So the creativity coaching work that I do is largely based on the work I’ve done to get through the blocks to being a comedian, solo performer, and artist.  Here’s a little sample of what I’ve been up to in my creative life.  I’ll be performing this show Eat, Pray, Laugh! in San Francisco January 20th, 2010 to February 24th each week with kirtan singer Mirabai.  You can get tickets here.

BOOKMARK THIS!

ShareThis

letting go

i am sad for a couple of days about losing the photos. and the camera too. it served me well on my last trip to india. so now i am learning lesson number 8,341 on letting go. but like i’m actually getting it. i mourned the loss, and then i got that, hey, this shit is all temporary. and it’s a great addition to my losses. meaning, now i don’t have a laptop, a cell phone, or a camera to distract me from what’s right in front of my nose. nothing exists but here and now. and what i’m seeing in the here and now with my eyes is also marginal on the reality scale.

whispering woods

co-incidence of strange co-incidences, the method acting teacher i studied with for four years, who has never been to india, is in bombay the exact same week that i’m here. i visit him at the film school where he’s teaching and sit in on a couple of classes. the studio is called whispering woods, and it’s like the canyon in LA. lush, green, undeveloped. i even get to do a deathbed scene while a kind of famous (so i’m told) actor is in the class. talked with some of the other professors there and the head of the film school and might get to teach a class on standup the next time i’m in the hood.

anandashram

i remember sam and his sister alice dropping me off at the train station, but i don’t remember anything about the ride. all i know is that it was overnight and i arrived in khanangad as the sun was coming up. one of my kirtan heroes, krishna das, told me after a concert that there’s a place in india where they chant “om sri ram jai ram jai jai ram” continuously. an ashram called anandashram. so that’s where i’m going. i arrive and somehow i’m not in the guest book, but they let me stay anyway–give me a private room and everything. and it’s a very special time to be there because a saint from tamil nadu (a state in india) is visiting for several days named thuli baba. i’ve never heard of him until now, but it’s very exciting. after each meal, i have the opportunity to have satsang and prasad with his group of devotees. the skinniest, frailest, loudest cat i’ve ever seen curls up next to thuli baba every day. they tell me that the cat was a guru in the last life and is working out some heavy karma for the world by coming back as this cat and not eating.

sun and moon

friends of my friend haridas bring me to the ocean to see the sunset and the full moon rise on the opposite side of the earth. i climb the mountain behind the ashram and leave all my worries there hanging in a tree. letting go for the 8,342nd time. you know what they say… “8,342nd time’s a charm!” the next day (or the day before… who knows!) my german friend sandra and i are walking back from a beautiful little temple in a field and we pass the cows’ maternity ward. on the ground is a five-minute old calf being licked by its mother. they milk the mamma cow and i peer into the giant milk pail of colostrum saying, “whoa.” “you like?” the guy says. the next morning they knock on my door with some cake for me made from coconut milk, sugar, and this thick cow colostrum–let me tell you–i have never eaten anything more rich. plus, when i was trying to “om” it started coming out as “moo” that day.

i joke!

i’m getting daily two-hour massages from these two young women with medicinal hot oil. after five days, it actually gets to be kind of boring! they don’t speak much english, so i’m cracking them up with my mime humor for two hour straight. “cheery” means smile in malayalam. and “tamasha” means joke. (these words strangely come in handy later when i’m being harassed at the train station.) “ichally” means ticklish and “idally” is a kind of breakfast rice dumpling. and they kind of rhyme so i’m just saying “ichally, idally, ichally, idally…” there’s nothing funnier than jokes between people who don’t speak the same language. i’m joking with gestures about how the oil they’re using smells like cooking oil and that i’m afraid all this basting means they’re going to cook me for dinner… and on and on…… stuff that’s way funnier without words.

i know by ths time in my trip that i’ll be spending more time in india in this life. it calls.

i hope your day of giving thanks was full of grace. i have returned from my time in india and i’m back in the bay, so blessed in so many ways. have a gander at the next installment of my adventures below… more to come about Tiruvanamalai in my next note..

In the meantime, I invite you to join Suzette Hibble, Erin Brandt and I, for the next Creativity, Sexuality, and Spirituality Workshop! Please register for the December 10th workshop event with me if you’re interested–soon–it is filling up–only a few spots left!

Namaste,
Alicia

BOOKMARK THIS!

