HEIDI REBECCA CELESTE KRAAY
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Looking Back

1/15/2021

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What a year. What a beginning to 2021...I hope you're safe, healthy and pressing on with all the sanity you can muster. All my best to you and yours right now.

With all the losses and challenges, I'm fortunate that I can look back on some highlights from 2020. Amidst everything, good things happened. Here are a few from my end.

Highlights:
  • I got to perform poetry with Thomas Paul & Friends' gorgeous live tunes at MING Studios
  • My play see in the dark got a reading through HomeGrown Theatre
  • I taught a playwriting workshop through The Cabin -- one particularly rewarding in how much the participants energized, motivated & inspired me
  • I wrote a tiny coronavirus play Float On for Georgia's 1 Minute Play Festival
  • Float On then got a digital reading through Trinity Street Players
  • Despite it getting canceled, the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts accepted my sister Kate's and my proposed project (that became Unwind: Hindsight is 2020) as part of their RADA Festival 2020, for what would have been my first overseas production of a full-length play
  • I'm ever so grateful for grants from the CCC Fund, The Cabin, the Idaho Commission on the Arts Cares Act and Alexa Rose Foundation Grant (deferred to 2021) that helped alleviate income loss to project/teaching cancellations
  • Despite not getting to co-devise the full piece in Seattle on account of the lock down, and not getting to take it to London, I wrote Unwind: Hindsight is 2020 and shared excerpts through Storyfort's Bloom series in the Idaho Botanical Garden, the CCC Fund Showcase Creation in the Time of Change and The Cabin's Writer's At Home series, and kept working with my creative team (including Kate Kraay) in moving that project forward
  • I signed a shopping agreement for my screenplay The Hungry Ones so Golden Idea Productions Limited in London could pitch it for production
  • Patrick Gabridge generously published quotes by me in his American Theatre Magazine article on Seven Devils Playwrights Foundry
  • My short play Somewhere on the Pacific got a virtual reading through Playwrights' Round Table
  • My creative team and I held a virtual table read of Unwind: Hindsight is 2020
  • Unwind: Hindsight is 2020 was selected to be part of Boise City Department of Arts and History's Archives as a way for us to look back on this pandemic in the future
  • My short lift got a digital production by Fargo-Moorhead Community Theatre
  • I had poems published through Willow Creek Journal, The Cabin's Writers in the Attic: Apple anthology and Magical Women Magazine
  • My full-length see in the dark got a reading from Women's Theatre Festival
  • Trinity Street Players rebroadcasted my one-act Hoarse on YouTube
  • I was commissioned to write a short play on the theme Envisioning a Global Green New Deal for Climate Change Theatre Action 2021
  • see in the dark  was a semifinalist for Seven Devils Playwrights Conference and The Local Theater Company
  • My play for young audiences Polar Opposites: An Impossible Tale got semifinalist standing at Campfire Theatre Festival and Purple Crayon Players
  • MFA@CIIS published my article about my process on their Medium blog
  • I got my student loan debt under the 10K line

I was about to list some of my losses, but looking back, most of these were related to travel, lost work and household income (aided by grants received), exciting projects put off and important personal events pushed back (like a wedding). I'm extremely fortunate to be healthy, that my family and partner are well and safe, to have a job and a home. I didn't lose close friends or family this year to illness (though it came close) or the violence that came to so many across this country and globe. I'm incredibly privileged, lucky and grateful.

Because most of my 2020/2021 goals were made less possible in COVID times, with hopeful optimism (and perhaps naïve delusion) I'm bringing a couple of them back for 2021 and 2022:

3 Big Goals for the Next Two Years:
  • Travel overseas/go to London
  • Go on one+ silent meditation/silent writing retreats
  • Get debt-free
As I've struggled with some mental health setbacks this past year, along with countless others, I'm setting the intention for 2021 to be  my year of courageous joy. 
Picture
How could a year when my sister and I swam here be a total loss? Photo by Kate Kraay
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Conjure up tomorrow

12/18/2020

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Picture
Image by Matias Tapia on Unsplash

Sometimes I wish Octopuses put ink in my cartridges
Sometimes I think the sun will open and we'll return to spring

And sometimes I feel my energy wad up into aluminum ball
Until I take a nap or practice a jig or play with my cat

I remember days I wasn't afraid to open the news
When I could look out the window and think progress

I can still look out the window
I can still make progress

I a giant hunk of wax rolling down the hillside
Picking up buildings, journeying to oblivion

I can surprise myself
I can jump out my feet and far down the canyon into new parachute

These days are mine
Claim them. Reclaim my voice.

