Nightfall Ablaze -- Director's Reflections No.1

For the last few days I have been going over the script for my new show Nightfall Ablaze. I really want to get this “right.” That is to say, I want to create a show that everyone will enjoy, I want to be a strong director, and I want the actors working with me to feel a sense of growth from the process, and I want to impress my peers, former classmates, and teachers.

Since writing that first paragraph, I have completed my first blocking rehearsal. It was great. Allow me to explain to you exactly what great means.

I’ve been learning different things, bit by bit. I’ve been trying to keep the tidbits of information I gleaned while speaking with and working with Raymon during E. D. Feehan’s production of Within the Penumbra. He spoke of how objectives were the work of the director, and that through physicalization an actor can find all of the different actions and tactics that I have long found troublesome. I’ve read little pieces about directors and theatre styles, nothing substantial yet. So, while on one hand I wish that I had taken some time to read about, and learn about the vast wealth of knowledge that other directors and actors have learned, but on the other, it makes this project even more exciting. I’m taking the pieces I do know, and trying to find my own way with it. Trying to see what I can learn, before turning to the books. This is just a chance for me to experiment --to play.

I told my actors I have no idea what I’m doing, which may not be the best way to instill confidence in what we’re about to undergo, but I wanted everyone to understand that I want this to be a learning process for everyone. I want to see what we can do if we take these bits and pieces and ideas and theories that we’ve learned, mix them all together, and just try something. We can just go for it, and see what happens.

My first step was for everyone to come up with an objective. Something very basic, at the very root of what the character wanted. Whether grandiose or deeply personal, I wanted it something that could be very tangible and understandable at the root of that character. “I want to take over the world.” “I want redemption.” “I want balance.” “I want my own destiny.” I then asked them to create a gesture to encompass that desire. A full-body gesture that grows and shrinks and fills the room. I was basing this on the work with psychological gesture that we learned. I want to take this further, to make it so that we no longer need to think of an objective for the gesture, but that the gesture is the objective. Through pure physicalization we can see what every character wants and what they need from the other characters. That’s what I’m hoping to create.

Nightfall Ablaze will be performed completely in silhouette and candlelight. The use of gesture and physicalization will be key. I’m excited to see where we can take this and how far we can go. I’m not sure if we can do everything I want in the time given to us, but if we can start to scratch the surface on something interesting and powerful (which I hope this will be), then I think we’d have accomplished what we set out to do.

So yeah, first rehearsal was great. I can’t wait until next week.

I Am The Internet

I’ve done it. I’ve taken the plunge. I joined Google Buzz after deleting it.

Ridding myself of Google Buzz was mostly a knee-jerk reaction to hearing about a young lady whose personal life was revealed to her abusive ex because of Google Buzz’s initial privacy settings. Also, it was totally my way of being all, “I am going to senselessly boycott something because you don’t use Facebook . . . Chelsea! Hah! So there!” But I have since realized that this is childish and silly. Sure, the privacy settings may suck, but it doesn’t do anything to me, a simpleton who doesn’t really do anything on Google. My gmail is mostly my spam folder anyway.

Then Chelsea said that she would consider joining Twitter (but not Facebook, never Facebook) if I got back on the Google Buzz band-wagon. And I thought, “You know, me. That seems fair. I never gave Google Buzz a chance, and it’s hypocritical of me to criticize Chelsea for not giving Twitter much of a chance, and then to not give Buzzing a chance. Besides, remember what the Dalai Llama said on, Twitter! ‘To be aware of a single shortcoming within oneself is more useful than to be aware of a thousand in someone .’ So, let’s go, me!” And here I am . . . on Google Buzz . . . and it doesn’t seem any more amazing than Facebook or Twitter, but hey, all social networking sites are the same nowadays anyway.

My dear friend and colleague Andy Carlson-McNab noted that I have become all “internet savvy.” That’s not to say that I can now use the internets and work their magic like a pro, but that I am using all of these funly networking sites and trying to be “cutting edge.” Now that I have a blog, three Twitter accounts (@EmpyClaw for me-ness, @FLoYD_Fest for official FLoYD Fest news, and @NooParkcast for anything and everything parking lot), Facebook, a website (in progress), a YouTube account (with posted videos!) and now Google Buzz, I feel that I have become the internet itself. Oh, except I don’t do Digg or Reddit or Myspace . . . and I think a few newer social networking tools have popped up that Felicia Day is on, but I totally haven’t heard of before. But beyond all of those things and more, I am totally the internet now!

So yeah. Um . . . Follow me on Google Buzz, I guess? I don’t know how that works. Just find me and do it. Or better yet, follow me on Twitter. ‘Cause Twitter’s sexy. Y’know, in a “I’d totally do that if I weren’t getting married” sort of way.

Peace out, waffles!

P.S. Read Chelsea’s blog and watch us battle to the undeath in a blog-off to end all blog-offs. http://somanyrants-solittletime.blogspot.com/

It's a Blog-Off, Apparently!

Note to self: never press enter after writing title. Apparently it automatically posts things.

Onward, then!

So, I received an e-mail from Chelsea, challenging me to a blog-off (essentially). She claimed that she would soon out-post me and that her popularity would soon surpass my own! Well, that's not surprising. But hey, gotta give it the ol' one-two for the Gipper, eh? Not sure what I'm talking about. Moving on!

I just wanted to post to say the gauntlet has been thrown down and subsequently picked up and subsequently pickled. That's right. I just pickled your gauntlet. Feel the burn.

Also of note, I suck at updating my website. I haven't worked on it for some time. And really, the only stuff I need to do is get the old stuff into the new format, but I have been lazy and thus failed. Ah well. In due time. Not like anyone has been anxiously waiting . . . Or that anyone will go to it when it's up. It's all for my own amusement anyway.

Oh, and while I am in the midst of battle Chelsea on this whole Web 2.0 thing, let me just say this: His Holiness the Dalai Llama is on Twitter. Get with the times, people. That said, the Dalai Llama did have this to say on Twitter recently: "To be aware of a single shortcoming within oneself is more useful than a thousand in someone else." I'll admit, I can be a jerkface. Now you have to join Twitter and Facebook, Chelsea. That's totally what His Holiness was getting at.

À bientôt!