Lefty Parent » cooper zale

Not Enough Boys to Sing & Dance

Cooper Zale — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 19:07:46 +0000

Nancy Grace and me in the 1971 JLO production of Oklahoma

When I first got involved in theater (see “JLO”) I was focused on doing work backstage and despite a brief and reasonably successful experience in Junior High (see TBD), was still generally too shy to consider being onstage as well. But some of my latent desire and external circumstances led me on a path to put me under the lights in front of an audience by my junior year in high school.

Prior to that, my combination of timidity and low self esteem made me very reluctant to take the spotlight, though at some level I longed to be acknowledged as talented or at least capable. My work backstage in several theater productions with JLO and my high school’s drama club had given me some of that longed for acknowledgement of competence at least as a lighting and set designer and a person who could pound out some sort of stage adaption however limited or flawed (see “Lord of the Flies”) on my portable electric typewriter.

The composition of JLO, like most youth theater groups I have participated in or encountered, included way more young women than young men. This was in contrast to the fact that most plays, particularly most musicals, generally had more parts for men than women. Given this, those of us who were active in the company, of high-school age and of the male persuasion were always being pitched to take a crack at playing onstage roles in our robust slate of theatrical productions. I had given in to these requests only to the extent of doing very limited work onstage in crowd scenes with no lines of my own.

But two of my JLO comrades, sisters and very talented actors who attended my high school, had decided that they wanted to enter a high school district competition in forensics in the area of “multiple reading”, a performance of a written piece with voice but no staging. They had found a piece that they both liked, the climactic scene of the play “The Innocents”, based on Henry James classic gothic novel, “The Turn of the Screw”, but they needed someone to play the male part – Miles – the demon possessed youth who is exorcised by his governess in the play’s final scene. I think I was one of the few male type persons they know who attended our shared high school and was involved in theater. They must have figured that since I had no track record of playing a part onstage, I had no record of being bad on stage, so I was worth the risk.

They had me read thru the piece with them and decided to pitch me to participate, and given that they were two intelligent, capable, good looking young women that I admired, I maybe was to shy to say no. We rehearsed after school and with their constant encouragement I got into my part and was able to vocally portray a young boy fearfully coming to grips with my demonic possession, ending the dramatic final scene raising my voice and screaming out the name of my possessor before dying. It was an exciting piece, the kind of angsty and overwrought stuff that appealed to my teenage self. When we performed it in front of Forensic tournament audiences it was well received and I enjoyed the rush of putting on a show for the audience of this very disturbed young man loosing it completely. After coming in second place in the district competition and then again in the regional one, I was hooked.

After a brief cameo in the JLO production of “The Sound of Music” as the male half of the “Sengerbund of Herwegen” (one of the sisters I had done the multiple reading with playing the other half) in the music festival competition scene at the end of the play, I was prevailed on to try out for the second male lead part in our planned summer musical production, “Oklahoma”. Such was our dearth of high school males in our theater company that I and one other guy were the only two to try out for the part of Will Parker, for a show to be double-cast and thus needing two guys to play the role. Simple arithmetic had sealed my fate and I was committed to a path forward that would have me singing and dancing under the lights in front of a large audience of mostly strangers, two things that I was no way comfortable in doing. But… the show must go on!

Looking back, these two experiences I have shared so far were the first examples of an ongoing personal pattern of being usually overcome with shyness to try something new and personal parameter pushing, but occasionally throwing myself completely in the deep end. I was always in an internal tussle between being scared and wanting to protect myself and wanting to be some sort of a star.

So again, with much encouragement from my JLO comrades, I learned the part, including the songs and with greater difficulty the dances as well. My performance included my first on stage passionate lips-to-lips kiss made particularly freaky because I had never had an off-stage lips-to-lips kiss with anybody (see “Cooties” for more details). Scared by yet craving the spotlight, and fearing failure to the point of willing myself to somehow be good, I got through my rehearsals and did my two performances before an audience of several hundred people including my mom and my aunt.

From my theater comrades’ reviews and the audience’s applause, I felt like I had done a good job and my addiction to the stage spotlight continued to grow. I went on to play lead roles in several other musicals, coming to specialize in the bad guy type roles, including…

* The biblical “Snake” in the musical “The Diary of Adam and Eve” with a dramatic song where I lure Eve into taking a bite out of the forbidden fruit

* The egotistical yet bumbling “Wazir of Police” in the musical “Kismet”

* The maniacal marketing director “Orson” in the rock musical “Do Your Own Thing” based on Shakespeare’s “Tempest”

* The TBD older brother “Noah” in Harvey Jones and TBD’s musical version of the “Rainmaker”

* Finally, my favorite part and I think my best work, “Mr. Rich”, the mega-wealthy avatar for “The Man” – too old, filthy rich, bored, jaded, etc. – in the allegorical musical “Celebration” by Harvey Jones and TBD

So what does it mean for a shy kid like me to be able to play these loud, in your face, larger than life characters? It was a revelation of another side of my personality, a way I could learn to be even playing myself someday. It was a way to channel and release a lot of angst accumulated from suffering through my parents’ divorce and my mom’s depression and suicidal moments. It was a chance to be acknowledged by others (and myself) as a capable person and to build some badly needed self-esteem.

