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May 13, 2008

Steady at the main. Week three. OK. So, the beginning of week three is that point when you look at what you've rehearsed, and then, at what you've got left to rehearse, and imagine the audience coming through the doors in 31/2 short weeks. *GULP*

It's easy for everyone to start going into freak-out mode and start questioning everything: Who's not been coming to rehearsals? When will they start coming? How many more props do we need? When will the crates be finished? When can we expect the planks to be delivered? When will costumes be made? When do we start weaving the music into the show?

And it's at this week that the answer to ALL of these questions must be: "Now."

Yep. It's enough to cause a freak out for folks unaccustomed to this. Our job is to hold true to the course and not freak out with everyone else. Ha. You know, even for seasoned folks like us, it can be a challenge when we have a week where we've faced oh so many challenges. On these days, I remember this time, walking through the Charlotte airport. I can't remember where I was coming from, it was a nice day, but sort of a blustery day, kind of bumpy flying weather. I just remember walking behind a pilot on the moving walkway. And on the other side, walking in the opposite direction comes another pilot. He says to the pilot in front of me, "Hey, how's it going?" and the pilot in front of me says "Living the dream, baby." And keeps on walking.

I thought I blogged yesterday, driving back to Franklin County from Colquitt. Must have imagined it.

I didn't imagine that we are in dire need of black participation in this project. No more than five blacks TOTAL have attended rehearsals since the first night's readthrough. Not five people several times each, I mean, African Americans haven't walked through the rehearsal room more than five times since that first readthrough night when there might have been seven.

Last night at the all cast call about 40% of the cast showed up. We circled, and the circle wasn't very large, maybe 35 people. Bees I said, seem to be individuals, but they have another identity in which they are cells in the organism, the hive. You and I are both as well. We're awaking a new intelligence, the one we'll need to do this play, the intelligence of the hive. It's much wiser than any one of us individually. Even though we're only half our numbers, we're still the whole as well. We are the hive. And what we need to do is to teach ourselves the patterns that make the hive function best, like coming on time, coming to rehearsals as called, supporting one another. So tonight, this smaller version of the whole hive will, perhaps, go out and help to teach the rest about attendance.

May 09, 2008

We had a large cast rehearsal today, and we started to gel together in the first stages of that beautiful thing known as ensemble. The many separate individuals merging to act as one organism. People applauding each other when things looked great, laughing when things were funny, and encouraging when things went, well, not perfectly. All of these acts are signs of a deep listening that is starting to take place. They are not just saying their lines and listening for their cues- they are listening to the pieces, listening and reacting to each other. It makes for really good theater, and it makes for even better community.

Folks have gotten full scripts this week, instead of just their sides, and they are coming to understand the full scope of the play and their role within it. We've moved from table work to full out big staging, and the pieces are starting to dance. Pretty soon, the actors will be dancing them on their own, but Richard tonight was really leading this waltz of words and movement and expression. It's coming to life before our eyes, in a space I don't think any of us, including Richard and myself, have moved in before. Dynamic is a word I've used before. After tonight, I'll have to add elegant. It's easy to "sweep" through the space.

One cast member was so inspired by a rehearsal we had this weekend, that he went home and wrote a song. It's got a real regional feel, it feels very of the place. good song. H simplye wrote it in response to the scene and the activity we were doing in it, and the feelings and inspiration that participation in the scene brought up for him. He's a big talent, but I don't think he knows it. He's come up to us a few times with some really stellar notions about scenes, and how to add to the business. This man is a director. He thinks he's just passing on ideas, but they are ideas of a director. big talent. Other big talents are emerging everywhere, and a sense of fun and play must be present, because other cast members have been showing up, even on nights they aren't rehearsing, just to see what's going on. Rehearsal attendance is getting better, too.

