for those of you who couldn't be here

Here's a (very) brief glimpse at some of Alice in Wonderland.

More news on the theater front:
I've auditioned twice for shows on campus (Much Ado About Nothing and the mini-musical showcase for the directing class), to no avail.
BUT, I'll be assistant directing my friend's mini-musical, Cradle Will Rock.

Alice in Wonderland, vol. VII

I think my proudest accomplishment is the fact that the kids are acting in the photos.

I'm prouder of that than the performances in front of our audiences.

Alice in Wonderland, vol. VI

We open tomorrow. Our final tech dress rehearsal is tonight. We have a preview audience coming this evening.

I actually slept past 8 today. This must mean I believe we're ready. (I think we just might be.)

This is also the inevitable time during a production when the director has to let it go. Mistakes will be made--probably the same ones that have been made for weeks--and that's just how it's going to go. The actors need to be prepared for things to go wrong and need to work through those moments alone. It's up to them now. And that's always a relief to me, honestly.

It's amazing how many TINY, TINY details can be worked out in just 5 days of technical rehearsals. AMAZING. I mean, I made decisions this week about things like how many sides of a box need to be painted, what color lipstick needs to be worn, where each set piece needs to go and what color spike tape is needed to mark them, how many seconds of prelude music need to play before the first entrance, which crew member needs to help a large set piece get onstage and on what word. I forget how many hundreds of decisions need to be made, and how many ways a show can go, if you're not organized and if you don't have a clear vision and if you can't make decisions. It's astounding. No wonder I stopped sleeping this week.

Aside from rumors of some backstage bossiness and negative attitudes, things seem to be running pretty smoothly among the kids. They look fantastic, the show sounds great, and I'm pretty confident there's fun being had.

I realized this weekend that the next thing I need to do is start being proud of MYSELF and the work I'VE done. I find it very easy to pass the credit on to others: my co-director, my designers, the actors themselves. And I need to reclaim some of it, even just for myself. I built this show too.

Alice in Wonderland, vol. V

On every show I've ever worked on, there is a point during the process at which I stop sleeping. I was doing incredibly well for weeks and weeks on this show, which seemed miraculous considering the chaos of working with kids and the challenges of co-directing. I was able to, for the most part, leave my work at work...

We open in a week. I will probably spend 26 of the next 48 hours in the theater (crossing my fingers that it's far less than that, but you never know), designing lights, finalizing sound, finishing painting, and having as many dress rehearsals as we can manage, once everything is set.

Needless to say, I think I've stopped sleeping.

We've finally gotten a few full-runs under our belt, which is a relief. Big set pieces are done and being worked with, lines are NEARLY completely memorized, painting has begun, and sound is mostly designed. It's the tiny details, at this point, that keep me up at night. The parts of the process that I, inevitably, need to give up control over eventually. The fact that the show crashes after intermission is something that I hope will change with the next week of rehearsals, but it's also something I'm not positive about. The minutiae of cutting sound tracks to the seconds we want to use to underscore. The scenes that still aren't quite clicking. The blocking mistakes and dropped lines that are always made. It just feels a little bit like a crapshoot in terms of how much of this will actually get ironed out before Friday. I guess it always does.

As S wisely says, every show can benefit from another week of rehearsals, no matter how organize or prepared you've been. But we never get it. And the magical theater fairies always take over and everything seems to work out all of a sudden.

I'm just not sure magical theater fairies visit children's productions in quite the same way.

thought of the day, 39: collection

Today, the 10 year old girl who is playing Dormouse in Alice in Wonderland gave me a poem she had written in summer school last week. It's an acrostic (remember those?):
Different than normal mice
Outdoors is not their favorite friend
Observe them carefully (We talked about the poem last week and I reminded her that dormouse only has one "o.")
Ranches are where they live
Many different colors
Oddballs they are
Umbrellas are were [sic] they hide
Small and cute
Eagles like to eat them

I realized just now that I have been working with kids long enough, and with enough kids, that I've got a collection of items from them, including all the nametags I made during my work with New York Cares and the "art" I made with the 5 year old daughter of the stagemanager of My Fair Lady. (She had obviously just learned the letters i, s, and t, because those were all she used to "spell out" my favorite foods on neon post-its. I also taught her how to draw a cake and how to write and spell "chocolate.")

