Plenty

July 19th, 2008

Woke up with food hang over and started the day stretching out my calves that are yelling at me after that warm-up yesterday. Man, I had no idea that I was so out of shape. Lame.

We met with Heidi today, which was so very useful. She was a great resource in terms of brainstorming names of possible playwrights and offering suggestions for setting up the right parameters in how they can be involved. I really don’t want to have someone coming on board feeling like a hired gun so I think it’s about finding the way that they can feel like a true collaborator in the conception of the piece. She also offered a lot of useful advice for setting up parameters and a timeline for the piece. Contractual stuff too. Thanks Heidi!

July 18th, 2008
Troels, Ravi and Katrina kicked my little out-of-shape bum bum Wednesday morning with a great warm up. Was a reminder of how the body moving helps the brain get going too as exemplified by the conversation that proceeded, talking about the two projects. Was great to get feedback and chat about the two projects. Much thanks to Craig and Franco for their feedback as well. The debate over whether asking people what they would most want to see on the stage vs. elements that they most want out of life is one that Emelia and I keep coming back to.

Thanks Franco for our lunch and for all the feedback about ‘Townsville’ and building new work.

The afternoon focused on material generation with both companies and I was struck by how terrifying that can be sometimes, especially at the beginning. Two moments in particular had that pang, like when The Chop put forth the exercise to write your ultimate play in 15 minutes and when we all got up to do an improvisation in Why Not’s time. Of course, both exercises were great and yielded some pretty interesting discoveries but it’s about getting over that hump. And I think Franco’s point of using the time as research instead of going “this is something that needs to be good enough to make it into the show” can open it up so that it can lead to more lateral places.

Oh. My. God.
Dinner was beautiful!
So plentiful and delicious!
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!