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 [...]

Our third rehearsal – the first with the second act – was another exercise in making a cohesive company, as well as a good listen for lots of folks.  As with last night, people read very well and enjoyed singing and moving together.  We tried a movement called "flocking," where the [...]

Tuesday night the senses and sensibilities of about 30 people expanded a notch.   And we rehearsed.
Tonight we started with singing, which always opens everything up.  And the great news is we sang well together, and people learned songs quickly, and contributed additional lyrics that I didn’t know about.  Harry Belafonte’s "Turn the World Around," [...]

We had our first rehearsal for Headwaters tonight – a chance for people in the company to meet and greet one another, learn a little bit about each other, find out casting assignments and review the rehearsal schedule.
We had a lot of fun – we mapped some of our relationships, and when asked to map [...]

Greetings, and welcome to the journal for SNCA’s world premiere production of  Headwaters   Stories From A Goodly Portion Of Beautiful Northeast Georgia.  During the preparation, rehearsal and performances of Headwaters we’ll be keeping this journal to document the production process and analyze, if possible, some of the effects this community performance adventure is having on [...]