what are wee doing in week one?

you may be wondering...

well.

Saturday night, we have a gathering- a party.

A welcome. A start.

Sunday, there will be production meetings- liam, myself , bob Leonard and some of the design team.

Monday, our first session as a cast.

We’ll all be there except Joel, who arrives at the end of the week.

We will, in week one, focus on three main things:

1)

Structure of the two memorial services- I will be giving structural assignments alongside character suggestions, and together we’’ll investigate how we want this story, this act 1, to get told, and we’ll see how characters and necessary narrative start to reveal themselves.

2)

We will do some more researchy/documentary type collaborative and individual research for the Act 2 video. We will help Shannon and the video team get a jump on the bus experience.

3)

We will begin as a core cast of 7 (8 when joel arrives) to do some fairly rigorous physical ensemble building- some sweating- with an eye towards some physical vocabulary that I am imagining for Act 3- we won’t spenda lot of time in week one developing Act 3, structurally or narratively- we’ll focus more on Act 1, and I have a feeling the pressure cooker of not dealing with it much will teach us some stuff as other areas of the show become clearer for us as a group.

3a)

we will do some research/engagement work in Molalla, focused on our timeline and community details.

A tour of all our sites will need to come soon, but we may wait for joel to arrive to do that.

I am going to try, really hard, to use our time in really focused ways- assignments, on our feet work- when we need to talk, and conceptualize, we will, but I’m really going to use time to keep that to a minimum, and also utilize outside of rehearsal time in hopefully smart ways to have lots of conversations there in smaller groups- the production group (designers), story conversations (which I’ve asked Jono to really focus in on with me on this show more than in the past, cause I think he’s a story big brain).

And finally, question on my mind a lot these days…what in Portland’s history and in its contemporary life mark it as a ‘city’…as urban? From a ‘resource within our state’ perspective, in terms of how state funding operates, and even how portland is perceived by the state, its clear. But I do wonder, as Bess’s family chose to stay in Portland, to stay in the city perhaps, what elements at what points have marked, and do mark, Portland a ‘city’…

Cannot wait to be in the room with everyone.