Competitive Shakespeare

I do some weird things...

Last Tuesday I had the opportunity to compete in my high school's Shakespeare Competition and this week I'm moving on the the branch competition of the English-Speaking Union's Shakespeare Competition.  I will be performing Timon from Act III sc. vi of Timon of Athens, which (in the words of a friend of mine/my english teacher from last year) is an unusual choice.  This monologue will be coupled with Sonnet 130 in competition.

I'm really excited about this opportunity, crazy though it might be.  My monologue is a grand "F*** you" to Timon's false friends, and my monologue, though perhaps less than complimentary to the woman to whom it is directed, is incredibly sweet and truthful at the end.  And I have the added bonus of clearly playing men in both performances.  I make no attempt to feminize either.

If any of you are in the area, it's in the Cole Auditorium at the Greenwich Library at 3 today (Leap Day, 2012).  It should be really interesting....

Addendum: because of inclement weather, the competition has been rescheduled to March 7. So look for that.

UPDATE: I placed 4th out of 20 competitors.  I won $25!  It's awesome to be paid to act.

The Recruiting Officer

I feel like I should make a few disclaimers to begin this post, just so you take my praise with an appropriate grain of salt.

I love the Donmar.

I am ever so slightly obsessed with Mark Gatiss (I follow him on twitter!).

Steven Moffat was sitting 20 feet away from me when I saw this performed.

The cast is 98% comprised of very good-looking men (there are some women as well).

Good?  Awesome.

This production is the first for the Donmar Warehouse’s new Artistic Director.  Given the quality of the show, I think we need not worry about the regime change.  The audience files in as the actors walk about the stage lighting the many candles surrounding the space.  This, combined with the scenic design, evokes a warm tavern or public house of the late 1600s.  It’s really cool is what I’m saying.  Five of the actors also double as musicians, whose antics add to the fun of this hilarious show.  And it’s a lot of fun.  There’s cross dressing, bawdy humor, and a German doctor named Conundrum from the far away land of Algebra (in the words of Captain Brazen: “I find his place of nativity hard to calculate”).  And that’s just one scene. 

The comedy is tinged with a hint of realism, stemming from the playwright’s experience as a recruiting officer.  Farquhar wrote this play in a time of patriotism and pride in the British army in the aftermath of the War of Spanish Succession.  There was a certain glamour surrounding the officers of the army. But the final scene of the play (I won’t say how) still manages to evoke the horrors of war.  It leaves you with a slightly unsettled feeling in spite of the post-comedy high.  Which I think makes this a really good play.  The acting is wonderful, the lighting (both candle and instrument) is perfect, and the set pulls the whole thing together into a very realistic, mutable environment; but the writing and the directing make the production special.

The House of Bernarda Alba

I’m not usually one for reimaginings, but I thought the Almeida’s production of The House of Bernarda Alba set in modern-ish day Iran was really well chosen and well done.  The play was written on the eve of Franco’s rise to power in Spain and so tyranny and totalitarianism play prominent roles in the production.  It centers on the actions of Bernarda Alba after the death of her husband, specifically the fact that she locks her five daughters and herself within her house for 8 years of mourning.  This house is not a home; it is conjured within the environment of the play as a fortress or a coffin.  Bernarda summons its different elements as a means of reinforcing its boundaries: the unseen love interest of the girls meets his sweethearts through their windows; men and women are separated (men in the yard, women in the house); and the neighbors watch each other without mercy between the shutters.  The women inside the house are connected to the outside world only by gossip and the excellent sound design of Dan Jones.  And I feel so much sympathy for them.  I too live with Bernarda Alba.

Visually too, the play’s palette of black and white may serve to evoke the color scheme of a black and white photograph.  Bernarda insists on everything being scrubbed spotless, yet only wears black.  Her morality too is black and white.  She endorses and upholds a society she condemns as keeping her daughters from enjoying their rightful place in the world.  Bernarda believes herself to be a high-born woman.  Whether this is actually the case is left up to the audience; but, in either case, Bernarda believes her daughters have been cheated out of their rightful place. But this play is built on the premise of negation.  Bernarda’s opening and closing line is “Silence” and she imposes on her daughters a regime of denial.  This is the story, ultimately, of a dynasty, only here Clytemnestra has been conceived as a 60-year-old matriarch for whom social control is inextricably bound up with religious display.  The play was conceived as a statement on tyranny and it wholly succeeds, evoking not only the beginnings of Franco’s Spain but also the conditions against which the protesters of the Arab Spring rebelled.

