Bam! More Henry V Testimonials!

From our friends at Red Then Productions about HENRY V happening right now at The Off Center:

The 4th of July wasn't the only reason for rockets' red glare this weekend: Henry V marched through France and conquered Austin. Enthusiastic audiences, Out & About in the Statesman observed, "....surged to their feet in appreciation."

Austin Live Theatre opines of Red Then Productions' Henry V, "An interpretation of depth, grace and a profound understanding of Shakespeare's language and text, Robert Faires' Henry V is not to be missed."

Ann Ciccolella, Artistic Director of Austin Shakespeare, observed, "O so delighted to be so surprised by so much imagination, humor, power and language....I experienced passages like I had never heard them before even in reading." 

Other audiences comment: 

"You will be blown away!"

"Robert Faires' adaptation of Henry V for 1 actor, bench, apple, flashlight, bowl, thermos of water, glasses and hanky is real theater!"

"Everyone should go see this show. I want to see it again actually."

"This is the finest Henry V I've seen yet. Astounding stage work by Robert Faires, economical and graceful direction, and superb design. If you live anywhere near Austin, don't miss this."

Get your tickets NOW! Performances Thursdays-Saturdays at 8:00pm and Sundays at 5:00pm through July 25 at the Off Center, home of the Rudes, 2211-A Hidalgo. Tickets at rudemechs.com or 800-838-3006.

Henry V Opens Tomorrow! Check out the press!

A post from our friends at Red Then Productions who are producing Shakespeare's Henry V starring Austin's own Robert Faires at The Off Center as part of Rude Mechs' Rude Fusion series:

Henry V opens July 2nd (tomorrow!) and we couldn't be more excited. Robert is, in the words of the Bard, "like greyhounds in the slips, straining upon the starts."

Our friends at KUT, the Statesman, and the West Austin News and are showing a lot in interest in the production too! Hear our talk with John Aielli on Aielli Unleashed http://kut.org/items/show/17325. Robert also recorded a segment for Arts Eclectic which runs throughout the day on KUT.

But wait! There's more! Tomorrow (July 2nd) at 3:00 pm Red Then Productions Artistic Director, Barbara Chisholm, will be participating in a live chat as part of Michael Barnes' Avant Le Weekend on Out and About. Log in to www.austin360.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/austin/outandabout/entries/2009/06/30/live_chat_avant.html at 3:00 pm and chat with Barbara!

Robert answered Three Questions for Jeanne Claire van Ryzin and it'll run in Sunday's edition of the paper.

AND Forrest Preece's piece about our production with lovely family photos is in the current issue of the West Austin News on stands now.

Henry V opens tomorrow and runs through July 25. Thursdays-Saturdays at 8pm, Sundays at 5pm. Special 4th of July performance at 5pm with complimentary champagne and sparklers too!

Can't wait to see you!

From "we few, we happy few" at Henry V.

Orchard Project - We've Never Been So Sappy!

We just got back from developing INBSH at The Orchard Project in Hunter, NY. We left the day after the public showing of the work we did (Scenes 1, 3, and 5) with the University of Texas Musical Theatre Initiative that was thoroughly and beautifully blogged by UT dramaturg Christina Gutierrez (thank you!). She just sent me all of the pictures from the 2 weeks at UT and they really do tell the story of that amazing workshop! Orchard Project - yes, so Kirk, Lana, Thomas and Peter Stopschinski flew to Newark, rented a car and drove to Hunter without incident. We arrived and were ushered immediately into a play reading, which was really amazing - the experience of it, the play itself. Annie Baker wrote it, Patch and Mike performed it along with our assigned Core Company Member, Sean Cummings - who at the age of 19, (yup - twice as old, ouch) already knows more jokes than anyone alive. I'm not sure what we did next, but I think a game of mafia probably ensued and everyone learned that Kirk, the great obfuscator, should be killed early if the townspeople want a chance a survival.

WORK TIME
The next morning we took up residence in the old cinema on main street - our dedicated work space - and met to decide what to present for the workshop production in September. We only have enough money left on the project to do it exactly as we did December '08 - 7 rehearsal days and 2 weeks of performance. Then it's all over, unless more money drops from the sky. This means, for all of us, that we have to walk in with performance booths conceived/built, script done, music done, overhead design done and directing as done as it can be without bodies. Kirk came with a draft of the ending. It used to end with a long song by the father (now the mother, Julie) about the "3 possible ways this could end" - I'm sorry to see that song go because it brought a really great gospel feel into the piece, but happy to have an ending that delivers so much great writing and music, and another dance number(!).

First - we read the draft of the piece, gave Kirk some time to keep writing on it, and came back later that day to talk about Annabellee's story - the gender politics of the piece, and some fairly funny plot points created by a land conflict between Julie & Brutus, the magical properties of the rope that Julie uses to tie Jeremy to the lion, and the unexpected demise of one of the characters. Over the next few days, Kirk worked on the draft and wrote a new first scene, "Annabelle's Dream," to complicate her story.

