Invention vs Discovery

"This is a great idea for a book," I thought, lying in bed in the dark. I ran the characters through my mind again and could see the book on shelves in elementary schools everywhere. It would be the next big thing for kids my age, a rite of passage like the Magic Tree House series or the ever-fading Boxcar Children. It was fourth grade, and I was going to write this book. And I was going to be famous.

I waited and waited for a fiction writing assignment to come up in class, and when it did I would write the novel and turn it in and the student teacher would be so blown away that she'd sweep me and my novel off to get published.

I never wrote the novel, though I narrated it (and three additional books in the series) to myself in bed at night or on road trips to distant family gatherings in the far-off city of Ogden. But it never left my head.


I knew I had a good singing voice, though it wasn't as fabulous as my friend's. I knew one day I'd walk into an audition and shock the casting table with my hidden talent.

"Who is this girl and where did she get that voice?!" They'd say and cast me on the spot.

I waited until my junior high musical production class, in which we did a musical review of sorts, to reveal my secret singing ability in my first on-stage solo. My friend had a duet with another girl in the same production. We put up the show. I sang. She sang. My parents came up to me afterwards and told me how amazing and professional she sounded.

I decided musical theatre would never be my forte.


When I'd started taking piano lessons I realized I was naturally relatively decent at it. This skill surpassed any my mother or grandmother had in the area, and exceeded that of my non-lesson taking friends. Satisfied in my ability, I stopped practicing. This nudge toward talent would suit me well enough.


The friend with the incredible singing voice has been in my life for years. She's very driven, very motivated, very confident. She always said she would do everything she could to be as good at theatre as she possibly could--knowing if she became as proficient as possible, she would, in comparison, exceed the ability of her peers in the field by miles. She believed being her personal best would equate to her being the overall best. And she was determined to reach that goal.

Meanwhile, I constantly resigned myself to not being in the same league as these people who shared my interests, or that I was so substantially better that I didn't need to constantly tune and tone my skills. Where I was was where I was meant to be.

And then I started doing improv.

For the first time in my life I had that desire to try, to actively work on this inkling of talent crumbled up with lint in my pocket, and to build it into a castle I could inhabit and from which reign and rule. I wanted to learn and grow and excel and become more advanced like the more seasoned players in the troupe.

For the first time in my life I wanted to work for something.


There's a quote the internet attributes to John Lennon which has started to rub me wrong: "Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans."

I understand why it is continually super-imposed onto images of sunsets and forest glades. I understand that the world takes it to mean that "Life happens when you least expect it," or "You can't control a lot of things that creep up in life," or, the every popular, "You'll find the right guy when you stop looking." I get that.

But I disagree.

To me this implies a passive, almost existential quality to life: that life is a river and we're in a little boat with no oars or paddles and we just...float. If you hit a rock, hey. You were meant to hit that rock. If you drift down the left fork when you'd hoped for the right, hey. You needed that tributary more.

I've lived my life that way, relying on fate and happenstance and circumstance and serendipity, I've lived with that mentality of life just happening to you--I've shelved my dreams of novel writing from a young age because it was not required for me to attempt it for a grade. I've given up on learning musical theatre because my voice, as an adolescent, was not naturally Broadway ready. I've quit musical instruments because it would take effort to become the kind of person who could sit down and play anything. It was enough to be able to play something, however basic that something be.

I wanted life to happen to me. As perfectly imperfect as I was naturally. I expected it would. I expected people would notice me in a quiet solitude and sense my potential and ability. They would find me out and bring my skill to light and life would be a landslide of good-fortune and fame and prestige.

And then I started doing improv.

There's a principle in improvisational theatre referred to as "invention vs discovery." The essence of this is that a good, strong scene is one that develops naturally between the actors and their relationship with each other through their characters. If each player focuses on the realities of their character and their relationship to the other players upon the stage, humor and a thematic direction for the scene will naturally crop up into being out of that action--discovery.

Invention, on the other hand, kills a scene. Invention is an actor running into a scene with an arsenal of jokes in his pocket he is determined to deliver, regardless of the dynamic of the relationship with his partner. Invention is best summarized by the "Michael Scarn" construct, which (for anyone who has scene a few seasons of The Office) is the improv actor who pulls out a gun in every scene when he runs out of ideas--because the actor focusing on invention focuses on ideas and what he can do to be a humorous aspect, what he can do to impact the scene for his own end, rather than supporting and building up his teammates even if that means taking a "fall" and setting others up for jokes and possibly not getting to deliver your own. Pulling a "gun" out in a scene is invention. It kills the relationship between characters and leaves the scene in shambles but, hey, at least they got a couple short-lived laughs and a smidge more attention.

