An Abundant Life - Design For Life

A little over a week ago I was walking by a garage that I walk by often and the doors were open. Sometimes when I walk past I hear music or people talking, but that day there were lots of things to see. I love a good yard sale, but it didn't seem like that's what it was. It seemed more like a party but they also had clothing hanging on racks, and I didn't know if it was just a group of friends having fun or if it was a store or maybe something that was a little bit of both. When I lived in Soho in Manhattan, there was a place near my apartment that was called The Scrap Yard. A few years ago a Graffiti Artist I know who I'm a great fan of told me that he buys his spray paint there. This place reminded me a little bit of the way I used to feel when I walked by The Scrap Yard, and I wondered if maybe it was something like that.

The day I walked by when the garage doors were open, I was on my way somewhere, and when I was on my way walking by again one of the very cheerful and friendly young men sitting outside called out and asked me if I liked cool stuff. I answered that I did and he invited me to see what they were doing and let him know if I thought it was cool. Of course it was, and I told him so, and then as we talked I started to realize that they were making the clothing. When I realized these talented young men were creating all the clothing themselves I asked if I could take photographs to post on Instagram and told them I planned to write a blog post. The designs I saw that day were a combination of vintage and repurposed pants and jeans and t-shirts and flannels that had the word "DERTY" printed on them with a hot press that was inside the garage, and there were a few pieces that were designed with patches that spelled the same name. I grew up patching my jeans, and one of the pairs hanging near the entry was a pair of vintage button fly Levi's, a style and brand that has always been my favorite. Seeing them brought me back in time and reminded me of all the years when I wore my jeans everywhere and patched them until they couldn't be patched any more.

Although I know many Artists and Designers and have worked with some wonderful ones over the years, I'm still always happily surprised to see that there are people doing new things that I haven't quite seen before. It's always a pleasure to meet and be inspired by someone whose work is new and fresh, and there was something about these young men and this garage that felt both reminiscent of my past and also something entirely new. I was reminded of when I hung out in garages in my high school garage band, the years that I lived in Soho near The Scrap Yard, vintage shops I've loved, Graffiti Artists and other Designers and Artists I admire who have painted and printed on vintage pieces and repurposed clothing, and yet there was something that was new and unique in the pieces and in the way the name DERTY was printed. This collective of Artists is creating something that is new and completely their own, and the feeling around that garage is part of the world they are designing.

There are messages inside the clothing, too, and on their Instagram page, about reusing and recycling to save the planet and that they're DERTY BUT CLEAN. There's also the tag line "Born In The Wrong Era," and though they may think so, I think they were born right on time. The world needs their vision now, more than ever, something that will wake us up to living our lives to the fullest and help us discover how to be comfortable enough to be our own unique and beautiful selves. We need a vision like this that reminds us that the world we live in is a precious place and every person in it has a unique and beautiful part to play in creating a present and a future that starts right here and now.

DERTY

Jersey City, New Jersey

https://www.instagram.com/dertyville

A New Favorite Pair Of Jeans

Blessings,

Jannie Susan

   

An Abundant Life - Local Gifts

 A few years ago a Greek restaurant opened up on a street I often walk on, and some friends mentioned that it was really good. I'd been wanting to try it but at the time I didn't have much time to go out to lunch or dinner, and so it was on my mind to get there when I could. Then life as we know it changed, and the places where I might usually go I wasn't going to for a long while. Little by little as things started to open up again I began to revisit old friends and favorite places and sometimes try something new, but somehow this restaurant was still on my wish list when a friend asked me if I knew a good place to have lunch.

Greek Town is one of those places where when you first walk in the door you wonder why it took you so long to get there. It's charming and the people who work there are helpful and pleasant and friendly, and the menu has all kinds of wonderful things on it that really are more than just good. Everything is made fresh, and it has the feeling of being very homemade and made with the care of people who want every experience in their restaurant to be a memorably pleasurable one.

The first time I went there I ordered a traditional Greek sausage that I'd never heard of before called Loukaniko along with a Greek Salad, and when the sausage arrived it was delicious and so beautifully presented, and more than enough for two people to share. Luckily for me the friend I was with is a vegetarian, and so I was able to enjoy it all to myself along with the salad which was one of the best Greek Salads I've ever had. Each selection in it down to the lettuce was so fresh and flavorful. I'd added falafel to it as one of the add on options, and it was made so well that just writing about it now makes me want to return and have more.

Places like Greek town are so wonderful to discover, especially when they are this kind of light and airy and pleasant places to be. I'll definitely be recommending it and visiting more often, and being so grateful that they have created such a gift of this lovely restaurant to enjoy.

