8 weeks of tech rehearsals

So, to give you some light reading material while you BUY YOUR TICKETS to Kinderspiel, I thought I would muse a little bit about what's going on in our final stages of rehearsal (we open Thursday, people!).

After what was positively the most pleasant cue-to-cue we've ever had (after what has easily been the most challenging rehearsal process we've ever had), Emily had this simple but brilliant realization:

In the lead-up to the past nine shows which have, as Jimmy Comtois says, since gone to the great production in the sky, we spent almost all of our last 20 hours of rehearsal dealing with tech issues, principally trying to figure out the most artful and least stupid ways of transitioning from scene to scene, a task made especially arduous by our CineTheatre projects, which usually have short scenes alternating between quite a few different locations, each with their own set. This time around, our evil-genius-set-designer-David has surpassed his genius if not his evil in providing us with a devilishly organic set which requires no interscene physical transformations (which is not to say his last 4 sets weren't brilliant cuz...um...they frickin' are!). What this means, however, is that we've spent every rehearsal since day one working out how the stage action itself can creatively transform the set over the course of a given scene. So, essentially, we've had about eight weeks of the logistically maddening what-goes-where-wait-when-was-that-supposed-to-be-preset rehearsals as we've simultaneously tried to develop a new work (with an original script) from the ground up.

The good news: instead of spending each minute up until opening night's curtain trying to work out how to cover the sound of dropping venetian blinds with a trumpet riff, we get to spend these last few hours delving even deeper (does anyone ever use the word "delve" for anything but that cliche?) into understanding the play's rhythms. And this is good.

Rehearsal in the morning tomorrow. An excerpt of the play performed at the Fourth Arts Block Festival in the afternoon. Rehearsal all day Sunday. A little brush-up on Tuesday and then we'll see some of you for Thursday's opening night.

Oh, and by the by, if you or someone you know is an artist (of any breed) whose work draws inspiration from the aesthetic, politics, or literature of 1920s Berlin, please let me know as we'll be kicking off our interview series next week.

Kinderspiel website launch and press photos

Jeez it's been awhile since I've posted. If you haven't already figured it out while browsing stolenchair.org, we are in the thick of final rehearsals for Kinderspiel. This piece has challenged us to go to so many new places that my mind will continue reeling well into the winter. There's so much I've wanted to write about but I'm reluctant to run my mouth off and reveal too much about the show now that audiences are about to close the creative circuit with us...and it's about time! After 6 months of fooling around in a basement on St. Marks Place, I'm really curious about how the heck this fruit of our collective loin is gonna feel in front of an audience (heh heh heh, we're going to feel our loin's fruit while you watch!)

The official website with snazzy flash bling by Aviva Meyer is at kinderspiel.us.

You can buy tickets there or here.

You can look at some pretty photos here, also courtesy of Aviva Meyer.




Kinderspiel opens October 4 and I'll hopefully get back into my once-weekly posting schedule.