Saying Goodbye to Thebes

My first main stage production with theatre KAPOW was in September of 2013 when we mounted our first run of The Burial at Thebes. It is a beautiful contemporary adaptation of the Antigone play by the famous Irish poet, Seamus Heaney. It is an uncommon privilege in the theater world to come back to a script and perform the same roles over several years, however, this was the experience for myself and a handful of other actors. For the past 5 years we have returned to Thebes each September to perform for the freshman class at St. Anselm College to coincide with the these new students’ reading of Antigone. We have also performed on a few other occasions for high school students.

This September will be our last run of the show and our 7th time re-mounting the show. Many actors have performed in various roles over the years and just the other day in rehearsal we were attempting to count up the total number of people who have contributed to the production. For the past 5 years I have marked the coming of fall with not only my return to teaching and my children’s return to school but also with the mid-August email from Matt Cahoon, usually entitled “Return to Thebes” or most recently, “The Very Last Thebes (We think)”. Facebook and Instagram have faithfully popped up pictures of the original show photos and many other rehearsal pictures from over the years.

As I reflect on this, it occurs to me how much I will miss receiving Matt’s email and how sad it will be when we actually do put this production to rest. Like many greek tragedies, Antigone deals with the flaws and strengths that make us human and is full of timeless themes such as love, pride, power, morality, betrayal, loyalty and fear. Each year as we’ve return to the play, we’ve found new relevance in its content. For me, the poetry and themes never get stale. We have found connections to 9/11, the Boston Marathon Bombings and other news stories and political climates throughout the 5 years.

I have played Ismeme, sister of Antigone, each year as well as a chorus member. Each year I’ve found a new lens to see Ismene through and different ways to analyze her relationship with Antigone and her decision not to follow her sister's plan to go against the “laws of the land” and bury her brother. In her I have found a fierce love of her family, but a true fear that perhaps we’d call her tragic flaw. Fear is certainly an emotion we can all connect with and one that so often decides our decisions in life. Was Ismene wrong to deny her sister her support and to not, as she states, “defy the laws of the land”? This question of who was right, Creon or Antigone, has been an ongoing conversation for the company and one that is always discussed in our talk backs after each show. There have been many different opinions and insights over the years, but as Tom Hanks as Forest Gump says so eloquently when describing what life might mean, “maybe it’s a little of both.”

Ismene is spared by King Creon and we never really find out what happens to her. Fear may have been her flaw, but it wasn’t a fatal one for her, unlike most of the other characters in the play, so maybe she’s wiser than we thought. Last year one of the college students asked me what I thought happened to Ismeme at the end of the play.  Where did she go? I have thought about this a lot and my favorite imagining is that she fled far away to the seaside and lived out her days watching the tides in solitude. Perhaps never forgiving herself for living and her sister dying, but somehow finding peace in her escape from the tragedy at Thebes.

~Rachael Longo

(photos by Matthew Lomanno)

2016 Resolutions

It's that time of year: the gym is crowded, various diets and cleanses are all the rage. Everyone is "turning over a new leaf" for the new year. We thought about some things we'd like to be sure to do in 2016, and here's what we came up with:

1. Engage audiences in the process
Last season we began a series of special engagement opportunities with our donors and audience members. The process of creation is often very private, but theatre is a collaborative experience. The cycle of sharing, discussing, revising, sharing again and continuing the discussion is at the heart of the rehearsal process. We’d like to widen the circle of participants and provide a deeper experience for audience members in 2016.

2. Experience the work of other companies
Re-stocking the well is an essential part of creative life. Sometimes that means setting aside time to read a book or color in a coloring book. One source of great inspiration and fuel for the fire/desire to create good work is to see good work. Be it dance, theatre, music, or visual art, in 2016 we want to see good work and share it with others. We’ll plan a series of “field trips” to re-stock our well and inspire our creativity.

3. Train with visiting artists
Over the course of the past several years we have hosted visiting artists as part of the annual Artists’ Retreat at Chanticleer Gardens in Dunbarton and have twice hosted trainings led by visiting artists at our studio space in Manchester. In 2016, we seek to expand training opportunities in both locations. A commitment to rigorous training has been integral to tKAPOW’s work since the beginning, but we believe that a critical aspect of our future success will be learning more about different approaches to theatre making. With this in mind, tKAPOW will plan and schedule a series of pay-as-you-go training experiences for local theatre artists.

