TAD Blog - The Actual Dance - a one-man play and story that explores what love really means

Welcome to October Breast Cancer Awareness Month -- Day 31

10/31/2015

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. The Actual Dance is about many different things. It is about breast cancer. It is also about love. It is also about relationships.   It is also about spirituality and what life really is.   It is about a lot of things.

In October in recognition of Breast Cancer Awareness I will post a daily blog with a reflection about breast cancer. The reflections will stem from something in the play. (All quoted lines are text from the play.)

Day 31: Support The Actual Dance: The journey this October of writing something every day has helped me become more Aware of breast cancer and its impact on women and the world. Sometimes, I have learned, good things come out of bad. If I had the power I would unwind the time to 1999 and change the story so that Susan would never have breast cancer.   What has happened though has changed our lives in ways we could not have imagined.   It is through this journey that I have found my true calling in life. I could never have imagined writing a play and having that play impact and change other people’s lives.   My mission now is for everyone who needs to see this show is able to see it. I have now performed over 80 times before over 2,000 people. My schedule can be found here.   You can help bring The Actual Dance to your community. It is perfect for community theatres, community centers, caregiver programs, churches and synagogues.   Click here for how to book The Actual Dance for your community.

Stat of the Day: There have been more than 81 performances of The Actual Dance with about 2650 audience members.

Task of the Day:   Become a Producer!   Donate $100 or more and you can become an official Producer of The Actual Dance with full recognition on the web site and in our program. Donations made through our fiscal sponsor Artistic New Directions are fully tax-deductible.   Click here to donate!

Resource of the Day:   The Actual Dance Preview Video.

The Actual Dance TRAILER from Sam Simon on Vimeo.

Welcome to October Breast Cancer Awareness Month -- Day 30

10/30/2015

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. The Actual Dance is about many different things. It is about breast cancer. It is also about love. It is also about relationships. It is also about spirituality and what life really is. It is about a lot of things.

In October in recognition of Breast Cancer Awareness I will post a daily blog with a reflection about breast cancer. The reflections will stem from something in the play. (All quoted lines are text from the play.)

Day 30: Living With Breast Cancer: Susan’s diagnosis, surgery and chemotherapy occurred between April 2000 and May 2001. During that time her prognosis varied with differing and often inconsistent test results. Following the active treatment process, she was checked every three months for the first year, then every six months for five years and then annually for about another five years. About 5 years ago her oncologist released her as a patient. Susan has dedicated herself to her long term survival by living a healthy, fit lifestyle. She does a “spinning” class twice a week, works-out on weights another day, works with a trainer on yet another day and works-out on her own the two other days. Thursday is her day off. There are many markers of the wonder of Susan’s survival. The one I like the most – you ready – is the fact that Susan’s silicone breast implants had to be replaced. Why do I find that so delightful? No, not because the new ones feel better. (Susan reminds me often and still that “they” don’t feel at all to her.) I remember wondering during those early years when we bought something new, even a new car, if Susan would survive long enough to enjoy those new things. Now Susan has not only outlasted all those new things including the then new car, she has outlasted the new boobs they gave her that year!

Stat of the Day: Statistics used in these daily blogs have come from a variety of sources. Here are a couple of the better places for data. American Cancer Society National Cancer Institute SEER Center for Disease Control World Wide Breast Cancer Statistics

Task of the Day: Become Aware! As Breast Cancer Awareness Month comes to an end take a moment to be Aware: Aware of your own relationship with breast cancer. Aware of the role of breast cancer in your community and in the world. Aware of what you can do for someone with breast cancer. Aware of the organizations that make a difference and support them. Aware – do a self-exam now if you have not yet done one recently.

Resource of the Day: Here are some places to find what other people have said about Breast Cancer Brainy Quotes Breast Cancer Quotes 11 Inspirational Breast Cancer Quotes Inspirational Quotes from Belief Net

Welcome to October Breast Cancer Awareness Month -- Day 29

10/29/2015

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. The Actual Dance is about many different things. It is about breast cancer. It is also about love. It is also about relationships.   It is also about spirituality and what life really is.   It is about a lot of things.
In October in recognition of Breast Cancer Awareness I will post a daily blog with a reflection about breast cancer. The reflections will stem from something in the play. (All quoted lines are text from the play.)