Greek Town Hoboken

https://greektown-hoboken.com

Blessings,

Jannie Susan

An Abundant Life - Two Character Plays

I've been invited to be an actress again in different productions and plays over these past two years which is something that I love to do, and it's been bringing back so many memories. When I first moved to New York it was to be an actress, and at that point in time I had wanted to be an actress for most of my life since the time I was very young. Over the years I've found that though I love acting, there are so many parts of a creative life that I enjoy, and so I go wherever I feel the most enjoyment, whether it be writing, acting, singing, dancing, performance art, collaborative events, producing, curating, or some of the projects that I'm working on now and have been developing over the past fifteen years that have to do with bringing arts education and enrichment opportunities to youth and adults and communities.

Just recently I was asked to be a part of a collaborative project that will be produced in the next few months, and the nature of the performance and how the rest of the group and I are working together to develop it reminded me of something that happened a number of years ago when I was still relatively new to the New York theatre world. From time to time in these pages I've been writing a bit of my own personal New York history, at the request of several people who have heard some of the stories and some parts of my history and want to know more. It's a strange thing to think that my life is something that would be interesting to anyone to read about, but the truth is that I have encountered some of the greatest Artists and performers of the 20th century and beyond in one form or another during the time that I was a fledgling just beginning to try my own wings in one of the greatest cities in the world.

When I was still in college, I was invited to audition for a play by Tennessee Williams titled "The Two Character Play".  The Director had seen me in other plays, and she had also thought that casting me opposite one of my classmates in this play would work beautifully because the play was about a brother and sister who have a very symbiotic relationship and we were already close friends who looked very much alike. I am a Tennessee Williams fan, and at times when I'm asked I tell people that he's my favorite playwright of all time. There are other playwrights who I love, but Tennessee Williams uses language time and time again and explores so many different genres and styles that I can read his plays and act in them over and over again and always feel like I'm discovering something exciting and new. "The Two Character Play" was a new one for me, and I was thrilled at the opportunity to work on it, and somehow or other I had already met someone who knew about this play, a professional Director and theatre critic who offered to come to the performance and write about it.

We began our rehearsals and it was one of the most difficult things I had done to that date. The play itself was written in a style that was new to me in Tennessee Williams' work, having been premiered in the late 1960's. The author described it as "My most beautiful play since Streetcar, the very heart of my life," and I can attest that it is lovely. It has a lyrical flow to it, the beauty of words that seem to sing in poetry that is always my experience of Tennessee Williams' work, but the subject matter, though seemingly very simple in structure, is so deeply haunting and riveting that it asks the Actors to go deeper within their own experiences than sometimes we are ready and willing to go.

The play tells the story of a brother and sister, but in some ways it could almost be the story of two halves of one self. There is a symbiosis of their experience of life and of each other, and a need to have the support of each other to survive and continue moving onward in life. Rehearsing that play asked something of me that I wasn't prepared for, but that I embraced as an actress as a way to grow in my craft. Performing in that play was one of the highlights of my life, while also being one of the most physically and emotionally exhausting yet cathartic experiences I had up to that point.

The theater critic who came to see the show wrote a rave review, and told me that in his experience of seeing nearly every performance of so many of Tennessee Williams' plays over the years, he had never seen anyone who understood this play in the way that I did. He sent me a copy of the review of the original New York City performance which closed after on a few short weeks, and wrote that if I had been in that original cast and been a part of the production, the play would have been recognized for the masterpiece it is. Of course these words meant so much to me at that time, as an actress just starting out, and that play has remained in my memory as a moment in time when I was able to rise to an occasion far beyond my own understanding.

About a year after that, when I was living in New York City after college and working with the Circle Repertory Company, I came across a manuscript in the literary office that was unmarked and unsigned. I had offered to help clean up the office and read through and catalogue old scripts, and between and behind some of the bound plays I found some loose pages that in my still very limited experience seemed like they bore the marks of my favorite playwright. It was a short play that was written in a style that was reminiscent of Kabuki theater, with two main characters and another who acted as narrator. The two characters, though married and not brother and sister, seemed in some ways to be interacting like the brother and sister of "The Two Character Play". I contacted the theater critic who had given me such a rave review for that play when I was still in college, and shared a copy of this unidentified play with him. He agreed and confirmed that what I had thought was most probably true, and he had the background information to share that made it all the more probable. Tennessee Williams had done some work with Circle Repertory in its early years in the 1960's and early 1970's, and this play was of a style that he was experimenting with during that time.

Because of the unknown nature of the play and also the fact that at that time especially it was very difficult to get approval to do any Tennessee Williams play, even those that had been seen and done many times before, the theater critic and Tennessee Williams expert contacted the necessary people to ask if we could do this play in any way. We were allowed the opportunity to do a reading for a private audience, we could not publicize it and we could not say for a fact what we thought it was. But that was a gift in itself, and the theater critic who was also a Director, set up a reading at the Ensemble Studio Theatre summer session in the Poconos for a very small and very select private audience. He cast someone opposite me who had been an Actor in New York City for many years and had performed in premiers of several prestigious plays including those of Tennessee Williams, and it turned out that he was the father of someone I had gone to college with. That experience was one to remember forever, and that play and being a part of it were life changing.

