At the corner of Liberty and Elizabeth: The Backstory

Part One: Rewind (in Four Parts).
[SIDEBAR: Grab a beverage. Or three. This entry is a novella. You’ve been warned.]


There are moments when life punches you in the gut with a realization, like a love-punch from a friend you haven’t seen since college. Your reason for living on this planet materializes and bites you, takes hold, the grip of its teeth changing all subsequent choices irrevocably.


And then (more commonly) there are realizations that take years to show their significance. While on a boat in Borneo in March of 2010, I didn’t get what was taking root until perhaps November of 2013…when a less subtle cartoon light bulb lit up directly above my head.


I returned from teaching in Java feeling like I had come home to be a real artist. I went back to the theater (thank you Adam Leskis) and performed in the best show I’ve ever been a part of. Best script, best cast, best black box stage, most affected audiences: it had everything. Including a certain piano player I fell in love with while also playing the saxophone (it was my character’s decision) with whom I shared a very cozy bench for two hours each night.


One evening early in the run of said play, our little show was slated to be reviewed by the Joseph Jefferson Awards Committee (the “Jeff” Awards are the Tony Awards of Chicago theater). However, this committee of experts walked out before intermission. Was it the show’s controversial topic (abortion), the racially diverse cast (I was one of two white girls and flattered to be among a group of uber-talented performers), or was the whole thing just too fringe for their tiny pea brains to wrap themselves around? I’ll never know. But it bothered me. The Holy Judges of what was considered “Art” in Chicago couldn’t even stick around for the end of a show that I could not have been more proud to call myself a part. Shame on them.


It took fifteen previous auditions with other theater companies putting on lesser shows to land this role as the saxophone-playing barmaid in the summer of 2011. By 2012 I was a cast member of Fucking A by Suzan-Lori Parks with Urban Theater Company and loving every minute. The collaborative air, Ms. Parks’ writing, the illicit note passing between the piano player and myself while we were supposed to be frozen in a dark corner of the stage equaled bliss. To say I was insulted when the Theatre Gods deemed our show unsuitable for keeping their flat, white rear ends in their seats is underplaying it. I was disgusted, annoyed, pissed off, but not all that surprised.


You see, dear reader, I’ve never been fully comfortable with the baggage that comes with being an actor, e.g.: type casting. It grosses me out. Subsequently, I’ve always done edgy theater with a socially relevant bent (I was in The Vagina Monologues twice and wrote a show called Choice about my days working at Planned Parenthood during the Bush administration, or as I like to call them: The Dark Ages). The marriage between art and activism is beautifully symbiotic in my mind and I wanted to keep reaching audiences that way. To make a living in theater, however, meant understanding and accepting that hot actors in mainstream shows sell more tickets. The juxtaposition between the established edges of commercial theater and my predilection for pushing the envelope clashed in a way that echoed in my brain and left me with a migraine. I suddenly no longer cared about the pithy predetermined standards of the Theatre Committee Elite. I had turned a corner.


I now know that I can credit an orangutan momma and her adorable infant for the road I currently find myself walking on.


Part Two: For the Love of Kipper.
[SIDEBAR: names have been changed in this section to protect the privacy of institutions and non-human primates.]


The stacks of plays in my office library are now rivaled by shelves filled with bindings that read: In the Shadow of Man, Bonobo Handshake, Walking With the Great Apes, Gorillas in the Mist, Next of Kin, Reflections of Eden, etc. I started reading ape related literature because I wanted to be happy again. I had left the theater and felt listless. My last blog entry four years ago cited the weekend in Borneo as one of the best of my life. I needed to remember why.


“Apes: go where the apes are” a non-schizophrenic voice kept murmuring in my ear. This search for the next fork in the road led me to volunteer at the local zoo and enroll in an anthropology course on primate behavior at a nearby college. Although being a guest relations volunteer wearing a green polo shirt and khakis was pretty sexy (if you wanted to look like you did in fifth grade marching band), I started to resent my time away from the ape house during my seven-hour shift passing out maps to the bathroom. The only choice I had was to boldly apply for a behavioral research intern position in the ape house having just completed my first ever anthropology course (while teaching full time) and not failing it. I was hired, probably on a dare. For the entirety of 2013, I got to know the non-human primates at the zoo while recording their every move two days a week on a hand held palm pilot, for free, all the while continuing to teach English the other three days of the week. It was humbling. And awesome.


Keep in mind; I transitioned rather swiftly from the Meisner technique into data entry and scientists in lab coats who studied the cognitive functioning of gorillas playing computer games. I was a former ARTIST (insert hand flourish and faulty British accent) in a world of humans who worked with animals because they perhaps lacked certain people skills. No more shoulder massages during rehearsal breaks, or gay men telling me I was simply gorgeous, or acting coaches yelling at me in scene study class to just slap/kiss him (my co-actor) if I felt called to during a particularly charged moment with this very good looking co-actor (god I miss that). Nope. Those days were gone.


