Monika Wunderer wrote:
> How the hell can you make use of all this wonderful ressources and
> creativity oudeis team provides without eating team members ?
>
> I am very much looking forward for our friday's after-performance glass
> of ambrosia.
I think when you talk about "overwhelmness" that this is a condition has been
described better than you may know. Burnout is an occupationally induced
stress-related condition--a multi-factorial discontinuity that results in an
inability (1) to manage complexity, (2) to make decisions, (3) set priorities,
and (4) to focus on details. Once it happens your are--we say here, "about as
useful as tits on a bull" :-) Before this happens you have probably already
suffered a loss of some vegetative functioning--food (and digesting), sleep, sex,
etc.
If you don't take care of yourself, you may get violent or suicidal. Very
serious. Responses to very traumetic stresses such as war, or work associated
with large accidents, disasters have been described in detail. People in creative
fields are especially susceptible to stress and burnout because they are highly
self-actualizing people who get absorbed in what they do. They lose track of
time.
What to do: (1) learn to recognize the symptoms and (2) support one another. The
three steps I mentioned to Rainer work for me if I remember to do them: 1. take a
deep breath and let it out slowly, 2. scale your expectations of yourself to what
seems realistic, and 3. do your best.
Burnout has actually been described in some detail by Christina Maslach, a social
psychologist at the University of California Berkeley. It consists of three
separate but related factors: emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and
reduced sense of work satisfaction. In theater, we are in the business of
impersonating and recreating emotions that in some cases wrecked the lives of the
people who first had to endure them. So emotional exhaustion is always around.
Depersonalization comes in when we start talking to those around us as if they
were not human. The Prima Donna display, for instance. Objectification comes in
with yourself too--an ear? so I pulled off my ear. So what. Let's get to work.
Type A, incipient heart patient. By the time you notice that your work is
suffereing, chances are everybody else has noticed it too.
Small, mindless, but meaningful tasks are very helpful. I wash dishes, pull
weeds, shovel snow, bind books, and build computers in this mode. Some times just
sit down and sit with the cat.
Getting a balanced diet, a good night's sleep, and some exercise will build you
some buffering against stress.
B-vitamins are good for stress and lecithin works with insomnia and hangovers. I
have a 4-year-old friend named Sam I like to hang out with and a cat and who
helps a lot to put me into a more vegetative state. (Cats and snakes have
meditation.) Children and animals live in their own time--they are not always
just about on their way to somebody's unnecessary meeting. Lovers do this for us
too, I think--put us in another time-world, life-space. The time out of time.Take
a moment to appreciate your partner.
Our other pleasures turn to obsession--until the show's over. But we should be
looking for a mode we can sustain. What if Oudeis is the next Cats? What if you
have to do this six nights a week and twice on Saturdays? Since you wouln't have
much time to spend all the money you think you might make by working so hard,
management has ingeniously designed a model so that you won't actually make
enough to worry about. Clever them, eh? But beware: us-and-them is an early
pre-symptom of objectification. Some of us may wander around in two or three
bodies, but we're *all* real.
And Monika, you have earned every drop of ambrosia you can wring out of that
bottle. Bravo in advance. Oudeis is already a wonderful accomplishment, thanks
largely to you and to those amazing Austrians, and it continues to grow. Cheers
to Gernot! and George! and Ulli! and Misha! and Karin! and Aaron! and still
growing! What an amazing place Vienna must be. The momentum is gathering. The
project is real. The people can work together and enjoy doing it. (Leaps several
feet and sticks on the window like a spider. Sometimes Jim gets so excited he
runs almost amok. Gotta be careful.) Looking forward to seeing Boris, and Twyla.
Hold a thought for Juli and her wrecked machine. It started as just another
harddrive, but I don't know what's happening now.
To Lee, Santiago, and Andrew: I want you to know that I am so envious I could
spit so had better forego further comment. I just want to say one thing: I just
hope you guys are having a good time!
Hope the stress stuff helps,
love you guys
Jim
xxoxxoo
ps: just so you don't get the idea everything is all hunky dory from this msg, I
think all the invitations juli sent out have the wrong time on them. They say 1
p.m. EDT (we are from 6 to 10 a.m.; they are from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. and that's
when it's *over*.You wanna take like a 15 minute break and do it again if an
audience shows up for this? Don't really need the whole cast. Georg or maybe
Aaron or whoever is Georg's understudy. The Conductor.
If I get time, I will mail out corrections to those I know. The action has
already begun. I can feel the winds of it coming down the mountain. jt
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