A Repentant Diva

Today was a remarkable day.  I am nearly 24 weeks into my first pregnancy and I was super cranky this morning.  Sensitive and angry.  I actually had a little fit at work.  How embarrassing.  I slammed my hat into a set piece and said the ideas for the staging were stupid.  I didn't even try to hide my disdain for the erroneously challenging staging which required action only while singing, not listening.  This is in general an impolite and ungenerous practice for a director.  I get that the initial impulse of young performers is to move when they are saying something, but a seasoned singer would always perform the compromising movements on the lines of others and remain fairly stable in their own lines!  It seems to me this ought to be common knowledge in my field.  Alas.

Anyway, I have had LOTS of struggles with directors since I started this journey a few years ago.  In general it seems like singers have an attitude of "us vs. them" when it comes to even considerate directors.  This is strange because I think the less a singer trusts the director, the worse that director ends up making a singer look. Sometimes there is an assistant teaching you the staging of an old production and the challenge is that they are religiously married to the original staging (its their job) and lack the dramatic justification which hopefully the original director had once used to motivate the movements.  I have had too many arguments trying to understand what appears illogical, needlessly disadvantageous, or just plain stupid.  Over and over I leave rehearsal feeling I was misunderstood and worrying that the directorial staff consider me difficult and badly behaved.  Last week there was a particularly intense conversation about the use of a gun in the quartet of Don Giovanni.  I insisted we needed to react if the gun was to be drawn.  The director repeated again and again that it wasn't pointed at my character so what did it matter?  I finally told him to imagine someone walking into the room where we were rehearsing and pointing a gun at say...the pianist, someone positioned far from this director in the room.  I asked him how he would feel and react in that scenario in spite of the gun not being pointed even near himself.  The final call was to remove the gun altogether from the scene.  I won I guess, but I also left feeling like I had lost something.  As in, what if there is only a finite number of fights you get to have on a production and I need one later?  Like, what if they asked me to do something I found morally objectionable and I wasted my one fight on the gun in the quartet.  My husband advised that if I didn't play nice I might lose the chance to do the show altogether which would be worse for the audience (he's so sweet).  This was because I insisted (and still feel) that my primary motivation in arguing against the production as it apparently has been for the past 20 years was that I feel a sincere responsibility to give the audience a worthwhile show.  I don't want to point at all the unnaturalness.  We are already a few degrees removed from normalcy because we are singing, so do we need to remind them not to get swept away in the story by making it obviously illogical?  Or, if it has to be illogical, can't it at least make poetry?  Or create a beautiful picture?  Something?  Anything?  I believe my arguing with the director was to stand up for those people who will come expecting or rather hoping to have an experience worth having.  I am so willing to do all I can to give them that.  Almost every singer I know is.  I guess its stupid, though, because directors, for the most part, probably want the same thing.  Maybe just a different way.  

Once I told a difficult director that I trusted her and that I was willing to follow her advice for the sake of the most beautiful possible show.  This one simple statement changed her entire demeanor toward me.  She softened.  She motivated change with encouragement rather than the humiliation and condescension which had previously dominated her directing.  Ultimately, I think I did much better for having listened to what she had to say, but I certainly heard her message more clearly when it was polite and respectful with obvious belief in my ability to achieve success.  Call me an egotist if you must.  Anyway, that day I thought I learned a lesson about directors and how to build a meaningful, valuable professional relationship with them.  I have come to understand, however, that the apprehension and defensiveness are always present at first.  Singers not trusting directors and planning to defy all their staging once the show finally opens, directors resenting singers for this and treating them like idiots as a result, etc.  The advice I have received from many colleagues and mentors on the subject is that you simply fake it.  You act like what is being said is solid gold.  You smile.  Inside you reject it all and do what you want when the rubber finally meets the road.  And if you need a little extra, if bending over and taking all the kicks in the shorts just isn't your thing, you can flip them off from in your pocket or behind your hand.  I'll be honest, I've made a fairly standard practice of the latter in the past two years.  You can have a huge smile on your face that can even look real if you are protecting yourself with that little birdy between the folds of your enormous rehearsal skirt.  That's the thing about anger.  It feels kinda like strength.  It feels kinda like it can save you from vulnerability and hurt.  For a long time I have bought into that as the best way to react to insulting ideas and behavior from directors, coaches, basically anyone acting like they know better.  You know what, though?  It isn't.  Today something better occurred to me.  

Yesterday afternoon, some sick maniac planted a bunch of bombs at the Boston Marathon.  They hurt a considerable number of people and even killed some.  It's disgusting.  I was thinking about it, about how sad it is that people hurt each other.  Someone on Facebook said it wasn't that big a deal given the much more significant death tolls which daily strike war-torn countries in the middle east.  They contested that every human life is precious.  I agree with that last part.  I think, though, that tragedy doesn't necessarily lose its sting by comparison to "objectively" more severe tragedy.  Anyway, in thinking of this I came to consider whether I believed in the genuine worth of human souls in any sort of practical and realistic way or only in an isn't-that special-to-theorize-about-but-at-the-end-of the-day-let's-get-real sort of way.  I want to honestly choose the former.  So, I decided to develop a little mantra.  Each time I see a person I will remind myself that they are a child of God.  As I walked to work I said it in my head about every person I passed.  I started to notice their eyes more.  I think most people don't genuinely consider themselves children of God, but I believe we all are.  Not only that, but He is personally aware of each of us -- of the inner workings of our hearts and minds.  He is there in the heart of everyone's most exquisite joy and profound sorrow.  He celebrates every goodness and hopes for an improvement of every flaw.  He loves.  Perfectly and completely.  Even the dirtiest, smelliest homeless guy.  Even the most arrogant, self-important boss.  Even me.  As I thought about all these strangers I realized they were worthy of my respect and consideration.  I hadn't known until that moment that I have been living with a me-against-the-world attitude for a long time.  I have armored my softness with anger and defensiveness.   How sad.  

As I got to work, I carried on in my new practice.  I looked into the faces of my colleagues and reminded myself of their inestimable worth and the love their Creator has for each of them.  I looked into the face of the director with whom I had been so upset a few hours earlier.  I reminded myself that it can't be me vs. him because we are all equally valued.  Even if I don't agree with something, or am unable to see the point, we are not enemies unless we choose to be.  We are children of God.  

This method is new, and so far no major traumatic staging events have sprung up to impede my optimism that it is a better policy than the hidden middle finger, but I already feel so much better about the world.