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Community Performance Inc.

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.)

In other spaces, we've hung lights, put up trees, strung paper chains. We've made about a football field's worth of paper chains, with the help of the kids from the orphanage in town. The kids from the orphanage are coming to the show on Saturday. We wanted some of them to be in it, but there were parties planned for them during this time. Hopefully, they'll participate in the summer production.

We open tonight with a final dress rehearsal, after the Christmas Parade. There's still much to do- finalizing the sets. But our actors are ready for an audience, now. One of the actors has a graduation tonight. Her daughter was going to do her part tonight, but backed out yesterday, so I'm going to have to do that role tonight- which is a bit of a bummer, because I've been filling in spots here and there as people have had to come in late from work or leave early for classes. I wanted to work the show's pace tonight, but I'll be part of it. I guess it's OK. We did a run through last night, and the timing is working perfectly. And I was very pleased with that.

This kind of progressive theater piece takes a lot of careful negotiating in creating the script. It's not as easy as writing 5 scenes that are all five minutes long. (Which, depending on the stories you get, can be a task unto itself). But also, some of the walks from location to location have a different distance. So, for instance, most of the walks take about 2 minutes. However, one walk is a little further around the corner, and takes more like 2 and a half minutes, so the scene in that location has to be written shorter- about 4 and a half minutes. Or, say, 800 words. Another location is just a few doors down, a shorter walk, so that scene should last longer. Like, 1100 words, or 5 and a half minutes. My biggest part of the puzzle was figuring out the story telling times for each location, and finding the right stories for each location, and then, making sure I had an emotional arc that made sense in that order. We ran the flow last night, and the machine worked. We had our Mail Man character leave every 10 minutes, and each location ran like clockwork. Smooth. So, they are ready to open tonight. Oh, a couple of actors will use photo albums with scripts inside, but for the most part, people are comfortable with their lines, or at least they know their stories. I told them last night, don't worry about the lines. You know the stories, the stories are what's important, and if you forget a line, just remember what the story is about and tell that. The usual speech. But the important one. Wish me luck tonight, I'll be on.

   

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