The There There Letter: Little-Known, Little Theater, and Little Free Library
Three things from DAH. Free every Friday!
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DAH is me, David Anthony Hance. "If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking" (Haruki Murakami in Norwegian Wood)
First up this week, Little-Known …
I seek out the little-known and enjoy a thrill when it's noticed. Noticing and paying attention sound like ways of focusing. But noticing the little-known requires a trickier skill: focusing while still allowing part of your attention to wander. An acting exercise I've enjoyed: Actor A stands between Actors B and C. Actor A carries on separate conversations with B and C, while B and C pay no attention to one another. After encountering this exercise, I realized that I can hear and understand multiple conversations at once, even if I'm directly involved in only one. This does cause consternation, when I share information or opinion beyond my primary focus conversation. This is how I stumbled upon the little-known Conway's Law. I wasn't looking for it, but it caught at the edge of my attention and snagged there while I was focused elsewhere. Simply stated, Conway's Law maintains that organizations creating communications follow the structure of their own organizational communications systems. Well, of course! But what a lovely, stunning awareness: they're saying this in that way because that's how their world is structured to say things. Seems obvious, but now I'm concerned that my own communications system may be offensive, since it includes awareness of conversations in which my primary conversation partner is not partaking. How rude.
Conway's Law
Second up this week, Little Theater …
Little Theater, or Community Theater, has played a central role in my life. Yes, there's been acting and singing and set-building and producing and directing and promoting and and and. There's also been the finding of kindred spirits and values. The finding of community, not just theater. The thrill (and occasional terror, or horror) of making something together and sharing that something. In high school I switched from team sports to team performing arts, and I never looked back. Sports and performing arts filled the same niche: A group working together in a spectator-fueled pressure-cooker. OK. It wasn't really as hot as all that. Not usually, anyway. But there's intensity in "…the camaraderie implicit in the act of storytelling …in striving to communicate, understand, see. Putting on a play is like holding out your hand to a stranger and saying, Come with me, let's visit this third person's history, let's visit this third person's heart" (Leah Hager Cohen in The Stuff of Dreams).
From the Top: History of community theatre in america
Third up this week, Little Free Library …
There are quite a few of them around here. Around everywhere I've lived recently. Like big (sometimes fancy) birdhouses at the welcoming edge of front gardens. "Take One, Leave One" -- they're little lending libraries. The impulse to operate a little free library is widespread, based upon their ubiquity. These little libraries lack the wide book selection of their City and County brethren, but their pure spunk and hope that sharing what we read can put more community in our communities delights me. Plus, they're contained, unlike the "free"-signed, troubled furniture left on curbs. The free furniture usually reeks of desperation and despair, so unlike a little library. Freecycling aims to reduce waste, but does little to encourage new thinking. Books can encourage new thinking, particularly when we are surprised and charmed by the unexpected.
Book Celebrates the Booming Little Free Library Movement
A Book I'm Reading Again:
The Stuff of Dreams: Behind the Scenes of an American Community Theater, by Leah Hager Cohen
"Novelist and reporter Cohen (Heat Lightning, 1997, etc.) examines the Arlington Friends of the Drama (AFD) production of M. Butterfly for what it reveals about the changing shape of community theater—and in the nature of community itself" (Kirkus Reviews)
And a bit more:
A Silly Poem, by Spike Milligan
Said Hamlet to Ophelia,
I'll draw a sketch of thee,
What kind of pencil shall I use?
2B or not 2B?
And that's all for this week.
From Mary Oliver’s poem Sometimes …
You can subscribe and browse past issues HERE
DAH is me, David Anthony Hance. "If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking" (Haruki Murakami in Norwegian Wood)
First up this week, Little-Known …
I seek out the little-known and enjoy a thrill when it's noticed. Noticing and paying attention sound like ways of focusing. But noticing the little-known requires a trickier skill: focusing while still allowing part of your attention to wander. An acting exercise I've enjoyed: Actor A stands between Actors B and C. Actor A carries on separate conversations with B and C, while B and C pay no attention to one another. After encountering this exercise, I realized that I can hear and understand multiple conversations at once, even if I'm directly involved in only one. This does cause consternation, when I share information or opinion beyond my primary focus conversation. This is how I stumbled upon the little-known Conway's Law. I wasn't looking for it, but it caught at the edge of my attention and snagged there while I was focused elsewhere. Simply stated, Conway's Law maintains that organizations creating communications follow the structure of their own organizational communications systems. Well, of course! But what a lovely, stunning awareness: they're saying this in that way because that's how their world is structured to say things. Seems obvious, but now I'm concerned that my own communications system may be offensive, since it includes awareness of conversations in which my primary conversation partner is not partaking. How rude.
Conway's Law
Second up this week, Little Theater …
Little Theater, or Community Theater, has played a central role in my life. Yes, there's been acting and singing and set-building and producing and directing and promoting and and and. There's also been the finding of kindred spirits and values. The finding of community, not just theater. The thrill (and occasional terror, or horror) of making something together and sharing that something. In high school I switched from team sports to team performing arts, and I never looked back. Sports and performing arts filled the same niche: A group working together in a spectator-fueled pressure-cooker. OK. It wasn't really as hot as all that. Not usually, anyway. But there's intensity in "…the camaraderie implicit in the act of storytelling …in striving to communicate, understand, see. Putting on a play is like holding out your hand to a stranger and saying, Come with me, let's visit this third person's history, let's visit this third person's heart" (Leah Hager Cohen in The Stuff of Dreams).
From the Top: History of community theatre in america
Third up this week, Little Free Library …
There are quite a few of them around here. Around everywhere I've lived recently. Like big (sometimes fancy) birdhouses at the welcoming edge of front gardens. "Take One, Leave One" -- they're little lending libraries. The impulse to operate a little free library is widespread, based upon their ubiquity. These little libraries lack the wide book selection of their City and County brethren, but their pure spunk and hope that sharing what we read can put more community in our communities delights me. Plus, they're contained, unlike the "free"-signed, troubled furniture left on curbs. The free furniture usually reeks of desperation and despair, so unlike a little library. Freecycling aims to reduce waste, but does little to encourage new thinking. Books can encourage new thinking, particularly when we are surprised and charmed by the unexpected.
Book Celebrates the Booming Little Free Library Movement
A Book I'm Reading Again:
The Stuff of Dreams: Behind the Scenes of an American Community Theater, by Leah Hager Cohen
"Novelist and reporter Cohen (Heat Lightning, 1997, etc.) examines the Arlington Friends of the Drama (AFD) production of M. Butterfly for what it reveals about the changing shape of community theater—and in the nature of community itself" (Kirkus Reviews)
And a bit more:
A Silly Poem, by Spike Milligan
Said Hamlet to Ophelia,
I'll draw a sketch of thee,
What kind of pencil shall I use?
2B or not 2B?
And that's all for this week.
From Mary Oliver’s poem Sometimes …
Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.
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