Call. Code. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

My days have been fairly lined and limited by more tedious intern work. Lots of phone calls to venues, lots of coding of events and venues.

But a glimmer of light has been shining through- once again, I'm talking about Mr. Marmalade, the show I will be directing in the Spring. I have briefly mentioned that I'm directing a show next semester, but haven't given great detail. I've been reading the play over and over, developing a production team, and getting tons of ideas for what I want to do with it. Also- I've just started to organize and plan for auditions (which will take place February 18th-19th for those who are interested...!) but now I will give a bit more detail as I've decided that this blog might indeed be a good way for me to track my experience through that as well.

Anyhoo. I just got back from meeting with Duncan Reilly, a friend of mine, fellow Obie, and a great musician. He went to high school with me and composed/ arranged some awesome music for the first play I'd directed, my devised piece: No One Way. I asked him if he would be willing to compose music for this show as well and he accepted. We had a great talk and idea swapping session over sushi (...alliteration)

I'm going to be taking a lot of inspiration from the internship. For example- I've always been really into putting movement into my plays and scenes and learning how Devon, the director of D&P does it was really helpful. She makes movement less of an abstract idea and more of a broken down scene. She usually calls these movement sequences "gesture dances." I described them to Duncan as a scene where you have removed all the words and intensely sped up the blocking and made the emotions less subtle. There you have it- a gesture dance! I'm also looking to play around with these ideas of shadows. The play they're working on deals a lot with shadows and the idea of duality between two people or a person and her shadow, or shadow twins- two people mirroring two others. For Mr. Marmalade, I want to use shadows more literally. The play is very creepy. I want certain things to be literally in the shadows of the lights. I also want to play around with silhouettes in the light.


Currently. I am reading up in some of my theater books- Games for Actors and Non Actors by Augusto Boal... a really really great theater resource. Or really, just a great resource for building community in group settings. and A Sense of Direction by William Ball (a book I was supposed to read for theater class, but never really got around to finishing...)

You can never have enough knowledge or input. I'm really looking forward to getting back to Oberlin so I can finally apply all I've learned/seen/done.