Well, it started snowing at three yesterday. When it started coming down, it stuck immediately, and things got icky quickly. I threw some overnight stuff in the car, and some bags of sandwich stuff and other little things, because chances were, we wouldn’t be able to make it back up the mountain again after rehearsal in the evening. I’m glad we prepared. We got stranded down here in town. Janna and I talked Richard into staying at the hotel a couple of blocks away, rather than spending the night in the church.

Janna Browning is the Assistant Director to the show, and comes from Jonesborough, Tennessee, about an hour down the road from here. We’re working with Janna as another Community Performance Director. She’s doing great work with the cast, really cleaning up specific moments in the scenes and doing a lot of one-on-one actor work, strengthening their individual performances.

Last night, as the snow fell, we rehearsed some scenes, there were some brave souls who lived nearby who came out to the rehearsal. Steve made his way, and soon found himself stranded, so I added him on to the growing list of reservations for us to be staying at a hotel down the road.

Today, the rehearsal that should have started at 10:00 am was instead replaced by a snow-shoveling party, led by Richard and Cole, one of our actors. Brett and I showed up, followed by Janna, and then Steve, Ben, Naomi, Alice, Emily. We had enough of a team to turn today into a tech day, so it would not be a total wash-up. There is a LOT of work, because we have 13 HUGE windows that need to be covered. I’m talking 30 foot high, stained glass windows. So, we’re getting necessary work done. But still, tick tick tick, we really needed that rehearsal today. Iega gets here Tuesday so we stop most scene rehearsals then. Brett still needs another day of music rehearsal. I was going to give him two hours today, since it was going to be a 10-6, but I can’t afford to give Brett that much time tomorrow or Monday, because now those days need to be catch up days.

Hopefully, the snow and sleet will be done this afternoon. I think we’ll have a great rehearsal tomorrow, because everyone knows we HAVE to have a great rehearsal tomorrow. For now, we’re doing tech stuff and waiting on Jason, our set designer, to arrive. Yes, his flight made it into Charlotte this morning. We’re just waiting for him to drive from there, but I-40 is too hazardous to take right now, so he’s taking the other way. It’s a good thing the name of this play is Always Expect Miracles. We do. We will.

Usually, we begin the process of community performance talking about the “circle”. How we always start each rehearsal with a circle, which signifies that we are one, together. This group is very diverse, maybe even more diverse than even our Scrap Mettle Soul cast in Chicago. We’ve got ages, cultures, ethnicities, religions, non-religions, etc, etc, etc. It’s made us aware of something, and our colleague, Lise Kloeppel articulated it best--- always be aware of who is NOT in the room. So now, instead of a closed circle, we will have a circle, with an opening, for the next person, or idea, to enter. It reminded me of something I’ve been doing all my life. It’s been a tradition in my family to have an empty chair at the table- it was a tradition in my mom’s family, too. We both grew up in military families. There was always space for a soldier or friend or anyone, who didn’t have a place to go or eat, on a Sunday, or a holiday, or any day, really. That chair was rarely empty.

I loved Lise’s suggestion of opening up, opening out, and reaching out to recognize that we don’t know everybody in our community, but we’re open to receiving the next person who walks in.

I'd had a good portion of the play written for the first reading in November. What I didn't have was the bigger, tougher scenes. I knew what they were, and where they went, but I hadn't developed them yet. It took a while for that to come, and that's when I ended up at Mary Immaculate Hospital. I think my muse was already in the hospital waiting on me, and that's why I couldn't write.

I also wanted to be able to include the students we’ve been working with from UNCA, and they are easier to get during the afternoon hours. (They are mostly freshmen, without easy rides.) Many of them actually handled the bulk of the reading, guided by their professor, and someone who has been working closely with us on this project, Lise Kloepel. They did a terrific job, and many of the students had some great feedback. Lise and the project director, Rebecca Williams also recruited a member of the Autumn Players, a senior acting group specializing in staged readings, as well as some of the actors from Lise’s evening community acting classes to also partake in the public reading. This helped me so much, because instead of doing most of the reading, I could listen to the words and take notes on editing and adjustments. I’ve never had a reading quite like it.

