Tag: Theater

Who says you can’t go back

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In which a ghost flits through l’école… [Written Mar 20 2026]


My father and I explored Étampes today, including a lunchtime visit to the school where I spent 4 months over the last year.
We chatted briefly with the administrators; I said hi to a few students.
The school felt oddly empty. Perhaps students spend their lunchbreak during these warmer months acquiring baguettes or eating outside.

Two students said hi along with my name, and I returned the greeting, then recalled their name a few minutes later.

Another student startled at seeing me. They looked like they’d seen a ghost.

Then, after school, around 4:30 or 5pm, I ran the 3.5mi loop I’ve done so many times.
I ran it slower than I did before I broke my foot.
I’ve become over the last few months: much fatter and happier.

I arrived home and wanted an orange.
I’ve enjoyed sumo citrus oranges these last weeks in New York.
I donned a shirt and walked to the local market.

On my way back, oranges in hand, I spotted two students sitting together.
One, a person who had wanted to fuck me.
The other, the person who wrote me hate mail.

What an odd experience.

I walked past, noticing how odd it is to be of any interest to others.
To gossip about a person gives them power.
Celebrity is formed by being an interesting subject for gossip.

Then later, I received a text from the at-school startler, asking if I’m returning to school.
I told them how “JuJu plans and JuJu laughs…”
They prodded again.
I repeated my lack of planning.
They said, “alright man, you do you. just know you’re a bit of a controversial figure so it would put people a bit at ease if they knew what to expect”.

What a weird thing to say.
Are you trying to protect others from feeling uncomfortable?
How do you think that makes me feel?

Does it make me feel good? Loved? Enjoyed? Respected? Seen? Invited? Welcome?
Or does it make me feel alone? Ostracized? Rejected?
Is it fun for me to feel those feelings?

Should I tell you that their discomfort makes me feel uncomfortable?
Is that enough to be conclusive?
If I feel uncomfortable, is that the end of the conversation?
Who are “they” exactly, and what exactly do they have to say?
Do they have some gripe with an underlying reason?
If so, I don’t know exactly what it is.

Only one even had the balls to message me about my being a pariah.
And that message was unhinged.
Unhinged, for example, in that they wrote three long, unanswered blocks of text and then finished with “Merry christmas” (they had sent it two days before christmas), and then deleted only the merry christmas message.
Why would you delete the only kind part?
That’s frightening. Objectively frightening.

Is this what celebrity is?
Being interesting enough to be spoken of?

I first wanted to attend this school because of the Bouffon class.
Some clowns are desirable, friendly, and fun.
Others are grotesque, disgusting, horrid (bouffon).
I have always found myself outcast by groups.
This group is not the first, nor will it be the last.
My elementary school administration, middle school classmates, college secret society, after-I-graduated improv group as well. Now this: a clown school.

If running away to join the circus is what people do when they’re rejected by society,
what do we do when we’re kicked out of the circus?

I have a great relationship with the admin. They’re kind, thoughtful, good-teaching bunch.
I also have a few friends I’ve made from school.
But man, there are a lot of crazies and stupids at clown school.
I don’t really care about being most of their friends.
What would be the point? What do they have to offer? What would be the mutually beneficial part of our spending time together?
But it sure does hurt to be yet again ostracized for bullshit reasons.

Returning now to the text and the question:
Why is their discomfort more valuable than mine?
Have you ever asked that question?
Their discomfort is conceptual – fear at some concept?
You’re making me hurt in the here and now.

I would pose that very question to this texting clown…
but he’s an absolute dolt and owes me money.

So I smile and I wave and I play the politician
and his life continues on
and theirs does too.

And I leave this year of clown school,
going instead to New York City.

And maybe in a year or two I will run into one of them
and they will shriek and run away
and by the time that happens
I will have learned
how to turn their fear

into gold.

P.s. No, it did not make me feel loved, seen, appreciated, and accepted.
It made me feel alone, rejected, hurt, and sad.
It conjured up the image of a bunny cowering in a corner
while some dark shadowy figure looms above it…

But that’s the key about dark shadowy figures:
what can a shadow do?
No arms. No legs.

They’re dispelled by the light.