ShareThis

The last ten days have been a whirlwind. As I type, roosters a cockadoodledoo-ing at 1:30 am. Wild dogs, doing the same. I don’t know if their internal clock is off, or there is some weird Indian breed of rooster who crows when the sun is down instead of up… Everything else is “backwards” here, so why not add farm animals to the list.

I arrived in Oxford, via Heathrow ten days ago and stayed with my friends Christina and Brian, of new baby fame. Their six-week old bundle of joy is named Jasper, and we shot the shit (metaphorically and literally) all week. We all laughed and played and I learned that much of the external Harry Potter scenes were filmed right in Oxford. Which is why I kept expecting to see the students pull magic wands out of their matriculation robes and say something Latin-sounding, and no, not the salsa kind of Latin.

Visited Avebury, an energy center similar to Stonehenge, but way quieter and way cooler. Went to a local sustainability conference and festival. Ate amazing beef lasagna (even though I don’t do that.) Roasted a chicken for the first time.

In London, I hung out with friends I met last year at Sivananda ashram in India. I went on a date with a cute Irish guy (whom I’d met on the plane when I was coming home from Costa Rica.) Navigated the Tube, ate apple cinnamon cake with clotted cream.

Did TWO comedy shows in London–thanks to my friend Paul, who I met in India. One was at a pub in the theatre district, one was with some really good comics in East Dullich (sp?) ALso had a drink at the famous Ivy Room (though I didn’t spot any celebs) with a theatre producer before flying out to Bombay in the morning.

Last night I flew into Bombay at 12:30 am. Negotiated several hours of immigration lines, security checks, swine flu checks, and then night time in the city that’s never sleepy–my taxi driver didn’t know where Thane was–or speak English–or have a mobile phone–so every few minutes we’d stop and ask some more rickshaw drivers where Thane, Balkum, and Runwal Garden City are. I was about to give up and look for a hotel instead of trying to get to my friend Sam’s house when a guy on a motorcycle led the way and we finally arrived, sans cell.

The most amazing thing here has been not having a cell phone for the last ten days, and having sporadic email access. It’s so freaking liberating. Of course I’m aware of how much I use my iPhone. Every four minutes, I check something. What to do without all the checking? Without Googling something when it comes up and I don’t know the “answer”. Just something to chew on… I’m hoping that when I return, and set up a new place to live, I’ll create a new structure for my life, with my new home as my alter, and my iPhone as my bitch. And not the other way around. \
Oh, BTW, I just did “Eat, Pray, Laugh!” in Bombay tonight with my fellow comic Sam Koletkar at the Jewish Community Center here in India, and we rocked it! What awesome fun! All the bits I was scared they’d be offended by were the ones they laughed the hardest at! (Pics to follow–it’s hard to upload on vacation.)

Namaste,
Alicia

P. S. Want to get my updates and info by email? Send me your address… I’ll put you on my list!

BOOKMARK THIS!

ShareThis

“A traveling conceptual, twisted, idiotically brilliant circus by Dattner and Ben Turner that travelled through the country, performing in 20 cities in double that amount of time, making audiences into temporary circus performers, such as the Amazing Moderately Flexable Man. Dattner’s invention of “The Latest Show on Earth” makes a wonderful vehicle for the lithe, ridiculously magnetic Ben Turner, adorable in a variety of roles such as the Self Taming Lion Man, and the Emotional Escape Artist. Dattner and Ben made use of the traditional circus obnoxious overacting and relentless flamboyant level of excitement, but their travelling circus was anything but conventional.”

-Tantra Bensko

BOOKMARK THIS!

ShareThis

I have seen a lot of standup comedy. I have seen thousands of comedians perform in the last dozen years. And I’ve performed somewhere between one thousand and two thousand times… What did that do for me? I laughed a lot.

But I also got pretty jaded and, well, admittedly, a little bitter. I got so into analyzing the jokes, comparing comedians, cataloging bits, and thinking about what makes the funny… I stopped really laughing after a while. When I did laugh, it was either kind of fake, or just a smile… a “that’s clever” smile. I lost the actual pleasure I went into comedy for in the first place. The physical sensation of uncontrollable paroxyms shaking my body. The sense of being totally powerless, driven to pleasure. An itchy sort of pleasure… Joke-tellers are tickling your mind.