How to Make a Two Act Play One Act

Last night I had the opportunity to attend Bingo: Scenes of Money and Death by Edward Bond at the Young Vic.  It is not one I particularly relished.  I would love to say there was something about the production I enjoyed, but I really can't.  I don't think I can express to you how absolutely terrible this production is.  It is really, really, really bad.  And I feel terrible saying that because I got to talk to Patrick Stewart (who plays the role of Shakespeare) before the show, and he is just one of the nicest people.  So nice, in fact, that I almost stayed for the second act.  Almost.  But I didn't.


To be perfectly honest, this play is fundamentally incomprehensible.  I may be coming down hard on playwrights, but this really goes too far.  As far as I can tell (and be corroborated by the great sage wikipedia), this is a historical fiction, Marxist interpretation of the last years of Shakespeare's life in which all he wants to do is sit.  I know they say make your characters want something, but I don't think this is what they meant.  The first act of this play also features his daughter (a greedy bitch), an old gardener with the mind of a 12 year old (this is how he is described by his wife), an angry preacher, a "witch" (she's killed for arson and shaking), and Combe (I think he's meant to represent the "establishment").  Let that sink in for a bit.  The script features heavy handed condemnations of violent entertainment (bear-baiting), capitalism, money, success, and the common man.  For being a marxist writer, Bond is incredibly aristocratic. As for the title: "Art has very practical consequences. Most 'cultural appreciation' ignores this and is no more relevant than a game of 'Bingo' and less honest."  If you understand that, please explain in the comments.  Thank you.


So yeah.  I literally can't say anything more than that.  I did not understand a word of what transpired on the stage in front of me.  Stewart is probably very good, but Bond gave him nothing to work with.

Wandering Through a Power Plant

To my mind, the Tate Modern is one of the most interesting spaces for an art museum.  It's inside the old Bankside power station.  Yeah.  Today, I wandered into room 3 of the Energy and Process gallery and the special exhibition called "No Lone Zone".  Of course I wandered into a lot more, but those are the two rooms I'm going to talk about today.


Room 3 of looked specifically at the Arte Povera and Anti-Form movements.  The Italian artists of Arte Povera produced work that explored changing physical states instead of representing things in the world, while in Japan and the United State the Mono Ha and Post-Minimalism movements looked for alternatives to a sleek technological aesthetic. In the late 1960s, many sculptors emphasised the process of making, and explored ideas of energy in their work.  Artists began to use a diverse range of everyday materials - sometimes industrial, sometimes organic - rather than those associated with fine art. These substances were often malleable, volatile or elastic, allowing natural forces and energies such as gravity, electricity, and magnetism to manifest themselves. The process of making was often evident in finished works.  I was specifically interested in five or so works.  First was "8th Paper Octagonal" by Richard Tuttle...

This was admittedly kind of an odd work.  It consists of an octagonal piece of bond paper glued to the wall by wheat paste.  Tuttle intends that the octagon should disappear into the wall as much as possible. Nonetheless, once noticed, the work becomes strangely present. As an object, it is ultra-thin; but it still takes up an awkward place between painting and sculpture.  To me it is interesting, and ultimately slightly unsettling, to make art that is meant to disappear into the wall.  I found that I kept being drawn back to this piece after I had noticed it.  This is of course the kind of art I love to mock, it is a piece of paper stuck to the wall; but I found it strangely compelling, which I think is what art is meant to be.  Strangely compelling.


I was also fascinated by Gilberto Zorio's "Teracotta Circle":

Terracotta Circle looks back to classical ideas about human proportion. The diameter is based on the artist’s arm-span and the circle was moulded as he moved around at floor level. The work also marks out the height of the body, as a glass platform with a thin layer of lead hangs at head height.  To me, this is an interestingly stripped down version of Da Vinci's "Vitruvian Man".  I googled this guy and I found out that many of Zorio’s early sculptures explored energy and change: crystals grew up metallic structures, substances altered colour when damp, live electric elements draped from the wall, and painted surfaces fluoresced under ultra-violet lights, which is pretty cool.  


Third, Kishio Suga's "Ren-Shiki-Tai":

This work is an example of the Mono Ha movement.  For the artist, this work represents the fragile boundary between the interior and exterior world.  For me, I think this work is particularly interesting because, while the work seems to represent a fragile boundary, that fragile boundary seems to defy gravity.  Admittedly gravity is not a particularly strong fundamental force, but it is probably the most popular.  These artists seemed to combine art and science relatively often, which I think adds a really interesting extra dimension to the experience.