Judy and Genny published a newsletter for the cast this week, to address some of the questions that were coming in, to cover areas such as costumes, parking, rehearsals (and the importance of coming on time or calling if lateness is anticipated.) They included all necessary phone numbers. Information on family discount tickets, and discounted ads for cast and crew members, for the program. Also, they gave information about the play in general, including the production team and how this was all put together.

Vivian was there tonight as always. She's the go-to person I've written about before. She's assembled a stage management team of four members, and they are on the spot for everything from being on book, to taking props and costumes notes to taking down staging. Vivian said, business person that she is, "Oh, you mean take the minutes" when we told her the basic idea of what she needed to do as a stage manager- take notes and write down and record all the action. She's amazing, as is Barbara, Michelle, Cindy and also Kathy- our props person. There have been at least two stage managers present each night, and on some big nights, as many as all four of them there to assist. Vivian's fabulous approach: the work all needs to get done, but I don't need to be the only one doing it. I just dig her so much. One of the stories in the play is about her grandmother, who was a kind of a medicine woman, or healer. Vivian has some of that in her, too. She sure knows how to remedy any situation that arises. You'll hear her name a lot as the weeks continue, I'm sure. Well, it's late. More later. We're moving right along.

May 07, 2008

When we worked with a project on the West Side of Chicago, the play had one role for one white woman, and we would find someone and she would drop out. And we'd find another, same thing. Again and again. Both Jules and our white stage manager eventually played the role, we couldn't keep it filled. In most of our projects, the situation is reversed and the project needs black cast members. That's the situation here.

Roads instead of stages. Misty Hayes is a woman in her thirties living with muscular dystrophy. For two years she has been in Swamp Gravy, and is the only cast member in a wheelchair. She can only perform in two places in the theater, neither particularly prominent. She can't climb up the levels to the tops of the stages. Down in Colquitt, Misty's presence is helping Swamp Gravy toward a stage re-design that will be handicapped accessible. This last year, her story was featured in the play REUNION. In that play we rigged temporary ramps to get Misty up to the mainstage. But here in Franklin County, Misty's stage is already built.

It's about conquering your fear, the new community performer said. He's a guy in his fifties, hasn't been onstage much if any, but he's channeling the moonshiner Leland. It's his story. He is the son of a moonshiner who help his dad with the moonshining and with his other work, which was cleaning out chicken houses. "My dad would clean out the bottom level and I'd clean out the top." Every morning he watched his dad take a drink before going to work. When it was time for the boy to go to school he did just like his dad, went to the jug, poured some in, mixed it with water and slugged it back. He immediately threw up but managed to get to the bus, climbed on board and passed out "cold as a cucumber." His dad had to come get him from school and take him home drunk on his first day of school. And then he and his dad busted up 15 gallons of liquor and both of them quit drinking. His dad went back to it after a while, but that was the end for the kid.

I was letting my blogs stack up, and some were getting out of date. So I'm publishing all of them at once and catching up.

Mother and daughter. Her name is Leslie, she is Carrie. It was Leslie's rehearsal tonight but Carrie came. Leslie is thirty something, pretty, short hair, generous in her proportions. Carrie is eleven and a half, just turning toward young womanhood, pretty, as well. Mother and daughter are both pert. They make me sit up straight and engage fully.

We did three of our really big scenes last night. The ones where we incorporate large numbers of people all throughout the space. This is a huge space, probably the biggest we’ve worked in, so there’s a lot of real estate to move these actors around on.

I used to have these Fisher Price toys as a kid, my brothers and I did. We had the Fisher Price Castle, the airport, the garage. (I never had the barn, though, and I always wanted it.) And there were the Fisher Price Little People, they looked tiny compared with the size of the playsets, and we’d move the Little People around inside the castle and airport and garage. We’d play for hours with the Little People, making up little storylines for them to live out inside of the playsets. I laughed a little last night as I was directing folks to go to one area, then the next, and standing in for some other actors, just having a ball. I realized I don’t think I’ve ever gotten out of playing like I did. Directing and writing is just a grown-up version of Fisher Price. Each theater is like one of the other play sets. And the great thing about these play sets, is that I’m one of the Little People now, moving around inside of the playset, and the other people are moving around on their own, too. It’s all of our imaginations coming alive inside the playsets. That sense of fun and play makes it a joy to keep coming back to work. (Or is that play? I like that.) I love going to play each day. “Bye, honey, I’m going to play now.”