The Dog Show: Play’s Dead

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I watched a play tonight by the former head writer of The Daily Show with John Stewart. This man has 13 Emmys, a Grammy, and a Peabody. I expected the play tonight – which was in previews – to be clunky but well-written. I was disappointed.

The show is called “The Dog Show”. It features four actors and a projector. The screen shows a dog; one of the actors reads a monologue from that dog. Cute and simple.

Some of the monologues are relatable (the dog beside the dining table begging for chicken). Some were clever (the existential questioning of a chihuahua who was purchased for $1200 yet lives in a purse purchased for $4800). Some are heart-wrenching (the dog whose owner abandoned her beside the road). Most were overly long, empty, surface-level bleh.

I’ll give you two examples:

  1. A dog who finally experiences his life purpose when his owner throws a frisbee. Beautiful concept. But the execution needed dramatic cuts. This dog starts by talking about playing fetch, then his relationship with his owner, then slowly transitions over to the frisbee. It’s just too much exposition. Cut it. Start straight with “The disc. I saw it, and every one of my ancestors, all the way back to the wolves, pointed our noses directly at it.” I’m surprised that the head writer of The Daily Show – a medium that provides little time – would contain so many unnecessary beats.
  2. The ending is a border collie saying he’s smart and then discussing the moral of the play. The border collie does not actually act like a border collie, however. Border collies are not the sort of smart where they intellectualize. They are the sort of smart where they require a task to accomplish at all times. What is it actually like to be a creature whose existence requires constant engagement lest he be destructive? I don’t know: all this show gave me was a person saying “I’m a border collie, so I’m smart.”

As I was leaving, I heard one of the actors say, “I just hope we get reviews.”

After seeing this show, I can understand that desire. The show is insufficiently content-filled to actually warrant much writing.

If they want someone to 1) chop all the fat off of the script, and 2) point out all the spots where the show lacks actual dog perspective and/or heart, I’m available.

On Mathemagic

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Tonight, Partner and I saw an off-Broadway show of a guy doing fast math in his head. He calls himself a “math-e-magician.” 

This performer does a great job of playing things off. One of his acts is to to guess the missing digit of the answer to an incredibly long multiplication problem. Starting with a 4 digit number from a previous trick, each audience member uses their phone calculator to multiply by a new 5 digit number that they don’t say out loud, and then they read all but one digit aloud. Give the digits in any order — he can still figure out what’s missing.

Magicians never reveal their secrets, but, for a math-e-magician, the reveal is part of the show. The trick is that he selected a multiple of 9 as the starting number. Therefore, the sum of the digits will always be a multiple of 9. So if The sum is 68? The next multiple of 9 is 72, so the answer is 4. The sum of the digits given is 34? The missing digit is 2 (34+2=36, 36/9=0). The sum of the digits is 45? Well, the answer could be 0, or it could be 9.

This is what separates the magicians from the math-e-magicians. And math-e-magicians reveal their secrets.

He cold-reads. He will say, “I’m going to read your mind… I’m getting a lot of nothing. It’s not zero, is it?” And if the audience member says, “That’s right!”, we’re good. 

But if the audience member replies otherwise, he can say, “Try thinking harder… It’s nine!”, just playing it off like it was part of the act.

Cold-reading psychics do this as well, where they might see a woman crying and say, “It’s not your husband, is it?” and if the response is yes, they say, “Yeah, I thought so.” But if the answer is no, they say, “Yes, I didn’t think so.” 

Either way, the phrasing gives you that particular out. 

My favorite and least-favorite part of the show was when an audience member kid said that he could do 75 digits of pi, and then he could not accurately do 75 digits of pi. The performer did a great job of making the kid not realize he was flailing. The performer had said, “We’re going to do 60 digits of pi, and then maybe continue onwards.” And since the kid was flailing, the performer cut him off. 

Partner’s favorite part was when he asked a little girl for her birthday, and did a whole act with the numbers in it. He then asked for someone else’s birthday, and the girl’s sister volunteered. But the sister was quick to point out that she’s not just a sister: she’s a twin. The performer chuckled and used the birthday anyway. 

This particular performer used to create magic squares to entertain himself. Now he performs math-e-magic in an Off-Broadway show. 

Starting early sure helps. 

An Art (Apr 4 2026) 

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An off-off-off-off Broadway day. 

