Sunday, 24 October 2004 10:48 am
(no subject)
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
deckardcanineI've been lazy about updating (rather than too busy to do it). Dang "Skies of Arcadia."
My long-awaited three-month performance review was last Tuesday. I sat down and said, "Let's see, I'm still too fast, I still keep forgetting dates on the title page...," and my supervisor, Peggy, laughed. It is true that despite me slowing down a little in the last two weeks, I am going thru papers faster than expected of a trainee at six months. I chalk it up to a combination of irrational overconfidence and a desire not to spend too long looking at the same words. Fortunately, both supervisors have observed a tremendous improvement in the last month. Trainees tend to get settled into the system almost overnight at some point, and I believe that's what happened.
I had been warned that one of my papers in the last two months would be a secret test. When I accidentally found the corresponding article on our website, I had strong suspicions. When I recognized part of a table that a co-trainee, Brendan, had showed me for amusement, I had no doubt. Since there had been no specific instruction against it, I used the online article to help me decide what to change, tho I did several things differently. Sure enough, Peggy asked me the next day to guess which paper was the test I passed by a wide margin. When she asked how I figured, I feared having to take another test, so I told her only part of the truth: that Brendan showed me a table from it. Turns out someone before me had found it online as well, but since Peggy didn't clarify what happened to that trainee, I still didn't sing. The result? All three of us had to take a new test. Peggy didn't name names in her explanation of why, but Brendan asked if I knew anything about it. I answered in full, and he laughed.
After that, I was worried about the next test. I did not plan to look for the papers online. But once again, it wasn't necessary: a paper apparently submitted in '03 but to be published in '05 (plausible but rare) had a suspiciously high variety of things to correct. I did slightly above the "average" (read: passing, like a C) level. There will be one more test in the next three months.
On an unrelated note, last night, my folks and I ushered Anna in the Tropics, which is about cigar factory workers who have Anna Karenina read to them and draw parallels in their situations. Our friend Kathy, who ushered M. Butterfly with us, said that her play-reading group unanimously wondered how it got a Pulitzer. It has not been well received at Arena Stage, either: ushers had no trouble finding seats for themselves. We weren't sure if we'd sit thru the whole thing, but we did.
The parts I gathered on the real AK reinforce my notion that Russian fiction is all about lots of developed characters and their unrequited loves. The play itself felt like it should have been quite good, but there was a certain empty space throughout. It was slow, especially at the beginning, yet it seemed to reach the intermission and ending surprisingly early. The only stellar actor was the one we ushers saw warming up before the show, and some had a serious problem maintaining an accent. Despite the attractive poster for the production, the visuals were seldom interesting at all; my mom liked a certain minimal room scene, but I thought it felt claustrophobic.
At the same time, I rarely thought of the play as boring. The dialog could get rich, even if there weren't many particular memorable lines. Certainly the premise was of interest; none of us had heard of Latin American factory "lectores" to up the workers' morale. And it didn't pay to turn away: if my eyes hadn't wandered, I wouldn't have jumped at a certain gunshot. I put this Arena production in the same league as A Moon for the Misbegotten -- not as hot as most, but worth sitting thru.
My long-awaited three-month performance review was last Tuesday. I sat down and said, "Let's see, I'm still too fast, I still keep forgetting dates on the title page...," and my supervisor, Peggy, laughed. It is true that despite me slowing down a little in the last two weeks, I am going thru papers faster than expected of a trainee at six months. I chalk it up to a combination of irrational overconfidence and a desire not to spend too long looking at the same words. Fortunately, both supervisors have observed a tremendous improvement in the last month. Trainees tend to get settled into the system almost overnight at some point, and I believe that's what happened.
I had been warned that one of my papers in the last two months would be a secret test. When I accidentally found the corresponding article on our website, I had strong suspicions. When I recognized part of a table that a co-trainee, Brendan, had showed me for amusement, I had no doubt. Since there had been no specific instruction against it, I used the online article to help me decide what to change, tho I did several things differently. Sure enough, Peggy asked me the next day to guess which paper was the test I passed by a wide margin. When she asked how I figured, I feared having to take another test, so I told her only part of the truth: that Brendan showed me a table from it. Turns out someone before me had found it online as well, but since Peggy didn't clarify what happened to that trainee, I still didn't sing. The result? All three of us had to take a new test. Peggy didn't name names in her explanation of why, but Brendan asked if I knew anything about it. I answered in full, and he laughed.
After that, I was worried about the next test. I did not plan to look for the papers online. But once again, it wasn't necessary: a paper apparently submitted in '03 but to be published in '05 (plausible but rare) had a suspiciously high variety of things to correct. I did slightly above the "average" (read: passing, like a C) level. There will be one more test in the next three months.
On an unrelated note, last night, my folks and I ushered Anna in the Tropics, which is about cigar factory workers who have Anna Karenina read to them and draw parallels in their situations. Our friend Kathy, who ushered M. Butterfly with us, said that her play-reading group unanimously wondered how it got a Pulitzer. It has not been well received at Arena Stage, either: ushers had no trouble finding seats for themselves. We weren't sure if we'd sit thru the whole thing, but we did.
The parts I gathered on the real AK reinforce my notion that Russian fiction is all about lots of developed characters and their unrequited loves. The play itself felt like it should have been quite good, but there was a certain empty space throughout. It was slow, especially at the beginning, yet it seemed to reach the intermission and ending surprisingly early. The only stellar actor was the one we ushers saw warming up before the show, and some had a serious problem maintaining an accent. Despite the attractive poster for the production, the visuals were seldom interesting at all; my mom liked a certain minimal room scene, but I thought it felt claustrophobic.
At the same time, I rarely thought of the play as boring. The dialog could get rich, even if there weren't many particular memorable lines. Certainly the premise was of interest; none of us had heard of Latin American factory "lectores" to up the workers' morale. And it didn't pay to turn away: if my eyes hadn't wandered, I wouldn't have jumped at a certain gunshot. I put this Arena production in the same league as A Moon for the Misbegotten -- not as hot as most, but worth sitting thru.