The other thing different about this reading is the I wasn’t finished with the script yet. The Jules a couple of years ago probably would have scrambled to get all 46 pages done (it’s the average length of our plays) but I took a look at what I was working with, and some of it is really cool, deep stuff, and I didn’t want to write to get enough pages. I wanted to give the community a real sense of where it is we are going. That’s the main reason for holding a first reading, anyway. And with first readings, I usually leave a buffer to add new scenes. But for this one, I didn’t even have the epiphanal scene finished. I sketched out for them, talked to them, about the epiphanal scene, but it wasn't read-- the ending of the play wasn't completed yet. As well as a couple of spine pieces. When we got to those places, I sketched out the story and the idea of where we were going. But they weren't read.

It was a new experience for me to not have the whole thing done. I made the right call, though. I’m sure of that. I didn’t try to be a superhero and write the length of pages that could make up a full play. There was a series of things, no one person’s fault, it’s those things that happen the first time around in figuring things out, but there was a series of things that happened that kept me from getting the transcripts I needed on time. In the past, I have been guilty of trying to be Wonder Woman, and against all odds, getting the whole thing done. And of course, there would be a lot of rewriting, because we all know what happens when you try to do something in a hurry.

I took a deep breath, and said, OK, Jules, you’re gonna do something different this time. The biggest reason I decided to read what I had, instead of rushing to get done, is because I am really, super-liking what I have going on. There are some scenes in this that I really wanted them to hear, because they ring so true for Asheville, I think. I’m playing with metaphor and poetry in a deep way in this place, and I think it’s appropriate for Asheville, but it would be hard for the audience at the reading to really hear this, if they were distracted by also listening to half-finished, or not-quite finished scenes. I wanted them to hear what I did have that was solid. So they got 37 pretty darn good pages. Then I sketched out several more scenes that would end the play, pieces I’m already working on, but not ready to read yet. The response was really great, and then I asked, “What else do we need”. We had a great talk, and I really appreciated that they heard what I wanted them to hear, and saw the direction of the piece, and could add in their input for what else I should be looking for or thinking about.

I’m really glad I held the reading this way. It was also a good reminder to me, in that where ever we are in the process, is where we are supposed to be. There was enough space in the script to make room for a story from a long-timer, a six-generation Asheville family, and I gathered that story the next day, from someone who had been right there at the reading. I’m also going to include a couple of comic pieces, like a good old moonshine story. (We all love those, don’t we?) I’m winding up the writing now, and when we hit auditions on December 7,8,9, the script should be pretty much finished. Of course, I do more contouring work once we get into table work, but that won’t happen until January 4th.

Oh, and it is worth saying, that we held some early-bird auditions while we were there, on the day after the readings, and we had more men than women come! Amazing, isn’t it? We are usually struggling to have 10 good men in the play, and on that day alone we saw like 8 or 9 men! So things are rolling right along with a lot of momentum in Asheville. In only two months, we’ll already be in tech, and we didn’t even get started on this journey until May of this year. Whoosh, it’s a quick one!

I am often in a room when a story is told for the first time in a long time, or the first time ever. I leave the room richer for having been witness to the experience.

Always, I enter into the material and come out of it changed for having done so.

Yesterday, I was present to a story that was finally told to me, but which took years to unfold in order for it to be able to be told. I don’t even know yet how to process it for my own understanding, so I can’t yet even write about it here. But what it does to the body, to my physiology. I am changed, somehow, by the expression of it now living inside of me, trying to work its way back out and onto the page.

