South Jersey Backpack

Cape May Stage's Production of The Understudy

2011-07-18T07:37:00.002-04:00

Photo by Vinh Luong

Last week my family and I took a three day jaunt down to the Victorian seaside town of Cape May, New Jersey. My earliest recollections of Cape May were of a town of gingerbread cottages, white-haired ladies, and no boardwalk. But make no mistake. Cape May holds its own on the cultural scene. Expecting an evening of pleasant community theater, my husband and I were amazed by the professional performance of
Theresa Rebeck’s The Understudy by the Cape May Stage at the Robert Shackleton Playhouse. We had no idea we were in for such a great show.

Under the direction of Roy Steinberg, this play about a play (jealous understudy versus Hollywood action hero) explores the personal trials of auditions, money, and the politics of acting. Characters Harry, Roxanne, and Jake—played by G.R. Johnson, Kristen Calgaro, and Luke Darnell— struggle against their theatrical destinies while simply trying to rehearse a Kafka play. Laughs arise at the most unexpected of places—prop pilfering, set manipulations, and whacky dance moves. Despite Kafka, or perhaps because of Kafka, the spirit of true theater arises from the chaos of individual struggle. Johnson, Calgaro, and Darnell create synergy in their performances. The Understudy is a play best experienced in an intimate setting such as this.

So if the water is a little cold this year—okay, frigid— consider enjoying a performance of The Understudy. The play runs Tuesday- Sunday at 8 p.m. through July 30. You’ll be very glad you went.

Jeremy's Run

2010-06-10T23:06:00.002-04:00

About a month ago I participated in a run in memory of fallen soldier Jeremy Kane, who died in Afghanistan in January of this year. The two mile run started at Jeremy’s high school, Cherry Hill East, and ended at his temple, M’Kor Shalom. Proceeds from the run benefitted the Student Veterans Association at Rutgers University to erect a memorial in honor of Rutgers veterans. I’ve tried for over a month to put this experience into words, each week thinking this would be my next blog entry. However, the task has proved far more difficult than I had imagined.

Maybe it was the weather. Sunday, April 25, 2010 turned out to be a dreary, soggy spring day. The kind of day gardener’s rejoice about when envisioning their lush plants that are sure to follow. I am told the same kind of weather showed up for Jeremy’s funeral. As a lapsed runner, I was secretly glad for the light rain and cool day-- the less sweating the better. You can’t help but reflect on a day of gothic drear. Memorializing a young man after he had spent one semester in college and a short time in the military is haunting. I couldn’t help but feel that God was trying to tell us something too important for words, so He sent in the clouds.

I can’t blame my hesitance to write about Jeremy’s run solely on the weather. I’ve also had trouble getting my brain to synthesize what people do and how we act in honoring life. That morning, sandwiched between a surface tension of loss and a somber background, life outside Jeremy’s former high school percolated. Young adults and their parents, professors, and friends gathered in clumps near the registration tables, sampling donated pastries and inquiring about majors and summer work plans. Over by some soggy looking shipping boxes, young women fretted over the sizes of the event tee-shirts. Inside the high school, military and civilians stretched their tendons, ligaments, and muscles by pushing and propping themselves on red locker doors and iron handrails. Just before 10 a.m., politicians dressed in suits and trench coats spoke solemn words about the meaning of Jeremy’s sacrifice. A woman with neatly bobbed hair spoke, Jeremy’s mother, I supposed. Then the microphone fell silent, so those of us in the back didn’t hear her words. We had to read her face instead. I saw her smile and laugh once. Mostly the woman appeared happy with a touch of nerves, like any mother would be on her son’s graduation day, but this wasn’t that. Everything we did and said seemed so important because we could. We were able. We were alive.

Several days after the run there was a memorial service on campus for Jeremy, and I felt compelled to go even though I hadn’t known him at Rutgers. A former student of mine and current president of the student veterans group on campus had invited me to come to the run, so I did. I went to honor him (a Purple Heart recipient) and the many other students I have known who were veterans in Iraq or Afghanistan. I also, admittedly, saw the day as a kick-start to my latest workout resolution.