Fourth, Grenville Davey's "Ce & Ce":

This rather surprised looking man is the artist himself.  He's rather surprised about the fact that I can't (after a cursory google search) find this particular work.  Oh well; you'll have to imagine.  Although abstract, the informal positioning and steel lips of the circles suggest the lids of vats, or giant paint pots, momentarily set to one side. By subtly altering the geometry of the circle Davey subverts notions of ideal beauty and uniformity. The streaked surface of the two parts of "Ce & Ce", with its traces of poured acid, underscores this subversion of purity. The title suggests a visual pun about looking at a work in which one element partially eclipses the other behind it.  But from you're perspective it might not.  You'll have to trust me on that one.

Last from this room, Direction by Giovani Anselmo:

In the late 1960s, Anselmo began to make sculptures exploring forces such as torsion, gravity, and magnetism. His "Direction" series incorporate compasses that point to the magnetic north pole. This work is made by pushing a glass beaker with a needle inside it against a dampened cloth. "I formed a sort of trail that the energy of the magnetic fields, continuing to orient the needle, kept alive", Anselmo said. Inside the gallery, the work serves as a reminder of the space outside it, and the invisible forces that structure the world.  I nerded out on this one.  Not only did it represent small scale physical forces, but to me it represented earth carving its way through the universe.  So that was awesome.

"No Lone Zone" is a military term designating an area where the presence of just one person is not allowed.  Determined by reasons of both safety and security, this two-person rule - which implies mutual observation - is often applied on nuclear sites, but also in laboratories, banks, and casinos.  However, the phrase can also be used metaphorically to describe a highly sensitive or unstable place, such as those vulnerable environments that proliferate in the context of postcolonial globalization.  This exhibit featured Latin American artists whose works engage with how a particular site and his local history are mediated by the networks of global communication.  Specifically, I want to talk about Teresa Margolles.  Her part of the installation was called "Score Settling" and it incorporated glass fragments from the shot-out windshields left on the asphalt after revenge motivated, drug killings.  She commissions the jewelry they are set in to resemble that worn by the narcos, who shoot their victims in their cars.  I thought this was a really interesting way to memorialize the victims of a war that continues just south of our own borders.  That we, as Americans, know little about.  It's pretty crazy.  It really makes you think.  As art should do.

Hajj Mabrour

The British Museum does special exhibitions right, down to the little things. Like having visitors to their exhibition "Hajj: Journey to the Heart of Islam" walk through their exhibition in a more or less counterclockwise path.  It's really all about the little things.

I personally found this special exhibition really interesting.  Having gone through Freshman World Cultures at my school, I was more or less familiar with the basics of Islam; but this was really interesting for me.  The exhibition took the visitors through the different steps of the sacred pilgrimage to Mecca from preparation to farewell tawaf.  I found their treatment of the different paths to Mecca particularly interesting.  They took a famous traveler of each road and used their experience to talk about the larger pilgrim experience.  These case studies included Mansa Musa, Queen Zubayda, Sir Richard Francis Burton, and Evliya Çelebi.  I personally found Burton particularly interesting because he was sent by the Royal Geographic Society to explore the hajj experience, which was really interesting because non-Muslims are not allowed into the holy cities.  The colonial hajji experience was also fascinating.  Both the British and the Dutch owned colonies in the Indian Ocean with significant Muslim populations, and it was really interesting to see how they regulated the hajj.  I thought the run down of the different hajj rituals was also well done.  If you're interested a more in depth look at the hajj (which is to say one that is more in depth than the one I could logically provide here), I would direct you to the National Geographic Special Inside Mecca which is also really well done.  All in all, I would wholly recommend the exhibition to anyone who's in the area; it's really well done.

The exhibition also included some interesting, modern, artistic interpretations of the hajj.  Featuring work by Muslim artists of today really brought the whole experience together.  That, combined with quotes at the end of the exhibition regarding the hajj experience from famous Muslims, was a really interesting way to bring the impact of the hajj to the non-Muslims who attended the exhibition.  And of course that was the point; the exhibition was designed to be appreciated by Muslims and non-Muslims alike, which is accomplished with a wonderful spirit of brotherhood.  I'll include some of the works below, as well as some of the quotes.