I was thinking about the last time such a story grabbed hold of me and would not let go, and it was that of Sam Althaus. He came to Newport News from Germany after the end of the war. He was from Poland, and at age 14, was sent to Auschwitz with his entire family and village. He and his cousin Irving were the only survivors of that group, after the war. Sam was also part of the march from Auschwitz to Dachau. He told me his story in 1999. He told me every single bit that he could remember. I also had received some things he had just written on the experience. His son did not even know about the experience of his father until high school, or maybe just after, because Sam never spoke of it once he came to Newport News. No one knew of his secret hell that he lived through in the concentration camps. The average life expectancy at Auschwitz was six months, he told me, and as a young teenager, Sam managed to survive for four years. He also told me the things he had to do, was forced to do, in order to survive. I remember struggling with those descriptions, and with that story, with the nightmares, with trying to figure out how on earth to tell this tale of ordinary horror—the processing out of human lives, one after the other after the other. After going to Jo a few weeks later, I decided to place the story in the most ordinary of places—standing in line inside of a Food Lion grocery store. The scene starts “I am uncomfortable standing in a line.”

I’d been thinking about Sam’s story a lot as I’ve been working on this new Asheville play. I was in a philosophical discussion with Richard and Ron, and Laura and Lise and George from UNCA. On one side they were talking about the beauty of art, even with the most horrific stories, and from them something beautiful could emerge, and my own feelings, my own sense, was that some stories are not beautiful. And I spoke of Sam’s story. And though they tried to talk to me about my treatment of his story, I just couldn’t go there. I couldn’t agree with them. I still stung from the pain of working out that story.

I heard a very difficult story on this trip. It started hitting me in the same way Sam’s did. Then I went for a break. When I went to a place for internet, I’d received a message. Sam died yesterday. It didn’t hit me at first. I was sad, I felt a loss. But as time has gone on since yesterday, I’m finding myself breaking down and crying at different times. I can’t explain it, except that he was the one character that got inside of me and never left. Maybe what I’m feeling right now is that part of him finally leaving me. I don’t know. It sounds woo-woo and weird, but I ache in places I’d forgotten to feel, and was remembering things I had tried to push back and forget- the images, his images. They are still there.

I pulled out his scene just a little bit ago and read it. I could barely pull it up, the formats have changed so much since ten years ago. And I cried again. I feel such a loss. I feel a loss for the world, too. Sam was such a good man. Though I hadn’t seen him in a couple of years, he’s never really left me. What hell he lived through on this earth. I hope, my prayer, is that he is in some place of beauty and peace. Finally. Sam Althaus, I will always remember you.

I got to stay in a restored old house, nestled up the mountainside in the Historic Bee Tree Community, where Davy Crocket found his wife. The old house I stayed in was once made exclusively of stone, but had at some point in the 70’s fallen into disrepair—so much so that a river had diverted and was running through the middle of the house. The new loving owners, artists, and classic car collectors- Donna and Bob Kelly, kept a lot of the original stonework, and then built the rest of the house around it. The Kellys took us on a fabulous tour of the property, which has in it a pond dug by the same people who dug the Panama Canal, a collection of old pottery shards and other various artifacts going back a couple of hundred years, found on the grounds, and showed us lots of cool little other secrets you can only hear about and see if you go there (shhh, I promised.) There are sculptures made from found items left on the property over the course of a hundred and a half or so years, like an old gas pump- the glass was out of it, it was found in the grassy debris sideways. Bob lovingly pulled it out, cleaned it up, found a neat home for it. ON a visit to the property, one of the old timers said “I shot the glass out of that pump when I was a kid” There are also various mannequins in whimsical costumes all around the place- at the foot of the bridge, in the gardens, around the barn. Bob said “Bridget would look good in your skirt” I looked down and I guess, sure, my skirt is a bit whimsical. I looked over at Bridget the Mannequin, and agreed, she would indeed look good in it. Little does Bob know now that on my last day, I plan to dress Bridget in said skirt before I depart. Why not? They took us up to see the classic car collection, including two 1934 Buicks from South America, that once belonged, as the story has it, to some Nazi’s down there. Bob then gave me a ride down the hill in a 1934 Ford.

Thanks to Jerry Cope for making the video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttQHZ-jdEpA

Doc Sullivan called me after my initial interview with him a couple of days ago. He'd thought of some other things he wanted to tell me. He spoke about the miracle of penicillin. How in one year, with the introduction of penicillin, medicine practice was changed forever. "When penicillin came, I never lost a case to strep throat, or STD's. And the flu. The year before penicillin came, i lost six cases to the flu that season. The next year, I didn't lose a single one."

