No auditions for me this week. The latest listing looks like this:
LOOKING FOR EXTREMELY ATHLETIC, HIGHLY SKILLED PROFESSIONAL FEMALE DANCERS FOR IMMEDIATE SWING AND FULL TIME POSITIONS. PLEASE WEAR SEXY, AGGRESSIVE ATTIRE. CALL BACKS WILL BE SAME DAY AND CALL BACKS WILL BE TOPLESS.
Sigh. Well, it took 3 weeks for me to find an audition for myself, so I will just keep perusing the listings and waiting for "clothes on" opportunities.
Went to a debate-watching party at my voice teacher's house last night. She hosted the party through Moveon.org, so most of the people there were strangers. It was a good mixture, about 12 people ranging in age from early 20's to late 60's, about an even number of men and women, with differing opinions on the state of our country. Most people there were Obama supporters, a couple were on-the-fence, but everyone was in agreement that American life as we know it is changing in ways that we cannot yet imagine. As one person said, "The government pretty much owns the banking system...How much more socialized can we get?" I certainly don't understand much about the economy, but I know enough to be concerned when the Dow drops 500 points in a day, when Lehman Brothers shuts its doors, when the government seizes WaMu, the largest banking failure in history. Alex understands these things much better than myself; he was a stockbroker, he reads The Wall Street Journal for fun, CNBC is his favorite channel. And the guys that he works with are all numbers guys, they're in the business of money, with backgrounds in finance and whatnot. So I get to hear what they think about all this, and let me tell you, it scares me. I'm really appreciating the fact that the men-folk in my family have been buying hunting property in upstate NY, because I'm thinking there may be a need for us to get the heck out of the cities and hide in the woods with our canned food and shotguns. And frankly, I feel like whichever man wins this election is pretty much screwed: say goodbye to any projects you wanted to implement, cuz we're broke beyond broke! The dollar is starting to look like Monopoly money. Supposedly "safe" investments no longer exist. Houses are worth a fraction of what they were worth a few years ago. Here in Nevada (which not only tops the nation in foreclosures but also has the highest high-school dropout rate in the country, go figure) things are pretty bleak. It's especially apparent in Vegas, where half-finished skyscrapers sit and wait for something to give. And foreclosure signs cover the neighborhoods. The apartment below ours has a huge sign on the door: NOTICE! LOCKS HAVE BEEN CHANGED! NEW OWNER! DO NOT ATTEMPT TO ENTER! And no one has, in the 4 weeks we've been here. Apartments in this building that were bought for $300,000 a few years ago are now being sold for less than a third of that. There are units available for $30,000!! And most people don't feel that we've seen the bottom yet. The casinos are losing money, which is unheard of. Tourism has decreased dramatically. Times is hard here in Lost Wages. Times is hard all over the ol' US of A. And I have to say, I didn't really get the proper level of gravity from either candidate in the debate last night. I understand that the debate was focusing mostly on foreign policy, but the first half was centered around the economy. And I don't care what McCain says, earmarks and government overspending is not what this crisis is about. And I don't care what Obama says, he's gonna have to cut back on his desired projects in a huge way. There's just no way around it that I can see. The government is bailing out companies with money that we don't actually have, and I'm pretty sure no one is gonna bail out the government. I don't know, but if you've seen the "Mad Max" movies, you've got a sense of what my nightmares look like these days. McCain and Obama are gonna have to work it out in The Thunderdome!
This certainly is not the best time to be getting out of grad school with an MFA and a heaping shit-ton of student loans to be repaid (though Alex is hoping that the bank which provided my loans will somehow go defunct and I will magically be paid off--HA). The Arts always suffer when spending needs to be cut, and considering how little money goes towards the arts now, it's frightening to think of where we'll be heading in the years to come, no matter who wins this election (though I have to believe that the arts stand a better chance at survival under a Democratic administration, as has been the case in our history). And while I agree that there are elements of American life that have a higher level of urgency than art (who gives a crap about art when you can't pay the rent? Other than artists, of course), I know in my soul that a society that minimizes the importance of arts education for its children is doing a huge disservice to itself and to it's future. I feel like I can speak to this issue, as I made my living through educational theatre for close to 6 years. I can tell you of the power theatre has over students, the power to engage them and their imaginations, to bring them out of themselves and to empathize with the struggles and triumphs of people far removed from themselves. I can tell you of teachers who looked forward all year to the one-hour program I would bring in to their classrooms, as this hour would connect with their students more directly and more meaningfully than any textbook assignment they were required to do. I can tell you that after No Child Left Behind came to be, many schools no longer had the time or the budget for these outside programs. Because of all of the standardized testing that students had to cram for, there was no time for an hour-long opportunity to have elementary school students see theatre and let their minds expand beyond the facts and figures they had to memorize. I mean, COME ON!!! THESE ARE KIDS!!! You want them to learn? Let them enjoy it! Let them get involved and ask questions and use their imaginations to grasp concepts, rather than sitting them at a desk all day taking notes on names and dates and events that don't seem to have any relevance to their lives. This is what art can do: art can transport children directly to a situation, to another place and time, all through the power of imagination, which is far more powerful than any textbook retelling of historical events. Why do we limit these opportunities, insisting that children need to learn in a standardized way that keeps their imaginations, the most powerful tool they've got, turned off? What has this regime of standardization done for our test scores throughout the nation? Are we now ranking with the best of the best? Nope, we're still scoring about the same below-average marks as we were in 2003, according to an article in the Washington Post from Dec, 2007 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/04/AR2007120400730.html
Clearly, cutting arts funding for schools and increasing the cramming for standardized tests isn't solving the problem. And there are many problems in our educational system. I've worked in schools in 35 states, from elementary through university, private and public and religious, all-girls and all-boys and co-ed. I have seen schools in low-income neighborhoods that consistently turn out high test scores, and I have seen students in high-priced private schools who behave like mildly retarded monsters. Kids are kids, whether they're in a crumbling public school in New Orleans (worst schools I ever worked at, and this was before Katrina) or in a tiny regional school in northern Montana (where there was no motel for 50 miles but they did have a heroin epidemic). They have their own learning curves, their own needs, their own strengths and skills. They all learn in different ways, and the more ways they can be engaged, the better they are going to do. And the more we take their imaginations out of their education, the worse they are going to fare. I know this to be true. A child's imagination is her greatest gift, and it is also her greatest tool. The more we smother the imaginations of our kids, the worse we will fare on the world stage. There is no doubt of this in my mind. And my mind is pretty frickin' sharp, people. Even with all the brain cells I've killed over the years.
I wonder what we'll be teaching our kids when we all head out to The Thunderdome...
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