It’s one of my favorite days in the whole process.  It’s community in action - young guys and old guys, women and children, some folks busy the whole time, some folks with time to gossip and catch up.  And by about 3 pm, the space was transformed.  Jerry Grillo, Roger Williams,  Mike Kaiser and I assisted Tommy Deadwyler in hanging the two big backdrops that contain the seating section, and then it was all done.  Here’s a little video:

In the midst of this, I had to leave, get all dressed up (well, a nice linen outfit instead of shorts and a polo shirt) and go to the White County Rotary Club as the featured speaker of the day.  Quite a contrast, and an opportunity to speak about what Headwaters is and what it does.  And an opportunity to sing, too - Courtney Johnston, a past president of Rotary, joined me in singing Hard Times.  It’s was Courtney’s first time singing in front of Rotary.  She’s been hiding her light under a bushel.  There were spontaneous testimonials about the show after I was through extolling its virtues as an agent of community change (with references to Jo’s book, Spider Speculations). 

The performers (those who hadn’t participated in the platform load-in) were appropriately impressed with the change in the gym - I love it when people walk in and say "wow" first thing.  And Mallory London, our stage manager, was back in rehearsals for the first time in a week and a half (family obligations, poor dear), and she was delightfully blown away by how the show had grown in that time.

Today, we’re finishing focusing the lights and setting up cues.  We’re ahead of schedule on the lights, thanks to Jessica Coale, our fabulous designer, and Dale Farmer, electrician and all round good guy, working with Tommy D to get everything ready.  We have a built-in reward: if we get all the light cues done, we all get to take two full days off on the 4th and 5th of July.  So we’re working at it - witness the power of good incentives!

Tonight, another run-through, probably with some lights on it.  One week from our first public performance - and this company is nearly ready for an audience.  Wahoo!

We cleaned movement tonight (6/22), and re-set the "greeting reel" that brings everyone onstage at the end of Joey’s Dance 3.  Tonight Wayne Smith got movement guidance from Walter Daves, who calls many a contra dance, on how to construct this reel.  We had a much more interesting set of movements by the end of the night.  A fine collaboration indeed.

Also on Monday, we’re going to clean the gym.  It’s important that the company that will make use of the space be the ones to clean it and make it ready for their work: it builds a stronger connection with the space, yielding a greater regard for keeping it clean and for the work that happens in it, ensuring that it’s good for one and all.  I learned this from the women of Dah Teatar, a collective in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. 

Finally, this week we get to start running through the two acts of the show.  Now the fun begins - seeing how it all comes together, and having the company of performers serve as one another’s audience.

Whee! 

Tonight’s rehearsal brought the SNOrchestra into the gym in full force - three guitars, two basses, two banjos (clawhammer and three-finger), a fiddle and a viola, and a harmonica. 

In addition to this song, we worked on the other Rivers scenes - the "how to dig a well" scene and the Milk Jug Lady & Daughter scene.  These scenes are all in great shape as we motor toward act run throughs next week.

The Bear Angel has a greatly expanded role this year, and we’re really fortunate to have Ollie as the performer in this role.  He’s been participating in Cirque classes at his school, Rabun Gap-Nacoochee School.  He looked at what the "baerialists" last year did, and told his mom (Jennifer) "I can do that."  And so we’re teaching him a whole new set of skills, and by the end of the run he’ll be in terrific shape. 

This is quite a different working arrangement than we had on last year’s Headwaters, where five different performers from Canopy Studios in Athens performed the role of the Bear Angel.  Last year, however, the Bear Angel didn’t speak.  This year, there’s more information to help people understand why this person’s crawling around in the air.  Last year it was pretty, but confusing. 

Shimi is here from San Antonio, TX where she works with Jump-Start Performance Company - www.jump-start.org - and she and I know each other because of Alternate ROOTS.  Last year a ROOTS Artistic Assistance grant brought Shimi to Sautee Nacoochee to teach an aerials workshop, which opened up the connection with Canopy. 

Shimi and I flew to Atlanta together on Sunday, coming back from the National Performing Arts Convention in Denver.  NPAC was inspiring and affirming, not without controversy (in which I was a proud participant), and very useful for the performing arts field.  Denver was hospitable, attractive, and arts-friendly.  Many of the speakers focused on the importance of engaging everyone in art-making - one of my basic tenets - and "value and relevance" was a goal the conference participants agreed on for the field as a whole.  Seems to me that’s what we’re up to in an old gymnasium in Sautee Nacoochee.