I wasn’t really prepared, however, to see the slides of this kid’s life. Snapshots of a funny kid, a slight boy sticking his tongue out, wrestling with his brothers, juxtaposed military pictures; I felt the breath of what he must have been like, who Jeremy still was for many. In one photo he and another squad member somewhere in Afghanistan held up machine guns Rambo-style and smiled. Lots of the pictures showed Jeremy at play. And then there was the somber stuff. Young guys moving somewhere in a blank, hot background of sand, terrain so foreign to me, I can’t even translate its bleakness into words. The woman from the benefit run spoke again (it was his mother, I found out). All I can remember her saying was that Jeremy hadn’t been a good athlete and had trouble finding his identity. Then his father passed away; he felt an incredible urge to be the “man” of the family. At this point I felt like I was eavesdropping.

My unease over Jeremy’s mother’s words has been further complicated by a conversation I had with some students afterward. The same week as the benefit run and memorial service, I had started one of my classes by asking students why women are going to college at higher rates than men. Guys are groomed to be financial providers still, trained in sports and not with books, they told me. The economic pressure is on young men to make up for any gaps in household income. Women don’t face these same pressures. I still haven’t been able to get over their instant insight into the issue. I can’t help but think they know something profound about Jeremy.

Whatever it was, in opening up to this young man’s life, I have not stopped thinking about men and identity. What avenues do adolescent males have in shaping themselves for the future? What pressures do they experience to be providers and heroes? How can we as a society broaden or reformulate what it means to be a masculine male in our culture? All of this has all been part of the mind cloud blocking this entry from happening. And now it’s done. I guess I should feel relieved.

Flea Market Karma

2010-04-12T17:56:00.001-04:00

Last Saturday started early for me—at 6 a.m. to be precise. With a mug of coffee in hand, to help open my eyelids from heavy slumber, I packed up old curtain rods, a nicked bookcase, dusty books, and bags with small lots of items like thread, paints, and jewelry. Since Mother’s Day is only a month away, I thought it wise to also bring some handmade crafts and gift baskets to peddle as well. By 7:30 a.m. I was on the road to the Evesham Spring Flea Market.

A flea market may seem like an ordinary or even tawdry event. However, I admit a certain rush in participating in one. Maybe for me it’s part nostalgia. When I was in high school I used to hit the local craft fair circuit with doll clothes I had sewn. While not an incredibly profitable venture, the money I had earned from these sales, along with my babysitting, and summer job savings, bought me a spot on a one-week class trip to England during my junior year of high school. In my mind, then, flea markets yield opportunity.

Then there’s the thrill of connecting with others. Flea markets offer a rare moment in American suburban culture when neighbors can mingle and ogle over each other’s junk without annoying one another. In fact, manhandling of merchandise is encouraged. Case in point: I tried to sell a pair of sunglasses at the bargain price of 25 cents at this sale. Five people picked up the glasses from the table. All of those people tried on the glasses and posed. Three of those people consulted another person for their opinion, and all returned the glasses to the table, finding something else to purchase instead. I can’t imagine that I had overestimated the value of a perfectly good pair of sunglasses. However, my marketing strategy is actually beside the point. When else could you try on your neighbor’s accessories, parade around in them a little, and then hand them right back? Such license is only available at a flea market.

In all seriousness, it’s the interaction with my neighbors that I find to be the most invigorating aspect of community yard sales. In fact, I had a great conversation with one of my first customers of the morning. She asked for my name and number in order to place an order for a gift basket for an upcoming bridal shower and was surprised, teary-eyed, to find I have the same first name as her sister had had. I’m not sure if I believe in community flea market karma but the coincidence of our meeting definitely wouldn’t have happened if we both hadn’t drug ourselves out of bed at a dreadfully early hour that day.

By the end of the event I had sold enough of my old stuff to make room for other people’s old stuff in two closets at home. I had also sold enough crafts to pay for lunch for me, my husband, and my daughter. Given the emotional richness of my day’s experience and the modest financial gain, I have to classify this flea market as yet another success. I look forward to the next.

Video: Evesham Blue Barn holds annual Flea Market - Medford Central Record - South Jersey Local News

2010-04-11T23:22:00.001-04:00

Video: Evesham Blue Barn holds annual Flea Market - Medford Central Record - South Jersey Local News

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On the Easter Trail

2010-04-05T01:28:00.001-04:00

There's this children's book my daughter likes my husband and me to read to her; Easter Egg Hunt (or something to that effect). You might think that this is a book we only pull out one or two times a year during the early spring, but any parent of a young child knows that this simply is not true. Like a Christmas episode of Happy Days on the Fourth of July, Easter Egg Hunt could just as easily be a part of the spring reading line-up as it could the Thanksgiving or Chinese New Year’s. Needless to say, all three of us could pull together an impromptu performance of the text at your next dinner party, if you are very desperate for entertainment that clashes with the holiday you are celebrating. We know the book that well.

