Bye Bye, Butcher of Baraboo

Jo Anne and I went to the landfill today.  Manual labor: pretty satisfying.  Leaving the babies at home with Delicia (where they both slept, because it seems they always sleep when somebody else is watching them): equally satisfying. Saying goodbye to a set that I loved?  Tragic.  

The Butcher of Baraboo closed on Sunday.  I am coping by creating a new piece of art (the photo above) out of the death of an old piece of art.

The landfill staff wasn’t so impressed. I got chastised by a friendly fellow in an orange vest, who probably enjoyed the fact that I jumped guiltily and put my camera in the cab when he accused me of letting Jo Anne do all the work.

I did help, I swear.

Here’s Jo nursing a bloody thumb, as a pile of the wallpaper that I spent an entire day getting up without any bubbles approaches unity with a couch and some yard waste. 

At least my thumb isn’t bleeding.

Happy closing, everybody! Thanks for your beautiful work on The Butcher of Baraboo!

Playing The Part: Part II

Tech beings tonight which means the final days of rehearsal when the play still belongs to the ensemble and not the audience. The process so far has been a challenge. Comedy is hard and this particular comedy happens to have its roots, as most good comedies do, in the most painful issues we deal with as humans. That means in some senses we are working on two different plays: A drama where all the characters are at HUGE turning points in their life where they are faced with their biggest demons, AND an all out physical and verbal comedy. Someones life is threatened in nearly every scene of the play and yet it’s silly and often lighthearted. How the hell did the playwright manage to strike both chords and did she have any idea what a roller coaster this thing would be to produce?

As I play the charachter Sevenly I explore what it means to be trapped in a belief system that you used to define yourself by but which no-longer works for the life you feel you must lead. As Sevenly struglles with a difficult decision, she finds that her faith in God is challenged and that her very definition of self must bend if she is to survive. I am struggling with the balance of playing her honestly without ignoring the fact that there is a lot of comedy to be found in how different she is from the other women on the stage. It’s tempting to see her as very different from myself but I discover more everyday that she isn’t. I can’t wait to get into costume for the first time tonight and truly find the last parts of who she is!

Playing the Part: Part I

 I’ve long been yearning to try and capture some of the magic that is the “process” of theatre, especially as it exists at MOXIE.  Today I begin documenting the creation of a character I’m playing in MOXIE’s next production The Butcher of Baraboo. 

The First Rehearsal -

A  few days before our first rehearsal I had a nightmare.  In my dream I was cast to play Sevenly (the character I am playing in MOXIE’s production of The Butcher of Baraboo) but at a different theatre.  This “other” theatre was going o be producing the play before MOXIE did.  I had to travel to wherever this theatre was and when I got there and started the first rehearsal we began working on some very modern and wordless  movement piece, which apparently was how the play began and I had overlooked it in the first few pages.  All the other actors seemed aware and prepared for this part of the play, except me.  They all knew how to move and had great ideas. I was unprepared but too ashamed to admit it and so I was making stuff up on the fly and the director wasn’t impressed. I think my nightmare was my way of processing those jitters an actor has before they have  taken that risk that you do at a first rehearsal, when you reveal you have already begun to make choices and you hope the director isn’t second guessing having cast you.

Here is Sevenly in the production at Second Stage in NYC. Ali Marsh. Yeah it’s that woman from that 70’s show playing Valerie the butcher… Debra Jo Rupp, and Michael Countryman.

Our first rehearsal was this past Saturday.  As usual I walked to the theatre and thought about the play on the way there.  I thought about the amazing cast (Linda Libby, Deanna Driscoll, Wendy Waddell and Don Evans) and was honest with myself that I felt a little intimidated I am to be playing with some of the women who are considered to be the funniest actresses on stage in San Diego.  I feel excited to be working with Chelsea Whitmore for the first time, and with Delicia Turner Sonnenberg again (they’re co-directing).  We started our first rehearsal by sharing a secret of our own since this play revolves around secrets.  I wish I could share some of those secrets with you..everyone had a juicy one…but I can’t tell.  Then we looked at a presentation of the set design which Amy Chini and Esther Emery are co-designing.  Jennifer Brawn Gittings spoke about costumes and our Technical Director Dustin Long assured us he would make sure we were all safe on the set…then we read and oh how we read. The play is funny. Sometimes we had to just stop and get the laughs out in order to continue.  We were half in character and half ourselves just enjoying the writing.  This is my favorite way to explore a new play!

