Seattle Rep Wrap-Up

Once again...over a month since I last updated. I know, I know. Shame on me. But this brings up my new goal. As new young urban professional (without a job), the plan is to update this thing more often. I'm hoping the blog will keep me motivated to write, act, create art so that the passion, the drive, and the necessity doesn't die out. Not that I think it would...but something to hold me accountable as well couldn't hurt.

This Sunday (June 27th) I officially moved to Seattle. I packed up (almost all) of the rest of my stuff in a friend's car, turned in the keys to my Bellingham apartment and changed my address. It is very exciting but I haven't really had any time to think about it. I spent my first day in Seattle unpacking and watching the Pride Parade and on Monday (well, yesterday) I began my internship at Book-It Repertory Theatre. Although I'm only on my second day in the office, I know I'm really going to like it here. You can expect many more blogs to come about my experience but that is not the purpose of this here blog post. The purpose is to wrap of my experience last week at-

The Seattle Rep New Play Program at Western Washington University
Yes, last week I had the pleasure of observing, mingling, playing kickball, karaoking, and creating art with a group of 20 professional Seattle theatre types. What a great week it was too. I feel like I have so much to say about my experience but my words are stalled. (That doesn't happen very often.) In short, the people we met, the plays that were read, our own work was all fantastic and I am so happy I slept on an air mattress for a week in an empty apartment to participate in this program. The hours were long but the reward was well worth it.

I had the joy of serving as the student playwright for the week, shadowing Stephanie Timm as she worked on her play Asleep in the Mouth of a Crocodile: An American Dream. It was interesting to watch someone else's process as a playwright. Since the play was in the early stages, we really saw how she went about developing the plot, the characters, basically the entire thing. I think I picked up some tools for the future, some that I may use on a play I started recently called (for now) The Last Tree. That play has stalled and I need it to get moving again.

We watched the professional process during the day and spent the evenings working on student work. We did staged readings for two of my plays: a completed one act called Dawn and a ten minute play called Car Parts. Dawn is a play that I have been wrestling with for a year now. It all started with a short scene that contained only a slap and has morphed into something, I feel, could be really great. I had a fantastic director and readers (thanks to Danny Kam, Ashley Johnson, Jessica Young, and Miguel Vila) who staged a very good reading. I think, in my naivete, that it is nearly ready for a production. So the question now is "how?"

This move/change/new chapter of my life is the start of a process of questions. My explorations through Seattle which consist mostly of "how?" I'm ready to navigate the river but I must admit I am ever so slightly frightened. (I think it is good to acknowledge fear, accept it, use it, and move on.) Mostly about this whole nonsense of finding a day job and what not.

Through all of this, however, I need to remember that I am a theatre artist - not just a writer. I am an actor, playwright, writer. I have capabilities to work in all sides of theatre. (These are my affirmations for the day. You may steal them if you like.)

Here we go.

And once again, thank you so much to everyone who participated in the Seattle Rep Program. It was invaluable experience for me and I only have gratitude for it.

F-ing Miracle at Book-It and the Seattle Rep

This blog title is a combination of everything theatre that is going on in my life currently. Clever, right? Well, regardless, it's a lot. I find that I am falling behind a bit in school work but what I lack in motivation in that area, I make up for in busyness in theatre. Let's start with the beginning.

The F Word
We perform next week, ah! We officially put the script together on Sunday night so now it is a scramble to make sure everything is performance worthy by Wednesday (when we preview). It'll be a rush, especially at the end but the exquisite pressure (as Rich Brown would say) is on us.

I think we have a provocative and thoughtful show that will hopefully effect the audience in many ways. I think there are some new ideas about feminism that many have not thought about before. Furthermore, it is personal and relevant to our lives.

Miracle Worker
We're going into our second week of performances. Six performances starting tonight with a double feature on Friday (one performance for area school children). It'll be a rough week but luckily I have some time backstage to work on homework and other things that are lacking. Now, my challenge is to stay motivated in that way.

Last week's performances went pretty well; Saturday's audience was definitely the biggest and the most responsive. I'm hoping that Ev is coming off as more caring than she is written in the script. Patrick Dizney at one point challenged me to play her as a "caring, doting aunt." I'm taking inspiration from my own aunt and I sincerely hope it is reading. To a certain extent, there does still have to be an edge to Ev; she can basically say and do whatever she wants. She has a luxury that not many other characters in the play have. I'm looking forward to the rest of the week's performances and also to being finished with the show. It is time to put the miracles to rest.

Book-It Repertory Theatre
I am officially an intern for the summer at Book-It Repertory Theatre. I am very excited. My position is something like "assistant to the managing director" which, in my opinion is very Office-esque. My job will encompass many things but mostly working on getting some of their scripts published. I can't wait...the internship starts June 28th. Yikes. In the meantime, I also need to be looking for a job, as I will need some income to...well, I don't know. Live.

Seattle Rep New Play Program at WWU
Very exciting news! I have been selected to be one of the playwrights for this new program at Western. It is a week long intensive were the college students (mostly recent graduates) will work along side professional theatre artists from the Seattle Repertory Theatre. They'll be putting up professional readings of new plays by Stephanie Timm and Bryan Willis. We'll then mirror that process with new plays of our own. This means, I need to be writing...a lot and quickly. More information on this to come.

