BadMormon

Quickie from the Trenches

Sitting in the sound booth at rehearsal for “No Traveler,” more impressed with these women I work with than ever before! Penny and Sam have so much fun creating this piece of stage art. And out of this fun comes some serious genius.

It makes me so anxious for my own show. Wanting to dig into a character, having a director take the lines I wrote and showing them to me in a new way, adding dimension to my choices.

The writing I bitched about before was mostly done. I definitely scrambled up until the last minute to get a script fully together but it worked! Crazy! I felt so insecure in the manufactured choices. I mean I sit there and I have written a speech for SexyBack at the bar and then I say so what then? My brain sees nothing. The images in my head of a woman sashaying around are still. Ok. “Then I guess someone would talk to me right? If I was at a bar? I would bug someone? Ok, she drunkenly zeroes in on um, fine, THat one!” and a new moment is born but what about the next and the next and…

I’m used to writing as a flowing piece. Even if I don’t know where it’s going usually once I start typing an actual piece of serious writing (no the blog) it just comes spilling out. My fingers fly and words come out and I have it, beginning middle and end. Really amazing to sit down with something more dredged up, created in blocks and read it out loud. Having the 6 people gathered around laughing, crying and letting me know that I have a solid piece that will work.

Satisfying.

I’ve put it way until done with this No Traveler business. It’s also enlightening to watch a show being created as you start your own. Having read Penny’s script from the beginning, watching it change from bits on stage, to workshop, to this final product of a stage dressed and acted upon I see the difference from head space to real life. Gets me excited and ready to do all the work NOW. EARLY. SOON! I want to have it memorized a month before rehearsal even starts. I want writing final by end of jan. I WANT to WORK. List and organization and sets saved for and built so we set up and simply act.

I’m so excited by ALL of it. I spent so many years NOT doing theater that I forgot how much I have always loved all of the process. The hours of waiting in a theater while other rehearse. On this production I’m stage manager and even as painful a thing as that is to be I LOVE it! Why? Cause I’m a sick puppy. I’m addicted to live performance and this small black box. But mostly it’s an addiction to the amazing art me and my friends create together.