by Ramy Eletreby
For three days, I’ve gotten down and dirty. I don’t consider myself among the community of men known as “handy”. Whenever I need an oil change, I take it for service. I am not a do-it-yourselfer, not in the least; so the fact that I’ve spent these past three days at the Blue Ox Millworks bathed in sawdust is certainly a departure from the norm. I’ve handled giant slabs of redwood and have picked splinters out of my skin. I’ve used a skill saw to cut lumber, a cross-cut saw to cut huge slabs of redwood, a power drill to build staircases and platforms. I’ve ran 50-foot and 100-foot electric cables under rafters, through cobwebs, through holes in the tin walls, up on tin roofs (while being watched by 3 colorful cocks sitting in a tree). I’ve used an actual printing press from 1819 and have had my fingers stained with ink. I’ve hung and mounted ellipsoidals and pars (lighting instruments) with nuts and bolts. The words ‘ellipsoidal’ and ‘par’ have not passed my lips in years…since my days back at UC Irvine.
The Institute experience is a lot about returning home; going back to the basics. Like back in high school when theater was pure fun and new and exciting. Back then, everyone attended ‘work days’ when we all took part in building the set, creating the costumes and hanging the lights. In college and in the for-profit professional world, there’s a hired crew for that. Oh, how the years and the “process” can make you so detached from the nitty and grittiness of theater-making.
All “jobs” possess a certain amount of fun if you commit yourself to finding it. This past weekend, I and two other Institute students (Leslie Carson, a high school drama teacher herself, and Stacia Torborg, a young fuchsia-haired Portland-based artist) spent hours braiding long strips of felt together to create a river effect for the play. A menial task on the surface but we three managed to make lemons out of our proverbial lemonade and transformed this “task” into a simple game: a sort of maypole dance where we would go over and under each other weaving braids from our whimsically choreographed motions. We sang pop songs, children’s songs, church songs, slave songs, and danced, danced, danced.
Using my own two hands, being covered in sawdust and mosquito bites, and going to bed ‘exhaust-hilarated’ from the day gives me such a clear sense of purpose as to why we’ve come far and wide to this small-ish town on the northern coast of California. We’re bringing theater to the community. We’re showing the people here that they can do this type of work and that it’s a smashing good time. We’re leading by example. You don’t need to be a professional artist to put on a show, and the fun is in the rising to the challenge.
I feel invigorated. I’ve self-identified as a theater artist for many years now; primarily as an actor and a writer, but more recently as a communicator and administrator (for Cornerstone). But up here in Eureka as part of the Cornerstone Institute, I’m so much more. I’m everything. I’m a craftsman, an electrician, a master felt braider, a classic printer/publisher, a dancer, a choreographer. I am an artist in every sense. I am large. I contain multitudes.