Invention comes from being self-focused. How can I be funny to the audience? How can I get a huge laugh/applause? How can I make an impact?

Discovery is about participation. That's it. Discovery is about actively working with your fellow actors and doing something to build them and, in turn, the scene.

A life well lived is a life lived in discovery, a life in which you work everyday to build others and their situations to a higher point than where you found them, where you actively strive to contribute something that doesn't reflect directly back to you. A life of invention is a life of pompous pride, a life of knowing you're as good--the scene is as good-- as you/it will ever be, and you just have to stand there and spew things out and it will work to your advantage.


If there's anything I've learned in the last two years, it's that there is no pearl without the oyster. There is no glory without work. Pearls don't roll around the ocean floor waiting to be scooped up in droves. They have to be pried from a sealed shell--there has to be pressure and work and time.

I want a castle full of pearls. I want a life that I've built and worked for. I want to be recognized as someone who did her best, not as someone who was the best. I don't want to go back to a life spent leaving doors closed because my key didn't open the lock on the first try. I want a life I've actively participated in, a life of discovery and creation where my input builds the outcome, rather than a life on a cardboard throne spent expressing lamentations that no one has noticed how great I am at sitting yet.

Life happens when you make it happen, and I think that's what Lennon intended if/when he said that. I want to act and not be acted upon. I want a life of beauty and fulfillment, a life of discovery.

I want pearls.

The Back-Handed Compliment

I thought when he said we could talk about it at the show that night it would be to ease my pain with a friendly hand on the shoulder and a few soft pats laced with the undertone that I was never really ever considered for the part, so it shouldn't be a surprise he had to email me with negative results.

And not negative in medical terms, meaning the disease isn't present. Not negative that way. Not really.

You can understand my surprise when the producer of the black box at the local community theatre approached me with a hesitantly sorrowful face that night and mouthed "Did you get your email?" before sweeping me into a gentle hug upon my Yes.

He started talking. Said after Saturday she was in first and I was in second, I listened, my mind remembering the four other girls up for the part at callbacks, but he was only talking about me and one other. Just two of five. "After Tuesday it all swapped. Your readings were so solid." My brain started to make sense of his monologue.

It was between me and one other. Just two.

"I was pushing for you but [the director] was pushing for her. And you were so close in everything that we had to go with looks. And I hate that because I've lost parts that way."

But she looked more like Thomas More's daughter than I did.

I don't have enough English blood for English looks.

I was chipper, I was flattered, I was understanding. It was enough to know I'd been considered. Especially so closely. I felt good about my callbacks, but I had no idea I was near the head of the group after that terrible first audition. But he looked at me and told me several times that I'd been good. I'd been really good. And so had she. So they had to go with who looked more familial.

And it was her.

But you can see how, letting it sink in further, I realized how disgruntling a situation this was. I'd been so close. I was so close. And I lost it for looks. I lost it for being blonde and blue eyed. I lost it for being round faced, not narrow faced. I'd lost it for factors beyond my control.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not angry and making voodoo dolls of the other girl. Nor am I curled up with the pint of ice cream my mom bought me for my birthday. I'm taking it with a grain of salt: a back-handed compliment of sorts. Knowing that I did my best, and that my best is better than I give myself credit for. I just wasn't meant for the role. Not this time.

There's a line in Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead that keeps coming to mind: "Which is a kind of integrity, if you look on every exit being an entrance somewhere else."

I'm not meant to enter the role of Margaret More. I'm exiting from the stage for a while, metaphorically and literally, the enter into something else. Something that's more suited for me at this point of my life. It would have been amazing to do a beautiful drama like A Man for All Seasons. It would have been delightful to work with a different director and several new-found, good theatre friends. It would have been fun to wear those heavy, authentic 1600's costumes. It would have been, it would have been, it would have been.

But it won't be. Not for me. I don't need to be Meg. I don't need to enter here. I'm needed somewhere else.

I'm just waiting for the cue.

