Reminder: play: The Tricky Part at SF Conservatory of Music @ Thu Sep 16 7:30pm - 9:30pm (Queer Things)

more details » play: The Tricky Part at SF Conservatory of Music San Francisco Zen Center presents the SF premiere of the play, The Tricky Part As part of The Expert's Mind Series Thursday, September 16, 2010 The Tricky Part Written and Performed by Martin Moran & Directed by Seth Barrish San Francisco Conservatory of Music Recital Hall, 50 Oak Street, San Francisco, CA Time: 7:30 pm - 9:30 pm Tickets: $10 (Students & Seniors), $15 (SF Zen Center Members, Educators, Non-Profit Employees), $20 (GA) "A translucent memoir of a play...shattering." -New York Times "...marvelous, courageous and above all [a] thoughtful memoir..." -Washington Post "Surprising and moving! Startling, marvelously told." -New York Newsday "An emotionally honest play about sexuality and reconciliation." -Associated Press "Gentle, thoughtful...You want fury, but what you get is actually kind of funny." -Washington City Paper San Francisco, CA - August 23, 2010 - The Tricky Part, a one-man play written and performed by Martin Moran and directed by Seth Barrish, will premiere in San Francisco at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music at Recital Hall on Thursday, September 16, 2010 for one night only. The San Francisco Zen Center proudly presents the award-winning play as part of The Expert's Mind series celebrating the 40th Anniversary of Shunryu Suzuki-Roshi's seminal book, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. Moran will perform his play followed by a discussion with the audience. A true story of sexuality, spirituality and the mystery of human experience, The Tricky Part is widely lauded as one of the most powerful productions of the last decade. Between the ages of 12 and 15, the author had a sexual relationship with an older man, a counselor he met at a Catholic boys camp. Now an adult and an established New York actor, he has transformed his story into a riveting, often funny and always surprising journey through the complexities of Catholicism, desire and human trespass. The New York premiere received a 2004 Obie Award and two Drama Desk nominations including "Outstanding Play." The book won the 2005 LAMBDA Belles Lettres Award and received Second Prize for the 2005 Barnes and Noble Discover Award. Ben Brantley of the New York Times notes of The Tricky Part, "What gives this play its disturbing immediacy is Mr. Moran's gift for summoning the confused boy he was with exact sensory detail. The emotions stirred are not simple, and Mr. Moran gives such acute and urgent life to his memories that you have no difficulty in believing that he has remained in their thrall ever since. A frills-free work of theater...The Tricky Part vibrates with the vertigo that descends when past and present coexist. ...there is surely some redemption in rendering chaos with this kind of clarity." In his own words, Moran describes The Tricky Part as "a narrative about abuse and the adventure of finding the abuser as an adult. But, it's really about forgiveness and how we deal with the past. The question to ask ourselves, is it possible that what harms us might come to restore us?" Moran, an actor who has appeared in Broadway and Off-Broadway musicals such as Spamalot, Titanic, and Cabaret, initially began working on his memoir in the late '90s. Upon the encouragement of his friend and director Seth Barrish to try the piece as a monologue, Moran developed a spellbinding portrayal of his childhood experiences for the live stage. The Tricky Part was published in 2005 by Beacon Press (Random House/Anchor Books: paperback, 2006). Prior to moving to New York City in 1982 to pursue a professional acting career, Moran attended Stanford and trained at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco. "At ACT, I was in what is now known as the Annette Bening class," Moran comments. While at ACT, in addition to his acting studies, he explored Zen meditation. He recalls, "I grew up so strictly Catholic that as I left Stanford and went to ACT to get involved in acting, I wanted to really let go. So, I started reading Buddhist writings and began meditating. I felt a deep appreciation for the quietness and sense of tapping into a larger mind." More recently over the past six years, Moran has spent time meditating at Village Zendo in Manhattan. "As a writer and artist," Moran says, "I'm trying to discover newness. Sometimes we are so choked by the past. Practicing Zen is a release into the beginner's mind. It's an invitation into the present, a fresh perspective. The Tricky Part is devoted to paradox and complexity, so for me, reason must give up to the unknowable and to the open mind." Moran's overarching theme in The Tricky Part is forgiveness. Over the course of the book/play, his forgiveness is discovered by an openness to exploring the extremely challenging feelings surrounding his relationship with an older man. He doesn't know all the answers, and through self-investigation and active exploring into new potentials, he discovers a feeling of remission; particularly after meeting the abuser much later in life at the age of 42 at a veteran's hospital, and seeing how broken down the man had become. Moran observes, "A lot of people work through this kind of story by going to court. I guess, in a sense, rather than taking legal action, I've taken dramatic action instead. I've taken what happened and tried to find the meaning in it." It is this exploratory verve that makes Moran's work a natural choice for The Expert's Mind series. Moran's nuanced refusal to draw neat conclusions, his willingness to stay curious and mobile at moments of paralyzing uncertainty, and his constant exploration of forgiveness as an unfolding, prismatic process, embodies the spirit of this series. The Expert's Mind series speaks to the proposition that if you dedicate yourself to something, you are endlessly exposed and open to doubt and nearly infinite possibilities. The acclaimed participants in the 10 interdisciplinary talks and performances address the excitement of new discoveries, self-doubt, and the open-ended investigation that comes with true expertise. They speak to being actively engaged with the mind and one's life. A Synopsis of the book, The Tricky Part Between the ages of twelve and fifteen, Martin Moran had a sexual relationship with an older man, a counselor he'd met at a Catholic boys' camp. Almost thirty years later, at the age of forty-two, he set out to find and face his abuser. The Tricky Part tells the story of this relationship and its complex effect on the man Moran became. He grew up in an exemplary Irish Catholic family - his great Aunt was a cloistered nun; his father, a newspaper reporter. They might have lived in the Denver neighborhood of Virginia Vale, but they belonged to Christ The King, the church and school up the hill. And the lessons Martin absorbed, as a good Catholic boy, were filled with the fraught mysteries of the spirit and the flesh. Into that world came Bob - a Vietnam vet carving a ranch camp out of the mountain wilderness, showing the boys under his care how to milk cows, mend barbed wire fence, and raft rivers. He drove a six-wheeled International Harvester truck; he could read the stars like a map. He also noticed a young boy who seemed a little unsure of himself, and he introduced that boy to the secret at the center of bodies. Told with startling candor and disarming humor, The Tricky Part carries us to the heart of paradox - that what we think of as damage may be the very thing that gives rise to transformation, even grace. About Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind is a book of teachings by the late Shunryu Suzuki-Roshi (1904-1971). Shunryu Suzuki was a direct spiritual descendant of the great thirteenth-century Zen Master, Dogen. This inspiring work ranks with the great Zen classics, in a voice and language completely adapted to contemporary sensibilities. Suzuki's words breathe with the joy and simplicity that make a liberated life possible. Suzuki always returns to the idea of beginner's mind, a recognition that our original nature is our true nature. With beginner's mind, we dedicate ourselves to sincere practice, without the thought of gaining anything special. The mind of the beginner is empty, free of the When Thu Sep 16 7:30pm – 9:30pm Pacific Time Calendar Queer Things Who • larrybob@gmail.com - creator

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