Headwaters 2008 is a genuine success, with people regularly laughing and crying in the same evening, young people seeing their home town in a different way, and donations for 2009 rolling in.  
The Wednesday, July 9 Friends and Family Preview performance sailed like a dreamship, with truly lovely performances and the magic of a passionate [...]

Headwaters is on the verge of true readiness for an audience, which is a lovely place to be on the Sunday before a Thursday opening.  Small space details will get finished tomorrow (Monday, July 7), and last minute costume and props changes are being made.  The company of performers have a good sense of what [...]

On Tuesday, July 1, we created a performance space out of an old gymnasium.  About 35 people showed up to load in seating platforms, build the seating sections, place chairs, hang backdrops, and generally transform the old gym into Headwaters Headquarters.
It’s one of my favorite days in the whole process.  It’s community in action – [...]

On Monday 6/23 we’re going to work on the transitions between scenes, of which there are only two that pose any kind of challenge: Fishing 1 to Bear Dream 2, and Fishing 2 to Fishing 3 (what is it about those fishing scenes?).  Herewith for the company’s learning pleasure, are clips of last year’s versions [...]

Here’s a quick piece of tonight’s rehearsal (6/19), which is for further rehearsal purposes.  Paul Brown and lots of members of the Headwaters company sing the song that follows the third Rivers scene. Steve Grizzard, who also sings this song, requested this video clip on the blog so that he could practice with it.  Jeff [...]

ST Shimi, incomparable aerial artist (among many other things) has been spending the week working with Ollie Hudgins, the Bear Angel for Headwaters.  Tonight she made a 16 minute instructional video to leave with Ollie, so that he has a clear visual record of the sequence and content of his movements.  Here’s a few minutes [...]

Sunday night we "cleaned" the movement segment that opens Headwaters – seven very important minutes.  We re-staged several parts of the "Geology/Cherokee/Forestry" section, where we tell the story of the land from both scientific and mythic perspectives. 
The first draft of the movement for that section, by Celeste Miller, created lines of people who were [...]

Tonight, June 4, we worked on the second Joey’s Dance scene – that which contains Working on a Building – and we created Bear Dream 3.  This is a big crowd scene, something I’ve never felt particularly adept at staging,  but we got through tonight pretty well for the first time assaying it.  Sheri Kling [...]

On Saturday, May 31, we had our last rehearsal with Celeste Miller, our lead Movement Designer.  We created the "pole dance" that accompanies the scene where the community renovates the Grillo’s house, to make it accessible to their son who uses a wheelchair.
In four hours, we created four minutes of movement.  The "Finally…" segment is [...]

Saturdays in May are movement rehearsals in Headwaters land.  We’ve been working our way through a revised version of the opening sequence, and by the end of a long rehearsal on Saturday the 24th we had nearly completed the work.  Movement Designer Celeste Miller is working with the cast on a variety of flowing movements, [...]