Day 29   The Actual Dance. If you have seen the show or followed these blogs you know now that The Actual Dance is a metaphor for the ritual of being with someone you love at they take their last breath. It is what love really means.   In the play I describe the dance floor which is surrounded by a darken ballroom with a “good sized orchestra of 40 or 50 or more musicians … who play whatever song the dancers themselves want to hear and which only the dancers recognize.” In what can only be called an ecstatic moment I believe the dance is witnessed by the spiritual presence of “everyone you have ever met, ever known, ever loved in your life, even generations from before us.” And at the end, I add the idea, “crunched are around the darkened walls of the ballroom are also generations yet to come.”   While the play is based on my journey as my wife’s prognosis from stage 3 becomes grimmer, the ritual and the experience I have come to understand applies whenever we are forced to engage the loss of a loved one. Have you had to dance? What was your experience?

Stat of the Day: In a study released in 2014 of cancer patients it was found significant numbers experience clinical mental health issues, such as depression, and the highest percentage was in breast cancer patients – 42%

Task of the Day: Say it out loud.   It took me six years to acknowledge my first experience with someone as they took their last breath. Talk about your fear of loss of someone and if you have had an experience say it out loud just once. It makes a difference.

Resource of the Day:   People have studied “Death Bed Visitations” which are variations on what I describe as The Actual Dance experience in the show. Check out this article. Or this web site.

Welcome to October Breast Cancer Awareness Month -- Day 28

10/28/2015

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. The Actual Dance is about many different things. It is about breast cancer. It is also about love. It is also about relationships.   It is also about spirituality and what life really is.   It is about a lot of things.

In October in recognition of Breast Cancer Awareness I will post a daily blog with a reflection about breast cancer. The reflections will stem from something in the play. (All quoted lines are text from the play.)

Day 28 What Love Really Means. I finally understood with just a few words from the psychiatrist I hadn’t seen in maybe 20 years that The Actual Dance was going to be the ultimate consummation of our – Susan and My -- love. “His words have a dramatic effect on me.”   Yes, the prospect of losing the love of your life is terrifying. “I … feared it as tragic and devastating.”   Instead, with just two words “it’s beautiful” my heart and soul waken to what love really means.   The privilege and honor of holding in my arms the person whose essence and soul I share as she leaves this world and she does so sensing and knowing that she is loved. Earlier in the show I talk about how Susan and I met (noticing each other first in 1962) and in 1965 deciding to get married. “I wonder if two 20 year olds really understood what love meant,” is my line. On reflection of course the answer is no, they could not. It has taken me nearly 50 years to understand that what love really means. It means knowing the “beauty and dignity” inherent in being with the person you love most in the world as they take their last breath. When circumstances do not allow us to be physically present at that time, when someone or something else takes that life away or we are far away, The Actual Dance still takes place, just in different ways and different forms. I do believe that the love inside of you not only goes with you, it also goes with the one we love.

Stat of the Day: Men get breast cancer too.   About 2,350 new cases of invasive breast cancer are expected to be diagnosed in men in 2015. A man’s lifetime risk of breast cancer is about 1 in 1,000.

Task of the Day: Say “I love you” to the person(s) you love most in the world at least three times today and every day: In the morning, in the evening and at bed time.

Resource of the Day: I found a song about “What Love Really Means” Check it out I enjoyed it and I think you will too.

Welcome to October Breast Cancer Awareness Month -- Day 27

10/27/2015

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. The Actual Dance is about many different things. It is about breast cancer. It is also about love. It is also about relationships.   It is also about spirituality and what life really is.   It is about a lot of things.
In October in recognition of Breast Cancer Awareness I will post a daily blog with a reflection about breast cancer. The reflections will stem from something in the play. (All quoted lines are text from the play.)

