It’s been a busy week for Diva Adaire. Last Saturday, Lori and I got together to go over our script for Kindred, now renamed Caretakers. We sat side-by side and went over each line. She typed in the new material while I navel-gazed. I think the piece is much stronger, though we’ll only know at the next reading (mid-November-ish).
Then Sunday brought the first meeting for Sound of Music. Have I mentioned that I made the second-cut auditon for Sound of Music? I am (ahem) a nun. Again. I should invest in a wimple.
Anyway, the meeting laid out the vision for how to work in a professional environment. Randy White, director of Cardinal Stage, was friendly but firm. We got to hear the circumstances under which one might be dismissed—yeeks. I guess we do similar stuff when going over ground rules in Kaia, but it’s scary to be on the other side of the table. I know this is going to be a great opportunity for me to sharpen my skills.
Wait, Cardinal was on Saturday. It doesn’t matter. Sunday was the VOCO show, which Kaia opened for. That was exciting. The audience was small but appreciative. It wasn’t our best work—Amy had some nasty bug and all of us were pretty much exhausted. But we gave it our best and had the pleasure of singing in the sanctuary of the UU church. Beautiful acoustics. I Love Everybody almost blew the walls down.
Then Tuesday night was the VOCO workshop at Malcolm Dalglish‘s house. He served gumbo and pear pie. I skipped the food but appreciated the gesture. Made it all very homey and a great start to the evening.
The workshop was better than many I’ve been to. They sang a few numbers first. Then Moira did this call and response thing where she sang little snippets of music from every freaking corner of the world and we sang it back. She is amazingly gifted.
We learned Bring Me a Little Water, Sylvie by Leadbelly as arranged by VOCO. Learned a little of a Hungarian (?) piece. Did some cool improv exercises which I want to try out with Kaia. Then some body percussion, which I had no chance of learning due to the exhaustion of my brain! I’d had enough by that point and couldn’t take in any more.
Today met with Pat Anderson, the facilitator of Caretakers, to talk about our creative vision for the piece. Lori is involved in twelve million things as usual—I don’t know how she does it all! We talked over the play and what direction might be given to the actresses. As we talked, I thought more and more about how the script could be changed to make the dialogue more realistic and the action more tight. I hope the feedback is positive.
I enjoy being this active in creative spheres. I’ve noticed, though, that I’m a bit burned out on Kaia stuff. I feel like “we have this repertoire, now let’s sing it.” I’m not interested in arranging new stuff or seeking out new music. I just want to perform perform perform.
Another thing I noticed during the whole Cardinal audition process is that auditions are really bad for me. 🙂 I get very depressed afterwards, sometimes for days. I feel like I’ve blown the audition even though I do the best I can. I do my best but then feel like it can’t be good enough. That my best days are behind me (that’s a big theme). I feel too old to do anything meaningful anymore. My hope with Cardinal is that I’ll build up my confidence some. Oh, and I’m also studying voice with Rebecca Keith now, so that’s another piece of sharpening up my skills and building confidence. I hope it all works. Auditions suck.
BloomingPlays ends
May 22, 2010Tonight marks the end of the BloomingPlays experience for me. I just got back from the cast party (thanks to Gabe and Brett for hosting!), even though there are 2 more performances to go.
Overall it was a very positive experience. I learned a lot; chiefly, I am not a playwright! That takes a special kind of writer and that I am not.
It was fun and frustrating to hear the final reading of our play the other night. Fun in that the fabulous actresses (Holly and Margot) brought so much intensity to the script and frustrating in that we still didn’t get the equality of the characters that we were going for. That tells me that there’s something lacking in the script, rather than something lacking in the acting.
I’m a bit miffed about how the process ended up. We were told before the final workshop which shows were going to be produced, so it was kind of a letdown to try and bring enthusiasm to the last two written iterations of the script.
Then, when it came time for the festival itself, it was presented as four plays. They got all the PR. No one knew about the free readings of the other 4 plays (Caretakers among them) that happened Wednesday night. The complete info wasn’t even on the home page of the website.
The email promos were little better, with the name of our play wrong and the synopsis uncorrected.
But most painful of all was reading the program tonight and seeing no mention of our play or of ourselves as playwrights. I thought we were part of the BloomingPlays series. Apparently only the 4 produced plays were considered part of the series. The readings were just considered something…else. They don’t fit in to any category.
Enough bitching. It was good to work with Lori and it was spectacular to go through the workshopping process. I learned a lot. And I stand in awe of those real playwrights who are able to create actual theatre with their work. Thanks to the BPP for making it all happen!