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December 19, 2007

Last year I started a new Christmas tradition at Swamp Gravy. At the end of the production, the cast, along with the audience makes an old fashioned ornament together. Last year, we made little elves made out of wooden clothespins and ribbon. The audience loved it, it was a fun interactive event. Each audience member was given a small Ace hardware bag (donated, thanks a bunch, Ace) and inside each bag was a clothespin, felt triangle for a hat, and some ribon for a tunic. Lots of fun. Yet, the prepartion of each bag was time consuming. This year, I created a simpler ornament. Not because it needed to be simpler. I was thinking- what do audiences come for? Memories and stoires, right? So for this year's ornament, I created a memory card.

December 09, 2007

I'm in the Little Rock airport, with a delayed flight and some time to write. There's one more day of shows in Morrilton, Arkansas. They begin performing a matinee at 2:00 today. I'm hoping they'll have big crowds despite the fog and drizzle.

It was exciting for a time last night, with group after group leaving the old post office and beginning their tour through time down Broadway and Division Streets. The streets were alive with actors dressed in vintage 20's and 30's costumes, tossing trees out of store fronts in one scene- filling lard buckets with old coins in front of others. The hustle and bustle of a project being born.

We've succeeded in creating a committed core cast. We've got an intergenerational and multi-cultural cast from the very start, which I think will prove to be important in the coming years. We're building this project together, and not asking others to join once it's been created. We've got white, African American and Thai participants. We've got whole families plugged in. A grandfather and granddaughter are performing in a scene together. Mothers and children, brothers and sisters performing together. I always love that about these projects. It's a place for families to get to do something fun, even with teenagers, where the teens don't think it's too dorky. I've got a 13 year old myself, now, and I know how hard it is to find something to do together as a family. This is something.

The best buzz was last night, at the end of the show in the reception room, where a white man in his 70's was telling the eight year old African American actor that he was playing the part of his own son. The man in his 70's had been ashamed of this story for years, and was now thrilled. His wife, Alda, was worried about it being told in the play- it's a funny story, it always made everyone in the family laugh-- except her husband.

A couple of decades ago, his wife, Alda, graduated from college. She;d gone back to school when her kids were in school, and she no longer had to care for them during the days. She graduated in December, and the whole family came to see her-- about 20 people. ON the way back, it started to snow, and all the roads were closed. Her cousin had a cabin off one of the roads, and they, in their jeep, transported all 20 people to the cabin- their non-4x4 vehicles couldn't make it to the cabin. The teenagers were none too thrilled about being stuck in the cabin with a bunch of adults and their 8 year old brother over Christmas. Especially since, they had enough food for that night, and that was it. The next day, one of the roads to town got cleared, but the highway was still closed. It was Christmas Eve, all the stores were closed. She found a 7-11 which had a can of soup and a 1 lb. canned ham. For 20 people. She got back with the bad news, and her husband told her the good news- he'd gone out and shot a deer. It was hanging on the porch. They'd have Christmas dinner after all.

Meanwhile, the teenage girls borrowed their mother's fingernail polish. They painted the nose on the deer red, then told their 8 year old brother that Daddy shot Rudolph, and he was hanging on the porch. and they were going to eat him for Christmas dinner. And the little boy runs out there and sees the red nosed reindeer hanging from the porch, ready to be dressed out and eaten. He cried and cried, not only for that, but for the worry that Santa would never, ever visit them ever again. They didn't eat the deer for dinner, and everyone was forbidden from telling that story in his earshot for years after that.

But after the performance last night, Alda's husband claimed the story. He went up to the little boy who cried out "Daddy Shot Rudolph! Daddy Shot Rudolph!" and said "I'm the one who really shot Rudolph. That's my story". The boys eyes widened, his mother, who played Alda, laughed, they all shook hands and talked. I love it when the story teller and the story actor come face to face, and people realize, Yes, Virginia, there is a real storyteller behind these plays. Merry Christmas from Conway County.

December 06, 2007

Once again, my desire to write a daily account of our work here ran head on with the actual work we are doing. The days have pretty much been 8:00 am to about 10:30 PM, every day. It's been go, go, go.

In the evenings, from about 4:00 on, we're rehearsing our cast of 40 people. But from morning until that time, we've not only been decorating the 5 stores and the old post office for performance spaces, we've also been cleaning, as well. Luckily, we've been using the 309's (trustees from the prison) to help with a bulk of the clean up. Many of these spaces have not been used in a very long time. Lots of dust and dirt. One building was filled wall to wall and floor to ceiling with stuff- lots of people's stuff- it was used as a sort of junk collection room. That's been cleaned out, and we've built a false wall with fabric, put up a fireplace and mantle piece, and a 14 foot cedar tree, which I strung lights on the other day (and am still itching from it.)