The only way I truly find that uncontrollable laughter these days is watching reruns of America’s Funniest Home Videos on Youtube. I consider myself a relatively intellectual person with relatively refined tastes… But something about watching people fall while dancing, get kicked in the groin,houses fall over, pants falling off… It kills me! Something to do with shutting of my brain and letting my limbic system take over. I laugh so hard that I start to cry–and then I’m bawling and laughing, tears, drool, happy and sad,gleaning some perspective on this short, crazy life we fall into and are pulled from… It’s very spiritual. But I decided there has to be another way to get my rocks off like that.

What’s a comic to do? Laughter Yoga. Of course! When I returned from traveling in India last year, I resolved to become a certified Laughter Yoga leader. I trained with Lydia Gonzalez, who trained with the Indian inventor of Laughter Yoga, Dr. Madan Kataria. And now I lead Laughter Yoga every Tuesday in Dolores Park.

What the heck is Laughter Yoga? Do you hold poses and laugh? Yeah… but mostly we just bounce around and giggle. Shut off the brain. We laugh for no reason, we act like idiots, we roll down hills, we do yogic breathing, sun salutations… It’s great. Plus, did you know that laughing reduces hunger cravings? I just read it in a study!
Wanna come? It’s Tuesdays at 6:00 pm in Dolores Park, at 19th Street, on the East side, just to the left of the steps. Look for the sandwich board sign and silly people. Suggested donation $10. You can sign up in advance at eventbrite.

BOOKMARK THIS!

ShareThis

“[The cold, though...] doesn’t it split the Cheechakos from the Sourdoughs? And then in the summertime such extreme summertime about a hundred and fifty degrees hotter than just some months ago, than just some months from now”

Can’t find it on Youtube? That’s because NBC would prefer that you view their copyrighted material on their own site, where you can see the sexy Gatorade ad first. I understand that. We all gotta make a living. So, the poetry of Alaska’s frozen plains, brought to you by Palin, brought to you by Shatner, brought to you by NBC, brought to you by Gatorade, brought to you by examiner.com me, brought to you by me. Now if that’s not community and connection bringing us all together in a swirling matrix of love and commerce, I don’t know what is.

See the clip here.

BOOKMARK THIS!

ShareThis

So there was some more important story about the legislature (what could be more important than laughter, I ask you?) so the reporters didn’t come last week. No big. They may come tomorrow… Who knows.. Either way we’d love for you to come out and enjoy yourselves at laughter yoga. See below for more info… You can sign up at eventbrite.com or just show up… Bring a friend to Laughter Yoga for free!

Costa Rica, Part Deux–I mean Dos
So you wanted to hear about the rest of my Costa Rica trip… Ok: the highlights. I went out in search of dancing one night on my own. Remember that I speak only broken, Sesame Street Spanish… I’m driving down the road to Quepos and I finally get past all the hotels and into the town when it begins to rain. I ask around to several people because the streets aren’t labeled anywhere, find the club, Republik, and no one is there yet. It’s like 9pm. They say come back around 11 or 12, I feel really silly and… old.. I want to go to sleep at 11 or 12. I chat with the door guys and one of them mentions that there’s some salsa dancing at Byblos. So I walk back down the alley to the rental car, a Daihatsu 4wd, and drive back up the windy road past the hotels and hotel restaurants in the now pouring rain.

I pull into Byblos, which has a sports bar and casino and pool tables, and there are exactly four people dancing to some recorded music–two Costa Rican guys with two white girls. Everyone seems to know each other. After a walk around the place, I buy a Pilsen ale (no, not Pilsner) and pull up a seat. I manage to ignore all men who want to talk, chat with a couple of women (who perhaps suspect I’m a lesbian because I’m ignoring the men and talking to them?) I sip an eighth of my beer and get up and sit closer to the dance floor three times. Finally, one of the guys who was dancing before asks me to dance–the one who totally knows what he’s doing (yes!) I say, “I don’t know how, is that ok?” Because I’ve only danced Salsa like three times. It’s ok with him, but this is Cha Cha, so he shows me that. “Relax!” seems to be the only word he knows in English. He counts out “Uno, dos, tres!” for me and swivels my hips such that I look like I Belong on the dance floor. Unlike in swing dancing, where there are three-minute dances, here each song blends into the next. We dance Cha Cha for 20 minutes and then he asks if I want to do Salsa. We dance Salsa for another 20 minutes. I am drenched with sweat and we’re doing twirls and dips and it seems that everyone in the bar is watching us like it’s Dancing with the Stars, but that may be just my imagination. When the music ends, I’m dizzy and my hair is wet and I know his name is Mario, but nothing else. I drink some agua and see my feet are blistered from dancing. As I leave he waves goodnight, and I get to sleep by 12. Huzzah!

