Month: October 2012

Mom-Son Date Night

Published on by mbcoudal2 Comments
Me and my date (thanks to MidgetMomma for this pic)

I know I have complained on this blog, “My kids are mean to me.” But my kids are also incredibly generous to me. Here’s one example. Last night, with only a few hours’ notice, my 15-year old, Hayden, agreed to go on a date with me.

We went to Dave and Buster’s on 42nd Street and then to celebrate the launch of the New Victory Theater season.

We started with a juggling workshop from one of the amazing teaching artists at the New Vic. Hayden was about four feet taller than most of the other juggling students.

Beyond his height advantage, he came with the advantage of knowing how to juggle (thanks Ben Dziuba for teaching Hayden a few summers ago with the promise: “Hey man, juggling’s a great way to impress the chicks.”)

With the teaching artist, we had to choreograph our own juggling routine with scarves. Hayden really enjoyed trying to teach me a new skill. He also delighted in whispering to me, “See that other mom? She’s so much better at juggling than you!”

Then we sampled some of Dave and Buster’s family-friendly meals and some of the alien-unfriendly arcade games. Fun! We wanted to play a trivia game in the arcade, but had to dash across the street to the New Vic for Urban, a street circus from Colombia.

Everyone loves a circus, like the Big Apple Circus. But Urban does it better. Urban has heart. It has more thumpin’, bumpin’ hip hop music, gritty subtexts, and clouds of dry ice. It has more circus flips, dips, trapeze, tightrope, swings.

Those are skills of athleticism and music, but this troupe also has skills of the heart. They have resilience and grit. The young Urban circus group seems to have known some tough times together and found their way to survive through their artistry – through their music and dance. They seem to genuinely love and admire and need each other. (I’m seeing a metaphor emerge for families! Stick together! I’ll catch you when you leap from that high platform!)

When the performers tell their stories, just briefly, sometimes in Spanish with English captions, you get a feeling that performing on the stage right now is a highlight of their lives. New Yorkers can be jaded and sarcastic. So can 15-year olds. So can circus performers. But not last night.

Last night, everyone was in great form, impressing, sharing, laughing, gasping. There were a few times when the stunts were almost too much to bear and my son and I huddled together, afraid to look.

Kind of like parenting. You see stuff going down and you’re not sure you or your kid’s going to make it. But they do and they did. And you do and you did.

Thanks to Mama Drama for giving me a chance to see my son as a good date last night!

20121014-160300.jpg
One of the other mommy bloggers, MidgetMomma with her adorable Kenzie at Dave and Buster’s! (Fun to share a table with her and the militaryfamilyof8 dad!)

The Best

Published on by mbcoudal1 Comment
“Pssst, here’s the office dish: we’re in a charming play set in the 1950s,” whispers Alicia Sable (April Morrison) to Sas Goldberg (Brenda Kapinski). (photo courtesy of The Best of Everything)

Friday night I was downtown at Here to see The Best of Everything.

The space at Here means a lot to me because 20 years ago my comedy partner, Jay, and I spotted a Ferris wheel in the middle of a cobblestone street. We had stumbled upon an art opening for this performance space at Here.

That night, we shot funny interviews on Hi-8 with downtown artists and called the 30-minute documentary The Big Apple Jam. It aired several times on Manhattan Neighborhood Network.

So there I was the other night at Here. Again I happened upon something magical.

New York City lends itself to synchronicity. You can wander downtown streets and happen upon a gem of a play like The Best of Everything.

I learned about the show from a tweet or email sent by Holly Rosen Fink who’d auditioned me for the Listen to Your Mother Mother’s Day performance (which I didn’t get). Fink was the associate producer of the play, based on the novel with the same name by Rona Jaffe, written by Julie Kramer and directed by Amy Wilson, who also plays my favorite character, Miss Farrow.

The play’s about the twisting fates of secretaries for a publishing house in the 1950s. Each of the secretaries could have a whole sitcom created for her. So funny. I laughed a lot but then I cried a little too.

And why I cried surprised me. It wasn’t the tragic outcome of one of the secretary’s obsession with a no-good man. I kind of saw that coming. Or another character’s discussion of her necessary abortion at this time of illegal abortions.

I cried when the only woman editor, Miss Farrow, played by Amy Wilson, quit her job to get married. She gave her stable of authors to Caroline, played by Sarah Wilson, a smart new secretary working her way up. The other secretaries marveled at and subtly insulted Caroline for her belief  that life was about more than marriage. (!)

I got choked up because I love authors and I love editors and I love that the editor cared about her authors. In some screwed-up way, the older woman, Miss Farrow, wanted to mentor the younger woman. Deep down, the women all wanted each other to succeed. Beneath Miss Farrow’s bitchiness seemed to be her genuine affection for her mentee.

I have felt that too:  while women can be competitive and enemies in the workplace, they can also be one another’s sponsors and help each other move ahead. Beneath Caroline’s insecurity was her quiet confidence; she asked Miss Farrow to help her achieve decent pay. I like that.

The play left me thinking, beyond the colliding worlds of wives at home and women in the office, how can women be sexual human beings? The men who philander land on bar stools while the women fall down stairs or require back-alley abortions.

It’d be fun to discuss how women’s sexuality and society’s moralizing drove behavior in the 1950s workplace and how that compares with today.

In any case, the show moves at a clip. The costumes and the music are delicious. When I walked out of the theater into the downtown scene, I thought, Thank God I wasn’t a working gal in the 1950s.

Although, some things never change, like the magic of Off Off Broadway. And that happens Here.

Check it out at Best of Everything or find out what’s next at Here Arts Center.