4. Provide artists with opportunities to expand their own training
As mentioned above, training is an important piece of tKAPOW’s identity. Something that we’d like to do in 2016 is to make funding available to allow artists who work with tKAPOW to take part in training with other companies or in complementary fields that we believe may benefit future tKAPOW productions. So, attend a theatre workshop, take lessons in a certain instrument, or practice circus skills as part of an aerial silks class, we hope we can help pay for it. We want to encourage our artists to gain skills that will add to future productions.

5. Incorporate music into our work more fully
Truthfully this is one of those resolutions that I put in the list every year. Working with Sandy on The Burial at Thebes and Dave on Macbeth really added a great deal of texture to those productions and we are excited to find other ways to integrate music more fully into future productions. With Raining Aluminum, the new piece that we are premiering in June 2016, we are collaborating with Cynthia MacLeod, a fiddler from PEI. It will be fascinating to see how Cynthia’s work on the soundscape for that piece influences the storytelling. I look forward to exploring ways that music can be used in new and perhaps unexpected ways to improve our work.

6. Expand our audience base by performing in new locations
In 2015, we were fortunate enough to perform in Manchester, Derry, Concord, and Portsmouth. Everywhere we went we met new people who truly enjoyed our work. In 2016, we are already scheduled to do a workshop in Boston and I look forward to finding new performance venues. In September, we met with a number of presenters from Canada about performing up there so who knows maybe we’ll be visiting Tim Horton’s instead of Dunks when we need a caffeine boost in the new year.

7. Create a “bring-a-friend” program to introduce new audiences to our work
We know that our audience members are the best advocates for our work. We hear such lovely feedback following performances both in person and online. We want to find a way that you can share tKAPOW’s shows with a friend and get some benefit out of it. Whether that is a reduced ticket for yourself, a buy-one-get-one offer, or some kind of loyalty program, I don’t know yet, but we’d love your help in introducing more people to what we are doing.

8. Increase participation in Open Training
Just today, we fell down a YouTube hole of watching clips of Wheel of Impressions from The Tonight Show. Both the musical editions and the one with Kevin Spacey (which is a master class in vocal work itself, you should watch it) reminded me that training, training, training is so essential to creating good work. Training your ear, training your voice, training your mind, training your body: these are the tools of the craft. To excel at your craft, you need to train. It’s not about having great physical prowess or building incredible strength or inhuman flexibility. It’s about training your instrument to do what you need it to do when you need to do it, so that you can get out of your own way and be in the moment. In 2016, we will continue to share the trainings we practice, and new trainings that we find.

9. Research and learn more about the world in which we live and work, approaches to theatre creation, understanding of cultures with which we are unfamiliar.

At this time of year we often spend a lot of time reading. We read a lot of scripts, yes, but we also read about different training methodologies, philosophical texts, books on textual analysis, and the occasional book that seems unrelated to anything (Banana: The Fate of the Fruit that Changed the World and I Am Malala are on the pile this year). It is part of tKAPOW’s mission to present great works of dramatic literature from across ages and cultures, but it never really feels like we have dug deep enough. The world is a big place and, the more we learn about different cultures, the more we understand the universality of the human experience. In 2016, we must travel more, read more, and meet more people who can help us tell the stories that need to be told.

10. Recommit to our aesthetic
We talk a lot about what makes a tKAPOW show a tKAPOW show and always end up back at the same place, aesthetic. So many great artists have contributed to shaping that aesthetic over the years and, in 2016, we will continue that work to define who we are as a company through the way that we produce work. Intimacy remains a key element of our aesthetic, as does accessing character through physicality, approaching all production elements artistically, and--I hope--endeavoring towards ingenuity. This is truly the work of a lifetime, an un-achievable resolution that will nonetheless remain forever a goal for this company, in 2016 and for many years to come.

Season 8:breathe

Dream. Awake. See. Breathe.

There are so many reasons that breathe makes a fitting and wonderful theme for season 8. The Latin word spiro, to breathe, gives us the English word inspiration. And the related word spiritus means breath, the soul, vigor, that which animates life. The breath provides a return to the most basic thing that makes us alive.

Kristin Linklater gives a wonderful tip which applies to both the artistic life and quotidian life: “Do fall in love with your breathing. It's you. It's your emotions. It's your voice. It's not a machine." Frequently at our open trainings, we talk about the importance of returning to the basics of training, including voice and the breath. Season 8 will be a good season to reinforce that message and to connect respiration directly to the work on stage.