"They asked me what about the Hajj had impressed me the most ... I said, the brotherhood! The people of all races, colors, from all over the world coming together as one!  It had proved to me the power of the One God ... All ate as one, and slept as one.  Everything about the pilgrimage atmosphere accented the Oneness of Man under One God." - Malcolm X, 1964

"I had come to the center of the universe, where the physical and metaphysical worlds meet.  I was floating in that wonderful sea of humanity, turning like stars in a galaxy, around the house of God ... I had at last found that dimension where human existence ceases to be held by the gravitation of sensual and worldly desires, where the soul is freed in an atmosphere of obedience and peaceful submission to the Divine Presence." - Yusuf Islam, 1980

Excerpts from "You and Only You" by Idris Khan:

I was here for You and only You

Are you leaving as you had come?

Nothing is insurmountable and you will return

What do you do now?

Where are you going now?

Towards home?

Towards the world?

The journey you have taken has shown your devotion

As you leave remember what you have achieved a one ness with this earth and another

Scenes from the London Underground

Contrary to Otto from a Fish Called Wanda, The London Underground is not a political movement, but given the way I'm going to talk about it it might as well be.  

This add is in the St. Paul's Station on the Central Line in London and it's not the only one.  In my extensive googling to find the picture above, I uncovered a bunch of different "Where Do You Stand?" advertisements on topics ranging from a rising China to Iran's nuclear program.  However, "Drone Strikes?" is the one I saw, so it's the one I'm going to talk about.

I've always been a fan of unmanned drone strikes for exactly the reasons listed above.  I am all for a weapon that lowers the risk of civilian injury and increases the accuracy of the strike.  But the add raises a compelling counter argument, namely the "extra-judical assassination" thing.  War is a tough call to make.  People are obviously going to die, so any tactical advantage that reduces the collateral deaths is, I think, fantastic; but in modern warfare collateral damage is almost a given.  We no longer fight wars where both sides face each other on a field and shoot.  That went by the wayside a long time ago (I would pick a war, but my history text book keeps telling me that each new war was the first to feature the extensive use of guerrilla tactics, so I'm not sure).  I think we have passed the age in which we could genuinely avoid massive collateral damage. I'm not saying I'm happy about it, but it's probably true.  The ability to target individuals is also probably a plus, but then again there's the whole "extra-judical assassination" thing.  I guess that's the long way of saying its complicated, but I thought this add was particularly thought provoking and I thought it might be nice to share.

What do you think?

It's Man vs. Monster, and the Monster Always Wins...

I feel like this is become a theme of my theater going experience.  In any case, I have touched down in London for another bout of theater going madness and have hit the ground running.  My family used to kind of live in London, so nowadays we try to come over every few months to catch up with friends, see some museum exhibits that we know won't come to New York, and - more importantly - see theater.  Today, we saw two of the hottest tickets in London: The Madness of King George III and Collaborators.  It seems only fitting to start with the matinee...

The Madness of King George III is a revival of an Alan Bennett play that I should think needs no reviving.  Suffice it to say that I think the playwright is doing something wrong when you care nothing for the characters on stage.  This is now the second play I've seen by Mr. Bennett, and I think I might be done with him.  My family managed to get tickets to The Habit of Art a few years ago, another inexplicably hot ticket in London, and not even the impeccable staging and acting of Alex Jennings could save it from Mr. Bennett.  But setting all that aside (which seems like a ermarkable feat) the acting of David Haig (King George Himself) and Nicholas Rowe (who does an excellent job playing the part of Prime Minister Pitt) as well as Janet Bird's design save the show from being completely unwatchable.  The script may be tedious, self-important, and awkward, but the actors bring it to a watchable level of mediocrity.  In this play, the man is King George, the monster is porphyria, and all seem to be fighting against the script.  It is ultimately unclear who or what has won.

The exact opposite is true of Collaborators, a new play by John Hodge now on at the Cottesloe at the National Theater.  This play mirrors in form and content the spirited insanity that is the work of the central character: Mikhail Bulgakov.  I am a huge fan of this author.  If you haven't read The Master and Margarita, you should move it to the top of your to read list.  The plot kind of defies description, but it is an awesome story.  Seriously, read it.  But for the play,  I have nothing but wonderful things to say about it.  From the set to the lighting to the script to the cast, nothing is amiss.  I also kind of love the National Theater.  The light board op, upon hearing that I do lighting, actually allowed me into the booth to look at their set up.  Serious nerd out moment.  The play itself takes a look at an immagined meeting between Bulgakov and Stalin as Bulgakov writes a play that, for him, is impossible to write.  It is a celebration of Stalin's youth to be performed for his 60th birthday.  It is as hilarious as it is dark, and man o man does it get dark in the second half.  As far as I could tell, it was pretty darn historically accurate, which was welcome after some of the glaring historical inacuracies of The Madness of King George III.  Alex Jennings was amazing as Bulgakov as was Simon Russell Beale as Stalin.  As for the script, in the first act, it succedes in humanizing Stalin, a psychopathic, dictatorial mass murderer.  Alan Bennet, take notes; this is how you make people care about your characters.  The set created an environment perfectly suited for this mad spin through Moscow, the last months of Bulgakov's life, and Stalinist Russia as a whole.  This a show truly deserving of the hype.

