A beautiful force of nature named Pamela walked into my life forty years ago and changed everything. I was hosting a meeting at my flat on the Brouwersgracht in late spring, finalizing plans to teach a week-long theater workshop out in the countryside a half hour outside of Amsterdam. Ms. Koevoets was nowhere to be seen.
I'd served tea and we'd decided to get started without the other prospective teacher, when, like a fairy or a witch, Pamela suddenly appeared. Her inner gyroscope was already spinning in top gear, so we simply proceeded with the meeting. That is, right after I made her a cup of coffee, as she was "off the whole tea thing" that week. Light blue eyes and dark hair, ten inches shorter than I, Pamela was direct, forceful and energetic. Topics that could have taken another forty minutes to cover were dispatched with in short order. The group organizers looked a bit shell-shocked by the time, minutes later, Pamela announced that we were all done and that she was late for another date. Daaag. Tot ziens. Whoosh. Then, when June rolled around, there we were out in the verdant countryside with 45 participants for a week of co-teaching/facilitating what became one of the more remarkable teaching weeks in my life thus far. Instead of splitting up the big group, we simply decided to do everything together. That first evening, with everyone gathered in the big space, we plunged in with vigor and never looked back. While near opposites in personality, we immediately were grooving together. The workshop participants, at evening's end, remarked on what a dynamic duo we were. As if we'd been at it together for years already. As we were mostly improvising, it was quite fortunate that we were able to read each other's minds. It was uncanny. Pamela had a background in dance and film (she had been featured in a couple of avant-garde Dutch movies), while I was just finishing up my conservatory training at the Theaterschool. It was thus, through seven days of nonstop, wildly creative actions with our forty-five wide-eyed students, that I got to become bosom buddies with this remarkable woman. The next year I was invited to help create an original theater piece with a group of six women. One of whom was Pamela. A piece about women. This was my first, but by a long shot not my last, opportunity to be the sole man amongst a group of amazingly creative women. Six weeks of "workshopping" in a studio created Vrouwen Variété, a show all about women on women's terms, critical, funny, lively... and a success! From this show, the Bamsisters were born. We started out with a 40-minute act that we performed at the Shaffy at midnight on weekends, and followed with 12 more years of creating theatrical pieces together. Soon after Vrouwen Variété closed and my boyfriend Isaac and I needed a place to live, we were invited to move into Pamela's house on the Koninginneweg. There Isaac and I lived on the ground floor and Pamela and her four-year-old daughter Tara lived on the first floor (or second floor, if you are from the USA). We got along well. Granted, Pamela had and has more than her fair share of eccentricities. But what others might call living with a crazy lady, I call living with a good witch of unfathomable brilliance. We helped raise Tara, she and I kept getting grants to create new shows, and we all made it work, with kittycats Fred and Stanley as our rudders. In addition to being a truly amazing performer without borders, Pamela is a writer. As I gathered myself up to return to California, Pamela carried on brilliantly on the page rather than the stage. Already a gifted writer, Pamela went on to create and publish a number of noteworthy stories and short novels. For between the two of us, words were corporal even as every physical gesture was a story incarnate. Collaboration in creation, as fruitful as it is mysterious, was our big, billowing sail. We traveled far and wide as comrades. And who knows what our old age will bring? We're on a great big round-trip journey and anywhere we glue on our eyelashes is home.
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