Letters To Home.

April 25, 2010

Hello Leongs!

I'm sorry I haven't updated you in so long. These past two weeks I kind of fell off the wagon for a lot of the good habits I've been building, but I'm getting back on this week and that includes updating you guys regularly. So what's been going on lately?

Well, let me start with Lea Salonga! Laura told me she was performing here, so we made sure we didn't miss it. The venue was the Hotel Carlyle, home to cabaret acts for many legendary performers including Eartha Kitt, and I was excited to see Lea join that legacy with her cabaret debut. It was a small lounge venue with piano, mic, and dinner seating for about 50 people. Laura & I got a seat at the bar for a much cheaper price, though still expensive enough to prompt me to have a blueberry muffin from the deli around the corner as my dinner. As a Filipino-American actor with theater background, there really wasn't more that I could ask for in a Lea performance. She sang most of the favorites: "On My Own," "Reflection," "A Whole New World," and an unreleased song from the original score for Miss Saigon. She didn't sing "Nandito Ako," but that was acceptable considering most of the audience wouldn't have understood it. On top of all that, she made both her entrance and exit through the curtain next to me! I even managed to snag a photo-op!


As for acting, it's gaining momentum. There was a play that I had been auditioning for these past few weeks, a role which I kind of grew attached to. I found out Monday I didn't get it, lost it to one other actor. It was hard to take, I will admit, but I talked it out with Melody. I look back and I can't believe it was just last week, I've grown so much since then. It's the nature of my profession to handle rejection, so I see it as more credit to my job title. My will is a bit wiser and my skin a bit thicker, picking up auditions again (I have a callback audition tomorrow). With each experience I learn better how to lift it up to God and cast my cares into His able, loving, hands.

I picked up my roommate's cookbook and started learning. It's great because it's teaching me the basic understanding of just about everything from all kinds of grains to all kinds of meats and then some. So far I've worked mainly with pasta sauce, chicken breast, and pork chops--so easy stuff--but I'm getting pretty good at using those and improvising to my own palate. Dad, I think you'd be more proud of me than Mom because my cooking is a lot more flavorful than health-conscious (don't worry, Mom, I'm learning to be more careful). Be prepared to take a break and eat well the next time I visit.

Melody and I are doing well. We talk often, and I'm growing more in love with her each day. Dad, you remember how much I've always liked that Spiral Staircase oldie but goodie? Yeah, it makes a lot more sense to me now. And Mom, every time I talk to her I see her growing more into a sponge for God's Word and a prayer warrior, kind of like you. More like you as time goes on.

My body has grown in discipline. Since moving I've come to fold clothes better, wash dishes better, and even organize my room better (but don't tell Melody or she'll make me do it more). I wake up earlier, I read more, and I hardly forget to do anything--yes, hard to believe, but it's true. I keep lists and schedule my days the night before.

I think I'm seeing more of God today than I ever was before. Living in an urban community, with a church as established in it as Redeemer, under the vision of a pastor whose heart is deeply rooted in spreading the gospel--well, it changes you. I spend time reading the Bible and in prayer every morning, just training my heart to know Christ more and to, with hope and expectancy, daily lift up to God my praise and burdens alike. Theology is so fulfilling! My appetite for learning theology has increased. I take a theology class every Sunday after church. I'm just getting more involved with Redeemer overall. I've even started volunteering as a greeter during services, and on the weekends I plan on helping with a youth sports program. So much about my New York experience has been about new experiences, and church is no exception. What I mean by this pertains to different things in different areas, but overall the contrast is really helping me deepen my understanding of church community and how to function in it.

I suppose that's all for now. I miss you guys a lot, and Lord-willing I'll see you this summer, if not before. I love you!

In Christ,
Ian

Looped.

It was one of those pitiable moments of faded glory revisited. She lifts up her hands to shield the light, slowly lowering them as she takes in her surroundings. Her fingers gracefully move to right below her neck, clasping her chest out of equal parts gratitude and fear, and imbues those famous Tennessee Williams lines with such lamentable honesty, so much reality that the audience begins to hoot. It's apparent now they didn't come to see the tragic character, but the tragic actress. Oddly this doesn't offend her, but instead the lady of elegance degrades to a campy showman supplying the crowd with that loused decadence they egg her on to give. Her covered inebriation then rears its sad face in full as she stumbles off into a pink-purple back lighting and Southern balcony silhouette. The curtain comes down, the lights come up, my head turns to the left and I notice my friend sitting next to me. "Oh right…I'm watching a play."

That's probably the first time my disbelief has ever been unconsciously suspended. I must say it's not like I imagined it. The luring in was so gradual I felt like a frog in a hot bath with the burner on low. Before I knew it, I was cooked, so engrossed in that moment where Valerie Harper, as real-life screen legend and bon vivant Tallulah Bankhead, in drunken nostalgia replays her bleary performance as Blanche DuBois. And get this, the show is a comedy. All the more reason this singular moment of unadulterated pathos was particularly ensnaring. The greatest plays are neither straight comedy nor straight drama, because that's just not the way life is. Melody's right, it really is so cool that I get to just go watch a Broadway show every now and then.

Walking down the stairs of the balcony following a standing ovation well deserved, Ana turns to me and says "see, this is why I want to be an actress. It's that applause, you know? Not like in a self-centered way, but it's that moment where you remember why all that work is worth it."
"Yeah, I know what you're saying. It's not just some self-indulgence, though it certainly can be--it's the finish of the exchange. It's the other end of the dialogue, the completion of that communion between performers and patrons that makes the stage a unique and irreplaceable medium of fellowship."


All performers understand this on some level. The tradition of applause was not invented for self-indulgence, I think. Dancers, singers, actors, musicians, artists, those of us who brave the vulnerability of that penetrating light, that glass that allows onlookers to bury into some fragile part of us beneath the bramble, shouldn't we be reciprocated with some sort of response, some requital that affirms what we've given has been received to its purpose? Which also gets me thinking--what then do we, as creations ourselves, owe to our Creator?