Working Artist's Statement

Three Core Values:
1) Organization
2) Recognition-people liking my art/performance, telling me I'm good
3) Feeling of productivity-getting things done, sense of accomplishment

Issues:
Heritage/ethnicity-I've always wanted to belong to culture or ethnic group other than "American." I'm jealous of people who speak another language at home and eat ethnic food and visit family in their home countries. This pops up a lot in my work and in my life. It is probably why I study/speak French and Spanish and desire to learn other languages, like German, Portuguese, and Russian; it's also why I want to study abroad and eventually live in Europe, so I can feel like I'm a part of those groups. I always use accents in improv; they're a good way to find a character. I'm also drawn to ethnically based arts. For example, I just saw the musical 'Ragtime' which hit me really hard; it even made me cry...coincidentally, it is about the stories of different ethnic groups in the early 1900s, such as Latvian-Jewish immigrants, WASPs, and African-Americans. Fiddler on the Roof is another favorite musical of mine...it's about Russian Jews, and I happen to be half Russian/Jewish. I listen to ethnic music; one of my favorite bands is Gogol Bordello-a multi-ethnic gypsy punk band, composed of immigrants from Eastern Europe. Jazz, the thing I'm pursuing, is totally ethnic; it's the music that African-Americans made for themselves. I also have a fascination with organized crime and the mafia, another group based on ethnicity and tied together by it; two of the works I've helped write this year involve it...in the movie "I Know a Guy," a girl asks the don of the mafia for a favor. In the children's musical Cassie and I have been working on, Vivian, the pigeon-girl, gets involved with the mafia when she has no other choice. So what does this say about me? I suppose that I want those feelings of closeness, support, love, and acceptance associated with being "ethnic"...nobody likes Americans anyway.