Yoga Bitch opens in London tonight. It is the culmination of almost five years of work—I remember sitting with Jean-Michele and Suzanne and nurturing this scheme of Suzanne's, encouraging her and working with them both to find a home for this work. What followed was a multi-year odyssey of workshops, starts, re-starts, cross-country migrations and occasional long silences.
It is extremely moving to see the fruits of all this long labor coming to light--Time Out London did a feature, as has the Guardian and the London Paper...she's capturing more than a normal amount of press because everyone else ran out of town to Edinburgh, a savvy strategy of the producers that is paying off big-time. It's such a pleasure to see Theatre 503 work so hard to ensure the show is a success, and everyone on the production team pulling together--it makes me feel young and proud to be affiliated with the production, watching artists carve out a name for themselves with nothing but sweat, blood, time and love.
Break a leg tonight, Suz.
In celebration of this event, I'm posting a mass email I received from Suzanne when she was in Bali. You can see the roots of the piece here, and its fascinating to read now that this experience has proved such a fertile ground for her work.
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From: Suzanne Morrison
Date: March 26, 2002 1:46:27 PM BST
Subject: baliblah
greetings, all,
here i am, in bali. baliblaibaliaiabailb. drunk off yoga and enlightenment. my friends here call me paramahansa suzananda. i am muy, muy serene. very sunburnt as well from three hours at pool yesterday. i thought i was coming to bali to live like a dirty filthy hippy, but i arrive to find my life consisting of a gorgeous house with a gorgeous pool, a weekly 2 hour massage and some incredible food. i even have hot water in the bathroom. so my idea of living austerely has proven to be completely false. i am living rather like a goddamn colonialist. with servants. a bit unsettling for my inner marxist, post-modernist. one should not go to college for liberal arts and then come! immediately to bali.
this place is teeming with aussies and germans and frenchies. they are all tan and gorgeous. they do not help me on my path to enlightenment, especially as i frequently see them in bars with cigarettes and martinis, as i demurely sip my bottled water and prepare for the next two hours of yoga and meditation.
that's pretty much what i'm doing here. envying the aussies and becoming enlightened through approximataely 4 hours of yoga a day, plus hour meditaion or so, and loads of reading-- the yoga sutras, the upanishads, several asana books and the latest herb blau collection of essays just to remind me that enlightenment coudln't possibly be as interesting as terror, apocolypse and revolution.
my classmates are fantastic, from england, australia, guam, italy and me and my roommate jessica from good ole seattle, wash. we are bonded by the pains in our hamstrings and our communal clammoring for the divine. mmmmm i've just been served a crepe with my email.
i've resigned myself to the fact that i will ultimately see very little of this lovely island, as classes pick up in intensity shortly, my workload will double, and only sundays are off. we've got a few sidetrips planned but for the most part i'll be in the temple chanting langvangrangyanghangangommmmmmmmm. for those of you who watch absolutely fabulous, i must mention that every time we chant i think of edina rolling her eyes as she says oinging langingoingboing, to hell with it.
the days are slow, there are many geckos, i've experienced none of the explosive varietys of gastrointestinal ailments, but my roommate has! i'm knocking on wood every second of every day. most of my classmates drink pee, by the way. they are wayyyyy into urine. i think it's totally exciting, the amount of pee that is drunk in my class. many drink 8oz each morning. one fellow snorts it for his hay fever. i think about this approximately twenty times a day, usually during meditation.
i'll have a billion more stories to tell you all when i return home, it's been quite an experience so far, very different from any other two weeks of my life. five more to go. my to do list for tomorrow is: conquer fear of death, release attachments to worldly senses, and tip up into headstand. after that i will probably eat some chocolate, have a coffee (it's exceptional here) bitch about the overabundance of bananas in my astral field and have a swim. as adam from london says, it's a pisser of a time we're having in bali.
love to all,
suz
7:43 AM