It is a very busy season with, ironically, few opportunities to come up for breath. We start off very early in September by returning to Seamus Heaney’s The Burial at Thebes for a fourth time. The production will be September 8th, 9th, and 10th at the Dana Center at Saint Anselm College. While it is a piece that we have explored a number of times, we always try to add new elements. This year we’ll be incorporating some puppetry including a brand new marionette that we had made specifically for the production by a carver in Prague.  

The first weekend of October (2nd-4th), tKAPOW will present Duncan Macmillan’s beautiful play Lungs. Lungs tells the story of a young couple living in a time of global anxiety, terrorism, erratic weather, and political unrest, who wants to have a child but are running out of time. If they over think it, they'll never do it. But if they rush, it could be a disaster. Macmillan expertly balances humor with heartbreak and really poses questions about how we can live (and love) in a world as tumultuous as ours.

For Halloween we’ll return to yet another familiar piece as we remount our award-winning production of Macbeth. Shakespeare’s famed “Scottish Play” as interpreted by three actors using minimal props and costumes. An audience member who saw the show last year commented,”The production had an amazingly guttural (raw) feel to it; the energy of the production was palpable.” This year, we’ll be taking the show to two venues where tKAPOW has never performed: Seacoast Repertory Theatre (October 29th-31st) and the Capitol Center for the Arts (November 6th).

The very popular ARTiculate playreading series at the Currier Museum of Art is now in its third year and will continue this year with two readings. The first play Bakersfield Mist by Stephen Sachs will be read December 13th. In this very funny new play, when it turns out that a thrift store gag gift may in fact be a long-lost Jackson Pollack painting, an expert is brought in to determine its authenticity. In March, tKAPOW will be reading Filming O’Keefe in relation to a piece in the Currier’s permanent collection: Cross by the Sea, Canada 1932, by Georgia O’Keefe. The play explores the relationship between O’Keefe and Alfred Stieglitz through the lens of a school project. The funny but poignant play explores the bonds of familial relationships as a teenage boy seeks to uncover his family’s hidden past.

After the success of 2013’s Penelope, tKAPOW is pleased to once again present a wonderful piece of contemporary Irish dramatic literature with Marie Jones’ Stones in His Pockets. This Olivier Award-Winning play (Best New Comedy, 2001) tells the story of a movie location shoot in Ireland, and the delightful, touching characters caught up in it. The piece is a comic tour-de-force for two actors who play all 15 roles. Not to be lost in the quick changes and ridiculous situations is a play with tremendous heart. Stones in His Pockets will be presented February 26th-28th at the Stockbridge Theatre.

In April, tKAPOW will return to the Currier for some very special events. tKAPOW, was part of a group of arts organizations and educational institutions that has come together to host a copy of Shakespeare’s First Folio. As part of the folio’s visit to NH, tKAPOW will be performing a selection of Shakespeare scenes (April 21st) and leading an educator workshop (April 23rd) at the museum.

May is a very busy month for tKAPOW. At the beginning of the month (April 29th-May 1st), we’ll be presenting George Brant’s explosive one-woman play Grounded. When an unexpected pregnancy ends an ace fighter pilot’s career in the sky, she is reassigned to operate military drones from a windowless trailer outside Las Vegas. She hunts terrorists by day and returns to her family each night. The play, which just completed a very successful New York run featuring Anne Hathaway, asks questions not only about the nature of modern warfare, but about its impact on families at home.

In mid May, tKAPOW goes on the road once again. This time we’ll be headed to the Charlestown Working Theatre in Boston to spend a week workshopping a new piece tentatively entitled Raining Aluminum. The piece weaves together the parallel storylines of the 1917 explosion in Halifax Harbor (and the corresponding American relief efforts) and refugee stories from Operation Yellow Ribbon (the Canadian response to the terrorist attacks on 9/11). While these two moments in history are often associated with great tragedy, Raining Aluminum seeks to highlight the tremendous instances of gratitude and the strength of human spirit. We are so thrilled to be collaborating with some fabulous artists on this project including the Czechoslovak American Marionette Theatre and world renown PEI fiddler, Cynthia MacLeod. The piece will be workshopped in Boston May 15th-21st in advance of the world premiere production at the Opera House in Derry June 24th-26th.

