New Class, New Energy

Storysets: the potential to be really awesome. I'm hugely excited and energized. There are 8 of us, and John really emphasized us as a cast doing rehearsals rather than students in a class. We spent the first hour or so in discussion, throwing ideas around about production values: costumes, lighting options, music, setting, props, etc. The focus, as the title suggest, is on telling a story, so we worked on how to frame it, so it's not just a bunch of folks running around a bare stage. Chris and I have talked about ideas like this for years, and really enjoyed good examples of it, like the Doubtful Guests. We've also seen tons of shows where the players were entirely hamstrung by their framework or characters or subject matter, so the challenge is to put something on it that makes it interesting without being totally taken over by those choices. We talked about the possibility of using archetypes (who were are naturally) to establish personal costumes, and then using props, or different colors and sizes of fabric (my idea, which I think it pretty cool) to flesh out our characters. We talked about building some blocks to use as a set, and about using color. I love it all.

We then did a junk set, and I loved playing with these folks. All familiar except one, and another who was missing class tonight. John led us through a couple of Who-What-Where exercises, focusing on jumping onto all of that information quickly, but patiently. I could feel myself being more ballsy, which was hugely gratifying. I'm excited to see how much of that I can bring into the project 22 this weekend. John led us through a couple of conducted stories, which were hysterical, and really proved his point, that establishing your environment first, then layering in characters (as specific as possible), and activities/events, it's much easier to build a story and draw the audience into it.

Very excited. Did I say that already?