Peter kicked his time off by teaching us the word dongle and making the mountain lion song - death metal, yes. In all, he wrote & recorded 5 songs. Thomas and I climbed a small mountain, created a new layout for the room, brainstormed performance booths (they will be outside now and before the show, we think), story-boarded the entire play, and created a new dance for the lion hunt. Honestly, we could not have accomplished this much on the project anywhere else.

Our open rehearsal/presentation on Friday included the new first scene "Annabelle's Dream" which was performed by Core Company members Starry and Alisa (thank you!); the lion hunt dance which was performed by me, Thomas and Core Company members Starry and Tyler (thank you!); and the Julie vs. Brutus scene, which is a song about the "western way of living" from their perspectives that jump-cuts to Annabellee setting her trap for the lion, performed by Peter, Lana and the lovely Shana Gold. We were so ahead of the game, we really didn't know what to do with ourselves Saturday. Thankfully, we had a long brunch meeting about the OPs future, we led a master class with the Core Company on "collaborating alone" and we tried to help them with the devised piece they've been assigned to make. And the rest of the day was goodbyes. We ended the day doing a full (and wine-sloppy) recording of the entire play so Peter could make a demo with all of the songs (demos too). Big thanks to Sarah and Meg who dropped in just in time to read.

In the end, we still all agree that our dream for this piece would be a ghost-town tour of America. A full day of exploring performance booths throughout the town with scenes happening throughout the day and into the night around a campfire. BYOBBQ, definitely. Very chautauqua - Charlotte, you would be proud. But for now, we want to hang on to the booths in this theater format because they were so integral to the December workshop and offer an active route to audience engagement around the deeper themes of the piece.

PLAY TIME
Oh people, we were so lucky every single day to be hanging out with and seeing work from Mike Bartlett & Nick Gill from Royal Court, Louis Cancelmi, Shana Gold and Leila Buck from The Public, and the team the team the team - rumors of a trade are indeed true. We played mafia, wiffle ball, board games, we attended an AMAZING cabaret put on by the Core Compay and OP Staff, we made smores around a campfire in the rain, we played capture the flag and the other team CHEATED all night! We walked away winners in the joke contest (thanks, kirk), the dance-off (thanks, thomas) and a bizarrely overpopulated round of mafia (thanks lana & peter). Alex Harvey & John Gromada - we hung just enough to know we should know each other better. So sad we just got one night with Naked Angels... call me on my cel, MIKE JONEZ!!!

THANK YOU ORCHARD PROJECT!

the blur that was orchard project

from jill @ the team

games we played: euchre, wiffle ball, capture the flag, settlers of catan, and mafia.

there was also a prom. and we danced a lot.

and we made a bonfire and ate smores.

dear mom and dad i love summer camp please send me back next year i will get lots of work done and play very hard. i miss everyone so much already! there were fireflies and it was magical and i loved it. i loved it!

Dear Jill,

We are afraid we are afraid that sending you to camp every single summer will spoil you rotten. So on the off-years, we will be sending you to stay with your cousins in Texas. It's very affordable, but it is terribly hot. You are allowed to swim in Barton Springs as much as you want, and we have allotted enough cash for you to have at least one happy-hour margarita per day. If you want the queso and chips, you might have to get a job while you are there. Our cousins are very very poor, and can only give you a bicycle and a floor to sleep on, but they are hospitable and when they aren't fighting with each other, can be a load of fun, we promise. Your cousin Kirk will spoon-feed you only Mexican food. Lana agrees to attend every happy hour. Thomas swears he will teach you that b-boy dance. Peter promises to write you a song if you promise to sing it every time you see him. We hope this will make you happy. Much love, mom&dad

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Electric Signals Through the Line: I’ve Never Been So Happy Workshop Day 10

A guest blog series by Christina Gutierrez, a Ph.D. student in Performance as Public Practice at UT Austin

Near the end of Friday’s final I’ve Never Been So Happy workshop day before the work-in-progress showing Saturday, we ran the Scene 1 vocals with the musicians. Those of us not in the trio of Western woman sat on the stage floor near where we’d be manipulating puppets to mark where we’d come in with background vocals. Since Erin was not at today’s workshop, we opted not to run the projectors. For the first time since we’ve had the musicians, I got to sit back and watch. And it was mesmerizing. Even without the crazy shadow puppets and accidental choreography of the puppeteers. When the song ended, there was a brief moment of silence that was strange to hear in a space usually so filled with voices and music. “That. Was. Amazing,” said Lana. “I’m ready to listen to ya’ll do it over and over again.” And that was the moment that I realized, work in progress or no, we’ve got something. Something that entertains even in a completely stripped down version and even after we’ve lived inside it for two weeks.

