A late night of video editing revealed a wonderful clip of Celeste Miller creating the opening movement phrase with the company on May 18.  She watched us tell our stories, and captured the gestures we used to illustrate them, then turned it into an 11 part phrase.

Headwaters Gesture Phrase
May 18, 2007 – Celeste Miller and [...]

I’ve been a little under the weather, so the blogging has been slow of late.  Tonight, I endeavor to catch back up.
Thursday night, May 24, we worked on monologues – the Woods Colt set of three, about Zebbie, a woman who made her own way in this world because she had to; the Cat, a [...]

Wednesday night’s rehearsal added the illustrious Barbara Luhn and her amazing musical direction talents to the mix of movement and gesture, as we continued to refine the opening moments of the show.  On Tuesday, I threw the company a loop, by changing the final verse of our opening song  ("Turn the World Around" by Harry [...]

Saturday afternoon was platform building time, as Alan Hall brought power tools and saw horses to tame the lumber Tommy had delivered.  in 3 hours, Alan, Roger Williams (who’s considering membership in Volunteers Anonymous, ’cause he can’t see anyone working but what he has to join in), MK Wegmann and I whipped out three platforms [...]

Friday and Saturday night were spent finishing the rough sketch of the show’s opening, which includes song, movement and text.  This is challenging work, but the company proved up to the task – if a little bewildered by it in the moment.
Celeste Miller, lead movement designer, led the cast through a full physical warm-up at [...]

The last two nights of rehearsals – Wednesday and Thursday – have gotten easier and easier.  Tonight was monologue night, and we have good ones, with performers who are eager to explore what this particular theatrical form offers.  We worked on critters and parts tonight – Raccoons and dogs that fetch dynamite and Gloria Brown’s [...]

Tonight was the first night we concentrated on what might be called traditional theater. But we didn’t do it in any kind of a traditional way.  
We had three scenes to stage tonight – the first bear scene, where an aunt and her niece go walking by some bear cages, end up tempting them with [...]

Tonight we started putting words in the midst of all that beautiful movement.  And it changes things.  
Words weren’t the only thing different about tonight from last week – we had four people return who hadn’t been present at the movement rehearsals on Friday and Saturday, we had five new cast members join the show [...]

We ended the first week of rehearsals by singing the wonderful round composed by Joanne Steele for the first scene.  This was after we had worked on refining the opening movements of the show – a waterfall of people coming down the bleachers making eddies and splashes and flowing fast down the mainstream of our [...]

On Thursday night, we had a very short rehearsal – about an hour and fifteen minutes – working on the Woods Colt monologue, the story of Zebbie Phillips, a woman who made her own way in the world.  It’s a first person story, and two terrific young women are cast in the role (many roles [...]