I asked if he saw other miracles. He talked about the children born. "The moment a child takes that first breath. The transfer of life that happens right then, that is a miracle every time."

He talked about how the community took care of itself. He talked about how people would pay with chickens, bacon, ham, eggs, vegetables from the garden, milk from their farm, if they didn't have cold-cash to pay for their medical needs. They had something to barter with for their care. And it was all things that the doctor needed, too. It didn't always cover the costs, (rarely did) but most of the time, they came out "square" with each other in terms of those other important, un-nameable things you have when you are in community and service with others.

He then went on to talk about some of the not-so-miraculous things in medicine. He talked about the end of solo practice. "Insurance did away with that. You couldn't get insured for a solo practice, only with a group. That was the end of solo practice. That was the end of house calls."

It was also the end, I imagine, to getting paid in chickens and fatback and vegetables and milk. The end of doctors recognizing you by the dimple you share with your mother, instead of your chart number.

As Jo Carson's cancer fund is reaching out into small pockets of our artist-community, I think about that conversation with Doc Sullivan so much. And it's not just Jo. I think about all the pickle jars with quarters and dollar bills in them on restaurant counters and grocery store check-out lines, all across the country, for families who need to give care to someone, but don't have the insurance necessary to get the care they need. There is so much to say on this. Too much for a simple blog. But, just to say it, if you haven't joined the cause for the Jo Carson cancer fund, go to the Roots site, click on and donate what you can. It's our virtual-world pickle jar. Every quarter counts, since blue cross doesn't take chickens anymore.

I'm excited for a couple of reasons-- for one, it is always great to meet and bring in new groups. Secondly, I'd not eaten at Mama Cita's yet, but I'd been hearing great things about it from Homeward Bound's director, Fran. Now was my chance. (As a side note, I've been partaking of all of the fabulous restaurants and pubs and wine bars while working in Asheville. I've got to be careful to stick with reviewing the work, and not the food!)

I get there on a very rainy day, and meet sunshine inside in the form of Martha and Greta. They are philosophically, and dare I say, spiritually aligned with the work we do. I brought my sketchbook which also doubles as my notebook, because I was hoping to get a story. The same song, different town was being sung about transcripts, and I'd not received them yet, so the stories I knew I could bank on were the ones I gathered myself and actually HAD. I was also feeling a little worried because at this point, I'd not gotten my "spine story". I'd heard a lot of good stories, just not the "it" story. Toward the end of the meeting, we asked Martha and Greta if they knew a story about transformation, because that seemed to be the theme that was popping up in the stories I'd gathered so far. Martha and Greta both said one name, and looked at each other. OK, we have consensus. Martha says, "Well, it's the first one that came to mind" and Richard tells her, "Then it's the one you're supposed to tell".

And that was it. My spine story. It was not long. But it had the same emotional arc of a wonderful Native American tale that I know of, which would be a beautiful parallel. LIberty Corners works with the Developmentally Disabled. The first thing they do is work toward removing labels from people, like "developmentally disabled" and go on to see them, and help them see themselves as a person. They told the story of a man who'd been stuck with a label since he was a kid. At nearly 50, they worked to help him see his potential. they helped him make a "life list" of things he'd like to do. On it were things such as have a woodworking shop, have a home, get married, see the Eagle Lady in Alaska- the only woman allowed to feed the eagles there. He had a fascination with eagles, always had, even when he was confined in an institution. After he finished his life list, he was diagnosed with esophagal cancer, pretty far along at that. He had gotten his woodworking shop by this point, Then Liberty Corners let his list be known to the community, and in two weeks time, enough money was raised to send him to Alaska to meet the Eagle lady, and to be with the eagles and feed them himself. That was in January. In February, on Valentines Day, he got married to his sweetheart, also a client of Liberty Corners. He lived a normal life, for about a month and a half, then the illness took him over. He saw his family one last time, his family he'd not seen in decades, then he moved to hospice, to die. He'd made a list of the things he had, and who he wanted those things to go to, and made a list of people he'd like with him during his care. Then, he died. He also died a life that, in the end, began to meet his own potential. He got to soar with the eagles before he went.