I can't even begin to imagine what I'll add to my collection while in school next year.

thought of the moment, 24: such a teacher

I actually just put the words "she's just a joy" into an email to one of my kids' parents.

5th grade math classes, here I come!

Alice in Wonderland, vol. IV

We're about three weeks away from tech week, which is a little mind-boggling considering we just walked through Act III yesterday afternoon. Definitely feeling the inevitable crunch of time when you consider 15 kids, the range of ages, and the fact that most of the rest of the play involves our entire cast onstage. Not to mention regular absences and no technical elements yet. (Although, our costume designer and props manager are on board and working hard to get everything done in time.)

I ran a few rehearsals at the end of June without K and then the 4th of July happened, so we're basically playing catch-up from days off and trying to sustain a certain momentum and hoping not to overwhelm the kids, and I'm not sure how successful we've been at any of it. S keeps reminding me that the main thing is these kids have fun, and I think I'm so bogged down by details I can't quite tell if they actually are. Not to mention that their having fun is certainly a key point, but we can't forget that at the end of this process, they're going to be onstage alone 4 times a weekend for 2 weeks. There's a certain urgency to what we're doing too; despite the fun, it's also a ton of work. I'm not positive all the kids realize this or have a sense of the end result being something they have to do all by themselves.

At this point, it's a matter of time-managing to the last minute and giving those that need individual attention their due. I'm finding it difficult to keep a purely positive attitude because at a certain point, the show will just be what it's going to be, and whatever energy I put into it doesn't really change that. Not that I'm not doing my best, just that my best under these circumstances will only result in so much.

All of that aside, the end of the show is going to be striking, I think. Our costumes are going to be fantastic; our props manager is an utter genius; and 3 weeks goes very quickly.

(In other news, I've booked my one-way ticket to Boston for August 19, which is so soon, it makes me die a little on the inside.)

Alice in Wonderland, vol. III and more

One and half weeks in, and we're still on track. We've staged and discussed the entire first act (there are three). Yesterday, K and I split up for a majority of the rehearsal, which was a relief for me, having felt for a few days that dividing and conquering would be the best strategy for getting some of this work up and running.

We're starting every rehearsal with a warm-up and a set of exercises/games. Yesterday, we played a game S and I invented while bored once, in which we all sing a song, one word at a time (S and I mastered "Hit Me Baby One More Time"). The cast and I started with "Twinkle, twinkle, little star." First person sings "Twinkle," next sings "twinkle," next sings "little," etc. It's about keeping the rhythm of the song more than anything and is surprisingly challenging. The kids did well though. Then we explained the idea of playing the opposite, and assigned short phrases to each kid, then gave them an apparently opposite situation to play: saying "I love you" at the end of a long argument with your boyfriend, for instance. These kids love these intention games, which is exciting and gratifying and entertaining.

I worked with Alice and Rabbit on the end of the first act, while K tackled a group song that happens in Act III. Then I specified some blocking in the Mad Tea Party scene. It's pretty complicated, and I found myself trying to do math and then justifying the amount of chairs we'd chosen to put in the scene. I'm not convinced it worked, but it's OK for now.

I hope we'll continue to split up some of the labor, and Monday we're going to work individually with some of the younger kids.

In the meantime, I've registered for my fall semester classes. I'm taking Drama as Education I, which is a core for getting my teaching license, Principles in Acting, with a focus on Augusto Boal, and Performance Theatre and Community, which is a core for my Theatre and Community focus. There are 35 incoming 1st year grad students: 28 women and 7 men.

Alice in Wonderland, vol. II

We've begun to do some scene work, and it's going more smoothly than I expected. After a bit of a miscommunication hiccup late last week, K and I had a good, productive conversation about sharing the labor and getting in touch at least once a day. It's necessary if we're really co-directing this thing, and K is incredibly overworked at her job, so finding a routine for the two of us is imperative and will keep me sane.