Tonight, June 18, is the full moon.  Great things happen in the full moon.

The first draft of the movement for that section, by Celeste Miller, created lines of people who were representing (to me) currents in rivers or in evolutions.  Patterns of chaos, as Jo Carson would say.  But we had a challenging intersection right at center stage that wasn’t clearing itself up.

The Headwaters company is frequently referred to as "the self-repairing ensemble" - these folks can figure out how to make something work with nearly 40 people faster than I can tell them to, in most cases.  So Wayne Smith, the movement co-designer who’s here to do the cleaning, and I gave the cast their ending points for the segment and let them create their own paths.  These ended up being more complex and easier to navigate at the same time. 

Tonight I’ve used the video Tommy Deadwyler shot of the opening segment to plot out how the company will perform the opening song and "I Come From’s" for the SummerFest Lawn Party on Friday of this week. 

Also tonight (Monday) we rehearsed the "Flyin’ Cross the Chattooga" scene - the new piece in the show.  We’re finding our way through this scene, and discovering the intricacies of double casting: the two boys playing one son are taking different sides in the dispute between mother and father.  That keeps a scene alive!

We rehearsed the first Fishing scene, where we introduce the concept of dynamite fishing, and then staged it outdoors for Friday night.  And we finished the night with Jill Hazen and Barbara Dawson working on the second fishing story. 

I have to leave this rehearsal process for three nights - I’ll miss the Lawn Party - but the show will be in the capable hands of Tommy Deadwyler and Mallory London.  And the self-repairing ensemble. 

I’ll be attending the National Performing Arts Convention, where 3500 people from all of the performing arts disciplines will gather to set priorities for collective action - a set of ideas for the Obama campaign to incorporate (and McCain, if he’s got the cojones).  I’ll be one of 350 facilitators guiding groups of people in discussions.  It’s a process I’m very interested in learning more about.  And it’s OJT, my favorite learning mechanism.

Here’s to hive knowledge.  It makes a good show.

The scene’s been substantially re-written since last year, as have all the Bear Dream scenes.  There’s much more explication - Jessica Harris and Jennifer Hudgins commented Monday night when we staged the first Bear Dream that it’s much clearer now what and who the bears are.  The edits we made have improved the script.  The joy of a re-mount.  (I suppose if I were to start a production company, I could call it Mount & Re-Mount.)

And I must confess I really enjoy the producer’s power in this field - community performance - to change the text as needed to fit the production.  It’s the dramaturg part of the director/producer’s role in a community performance, which may have an equivalent in the regional theater model, but the power dynamics are different there.  In community performance, the organization owns the script.  In regional theater, the playwright owns the script.  The community performance norm jibes well with my "I’d rather ask forgiveness than permission" nature.

The video documentation of rehearsal is incredibly useful.  The camera sees things I can’t, and I usually end up with about a page of notes that will come in handy in subsequent rehearsals.  Here’s what it saw tonight.

In four hours, we created four minutes of movement.  The "Finally…" segment is for the company’s use - we were tired after four hours, but we got through it (with occasional glitches in memory and rhythm).  Two days later, on our first music rehearsal (June 2), we sang the song at its actual tempo.  Watch the video, and then imagine that leisurely, deliberate set of movements sped up to the real tempo - it will be a ferocious, astonishing machine.  This ends the first act, and will send people out to intermission all  charged up.  Oh yeah.

Celeste has handed over the movement reins to Wayne Smith, who will spend Sunday nights "cleaning" the movement segments, and adding texture to our transitions.

Rehearsals have begun in earnest: six nights a week, three hours a night.  We’re moving fast, and accomplishing a lot - the June 2 music rehearsal gave us harmonies and correct tempos for Turn the World Around, the River Round, Working on a Building, and I’ll Fly Away.  More music work this week - a suggestion from last year’s company, please let us learn the music early in the rehearsal process - and time with the bears.   With their heads at a jaunty angle.

