A Work In Progress




I attended a one-woman show earlier this week, "Let Me Down Easy." I don't want to floor you with umpteen adjectives, so I'll be selective. Impressive. Thought-provoking. Moving.


Many compotents came together for this show to effect me. The writer and performer is Anna Deavere Smith. The show is "portraits based on verbatim excerpts from interviews conducted by her." Basically, she took on the personas of the people she had interviewed over the last dozen years. Some were famous (Governor Ann Richards), some were not (Smith's aunt). Some were dead (Joel Siegel), some have sped away from death (Lance Armstrong).


In the span of 90 minutes, Smith became 20 different and convincing characters. For 4 1/2 minutes, Smith, through her twang, tobacco, and right-wing rants, convinced me she was a rodeo bull rider from Idaho, right there on stage, in NYC. Four and 1/2 minutes later, Smith whisked me away to South Africa to where I felt I became the director of an orphanage in Johannesburg. I held the hand of a dying child, finally going to be with her mother in a less painful life.

But the reason for this blog isn't to plug the show. What impressed me, along with Smith's abilities, was the amount of time, effort, and patience that was put into this body of work. She had to extract a common theme from dozens of interviews, she had to learn accents, acquire mannerisms. Costumes were selected, staging decided upon, lines to memorize. During the eight years that she worked on this piece, I'm sure she had to make a living, as well.

It was a Work In Progress for eight years--at least. It made me reflect on how I'm a Work In Progress. We're all Works In Progress. Eight years ago, Smith's theme for her show was human mortality. Fancy words for death. After eight years, this theme morphed into grace and kindness. Don't we all start out one way and morph into something else?


You are a WIP. I'm a WIP. I've taken breaks from that work, from time to time. I supose most of us have. A slight pause is fine, don't you think? Just don't let that pause become too lengthy. Rest is good. Stagnation, not so good.

I want to be a mound of clay on a potter's wheel. Changing shape, morphing as I desire or outside forces necessitate. Pliable, but not too pliable. Don't put me on a shelf and dust me once in a while.

WIP~~==+++>>><<<<***&&&@@@!!!!~~~```::::::;;;;;;;^^^RIP


I want my life to have lots of STUFF in between WIP and RIP. Don't you?