Getting ready for Amahl and the Night Visitors – performed by the Porthole Players and the Newport Symphony Orchesta.
I just scrolled through my own Tweets to revisit “2018 in the Life of Kari Wergeland.” As a breast cancer survivor, I have vowed to live as fully as I can, to refuse to “go gentle into that good night.” Well, it’s been a good year. I launched my first “real” poetry chapbook—I published a handful of other poems in journals and anthologies. I received acceptances on two short stories and one essay (due out in 2019). I sang in a holiday concert with the Central Coast Chorale in Lincoln County, Oregon. And I joined the Porthole Players in conjunction with the Newport Symphony Orchestra to perform as a soprano shepherdess in Amahl and the Night Visitors.I also landed some adjunct librarian hours with Sacramento City College. This will allow me to move into a swan song phase of a career I’ve loved and participated in since I first took a paraprofessional position in the Ashland Branch Library (Ashland, Oregon). I was still in high school at the time.
I must confess, Amahl and the Night Visitors takes the prize in terms of personal satisfaction. I worked with a vocal coach (Rhodd Caldwell) and a director (Bonnie Ross) who were upbeat, supportive, and instructive. I shared this experience with an enthusiastic cast and a group of fine musicians, people who were kind, talented, professional, and a whole lot of fun. We performed to a full house both nights. It felt like we burst to life on opening night. I suspect our troupe came away feeling pretty good about the whole thing. If I never get to do this again, I can now say I checked that box. This was a bucket list item for me.
I continue to think about my bucket list, because my days seem permeated with more intensity than the life I lived prior to breast cancer treatment. It’s been over two years since my last radiation zap, and I’m still finding a heightened sense of meaning in almost everything I do. I don’t want to waste another minute. I try to toss out anything that feels extraneous. I continue to feel gratitude for the opportunities that come my way. Maybe I’m more often noticing what is worth living for at all. Small things like how the ocean looks silver beneath the midday sun. Or how a muted winter landscape reveals its own kind of magnificence. As we were preparing for Amahl and the Night Visitors, our director Bonnie made a point of telling us that people sometimes ask her, “Why do you direct plays?” She said she did it to put some beauty into the world. She followed that thought with another one, “The world really needs this right now.”
Aesthetic considerations may seem inconsequential in the face of political turmoil, wildfires, floods, war, and famine, but I’m with Bonnie on thinking about how we can achieve acts of beauty in a troubled world. As a writer, I continue to ponder the purpose of my voice. What do I need to say? How should I say it? All sorts of thoughts come to mind—some are on my bucket list. Yet no matter how I end up answering these questions, I’d like Bonnie’s sentiment on beauty to be amongst any other reason I might have for writing or singing (or Tweeting or dealing with the public from the reference desk). How a person chooses to use their voice – even in the face of terrible conflict – can potentially move us all toward that fabulous choir sound, which can include major dissonances and minor chords, even as it transcends stalemates born of cheap lines.
To repeat, I had not tried out for a musical theater production since my twenties (and by the way, I was never cast in a musical back then). I did get to taste a small speaking role in The Taming of the Shrew at Lane Community College (in Eugene, Oregon). And I appeared in a few dance concerts, but I never sang on stage during my initial tango with the performing arts. My passion for all of this eventually fell by the wayside when I became serious about my library career. I began working for the Seattle Public Library in the late eighties—my first librarian job—and this took up the bulk of my time.
Voice Break 