I attended an art today. A very Burning Man-ish art. Listen: 

You knock on a door in Brooklyn. A clown-not-yet-in-costume opens the door. She tells you the show starts when she dons her hat. But now, she is hatless, so the show must not have started. 

You introduce yourself to the other attendees. There are five of you: you, your partner, a couple (she’s from Bulgaria; he’s a stand up comedian), and a woman of about 80 who formerly performed voiceover work for the Muppets. 

The host dons her hat. She provides you a passport and divides you into groups: you’re with the Bulgarian and Muppet; your partner is with the Standup. The host introduces you to the town: five stations, each themed around a custom topic for you. (Mine was Consistency & Stability.) 

You visit the five stations in sequence. At one, you marry your theme. At another, your theme writes you a letter.
At the beginning of the experience, you ask yourself, “Why am I here?” You imagine yourself leaving to go to a park. Getting some much-needed rest away from the world. 

At one station, the Muppet tells you of how she was engaged to a man in L.A. A beautiful man, an incredible musician. But he had a nervous breakdown and moved back to Las Vegas. And she moved back home to New York City. And had she not done that, she would never have been the in-demand voice over artist she ended up being. 

By the end, you have found in this activity a bit of solace, peace, and comfort.
You met some people who enjoyed the time they passed with you.
You learned a small bit experientially.
If you generally had positive memories, you would have positive ones here too.

After the experience, the clown host mentions she previously studied in France, under the same teacher who founded the clown school you attended.
She says she left his instruction back in the early 2000s, thinking he had failed her. Only after he died did she recognize he had been right all along.
You wonder how much that’s true for you too.
You wonder where you have to go. 

An hour later, you see a dear friend for a bite of dim sum.
It’s his birthday. It’s nice to laugh.
You wander toward home, a bit colder than expected.
You check your texts, and find a thank you from the clown host. She says that your conversation helped her. She may return to that school. 

You arrive home. 

And all this time,
still,
throughout the entire day,
you wonder
why you feel
so utterly
alone. 

The Glory of Gaps (Apr 1 2026)

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Sometimes nothing is everything 

Earlier today, I bought tickets to a play.
$5 per person for two tickets to an off-broadway show. 

At 5:10pm, I asked Partner, “Do we even want to go?”
Partner said yes. I agreed (ambivalently).
At 5:42pm, we arrived to the theater. A sign on the door stated tonight’s performance was cancelled due to “staff injury”. 

What a lucky occurrence!
Partner and I walked toward the sunset.
We split a pound of strawberries and listened to a spiel for a green energy provider.
Then we strolled up through the park til our bare shoulders felt cold
and hopped the subway back home to eat lentils. 

I ran 2.5 miles today at a 7:59min mile,
lifted heavy objects for the first time in forever,
and walked three or four miles. 

My body feels nice when it’s satisfiedly used.
Life is especially nice when the universe conspires in your favor. 

A Half-Baked Production (Feb 18 2026)

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In which Our Hero has a crusty good time. 

The worst theatrical performance I’ve ever observed occurred in an off-broadway theater this afternoon from 2pm to 4pm. 

Experiential quality is the delta between expectation and outcome. 

This play, which retails for $55 per seat, but which my partner and I observed for a steep discount, prompted my partner to say, “We spent more money getting to and from the show, which is appropriate.” (We took the subway.) 

Issues included: 

  1. An actor flubbing her line, saying “first anniversary” instead of “fiftieth anniversary” in a very-obvious-to-everyone manner. 
  2. Plot point problems being invented only to be immediately resolved. It’s like Chekhov always said: “If a gun appears on stage in act 1, it better be fired within 5 seconds, lest any theatrical tension develop.” (That’s not the real meaning, duh.)
  3. A lead actor who had no light in his eyes. No joy on his face. No radiance whatsoever. When he sang about the weather – about his love for the wonders of the natural world – I received no awe. Only cringe. He hit his notes, his lines were clear and well inflected, he simply had no pleasure to share. 

A year or two ago, I watched my partner’s brother-in-law perform in a small town musical. He played Linus in You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown. I left that performance appreciating the heart that the performers shared with us that day. I left with a new, darker view of the character of Charlie Brown. I left disillusioned with the influential characters I had formerly seen as simplistic. I asked questions like, “How have the archetypes of that generation’s comics/cartoons shifted and morphed as the American experience has changed over generations?” 