How was your day, dear? “Oh, you know the usual. I played for 8 hours, and came home and cooked dinner.”

“Have a good day at play.”

Now, playing can be hard. If you’re missing certain pieces, if other people don’t want to play nice with you, or if something breaks. That can be hard stuff. Even as an adult. I want to remember now to bring that same sense of imagination I had as a child to such situations. Because as an adult, the same things happen. How did I resolve it as a kid? A little imagination to fix things that are broken. Getting my brothers and sisters to help me look for the missing pieces. Maybe an adult, every once in a while, reminding me to play nice. A glass of milk and some Oreos isn’t too bad a solution, either. Hm. It worked when I was younger. Too bad those simple solutions are forgotten, around the same time we forget how to play. They’re not bad tools for resolution. And if getting your brothers and sisters to help you doesn’t work out, never underestimate the power of sharing a glass of milk and some oreos.

May 06, 2008

The final scene in the play here deals with a March. It is a march and a call to action, it is a parallel story of another scene, in Act I, in which the Mill Hill and its people are a victim of urban renewal. The Mill Hill folks are dispersed, and the community is very much lost. Some time later, urban renewal came to another neighborhood, a predominantly black neighborhood. But this neighborhood found a way, even after being displaced, to stay together. Churches came together, along with a café, to hold school classes for kids during the week. They had a center, I think it was a gym, where people came together and played and had fellowship. And some hard things happened. They felt encroached upon again, but instead of dispersing, and instead of resorting to violence, as was happening elsewhere in the US at this time, the community drew up a list of demands and marched it to City Hall. Heather wrote a brilliant, powerful song for this moment.
“We marched in the rain
Our souls drenched in pain
Wondering why, why why,
Should it come to this
And why
So much strife
When we want the same thing
Just a little respect”

Those are some of the words. Yeah, I know. She’s good, as I’ve been telling you.

The woman who was to sing the solo for this song, along with her son, who played a key role in the scene, and her other daughter, dropped from the show yesterday. Their schedules for the rehearsal and their schedules for real life just couldn’t come together. I’m feeling a bit of despair. We found out just about 2 hours before our rehearsal for this big scene was to begin. As 5:00 approached, all the other cast members in the scene showed up, but there was no principals. And nobody to represent the community in the march. We’re together trying to solve this. What was important about this moment, is that no one even suggested that we rewrite it or remove it, or do it some other way. Mary Ann turned to us and said “We have to have this scene, It’s about who we are.” Victoria started asking smart questions like, “If it’s too hard for them to get to rehearsal, can we bring rehearsal to them?” Gas prices here are $3.53 per gallon, and this is a region that has a large population of people right on the line of minimum wage. Tough times all around. Kathy mentioned some people who she just saw in “Seusical” who could do the role, but could not remember their names. Cindy went out to her car and got the program, because her child was in the production, I believe. Everyoen was working together to solve it as Richard and I watched. Then, about 39 minutes into what was supposed to be this rehearsal, in walks Lynetta and Bobby. Bobby is not cast in this scene, but arrived an hour early for his scene, “Ahead of ht Times”. Lynetta got the time wrong for her rehearsal, thought it was at 6:00, it was at 5:00, and she would have been early. Bobby agrees to take the role that was dropped by the other young man. Lynetta reads the role of the woman—she’s 17 but has a much older soul. Spirits in the room are lifted. We have a rehearsal, we have a scene, and we’ve got the beginnings of connections. They both said they were planning on recruiting down in Goose Hollow after their rehearsal. They understand, they need others with them to make the march make sense. So do the other cast members in the scene. They’re all working at different ends to make a solution. This community continues to lift me.