What Dreams My Come

I had an interesting dream last night. Perhaps it was a result of eating french toast with strawberries at 11:00 at night, or driving around with the cool kids singing classic rock until 1 AM, or finally telling myself to finish Jacob 5 because that chapter's crazy long. This is the dream. The Improvables at I were doing cool things on a stage. I was in the tech booth. It was kind of like a tech day where we were checking cues and that jazz, which we never have so... Dream jumped from there to a small town where we were making a movie (we being the fact that I was with other people, not necessarily the Improvables). There was an undercurrent that something horrifically wrong was going to happen, and perhaps it was here that the guy from wardrobe noticed one actress being abused by her "son," and went over to subtley help out under the rouse he was fixing her shirt. They pummeled him. Then there was stuff about driving the freeway. Art imitates life. I'm back with the Improvables at Centerpoint Legacy Theatre, only it doesn't look like the theatre at all but dream logic makes it so. Paco says we have to wrap things up and get out now, because that something horrific is pretty much about to happen. We all groan, cuz we'd been having a jolly waxy ole' time, and I grab the garage-door opener so that just in case the zombie apocalypse goes down I can use it to get into the theatre quick and easy and fortify myself thus. A time jump later, and the Improvables and I are fortified in the theatre against the zombie apocalypse, and we're sitting at a table and a waitress is taking our orders. My best friend Erin is with us, rehearsing for a part that requires her to get slopping drunk. So she does. And she is quite the hoot. I later reenact her sloppiness to which the people laugh. I suppose it's noteworthy to say that shortly after this I took a shower and washed my hair with my Jack Daniels shampoo. I promise I don't know why my brain included this. Dream jump back to the small town. Now the weird part. It's not a movie anymore, this is real life and the world is basically ending. And for some reason instead of just dying with the explosion of the world, or whatever it is that'll happen, we're committing some cult suicide. But it needed to happen, sort of like the Abraham sacrificing his son bit. It's something we had to do. So my family went first, though in dream mode I'm the oldest with like three younger siblings under age seven. Basically, we were laying on a large pan (like the ones used at the bakery) and then other's pans were being stacked on top of us. So my "siblings" crossed the lava pit of coals on foot and laid on their pan. The next person, also young children, laid their pan on top of them and then got on. And so on and so on until it was my turn. I'm not a child, so only my pelvis and torso really fit in the pan, my limbs sticking out along with my shoulders and head. There was a brief pause as to who was next; my family had gone. Some photo appeared revealing it to be the family of my dear friend Lexi. I was already being squished a bit, and I knew it was over. My organs were being flattened, I was being suffocated, this is it. And I suddenly saw my ambitions for life. I saw the marriage ceremony I'd never get to have, and how that's one thing I'd always aspired for: getting married. Then I thought of who I must have been in the premortal existence, wanting to come to this Earth. Was that an ambition then? To be married in the physical mortal confines of this life? And then I was grateful for all the good I'd done, all the trying and striving to follow Christ. And the necessity to die was retracted. We all uncovered the pans as fast as we could, but my being in a state of shock couldn't be calm long enough to see if my younger siblings were breathing. I rued having them go first, how it had to be so. I could have gone first. But then I started to think about the story arch of a girl of 20 surviving her younger siblings in a tragedy and how that would play out for post-traumatic stress disorder, and I cognated myself into waking up. All of it was....something. Obviously. And I wanted to blog it though I'm not sure why. I feel like perhaps it was the final message; the fact that honestly, at your final moments, you can't deny God. I couldn't not think of things of a spiritual context. I tried. And in the dream, as my conscious mind was starting to stir, I remembered that talk by Holland about the Book of Mormon, where he says something to the effect that Hyrum and Joseph Smith would not be quoting and finding comfort in a book they'd created as a sham moments before meeting the God that created them. And in addition to this, I think the dream served to wake me up. Pun unintended. I'm not where I was last year, completely ignoring things of a spiritual sense, but it served as a reminder of what is of importance here. No, I don't need to cut myself off from the world and spend my time studying the scriptures. But... Just remember that the time will come when you're being crushed by the weight of death, and the only thing ahead of you is your reunion with God, and all behind you is time wasted or used to benefit or condemn you in the realm you're fast approaching. And you had best hope you lived it well.

-for lack of a better title-

Whether it's my low self-esteem or my pride, or an odd combination of my low self-esteem and pride, I relish my victories. I like seeing I've accomplished something worthwhile; I read every satisfying blog post/essay/facebook status to the point of memorization because I'm amazed and thrilled at the way the words sound. I look at pictures from a show I felt I acted well in, or an instance that happened to be captured where I looked particularly nice. It's the later that bleeds more toward vanity, but I believe I let vanity have its moment because, to my low self-esteem, those moments are so few and long awaited and deserved that they have to be enjoyed.

I was looking forward to dwelling in this victory. I was anticipating with heightened senses dwelling in him and how I won. I was going to woo him, win him, keep him, and lie down at night with the knowledge that he was in my arms, in my bed.

And then he disappeared.

I saw Weber State University's production of Charm tonight, an up-and-coming play written by Kathleen Cahill about Margaret Fuller (female writer in a time when female writers were...less than desirable). The play focuses on women's rights and feminism and homosexuality and sexual discovery, and as much as my Mormon conservative cannot bare it, I have a confession.

