The House of Ash

My thoughts are usually non sequitur but the musings below are abstractly connected... I swear...

I've been thinking a lot about our society's standards of beauty and ageism. I've been thinking about the emphasis, at least within the communities that I'm in (which of course reflects society at large), put on the young women who by 18 must be in the best shape of their lives (it's all "downhill" from there apparently) and at the peak of their sexuality. I've been thinking about the messages we send our teenage girls... "Sex sells! Show some more skin to get attention" and when the young women follow the "sex sells mentality" (ie: "racy Internet pictures/youtube videos" etc.) everybody loves to blame them and use them as prime examples of the "decline of morality in the country". Regardless of what happens, these girls are examples of "what not to do/be"and by the ripe old age of 25 are tossed away.

Last night I saw a video of a performance by Dynasty Handbag called 'bags' ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jGrS0NSIPo ) in an EmergeNYC seminar given by Jose Munoz. I had seen Dynasty Handbag perform live awhile back but had never had the opportunity to contextualize it. Well, after our discussion tonight, I can't wait for more. For me, this performance really represented this idea that you are tossed around like a piece of trash, by people (who are, in fact, represented by plastic bags... pieces of trash) and the power relationships that you have with specific people. Is there room for creative/artistic/personal development in the "real world"? Should there be? These are the larger questions that this performance raised for me. As a product of this specific socialization, you are told who you are, what you should be and what you need to be. It reminds me of the issues raised in a brilliant show playing at the Minetta Lane Theater called "The Adding Machine". If you haven't seen it yet... RUN! It's worth it.

I've recently started a health kick, inspired by Estelle Parsons and Dara Torres. My goal is not necessarily to drop weight, but simply to get into damn good shape. A few days ago I came across an article in the New York Times by David Belcher about Estelle Parsons, the current lead in "August: Osage County" on Broadway. She is in stellar shape at 81! And of course there is one of my favorite Olympic Athletes, Dara Torres who, at 41 is competing in her 5th Olympics in swimming (Dara Torres - http://daratorres.com/bio.php). Not gonna lie, whenever I see her I think to myself... there is no excuse to not hit the gym.

This is a mighty long introduction to the article below. I hope you are as inspired by her as I am!

From the New York Times:

July 29, 2008
The Role Is a Workout, but She’s Fit
By DAVID BELCHER

Estelle Parsons tears up the staircase in the haunted dollhouse of a set in the Broadway production of “August: Osage County” with the nimbleness of an Olympian. For the next several months this 80-year-old Oscar-winning actress will inhabit the physically demanding role of Violet Weston, the drug-ravaged matriarch of “August,” Tracy Letts’s Tony Award-winning play.
Her stamina may be a tribute to a lifetime of simple physical fitness for Ms. Parsons, who will turn 81 in November while finishing her six-month contract. She lifts weights and swims, she said, and has hiked the backwoods of her native New England for most of her life. She hasn’t smoked in many years and rarely drinks. She almost never eats red meat, save for the occasional lamb chop. She started practicing yoga about 30 years ago. She is the antithesis of Violet, whose self-destructive rampage gives “August: Osage County” its squirming core.
“Here I am, Miss Healthy, fit Swedish flicka playing this drug addict,” she said last week, wearing workout clothes in her apartment on the Upper West Side. “But this play is very physical. It’s closer to Restoration comedy or French farce, so you have to go out and really deliver the goods at every performance.”
As Violet, a mother who tosses back painkillers as if they were Flintstones vitamins, Ms. Parsons spends 90 minutes of the 3-hour-and-20-minute play onstage and goes up or down the three-story set for a total of 352 steps during each performance. At a time that most actresses her age would be happy to spend 15 minutes on Broadway in a couple of wheel-Grandma-out-for-a-song numbers, Ms. Parsons is tackling one of the most shrewish, complex mothers to terrorize a Broadway stage in decades — part Mary Tyrone, part Momma Rose.
“She is certainly giving a performance to remember,” Charles Isherwood recently wrote in The New York Times, “one that may prove to be a crowning moment in an illustrious career.”
Taking on this role would be a challenge at any age, considering that the 68-year-old Deanna Dunagan, who won a Tony Award in June for originating the role, cited exhaustion in her decision to leave the production. Ms. Parsons must navigate two sets of stairs (the stage depicts the Weston family’s sprawling Oklahoma house), smoke cigarettes, argue with pretty much everyone onstage, dance to an Eric Clapton song and verbally eviscerate 10 other characters in a family dinner scene.
“I think it’s had an effect on my psyche because every one of those scenes is one that I don’t want to have in my own life,” Ms. Parsons said. “Violet doesn’t want to sit down and be interrogated. Every scene is something she really doesn’t want to have, except when she’s drugged out, and then she seems to be comfortable.”
For Ms. Parsons being comfortable means being active. In addition to her weight lifting and swimming (she swims for 30 minutes twice a week), she goes on 30-minute bike rides on two other days. She takes a break from exercise on Wednesdays and Saturdays, when she has two performances. At her summer home upstate, she also rides her bike or hikes or swims on Mondays, her day off. She played tennis for years and still cross-country skis. And she does yoga in her dressing room and at home whenever she gets a few minutes.
“I’ve always been a fit person,” Ms. Parsons said. “I’ve been acting all my life, and I’ve always felt you should be in shape. I’m used to devoting my whole life to the work and what it requires.”
That lifelong devotion to performing has rubbed off on her co-star Amy Morton, who plays Barbara, the daughter who takes on Violet. “Estelle has so much stamina and so much energy, and she has stayed working and never retired,” Ms. Morton said. “She’s quite the opposite of Violet, but let’s hope everyone is the opposite of that character.”
Ms. Morton, who has portrayed Barbara since “August: Osage County” had its premiere at the Steppenwolf Theater Company in Chicago last summer and is onstage longer than any other character, understands a thing or two about how grueling the play can be to perform.
“I don’t know that I’ll be able to do this play at 80,” Ms. Morton said. “And Estelle didn’t have the luxury of the rehearsal process that the original cast had. Most of her rehearsals for three weeks was blocking with the understudies. She was just sort of thrown onstage.”
Being in shape took on a new meaning for Ms. Parsons after she won a supporting-actress Oscar in 1968 for “Bonnie and Clyde,” playing Clyde’s sister-in-law.
“I started doing a lot of hiking after ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ because I just had to run away,” she said. “It’s very hard when you’re in a movie that big. You become notorious, and people often bothered me in public.”
This led her to the Appalachian Mountain Club, an outdoors group. “Those people I hiked with hardly ever knew who I was,” she said. “Maybe they didn’t go to the movies. It was just a completely different orientation.”
She and her husband, the lawyer Peter Zimroth, have been fitness enthusiasts for years now. This commitment is part of a lifelong routine handed down from her self-proclaimed “Swedish peasant” roots. It has also led to a balance of city and country living.
“The outdoor activity is great fun, and it’s such a change from urban life,” she said. “But listen, I’m a theater person. I’m not going to give up my life to go sit in the woods.”
When her fellow Steppenwolf alumnae Laurie Metcalf and Rondi Reed (who also won a Tony for “August: Osage County”) suggested the role of Violet to her over lunch one day, Ms. Parsons said she hesitated but was thrilled with the idea of returning to Broadway.
“After meeting Deanna backstage after I signed on, I called my agent and asked, ‘Listen, am I a lamb being led to the slaughter?’ ” Ms. Parsons recalled. “Deanna seemed to think that doing eight shows a week was nearly impossible.”
But after more than a month in the role, Ms. Parsons says she’s up for the challenge.
“Estelle doesn’t even consider this role daunting,” Ms. Morton said. “She considers it fun. She’s always amazed that people say that she should be exhausted.”
Ms. Parsons doesn’t want to dwell on the physical demands of the role, however, and shrugs off the notion that it is a feat for an octogenarian.
“I don’t like to feel like a freak,” she said. “I don’t want people coming to the show just to see what an 80-year-old looks like onstage. Isn’t that what actresses do? They just keep on working.”