December 04, 2007

We ran the machine today. We started the scenes in each of the storefronts, and ran them at 10 minute intervals. The entire scenes should be only 6 minutes long. Many were running right on time. One ran at 10 minutes. Yikes, Maybe more. Drill,drill, drill, is what we do tomorrow and the next day, and if that fails, hide the lines in a prop, I guess. Won't be the first time. We've become experts at helping people hide lines in photo albums, Bibles, buckets, and even ornamental fans. We've got to get them right at 6 minutes. That's the only thing that can gum up the works. We don't want one scene consistently running late, because we leave on a cycle of ten minutes, which gives two minutes to walk to each store, plus a two minute reset breather for the actors. If antoher group piles up in front of another scene, the actors in that scene won't get to reset. We'll get them there. Prompt books and all.

It's always exciting working in a place for the very first ime. This is the first time these actors have experienced COmmunity Performance. Most of them haven't stepped on stage before in their lives, except maybe a church play. Although we do have two actors fro mteh Rialto COmmunity THeater in this play. Most are just folks. I had a talk with the woman at hte Chamber of COmmerce (she's nice enough to let us use the back office to plug in and send email) She said her mother's boyfriend, who she's known for years and years, said he was coming out to try out for hteplay. And she could not believe this of him. She didn't think he'd ever have it in him. I told her that when he auditioned, we were blown away by his talent, he's a natural storyteller. Steve Trowbridge. He got one of the biggest parts in the show. Never been on stage before, either. That's what I really dig about this work. People get to step out of themselves and discver that all of us can be performers if we want to.

I may have mentioned, but I bet I forgot. RIchard and I have now been working together for ten years. Well, Richard, Joe, Brackley and I.

Joe's not married. Never been married. If he was, he never would have made the "compliment" he did this weekend. Richard and I were standing next to each other, and he says,

"I must say, you two are really aging well".

At which point I picked up the nearest thing I could find and flung it at him. That's it. He's out of my will.

Tomorrow we start working on making all of the storefronts pretty. Just a few more days and we open. We've got a cast of about 40. I wanted to write more about them, but I've got to run and hang up some paper chains. Then, lights on our trees. About ten of them. All cedar. Ouch. They sting!!!!!

December 02, 2007

Friday afternoon, RIchard and I were working on schedules, rehearsal notes, and finalizing where each scene was going to be when Alda dropped in to say hi. She was the one who picked us up from the airport this summer on our first visit. Before she left, she told a to-die-for funny story. I asked myself "Whyyyyyy!" Why didn't I hear this a couple of months ago when I was writing the script. This story is just too good. But now we've cast people in roles, we can take them out, we can't add another story- which would be the usual option for me-- but because this is a progressive theater piece, all of the different scenes need to each be between 5:00 and 5:20 seconds long. Adding this to any other scene would lengthen it too much.

After she tells the story, and I'm lamenting that it's not in a show, I realize we have one more hour left until rehearsals begin. How we're working it is that I'm rehearsing half of the scenes, Richard is rehearsing the other half at the same time, in order to get in enough rehearsal time to open on Thursday.

I get to one of my scenes, and it's the only one which isn't cast all the way- we have some empty roles. One of our actors, who's child was cast in this scene, tells us his wife and kids are home, they could be in it. I'm thinking "kids". Like, 10 and under kids. I say sure, call them. They arrived about 5 minutes later. 13 and 20 years old, and 8 year old Joseph who is already in the scene. His wife will be here in a little while, but I look at the scene I have, and the ages are not a fit for the family who walked in the door. This is also my least favorite scene. They don't fit the scene, which is already going to take some work to make it work. What to do...

Then I look at them and think, aha! The story I just heard a couple of hours ago-- if I were to turn it into a scene, it would need a mom, two mischievous teenagers (the 20 year old looked teen enough) and a little boy. I told them the story I had heard about an hour before, and they were laughing too. I asked if they could come back during the rehearsal slot for this scene tomorrow, and they agreed. And I asked them to look for the scene over email that night or the next morning.

I finished the rest of the rehearsals that night, had some dinner, and by the time I drove up the mountain it was very late. I woke up in the morning at 9:00, we had a rehearsal at 11:00, and the drive down the mountain is half an hour. So I've got an hour and a half tpo write the scene, get dressed, etc. We also have to move out today because they need the cabin we were living in for a conference up there. So I've also got this packing to do. Richard and Joe and Corey help me out by packing me up, all around me, while I sat there writing a scene and eating a piece of peanut butter toast. Type, type, edit edit, (delete, delete) type type. Viola, scene finished, emailed, we hop in the car, and arrive at 11:01 to our first scene rehearsal of the day. So, OK, i was a little ripe because I didn't get a show, but the work was ready! I think I remembered to change out of my fuzzy socks before throwing on my tennis shoes.

The family came in, having downloaded the scene, and we laughed our way through rehearsal. I love it when the universe hands me little treats like this.