I connect IMMENSELY to Margaret Fuller (at least, for the sake of the remainder of the post, as portrayed in Charm). I have for about a year or so abandoned private journal writing (catching up would require too much time, so when the urge to write about myself comes I usually obscurely blog), but I can't take the secrecy right now, and maybe I'll wake up tomorrow with bloodshot eyes and a lack of sleep headache, and promptly delete this, but I feel the urge to speak. And I know it doesn't matter because no one follows this anymore, except my father who checks up on the random. To whom I say hello and sorry.

No, I'm not coming out.

My Public Speaking teacher last year constantly joked that LDS members got married so young because, to be frank, they couldn't take the sexual frustration that waiting for marriage inflicted. Because they have to wait and can't...experience prior, everyone settles at a young age because they just want to know....what it's like.

This is the part I'm afraid of, the part I hate to admit even when I'm by myself.

I want to know what it's like.

I want to know what it's like.

But the thing that keeps me celibate and patient, besides the fact that n'er a young man will look my way, is that I have more in my heart than I do in my pants. I want a man, but I want a man that will love me. I want a man that will let me listen to and talk about Jason Mraz, become house-poor with me, go to the theatre with me, make me with child and smile at me constantly because he loves me and he loves that I'm carrying his child and I'm his and...

The Mormon conservative straightens her skirt.

The feminists rend their blazers and trousers.

I like traditional gender roles.

I crave traditional gender roles.

Not as removed as the Victorian Era, but I would be content to consider myself a possession of my husband, and I'm not meaning as a lifeless slug but...to belong to someone. To belong with someone. That's what I mean.

And it's the idea of having someone hold me not for one night or one hour, but for now until the red moon sets and the four horsemen ride and the Devil is bound for a millennium and later defeated, being in his arms forever is what keeps the Margaret Fuller at bay.

But Margaret and I do agree on one issue: no one seems to find us desirable.

But he was starting to. He was slipping toes into the water, and I was ready to greet him, to immerse him by degrees, to convince him we could work. I was going to win him, forever silencing the nag who says we'll die an old unpublished maid, eventually satisfying the Margaret Fuller, and giving the Mormon conservative a place to rest her head.

And then he disappeared.

When I Grow Up

Being a nineteen-year-old female in America, the small-talk question I am most commonly asked after "Where are you going to school" is "What are you studying?" Luckily enough I have an answer: "I'm doing a double major in English Education and Theatre Education." Usually I slur my words together -something anyone would fall victim to after rattling off the same phrase more than one hundred times- and usually have to repeat myself. That, or people don't want to believe they heard someone level-headed saying they're going  into theatre. But they did.

And I am.

I have found, after enduring such conversations on nearly a daily basis, that those who have dabbled in the arts smile knowingly and remark that it sounds "fun" or "exciting." Those, especially the elders, who have nothing but the patron-perspective try to translate it for their industrial minds: "You must have had a really inspiring teacher." They respond this way every time, and in return I deliver yet another practiced statement. "Actually, no."

After their confusion and timid topic change, I am left to ponder over the anomaly of why teaching theatre has to stem from the actions of those who taught me. In a way they aren't wrong; I designed to be a theatre teacher because I was severely disappointed in what my many theatre teachers "taught" me. From age eleven until entering college at the closing of my eighteenth year I enrolled in acting classes -community and otherwise- hoping and praying to expand my knowledge and skill with regards to the trade. The farthest we ever breached were improv games and audition etiquette. Then we would put on a show.

I appreciated it for the sole reason that I was given another show to put on my resume at the close of each school year, but no one ever pointed out the difference between reciting lines on stage and portraying a character. It never mattered if a message was passed to the audience, so long as we remembered our positioning on stage. I had to propel myself through a tangled forest, learning from trial and error which berries would give me substance behind the proscenium, and which leaves would leave me itchy and flighty. I came to college with the overwhelming knowledge that I was -and am- under prepared for the theatrical world. And as a child raised in a family of homebodies and panicked public speakers, who enrolled for every class she could find, the fault falls to my educators.

Michael J. Fox was a high school dropout. He was good enough as a junior in high school to begin to forge a career in the performing arts. And he forged the career, he sustained the career, and in spite of crippling medical conditions still dabbles in the career. Talent? Yes. But he didn't get there by himself.

