Alexandra Silber's Blog, page 10

Own Your Star

One of the most profound ways to fight Anti-Semitism is to live a joyful and proud Jewish existence. In times of hatred and annihilation, ✨JOY CAN BE A RADICAL ACT. ✨

So on this Shabbat, I welcome you to pause and fully experience your joy in any form it arrives in.
Dance.
Sing.
Make music.
Read poetry.
Be in nature.
Nourish your body.
Experience togetherness.
—Whatever makes you feel connected.

 The Hillel International #OwnYourStar campaign was launched to create a public and shareable...

20 Years

Today is the 20th anniversary of the death of my father, Michael Silber. I’ve been pretty overwhelmed with feelings about it. Sometimes this anniversary comes and goes, the world spins on. This year? I don’t know. Perhaps it is the milestone. Perhaps it is all that we have endured as a planet, society, and what my individual body has been through, but the event is having a profound effect.

Right now we live in an era of loss. It is also an era of agony, division, disconnection, anxiety, uncertai...

Zeyn in dinst fun — “to be in service of.”

 On 14 March, 2020, Rebecca Taichman's original production of Paula Vogel's Indecent played its second preview performance at the Menier Chocolate Factory.

Previews came after a period of detailed, emotional, and spiritually grueling work on the part of our extraordinary company and creative team, and as the day wore on, the world around us began its crash into the piercing silence we all came to know far too well.
 

That night, my heart surged with ache for the world, but in particular for our th...

"End of Summer" by Stanley Kunitz

An agitation of the air,
A perturbation of the light
Admonished me the unloved year
Would turn on its hinge that night.
 
I stood in the disenchanted field
Amid the stubble and the stones,
Amazed, while a small worm lisped to me
The song of my marrow-bones.
 
Blue poured into summer blue,
A hawk broke from his cloudless tower,
The roof of the silo blazed, and I knew
That part of my life was over.
 
Already the iron door of the north
Clangs open: birds, leaves, snow...

Things I want to remember about this week 8/9-8/14: a List

Oh London. I have returned. I am new. I am unchanged. The World is altered. The World is the same.

 Standing in on the same patch of the South Bank I stood upon on March 16, 2020 -- the day before the world closed down, and seeing that the river, the bridges, the city, the sky-- are all still here. 

I will never tire of a stroll through Borough Market and the bells of Southwark Cathedral.

Reunion with my dearest London pals the day before rehearsal. So much has changed. So much has not.

Findin...

Not to recreate. But to create anew...

I took this photo on March 16, 2020, after a desperately sad, confused, and terrified walk to the theatre to retrieve my belongings, and I wept for our show and the world. I didn’t know if I would ever see this marquee—and all it represents—ever again. The next day I boarded a ghostly-empty plane home to New York and we all know what came next…

Tomorrow I return to the Menier Chocolate Factory and to Indecent in London, reuniting with the same, small group of people I was “in the plane cr...

The [RE]humanization of our role models

I have a couple of things to say as a person sometimes in a position of leadership, role-modeling or mentorship.

I think we all could benefit from the reminder that the people we look to as teachers, mentors, guides, inspirations, wisdom-sharers, and leaders are also only human - just like you.

Admiring people to the point of assuming they are all-knowing, or have it figured out for everyone, is not actually flattering OR kind. In fact, it bypasses their inherent humanity, which leads to easy an...

Present and pain-free: an example

This is a photo of me on February 4, 2021. My wedding day! It was also the exact halfway point between my first and second bowel surgeries.

Look at that lady: radiating health and happiness! That’s the real me.

And yes, in that photo of a healthy happy woman in her prime, there is also a life-saving ostomy bag beneath the (glamorous AF) gown.

I think there is a time when that detail would’ve concerned me a great deal— but on February 4, 2021? All I felt was alive and in love.
 
I am overjoyed in ...

Things I want to remember about this week 7/10 - 7/17, 2020: A List

- a great deal of "clothing optional" swimming and sunbathing. Not sorry at all. 

- A glorious trip to San Francisco centered around the LGBTQAI+ journey and history in this historic city. 

- Eating delicious bao and dim sum in downtown San Francisco 

- A foggy drive across the Golden Gate bridge whilst listening to this ... 

- Meeting my new friend and teacher, poet Thomas Centolella for the first time IRL (a friendship born, believe it or not, of this very blog!)  

- meeting my new friend and soul-...

38

This is a special birthday. It almost feels like a RE-birthday!

38 is...

The atomic number of strontium The Messier object M38, a magnitude 7.0 open cluster in the constellation Auriga The most common eye-test for color blindness. (see [or don't see?] right) Most people will see the number 38, but people with red-green color blindness might see 88 instead.The number of slots on an American roulette wheel (0, 00, and 1 through 36; European roulette does not use the 00 slot and has only 37 slots)Th...