And I’m home.
I’ve got a bit of a headache. Lou was heavy with cold. But I’m happy to imagine that I’ll be okay. Tomorrow is line hell. Today I met up with some lovely people in Somerstown to start to make sense of a strange and beautiful script I’ve been sent by a mentoring project.
In my interview with the child playwright I said how I love to know which mushrooms are which. Because I do, as you well know oh constant reader.
Megan the other actor had some fly agaric on her socks which I only noticed once the topic had been opened. “Can these ones be eaten?” I was asked in reference to the sock picture. “No.” I replied. Fly Agaric, the Christmas mushroom. They are shamanic if dried. “They look pretty. They are beautiful and come out at this time of year and later. They’re very distinctive but no you definitely don’t want to eat them. You’d be very sick. Some people try and dry them to make themselves feel funny. But … they’re poison. And those people are idiots.” I’m talking to a nine year old urban kid about a mushroom they’ll never see. I don’t care about mushrooms because I’m looking for hallucinogenics. I am just geekily interested and trying to be honest in the moment.
I find it astonishing that the dramaturg felt it necessary to literally report me for that information. That’s all I said – if anything that’s more than I said, I can’t remember it very well. I care about this work and I’m not gonna start recommending hallucinogens in front of children. Thankfully I’m embedded enough that things like this just slough off the first time. But it’s upsetting. It goes on my record irrespective of context. “I’m told you said some people eat some mushrooms in order to feel funny”.
I have no idea why that person’s threshold is so badly calibrated but it is.
It’s not a big beef, I’m not in trouble, nothing like that. But for me now it is interesting. I’m trying to dig into hidden motives etc.
Someone felt the need to flag something that I absolutely steered away from being anything bad. I was in a space where I was deliberately being honest and also actually trying to expose truthful and interesting things about myself so the child playwright had material. I went into great detail about my privilege because it’s what I came from. And the mushroom comment – 5 seconds. Innocuous.
It’s almost as if the dramaturg had some sort of an agenda against whatever they have decided to frame me as… I am not gonna speculate what that might be. But… A complaint like that – not a pleasant thing to experience. It’s fine, but it all affects how I’m thought of. I’m going to solve it by being compassionate towards the person that made the complaint, and by writing all my negativity out here so it’s gone.
People often live in the realm of ideas, and perhaps doubly so if they’re a dramaturg and writer working with words. And … youth frequently lacks perspective as I well know from mine. They were a lot younger than I am. And there are cultural perspectives and expectations around that age gap.
I like to be honest and try to expose my truth. But … I yam who I yam.
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It’s going to be a lovely piece. Strangely my character is a baddie dramaturgically, but a goodie in terms of my actions and words. Almost like the dramaturg had one idea and the child had another.
