Chimera: Blog

In my last post I mentioned that I’ve been carrying this guilt about how damn long it’s been since we updated this blog. And we're about to jump into the next phase, heading to Perry-Mansfield in Steamboat Springs, CO with Tara Webb, costume design wunderkind. But a lot has happened already, so I’ll make a list. Looking backwards:

-After Minneapolis, we packed up the set and shipped it to New York, where we set it up in a corner of HERE’s Varick Street rehearsal space.

-We taught the show to our awesome assistants, Zane and Gwen, in mid-December. Tara got to come back and make some costume adjustments. Trey started to layer in new sounds. We started to see how the show would continue to swell and grow and develop with more time—I was reminded acutely of how we stopped the creative development of some aspects (script, costume, lights) in late October in order to focus on building and completing other aspects (video, sound, set, staging). Suddenly all the balls were moving in the air again – and we were starting to see how we could muck it up to make it better. The scariest part of revising. Except this wouldn’t be revising, it would be continuing a process that was paused.

-And then, that process got paused again in order to do the show again. At Culturemart. Two sold out performances, lots of friends and family and a warmer reception than we had dreamed. After a non-stop 48 hours of tech, during which we: cut a projector, added new sound, loaded-in and re-teched the whole thing. In under 48 hours. Which is standard for Culturemart, but as is our habit, we’d bitten off more than should have been possible to chew. Rather than presenting something that felt like a work in progress, we wanted something that felt like a full evening of theatre. So even though we knew we weren’t finished, we still were aiming for something that was fulfilling and satisfying and worth our audience’s time and attention. Getting that done in 48 hours (!) would not have been possible if it hadn’t been for the overly generous Playwrights’ Center and Workhaus in Minneapolis, which had given us a combined eight weeks in the theatre to build the thing between June and November. So the tech process was about recreating what we had already made, rather than building from scratch. (Although, of course, we’re always restless and trying to improve/experiment, so we were making changes and adjustments anyway…but having the bulk of the thing solidly under our belts was key.)

And looking forwards: now we can un-pause the creative process for a while. Dig in and muck up the script (scary. necessary. exciting. ack!) and build new costumes and dream big about the video and sound and lights again.

And, in a few weeks we’re heading to Perry-Mansfield (at the invitation of the Actors’ Theatre of Louisville). It will be me, Suli, and Tara—so we’ll be focusing on some storytelling issues, some character stuff, and starting to dream big again about the interaction between Suli, the costumes, and the projected image.

And planning to premiere the show in January…more details soon…!

—DS