A pile of young women enter the lobby with a clang
The beginning of tomorrow

I can write my future
and remember when I discovered who I'll become
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Learnings from July 2016

12/11/2020

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Picture
Image by Element5 Digital

I'm falling in love with my process again, the less I try to fill every minute.

I time travel when I read the past.
I see into my then skin, compare it with now.
I learn about where my brain was and where it is.

I've learned that the practice of writing takes time. A long time.
That having patience and cultivating love
for the act of writing is the thing that leads to authentic depth
and realization of voice that can't be forced.
I've learned there is deep value in waiting.

There is no one way to tell a story, to structure a play.

The act of writing daily helps me know how to move my hand
through a story, an idea, a play or a thought
much more than if I wait between projects.

I've learned I have something to say.
I am an adventure.
I work hard.
I can miss things, skip things and the world carries on.
I can fail in big and small ways, that's how I learn.

For me, writing is not about seeking expertise but discovery, opening, humanity.
Vulnerability is the gateway to connection.
Everyone has a creative voice to unlock.

Listening is a difficult art that requires great patience
and ability to resist interrupting, speaking, offering advice.

I've learned that I love to use giant weather-based catastrophes in my work,
often representing some big world or personal event.
I've learned that the personal is political.
That my tendency to assume factors about people and situations
is a habit that I must continue to break.
That as a white person I have extreme advantage that is unfair,
but I can use that agency to open up space for the targeted.

I've learned that we can make something beautiful together through art,
and that I love collaborations even though they are difficult.
I've learned that writing is hard and I will always do it.
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Have a Heart

12/4/2020

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Picture
Image by Alexandru Acea on Unsplash
Heart is a blubbery mess of whole skin
An aching, frustrated chord on the ukulele
And also piano, guitar, bass
Or a long minor key on cello
Heart wants connection
Shakes for bravery
Sound of a single coin rattling tin cup
Heart sees every color under sky
And over
In the vast universe beyond
We are small
Heart contained in my fist
And massive, oceans deep
Vast, interstellar dreams run million miles
Arrows point in every direction
Hot chocolate kisses spill out wrappers
Heart brushes eyelashes
Sticky hands stuck faces
Watching out windows, radiate sunshine
Reflect back at me the rain off clouds the sugar glass panes
Heart walks grounds where Dad lies
Waiting
His wife still here, beating
A-Thump-A-Thump-A-Thump
Heart's ears capturing news
Remember feasting lunchtime sandwiches running acres wide
Backside damp from marshland lawns
Blue string knotted tight round finger
Falling forward into forever yeses
A ball of wax slipping through fingers
Blots away cheek tears
Heart is a feverish night
A journey into great beyond
Side-by-side by fire
Picture
Image by Camilo Jimenez
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Process Notes from July 2016

11/27/2020

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I can work in a way that I guide the process and the process guides me.
My work helps me stay grounded.
Writing teaches me how to live, how to listen, how to be.
I take time with it. There is no rush.
My work goes against values I dispute --
commercialism, capitalism, unchecked patriotism.
It challenges me.
I can continue all my life and there will always be more to learn.
There isn't a wrong but I will never get it exactly right.
Not about right and wrong.
Writing teaches me what I think.
Shows me what I know.
Brings out memories that don't surface otherwise.
My work gets braver and more specific.
Is beginning to reach more globally, into dangerous territory.
Is starting to connect with audiences and collaborators in authentic ways.
Becoming more about--
That knocked me off guard. That unsettled me. That spoke to me directly.
My work doesn't define me but is a primal factor in who I am.
Me as writer, as playwright, as artist, ingrained into my DNA.
I no longer have to prove --
hey look at me
I write I'm a writer not just prop master or stage hand or sick person,
not that there's anything wrong with that.
But this ink is the air I breathe.
Getting more confident with my experiments, more courageous and bold.
Coming into my true voice that resonates with the young writer me,
what I tried to be/make/sound like.
I still feel very young. Like I know nothing.
But I know something.
And I learn more every day.
Picture
Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash
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burn/body