And I left our meeting knowing I had my spine story.

It's so full of wonderful, fun, funky little places downtown- and not a chain store to be seen in all of the downtown area. The restaurants are fabulous, and you won't find Bud on tap anywhere-- they're the nation's leader in micro-brews. (My favorite is Catawba Valley White Zombie). Coincidentally, the name of our Asheville Project is "Beaucatcher Brew", named after Beaucatcher Mountain, and well, any Brew you prefer to concoct- beer, coffee, tea or magic stew. (Oh, and there are magic stores there, too, and palm readers, etc.)

The reference to tea as a brew goes right back to Beaucatcher, too. A lot of the homeless folks who have befriended me go up on Beaucatcher to pick Carolina Mint, gensing, and other herbs used to make healing teas. They sell the herbs to folks back in town.

Asheville also boasts one of the finest chocolatiers in the US -- "The Chocolate Fetish", right there on Haywood Street. The old Woolworth store has been turned into a folk art gallery. And every Friday night is the drumming circle, that pulls in an entire cross-section of the population- business people, homeless people, professors, students, church folks, families- they are all together there at Pritchard Park. If you've not experienced their drum circle, it should go on your list of things to do.

It is from exactly this cross-section of people found at the drumming circle that we are working with to create the new production. Since we were brought in by the agency "Homeward Bound", (whose mission is to end chronic homelessness in the next decade by providing front to end services) there was some confusion in the community at first, about what this play really was. No, it's not a play on the homeless. This project is going to be Homeward Bound's "showcase" project each year. We're telling the story of Asheville, which the homeless are a part of, not apart from. But first and foremost, it is the story of Asheville.

We are so fortunate to also be working with UNC Asheville on this project. There is a class this semester devoted to studying this work, and to working with us as we pull the first performance together, and to even participate in the first public reading, scheduled for November 12. The class consists of Freshman students, as well as people from the community who are associated with Homeward Bound. I was really impressed with the solidness of the Homeward Bound participants- Tony, from the Veteran's home, three women fro the women's shelter, and a young man, currently homeless, but attending both this class and classes at Warren Wilson. This mixed group drove down together at the end of August, piled into two large vans, so they could all see our community performance "Salkehatchie Stew". What really impressed me about this class, was that as they were doing a debriefing on the experience, every one of them made reference to the community they saw, and how that group of 85 actors, who hadn't known each other before this project, were so bound together. They saw beyond the play, to the purpose. (It's so cool when people see and get what you're doing!)

We're also fortunate to have a lot of the faith-based groups supporting us. And the downtown merchants and residents. We'll be performing in the sanctuary of the UCC church, and the large Baptist church across the street is offering parking. So we're getting a lot of community groups joining up with our merry band.

The stories I've gathered so far all have one common thread-- the idea of transformation- of listening to (or not listening to) that small voice of intuition (or conscience, or God, however you want to see it) and how life unfolded after making that choice to either listen to that voice, or quiet it. Those aren't the questions I was asking. They are just the stories that are emerging in the collective community.

The theme for next season's new play is generating a lot of interest, and a lot of stories from many angles. This summer, Lavonia got word that they were getting the new regional hospital. Not too far away, in Royston, is the area's very first hospital, started by none other than Royston's famous bad-boy of baseball, Ty Cobb. Judy wrote early on and asked if doing a theme on the hospital and the doctors might be a good idea. And I cooked that around in my head a little while, and thought, yep, it would, and what would maybe be even cooler is to make the theme a little broader-- to include healing stories, what it means to be healed, physically, spiritually, all that. And to get stories from those people who have helped others find the healing they need, from the traditional doctors and nurses, to midwives, root doctors, locals with special knowledge, preachers, teachers, as well as stories from those who have gone through a healing.

