Catharsis in theater

My Western Civ professor finally took a break from the endless sex talk today as we began our discussion of Greek tragedy. She discussed a topic I had never really thought about before - that of catharsis and the getting out of feelings through watching a drama. She said that men need to watch violent movies and get out their aggression and girls need to watch tragically romantic "chick fliks" and cry to be emotionally stable.
I thought, if that's the case, I'm not a properly formed human being at all. I watched Titanic a few years back with a girl scout troop really late at night, and they were all sobbing and I was thinking "Climb on the plank with her, you moron!" There's enough drama in my own life - if it doesn't make me cry, a stupid fictional movie isn't going to.
I raised my hand and asked if acting would also do it. She nodded and said that it would do it more. Finally, the realm of personal experience. Last year, I recalled hearing from his mom, our Shylock would go home after Production Week rehearsals, arriving at about six, and would go to bed. It was such an emotional part that it did take something out, leaving him completely drained.
Next I thought of this summer's short-term missions project, during which I had put together, directed and ended up performing with an Everything Skit team. Not only was the directing of it, just the watching, listening, etc. very draining in that it filled me with adrenaline and had me pacing, jumping, and calling from sheer energy after a day of manual labor (I slept well that week!) but it was very interesting to feel that, conditioned as I was to belong in a very active role in that skit (the musical cues still cue physical reactions in me, such as increased heart rate, etc.), in that kind of a situation I really, really wanted to get something out in the doing. I was what you might call an overenthusiastic director. (Under certain circumstances I did end up being in my least favorite most experienced role during the performance, but more on that later.)
One member of my skit team, the young man who played Satan, was the first person to actually volunteer. That is, rather than me asking him, he heard from someone and came to tell me he was in. (The casting, getting people involved, was very difficult.) He evoked comments from an extremely empathetic leader that it looked like theater/acting/drama is very good for him, and I could see it. It does let something out that it would not be appropriate to release at other times.
So. Movies? Not seeing it. However, acting does do it. And "Hamlet" is a rather emotional play. It's going to be an interesting year for all of us, I think.

And another

I've been following this story over the past couple of weeks. An Iranian pastor, married with two children, was arrested while trying to register his church, and his charges were shortly changed from "protesting" to "apostasy" (converting from Islam) and "evangelizing Muslims." Both of those charges carry the death penalty.
The verdict has been appealed, and most recently the court, while investigating if he was a Muslim after the "age of accountability" which in Sharia is fifteen, commanded him to "repent" and return to Islam. It was discovered that he was never a practicing Muslim adult, but his condemnation was upheld on the grounds that he had "Muslim ancestry."
Section 6 – 225 of Iran's controversial legislation says “when a person's parents were Muslims at the moment they were trying to have a baby, and he or she converts to another religious without claiming to be Muslim, he or she is a national apostate,” [advocacy group director Jason DeMars] added.
Pastor Nadarkhani has refused to convert to Islam, and says he is happy in that his faith is strong. If nothing changes at the moment, he could be hanged as early as this Thursday.
Read more here.

Why does no one hear these things?

As mainstream American media usually doesn't share the news of what happens in the Middle East unless it has an impact on the USA, and almost never talks about the situation of those suffering from religious persecution or clashes due to that sort of prejudice, I use other sources. It's amazing just how much persecution of Christians goes on abroad, seriously putting into perspective the coldness and scorn that is usually as far as it can go in America.

LAHORE, Pakistan, September 21 (CDN) — A Christian mother of five was allegedly raped by two Muslim men last week, and area Islamists are threatening to harm her family if charges against the suspects are not dropped, the woman and her husband told Compass... Muslim criminals in Pakistan, where the population is more than 95 percent Muslim according to Operation World, tend to assume they will not be prosecuted if their victims are Christians. The accuser said Muslim men in the area have been harassing Christian women for some time.
[The woman] said that as they reached the police station, Muslims warned the family against pointing out [one of the rapists].
“They told us that they will kill my children and husband if I identify [him],” she said. “They said that we should not forget that we are chooras [sweepers, a derogatory word for Christians] and can bring no harm to them. They also warned that our daughters would face a similar fate if we did not listen to them.”

You can read the whole article here.

