6:30 AM, Friday morning.  We drive to Brattleboro today for a penultimate rehearsal.

All the costumes are done, the set has its final touches. I’ve got some last minute hats, a shotgun (prop), and a box of nuts, wings, and bolts in my car.  The sound designer and stage manager finished working cues last [...]]]>

Becky Webber

6:30 AM, Friday morning.  We drive to Brattleboro today for a penultimate rehearsal.

All the costumes are done, the set has its final touches. I’ve got some last minute hats, a shotgun (prop), and a box of nuts, wings, and bolts in my car.  The sound designer and stage manager finished working cues last night.

My downstairs neighbor woke up playing some heavy metal, so my bed was reverberating with a thwunkathump thwunkathump rhythm when my alarm went off.  As if I needed that to get me more pumped for our opening, but it’s nice to have a soundtrack to go along with the story, I guess.

So much about this process for me has been about giving away.  I’ve been carrying around this script since before I could legally imbibe, and my relationship with the two main characters has matured as I have.  It has changed.  As we’ve moved through rehearsal the play has become it’s own story, Jensen’s poetry has become action, and the characters are now flesh.  It’s been great fun to watch and shape and mold and guide.

And now we get to the point of the biggest change, when it becomes their show.  That’s what we prepare for as directors, isn’t it?  The giving away, the sending off?  Making sure a play is well stocked before its voyage.

OK, maybe I’m waxing poetic a bit, but to be fair Two-Headed went into pre-production over a year ago.  It has beenand will be a journey for the next four weeks.  Kara, SerahRose, Meaghan, myself and the rest of GAN-e-meed will keep moving it along, and it will continue to change as we move through that step process.

When I’m working on a play, I can’t help but seeing everything in life through that lens.  Hettie and Lavinia, the two women in the play, change so much through their five stages of life.  We really do get to see how life affects them over time, what they take from each other, and what they hold on to in the end.  We get to live the constants and the variables.  And like them, we’ve got something solid, a well-rehearsed show, but it will become something new by the end.  There’s a song by Cheryl Wheeler called 75 Septembers, and she asks, “Are you more amazed by how things change/ or how they stay the same?”

That’s the question I have now.  We have a solid show, beautiful actors, dynamite design, and tomorrow we have an audience.  It’s going to be different with people there.  I’m curious, excited, my heart is beating to the rhythm of the second floor’s grooves.  I can’t wait to see the change!

The term conjures up awkwardly placed actors staring off in opposite directions trying to look intense, insightful, distressed, loving, or some sort of failed combination.  In the end, they just look awkward.  Even the cool ones look awkward.  Because where, really, in the play do people do that?  They don’t.

So we took [...]]]> Press Photos.

The term conjures up awkwardly placed actors staring off in opposite directions trying to look intense, insightful, distressed, loving, or some sort of failed combination.  In the end, they just look awkward.  Even the cool ones look awkward.  Because where, really, in the play do people do that?  They don’t.

So we took the au natural approach this time around.  I handed the camera to Becky (director) and Meaghan (stage manager) and said, “Jen might just strangle me if we don’t get some today.”  Don’t worry, she wouldn’t strangle me, but she sure wouldn’t be happy if we forgot again.  We were supposed to take photos the last three rehearsals.  Oops.

But, no worries, Becky took some this week, and just in time for opening!

Here you go.  Enjoy.

If you are press and would like press-quality images, please go to the press section for hi-res downloads and credit info.  If you are a friend and want to share these images to spread the word, please give credit to GAN-e-meed and the photographer: Becky Webber.

It is not often, here in the U.S. anyways, that we are given the gift of time in the rehearsal process.  Our budgets are tight, spaces are scarce, we are juggling schedules, and balancing lives.

This time, however, we gave ourselves this gift of time.

It is paying off.

Some of our [...]]]>

SerahRose Roth

It is not often, here in the U.S. anyways, that we are given the gift of time in the rehearsal process.  Our budgets are tight, spaces are scarce, we are juggling schedules, and balancing lives.

This time, however, we gave ourselves this gift of time.

It is paying off.

Some of our choices were harder than others: rehearsing a two-person play for more than 5 hours is, quite honestly, brutal.  You walk away physically exhausted, mentally drained, and wondering if your soul will forgive you for twisting it into so many shapes in one day.

Some of our choices were brilliant: allowing for time to talk, to explore, to learn each others’ language before we even tackled the scenes.  Kara put it nicely in her post about view points.

This Sunday’s rehearsal felt golden.

We’d been rehearsing for long weekends, shoveling text in our ears, and actions into our bodies.  Sometimes it

SerahRose Roth as Hettie. Photo Credit: Becky Webber

was hard to tell whether it was me feeling something, or Hettie.  At our prior rehearsal, I got so frustrated that I fought to keep my own vulnerability at bay while in the scene.  But Hettie’s vulnerability was so strong that my wall of power crumbled, and I quickly melted into SerahRose tears as I pushed my through Hettie’s scene.  It was not fun.

But then we had six whole days of no rehearsals.  Six whole days to review my lines one by one, and allow Hettie to simmer in my heart as I pulled weeds, planted Columbine and curled up with my child.

On day seven, Sabbath, Sunday, Earth Day, as a matter of fact, we rehearsed again.  And all the time and love devoted to slowly simmering blossomed fragrantly.  By the time I got to scene five, feeling quite proud of myself, I managed to skip an entire page.  Oh, yes, an entire page of dialogue.  I slowly inhaled and wondered if it would be possible to backtrack…no, it was too late, so I kept going, chuckling at myself for feeling too proud too soon.

In the heat of rehearsal, it can be hard to take that time to inhale, make a choice, and finally, chuckle.  But because we have gifted ourselves with time in rehearsal, we have been able to take it and use it to our advantage.  And breath.

It is not easy, to give ourselves this gift.  But it is so worth it.

This month we celebrate:

Three years of non-profit mission-driven awesomeness.

Hundreds of participating artists, Career Lab participants, and audience members.

And our Third full-length production, Two-Headed, opening April 28.

So, of course, we celebrated in style…by having a Networking Night!  With Cake, networking, and an open-rehearsal sneak peak at Two-Headed.