It will be a very busy season and one full of great theatre. In the words of the Buddhist monk, Thich Naht Hanh, “Smile, breathe, and go slowly.” A mantra for this busy season indeed.

From Brazilian Page to American Stage

It is not rare for theatre KAPOW to work with pieces in translation.  In fact, a quick count reveals that nine of our mainstage shows over the past seven seasons have been English translations/adaptations of pieces originally penned in a different language.  So, I think we’ve become pretty adept at interpreting foreign text for American audiences.  What we have never done, however, is play an active role in translating and adapting a piece for the stage.  That’s exactly the challenge we find ourselves facing with our current project, Uma Vida Imaginária (An Imaginary Life). 

How the text ever got to us in the first place is quite an amazing story.  Just over a year ago, our dear friend and collaborator Valentina Lattuada introduced me to Nick Farewell, a novelist currently living and working Sao Paulo, Brazil.  Nick, whose birth name is Gye Suk Lee, was born in South Korea and emigrated to Brazil when he was 14.  Nick’s parents were determined that he would assimilate to his new culture so he started using the western name Nicholas.  He says he learned Portuguese by playing ball with his school friends.  After starting a degree in Mechanical Engineering, Nick changed paths and decided to go into advertising.  He is now one of Brazil’s most well-known authors.  His best-selling book Go was selected for inclusion in the Brazilian public school curriculum and is such a cultural phenomenon that it has led to young people throughout Brazil getting the book’s title tattooed on themselves.

It was another of Nick’s books (Uma Vida Imaginária), that Valentina told me renewed her own faith in the redeeming power of love.  When Nick agreed to allow us to adapt his book for the stage, Valentina and I jumped at the opportunity.   That process started in earnest in August 2014 when Valentina travelled to NH to lead some training as part of theatre KAPOW’s annual summer artists’ retreat.  Carey, Peter, Valentina and I worked with local Brazilian actor Rafael Marinho to start the arduous process of making Nick’s words performable.  This was some of the most rewarding work of my life in the theatre.  Listening to Valentina and Rafael work through the language and then working with them to help take the literal translation and make it sound more natural was invigorating.

That week of work in August provided us with a rough draft of a script, but we knew that it still needed a lot of work.  Our next step was to send the script to our good friend and well-respected NH playwright Lowell Williams.  Lowell went through the script for us and found all the things that he thought needed to be re-worked.  One scene that provided us with a particularly difficult time (scene 10 in the show for those who may want to keep track) just didn’t seem to work in English.  In the scene the two characters are having trouble communicating because one is misinterpreting what the other is saying.  We really thought that the only way to make it work was if we kept the joke in Portuguese.  Then we decided to turn to two more of our longtime collaborators Mark Marshall and Kyp Pilalas from Wax Idiotical Films.  Mark and Kyp are two of the funniest guys I know and their films have a trademark quick wit.  They puzzled over the scene and within just a few days sent us a re-write that is absolutely one of my favorite parts of the show.  They just did such a tremendous job remaining loyal to Nick’s words while also finding a way to make the scene work for an American audience.

Now we’re in rehearsal for the show and every night we find little things we want to tweak.  It’s a process to be sure and one that likely isn’t going to be finished until the lights come up on opening night.  We are anxious to share that moment with you and especially excited that Nick will be there to share it with us.  From Korea to Brazil to New Hampshire I can’t imagine what it will be like for him to watch his words come to life on stage at the Opera House.  Man, now I’m psyching myself out.  There’s lots of work left to do before you and Nick arrive. Gotta go.

1. ~ Matt Cahoon

Instant Acting and Kismet

Just add water...and a script, a director, a castmate, copious amounts of coffee.... a couple of slices of pizza won’t hurt.

Walking into the kickoff meeting of the 2014 24 Hour Play Festival, I really had no idea what to expect, but I thought I did. I knew there would be about 30 people there. I knew that five playwrights and five directors would be paired up by the luck of the draw and that the rest of us would be assigned to a cast by lottery.  But I did not know the sweet moments of kismet, or the confidence in my ability to work fast….really fast, and pretty well.  I’m hooked.

I knew two people in the room, Debera Lund and Olivia Dodd, a director and an actor with whom I’d just worked for a week last month. I secretly hoped I’d work with Deb, because I liked her process and didn’t get to work with her nearly long enough. The first playwright, Patrick Cleary got to pick a card from the “director” group. He drew Debera. After the other playwrights randomly chose their directors, they got to pick their cast size. Patrick drew a cast of two.

