So close to waking

And I just realized we have only 25 days until we open THE AWAKENING, our largest project yet.  25 days, 22 rehearsals and one more day of video shooting.  Oy vey.  So much to do in so little time.

Largest you say?  Oh, yes.  We have 13 adults actors, our largest cast yet.  We cast the show at the first of September and workshopped for four, count 'em, four months.   We're incorporating video into the production for the first time ever.  It's our first time working with child actors;  we have one stage and five more on video.  There are over 50 scenes, making this our first show with an intermission.  We've had original music before, of course, but we'll now have our largest pit ever with piano, clarinet and violin.  There are over 50 costumes - with a costume team of only two, who are working their fingers to the bone.  Behind the table we have 14 - fourteen! - people giving their time and talents to make this show happen.  No, not just happen, but blossom, explode, succeed, soar.

But as breath-taking as that all large-ness is, at its heart, this project is simple.  We're telling a classic story in a new way.  Once again, we're re-imagining a timeless story and making radical choices in both form and content.  For our friends, our peers, our audience.  For you.

At first glance, THE AWAKENING is a simple story.  A woman realizes that her life isn't as fulfilling as it might be, and she sets about to be happier.  It's a scenario that has happened before, and it'll happen again.  But take heed.  The depth and the complexity of the material Kate Chopin (author of the novel our work is based upon) has given to us all is spell-binding yet subtle.  Just tonight in rehearsal, working one of the intimate scenes between Edna (Sarah Teich) and Robert (Carl Atiya Swanson), my mind was blown by a brand new take on words we've been reading for months and months and the implications on the characters we've been creating for months and months.  Bravo to Sarah and Carl, of course and always.  But the real champion here is Chopin.  It's a testament to the intricate tumultuousness of the story she's given us.  Simple it may seem, but do not underestimate.

I probably should've come up with a conclusion or at least a winding down.  But I want to leave this here - unfinished.  Because Edna's tale  is incomplete.  Because the story isn't finished until you fill in the blanks.  So get yourself to the Gremlin in April and help us finish this thing.

-Laura