Reflecting on Lefty Parent So Far

Cooper Zale — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 22:00:35 +0000

Me in my home office

I’ve been doing this blog for a couple months now and I thought it appropriate to stop and reflect today on how its going so far. So here are some thoughts…

First of all, I want to acknowledge all of you have posted comments on my posts, including: Adam Fletcher, Bob Bruech, Caroline D, Cheri Isett, David Wolinsky, Emily Haraldan, Ida Hurt, Jim Strickland, John Thompson, Katie L, Kim Moreas, Leo Fahey, Nancy Shriver, Noreen Ringlein, Sally Rosloff, Blanche & Reuben Rosloff and Tom Kennedy (I think that’s everybody!) Some of you I know from my life in Los Angeles (my U-U Congregation and my partner Sally’s alternative energy and healing community), others from online communities I participate in (AERO, IDEA, EfHG, Ed Week Forums, etc.), and maybe others beyond all that. It is hard to write when you don’t have an audience, so your comments have been critical in keeping me going.

I guess there are others of you out there who may be reading my blog but not commenting, I am only semi-aware of you from my daily “blog hit” statistics. I seem to be getting about 20 or 30 a day. I would be thrilled of course if you identified yourselves by a quick comment on this or any other post.

We are all unique souls with our own thoughts, story and wisdom to share with the rest of the world. When I passed my 50th birthday, I felt compelled like never before to try and share mine. What is the point of living so long in this incarnation and experiencing so much if you have no thoughts (posing as wisdom…*g*) to share with others? Particularly when, in my case, I don’t see anyone speaking so much from the perspective I’ve acquired, seasoned by a child-friendly youth in the amazing town of Ann Arbor, later tribulations, feminism, raising kids who did not fit in the educational box, Unitarian-Universalism, the historical perspective of Riane Eisler’s “The Chalice and the Blade”, “New Age” wisdom including “Creating your own reality”, just to name some of my influences.

We where am I headed at the moment? Well I’ve been out of work since July 2008 (though with five months severance pay) which has been an interlude that has been giving me the opportunity to really see if I can focus on my writing… and I feel like I am having some success in that focus. I have been able to keep up with writing this blog and also writing vignettes for a companion book, with a current working title of “Confessions of a Lefty Parent”, which I hope I can get published as a contribution to the movement to transform how youth and adults engage each other in our culture. My fantasy is to be able to make money as an author and advocate so I can continue to focus on this full-time.

But now my severance has run out and I have been lucky enough to find a new job working on a three-month information technology project that will bring money in again towards paying the bills. Going back to this work will take a great deal of my time and challenge my ability to keep up this blog and my other writing and youth/adult engagement projects. But now that I have made this transition to writing nearly every day, I don’t really want to let go.

As my dad always believed… life is an adventure… and I am now charting new ground in my own life story, as many of you are as well I am sure.

Welcome to Lefty Parent

Cooper Zale — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 06:23:30 +0000

Me in my home office

Hey fellow travelers… whether you are involved with raising your own progeny, someone else’s, or are just playing a role as an adult in some kid’s life, I want to share that experience with you, because there is nothing more profound than helping people (young or otherwise, and even including yourself) come into their own in this world and move forward on their evolutionary path.

Having spent over half a century in this incarnation on earth, and almost half of that as a parent, you can bet that I would have some thoughts, posing perhaps as wisdom, about this very fundamental role in human society, and I wager that you do as well. You cannot go through the experience of helping kids on their journey to agency and adulthood without feeling at times inadequate, moved to tears, longing to have another chance, blessed, relieved and many other gut-checking emotions. It is hard work, and as many have noted, you are more likely to feel guilt and get blame for failure than feel pride and get kudos for success.

For me, the job got easier when I took a deep breath, went back to lessons I learned from my parents and my own youth, and chose to go with my gut. I was raised by two people, my biological mom and dad, who made a decision even before I was born in 1955 to raise me outside the conventional parenting “best practices” of the 1950s. They were no experts on parenting, but their instincts told them that they should do everything their parents did not do, and ignore much of the conventional wisdom of the time, from Dr. Spock and others. So they created an enriched environment with love and liberty in which I managed to grow and flourish. Not that there weren’t rough times. Their own relationship was problematic, and ended in their divorce in 1965 when I was 10. But they both continued their focus on trying to be the best parents they could be for me and my younger brother.

My mom used to say that “kids will tell you what they need”, a philosophy in no way permissive, but was an honoring of the personhood of a younger person, who in the end must chart their own course. My youth was a rich mixture of adventure, imagination, respect given, freedom exercised leading to responsibility learned.

Later as an adult I became a parent myself, wrestling with the conventional parenting wisdom of the 1980s, with its tough love and directed “helicopter” parenting, versus my own instincts in a different direction. In the end, my partner Sally and I agreed to throw away the rule book for parenting and and try to come to grips with the following…

1. As Einstein said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge”, and is the beginning of just about everything

2. Life, at its best, is an adventure – not always successful, not always happy, but a compelling narrative worth living and sharing with others

3. Understanding the context that surrounds the situations we find ourselves in is always critical to effectively navigating them

4. There is both creative tension and synergy between looking inside yourself for guidance and being connected to something transcendent and larger than yourself, whether civic, magical, religious, spiritual, universal and/or biochemical

5. We all ultimately have responsibility for our own actions, adult or youth, and given that, are best when we have the liberty to rise to that challenge

6. It is most effective to treat people with respect, whether adult or youth, including offering but not insisting on giving guidance and other help, unless that guidance or help is asked for

7. The education that stays with you are the things you learn on your own initiative, the other stuff tends to be forgotten

So why “lefty parent”? It reflects that creative tension between the politically liberal, left-leaning family and community I grew up in and my own left-handed tendency to think outside or not quite fit in the box of a right-handed world, even the left-leaning part of it.

Unlike some blogs I have posted on – where I never get a response from the blogger to my posts, and the opportunity to have a real forum for ideas is squandered – I commit to reading your comments on my posts, replying with my further thoughts, and fostering the dialog towards our evolution as individuals and as members of our shared society.