Don't talk about the show after the show
Sincerely closed today. I feel like I only update when a show closes. I think this is partly because I only have time to write when I'm not working on a show, and partly because I always feel the need to relieve a little bit of the emotion that inevitably follows with the closing of a show.
For starters, I have to say that this show has been miles away from anything I have worked on before. I was thinking about why this is, and I think that it stems from several different things. For starters, I have never worked so intensely with so many people on one project before. To get fifteen very different people to collaborate and share ideas and create a body of work that achieves everything that each individual wants is a difficult, or impossible, task. Somehow we managed to do it. Somehow we all created this.......thing that spoke to us, that spoke to others and said exactly what we wanted it to say. I think another reason I was so deeply affected was because we weren't dealing with a body of work fabricated by one individual. Our text was not fiction, nor was it simply based on reality- it was taken verbatim from the writer of each of the thirty letters that we chose to include in this project. Finally, I am glad that this show was as hard as it was. There were so many times that we would leave rehearsal frustrated or confused, or worried about pulling an entire two hour show together from a pile of letters. Two weeks ago we scrapped most of the second act and had to rearrange the entire show. The whole time Carrie Ann kept telling us that we needed to believe and trust what we were doing and everything would come together. It took us awhile, but once we did, the show did come together in an amazing way.
I am glad that we have had such an impact on the people who saw it. Every night there would be people in the audience with tears streaming down their faces. I never dreamed that we would affect our audience as much as we did.
Now it is over, and I am trying to come to terms with the fact that we ripped down another set, leaving the Bellamy once again empty. Every show is the same, it's like a miniature circle of life: you create this world, work and work and build it up and make it everything that it needs to be, it has a few glory days, and then everything is ripped down and thrown away. It's hard for it to be over. It's hard to know that I won't get to see my amazing cast members every day. There won't be any more four square games in the loading dock or dancing like crazy to the polyphonic spree or random bursts of a capella singing. There will be other shows, but there will never be this show again. There never can be. That was the point.
I'm not that sad really, just contemplative.
For starters, I have to say that this show has been miles away from anything I have worked on before. I was thinking about why this is, and I think that it stems from several different things. For starters, I have never worked so intensely with so many people on one project before. To get fifteen very different people to collaborate and share ideas and create a body of work that achieves everything that each individual wants is a difficult, or impossible, task. Somehow we managed to do it. Somehow we all created this.......thing that spoke to us, that spoke to others and said exactly what we wanted it to say. I think another reason I was so deeply affected was because we weren't dealing with a body of work fabricated by one individual. Our text was not fiction, nor was it simply based on reality- it was taken verbatim from the writer of each of the thirty letters that we chose to include in this project. Finally, I am glad that this show was as hard as it was. There were so many times that we would leave rehearsal frustrated or confused, or worried about pulling an entire two hour show together from a pile of letters. Two weeks ago we scrapped most of the second act and had to rearrange the entire show. The whole time Carrie Ann kept telling us that we needed to believe and trust what we were doing and everything would come together. It took us awhile, but once we did, the show did come together in an amazing way.
I am glad that we have had such an impact on the people who saw it. Every night there would be people in the audience with tears streaming down their faces. I never dreamed that we would affect our audience as much as we did.
Now it is over, and I am trying to come to terms with the fact that we ripped down another set, leaving the Bellamy once again empty. Every show is the same, it's like a miniature circle of life: you create this world, work and work and build it up and make it everything that it needs to be, it has a few glory days, and then everything is ripped down and thrown away. It's hard for it to be over. It's hard to know that I won't get to see my amazing cast members every day. There won't be any more four square games in the loading dock or dancing like crazy to the polyphonic spree or random bursts of a capella singing. There will be other shows, but there will never be this show again. There never can be. That was the point.
I'm not that sad really, just contemplative.