This was the world of PhDs, research for publication, and nerds. The really really smart kind. Sure, I have an advanced degree (thank you Grandma Berne) but it is in the Humanities. An area of study I still cannot define. In this new pool, I not only did not know how to swim, there was no life guard waiting at the top of the ladder to hand me a towel when I emerged soaking wet and snotty with my suit wedged up my butt and ears full of chlorine. Spoiler alert: I am not a scientist.


But I do love apes. Oh, the love. It is deep and real. Apes are hilarious, beguiling, playful, inquisitive, empathic, surprising, mischievous, gloriously unique individuals with complex personalities. I fell for them hard. For one in particular: Kipper was a wild caught chimpanzee from Africa who used to get dressed up for patrons at the zoo and perform tea party skits with real teacups, pinky finger extended. He was a favorite with the public until he grew to be of a certain age, at which point he was transferred off-exhibit into a private, retirement enclosure with a few other older female chimps.


Since Kipper was used for entertainment before it was politically incorrect (and correctly understood as inappropriately cruel towards animals), he had a particularly unique personality. He required you to greet him when you walked in to work. If you did not say hello, he displayed at you and raised hell as punishment. Although a pane of thick glass separated all apes from humans, Kipper would sit right up against the clear divide and play mirror with his fingertips and yours, tracing patterns together for what seemed like hours. [ASIDE: “Playing” with the apes was frowned upon while working as an intern. Rightfully so, as it encouraged behavior that was unnatural for the apes since they should be unconcerned with us humans while we impartially observed them. However, Kipper was essentially raised by humans, and human contact was what he craved. It just wasn’t in my heart to ignore him].


Sometimes when feeling anxious, Kipper would present his rump for you (pressed against the glass) to pat as assurance that all was right with the world. He always gazed directly into your eyes/soul with understanding, and he understood everything. He loved to play chase and hide-and-seek. He demanded to see your shoes and approved of them, or not, depending on if you’d chosen wisely. Elderly as he was, he was still male. Thus, his anatomy still responded to those he found exciting in a manner according to his body’s instructions. This was unnerving, but he was an ape, and apes walk around naked. He was also wise, handsome, quirky, and fully present. Each day I knew I would see him, my heart swelled. The days he was moody or hiding out of view were just not as fun.


I’d made friends with other apes and even occasionally visited my gibbon boyfriend in the primate house during my lunches, but for me, Kipper was King. The day he passed away peacefully from heart failure in his mid-50s, I had to leave work early because I could not see a foot in front of me due to my constant eye leakage. At home I openly wept, in waves, for the entire evening. Thankfully my actual human boyfriend Jeffrey (the piano player from Fucking A) was there because I’d called him and he knew how much I loved this ape and how shattered I would be. He lay kindly and patiently with me on my bed as my heart broke and I demolished a box of Kleenex.


Kipper taught me that apes have so much to teach us arrogant humans, if only we can stay present enough to learn. My whole life I’ve had a hard time being “in the moment” (says the retired actor). But when I’m with apes, I am nowhere else. And wouldn’t you know: that place is unicorns and rainbows.


Part Three: The Light Bulb.
[SIDEBAR: Names and locations have been changed because it’s the polite thing to do and I could get sued.]


Kipper passed away nine months into my internship and try as I might to chin up and move on, being there without him sucked a little. That said, I was determined to stay at least a year. Working for free was trying, but I was learning so much and had finally decided that the lack of shoulder massages and gay men were not personal.


In November of 2013, a research scientist employed by the zoo came back from Africa. While in Chicago, he graciously gave the interns a power point presentation about his work with apes in the wild. It blew my mind. In my opinion, he clearly had the best job ever and I hung on to every word with avid focus. He then stopped on one particular shot of his research assistants who were all local men smiling in t-shirts and cargo pants amidst the lushest forest I’ve seen since Indonesia. These men were interested in learning English. Hence, they were being sent in pairs to the States for 4-6 months to do so. It was then that I stopped breathing.


Wait. What? Sent to America TO LEARN ENGLIGH!? Cue cartoon light bulb.


English is the international language of science and conservation. It is a necessary tool for all those working to save great apes in their native habitats to advocate on behalf of the preservation of these critically endangered creatures. I am not a scientist, but I am a teacher. Of English. And I am passionate about apes and their survival. I also love to travel. Holy mother of all things ohmygod my hands were sweating.


After that day came to an end, I walked into my boss’s office and told him I had a crazy idea and could he indulge me for a minute or forty? This is why I was here, I exclaimed (insert hand flourish and faulty British accent). This is why the second oldest intern who was really a teacher/former actor was moonlighting next to these intelligent, actually scientifically minded youngsters two days a week without pay. I was here because I was supposed to be at that meeting and hear that presentation and receive that punch in the gut/light bulb flash telling me to get my ass to Africa and teach that English. Because it was needed. And I could fill that need. He nodded. I was dismissed. Plans were underway.


