Play Out the Play!

All's Red. . . closed.

The final performance of "All's Red that's Riding Hood" was yesterday, and by all accounts went very well.  I couldn't see it since I was prepping for the FCC Feast of Scholars Dinner. 

Our little cast party at Rousseau's was lovely with great fun and many laughs.  I do have to share Randi Saul-Olson's gift to me.  It's one of the most original gifts I've gotten for a show:  a decoupaged box with a wolf in sheep's clothing on it.  LOL!  If you look at it closely, the basket has bread, wine and turnips in it.  The rocks have little blood spots on it and the trees have bits of Red Riding Hood's cape on it.  LOL!

 

It, along with the stuffed wolf and the volume of Grimm's Grimmest Tales are very lovely tokens from the cast. 

I'll write more later, but right now I'm really exhausted from having finished three major projects in as many weeks.  There's more photos in the All's Red photo album, though.  And I hope to have a scene up on You Tube soon. 

~H

Letting it Go

Last night's preview went exactly the way I foretold it would.  Everyone was focused and drove elegantly through their actions.  The pacing was right on and the training took over.  It was the final step I needed to feel as though I could let the show go.

As a director, my previous casts and those I work with regularly know that I am NOT one of those directors who holds onto a show indefinitely.  I stop giving individual notes unless I see egregious errors.  And I rarely give ensemble notes except on keeping focus and pacing.  I figure that what could be fixed has been fixed.  The flaws are lessons I'll carry with me into future productions (such as learning better how to handle stage combat).  But if I've done my directing as well as I know how and my actors have conscientiously crafted their moments, the show will have legs. 

And it does.  I believe it has achieved what it wanted to be:  a Shakespearean fairy tale with some thought and a lot of heart. 

(Now lets hope the audiences agree!)

Final Dress and Preview

Tonight is our final rehearsal and we've invited a few folks to come in and see what's happenin'.  We're still in our rehearsal space so we'll be sans lighting, but we had our tech cue to cue and tech run on Sunday and it went really well, all things considered. 

What needed considering was the fact that I was told at the beginning of the process that i'd be working in a 3/4 round and so we staged the piece for that.  Arriving, though, the space was missing the chairs to the sides of the playing space-- apparently they had to remove them because a dance troupe also using the space has more people than they first told them. 

So, my actors braved up and played to the front after I had drilled 3/4 round movements in them.  The advantage, I suppose, of using Viewpoints techniques is that the actors become confident enough in their movement in a space that they can accommodate almost anything.  All four of the actors showed a terrific knowledge of how to use the space and move within it in that one run.  The technical director of the venue noted how well they adjusted to the change. 

Last night, though, we worked with the actual weaponry they were going to use.  And that went okay, I believe.  The actors seem okay with it.  They were a rough two run throughs, though.  But I know its all there.  They just seemed to be wigged by the end of the rehearsal process.  I know tonight will be a focused run. 

So now we're just moving through it and I'm in the process of letting this project go and getting my next project underway.  The costumes are officially done-done, which excites me to no end because I've been hankering to start my new Elizabethan doublet!  Huzzah!

Waking Up

Typically, when a photographer or reporter from a local paper comes in to get coverage of a play, it totally screws up the rehearsal.  Everyone's mojo is off, their focus is out of whack, and they can't seem to remember perfectly routine details of the script from the night before.  It's like every actor to hit the stage is suddenly a single celled organism.  It's exhausting.

Not for this group, however.  The photog from the South Valley Bee came in tonight, we ran the show from the top, and it was as though someone flipped a light on inside this cast.  While it was unnerving for some of them and others took it off the cuff, everyone was firing on all cylinders.  Their focus and energy was revved up and their responses were spontaneous, clear and germane. 

Suddenly, I didn't have to give the speeches I intended to give regarding active listening, making your words and actions land on their objects, and keeping buoyancy in their speech.  It was all there.  Even the second run through without the photographer was very good, solid and compelling.

We also got some fittings done on the costumes (I have just to put together two shift dresses for the ladies and they're done).  Sunday is our tech run through and the weaponry will be finished by then as well (I hope) and we'll be able to do our last three run throughs without any major hitches. 

Rehearsal Progress

Well, we've only got two weeks of rehearsal left for "All's Red".  They really are going well and the cast is working very hard to make every moment count.  I think that it will be a good solid 45 minutes in seats, but I am at the point where I may be too close to really know. 

As I've reviewed my notes, though, I see that there are a number of things we've actually worked on and improved during the course of rehearsals.  We still have some things to work on, but it is encouraging to look back and see from where we've come. 

Here are some items that aren't specific notes from the show, but are rather notes to myself on creating style in theatre.  It's a hard, ephemeral thing to cultivate and is as much a product of the collaboration of actor, script, and director.  Here are some thoughts I've written down in the course of the last two months of working on the show:

If the gesture is separated from the truth of the character's circumstance and inner life, it produces artificial posturing. 

Style is content; a physical gesture is an emotion.  The actor must understand it and illustrate it in the truest fashion possible. 

Style is the distinctive way a production communicates.  It is "knowing the play you are in". 

All great acting, no matter the style, begins with a truthful inner life, an incandescence and brightness.  Any style or expression must maintain a connection to inner truthfulness-- even in its most mannered forms. 

And, scrawled across an entire page in my notebook:

How is your art in your life?  And how is your life in your art?

A question for us all, I guess. 

Basic PR for All's Red

This is what has been submitted to the Rogue Festival for the Rogue Map and essential PR.

All’s Red that’s Riding Hood

Woodward Shakespeare Festival

Cal Arts Academy-- Severance

50 min

$7.00

www.woodwardshakespeare.org www.madwomansattic.net

 

Winner of the 2007 WSF New Playwright Competition, All’s Red that’s Riding Hood is a fractured fairy tale with a dark twist. Red Riding Hood heads for grandma’s house along her customary path. This day, however, she finds an unexpected companion in the exiled DeWolf. A series of misunderstandings ensue leading to a tragic end. Spoken all in blank verse, the story unfolds amid a gothic backdrop of good intentions gone wrong. Local playwright Terrence MacArthur both delights and startles audiences with his whimsical, thoughtful piece.

 

The cast, entirely from the South Valley, includes veterans from the Fourth Wall Theatre, Ice House Theatre, The Enchanted Playhouse, and the Sequoia Theatre Conservatory. Director Heather Parish, known in Visalia for her stylish and intelligent productions, incorporates a flair for the unexpected into this piece.

Rated PG-13; Some violent content.

*****************

I'm also updating the photos of the cast in my previous post. 

All's Red that's Riding Hood

Well, the WSF board approved my proposed budget, so it looks like the green light is really green.  We're setting up a meeting with my producer ladies, the fabulous Debora Bolen and the vivacious Laura Vogt.  I'm super excited to get to work with them both.

Oh, if you missed the memo, this is for Woodward Shakespeare's entry to the Rogue Festival in February.  It's an original piece by local playwright Terrence McArthur, a fractured fairy-tale with a tragic twist, and spoken all in blank verse.  Really charming, whimsical, yet dark stuff.  Right up my alley. 

 

The cast is also set-- I'm mailing out scripts this weekend.  The cast as it stands:

DEWOLF:  James Sherrill (Richard Lionhart, Lion in Winter)

RED RIDING HOOD:  Alicia Buss (Princess Alais, Lion in Winter)

LORD WOODMAN HOOD:  Tom Nance (The Man, Turn of the Screw; Frederick Arnott, Enchanted April)

GRANDMOTHER HOOD:  Randi Saul-Olson (Costanza, Enchanted April)

I'm hoping to have the first meeting in early November.  Huzzah!