8.23.05-- Damn college, damn this overly analytical brain.

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Look, a press photo that Marcus Kuiland-Nazario and I took last weekend for "Carnalville"-- an interactive and durational performance we are curating for October 30 at Highways in Santa Monica. And shock of all shocks, a press photo where I don't have my mouth open, my tongue hanging out, or my leg ready to dropkick the camera man. I actually look... "decent"(Even though in this picture I am squinting and cursing the sun.)
What's going on here? Has Kristina turned a new leaf?

So ok, I don't have much to say today about other than how much I love and hate that I went to college. Not the college that I'm in right now. Right now, I love being in grad school for creative writing. Because all I do is write.

I haven't been updating this site because I have been knee deep in memorizing and rehearsing for "Voices of America"-- that one person show I told you about in my last update. It's an eight character show where I play characters like an anorexic Asian girl, a skinhead, a deaf black guy, a guy on death row and a gay priest.

And Colin, the director, who is also British (not that that has to do with anything) finally was like, "Kristina! You need to get your head out of the way! This isn't performance art! This is acting!"

He's right. Sadly, not since high school have I been able to just delve into a script and really soak into the emotions of a character. Instead, I instinctively pick up a script and like the English major I am, start dissecting it politically and structurally. I look at shit like the representation of women or race, deconstructing the thematic structure, critically examining the politics of the one person multi-character show, getting into these huge self-dialogues about multiculturalism, mentally placing the script historically in the timeline of progressive politics and political theater, and having informal self-conversations about the presentation of "multicultural" theater.

I get all bogged down into the politics of it. I turn into a literary critic and not the actor.

Greg Sarris, who I took creative writing with at UCLA went off on a tirade once, screaming something like, "The English major is making you all hate literature! Stop being English majors and start thinking like writers! Creative writing is not about being an English major!"

He was so right. Sometimes I think that college was great because it made me aware of how to appreciate and read art, but it made me so overly critical of everything that I can't go through day to day life without being an anthropologist about everything. Everything from looking at the layout of a menu to the name of streets-- I can't help but deconstruct it all!

Even in the creative writing class at UCLA, I had been so accustomed to writing all these papers as an English major where I scrutinized the bullshit of a novel to death, that I really struggled to just write a story from my heart without getting all tangled up in thinking, "Now, how would a college student write a critical paper about this story that I am writing?"

I think this happened to me a bit in when I first started taking improv at the Groundlings. I'd watch my classmates improvise sketches and the little angry college activist in me couldn't help but deconstruct their political representations of race, gender or sexuality. When it came time for me to go up there, I was so bogged down by the voices of kids in my Asian Am classes saying over and over, "That's racist!" and "That's a stereotype!" that I had no idea what wasn't racist and wasn't a stereotype and many times just froze solid on the spot having no idea how to just improvise.

Even then, I realized how deadly my brain was going to be to my art. I've been trying to run from my brain ever since.

I built bigbadchinesemama.com mainly as response to my fellow Asian Am studies classmates and my frustrations of always feeling I had to be "politically correct" as an artist, rather than honest.

Perhaps this is why I got into performance art. Performance art is so clever-- it's like art for the overly educated and for audiences who love deconstructing everything and their mother. That's why so many people say "Performance art doesn't make any sense." It's true. You need an MFA and a PhD half the time to know what the frick you are looking at. Like a performance artist covering herself in chocolate syrup is brilliant to everyone else with an MFA, but the rest of the world thinks you are just plain dumb. And maybe they are right.

Colin also said during rehearsals, "Kristina! You need to be more happy! Stop analyzing what you are saying! I can tell you are analyzing these lines as you say them! Stop thinking! You think too much! Let the audience do all the deconstructing. Just open yourself up to the feelings."

Well anyway, so that's what I've been doing since I've graduated from college. Trying to drop my brain. Trying to let the thinking go and just be. Just emote, not analyze. Any feedback on how to drop my brain would be appreciated.

Love,

kristina