My Character:  I play Sevenly a 30 year old Mormon woman from Provo, Utah who moves to Baraboo Wisconsin. Sevenly is the mother of 6 children. She is married to a man 20 years her senior, who she loves. Sevenly is very kind and likable.  She is a perfect party guest…well that depends on the party I guess. Sevenly has a secret that she fears may land her straight in hell.  In my research to learn more about my character I discovered the following about her hometown:

Population: 117,592
Third Largest City in Utah
The MOST conservative city in the United States with over 100,000 people!
88% Mormon
88% White
Home to the largest LDS Missionary Training Center
Home to Brigham Young University
Home to the entire Osmond Family

We finished off the day asking questions about things that we weren’t sure about in the story.  We made decisions about timelines and back story and then we called it a day. I stood outside afterward and picked the directors brains for a few more minutes which was productive.  I was assured that my character isn’t stupid and that through the course of the play we see her get stronger. We discussed how heavily her secret ways on her.  I walked home feeling electrified.

Name that MOXIE – Jo Anne and Amy

Ladies and gentlemen, I give to you… Jo Anne Glover, MOXIE Theatre Managing Director and one of the four founders of the company, who comments on this blog as kidglove and is the guest author of the very next post. 

And, Amy Chini, MOXIE resident scenic designer and wizard of props, who comments and posts on this blog as chinimachinee, although she has very recently been fully occupied wearing two hats for our upcoming The Butcher of Baraboo, handling the props AND scenery design.

The winner’s ribbon this time goes to Missy, who got it on the first round due to an expert assessment of the environment behind the photo subject. Don’t go into forensics, Missy.  We’d miss you.

Thanks for playing!

On finding my inner six-year-old

This post was written by Jo Anne.  Someone get that girl a password so she can keep writing blog posts like this one!

Yesterday, I had a great time at my godson Auggie’s baseball game.  It was so cool to be outside in the late afternoon.  Great people watching – all of the very serious 10-year-olds and their parents rooting for them. 

But, some of my favorite moments were hanging out with six-year-old Zoe, who I am just so inspired by right now.  I loved watching her entertain herself, investigating the underside of a table, skipping off to the playground.  At one point, she picked a little flower – one of those little plants made of little grains that fall apart when you rub them between your fingers.  She was telling me about how she and her best friend Piper will pretend that its wheat and play granary.  Really?  They play GRANARY?  And, I was just struck by the simplicity of being six.  The lovely openness and beauty with which she approaches the world.  I want to regain some of that loveliness.  As most of us do, I let it get chased out of me – but I want to rediscover my six-year-old.  I think she’s probably pretty cool.

I’m not a poet, but felt inspired by this baby goddess.

For my goddaughter, THE PRINCESS ZOE

Sweet Princess
You amaze me with your
Spirit
Laugh
Wonder 

FULL of WONDER
I love how you wonder at nature
At dogs
At sticks
At flowers
At people 

So much spirit
So much spunk
For someone so small
You INSPIRE me with
Your BIG heart and BIG self 

Your laugh will always make me smile
Just like your mama, my sister
It makes my heart bigger
And when you hug me
I know I would travel to the ends of the earth for you
I am so blessed to know someone as cool as you

Name those MOXIE’s: Round Two

Same two MOXIEs. Same order. How’s this for a spiritual resemblance?

Final answers! First name and location in the continental United States. If you’re really stumped, read the comments on the last post for clues.

Name These MOXIE’s – Two for One

Or name the photos. 

I call the pair of them “Small Women Plotting World Takeover”

In comments, list your caption, and/or your picks for who we’re looking at. They’re not the same person, although I think they kind of look like it. First names are okay. I have another round for when and where.

Have fun!

Cafe Press

I didn’t make room in my April budget for an original piece of art. But I did buy a magnet. It made my day to open the mail on my birthday and find this adorable monster, created by Amy Chini and sold via CafePress. Doesn’t  it look nice on our fridge?

Milo doesn’t understand why I keep telling him that the monster was made by Amy, since it doesn’t look like her  at all. And he is understandably frustrated that the magnet is too strong for him to pull off the fridge and ferret away underneath the bookcase. Otherwise, we’re satisfied customers.  

If you want to check out Amy’s store and buy a magnet for yourself, go here.

Or, even better, if you want to open your own online store so I can buy a magnet from you, too, go here.