Ok, so that was a long story and I’m tired… Also, we went on a zipline tour of the canopy of the rainforest, which was really fun, and the last day when I was sitting by the pool, the spider monkies and iguanas came to visit me! Dozens of little spider monkies and their babies jumping in the trees next to me. And an iguana and several lizards walked almost right up to me. Wished I had my camera then. Ok, pictures to follow soon.

Ciao,
Alicia

STANDUP COMEDIAN, ET CETERA

BOOKMARK THIS!

ShareThis

Back in the air, we flew just to the left of a mess of lightning. It was exquisitely beautiful. The clouds alight with electricity, the sky looked like Albert Bierdstadt meets Einstein with a little Alex Grey and Georgia O´Keefe. Each time the lightning struck, the outlines of the clouds would glow for a moment. It reminded me of synapses firing… a brainstorm… ideas being created… the confluence of two unrelated things, suddenly making new meaning, making light and beauty.

I got another stamp on my passport as we went through immigration. Maybe I´m not so much a world traveler as a stamp collector… tee hee. We drove our rental car from the airport to San Jose (following the guy who picked us up.) Stayed in a beautiful hotel called El Presidente. I figured with a name like El Presidente, it would be a shithole, on account of irony, but it was a welcome oasis of clean sheets, air conditioning, and flat screen HBOness after a long travel day.

Our rental car is a stick shift, the streets aren´t labeled, and the traffic is a little crazier than in the states )though nothing like India.) They drive on the right side of the street here. I take the wheel for most of the trip to Manuel Antonio, which is about 170 km from San Jose. We got lost in San Jose and in the next big city, both for about half an hour… finally paid a taxi driver to take us to the freeway. Nothing is labeled. We didn´t opt for the GPS. I actually enjoyed the adventure. (This is the real reason they wrote ¨Do You Know the Way to San Jose¨)

We drive through the rainforest and the mountains, which are beautiful. One rest stop overlooks the mountains and reminds me so much of a rest stop I was at in Southern India that I´m salivating for chai. There are so many similarities with Central America… the climate and landscape, the Christianity mixed with the local religion, the hints of socialism… Dios Mio, I almost forgot to mention that the coffee is amazing. I rarely drink coffee, but it´s so good here, I´m drinking it like a caffinated fish. Oh, I bou

I wish I could speak Spanish so much… my Spanish is like a bastard child of Sesame Street, conversational French, and some cassette tapes I listened to on the way to Mexico when I was eight. I smile and nod a lot. I do a really good gracias.

We rolled around in the waves last night… the water is really warm. Watched the sunset as we walked along the beach. I played some pool with the gay bartender… not really… I played on my own… I´m just saying… Actually it turns out that they de’crimiminalized um, gayness, here about 20 years ago, and I guess Costa Rica is a big gay tourist destination.

This morning we went on a white water rafting trip down the river. There were a few class four rapids! One girl fell out of our boat in the rapids and floated down the river, bobbing up and down for a bit. She got caught under our boat and then she got rescued by the kayak, which then flipped, and she bobbed through the rapids some more. Our whole boat almost tipped over as the guide was trying to help her. Quite an adventure. We finally got her back in the boat, and her lip was a little bloody. Ok other than that. It was actually a really fun ride and the land is amazing. We saw frogs, spiders, hawks, all kinds of butterflies and trees… And now we´re back at the hotel, Playa Espadilla, which is right next to the national forest. A package tour with surprisingly great features. So I´m off to soak in the pool a bit and try to relax and enjoy all that´s here.

Namaste,
Alicia

············
http://www.aliciadattner.com
http://www.creativeheartcoaching.com
http://www.monkpunk.org

BOOKMARK THIS!

ShareThis

Show Report: Tucson less phreaky than Phoenix…
I’m sitting in my friend Abby’s dining room in Tucson, Arizona. Abby’s three month old baby, Juna, is adorable and amazing. Bouncing Juna in my arms is at once peaceful and thrilling. It’s sunny here with a light breeze that carries the tune of morning songbirds. The air is dry and intermittently dusty, the land dotted with cactus. Dogs bark at night in packs, reminding me of India, but with less death-cries. Today I visited my comedian friend Robert Mac and threw some ideas around for my show about India, “Eat, Pray, Laugh!”

