How am I doing today?

Breathe.

Grounded closed yesterday, its initial run anyway. We got home after a 4-hour strike, I put the flight suit and boots away, shirt and socks into the laundry. I slept very, very soundly last night, which hasn’t been the case for the last two weeks. This morning I got up, and went through my full morning routine.

Read a chapter of Zen in the Art of Archery. Since the new year, I have started my day each day by reading 15 - 20 minutes of eastern philosophy, which has been incredibly calming and strength-building.

I spend a few minutes seeing off my husband and daughter as they head to work and school. 6 minutes of balance exercises. This six minutes every day is a great opportunity for me to check in with my body and my mind. How am I doing today? Am I steady? Am I grounded? I unroll my yoga mat, and stretch for 10 - 12 minutes. Breathe into those muscles, those joints, those hard-working tendons that need breath. Today was a return to planking in the morning. How am I doing? Do I feel strength and can I balance the tension and find relaxation?

I roll up my yoga mat, and bring up a guided vocal warm-up on my i-phone. I have been doing this vocal warm-up for almost six years now. In 2010, my husband pushed me to go to an actor training program. He researched summer programs and sent me the information on the Atlantic Acting School and said, “this is the one you need to go to.” He was right. I come back to the vocal work I learned there almost every day. I spend 10 minutes, 20 minutes or more if I have the time, breathing and generating sound. How I am doing today? Where am I feeling vibration? The warm up is different every day because I am different every day. Sometimes I spend my vocal time in the morning focused only on the breath, with very little sound. I am grateful for this time to breathe and nourish this very basic starting point for everything.

Make sure the water is heating up for my cup of tea.

I turn to another practice: speech. Working the muscles of my mouth. Tuning in to vibration and sound waking up the full range of my voice. Articulation, clear pronunciation, strength and freedom of movement to shape breath and sound to clearly communicate. How am I doing today? Am I here in this moment or just going through the motions? I spend about 16 or 17 minutes on this speech practice.

Brew a cup of green tea and let it steep.

Meditate 10 - 12 minutes. Breathe. How am I doing today? Am I here in this moment? Am I grounded?

Drink my green tea. Eat breakfast, face the day. Carry the work from the morning into the day.

I was terrified when theatre KAPOW chose to put Grounded into the season. There was a time I said, “Find someone else to do it. I won’t be able to do it.” 100 minutes on stage, just me. Lean into the uncomfortable, face the fear. I know that the only way I was able to do it was because of those daily practices. My voice did not give out, my body did not give out. Voice, speech, and most importantly breath.

I am grateful for those practices. I am grateful.

Breathe.

~Carey Cahoon

The Evolution of a Season - Our Relationship with Technology

It’s no secret, by now, that I’m really into season planning. At this time of year, several of us read dozens of plays and have long conversations about themes we are interested in exploring moving forward. While I’m certain some future post will be all about planning season 9, that’s not what I’m thinking about today. Rather than spending this time planning for future seasons, I find myself reflecting on season 8. No, it’s not done, there is still a lot of work to do, but as I sat to work on Grounded this morning, I found myself thinking of the show in context of the season as a whole.

If you’ve been following tKAPOW this season, you know that our theme is BREATHE. I think it’s a great theme and really touches upon both our interest in the importance of those things that make us human and the practical use of breath as a part of our training and storytelling processes. But, as I reflect on this season now that Grounded is nearly up on it’s feet, I find a different theme emerging. What I think we’ve really been exploring this season is humankind’s relationship with technology. It wasn’t planned that way and since it wasn’t planned somehow it feels more sincere. Here’s a reminder of what season 8 has looked like so far.  

In December, we produced Duncan Macmillan’s Lungs. The play centers around a young couple making deciding whether or not to have a baby. The relationship between M and W in that play is in the foreground, but one of the clear factors contributing to the couple’s (especially W’s) reluctance to have a baby is how much of an impact the child will have on the environment. Ultimately, I think everyone would agree that having the child was for the best and that M and W were able to live much happier lives as a result. At the end of the play, however, the world is literally covered in ash.

This year’s February comedy was Marie Jones’ Stones in His Pockets. Rich and Peter had a great time playing a whole bunch of different characters including members of both the local, rural Irish village a Hollywood film crew. As is fairly typical of a tKAPOW comedy, the show was funny on the surface but had some very serious undertones. At its roots, Stones explores the impact of outside modern influence on a traditional community.

With Grounded (opening this weekend at the Derry Opera House), the relationship between humans and technology is forefront. As the technology of warfare has shifted away from fighter jets and towards unmanned aerial vehicles (drones), the way we conduct war has changed considerably. So much of this show is about the guilt associated with inflicting harm without ever putting yourself in danger. The show also asks serious questions about how technology can desensitize even those in the most critical of fields. When our world is reduced to what can be seen on a small screen, what are the implications of our actions?

Looking back I’m really proud of the season aesthetically and think that a lot of the design elements also speak to our relationship with technology. Lungs was just two actors (wearing their own clothes), an 8’x10’ area rug, and a few Ikea light fixtures (oh and a grand total of 6 light cues). The world reduced to the minimal. The set for Stones was a physical representation of the influence of man (the rectangular platform) on nature (the circular grassy hill). David Brown provided beautiful traditional fiddle music which was contrasted by Tayva’s visible movie lighting equipment. Grounded, as you will see in just a few days, is a mess of technology. It’s as technologically complex a show we have ever done with 5 flat screens, multiple cameras, two laptops, and dozens of video clips. All of that technology is juxtaposed, however, by a single actress, in a single costume, standing in an 8’x8’ room with one very plain looking chair.

It’s fascinating to me that without really meaning to, we’ve been exploring this idea of our relationship with technology all season long. I think this speaks to the fact that amazing things can (and will) happen if you make a priority of producing well written shows and purposefully stringing together pieces that complement each other.

As we plan season nine (it’s still amazing to me that it’s already been eight years), we know that we have a responsibility to ourselves as artists, to the playwrights whose work we produce, and most of all to our audience, to continue to make deliberate choices when constructing the season. I’m excited to explore new themes in season nine and to see what conversations result.

~Matt Cahoon