When you make theater as a small(er) company, you learn to play a lot of roles, both onstage and off, and in JUNE, plenty of us are doubling down on duties. When I’m not writing blogs, you'll find me providing percussion as part of The Box band. Laura is creating costumes and also in the show as naïve newcomer Dottie. Emily is writing songs for the show and portraying the lovely Mae. And (in her Savage Umbrella debut!) Meagan Kedrowski is playing “MJ” the bar proprietor as well as designing and building the set as our Technical Coordinator. Serious double tasking skills, y’all. 

Hello again fellow Makers and Shakers! It's only a few more weeks before JUNE opens February 12th, and we can't tell you how excited we are to officially open the doors to The Box and share with you the secret lives and stories of its patrons.

JUNE will be performed at the beautiful Southern Theater as part of ARTshare's first wave of 2016 offerings. We're super pumped that we get to share the month of February with two wonderful groups performing fantastically varied pieces: Main Street School of Performing Arts, presenting FAMILY UNIT and Minneapolis Music Company, presents A FIDDLER'S TALE.

ARTshare is all about sharing. Space. Talent. Expertise. So this week we're sharing some blog-space to highlight these two productions. We hope you give them a gander alongside JUNE next month!

​I find the process of creating historically based plays fascinating. If making theater is like a video game, I think period pieces can be up there on difficulty level “hard.”  All the challenges you typically face in making a show (writing a great script, creating beautiful staging, integrating production elements, etc.) are amplified when you’re working with history. It’s crucial to have a good grasp on the time period you’re working with, and your final product is only as good as your research.  
 
And yet, there’s a funny little irony that happens in the rehearsal room, where the mountains of research we do to prepare for a show like JUNE gets shaped into the final play. Though that research informs everything we do, very little of it makes it into the final piece. And I think that is a CRYING shame. So! Without further ado, please allow me to introduce to you some incredibly badass, awesome and inspiring pieces on 1950s lesbian culture. I hope you will enjoy them as much as we have. 

Going away and coming back. It's what we love about the process that every Savage Umbrella show goes through. We come together with an idea for a thing. We grow it in a workshop. We nurture it.  Then we show it to people, take the best from it, and step back. When we return to the idea in a full production, it’s often changed in ways we could have never imagined at the beginning of a process.   
 
I sat down with Creator/Director (also Savage Umbrella's Managing Director!) Hannah Holman to discuss the ongoing journey of our upcoming adventure, June.

JUNE is here! We've been delving into rehearsals this week, moving and shaking around themes and beginning to create these characters. Last night we were lucky enough to get to play at The Southern Theatre, where we'll be performing in February as a part of the ARTshare program.

Well, we took our obligatory post-Give-to-the-Max-Day nap. Now we're alert, alive, and ready for the future! Before we get really rolling on our next project -- JUNE -- we want to take a moment to recap the big day.

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