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 story of a face to face encounter with a ‘painter’ (panther, for those who don’t speak mountain); and Honor and Dignity, the powerful and difficult tale of integrating  the schools in Habersham county.  My big a-ha moment for the night came when we discovered that Ryan Baker, who (double cast with Ebony Jordan) tells the story of the principal of the consolidated black high school in Cornelia, knew Dr. Rosser (the subject of the story) and, furthermore, is the only black teacher in the Habersham school system who completed all 12 years of his primary and secondary education in that system.  That’s the kind of community connection I value in this work - it gets to the "of, by, for, about and with" part of it.  We are these people we play.

Friday night Celeste Miller and Nicole Livieratos returned to the valleys, and created most of the second "Joey’s Dance" closing scene, where the community builds a bed for Tony, the profoundly disabled child of Philip and Laura.  The movement is just building a bed, the whole scene is about remodeling a house - a feat that was accomplished in just a weekend’s time by a huge number of volunteers.  We braved the splinters in some old wood quarter round molding, and it became the building materials for the bed.  (Splinters are a motif in this show, unintentionally - I got one tonight, as did a few other cast members.)  Celeste created a terrific construction dance, very different from the opening moment - the opening is very fluid, the construction dance much more formal, lots more right angles (how appropriate!). 

On Saturday morning, we finished up the construction dance, and created a wonderful reel for the community dance that happens very close to the end of the show - finishing out the third "Joey’s Dance" sequence.  Celeste used some of the form of a Virginia reel, but all the hand clasps are really handshakes of greeting, and the four corners motif of the opening returns once again.  The Headwaters company is really terrific at making these movement sequences by now - the opening took four rehearsals to set and two more to perfect, these two segments took two rehearsals to create.  We’ll come back to them both tomorrow (Wednesday) night, to set and, hopefully, polish.

The whole show had a real weekend off - Sunday and Monday - and I had a chance to recover from the bronchial crud (although I’ve given it to a few folks in the company, I’m sad to say).  Kind of a strange way to use a weekend in New Orleans - most people would expect you to come to Sautee to recover from New Orleans, not the other way around, but I often take refuge there.  I spent a little time on Monday with Nick Slie of Mondo Bizarro, who will be coming to Sautee Nacoochee on Monday June 11 to begin the official documentation process on this show.  He’s having to understand how houses can be built into hills, and other complicated facets of mountain living.  Flatland bayou boy visits Appalachia.

Tonight, we worked on the rivers scenes, and welcomed a new cast member, Joshua Oberlander, age 10.  Josh did a terrific job of jumping right in, and he had good guidance from John Boyes, who has already memorized his lines, mostly.  We revisited the scenes we’d staged before (Rivers 2, the classroom in the woods, on how to dig a well, and what to use the water for) and re-staged Rivers 1 and 3, which, last time we worked on it, was missing both of the young boys who take their rickety little canoe down the Chattahoochee.  Tough scenes to do without those guys.  Sheilah Welsch and Jennifer Hudgins are having a good time with the "Milk Jug Lady" character, and Emma Harris and Ginny Hudgins, respectively, are cranking up the heat on the Milk Jug Lady’s daughter.

This week we begin to test how well people are doing at memorizing their scripts.  It’s a tough thing to do, if you haven’t had to do it before (or even if you have).  But the folks in this show have successfully done everything asked of them so far, so I have no doubts that all will be committed to memory, soon enough.

Onward.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 29th, 2007 at 10:41 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.