Kodachrome

I’ve been sitting on a power line lately.  Remember the lines of energy that the voodoo nurse talked about in Mary Fengar Gail’s play Devil Dog Six? I mean that kind of power line. I’ve had some special access, or perspective, that makes it possible to see connections where I didn’t see them before. Maybe it’s the pregnancy.  Maybe it’s the fact that I’m on a genuine spiritual search. Or maybe I just took the time to let my head clear. 

What I do know is that once you open yourself to hearing the truth (and experience the hard knock that probably comes with that), then the truth is exactly what becomes available to you. 

At first it felt like luck.  A book that I really wanted to read literally fell off the shelf at the thrift store in Spring Valley, marked $1.95 in red crayon. I hadn’t been reading much, but for $1.95, why not?  

As one non-profit delayed and eventually rejected my offer of volunteerism, another made an outright invitation. And that second organization turns out to be exactly what I didn’t know that I was looking for.

At some point I started to harness it.  Just as I had been struggling with the task of bringing a baby woman into a less than woman-friendly world, my aunt visited me from Iowa for the second time ever. She happened to want to talk about grandma, and she happened to drop a key clue regarding the history of intergenerational cruelty and competition that sits like a curse on the women of my extended family.  I asked for the whole story, and, three weeks before I mother a daughter myself, I’m finally starting to understand why my familial role models are so uniquely insufficient.

Then, just as I was wondering how my passion for social change is related to my passion for theatre, Chelsea asked me to go to a play reading with her.  And it happened to be a play about spiritual search and the possibility of true altruism.  Since then I’ve been writing, pretty freely, on a new and different project that is helping me connect the dots between my passion and the page.

Synchronicity, right?  I’m getting used to it.  But this next one still blew my mind.  

This evening I showed up fifteen minutes late to a $35 Intro to SLR photography class that I’m taking at Santana Adult School. I thought they were going to show me how to use the buttons on the fancy camera that my husband bought me for Christmas. Instead, I got a powerful wake up call as to the nature of art and the function of the artist.

“The only way we grow as a society,” says the teacher, “is to get more artists.”

Woah. That’s a statement I agree with. But I’m in a trailer at Santana High School. Did I come out here to hear that?

Maybe I did. 

“The manual setting is designed to give you average,” he says.  ”Average is nothing to aspire to.” 

Dude. It’s hot, and I’m due in three weeks, and I just want to take cute pictures of my kids. 

He explains to us that the manual settings reflect what the eye sees, with the intention of reproducing the photographer’s physical limitations. “Beauty,” he says, ” lies outside of our range of vision.”  It’s a three hour class, and he doesn’t let up. Have a point of view. Know your message. Practice your craft. Be the artist you are. And don’t bother making excuses. 

I’ve been schooled. 

As Amy and I do our color work for the final scenic design of the Butcher of Baraboo tomorrow, I may be a little less likely to lift the details directly off of a “Wisconsin kitchen” Flickr search, and a little more likely to own the art. 

Have any of you had a teacher or a lesson pop up on you like that? Or been taught something you could have sworn you already knew? 

About that MOXIE – No more delay!

Ladies and gents, I have a new computer, and the delete key works, and the space bar works, so I’m able to sit at the computer again without reaching for the nearest hammer.  (Whether for my head or the dysfunctional keyboard, I’m not sure.)  So…I’m back.

And today, I’m here to tell you about Dustin Long.

This is Dustin.

He’s our TD. That stands for Technical Director. TD’s are legendary for being grumpy, and I should know, since I’m married to one, but Dustin breaks that particular mold. He’s very, very funny. 

And he collects shoes.  

I’m not making that up. The subject arose during a production meeting for The Sugar Syndrome, and he admits to having a closet full.  Maybe that bit of delicious self-care is the way he avoids the stereotypical grumpies.

When not collecting shoes, Dustin works full time for his family’s cabinet shop, Equity Cabinets. For MOXIE, he is nothing less than an alchemist. He takes a set model and some drawings and a fixed (small) amount of money, and he makes it all into a set.

He might start by making a 3 D computer model like this one.

Then he tells us how much it is going to cost, suggests cuts or adjustments to get the project within budget, and finally builds it. All of it. He hires any crew that he needs (and we can afford) to get the build done on time, and then leads the MOXIE team in assembling it all on site in a few very long, thrilling days just before we open.

And then we all start taking notes.  That means Dustin has to keep working, making small adjustments right up until opening.

Most people who do what TD’s do will tell you that nobody really knows what all they do.  Honestly, I know that’s true.  But I also know that we appreciate it.

Thanks for being a MOXIE, Dustin!