I’ve started getting antsy about rehearsals for William Blake’s Inn. It’s time to begin planning our final approach, because at some point soon we have begin involving a larger number of “others”: troupe of sunflowers, marchers in MMH, hedgehogs, etc. We have to decide whether we want to invite our octet to take part in the actual staging. We have to set up times for all these people to be… where?
We have to convince someone, who?, to help with constructing sunflowers, banners, pennants; costumes for the Band. What will we do re: costume/indications for the octet as soloists? How involved does our May performance have to be in order to make its point to those we assume to be unimaginative enough to require our having to do all this?
When should we start getting the octet back together?
I’ve proposed May 3 as our performance date, but at this point we have no firm date or space for the performance. Perhaps we can plan not knowing these details, but I’m having a hard time even successively approximating what to do next.
In other news, I was very nearly creative today. After nearly two hours in an optometrist’s office in Greensboro, I retrieved my laptop and began writing this post. Then I pulled up the Sunflower Waltz and got exactly four measures fixed before they finally finished with Grayson.
Deadlines guarantee a strong dose of fear and worry. The word promises as much–it doesn’t try to disguise what it is.
The overall goal of workshopping the material is being met, I think, and we should be quite pleased about that. We are making decisions about what each song “is” as a theatrical performance.
You know (this just occured to me) what if this backers’ audition was seen as an opportunity to present a theatricalized documentary about the evolution of the production. We might present some power point in conversation with the material, video images of our drawings and rehearsal explorations–an effort to create a portrait of our work. The octet could perform the song straight and then we follow it with a presentation of how we work to realize the material using video and live presentation, perhaps some recorded conversations…a recording of the octet’s performance as part of the soundtrack. The story: how a theatre group goes about creating a work using your songs.
Well, other than the overall goal of the workshop being to come up with actual stagings for May, yes, we’re on track. What I’m worried about is the “final inch” in getting all our ideas turned into reality, whether it’s flesh-and-blood performers or digital presentations.
I like the idea of doing a documentary along with our singin’ and dancin’, although that adds another layers of Things to Do. And I just see our Tuesdays turning into another round of “how might we do this?” There is also the fact that we don’t have video of any of our deliberations.
Hmmm. For the May sneak peek I guess it’s time to ask, “Who’s really with us and who’s agin us?” See what our true forces are and then employ them most efficiently for the performance.
Not a documentary on top of everything else. Give them an understanding of how the songs will become a stage work by giving them a taste of our process; show them what we are on the way toward, and then give some bits of performance in light of those efforts. No need for video, I think. We can combine the materials we are using now–drawings and the like–take a few more photos, and create some quote cards and headings to add to the mix, then string it together in “period dance” fashion using software. Use that to punctuate a performance of the song and other bits we have a handle on (sunflowers, etc)…
That makes sense.