What it was like to see Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart live on stage

On Saturday evening my mom and I went to see Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart on Broadway in Waiting for Godot (with Billy Crudup and Shuler Hensley). It did not disappoint!

© Luigi Novi / Wikimedia Commons

When they entered the stage it took me a minute to process that I was actually watching them. I'm not sure I've ever seen such fine stage acting and it was really just enjoyable to watch these people I admire interacting so fluidly with a physicality that is lost in film.

These two gentlemen were huge fixtures of my adolescence. In a time when many of us are grasping for heroes, when popular media fixates on moral complexities, when many of us have lost faith in organized religion, we're still hard-wired to look for the moral to the story. We still need reassurance, even if it's symbolic,  that classic archetypal mentors are there to guide us, that "good" is not lost, that life has meaning. Personally I can't help but gravitate to them. Who doesn't need a Gandalf or Prof. Xavier? Who doesn't want Captain Picard's decisiveness and bravery?

The irony about what drew me to these actors is that the play itself is an absurdist reflection on the meaning of existence. It's full of moral complexities,  ambiguous and contradictory and open-ended. The lives of its two non-heros, Estragon and Vladimir, are meaningful if only for the brief identification with one another that life has allowed them. That was the salient point for me (because really, what other option is there?) Stewart and McKellen manage to balance the tragedy of meaningless existence with just the right touch of humor and camaraderie.

Billy Crudup was also simply astounding as "Lucky". I'd seen him in the film Big Fish but I had no idea he was also a talented stage actor. The play is relatively physical for all involved, but Crudup's character was in constant motion. Hensley was also fantastic as "Pozzo". I can't imagine having the energy these four had to sustain more than seven shows per week (including its pair, No Man's Land).

This was my first play on Broadway, and I'm really happy to have gone. So inspiring to see four people who are so very top notch in their craft. I also learned that British people pronounce it GOD-ot in contradiction to the US go-DOT. Apparently the matter is hotly contested, as Beckett himself didn't provide any definitive guidance. Another inspiring lesson in ambiguity.

Want to get in on it? There's still time; the show plays at the Cort Theatre and will be closing on March 30 after a five-month run!

A chance to see two legends in action!

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I can hardly believe it, but tonight I'm headed off to New York to meet my mom and see Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen in "Waiting for Godot".

Both are not only two of the finest actors of our time, but they have provided the public imagination with strong symbolic images of leadership and wisdom. Not to step out as an enormous geek, but above all others, these two men filled the mythic reality of my adolescence.

I'm beside myself. Do I ever love these two people!

This is definitely one perk of living on the East Coast, compared to rural Guatemala, or say, rural Michigan. There are lots of great memories I've made in my rural life - but there really are once-in-a-lifetime sort of opportunities, and this is one of them.

Eeee! Tell you more on Monday when I get back...

International Happiness Day

Today is the United Nations' International Happiness Day. It sounds a little fluffy, but underneath the surface there lingers an important and controversial statement about how countries should pursue development. Traditionally, progress has been measured not in terms of social well-being but economic well-being.  International Happiness Day sounds fluffy, but makes a radical statement: that society should consider social well-being as a form of wealth in itself.

It is true that economic progress reflects societal well-being to a strong degree, but many scholars now recognize that beyond a certain point they are no longer directly related. As Robert F. Kennedy so famously put it:

"Our gross national product - if we should judge America by that - counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for those who break them... It counts Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children.

"Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play... It measures neither our wit nor our courage; neither our wisdom nor our learning; neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country; it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it tells us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans."  [1]

Measuring happiness is a complex venture. Economic metrics are a lot easier to handle. Does that make happiness any less important for society, though?

Welcome, Bienvenidos, B'an Tulena

If you are looking for cat pictures, you have come to the right place. Oh yes, indeed, you have.

So, why am I starting a blog?

First, I just moved to the metro Washington, DC, area for a communications fellowship at a science institute. That has been an awesome change in my rural-small-town-bumpkin life that deserves some documentation. I can't believe all the new stuff I'm seeing all the time. Why did no one tell me that cities are cool? (Oh, wait...)

Second, I've always loved reading memoirs and other people's reflections on their own lives, but during Peace Corps I developed a serious interest in blogs. I ended up keeping my own (it's kind of the cool thing to do in Peace Corps), but I also just read a lot of them. There are two lifestyle blogs from that time period that I still read regularly; they were women to whom I could strongly relate in some way, who kept me connected to my hopes for the future in the US.

I also spent far too much time in my first year back from Peace Corps absorbing web media - especially blogs - nutrition blogs, news blogs, mommy blogs, lifestyle blogs, science skeptic blogs. I've learned a ton in the last year from some of the thoughtful bloggers out there (more on them later).

And what about the Oliver blogs? Oliver asks. I promise at some point I may actually post some pictures, you know, like, related to Washington DC.

I naturally thought at times about starting a blog to join the conversation, but most of my free brain cells were devoted to teaching labs and finishing my Master's, so the blog hasn't happened... until now!

So here we go! Thanks for dropping by.