Popcorn, Ice Cream, Drinks and Lollis

First why I’m here. Four years ago, I went from being Visiting Faculty at USF’s Department of Theatre and Dance to being a Non-Tenured Professor. I love teaching and directing, and felt supported by my friends and colleagues. However, because of massive budget cuts, a lack of summer research funding, and a dwindling support for the arts, I made a five-year goal for myself: to be awarded a Fulbright, earn a PhD, and sell a screenplay. In 2008, I went to Romania as a Fulbright scholar and taught for nine months at the University of Craiova. While there, I applied to Victoria University Wellington (VUW) and was accepted as a PhD candidate. I hesitated to accept, feeling that my job at USF, though it had some drawbacks, was extremely rewarding. When VUW offered me a 3-year scholarship, it made the decision even harder. I have left the place, job and people that I love to be where I am now.

It’s been a busy week. Last Friday, I was delivered to my new digs, a six-storied apartment building for grad students in downtown Wellington. I’ve never lived in student housing before, and it was a bit of a shock after leaving my lovely apartment in Tampa to discover a tiny first-floor studio with kitchenette, twin bed and bathroom. It’s in the back of the building and so it’s quiet, except for at 5 a.m. each morning when a trash truck inverts the dumpster right outside my window and pounds it repeatedly, metal on metal, like the soundtrack to a summer action flick. My first three days here were spent looking for a new place, but Wellington’s expensive and the head of student housing has offered to move me up to the sixth floor on the other side of the building, and so I’ve agreed to honor my four-month contract.

The university sits high above a hill overlooking the city harbor. It’s winter here, cold, rainy and windy. Wellington looks a lot like a smaller San Francisco, and the weather changes constantly. Being on the first floor, surrounded by tall buildings, I cannot see the sky from my window, and so unless the wind is howling and rain is pelting, I’m never quite sure what it’s going to be like outside. It’s a 20 minute steep uphill walk from my place to the uni, and I spent the week signing and delivering papers, and setting up my campus office.

On Friday, I went to a noon yoga class at the campus rec center. The yoga room is a year old with blonde hardwood floors, a 50-foot ceiling, and an entire wall of windows that overlook the city. The instructor, a pale Kiwi named Angus, put in a CD, and a Sigur Ros melody took me back to one of the happiest times in my life: last fall at USF, directing a wonderful cast in the play 100 Saints You Should Know.

Tonight I went to see a recent New Zealand film called Boy. A comedy/drama set in Waihau Bay in 1984, it’s about an 11-year old Maori boy, his family, and a goat. See it if you can. Before the movie began, the screen filled with technicolor images of movie snacks and a voice beckoned us to the snack bar, promising “popcorn, ice cream, drinks and lollis.” Though considered the “cultural capital of New Zealand,” Wellington has a very small town feel. The downtown area closes up early. Internet service is billed for bandwidth used. The public library charges for DVD rentals, and the university library will not let students check out DVDs. It is, geographically, quite small, hilly, and, weather permitting, walkable. Oh, and for those of you on the East Coast reading this, it’s already tomorrow here.

Since it’s winter, and New Zealand is so close to Antarctica, it doesn’t really get light until around 7:30am. By 6pm, it’s dark. Food is expensive, in groceries and restaurants. There’s a heavy Asian influence, and Malaysian and Indonesian restaurants are everywhere. I’ve only seen one cat since being here. The natives are protective of their birds. I knew one person before arriving, Walter McGinnis, who I met at a summer acting workshop at The Atlantic Theatre in NYC in 2004. Walter’s involved in local theatre, his girlfriend Marci is a visual artist, and they’ve been really great at showing me around.

I’m still not sleeping well, kept up by the new time, season, and place. Big changes. I’m sleepy by 10, read myself to sleep, then wake sporadically all night long. Sometimes it feels like this has been one long dream, and that I’m going to wake up in my apartment in Tampa, cypress trees swaying out my window, Jody Cat beside me, my loved ones near. The decision to come here hits hard at 4am, and I often lie awake, forcing myself to give thanks for this opportunity, and to focus on what I have rather than what I want.

If this is a dream, then I will begin to dream big. My dissertation focuses on film acting, and how specific actors in specific movies from the past 80 years have, through their performances, reflected or influenced cultural, political and social changes. The first chapter deals with Louise Brooks and her Delsarte training exhibited in 1928’s William Wyler film Beggars of Life. The film has recently been restored, and I am applying to a Silent Cinema conference being held in Berkeley in February 2011, hopefully introducing the new print at a showing of Beggars of Life.

Tomorrow, I’m riding a bus across town to Island Bay with one of my fellow film students to see the John Lennon-as-a-teen biopic, Nowhere Boy. From there, I’ll head over to Walter’s place for a play reading. There’s a lot of theatre going on here, and I hope to have time to teach acting classes and to direct while researching my thesis. I’ll be traveling to Bali at the end of August to teach an acting workshop. But right now, August seems a long way off. It’s late, nearly midnight, and I haven’t done any reading. Hopefully, sleep will come, and the dreams won't hit too hard.