Day 27: B’Shert – Destiny: There is a Yiddish word meaning destiny --B’Shert. In the breast cancer context destiny can be complicated. Yes, I think Susan and I were destined to be together. “I can even remember the first time I noticed Susan, we hadn’t even met yet. She was living in Houston and I was living in El Paso,” is how I begin telling the story of how Susan and I at the age of 16 attended the same youth group convention and ‘noticed’ each other. Then 3 years later we end up at the same college (Texas Western, now UTEP) and find each other, again. Eyeballing each other in Texarkana, Texas and then magically going to the same college, meeting then dating and falling in love. How can that be? Just an accident? I don’t think so. Somehow in the universe of unexplainable things this had to have been meant to be. Yet, if things are “destined to happen” to us, what about illness? What about “cancer.” Was that pre-ordained for Susan or any other person with cancer?   It is much easier to believe that love is “meant to be” than it is that illness or tragedy is the product of some preordain structure in the universe.   I do not know. I am open to the possibility that it is true that the end is written at the same time the story of our lives begins. We do not know so much about the “whys” of life and death.   What we can do is respond to both the love and the loss in our lives as if it is our responsibility to honor both.

Stat of the Day: Breast cancer is the most common cancer among women in the world. For example, in Australia, in 2010 breast cancer accounted for 28% of all cancers in women in Australia.

Task of the Day: Read a love story or watch a movie about a love story and cancer. Here are a couple of books I recently enjoyed.   One Hundred Names for Love , by Diane Ackerman; The Wisdom of Love, by Jacob Needleman; Levels of Life by Julian Barnes. Then there is there is the original: Love Story by Erich Segal.

Resource of the Day: If you are Jewish, check-out Sharsheret a breast cancer program for Jewish Communities.

Welcome to October Breast Cancer Awareness Month -- Day 26

10/26/2015

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. The Actual Dance is about many different things. It is about breast cancer. It is also about love. It is also about relationships.   It is also about spirituality and what life really is.   It is about a lot of things.

In October in recognition of Breast Cancer Awareness I will post a daily blog with a reflection about breast cancer. The reflections will stem from something in the play. (All quoted lines are text from the play.)

Day 26: Magic Words:   Two days ago I spoke about the experience with a Rabbi that turned out to be neither the right time nor the right place to have the right talk. “I need to talk to someone else.” It turned out to be the “psychiatrist I had seen every now and then for the past twenty years.” I told him about the imagery of the ball room, the orchestra and the dance and “how real it was to me,” hoping that he would give me medication to make it go away “and change the future by changing what was going on in my head. Instead he called it a metaphor and said it was beautiful.” His words had a dramatic effect on me. It was like magic. It had never occurred to me that the dance was “beautiful.”   Immediately, I react and understand that “The Actual Dance will be the ultimate consummation of our love.”

Stat of the Day: 40, 290 women are expected to die from breast cancer this year or an average of 110 per day.

Task of the Day:   An encouraging word. Talk to someone who is struggling with cancer and let them know how much you love them. That might just be magic for them!

Resource of the Day: Words can have a dramatic effect on our loves.   Here are some reflections and suggestions based on this idea. Secular. Faith.

Welcome to October Breast Cancer Awareness Month -- Day 25

10/25/2015

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. The Actual Dance is about many different things. It is about breast cancer. It is also about love. It is also about relationships. It is also about spirituality and what life really is. It is about a lot of things.

In October in recognition of Breast Cancer Awareness I will post a daily blog with a reflection about breast cancer. The reflections will stem from something in the play. (All quoted lines are text from the play.)

Day 25: Today is Susan’s Birthday. She turns 70. She was 54 when diagnosed with breast cancer and the events at the heart of The Actual Dance span her first year of treatment through her 55th Birthday. By this time in 2000 Susan was in the middle of her chemotherapy. I went to each treatment with her, for that was my role in the world as define by her breast cancer. There was a large infusion room in the doctor’s suite with “stations” – really just large lounge chairs with IV stands and a little table --- enough for maybe 20 people. There were also a couple of rooms in the back for privacy. It was never explained to me exactly why we always went to the back. I surmised it was because of the strength of the toxic chemical mix they were using and the risk of her become ill. Susan today, on her birthday, will get up and go to the gym. She exercises six days a week. She looks beautiful and sexy all the time – yes you can look Sexy at 70! I don’t even think twice about those two rounded bumps on her chest of skin around silicone implants. The big difference between Susan and me today came up in a conversation a few months ago. We were talking about the show and my work and she turned and looked at me and said: “”Sam, I do not have breast cancer.” For me, I still remember the oncologist talking about how the microscopic cells travel through the lymph nodes waiting deep inside Susan to one day ‘wake-up’ from the long slumber imposed by the powerful medicines infused in her body for sixteen weeks in 2000. And each day and every day, “l listen, for the briefest of instants, for any indication that the universe has shifted or changed.”