Recently, however, the Easter Egg Hunt has been a timely read. And while reciting the book last week, I remembered that the Easter Bunny hadn’t finished shopping for our family’s candy yet. This is the thing about parenthood; I often forget my active role in perpetuating the dream of childhood bliss. Doubts flooded my head: How do I get to the store without my daughter asking to come with me? How will I then avoid her Dino Flintstone act when I get back? (No bag gets into the house without her inspection.) Where will I stash the stuff? What if I eat it all before Sunday? Some readers might ask why I didn’t think to call my husband into this dilemma, but, you see, he didn’t grow up with the same traditions of consumerism as I did. Honestly, I think the Easter Bunny role really goes to me simply because I eat the most candy around here. Either way, I take my responsibility seriously.

My break came on my birthday. The three of us sat at the table stuffed with chocolate cake. Candle smoke mixed with the sweet scent of the red roses my husband had given me. After praising the meal and my company, I grabbed my running shoes and reusable grocery bag. I was out the door before the dishes had even been cleared (it’s an unspoken rule in our home that birthdays make one exempt from dishwashing). Hippity-hop, hippity-hop. I was down the trail in no time.

Trails in children’s stories lead to enchanted places like gingerbread houses, castles, pots of gold, or dragon’s lairs. The trail I was on is a running path that parallels the main road through our suburban housing development. While I admit this route is classically beautiful in that it is lined with trees, parks, a pond, and a lake, it ends, or least my journey along the path ended, at a pharmacy. Not quite as exciting a destination as in adventure and fairy tales. But at thirty-three years of age, I felt as vigorous as any knight on a quest. I walked to the cheery evening songs of robins and paused only once to marvel at the field of greenbrier outside the homeowner’s association office, not for a breather, but to imagine residents with late payments caught in the thorny arms of this sinister sentry. (It was as close to a dragon as I could get.) Yet it wasn’t this sight that distracted me; it was the “for sale” sign in front of the house at the next corner that took me off course. Dinner in my stomach curdled. The golden, Spanish-style home would change hands, and I am not wealthy enough to buy it.

While I mean to do more reading on the subject, I am fairly certain that New Jersey felt little colonial Spanish influence at it inception. Despite this, a gorgeous hacienda stands on about an acre of land and, according to the realtor’s handout on the place, was custom built by the owner in the early eighties. For some reason, I am drawn to the home. I have relandscaped the grounds in my mind a million times, literally every time I have ever walked past the house, because if I were the owner, I would use the spacious front lawn for a labyrinth of hedges and secret fountains. I’d also tile the kitchen from floor to ceiling in brilliantly colored Mexican tiles (if the current owners haven’t done so already) because only a house like that could handle such colorful glory. But the reality before me puts my dreams into serious jeopardy. Will new owners reconfigure the home beyond recognition? Will they respect the fantastic out-of-place quality that makes passers-by like me let our dreams squat there freely? I couldn’t help but sigh. I tucked the fact sheet into my pocket and continued down the path toward the pharmacy.

One good thing about waiting until the last minute to purchase holiday candy is that everything is 25% off. The bad thing, of course, is that your selection is limited. I had to dig through quite a few bags of hard gum balls and a squeaky bunny to get to the good stuff. But I managed to get all of my daughter’s favorites. I stood in a long line of last minute parents like me: Easter bunnies on a dash to the finish.

When I got home, I opened the door as slowly and quietly as I could to avoid attracting any attention. I could hear water splashing in the tub and daddy and daughter singing. “Oh good,” I thought and placed the bag of candy on the highest shelf of the coat closet. I could hear the water drain from the tub and a din of voices in very serious conversation. I climbed the stairs only so far as to eavesdrop.

“Daddy,” she said cheerily, “tonight let’s read the egg hunt book.”

“Again?” my husband asked.

Again. And always, again. A place for rituals and dreams, home's the real destination to any quest.

A First Time for Everything

2010-03-28T23:16:00.001-04:00

Tonight begins my foray into the bloggosphere. My intention behind this project is to take a little time each week to look at my local cosmos through new eyes-- the eyes of a traveler. Determined not to let the economic downpour drown my wonderlust, I'll refocus my need to discover to the highways, pine barrens, and shopping bazaars that permeate the South Jersey landscape. Should be interesting. . . Wish me luck!