Knowing that my tenure as an intern had come to its conclusion and that apes were also cared for in sanctuaries as well as zoos in the United States, I got another internship at a sanctuary in the southern part of the country where I spent my winter break. This internship caring for chimpanzees and orangutans would not have been possible without my time at the zoo and the gracious people who sent recommendations elsewhere on my behalf. It was also quite evident that I was more suited for sanctuary life. I couldn’t write a scientific research paper (I was aptly told I was more of a “memoirist”) and my heart expresses itself loudly through my face whether I like it or not. That month surrounded by palm trees and pant-hoots (a type of vocalization made by chimpanzees) nourished and propelled me. I was working on a grant to go to Africa to teach English and had found the reason why I had walked this zigzag path all my life. This was a time of major transition and multiple panic attacks.


Part Four: Here I Go Again on my Own, or how Whitesnake was right on.
[SIDEBAR: see previous sidebars.]


“The best laid plans of mice and men go often askew”. This is a rough translation of a line from the poem “To a Mouse” (1785) by Robert Burns, which was then adapted by John Steinbeck for the title of his seminal novel Of Mice and Men, which is shorter than this blog post. This is also a metaphorical teaching moment/snobby literary reference to explain why it took over a year to find the right sanctuary in Africa where I could do my work. Oh, the patience I never had and apparently need as an adult. I hate adulting.


I learned that flexibility and ignorance are not compatible in my search for a place that has hot water, electricity, occasional Wi-Fi, apes, and potential students of English. I knew almost nothing about this new frontier I was pursuing and was thwarted twice before the career fit came. It came by the grace of people who believed in me who listened when I gushed about ape conservation and teaching English and how I was put on this earth to combine the two. Bless those people and the therapy (thank you Lia) it has taken me to join them in their belief.


Exactly one year after my internship at the zoo ended and days before I was to leave for my second Christmas with the apes in Florida (I mean, down south…shit), I went to a party for the ape house to celebrate the exceptional work that they do. I also went to be with my ape loving people and catch up on ape gossip. Having switched gears, I was straddling a new divide with one foot in the known (teaching English in Chicago) and one foot in the very dark unknown (teaching English in the jungle). I was missing the artistic expression inherent in theater and watching my gifted boyfriend write music for shows day after day with a twinge of envy that I wasn’t proud of. On other days I was crying on my therapist’s couch and agonizing over why I’d listened to that schizophrenic voice that’d told me to follow the apes. Jump and the bridge will appear, eh? Jump emphatically if you’re also terrified of heights. Which I am. Well played Berne.


That night while drinking beers with my ape people, I was introduced to a saint dressed as a woman who did her PhD research at a sanctuary in Zambia that was actively looking for an ESL teacher for their employees. Cue the strobe light (bulb). That night she gave me the name of the airport I will be flying into a week from today, and the email address of the Chairman of the Board of said sanctuary who I would Skype with only weeks later. That night I went home and tried to put my heart back into my chest while it danced around with unicorns farting rainbows out the tips of my jazz hands. This goes to show: thou shalt network, network, wait tables so you know how to drink beer, and network.


It was decided that I would go to Chimfunshi Wildlife Orphanage in Zambia to pilot an ESL program on grounds for the local community as soon as possible. I did my research and applied for four grants. So far, I’ve received two. Still waiting on the other half. I am grateful as can be to the many people who made it possible to book those tickets and buy those classroom materials that are making my luggage weigh as much as I do. Indeed it does take a village. I could not have done this alone.

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Which brings me to the present. When I taught in Indonesia five years ago, I did so with ten other experienced teachers also going to the tropical archipelago and the support of the US Dept. of State providing a net beneath my feet. Now, I’m older and wiser, it’s true. I’m also scared as shit because the government is not supporting me and I’m (to my knowledge) the only person who has ever been crazy enough to carve herself into this tiny niche. But as the brilliant Emily Dickinson once wrote, “If your nerve deny you- go above your nerve…” (Yes, I read Wild and saw the movie and have a crush on Cheryl Strayed’s work like I did on Leo DiCaprio in college what of it?).


I guess this is the upshot of having a family that resembles a stained glass window minus the soldering wire. I’m blessed to have friends and mentors that inspire and support me when faced with yet another realization that the stork who dropped me had a sick sense of humor. I’m kinda tough, even if I still look nice enough on the outside for suburban tourists to constantly stop me for directions on the street. Also, that listless feeling that only subsides when I’m in the presence of apes or teaching a fairly smooth lesson has prompted me to accept that I wouldn’t have been satisfied with anything else.


Jane Goodall, Beryl Markham (thank you Aunt Nan), and yes, Cheryl Strayed are pioneers, lionesses, and badass ladies just to name a few. They live lives people make movies about. When I stopped trying to get cast (as an extra) in movies about other people, and stepped into the thing I was born to do, the doors that periodically slammed in my face as an actress opened with ease, whispering, “It’s about time old lass. Welcome.”