Love (Shouldn't) Come by Seeing

Ahhhh, gotta love Wednesday - theater day.
Having embarked on Sunday on the Intensive Discipleship Program (YWAM Publishing), I figured it was a good time to think about new ways of doing...what I need to live instead of do. I also figured the book would be good for focus. First topic: Love. As in, "for everyone." (And I don't mean that "Love has no gender" stuff.)
So. Back to Wednesday. There are a few people in my troupe that I have trouble loving. Because, y'know, I'm a regular sinful not-so-awesome human being. But hey, that's why we work on stuff. So this morning I thought about one particular girl I'm not so fond of. I thought, I'm going to try to love her today. Dear God, please give me a hand...because I'm probably going to screw this up royally.
I then proceeded to screw up royally by completely forgetting about it.
"Hamlet" is a fascinating play. Some of the more well-known material are the scenes in which Lord Hamlet's would-be girlfriend Ophelia is mad. Not just feigning insanity, like Hamlet himself, but actually bonkers. I have a friend who isn't much for acting in front of people. She is a wonderful person who gets her kicks in the costuming room because she loves sewing and who will go out in public wearing an ancient Greek chiton, and yet is very nervous performing in front of people. She does want the role of Ophelia this year however, and enjoys doing the mad scene, and is actually really good at it.
As a troupe we are going through the play, and we did the first of these "mad" scenes today. Our wonderful director had my friend do Ophelia. She did a magnificent job, until the fact that she was on a lit stage in front of a bunch of people got to her, at which point she tentatively requested a replacement and departed for the costuming room. I waited until I could get offstage (I was there too, as the young noble Horatio) and then went and found her to let her know how she was and that she did excellent and that I was proud of her for trying despite the difficulty.
After rehearsal ended, not long after, the girl I had resolved to look at differently came up and asked how she was doing. "She's doing fine. Just got nervous."
"She did a great job." she said. "Just making sure."
"She did, didn't she? I love her. She's awesome."
"Yeah," she agreed, "she really is."
I discovered to myself later that my feelings about this person had completely changed, now that I had seen something about her like that, concern for someone she didn't know particularly well (my friend is not the most social of people either).

Then I remembered my resolution from earlier. I had not done my best to love this person or even to like her. I had been tricked into it, as it were.
Lesson here? Undoubtedly. Just slightly too complicated to put into a handy little aphorism or moral.

College: The Weirdness of It All

So, five classes: Intro to Special Education, Child Psychology, Computer for Beginners (satisfying a requirement for high school, not college), Mathematical Ideas II, and Western Civilizations I.

Intro to Special Education is pretty much about legislature. I'm really hoping that, at some point, we start talking about teaching the students...
Child Psychology is a class with a male professor and one male student...plus about eighteen of us female students. The professor loves to talk and is pretty funny, and he also likes watching videos in class.
Computer for Beginners is essentially the most boring class I have ever taken. It's a three-hour class. Class 1: Left-clicking, right-clicking, resizing windows, finding the Start button and accessing Microsoft Word. This is not an exaggeration.
Mathematical Ideas II is education based. Meaning cute little worksheets and games like learning base four by pretending we went to the planet Fouria. Again, no joke.
Western Civilization has no textbook, no homework assigned yet, and all the class material is on summaries posted on the internet (the professor stated the intention of not having us need to take many notes). It's taught by someone who is teaching for only the second time in English and who believes in magic and the power of the human mind.

This 0ught to be another interesting semester.

Missing Women

Abortion and gendercide are issues that have been issues very near to my heart lately. As I believe that unborn children are still human beings, it therefore seems to me the murder of children for the mother's convenience and for the clinics' earning money. Furthermore, there is social stigma attached to daughters as opposed to sons in communities in Asia, such as China and India. China's One Child Policy appears similar to India's laws that prohibit families from having more than one child.
Live Action is producing a movie on this topic intended to come out next year.



There is almost nothing I can think of to say that isn't "horrible," "heartbreaking," or "inhuman." (Although the last one is horribly ironic for this

Summer comin, summer goin

Oh hi. It would seem that I managed to avoid blogging all summer long. Oops.
My summer was pretty great. Spent a week working with a short-term missions project with my youth group. Then I went and worked at a camp for autistic kids. I'll probably give each of these projects a separate post (each of them deserved it).
In the meanwhile, I am facing the new school year: Senior year. Thus far there are:

• TRIPLE-casting this year at theater. Shakespeare's Hamlet.
• FIVE college classes...plus only two high school ones this semester, so not bad.
• Preparation for my fife and drum corps's international performance next summer. New standpiece, probably a new drill, and a bunch of mercenary performances to get cash.
  
• The beginning of my participation in the activity commonly known as "dating..."
• A brand new kindergarten class :)
• New undertakings of the the college Christian Club (we're experimenting in actually organizing a schedule this year).
  

...and the SATs too, but who counts them?

It's adventurous already! For instance, earlier today I spent three straight hours sitting in a chair on campus cutting out little paper circles for my math teacher. I would love to say that I composed an existential poem or something from going snip, snip, snip. However, my only epiphany was "It's hot in here."
And a heightened appreciation for Easy Mac. Thank you college.