Oh, and by the way, did I mention I had some green tea in an alternative health store that has been there for about 15 years? Shelves stocked with herbs, teas, alternative medicines, and a library with books by Carlos Casteneda, Carolyn Myss, Wayne Dyer, etc.etc. They also have free wireless. And a meditation room. This community continues to lift me. Cool.

May 05, 2008

Our first music rehearsal with the full cast was yesterday. Our music Director, Deb Stark, of Emanuel College, asked the question, “Who has never sung with a choir or a chorus before” and only 2 people raised their hands. So we’ve got some really great singers.

Our composer, Heather McCluskey, has written five original songs for this show, and these are probably the most sophisticated, demanding pieces of music we’ve ever had the pleasure of working with, in any of our projects. They sound as if they’ve come right out of a chapter of the Great American Songbook, ripe with duets, four-part harmonies, character-inspired solos, sweeping numbers filled with the theme of the play and the most skin-tingling epiphanal song--- every member of the cast feels chills as they sing it, a number called “March in the Rain”.

Even at our first music rehearsal, (which as we know, first music rehearsals can sound like a group of cats being given a tune-up by the vet all at the same time) oh, the sounds coming out of this group were beautiful and spilling out of the theater.

All week, community members have been coming and going through our theater, to help with construction or to just see what’s going on, or if there’s another way they can volunteer. Yesterday, as they came in, they made a bee-line to me, to excitedly say, “I heard them singing before I came through the door, they are wonderful.”

They are gifted in the way the Mennonite Community in Newport News was gifted, in that singing has been a rich part of their cultural heritage. We’ve got a group of people who already know how to sing well. Now, they’re coming together as a larger group, to sing well all together. There’s a comfort zone in their singing, where in places other than the Mennonite Community in Newport News, there’s been hesitance, a more timid approach to the music by the cast. Here, they’re even willing to jump in and try out their solos, as Peggy Moon did yesterday, in this big honky-tonking blues number, singing out and letting people know, “I ain’t no bump in the road”.

After the music rehearsal, Judy and Genny, along with our fab stage management team (we have four people working as a stage management team, and it’s working out so well, I’ll write about how that’s working out tomorrow) but they and the stage management team brought out the new T-shirts for the play, with dates on them, and the play title. The name of the play is “The Last Hard Times”. They’re really lovely shirts. Judy and Genny asked me earlier when we should give them out to the cast- before the show or when it opens, and I’d suggested to give them out before it opens so we’ll have a hundred walking billboards going around town for the next 5 weeks or so. Some folks put them on immediately. Others came in wearing them to the next day.

Speaking of billboards and ads, today on the way to rehearsal, I passed these new street banners, the kind you see designating special areas or neighborhoods, there are dozens of them, with the Land of Spirit logo on them, with the words “storytelling and song” and “Land of Spirit Folk Life Play”. And posters are in all the windows, stating, “The Last Hard Times is Coming”.

So that’s the really great part. It’s the first week, and our challenge so far has been in the form of rehearsal attendance. This of course, is a new project. People don’t know yet that there is a finite time in which to work, to get the most magical experience in performance. As this time closes in, the moments we have left to polish and shine the production begin to slip away. We’ve got to educate the cast members about this. First rehearsals are often the ones actors blow off, thinking “Ah, I know the important stuff is going to happen a little later, I don’t need to do table work”. Even in established projects, this happens.

First rehearsals are probably the most important. It’s when we sit down together, figure out what our characters are, their purpose in the play, how they relate to the other scenes and characters in the play, etc., etc.