Stat of the Day: Susan was born on 25th October 1945. Her age is Seventy years, means she has started the 1st day of her 8th decade! 25567 days passed since day of her birth (or 3561 weeks).In world 298000 babies was born on that day.

Task of the Day: Wish Susan happy Birthday by making a donation to her next Avon Walk for Breast Cancer in Washington DC in 2016. Click here to donate!

Resource of the Day: Everything you ever wanted to know about your birthday: here andhere and here

Our Story- from Sam Simon on Vimeo.

Welcome to October Breast Cancer Awareness Month -- Day 24

10/24/2015

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. The Actual Dance is about many different things. It is about breast cancer. It is also about love. It is also about relationships.   It is also about spirituality and what life really is.   It is about a lot of things.

In October in recognition of Breast Cancer Awareness I will post a daily blog with a reflection about breast cancer. The reflections will stem from something in the play. (All quoted lines are text from the play.)

Day 24: The Right Talk Yesterday I explained how urgently I felt the need to talk to someone. How do I do it?   If you have taken the journey with someone you love as breast cancer – or any disease – threatens to take their life, you know about those moments of internal terror. With an unexplained post-surgery lump on Susan’s chest, cancer in 10 of 17 lymph nodes tested, and “triple negative” chemistry of the cancer tissue, it became apparent to me that I had to prepare myself for what I had already sensed --- Susan like her mother was not going to survive. “No one was saying it, but if the lump was cancer, as we all expected it to be, Susan’s prognosis was grim.” I was scared.   “I got nauseous at the prospect of taking Susan through her end of days.” I needed help.   I was desperate to find someone who could help me discover “how am I going to be able to dance the last dance with Susan.”   At first I thought it was going to be our Rabbi. It turns out the Rabbi and I didn’t “click” that late night when I unexpectedly rushed into the Rabbi’s office as she was getting ready to go home. The words offered were sympathy for the anticipated loss – but I needed something else. I needed to figure out: “how am I going to be able to do this?” I did thank the Rabbi for her time, and I was desperate to find someone else to talk to.

Stat of the Day:   Non-profit breast cancer charities raise about 1.68 billion dollars a year. (Down from 2.4 billion reported last year.)

Task of the Day:   Lend your voice for resources and research to end breast cancer. There is an organization, the National Breast Cancer Coalition, whose goal is to know how to end breast cancer by January 1, 2020. There are other organizations however NBCC is uniquely focused finding a cure and has set a goal of a specific date.

Resource of the Day: There are a lot of different organizations with missions to promote breast cancer awareness and to end it. The Charity Navigator provides a list and rates them by their effectiveness in getting money to programs rather than to fund raising.

Welcome to October Breast Cancer Awareness Month -- Day 23

10/23/2015

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. The Actual Dance is about many different things. It is about breast cancer. It is also about love. It is also about relationships.   It is also about spirituality and what life really is.   It is about a lot of things.
In October in recognition of Breast Cancer Awareness I will post a daily blog with a reflection about breast cancer. The reflections will stem from something in the play. (All quoted lines are text from the play.)

Day 23: Talking to Someone.   “I need to talk to someone,” I realize after we find the lump on Susan’s chest. I am walking around the house “early on the Sunday morning after we found the lump, wondering what it is going to be like being alone.” I admit that those Sunday mornings were “the times I tended to get sad and depressed, because Susan was still upstairs asleep and didn’t see me.” Among the scariest moments for people who face the loss of a longtime partner is facing the prospect of “being alone.” Being alone is not merely the fact of living a solitary life in a house that was once filled with family or a spouse; it is also sense of being alone in the universe, of having lost “the other half of my whole.” (See Day16) In performing the show one of the most frequent comments I hear from people who have lost their mates is about the “silence” of early mornings. I realized the need to talk and it was through the talking I found the ultimate peace with the journey that I would need. It wasn’t easy though. It didn’t work the first time.