Anyone watching today’s live feed would have seen an excellent example of the balance we’ve searched for over the past ten days between a showing meant to inform future work on the project and a product we’re proud to show the family, friends, and funders that will be here tomorrow. We spent most of the day refining moments in all three scenes—marking entrances, sharpening choreography, practicing our developing puppetry skills, syncing ourselves with Peter and the musicians, and, just before we finished the day, figuring out the mechanics of the transitions. We began the day, however, with an experimental overhaul of Scene 1, projecting the rope images onto the trio’s long white skirts rather then the enormous cyc. No ladders, no physical coil of rope, no projected sunset image. Most importantly, no anxiety about having to completely re-stage the scene hours before our invited audience show up. The new configuration may wind up in the final showing, and it may not. For now, it’s enough to know that it’s an option.

Rather than waiting until I got home to post this last workshop day blog, I’m sitting alone in our work/performance space as I write. Ostensibly, this is so that this last installment before the showing can be posted by the morning and also ready to be printed as part of the display I’m setting up for the pre-show reception tomorrow. Somehow, though, it feels right to be doing this in the space that is still littered with our lengths of rope, extension cords, projector carts, baskets of puppets, music stands, stray rolls of gaff tape, stack of production posters and plastic toy horse that has become the tech/writers’ table mascot. The whole point of these two weeks has been finding a way, as my high school math teacher used to insist upon, to show our work. There will be no effort tomorrow to hide the bodies of the puppeteers, just as those of us who continually find ourselves completely incapable of recovering from the fall to the ground during the rope dance won’t try to pretty up our attempts to stand just because there’s an audience in the room. The pre-show reception will allow audience members to try out the cool looks we discovered with the projectors, and maybe even make some of their own. Thomas and Lana will fill the transitions between scenes with discussions of the process and explanations of some of the effects. The post show discussion will (hopefully!) include questions from live feed viewers typed into a chat box and read aloud. (Which means you can participate too! Go here to watch and chat at 4 p.m. central). In a work like this, the audience serves as the final collaborative layer, and, after today’s work, we’re ready to show them the ridiculous, beautiful, crazy, low-tech and highly amusing things we’ve found.

“It Turns Out it’s a Musical:” I’ve Never Been So Happy Workshop Day 9

A guest blog series by Christina Gutierrez, a Ph.D. student in Performance as Public Practice at UT Austin

“I thought, ‘Oh, we could make a musical. Why couldn’t we?’ But I don’t know how to make a musical. So I sent an eight page monologue to my good friend Peter.’” Kirk told this story on the first day of the workshop last Monday, and then again on Tuesday’s KUT interview with John Aielli.  Over the course of the last nine days, that eight page monologue, which Kirk and Peter worked into a three part song in the days before the workshop started, has grown into Scene 1 of I’ve Never Been So Happy. Our process for the first scene is emblematic of our work as a whole on the project. Piece by piece, we’ve layered on singers, projections, choreography, and finally, on Thursday, an eight piece string ensemble. Turns out that eight page monologue makes for some pretty gorgeous music.

As I sat at the table I’ve commandeered as a desk next to the stage managers’ set up and watched Peter teach three scenes worth of his score to the musicians, it hit me: “Holy crap. We made a musical.” Even after being reminded of the scope of the piece on Tuesday at the podcast recording, having eight new faces in the room made the work somehow more real. To some degree, they felt like our first audience, except that this was an audience that was creating right along with us. We’d grown used to running scenes and dances to the pre-recorded mix tracks Peter played from his computer—the same ones you may have heard on Tuesday’s recording. One of the great things about working with recordings is that we can stop them at any point, start over, rewind, skip ahead, and generally use as tools to build scenes. It can be a bit difficult to feel any sense of responsibility or collaborative energy from a computer track. Not so with live musicians. We spent most of our time with the musicians running Scenes 3 and 1, syncing our choreography to their cues. I don’t think I’ve ever been more committed to wrapping myself with rope and flopping onto the floor or pulling puppets across a projector screen as I was when there were eight ridiculously talented musicians playing along with me. There’s generally a moment in every rehearsal process when it becomes clear that the product of all of the work is much greater than any individual contribution to it. Thursday was that moment for I’ve Never Been So Happy. The addition of the musicians brought a new perspective to the physical and vocal aesthetics we’ve been exploring.

All of this is not to say that the musicians’ playing stopped our own. We’re still working to solidify puppet and projector choreography in Scene 1, and spent some time in the afternoon experimenting with bubbles and a rubber bat. We reconfigured some of projector positions and solidified which puppeteer is responsible for which effect. We added two more ladders for the trio, reasoning that if one giant ladder shadow was good, three would be even better. In the last few moments of the day’s work, we tried on costumes left over from the December workshop. Tomorrow, our last full day before the showing, will bring work with the musicians on Scene 5/6, and probably a few nerves.  Of course, there’ll be a few new experiments as well.