That is why theatre education was such an obvious choice; I've always known I'd end up a teacher -I'm not motivated enough to strive for anything else- it was merely a matter of what I would end up teaching. I want to equip students with confidence and technique. I want to prepare them for a life in this field; I want them to be good enough they could go without a degree and stand a chance. I decided to teach theatre so that I could give aspiring actors the information I eagerly yearned for and was constantly denied. I want to do for someone what I always wished had been done for me. I want to do the job no one is doing, even if their title says otherwise. I want to be the change I wish to see in the world.

Eye for an I...do

It was one of those moments when the world around you stops. The air suddenly becomes thick, as though the particles of time are laboring to remain stagnant, giving you the sensation that if you turned your head in either direction it would be like spinning your finger through jello: the fragments of space would rip off in contorted chunks and re-stick haphazardly to neighboring fragments. I've seen it depicted in cinema as having a harsh light suddenly fall on the person experiencing the sensation, the remainder of the room fading out or even going black, and perhaps there is even a sharp focus and swift zoom on the person's face. It was one of those moments, and as it happened my heart was caught up in the camera close-up and jello-filled air and it drifted into my throat. I swallowed it down and ignored the moment.

Nothing had happened. There was no change in the consistency of the atmosphere; he didn't just look at me like that.

But he had.

The trouble with being a perceptive theatre/English major is that moments of anomaly do not go unnoticed. Each instant of my life is fodder for a character--whether one I stand proxy for on stage or one I create on the page. I had a phase in the fall in which I took detailed internal notes on every wound I received, on the off chance I would need to describe such a wound in a short story or novel someday. It is therefore impossible for me to ignore that when he looked at me the air was wrought with such a change. Nor can I shun the fact that it happened more than once.

But I am known, at least of myself, to be a hapless optimist when it comes to the realm of love and the opposite sex. I have learned from experience that the look may very well imply attraction, but there are many false motives that underlie it. Thus far, out of 5 such fellows who have heftily dished out such looks, I have only properly interpreted one and a half of them as actually romantically inclined. The half is because I'm not quite sure if he was really interested and just very shy about going for it, or if he was just the kind of guy that looks at all of his good friends that way. Therefore who am I to assume any different of this recent man?

Granted, the last to have given this look was in fact quite interested, but as he was more moody and touchy than a cat in a bathtub, I didn't eagerly dive into that relationship.

I was intending to be more vague with this but, alas... It is hard enough for me to look at him when he speaks without feeling my blood vessels are rearranging under the flesh of my face to spell visibly in cursive the words "I am utterly positive I love you. And I would be genuinely content to bear your children." Add in the factor that nine out of ten times he looks at me with that searing look that should only be accompanied with the overwhelming desire to run away with the person the look is given to, and you can see why I'm a complete wreck. How could I ever ignore how I feel when I'm constantly reminded in the way he looks at me?

I am determined not to let my optimistic self grab this notion and run with it, playing out ways he could corral me into a relationship.

Easier said than done. You try admiring a fellow in the fifth grade, see him randomly as a senior in high school, and now finding yourself with a severely logical excuse to see him for 2-4 hours a week at very close proximity and not be twitterpaited to some degree.

Just try.

I'm so incompetent I can't even compose a post about how I'm incompetent. So forget the theatrics, forget the prose and poetry. It's time for raw words.

I knew I wouldn't be able to audition with that song. I've tried it three times and it just never works the same in front of the panel as it does at my piano. But I did it anyway.

And I HATE feeling so... You have to understand when you're best friend's in musical theatre and the majority of community shows they put on are musical theatre, and all of the freshmen in the theatre department are doing musical theatre... singing is a big deal. And every time I fail at it I feel like I'm a five-year-old again. An incompetent five-year-old that maybe someday will get better but for now she's just a dumb little kid and doesn't know better.

I feel like my confidence and my ability to perform in sync with that confidence determines my intellectual standing with people of this crowd. So when I stumble or reveal a short-coming I lose a few years and become the 19 year-old that doesn't know any better. They 19 year-old who is obviously a five-year-old on the inside because if she wasn't she would have gotten better at this by now, or learned to never EVER EVER rear her ugly head in this direction again.

And it's stupid but it really does shatter me immensely. I avoided singing in high school because I thought I could get around it, but if I ever want to perform again I have to learn to sing.

And it's shit. It's ridiculous that my self-worth is determined by whether I can control my singing voice in a public setting.

I don't want to sing. I hate musical theatre for the sole purpose that to participate I have to sing. It was okay in high school when I could get the old lady parts that don't sing, but in community theatre there are real old ladies to get those parts.

What do they need a 19 year-old for?

But the thing that's bugging me the most is that I felt I was making a decent impression on this brutally attractive man.

And then my voice cracked.

And who would ever be impressed by a 19 year-old who confidently sings like she's five?