The show: links to video and photos

Well it happened.  As we always know it will.  We've been working since sept 1 as a theatre ensemble, and 5 months later we put on 4 shows. The student audiences (we perform for our student body, 3 times, each audience about 350 students) enjoyed the show, but the community audience, with about 300 parents, friends and community members in attendance, really got it.  The humor as well as the deeper scenes.  You could see the student actors respond to laughs and bringing their performance to another level. 

It is difficult for me to assess this project.  It began with a great need to create theatre out of my travels, to use theatre to make sense of what I had seen in Turkey.  But it grew into much more, for this is what theatre does, it forced a whole new way of thinking throughout the process.  I have lived with this play and its ideas for nearly a half a year.  And now it's over.  I am glad we undertook it.  It was good to see 35 plus middle school students wrestle with profound issues and it was good for me to learn some new things.  The big thing I learned is that it isn't easy to do good, interesting work.  But it is worth it.
Here are links to video: 
http://vimeo.com/36220233

and photos:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/53901376@N04/sets/72157629166269491/

I'll have to begin blogging about something else..

Tech Week

I'm very unclear why I haven't written an entry in two weeks...other than, it seems that bringing this play to performance level is taking a whole lot of time.  The shadow work has been difficult, but I think we are finally getting it under control.  It was clear, about the middle of last week, that our projectors, standard issue classroom overhead projectors, weren't adequate.  The projections of kids in shadow were fine, but once we added titles and some color transparencies for art work, it was clear that a major component of our show wasn't going to be up to a performance standard. So, I did what any director would do.  I woke up at 3 AM and knew, I had to get better projectors.  And I did.  I got some that were rated at 4000 lumens.  The other ones we had were something like 1200.  And the difference was staggering.  This caused me to add much much more shadow imagery to our show, which overburdened our shadow projectionists for a couple of days, but it seems undercontrol now and I think will be a cool part of the show.

      Costumes and scenery have come together as well:  take a look at the sets: and the two artists that created them (my wife, laura and daughter, carmen).
We have continued meandering to a conclusion to our story and just a week ago the ensemble and I finally arrived at what feels like an ending.
Now we have two more rehearsals (3 hours tomorrow and 7 hours on wed.) before our shows. 


 

Link to article in AATE publication

Here is a link to insight/incite, the magazine of the American Alliance of Theatre and Education.
In the current issue is an article I wrote on my process of creating this project.  It  appears on page 24; check it out, but also check out the entire issue.
http://content.yudu.com/Library/A1v9as/InciteInsightVol3no5/resources/index.htm

Publish Post

video of our first dance rehearsal

Shadows and Dance

We've had a few weeks off for winter break and we return to school seeing we have about a month until production.  It sounds like a lot of time, a month, but as far as number of rehearsal days it is only 20.  It's time to move.  I am blessed with a PE teacher on our staff, Sarita Truijillo, who is a magnificent dance instructor.  She came in this week to teach a dance to the Oracles. The oracle is our attempt at humor and history.  The history is that the founder of the settlement of Byzantium (which later came to be called Constantinople, and then, Istanbul, was Byzus,  a Greek colonist.  Legend has it that Byzas went to the Oracle at Delphi seeking advice on where to found a new colony.  The oracle told him to build his new settlement across from the land of the blind.  After sailing a bit, following the path of the mythical journey of Jason and the Argonauts to the Black Sea, Byzas found himself sailing up the Dardanelles, into the Sea of Marmara, and just about to enter the straits of the Bosphorus when he came upon the  settlement of Chacedon (what is now Kadikoy--the asian side of Istanbul). From all accounts it was an awful spot: no wind, no hills for protection, no running water, no natural harbor for ships.   Some of his crew went exploring in their boats across the Bosphorus to the golden horn, to what is now the European side of Istanbul.  There the land was perfect, a wind to ward of insects and disease, running water, a natural harbor, hills for protection.  Upon seeing this Byzas is said to have declared:  The people of Chalcedon must be blind not to have seen this magnificent land.  It was then he understood the Oracle's prophecy.  And so he built his settlement there.  And the rest, as they say, is history.  Our play about the Hagia Sophia incorportates this story, with dance and some humor.
  I always try to incorporate dance into the productions for a couple of reasons: it gives voice to many students who otherwise might not participate, it adds an aesthetic dimension to our shows that is quite popular with our audience (most of our 1,000 students see the play), and it gets another adult involved.   I gave Sarita the music and she developed the dance.  I also had a few kids on hand that weren't interested in doing the dance but used the shadow screen behind the dancers, some overhead projectors for rear light projection, and a puppet, cardboard and scissors to see what they could do to support the dance.  All in all a creative session.  And it left me with a positive feeling about where we are at this point in our process.  The next step is work with our shadow artist and decide on the shadows behind the dancers, and of course continue to rehearse and refine the dance.
Here is are some photos of our work with shadows and dance today.  I will try and add a video later as well.