Well, stories have been coming at me since we decided on that theme. I've gotten emails, phone calls, I've been stopped in the grocery store and at the drive through window at the McDonald's when i was getting my caramel latte! (Yes, at the drive thru-- with other cars behind me, but she had to tell me!) People want to tell their stories on this subject.

I'm already looking at three really cool spine characters:I'm thinking about looking at the world of the play through three lenses--from the daughter of the man who brought most of the town into the world, Old Dr. Brown; the daughter of the man who delivered most of town back to God, Mr. Pruitt of Pruitt funeral home, and a doctor from Carnesville who was Ty Cobb's doctor, and who made house calls way into the 1970's, and on many of these house calls, he would play piano and sing for the family. What a prescription for healing! I heard about this, and I said, Oh, I wish I could have gathered his story-- and they say "Oh, he's still alive!" So two days later I sat down with Doc Sullivan in his home, and he told me story after story about cures and miracles he's seen through the years.

I'll be back there again in Lavonia, on my way to Asheville next week. I'm going back to Asheville to collect one more story. It's an important one: The Mayor of Asheville is giving me her story to use in their play which opens in February. Yes, it is a little late to get a story for a play that is due to be read publicly on November 12 (*gulp*). SHe couldn't get with me before because of the election. But in a week and a half, I'll get that story. I'm not too worried-- after all, the title of the Asheville play that I'm already working on is: "Always Expect MIracles". And I always do.

More stories about transformation in Asheville and healing in Lavonia coming soon!

"YOu know where I can get some? SOmebody told me I could get some ammo here."

"You must mean Vincent's. They are the drug store next door. You can get ammo there."

"Where's that."

(I pause for a moment, wondering if I really want to give this person holding a rifle in my theater directions to the nearest place to put bullets in said rifle. BUt I think, ah, heck, I'm in South Carolina, ain't I? I might as well be helpful)

"Go out this door, and go two doors down. It's the drug store."

"I can get ammo at the drug store?"

(Again, I wonder at the question. To me, and call me crazy, but the drug store is a more likely place to find live ammo than, say, oh, a theater.)

"Sure, you can get ammo there."

(Truth be told, you can buy guns there too, and knives, BC Powder. You can wiegh yourself on the scale for a penny, and it still works, and there's even a piano in there. BUt I digress.)

He's now got directions to the ammo. And I go back to rehearsal. But that was wierd. I turn to Brett, who recently moved here from California, and I say "Bet you wouldn't see that happen in San Bernardino."

"No way, Bro!"

OK, so that was an interesting rehearsal moment I thought I'd share.

I had to look twice at the message, before remembering that Iega is deathly allergic to crab meat. He had a reaction as if someone had dosed his food with poison. So we did a scramble, and decided to work music one more time, and do another run through.

We always put choreography in at this point, because the scenes are pretty much in place, the energy level is starting to dip a little, and the addition of choreography is like a jolt of java to the cast, and they are ready to work one more week through to the final dress rehearsals. "Iega time" is everybody’s favorite time. But some Chesapeake Bay Blue Crabs now have Iega, and we have another run through.

We decide we’ll adjust our schedule for Saturday, which was to be ½ choreography and ½ teach to mostly choreography. OK, plan made. Iega will get them for 6 hours.

Then we get another text from Iega. He’s texting because he’s so sick he can’t even talk. The doctor has put him on a traveling restriction- he wants Iega under observation for a full 24 hours because his reaction is so bad. Now we don’t have Iega at all for Saturday. We decide to cut a few hours from the morning, and start early afternoon doing a tech. Then in the evening, we’d do a run through. We asked the cast to reach down to pull this one out, because at this point, they are ready for that good food of applause that the audience will give them.

Finally, today, we’ve got Iega, and he’s chasing all the chicken wings away. There will be no bent elbows on his watch! “Full extension!” “More energy!” “Put those arms up!” and that wonderful Iega laugh is now ringing out in the theater. We’re doing a long Sunday rehearsal from 2:00 to 8:30, choreography only. And the cast is having a ball.