The Summer Doldrums

I have been racking my brain, trying to think of something profound and meaningful to write on. Much of what I have been contemplating I have covered before. For instance, yet another person--a man--commented that it was unfortunate that my initials make it so that I'm "Mr. Toomey." This, after looking through my portfolio, which presumably I had control over whether or not to be "MR Toomey" or "Margaret R Toomey" or whatever, and yet seemed to think that I was blind to this choice. So very infuriating, on so very many levels given my relationship to this gentleman. (I speak more on this topic in my first post.)

Also, I have been feeling the anxiety over what happens next after I graduate in May. Though the big day is still 10 months away, I can't help but feel distraught at the crossroads I am facing. Do I follow my heart and make a move to a community that I want to live in for a while, even if there isn't the perfect job lined up there? Or do I make a wise career move and ingratiate myself to someone who will take me on as an apprentice and continue to live a gypsy's life? The second option is specifically wrapped up in a pipe dream I have to shadow the wonderful Anita Stewart at Portland Stage. There is a grant I could apply for to fund my work with her, but I can't even bring myself to ask if this is something she would be interested in, let alone applying because I can't stand having yet another expiration date on a part of my life.

This choice between career and, well, not-career was easy once-upon-a-time when "not-career" was synonymous with "family." Without getting into the details of the last 10 months of my life (though most of you probably know about it anyway), it was much easier to decide that career came second when I thought I was making a decision against it for the ideal of family. Now that I am unencumbered by that in my immediate future, I feel stupid for not taking the risk of moving around as much as I need to to make the connections I need in order to fulfill my dreams in theatre. In some ways, having a partner to make decisions about where life will take you is the most difficult thing you could ever face, but on the other hand it would make things easier... I could just blame him for ruining my dreams. Ha ha.

What all of this--my moniker, my future, etc--boils down to is that I have hit one of the valleys in the emotional roller coaster that is a career in theatre. I need a project to be passionate about, that excites me, that makes me see why I would bleed myself dry, make ridiculous geographic decisions, and shun personal happiness for this crazy art form. These kinds of moods come around for me like clock-work, especially in the summer when the seasons have ended and everyone else is, rightfully so, taking a break before getting pumped up about the upcoming season. In a few weeks people will begin to trickle back onto the UNCG campus, Oklahoma will start getting built, and, perhaps, I will be sucked back into the joy (rather than the anxiety) of putting together another show. Perhaps, too, I will send Anita an e mail and just see if there really is anything worth worrying about in potentially moving back to Maine next year.

What's in a name? That which we call a rose...

For many years now I have signed my work "MR Toomey" rather than using my first name. The reasoning behind it has changed in nuance over the years -- it started because I was tickled by the fact that my initials titled me MR. T -- but it remained constant in the fact that I rather enjoyed an air of mystery about who I was, primarily my gender. As a young girl I read the Anne of Green Gable books by L.M. Montgomery and was fascinated that, until I went looking, I had assumed that the author of this wonderful series was male. I thought, "How clever, to disguise your gender by only using your initials." There are a number of ways that I can parse this young thought of mine in terms of gender theory, but for now I use it merely a point of reference as to when I somehow decided that being a female author, artist, etc. somehow demanded a different approach than if I were male.

Last week I read a quote by Rachel Rosenthal in Sue-Ellen Case's Feminism and Theatre* in which she discussed why this this might be the case. Rosenthal, speaking about her piece entitled The Arousing (Shock, Thunder) said, the piece "dealt with the fact that I had been male-identified for so long... the reason for that is because for so long, the idea of artist was that an artist was male; and I was an artist, therefore I must be male." (60) I wrote in the margins of my book, "Is this why I want to be MR Toomey?"

The short answer is "yes."

The long, more nuanced answer that I have been mulling over in my mind is "maybe?".

I do believe that the desire to hide my gender falls into this realm of being cognizant--though very unaware of the political ramifications--that by being gender neutral with just my initials, I would get more recognition of the work that exists out there without me beside it because I would, by default, be assumed male. It is a bonus that my initials make for a more direct declaration of my gender being male by abbreviating "mister." But it is this last point that makes it a bit of a maybe. For many years now, since writing "MR Toomey" (deliberately not using punctuation) on personal items like CDs, signing my photography and creating a corresponding website as "MR Toomey," and turning in drafting to theatres I've worked at as "MR Toomey" I have, without fail, been asked by someone seeing these signatures, "Who's Mr. Toomey?" Ha ha, I laugh, but it's getting old. In part because everyone believes they are being clever and somehow even I missed this blatant title-shift in my initials. But also because it is not written as Mr. Toomey, so why is that when you see an M and an R together that we are immediately conjuring up that mode of address? Or, for that matter, why I cannot embrace the quirks of my initials and perhaps I've done it on purpose (I've been told a number of times by male counterparts that perhaps I should at least consider using punctuation).

This debate over my professional name and thus identity is ongoing. I recently changed my website, which is still mrtoomey.com, to read on the title page "Margaret R. Toomey" for better search results on the internet. However, I still sign all of my photographs and art with my "MR Toomey" signature (in part because, shorter than my full signature, it looks neater and takes up less room but also because I have a legacy of being MR Toomey, Photographer). In an upcoming conference, my display boards use my full name because I didn't want to face snide remarks while presenting my work professionally for the first time (especially since those remarks are generally made when I am revealed to be a girl).

That which I continue to ponder is whether my initial impulse to male-identify, as Rosenthal says, because I saw artists as only male remains and problematizes my choice of nom de guerre, or is the nature of embracing an initial-based name that turns gender on its head once more overcome those problems and cast me as Artist (sans specific gender) in a new light.

Discuss.










*Case, Sue-Ellen. Feminism and Theatre. Reissued ed. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2008. Print. On Amazon >>