Recently in Rehearsal Category

Have you noticed that the blog has been quiet the last few days? That'd be accurate. The actors have been rehearsing, beautifully, until midnight each night. The tech crew, however, has been dealing with this guy.


That's a fully broken lighting board, which bid us farewell only 3 days ago.

Jessica Brubaker and Dan Horst, to their immense credit, have pulled some late nights getting lights on stage, and being where we are supposed to be the night before opening.

Something going extremely well has been, well, the rest of the show.

Can I just take a moment to say that the morale of this cast and crew is amazing? Because it really is, and it's incredibly inspiring to work with people who are so devoted and focused on putting together this show. Over the past week, we have dealt with numerous illnesses and "invisible" actors, a malfunctioning lighting system (and then functioning, and then malfunctioning again, etc.), noisy costumes, new costumes, and costumes at a different stage of completion every night, constantly evolving props, and a learning whole bunch of set changes on top of everything else. And everybody has handled things with so much grace and cheerfulness (and soup!). Thank you cast and crew.

Also, so many extra people have pitched in to help make sure we're all ready for opening night. Thank you everybody else. It's great to feel so supported as an actor, both by the crew and all the extra costume helpers running around, as well as by my fellow cast members, who are always open to discussing and dissecting and refining our scenes together over and over again. It continues to be an honor to work with you all.

And a final P.S. to anyone who knows the end of the show: ask me about the Transfiguration...

I've been so excited about being set designer for this play. I'm an aspiring artist and have dabbled in everything from painting to digital animation to large scale sculpture. Until I attended the open auditions at new world, I had never really thought about set design. I have friends that have done set and lighting design in the past, but my art has always been done for me and not as part of a bigger production. Here I get a chance to have my ideas be part of a theatrical production with lighting sound and live actors; coming together to create something that I hope will be worthy of the great script we have to work with.

Since rehearsals are in full swing and most of the preliminary designing is done, I feel like I'm late in starting this blog. I've been filling my sketchbook with rudimentary sketches and I really wanted to do some full blown concept art, but time is short. Monday we build.

I will try to post some of my sketches this weekend and we will definitely share some photographs from our building session.

Wish us luck!

p.s.  The 4f festival tonight should be great!

Tonight the cast and crew are going to be going through some thoughts and observation of the Mariol text. We'll try and hit what we can and give you a peek of some of the more academic parts of the rehearsal process.

6:07: We'll be starting at 6:30, instead of 6. Stay tuned.

Continue reading after the jump...

File this under: why the hell not?

When New World Arts started giving shows their own blogs in 2005, we were - to my knowledge - some of the only ones doing something like that. By 2008, large and small theaters are giving each their own shows a chance to give their audience a peek backstage (and one started just a few months after we launched ours.... Hmmm, Steppenwolf, hmmm...).

I have never really heard of a theater live blogging anything, however. Wikipedia definition:

A live blog is a running online commentary by individual bloggers contributing to a topic thread focused on an ongoing event as it unfolds in real time. Participation is referred to as "live blogging."

Starting at 6 p.m., EST I will be living blogging tonight's Marisol Table Talk, where Bryan, Artistic Director Laura Gouin, the cast and some of the designers are going to sit down at New World Arts and parse through their thoughts on the script from the last week and a half. Knowing what I do of the cast, it should be more than interesting. So, if you feel like it, go ahead and join us tonight at 6.

Disclaimer: New World Arts' internet has been rather up and down recently. So, the "live blog" might be just a post right after the table talk. We'll see...

Update: Someone just reminded me that President Bush's last State of the Union address is tonight, granted later than our Table Talk. If you're more interested in a mere 150 billion stimulus package (for a multi-trillion dollar economy) and mis-appropriated economic blame, I'm sure that NYT, Politico and Carpetbagger will all be live blogging that. While the two events are not unrelated, I think our Table Talk is going to be more interesting.