipping the pastures.

Instead, we'll grab a mocha at Noble Coffee. Anjie will save us a spot at the Big Table. We'll browse Bloomsbury Books and stroll the Bear Creek bike path and have Pangea's Ipanama Wrap as a grill (best secret ever, it's not even on the menu).

Next, a play. For three hours, we'll feast our eyes on the rich set and lavish costumes of Hamlet, directed by OSF artistic director Bill Rauch, whose hand I held two weeks ago at our kids' school.

"Grease" is playing at Ashland High; it's choreographed and engineered by OSF directors in their off-season.

Then there's the Oregon Cabaret, my fave. We've missed "Men on Ice," "Alter Boyz," and "The Pageant." But there is the knee-slapping "Red, White, and Tuna."

We can hike Pilot Rock or the White Rabbit Trail. Many acclaimed artists and actors have homes here; we have a good chance of bumping into a serious somebody!

We can stroll the SOU campus, check out the bubble room at ScienceWorks, watch the flame throwers in Lithia Park.

Are you tired?

For $30, we can have an hour massage, courtesy of The Ashland Institute of Massage.

Dinner? Kobe's tasty dragon roll. And because you were so much field-trip fun, a lemon tart from Mix.