This play ended with the explicit moral “The real success was the friends we made along the way”. 

I’m not kidding. 

It wasn’t even tongue-in-cheek, self-aware. The writers seemed to actually think that was an acceptable moral. Or else the whole play is an over-the-top self-mocking farce that the director and actors failed to recognize. And then, why were the characters lit in purple for that one scene? Some avant-garde nod to Grimace? (Per my ex-professional-lighting-designer partner, “The lighting designer was incapable of changing the mood through anything but LED color washes and the colored lights weren’t powerful enough to properly light the scene and be visible.”)

Around 3/4ths of the way through the first act, when the characters on stage mention they’re about to go to intermission (they were performing in a TV program), I thought, “Ah, a fun meta-joke: Their intermission will be exactly the same time as ours.” Then, when their intermission struck, ours wasn’t for another 15 minutes! Another man in the audience clearly thought the same thing, as he stood up and then confusedly sat back down. 

Woof. 

My favorite part was before the show started, when a woman behind me narrated everything she was doing. “I like standing up so I don’t have to get up when people need to pass me. I hate shuffling by people and I am thoughtful and don’t want to make people shuffle by me. Oh, the row is now full, I will now sit,” she said to no one in particular. “It’s very stuffy in here. Very stuffy with all these people,” she said wearing a kn95 mask, her row full, but the theater only one-third full.

As my partner put it, “It was fun to sit near the woman who had to narrate everything out loud. I wonder what her IQ is.”

As that woman narrated just before the show started: “I do hope it’s a good performance.” 

I also hoped it would be a good performance. 

It was not. 

-1 star. 

Hate Mail (Feb 11 2026)

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In which it’s nice to be seen 🙂 

My first piece of hate mail arrived in the form of a google document from my partner’s former grad school weightlifting friend. It articulated all the terrible traits that he observed during the long weekend we stayed with him. It included such gems as, “There were multiple occurrences of him saying something to the effect of ‘this happened because of some thing you did Nikki’ or ‘whose fault is this?’ And because he was saying it in a silly way it is expected to be a joke.” 

I read this criticism to a clown school friend of mine, who asked, “Oh, so you were doing bits?” 

“Yes,” I replied. “One was blaming Nikki for absolutely absurd things that were clearly not her fault, like the weather.” 

“That’s a pretty good bit.” 

“I agree.” 

—

Then, two months ago, I received a second piece of hate mail. This one came as a series of text messages from a fellow clown student. She derided my blog, my relating to other humans, and my analytic approach. I hadn’t spoken with her in ~a month (I had broken my foot and stepped away from clown school), and before that, I recall only neutral-to-positive experiences. Apropos of nothing, she sent me this diatribe. 

I have since shared that letter with a few friends. To a person, they describe it as “unhinged” (or various synonyms). 

In her hate mail, she made a few good points. My writing was likely alienating to some clown students. Clown school is a beautiful place and a precious gift. 

She also took some shots. Specifically, she said I “wasn’t funny yet” (the newsletter was called “Am I Funny Yet?”) and she described my blog as “very public and mediocre”. 

After I received that letter from her, I of course didn’t reply. I also of course didn’t alter my writing or publishing schedule. The article I published that day prompted a second screed from her the next day. She – in whatever reality she was experiencing – thought my intervening post had been about her (it had not). 

This second screed brought me great joy. 

“Ah,” I thought. “How wonderful it is that she reads my blog every day!” 

—

I like to live my life in public. I adore New York partly for that reason: meeting strangers and living in an environment where big, bold people are appreciated. I take my shirt off in public. I do so even though I’ve grown breasts. 

I also think it’s funny to call a blog about someone’s daily struggles “mediocre”. It’s not polished. It’s not complete. It’s not intended to be either of those. It’s a documentation of my attempts to do new and challenging things; a collection of my thoughts and observations and learnings and experiences. I’ve never been accused of waiting for perfection (and my partner, at least, thinks my life is better for it). That’s one of the clowning lessons: fail more, and befriend your flops. 

To quote my partner: “Being mediocre is the first step towards being kinda sorta good at something”. 

At present, I have 21 Substack subscribers and 168 subscribers. 