Talkers Be Not Do Gooders...

I hope I caught that right.  If I did, it's from Richard III.  Specifically, the Richard the III featuring Kevin Spacey playing now at BAM.  And it's awesome.  Seriously, you should all go see it.  I think the ballonatic Menendes' Bridge Project has finally turned out something worthwhile.  Since this is Shakespeare, I'm going to go ahead and spoil the ending a bit because its been around for 400 years.  If you are averse to that, read no further.

Richard III is Shakespeare's second longest play (after Hamlet), but you wouldn't know it to see this production.  There's never a dull moment in the court of England when Kevin Spacey is present, and even when he is off stage there is rarely a pause in the action.  As he himself says, this play is destined either for heaven or for hell; and while Richard himself is certainly going to hell, this play is ecstatic. If only for the technical feats of focusing on the lights, check out the play for the staging.  The multi-doored set seems to have a single light focused on each door, which let me tell you is a feat.  I'd love to sit down with this lighting designer to talk to him about his shadows, because they were gorgeous.  It is impossible to escape the feeling that the sun is setting on all of them. This sense is compounded by the projections, the text of which seems to lengthen faster or slower depending on when each character dies.  And a lot of them do.  The omniscient, mad Queen Margaret curses the whole court within 45 minutes, and they all seem to meet the fate she sets out for them.  It is she that places x-es on each door as each character passes on, creating an inescapable sense of predetermination.  It seems that the characters could do nothing else but fall.

As for the bunch-backed, toad himself, I have nothing but wonderful things to say.  Spacey seems to taunt the rest of the cast with his grotesqueness of character and physiognomy.  It seems that he's testing them to see how far they'll let him go.  All in all, he manages to take in Anne - whose father and husband he has killed - various lords and dukes, the princes regent, and the populace of England (thanks to a spectacularly media savvy Buckingham); all the while telling the audience how much he should be hated.  And not for his physical features.  He seems to have come to terms with that.  No, we should hate him because he has consciously decided to be a villain.  And he loves it.  He begins the play with a Nixonian sweating problem, graduates to the Kim Jong Il-style aviators, and ends the play strung up by his feat a-la Mussolini.  As I said, the staging is spectacular, but it is made that much better by the way the actors play with the space.  (Yes, I just gave credit to the actors.  Deal with it.)  They know exactly how to run their show, and they make a truly memorable Richard III out of a spectacular technical environment.

So go see this show.  NOW.

Lauren Eames, Live from New York. UNPLUGGED.

I am lucky enough to go to a school that leases its students laptops. Under normal circumstances, my blog posts are typed from that laptop. This post is not one of them.  Unfortunately, as a result of severe technical difficulties (I think I can safely put severe in italics when the tech department says "your hard drive sounds like an off-balance washing machine") I have left my laptop with the geniuses of the tech department overnight, and it will quite possibly have to remain there throughout the day today. Why do I tell you this? Because what I do with my time without technology is rather interesting.

Because of the way many of my classes are structured (i.e. around the assumption that the students will have laptops) I was able to get very little of my school work done. I think it is only when you are forced to take a night off that you realize just how much school governs your life as a student. My plan to be awake at 10:00 PM to begin tracking Jupiter for my physics class was stymied not only by the cloud cover over my house but also by the fact that I simply didn't have enough work to keep me up that late. I am now 90% certain that my sleep patterns are dictated by my school work.