Then, Debera was the first director to “cast” the show by blindly picking cards with the actors’ pictures on them. Suddenly, the picking-teams-in-gym-class feeling washed over me. I thought, “Please don’t let me be the last kid picked. Please don’t let me be the last kid picked”, until I realized that having a card with your face on it picked at random is more like being part of a card trick than being chosen (or not) for a dodgeball team. Debera picked my card first. Hooray! First kismet moment. By the end of the evening, our team included Patrick, Deb, myself, and a young actress named Jasmine Roth, who also happened to be one of the playwrights for the Festival.

The playwrights then chose a prompt in the form of an image or a quote. Our prompt was a picture of the M. C. Escher elephant. He chose a genre: Drama. There were a few minutes for the four of us to get together. When I meet new people, I fight an urge to talk. It is my job to make everyone in the group comfortable. Or uncomfortable, as the case may be. Even when it’s not. Somehow, I blurted out something about having a wicker table in the shape of an elephant. Because, you know, elephant is sort of random. It seemed like a team-building statement. Well, guess what? It kind of was. Because Patrick said he sometimes likes to approach things literally, and what did the elephant table look like, exactly? So I described it. Second kismet moment.

After the kickoff, the actors and directors got to go home to re-convene in the morning. The playwrights were challenged to write a play before 7:00 AM, while the rest of us slept. Although, I am not sure sleep is an accurate description. My mind was “on” all night. Would I get there in time? Would I be able to get my son to his cross-country team breakfast at approximately the same time I had to be at the theatre? Who was going to braid my daughter’s hair for her own theatrical performance that night? Would John, my husband, encounter any crazy theatre-dad issues he was unprepared for? Would everyone have enough to eat? (That last question is always there...I am probably the reincarnation of somebody’s zaftig ethnic grandmother….but I digress).

8:00 AM. On time. And Deb is already here. And there are scripts on the table for us to read. And there’s coffee! And a wifi password! Oh, this has already surpassed my expectations.  Jasmine arrives. Patrick is having some well-earned sleep. To me he has become an elusive fairy-godfather who worked through the night to deliver us an incredibly crafted play to bring to life. The script is entitled “Possession”. And, yes, it does involve an elephant-shaped wicker table. And the conflict between two women, a hoarder and her well-intentioned family member, at odds over the inherent value of stuff. And whether the table is, in fact, a table, or an elephant sculpture. I read it. I love it. It’s 10 pages (not, 17, thank you Patrick!). It’s about people I’m related to. You see, I have the I-break-at-yard-sales gene. (That’s a thing, right?)  I fight that gene tooth and nail, but I have it. Third kismet moment.  

In the script there’s a squabble over an opal ring. An opal ring, really?  Fourth kismet moment.

And we began. In spite of having Debera Lund as our director, I was certain this would have to be a day of blocking and memorizing. How can you possibly find the depth and soul of a character whose ink is barely dry in 10 hours? How can you create a backstory and undercurrents to the character relationships before lunch with a story that has just been read for the first time. Well, you can. You SO can! And, all of a sudden, I recalled days of working summer theatre twenty years ago….when ten days seemed more than sufficient to work on a full-length musical and fill a 1,300 seat house for two weekends.  It’s called total immersion. We had a day. But we had that WHOLE day. There was no world outside to attend to. Yes, we took breaks. Yes, we ate lunch. But those were the moments when the things we worked on took the time to seep into our limbic centers. There were no distractions. No one needed us to make their lunches. No one needed a ride to a friend’s house. No one needed to take over the kitchen with three friends to make cupcake sans recipe. And not a single person brought mud potion into the rehearsal room and accidentally spilled it.

We blocked. We formed relationships between the characters beyond the story at hand. We got to know these two women Patrick created literally overnight out of a prompt and a commitment. Debera was there to share her metaphors, to guide us, to push us to change up our approach, and change it back, and find the sweet spot. She calls it “whiplash” directing. I call it brilliant.

Jasmine and I got to know each other pretty well, in an “I’m-sorry-I-have-to-grab-you-and-throw-you-on-this-pile-of-hoarded-stuff” sort of a way. (The director made me do it.) In spite of the fact that she was up most of the night writing a play for another team, she was good. She was quick. She was a lot of fun to work with. My character was sort of obviously nuts. Her character was more difficult, I thought, walking a fine line between being a supportive and loving family member and just having-it-up-to-HERE already!