I’ve never looked at my stats before. I haven’t cared. I still don’t. But it’s nice to know that her estimate is also true numerically. 

So yeah, with my hundred of fans and my abnormal life, I’m proud to be: 

Very Public & Mediocre. 

Mellow and Dramatic (Jan 26 2026)

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In which Our Hero mellows in the drama 

Today was the first day of the second term. I’m not there. I’m in Etampes, four minutes walk from the school. I walked earlier today by the train station cafe that doubles as the student haunt. Yet I’m not there. Do I miss it? 

Today my mother and I dawdled down a classic Parisian street. Over lunch we swapped plates four times so we could experience what the other was eating. An Eastern European tourist offered us alcohol at Jim Morrison‘s tombstone. A California native gushed his worries about American politics 10 feet away from Molière corpse. 

This evening, my housing purchase was confirmed. After 8 years nomadic (homeless?), it’s time to put down roots. My partner ordered a bed for the empty apartment. I ordered locks for the doors. We’re buying one way flights like we always do, only this time they’re to home. 

The clown course I’m missing is melodrama. A fellow student once told me that melodrama is about stretching moments. What should be a five second stroll becomes ten minutes of dramatic, hyper-experienced anguish. 

Today stretched. From sprinting for the train to dashing through loan documentation, I was hyper present. Focused. Immersed. 

That’s one of the goals (or is it *the main goal* of clown school). Presence. Giving. Moving forward. 

I don’t miss melodrama. 

I’m excited for my life. 

Clown School Break Day 4: Return of the G

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In which Our Hero gets his groove back. 

Friend: “We’re looking for ladyfingers”
Grocery store employee: “What are those?”
Me: “They’re like chicken fingers but made out of women.”
Employee: “I can’t stand men, but that’s a good one.”

A friend told me I’m funnier now than before clown school—that I tell jokes for other people more than I used to.

That’s nice.

I do feel myself joining other people’s worlds more readily. It feels more comfortable, somehow safer. Like I’m less afraid of being hurt by them. Like I’ve internalized the fact that the pain of rejection is both temporary and unreal. 

And I am still unquestionably afraid. But the fear is now useful. It’s a companion. A friend. I just need to embrace it, befriend it, and place it properly so it doesn’t own me.

At dinner, my dad asked me to do an impression I’ve done before: one of the teachers from my Le Jeu course this summer. I did it, and it was fun. The fact that sharing pleasure is more important than the impression’s accuracy put me at ease. Historically, I’ve refused in spots like this. Maybe because doing someone else’s game felt uncomfortable. But why? Who cares? Might as well give pleasure. Spread joy. 

I was more open and comfortable and relaxed in general.

And noticing the spots when I wasn’t. And releasing them. 

These are nice.

Thanks, clown school. 

Clown School Break Day 1: The Flickering Light

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In which Our Hero contemplates steadiness.

My roommate and I carpooled to Paris today. En route, we discussed improv and clowning. Some students at our school want to be clowns. Others want to be actors or performers of a different stripe.

This school teaches pleasure-finding and pleasure-sharing. That’s it. Everything else is downstream.

Lately, I’ve had much less ability to share pleasure. Since around July, something’s been off. It’s not that I’m more self-conscious (I’m not). It’s not that I feel less pleasure (I don’t). It’s that my ability to give it—my pleasure-sharing skill—has dipped from where it recently was.

At an alumni gathering for my university, people asked what I do. I told them I’m in clown school. They asked what I plan to do with it. I had simple, light conversations. Most of it felt uninteresting. Like I had no ability to use the skills I had just learned to find and share pleasure. 

Why was it so hard? Where does this difficulty come from?

One: a cough. I’ve been sick the last few days.

Two: a fractured foot. Not exactly peak performance mode.

¿Three: the weird-ass mental state this school induces?

¿Four: just not doing this thing well? 

Five: [redacted, personal]

—

Last night, I went to a cabaret, watched friends perform, and talked with them afterward. We discussed clowning and performance. We connected easily. Pleasantly. Full of spark. Despite having trouble with this the last few weeks. With the same people, no less. 

Why does this turn on and off without my permission? This ability to connect with others—to care, to be curious, to find pleasure and give it back?

It’s odd.

It feels, currently, out of my control.

I guess that’s why I’m studying it. To gain control of giving light.