We’ve had some great rehearsals, and we’ve also had some that were poorly attended, when doubles weren’t present, so now some people are going to be in the know more than others, and it can become a game of catch up for those who didn’t attend. Richard and I want to do everything we can to help people NOT have the experience of playing catch up. We’re being really pro-active about it, because we’ve seen in the past where this happened, and we waited a couple of weeks to shore things up. This time, we’re trying to stop it before it gets started. And, of course, it all comes down to education. I think if we, at our next “all cast” rehearsal, take some time out and explain it to them, they’ll get it. I think it’s just a matter of them not knowing how crucial these first rehearsals are. A little information makes a world of difference. I fully expect after that meeting to have 90-100% attendance, and not the 80% we had this week. Because one thing I can say about the folks here, which I’ve been saying all along, is that they get stuff done.

May 02, 2008

OK, so I’ve been here a few days now and I haven’t journalled, and I should be doing so. I’ve just been so totally tired. 12 -13 hour days- phew.

After a rather spirited flight here (you may have heard about the tornadoes in Virginia? Yup, flew through that mess) I arrived in Atlanta and made my way up to Franklin County for the cast’s first read-through of the new play. This play has the revisions made after my visit there about a month ago. About 50-60 people were in there, taking in the new space.

Folks were really amazed at the transformation of the armory space, which is now our community performance space. The theater is downright dynamic. We’ve got curving zigs and zags and ramps leading up to the main stage as well as the smaller stages in the middle of the floor, with it’s own curving zag. We’ll be using these wonderful zigs and ramps, of course, with lots of wheeled objects- medicine show carts, wheel barrows, old-timey bicycles, whiskey barrels, and even…shhhhh…an old Indian Motorcycle.

So far, the week’s rehearsals have focused on table work. This is something we do in all of our projects. We sit down with the cast, and read through the scenes, listening for how it sounds coming out of their mouths, making adjustments where necessary, and finding some key elements of the scenes and characters, to help folks get connected to the part they’re playing.

We’ve also had head-to-head meetings in the mornings and afternoons. Most of those should be over, now. The long days of 5-6 hours of meetings and then 5 hours of rehearsal can tire me out. I’ll get home, cook dinner for Richard and myself, and then I’m just no good for blogging after all that. But I’m making some time now, and will try to each day.

The truth is, there are so many extraordinary things that have happened, even today, but if I fall into fatigue, and put it off, it’s not as fresh anymore, I can’t remember the event as vividly, and besides, a new incredible thing happens the next day.

So, I’ll do a quickie recap of today, and from here on out, I’ll try to be more consistent. This will give you an idea of the people I’m working with, who’s stories we’re using, and why I’m excited to be here.

I went to see “Doc” Tommy Scott, the medicine man, at his home today. It was like driving into a Hollywood set. The house was built in California and then moved here. I’ve never seen anything like it, there’s like Pagoda things all over it, the roof has these giant Chinese sculptural pieces on top of it, giving it the illusion of some kind of ancient temple that fell into a 50’s post WWII modern architectural experiment. WILD. There’s a homemade swimming pool dug into the ground, which is fed by a nearby well. The walls of the sides of the pool are painted bricks in various pastel colors. The entire house, outside and in, is decorated in an oriental style, with pieces from the Far East everywhere. He’s got a waterfall and a Chinese waterwheel on a walkway leading from the living room area to his memorabilia room. Super, super cool. His medicine show wagon- which has been used for 75 years now, is under the covered garage. Tommy, in his traveling show, developed the first mobile home unit, also under the covered garage. He put a truck bed on top of some other chassis. He fit it to sleep himself and his wife comfortably, and also to have some other amenities on the road. He spent January through Thanksgiving on the road and did what he could to make the road his home, no matter where he went with his travelling show. So, he designed and made that prototype, brought it to a company and asked them could they make another one. They did. He liked it so much, he bought the company, and he had the company make some more. The company was named for his wife’s name and his business partner’s name. His company manufactured close to thirty of these and sold them, up until he hit some financial hard times. Then he sold his company to another company. Might have heard of them. They renamed the vehicle Winebago.