I suppose that these memories and times that I've had are extraordinary, but that was just just the way life was in New York at that time. Friends have described it at times as the Golden Years, and in some ways I think that's true. We were still very young and wide eyed ourselves, and in a beautiful way we were able to connect with those who had gone before us. Performing in "The Two Character Play" was challenging and difficult, but I didn't feel as if I had to follow in anyone else's shoes and because of that I was able to go deeply into the character and discover her for myself and as a part of myself which is one of the greatest joys of acting. Discovering a play that was most likely a draft of a masterpiece hidden in a bookshelf was a rare find of a treasure, but that's the kind of thing that was possible if you worked at the Circle Repertory Company and offered to read scripts in the Literary Department as I did. There were so many extraordinary people I met in those years and so many extraordinary things we did together. Life in New York City was always an adventure, and every moment of every day offered something new.

"The Two Character Play"

Tennessee Williams

Published 1969

 

Blessings,

Jannie Susan

An Abundant Life - Crafting A Story

I had the opportunity recently to read a new novel by the extremely talented writer Daniel Damiano, and it was as always a joyful experience. When I describe the subject of it, you might wonder how I could say that it was joyful, but to me, reading the work of a writer as gifted as Daniel makes for a reading experience that is one of the high points of this book lover's week. When I have a good book in my hands, I can literally get lost in it, and when I have a busy schedule and not enough time to keep reading, I find myself trying to make time in my day to go back to the pages where I follow the adventure of the lives written in them and go on a journey of discovery that takes me to places I have never been before.

Daniel Damiano is an award winning Playwright, Screenwriter, Poet, Award-Nominated Actor, Voice Over Artist and Novelist. I've written about him before in these pages for his poetry, his novels, his plays and his performances that I've had the wonderful gift of experiencing. When I began reading this new novel, I knew that I would enjoy it, though the topic was one that was far from something that I would usually run to explore. The title is "Graphic Nature" and it tells the tale of Edmond de Capitoir, the Chief Executioner in France in 1913. Though not the usual description of a story that would bring enjoyment in the reading for someone like me who doesn't normally like stories that follow the darker topics in life, because this is a Daniel Damiano novel, the writing itself is a joy, as are the character descriptions, development, and ultimately the story itself that is told.

Reading a novel by Daniel Damiano is an adventure because he is such a gifted storyteller. His experience and craft as an Actor and Playwright shine their light into each characterization and each moment. When the members of the cast are met, there is such depth and resonant description in the way we learn about who they are that even those characters that are unsavory give us reason to keep reading about them and discovering more in the spinning of this excellent writer's tale.

The arc of the story follows the growth and in a way the redemption of the main character, Edmond de Capitoir, as he goes about what is for him his daily life. I say that it is in a way a redemption, because he is not an evil man, and we see a love of beauty and a gentleness about him slowly emerging from where it is trapped underneath the exterior of a perfectionist's precision. Although his job is fearsome and gruesome to many, to him it is one he takes pride in. It is a profession he inherited, but as we sometimes inherit behavior that is learned, it is something that he has the choice to pursue or not to pursue. It is this choice that he stands by, viewing it as a badge of honor until he begins to learn that there is another way to live. Through a series of events that in all of his careful planning and his fierce protection of his own inner life he would never have imagined possible, he begins to experience emotions that are so powerful that the existence he has intricately crafted as a way to keep the outside world at bay is completely changed. The journey he takes, both in a physical and emotional sense, begins to release the weight and pain that have been hiding behind his exacting exterior, allowing him to open his heart and mind to the possibility that his life could be very different from what he always believed it must be. In this process he finds release from the prison of the past and the memories that have haunted him in dreams and visions, and as we follow him on his path we begin to understand that beyond the fear of taking steps in a new direction we can find that all things can be made new.  

There will be no spoiler alerts in this post, because I want to make sure that everyone who reads this novel comes to it without knowing the delight that is in store for every reader. An Artist like Daniel Damiano has such a special and valuable gift that opening one of his books or experiencing one of his plays is like finding treasure. There is the craft of the Actor and the craft of the Writer that goes into his work and creates something so uniquely powerful. When Daniel Damiano crafts his stories, he creates something that brings new ideas, new people and new vision to life.

Daniel Damiano

In Brooklyn, New York

Photograph Courtesy of Broadway Play Publishing, Inc.

https://www.danieldamiano.com

Blessings,

Jannie Susan