Stat of the Day: Susan and I went on our first date in 1964 --- 51 years ago. And we first “noticed” each other though we never really met in 1961 54 years ago!

Task of the Day:   Call, visit or email. Your “voice” can be a miracle drug for someone who is experiencing “being alone.” Silence can be oppressive. This can someone who has lost a loved one, someone who so going through their own cancer or are living with someone who is going through cancer.

Resource of the Day: The American Psychosocial Oncology Society has an information and referral help line: Toll Free 1-866-276-7443 (1-866-APOS-4-HELP).

Welcome to October Breast Cancer Awareness Month -- Day 22

10/22/2015

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. The Actual Dance is about many different things. It is about breast cancer. It is also about love. It is also about relationships.   It is also about spirituality and what life really is.   It is about a lot of things.

In October in recognition of Breast Cancer Awareness I will post a daily blog with a reflection about breast cancer. The reflections will stem from something in the play. (All quoted lines are text from the play.)

Day 22: Going Dark.   Yesterday I described my decision to be in the exam room as the oncologist conducted his first post-surgery exam. I stand back squirming as Dr. Blonder, the Oncologist, runs his finger along the lips of the incision point on Susan’s bare chest.   “All of a sudden he stops. He does a military style about-face and walks to the opposite wall and picks up the phone.” I hear the muffled voices of the office staff over the doctor’s office paging system and decide that Dr. Blonder was paged. While I can’t possibly make out the garbled words of the system I decide that he is so use to it he can tell when his name is called. It takes him some time. I’m starting to get agitated, who is this guy anyway that he take a call in the middle of an exam. It better be important. He wasn’t paged. He has called Susan’s surgeon to make an appointment for her (us) for the next day to check out a lump he just felt on Susan’s chest at the incision point. There is NOT supposed to be a lump on Susan’s chest post-surgery. Hell, there wasn’t even a lump pre-surgery, just cancerous breast tissue. Dr. Blonder is clearly not happy. Nobody, not the oncologist and not the surgeon and not me, is happy. It is as if the lights of the future have just been flipped off. I can’t see the future anymore. I look out in my mind’s eye and everything is black. I understand in a different way the aphorisms of “putting one foot in front of the other” or “one day at a time,” it is because I can’t see beyond each step any more or each day. It is just all dark.

Stat of the Day: The National Cancer Institute spends more on Breast Cancer Research than on any other type of cancer. In 2013 it spent $559.2 million on breast cancer research compared to $285.9 million on lung cancer research, the next highest category.    However, the amount spent in 2013 on breast cancer was down $65.9 million from 2011.

Task of the Day: Finding peace in the moment of stress is not easy. “Take a Breath” is the advice given often. This task is about mindfulness in the moment. Developing techniques to deal with the “dark moments.” The task is brought to mind by an article in the Washington Post about the growing popularity of mindfulness as a strategy during the morning commute. And isn’t the breast cancer journey also like a commute – getting from here to there.

Resource of the Day: Carol Fox Prescott has taught me for nearly 15 years as an acting coach, teacher and mentor. Her method is known as “On the Breath.” I am lucky to have found fellow student Gabrielle Maisels to be my dramaturg in creating The Actual Dance and who also now teaches the technique. I recommend the process not just as a tool for acting, but a tool for living.   There is no better gift than breath and unwrapping that gift is what learning how to breathe through the most important times of our lives is about.

FOR MORE INFORMATION ON THE ACTUAL DANCE
Contact Samuel A. Simon for information and media inquiries:
[email protected]
202-329-1851
www.TheActualDance.com

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Mr. Milt Orkin, Responsible Agent, at Producers, Inc.:
[email protected] • 813-988-8333 • www.producersinc.com

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Photos from ragesoss, The National Guard