I’ve done little blogging this week, because it’s been a week of visiting artists and public performances.  Nick Slie of Mondo Bizarro was in Sautee Nacoochee on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, taping interviews, rehearsals, and taking a trip up the Tallulah River to shoot "b-roll."  On Thursday, Jo Carson, our primary playwright, arrived to watch rehearsals and spend some time with the cast.  She’s appropriately approving of what we’re doing, and found the opening "I Come From’s" to be really terrific - mixing them in with the movement section really works.  

Jo spent the end of Thursday’s rehearsal regaling the cast with stories of some of the other story plays she’s worked on, and she and I got to tell the story of working together on her play Daytrips at the Los Angeles Theatre Center, nearly 20 years ago.

We’re beginning to show this play to the public now, with a brief performance during a travel association luncheon on Wednesday 6/13, with Jan Gabbert and Barbara Brady performing Fishing and Foot monologues, respectively, and Paul Brown and company singing "Come and Sit by the River."  Quite successful mini-performances, they sent people over to the front desk to reserve their tickets.  Hooray!

Tonight, 6/15, we’ll perform the opening sequence, the first rivers scene, two songs, and Foot for the "Lawn Party" - the opening of the Sautee Nacoochee SummerFest.  We’re hoping the party will be on the lawn, but if it rains, we’ll take to the gym.  As always, the company of performers is rising to the challenge of working in different venues, and the prospect of an audience seems to be making everyone appropriately nervous.  There’s good energy in those nerves, and we’ll all learn a lot.

Yesterday I met with Megan Cattau, who is wrangling aerial performers for us.  This is an element otherwise unheard-of in community story performances, to the best of my knowledge, and I hope it will be quite spectacular.   

Tomorrow, Nicole Livieratos returns for more "cleaning" on the dance segments.  Next week we begin running each act, and soon there will be tech rehearsals.  With the first formal public performance three weeks away, we’re all feeling good, but also feeling the pressure of opening night.  Another good kind of nerves.

Ever onward.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 15th, 2007 at 11:19 pm and is filed under Headwaters. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.