Wednesday night’s rehearsal added the illustrious Barbara Luhn and her amazing musical direction talents to the mix of movement and gesture, as we continued to refine the opening moments of the show.  On Tuesday, I threw the company a loop, by changing the final verse of our opening song  ("Turn the World Around" by Harry Belafonte and Robert Freedman), using a verse that’s more apt than "we come from the sky" - it reads (sings?) "water make the river, river wash the mountain, fire make the sunlight, turn the world around."  On Wednesday, Barbara worked to refine the singing and to set the harmonies for the chorus of this song, and to set the pitch and harmonies for the River Round that follows quickly on in the opening scene.  The result was goosebump-inducing, and surprising - based on the auditions, we didn’t really think we had a strong singing company, but now that people have gotten more and more comfortable with being together and being onstage, the music is starting to jell. 

We’ve asked a lot of these performers, many of whom have never done this kind of thing before, and even when folks are having difficulty they struggle on and make it work.  And, thankfully, accept with grace revisions to directions they’ve been given.  For example, Sheilah Welsch jumped in after missing last week’s rehearsals, and caught up with what we were trying to do very quickly.  When I forgot that she had to be on one side of the stage by the end of the opening moment, she and Jennifer Hudgins figured out where she needed to be and how she needed to get there.  I am ever grateful for the amount of foundational work Celeste Miller and Nicole Livieratos did with the company on their first weekend in Sautee Nacoochee, back on May 11 and 12, because it has enabled people to adapt to their circumstances. 

By the end of the night, we had set the places in "Turn the World Around" where the gesture phrase that Celeste designed matched the song, and the effect that we’re trying to get - of chaos slowly coming into focus and unity - is beginning to be clear.  Kathy Blandin, who is new to the Valleys but has oodles of theater and movement experience, has the challenging task of being the focal point for the full unison version; you can see her running through the eleven components of the gesture phrase in nearly all of her "off" moments.  I suspect she does it in her office at SNCA, where she’s the Executive Director, too.  What a nice change from grappling with budgets and managing cash flow.

Barbara Luhn was very effective in instilling the correct tempo for songs in the cast, which ain’t easy, since there is a time signature change in Turn the World Around (from 5/4 to 3/4).  She’s also a great guide for Courtney Johnston and Rebecca Steele, who sing the first version of the River Round; this is a song these two have sung for years, albeit with different words, and the new words and their new rhythms take some getting used to. 

The last thing we did before the night was done was brainstorm some new verses for "Working on a Building", which will underscore the last scene in the first act, as the community makes over Jane and Jerry Grillo’s house.  The original lyrics in this traditional song speak of redemption - "if I was a drunkard, tell you what I would do, I would quit my drinkin’ and I’d work on a building, too" - and while I do believe that the experience of transforming Chez Grillo was redemptive for those who did it, I’m loath to trap those folks in lyrics that don’t really reflect their circumstances.  Jeff Mosier (the Ear Reverend) gave us permission to rewrite this song as needed, so we came up with lots of alternatives - "if I was a builder, tell you what I would do, call up all my carpenters and we’d work on a building too" and "if I was a preacher, tell you what I would do, gather all my blessings and I’d work on a building too" and, in a little homage to the original, "if I was a ’shiner, tell you what I would do, pick up all my face jugs and I’d work on a building too."  One of my tasks today (Thursday) is to pick from among the 18 potential verses the ones that will fit the scene, be easiest to remember, and sound good when sung.  On Friday night, Celeste and Nicole will return, and we’ll create the movement for the Working on a Building scene.

Tonight, we make monologues - the "Woods Colt" (local term for an illegitimate child) story of Zebbie Phillips,  the story of Dr. Rosser’s experience of de-segregation in the northeast Georgia schools, plus a face-to-face encounter with a ‘painter’ - a big cat in the woods.

Ever onward. 

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 24th, 2007 at 11:43 am 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.