The last 14 months have been almost unrelenting in the delivery of personally staggering body blows, beginning with Katrina on August 29, up to the death of my mother a few weeks ago. Regular readers of these pages need no list of the events or maladies of which I speak; new readers take my word on it, please.
I will not hide the fact that since my mother's funeral, and my quick, sad trip to the States and back, I have been dealing with more than just your garden variety of depression. It got deeply dark all about me, a paralyzing shroud I hid as best I could but folks knew and I had to continue functioning even though focus and concentration was erratic and fragmentary at best.
But, life being the miracle that it is, I am very close to being totally free and unashamed again in the bright sun of a new day and a new life--but isn't every day of life a new life? Yes. That knowledge is what separates dangerously serious depression from just another of life's infrequent moments of hitting hard-rock bottom emotionally.
This time, however, there is very clear reason for my resurgence. That which saved my life and sanity almost 31 years ago to the month has worked its miracle again: Theatre (it is an old story that some of you know well and others will learn in a book or two some day). Late last spring, BFSU joined a growing number of Chinese universities that have decided that English Language drama is an important component to a liberal arts education. It was with great joy and humility that I accepted the position of Director of the new English Language Drama Program here at Beiwai.
For the past two weeks, I have been working long, hard, extra hours happily casting and rehearsing Shakespeare's Othello, which we will enter in the Chinese University of Hong Kong's Shakespeare Festival, the 12 finalists of which will be presented in Hong Kong May, 2007. And tomorrow morning (Friday, October 20) I fly to Hong Kong for a week-long seminar in Directing English Language Shakespeare in China.
My educational and early professional background was the theatre; while I left it to concentrate more on my writing in my mid 20's, theatre has remained a passion and occasional occupation over the many years since I left it full-time almost 3 decades ago. Making and writing movies are fun; theatre is an all consuming, collaborative art form that is unlike any other. Nothing I know of gives reasons for living and creating quite like the stage. And, of course, a special lady to experience it with.
Since I no longer have a laptop, only my new and powerful desktop computer; I will be completely out of Internet contact for the next 7 days. While my long periods of absence from these pages are nothing new to my faithful readers, the announcement here is mostly for those folks whom I owe an e-mail. I will get a round tu it eventually, one hopes.