I think I have also lost sight of how strongly connected I am to the rest of the world by the internet.  I spend a good amount of my time home alone, and one of the ways I keep myself sane (other than by listening to podcasts) is by surfing the various social networking sites on which I have accounts. Not possible without a laptop. The 3G around my house is spotty to be complimentary, so many of the smart functions of my smart phone (on which I am typing this post) are disabled simply by location. In the words of The Eagles, "On quiet nights, this big old house gets lonely." Getting in touch with people with whom you don't really want to have a full conversation is somewhat difficult in this day and age. Of course I think the idea that you'd want to know what's going on in the life of someone with whom you wouldn't want to have a full conversation is an invention of this day and age, but I still find my self somewhat perturbed by the fact that I can't do it.

Now, many of you, I'm sure, will note my comment that this post was written on my smart phone and think to yourselves: "She isn't really unplugged!" Since I can't restrain my snark reflex, I will point you to the note that follows regarding the strength of coverage near my house; but you are right, dear hypothetical reader. I think it is honestly impossible to get completely unplugged in 21st century America short of becoming a mountain hermit in Appalachia. I am involved in a program at my school called "Global Scholars" that seeks to incorporate technology into my life to an even greater extent (it is for this program that I blog) as part of an initiative to turn GA students into better global citizens. However, the point I really wish to make is this: to all the bloggers out there who tout the virtues of getting "unplugged", firstly, it's damn hard; and secondly, why would you want to willingly cut yourself off from such an integral part of global life? Very few young people of the late 19th century would have proposed cutting themselves off from the telegraph and mass transportation systems (the things that turned their local worlds into national arenas), yet some twenty-somethings today propose to cut themselves off from the Internet, which - while it may be our lord and master to a certain extent - had made our national arenas into one, real-time global stage. I can't imagine not being connected any more, and, to the people who think real-time connectivity is too mainstream, wake up, smell the Internet, and imagine your life without it.

Yeah, I thought so.

My Half of the Sky

For those of you reading who don't already know this, I am cynical, white, prep school girl.  It's really hard for me to have it better in life.  I am from the North East of the United States and I go to school in Greenwich, CT.  I am lucky as hell.  As much as I hate the phrase (which you will know if you spend any time reading my rants), I was pretty much born an "empowered woman".  It is rare that any speaker can bring global issues home for me.  That just happened.

Nicholas Kristof is a New York Times columnist and the author of Half the Sky.  He's awesome as hell.  He works against human trafficking and to support women across the globe.  That's a gross understatement considering I just had the opportunity to listen to him talk about his mission for an hour; but you don't have all day to read, and I don't have all day to talk about this man's work.  The basic thesis of his work is that women across the globe are the key to, if not solving, ameliorating many of the world's issues.  Specifically, educating women is the key to working toward solving the vast majority of our global issues.  It's not the end all be all of fixing the world, mind you, but it can do a lot.  Education for women reduces birth rates, reduces the risk of contracting AIDS and other STDs, helps add sources of income to impoverished families, improves global health across the board, and improves the living conditions of communities as a whole, among other things.  Admittedly, making this happen does kind of involve throwing money at the problem; but another big point Kristof had to make was that raising awareness is key.  That's why he advocates for travel.  He calls for all of us to travel to places that take us out of our comfort zones (not necessarily to places like Darfur and Cambodia, it could be to a prison in your area).  I really think he's doing great work, and I applaud him for it.

And now I get to criticise, because, as y'all know, I can't be entirely positive on everything.  Firstly, I question the tone of his exhortation to the GA student body to travel alone. To places in which we are out of our comfort zones.  As women.  Alone.  I think that's both a little dangerous and also not quite the right way to travel.  Travel gets fun when you have people with which to share it.  Secondly, and this is more about my school (which I love to criticise) than about the speech itself.  Apparently, because we are an all girls school, we are contributing to the education of women globally in an impactful way.  Go back up to the first paragraph of this post where I talk about myself.  I'll wait.  Have you reread that? Good.  Now can you please explain to me how our school, in our community is doing anything for the area immediately around us.  I respect stuff like the faculty beard growing competition (its pretty awesome and its actually happening) which is raising money by encouraging us to donate for the privilege of deciding how the faculty members participating will shave at the end of February, but I honestly don't think that we can do much to incorporate the idea that "the enfranchisement of women is the key moral quandary of the 21st century" or the idea that "women aren't part of the problem; they're part of the solution" into our message. Our headmistress talks about incorporating these messages by making our buzz word of the year "Citizenship" and by (and this is not a joke) posting Kristof quotes in our hallways.  Apparently, by virtue of being an all girls school, we support Kristof's message in our community by existing.  I am a fan of education, but I don't think that simply by existing Greenwich Academy is doing much.

So, all that said, what do you think of Kristof, his work and his message?