Transitions always bring new energy, or at least they should. Ever since one of my mentors, Anna Shapiro, gave her famous lecture on transitions and I was shown both the necessity and potential of the tool, I haven’t been able to watch theatre the same. All too often I come upon a show that works great within the scenes, but when we arrive at a transition everything comes to a screeching halt; the lights dim, music comes up, shadows move…
I went into this week with trepidation and determination. Last week was hard; not without results, but hard, nonetheless. We needed something to happen, to spark, and to engage. If we could succeed in scaling the brick wall that was last week, then perhaps the other side would be more conducive to the work. Nothing is easy these days but we must get used to working despite the rigor of the world. Monday. I walked into this rehearsal ready to…
We made it to the end of Week 3. Amazing how just that seems like an accomplishment even though we’re still not through our initial research phase. We’re learning how to negotiate our meeting space better, though it has nothing to do with how we thought we would. As pretty as it’s been, outside has become inhospitable to our work because we can’t effectively communicate with the Zoom room. Our sound disperses too much and those in the Zoom miss…
The second week is done and while that may not have seemed like a big deal when the world was right side up, it feels like a huge accomplishment now. The ensemble is growing together while still being held apart by the pandemic. We are confronting technical issues in collaborating while in person and on zoom, but with diligence and not frustration. What would normally take an hour takes three, but we get done what we can and will tackle…
The first week of the Pandemic Theatre Project is in the books and we’re off to a solid start. The one thing that I think we’re all struggling with right now is endurance and I can’t help but think that is because of the loss of connectivity. After two hours of work either in person and masked or online, exhaustion sets in. This is certainly related to the accumulation of our life on zoom, our constant self-policing of behavior, and…