Friday afternoon, we spent the time at rehearsal breaking the scenes down into simple objectives, which, with a group of 15 kids and a huge range of experience, not to mention vocabulary skills, was challenging. My goal was to shed light on the idea that in a scene there are things that you want that other people in the scene keep you from getting and so you must use different tactics to try to get what it is you're seeking. It's a basic acting lesson, but I'm finding that my brain doesn't really run on simple mode and that it's generally difficult for me to break something down into little nuggets of clarity for the younger kids. K is very good at that, but sometimes breaks things down too simply. I want to be sure that the younger kids are not being patronized too: I don't want them to just play "angry." It's a fine balance between clarifying something and dumbing it down. The kids I can use my everyday vocabulary with, my catchphrases with, are the ones I'm gravitating toward. Luckily, our principals are very strong and seem to speak my language.

Yesterday, we started from the beginning of the act and got some good, more specific work done. The biggest challenge is keeping the other kids occupied when I'm working with just a few on a scene. At this point, we've had them watch one rehearsal (which was fine until about 1/2 hour until the end of class) and work together in small groups and then present the scenes they'd worked on. Tomorrow, we're going to hope that they're satisfied with a long warm up, some projection exercises, and then working on their lines, until we get through the end of the act. Then, perhaps they'll be OK with watching while we finetune and run it.

Alice in Wonderland, vol. I

We'll see how long this lasts, but I thought I'd give blogging my Alice experiences a shot, while I have the evening totally free.

As I mentioned in a post many weeks ago, I've been hired at the San Luis Obispo Little Theater to direct their annual summer children's production. I'm co-teaching with the theater's Production Manager (let's call her K), who is an incredibly hardworking young woman. She and I are virtually always on the same page and, kudos to her, she's really great at letting me lead while also totally supporting me and helping out when I need another brain on the job. I was initially apprehensive about working with someone so closely, and I'm sure it won't always be sunshine and roses, but so far, we're cooperating with great success.

K and I spent about 3 days in mid-April auditioning these remarkable kids. Subsequently, we've also had to recast the show probably 8 times (I kid you not). Scheduling conflicts and other opportunities coming up and flaky parents; what can you do? I've been surprised at my ability to hunker down and problem solve in those cases though and impressed at my ability to keep a level head.

A few weeks ago, we gathered our final group (15 kids, ages 8-17) for a meet and greet that went so much better than I expected. K and I laid down the rules, explained our mentoring system (pairing SLOLT vets with newer and younger kids), went over our discipline policy (3 Strikes), and then played games for about an hour. At the end of the afternoon, the feedback I got from the kids, during our reflection time, which we're planning on doing every night, was AMAZING. Several new kids asserted that they were confident they'd feel comfortable, even in this new environment, and the shyest cast member proclaimed she realized she didn't need to be shy with us. (I wasn't even nervous, going into the session, and I'm ALWAYS nervous.)

Yesterday afternoon was our first official rehearsal. We spent about 15 minutes re-introducing ourselves and then read through the script, which proved to be more difficult for some kids than I expected. (We'll have to do some serious problem solving for the youngest kids...) We ended the afternoon with some concentration, timing, and character games, and I was again completely encouraged and impressed by how dedicated and focused the group was, and also at what they all came up with.

I pitched this idea with the hope that I'd be able to really explore improvisation with the cast, and I'm growing more and more confident that I'll be able to really go forward with that idea. The text itself is pretty silly and hard to follow, so what we all come up with as a group will be what makes the show really shine.

One of the oldest students told us, in reflection yesterday, that he was really excited because he's always dreaded readthroughs--feared reading his own lines and was bored waiting until the next time he spoke--but that yesterday's made him very excited. Of course, I left the rehearsal with a bit of a sinking feeling about all the work we would have to do to get the kids audience-ready, but I'm grateful I have a partner on the project. I can't imagine dealing with 15 kids 3 times a week for 2 hours each day alone. I'd lose my mind.

After being in My Fair Lady brain for months, I'm finding myself slow to warm to this project, both in really realizing how much work it will be and wrapping my brain around the fact that it should be fun. I'm sure I'll come around at some point. And, even if I don't, I'm still getting paid in a month.

We jump into Act I tomorrow. Eep.