I put on my show “The Punchline” five times in the Phoenix Fringe Festival these past few days. Emotional spaces opened up in my later performances that I had been longing for–there were whole shows, not just moments in which I truly enjoyed myself. I expanded into my characters more playfully, freely, deeply. It was both inspiring and relieving to know that it gets better and better as time goes on.

The audiences were so great… they really enjoyed the show and got what I was offering (although smaller crowds than I would have liked.) Here’s one among many awesome reviews from a fellow Fringer/Storyteller from LA:

“You have a lovely show. I really enjoyed it. You are a very skilled writer and performer, with great command of the story arc… the Distraction Dance was awesome.” -Antonio Sacre

Tucson is less weird than Phoenix. Phoenix is very hot and you can’t walk anywhere. The only kind of “alternative” lifestyle that seems to exist there is the punk genus. If you don’t go to the university and walk around in a bikini and shorts all day, (where is the beach, young ladies??) and you want to be different, you have to be a punk. It’s very sad. The people from the ASU theatre department are great, and really dedicated to bringing more grassroots culture up into Phoenix with the Fringe Festival. Keep on fighting the good fight. Anyway, I stayed in the Hilton by the airport for $45 a night (thank you, Priceline) and was able to get in the jacuzzi every day and watch HBO, so that made up for various shortcomings of the city.

A final highlight: yesterday I drove up to Arcosanti, 75 miles north of Phoenix. It’s an experimental community centered on the architecture and ecology ideas of Italian Paulo Soleri. Soleri, a Guggenheim fellow now about to turn 90, completely re-imagined architecture and city planning such that people, culture, and natural space are the focus, instead of, say, cars, roads, and parking. His city plans are like hives, built to maximize open space and human interaction. Some deep part of my soul called out to me, yearning for such a place to live and work. Even though 50,000 people a year visit Arcosanti, and they’re actively building a city big enough to house 7,000 people, the pace is a snail’s. They need an infusion of millions of dollars to really build it. Maybe they can get in on that stimulus package…?

BOOKMARK THIS!

ShareThis

As 2008 passes like a gall stone, I’m laid up for the first day of the new year, high on early episodes of The West Wing and the belief that the inauguration of our new president will rescue this country from free-fall. It’s been an endlessly interesting year for us all. Electing our first black president, losing 40% of the capital in the stock market, seeing Tina Fey look so much like Sarah Palin, I can’t tell who’s who.

Personally, I’ve had an interesting year as well. It began with a ten-day silent meditation course in India. You all followed my travels throughout India, Thailand, and Cambodia for three months starting last February. I gathered parts and memories of myself scattered in many lifetimes during that trip. I returned home with a powerful sense of independence, maturity, and knowing that no matter where I am in the entire world, I can take care of myself and be happy. Then I came home and saw my parents. (And forgot again. Ha!)

I also joined a year-long training course for life coaching and workshop leading in August, and began coaching people in creativity and spontaneity. After doing standup, working and playing with others to break through to what is most true for them is my favorite thing to do. And after almost two months of work on my solo show, “The Punchline,” I played to sold out houses at the Fringe Festival. It was an honor to win Best Female Solo at the Festival and be selected for the Solo Show Festival in Marin in February (the 24th.)

I’m sending out this new year’s wish to you because I want to reach out and connect with you. I’ve been very affected by the intensity and fear of the world’s events–the end of easy oil, the reluctance of auto companies to completely re-invent themselves in order to protect the environment, the blindness and greed of the mortgage industry, and the sense of scarcity the downturn in the economy has had on us. And the message I want to convey is that it’s time to open our eyes to what’s really happening in the world. And to take a stand. To speak what we believe, and to align our actions with our values and our words. But I also want to say that there is so much more to life than the what’s in the news. Our own thoughts and actions are what truly build the fabric of reality, moment by moment. And together, we have the power to focus our thoughts to send an asteroid crashing into Bernard Madoff’s living room. (But read some of my beloved Krishnamurti and you’ll realize we are all Bernard Madoff.)

So stay tuned for info about my gigs, laughter yoga classes, and workshops in the coming year. I’ll be premiering the full version of Eat Pray Laugh! at some point, and I’m also putting together a down and dirty old-school standup set for the clubs.

To 2009, may all beings be happy.

-Alicia

http://www.aliciadattner.com
http://www.creativeheartcoaching.com
http://www.monkpunk.org
http://www.examiner.com/x-453-SF-Comedy-Examiner
http://www.youtube.com/AliciaDattner

BOOKMARK THIS!

ShareThis