This video is from the last moments of 5/24, and features serious shaky-cam action (LQ Mount filming from atop the scaffolding, slightly precarious and very zoomed in order to capture what’s going on.  Funny, it doesn’t look so shaky on the tiny screen of the camera!).  Apologies in advance for motion sickness.

On Saturday 5/31 and Sunday 6/1 we’ll finish off the basic choreography of the major movement sequences, with both Celeste and her co-Designer, Wayne Smith. 

We created a new opening sequence today, with gestures and movements that are different than last year, but no less beautiful.  People worked well and quickly with one another, and even though by the time we taped the clip below everyone was dog tired, they remained willing to give it a try.  There are some goofs, but remember this was the first rehearsal.

We got farther in 3 hours today than in 6 hours last year - the value of repetition, and the value of newcomers to the process who are both willing and able.

It’s been a great week - we started Headwaters, and we hosted Celebrate the Arts, which is a great gift to the children of White and Habersham Counties.

It’s great to be back swimming in the Headwaters.

The final dress rehearsal on Thursday 7/5 had about 30 good friends who responded wonderfully, and then the Friends and Family Preview on 7/6 went off without a hitch, with about 110 people watching.  Opening night was truly terrific - the cast kicked it up a notch, about 25% more intensity; the pre-show VIP reception had 100 people who listened attentively as Kathy Blandin and I gushed about what this show means for SNCA and Sautee Nacoochee; and afterwards MK and I got to go hang out with Jim and Courtney Johnston, around the same kitchen counter where the ball got rolling in the first place.  Barbara Luhn was there, too, which inspired at least one impromptu singing - "knee bone connected to the leg bone" ending in 3 part harmony.

Sunday at 2 pm we had another terrific show, and a wonderful conversation with the audience and cast and Jo Carson following it.  Sunday’s performance was the other way in which the show was a hit - the bear cage fell from the rafters and whacked young John Edgar Boyes in the head as he sat beneath it.  I said "that wasn’t supposed to happen," and then saw the other Bear Boys hustling John Edgar off stage, with blood running down his face.  I jammed backstage and found him in the bathroom, and immediately knew he was in for a trip to the emergency hospital (I’m a veteran of three head wounds myself, courtesy of over zealous big brothers).

We’re blessed to have Roger Williams and John Lumsden in the cast, our volunteer firemen and well-trained EMT’s.  They bandaged John Edgar up - probably while still wearing their bear costumes, by that time I’d gone back to watch the show, knowing everything was under control.

One of the great things about this whole, extremely unfortunate, incident was the way nobody skipped a beat (okay, one performer was a little bumfuzzled and dropped some lines in the last scene, but that’s understandable).  Sheilah Welsch was moving through backstage fast and sure, telling people to get ready for the final "Joey’s Dance" number.  And Roger and John made it back onstage for that.

This Thursday, John Edgar arrived at rehearsal wearing a t-shirt covered in fake blood that said "Headwaters :: Liquid from a Goodly Portion of my Head!".  He was showered with gifts and praise, just as anyone who gets back up on the horse after 15 stitches should be. 

Talk about the self-repairing ensemble.

And boy are we selling tickets.  This weekend’s performances are moments away from being sold out, and the closing weekend is nearly full too.  Woo hoo!  Folks are coming from all over the state to see the show, and a segment on it will air on Georgia Public Television in August.  We’re expecting a review by Rickey Bevington during Morning Edition on Monday or Tuesday on Georgia Public Radio (the statewide version that doesn’t really air in Atlanta).

One of the remarkable things about selling this show out is that we’re doing it entirely with single tickets.  We didn’t have the human-power to sell group tickets to churches before the run opened (a sure way to fill the house), so we were 100% at risk for sales, and only had a few pre-sales the week before we opened.

Being on the front page of both of the local papers - the White County News (weekly) and the Northeast Georgian (semi-weekly) - has helped a lot.  Here’s the link to the White County paper this week, which has a terrific story.  I never thought I’d be saying that, but Denise Etheridge got it, completely, and no one edited out all the good parts.  http://www.whitecountynewstelegraph.com/articles/2007/07/12/news/news01.txt

We’ve shot oodles of video, including a terrific 30 minute film by Mondo Bizarro on the community, the center, and the play.  We’ll post that in segments… eventually.

Y’all come! (If you can get tickets, hee hee.)