Broken Promises

Okay, let's face it. I never did the wrap up post that I promised and thought I would do. The transition between Apocalypse Plays and the next projects was brief, so I took the time for myself. I will conclude the project just a bit, in case anyone is still reading and wants to know what is going on in my head:
I am so proud of the work that we did. Theatre is never easy, and doing theatre that is produced by strictly students, especially ones learning how a production team and producing body works is a challenge in and of itself. I know things I would do different for sure. I still struggle with finding my voice in the rehearsal process, figuring out when and how to say things. I do, however, understand my writing voice so much better and how to further develop my plots and characters. You can bet those pieces, especially Regarding Eden, will be getting rewrites and will hopefully be remounted in a future date.

Enough of that.
As you can see, I changed the name of the blog. Although the url will stay the same (apocalypseplays.blogspot.com), the focus of the blog will move to my life as a theatre artist (hopefully, I can add "working" to that title some day) and the projects I'm working on. Speaking of which, I'm currently working on two shows.

The Miracle Worker
Character: Aunt Ev
My last major show at Western is on the mainstage and faculty directed. It will be a nice way to end my career at WWU, by doing what I came here to do: act. My part is not very big but that does not matter. When I enter, I am to be mighty: a sweeping Southern woman who often oversteps her bounds. Right now, I'm struggling with trying not to make her a stereotype. She was a real person after all.
Oh and guess what? I think I'm getting a bustle. Yes!

The F Word
Returning to my love: devising. The F Word is the brain child of Amanda Woodard, and her senior project to boot but I am only too happy to oblige. The concept of the show is based on feminism but who knows how it will go from there. We are in the research phase and I think we're all feeling a bit overwhelmed. I considered myself to be knowledgeable about feminism, at least the history of feminism, before but we're all finding that there is so much to know. Research is a good start but what will really effect the work is our personal stories. I hope the research does not stall us as we move forward. Currently, I'm having a hard time coming up with moments myself because I have so many things behind me. I have ideas but nothing is coming to fruition quite yet. We're having our first movement rehearsal tonight so I'm hoping that sparks something inside me.

In the meantime, I am writing too but I think I'll save that for a future post.

Finished but not complete.

We opened. We closed.

I think the show went very well. I'm getting some positive feedback.

We just closed yesterday and I miss the show already. More debrief to come later.

Opening Night!

It is finally time for opening night. And we're ready.

We had a successful preview last night. It was really good that we had an audience first though. There were a lot more about the plays that are funny apparently than we anticipated. Nearly everyone had a moment where they just about broke, including myself. I didn't think "What if something doesn't work exactly right" was so humorous. Inherently, I know that I write humor in my pieces but I didn't expect the humor to be so apparent. It is a new challenge for all of our actors to work with. In some cases it adds a lot to the pieces, as in Eden because it creates a much stronger connection for the Eden character (Ashely) and the Devin character (Brian). In other cases, it was a wee bit distracting for our actors as in Bathtub Safety. The seriousness and finality of the piece was lost amid a sea of laughter. In my case, I enjoyed the laughter. Since, it is a solo piece, I'm glad I finally had somewhere to pull some more energy from.

The opening of the show tonight means the ending of the show tomorrow. I'll be sad to see it go but I know the work is never done. After the show closes, there is of course, all sorts of senior project work to finish and then, as always, more rewrites to do.

Thanks for reading about the journey.

Tech Rehearsal

I applaud my designers and director. Paper tech, dry tech, and wet tech all in one day? It is a feat. Yes, we have a total of roughly seven light cues but still, wonderful work. We've had some issues with the set here and there, and we still don't know exactly where we are getting chairs for seating but it'll come together. Our actors were dismissed after just an hour and a half tonight. Now that's efficiency.

I will say this: ah, the perils of a found space. I think the cast is really getting settled in nicely to finally being in the performance space but set up and tear down is quite the process. According to our contract through our producing body Student Theatre Productions (STP), we have to be able to tear down and store our set every night so as not to be in the way of any thing else that might be in that space (usually classes or other productions). That is true of all levels of productions through STP because we simply do not have a space of our own to use. The College of Fine and Preforming Arts (CFPA) is kind enough to let us use this weird space, but, of course that means some extra interesting challenges to work through.

Behind our playing space are three massive mirrors that need to be covered. If we do not cover them, the light will reflect off the mirrors and interrupt the actors and distract the audience. So there is a necessity to cover the mirrors. The challenge is not really how to cover the mirrors or what to cover them with (black paper, if you are curious) but coordinating the schedule of set up and take down. Danielle is prepared with jobs and we have sufficient time. Then the issue becomes storage. Being, once again, in this weird space we don't have any storage at all. We will be storing props and set pieces in our stage manager's (Kayley) car.

Today, all of it seemed to come together. We're moving into dress rehearsals tomorrow. We have a preview scheduled for Wednesday night, and our shows are Thursday and Friday.

(I've decided) The tagline for the shows:
The apocalypse is coming...
But don't worry. It's a good thing.

tech weekend

We ran a whole she-bang last night for the first time and Danielle and I realized something:

We have a show!

And now, we have some big issues to deal with. Tomorrow begins tech. You'll have an update by the end of the weekend.