11/6/2020

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knees buzz
hummingbirds inside
freshly hatched
stir up from eggs
million wing-beats per minute
permeate

TV snow washes away
to bring clarity
underneath
heat in legs/heels/ankles
belly, too
echoes way down deep

in gut a glowing
magma spills out
from cracks below ocean
at the edge of earth's crust
itching out
this volcanic self this blaze

thundering dinosaur
late night retro-Japanese horror mouth
large and looming
ghost haunting phantom
contains breath
from my belly to beyond
Picture
Photo by James Wainscoat on Unsplash
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pond

10/9/2020

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I blubbery salamander
working way through creek
transform as I go.
Extend hands reaching out,
form body against algae.
Thank you, bits of green
under toes, soft and wet
your coat of mud
between webbed fingers.

I duckweed up above
shine like granny smith.
Cover the density of me
against water surface
like blanket.
A spidery silken scarf
drapes overhead
amphibious mess.
Beneath my rubber leaves
--that look slimy but are not--
watch frog/tad beauties
and salamander friends
--that are slimy but look slick
like rainbows.
Wrap ourselves inside ourselves.
Forever protection.

Watch friend salamander
coax down grey rock.
I myself have faster swim.
Spend time in stillness
zip along racing through creeks.
Bend legs and arms
quick switchblades.
Swish tail, turn bulbous head
burrowing in lacing mass.
One day will emerge.
Spend days on stone on pad.
Rapid plops in/out water,
flash tongue shooting,
six-legged bite
will make up for

now 


slow


underneath.
Picture
Photo by Niharika Bandaru on Facebook
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and float above the clouds

9/11/2020

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heavy gust of rain
tongue tied nerves

blustery clouds in spring
fallout days in summer

a pair of dry lips
lost puppy eyes

suck leeches from my knees
watch glacier bits fall from sugar white pastures

those ways are thawing
melting
watch the drip
let out ragged bleats

this morning I rise with full eyes in bloom
a thick loaf of sourdough

a scrunched up forehead
long legs
wide hips
bloated right now

bear fruit out my eyes
giant worms on fish hooks

all we ever seem to do is wake
our names in our chests
Picture
Photo by jessezhou on Unsplash
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un/vers/ty

7/31/2020

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that room of stiff bodied people
and wild green outside
flick of lips
when she opened her mouth
and a squeak came out

the charged nature of everything here/now
back bent at screen
blue flowers grew up on either side with little saplings
bombastic voices surrounding park bench
her throat clearing

broad skies and clouds
skinny wisps of white
the building bricks like Marlboro Reds
smoked packs a day those years
something she was good at
Picture
Photo by Taylor Cowling on Unsplash
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Reminders

7/24/2020

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Picture

Art shows me the world I want to see, reveals how I want to live.
The process of making art teaches me to live better.
Putting creations into the world helps me express
what's going on inside me, in my life, what I observe in this world, my beliefs
when I find it impossible to do so face to face.
By sharing the work I make, I can make myself vulnerable
in a way that opens me up to connect with others through empathy,
and them to each other.
When I see art that inspires me, I am reminded of our condition,
our world, the irrevocable sense of beauty and truth in each moment.
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    Heidi Kraay

    Process notes on a work in progress. This page serves to invite you into the way I work, with intermittent posts to show you the hows and whys on the whats I make, as well as prompts and ideas I bring to certain workshops. There will also be some raw, rough content found in notebooks written years ago, previously posted on: 

    ​50 Shades of Kraay

    Thanks for reading!​

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