We teched at five. Our show opened at 7:30. First up. And we did it. We formed characters out of Patrick’s well-placed words on a page and adrenalin and coffee and water and trust and thought and repetition. Fifth kismet moment. And I want to do it again.

~ Deirdre Hickok Bridge

24 Hours, and... go!

Driving around Pinkerton in the dark tonight looking for the Stockbridge Theater was a bit of a metaphoric representation of the challenge of the 24 Hour Play Festival. As I came in through the back entrance, I thought I knew what I was doing. I had spent four years of my life studying at this institution, and never once did I get lost on campus, but tonight was the first time I had used this entrance since the Academy building had been built, and I almost missed the turn.

I have been heavily involved with theatre for the past decade, and this 24 Hour concept is completely throwing me for a loop and knocking me completely (well, almost) out of my comfort zone. I'm the type of director that loves to spend months with a script, tearing it apart, putting it back together, and figuring it out from every angle. I look forward to getting to know my actors on a personal level over the first few weeks of rehearsal so I can figure out the best way to use them. And I like to have time to let things sit, sleep on decisions, and fix my mistakes. Going into tonight, while I knew I would be attempting to battle the familiar beast of directing, I will be doing it in a very unfamiliar way, much like trying to navigate the back lot of Pinkerton Academy.

I was one of the first participants to arrive in the black box tonight. As they other directors, playwrights, and actors began to filter into the room, the tension began to rise. The nervous energy was at an all time high. I was a little at ease, as I had convinced my good friend, and sometimes co-collaborator, Jacob Randlett to be one of the actors for the festival. It was nice having a familiar face in the room, and I figured it would be cool to see him directed by someone else for once (him having been in 4 of the 8 things I have directed.) Once all of then 30-something people had taken their seats, the instructional period began. I was half listening. I also had sudden random doubtful thoughts that oft plague any artist. "What if my playwright has a really jarring style?" "What if my actors don't like me?" "What if I oversleep tomorrow?" and so on and so on. My mind was distracted when we went on a tour of the space, so I quickly was able to stop thinking about these things. But all these things came back to me, and I'm sure others as well, once we all re-entered the black box.

The table in the center of the black box had a large amount of what appeared to be "24 Hour Play Festival" playing cards, which turned out to be the head shots for the directors, playwrights, and actors, as well as the prompts for the shows. The playwrights head shots were turned over, and each one was called up to turn over a director card. After the first four went, and I hadn't been turned over, we all knew who was last. Me. I had met my playwright, Jasmine Roth, once before, as she had auditioned for me, but that was the end of my knowledge of her. I look forward to getting to know her work over the next 20 hours. After that, the directors were instructed to flip over the next set of cards: the number of cast members. The directors were just told to have at it, and we each grabbed a card. I got 4, the largest number possible. Fitting four actors into a 15 minute piece will be incredibly difficult, but I embrace the challenge.



Then the fun part: turning over the actor cards. The directors and playwrights took turns flipping cards as needed. The first card I flipped over made me laugh and curse, as I flipped over Jacob's head shot. I love and hate the fact that I drew him. It saves me time of having to "figure him out" but I also wanted to get away from my comfort zone, but I digress. We did get a nice extra challenge, as when we drew our genre card. Comedy. The only two options were comedy or drama, but comedy will be a good challenge, as Jasmine shared that she has only written deep drama before. My other three actors (Mitch Fortier, Sarah Dunn, and Finley Smith) all have various backgrounds, experiences, and special skills, and they should create a very eclectic ensemble. The next card drawn was our prompt, in which we were given the Anais Nin quote "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." Very thought-provoking, especially for a comedy. The final card drawn was a line of dialog that will have to appear in all five pieces: "You did what?!" After taking twenty minutes to share a little bit about ourselves with each other. We all broke for the night.

I feel... good. Tomorrow will be all about directing from the gut. No drawn out analyzing, no note taking, no research, no hours of ensemble building, just directing. I've been debating trying to draw up a less abstract plan but I don't think that will be any good. I'm just gonna go in there tomorrow, eat breakfast with my cast, read the script, and just let my artistic side flow free.

"You'll never be a success if you fear failure" - Paul Heyman. My motto in life, my motto for this project. Let's rock and roll!

- Dan Pelletier