hitting the ground running.

If January is indicative of how the rest of the year is going to unfold, it will be productive, busy, fun, and fairly successful.  However, I won't get much reading done...

Ben has been working hard on Questions of the Heart.  Mid-month he performed the show at our church building as a fireside.  Ben wrote a great post about it on his website.  The discussion afterwards was incredible.  In fact, the whole evening was rather surreal, especially for Ben.  He's had several productive discussions with the Bishop and a handful of others about what would make it an even better fireside in the future, for various types of wards.  Through this fireside, Ben has made some incredible connections and received encouragement to add ways to donate to the show.  We also have two additional performances in Bloomington lined up, one before, and one after the Frigid Fringe Festival in NYC.

The Primary Room transformed into a performance space.

Along with assisting Ben with his show stuff I opened my thesis production, Woyzeck. The show is known as the "first working-class tragedy" or the "first modern tragedy" and is about a poor man trying to make it as best he can but is ultimately driven to insanity and violence.  It's pretty strange (the playwright died before it was finished) and dark, but I love it!  I chose it because the story is fascinating (it was based on the crime that used the first "insanity plea") and it lends itself to being highly stylized, which I hadn't done yet and, frankly, slightly terrified me.  It has been an incredible experience and I have loved working with the director (who I worked with on Waiting for Lefty) and design team.  With the production up and running I will have my thesis defense in a couple weeks and can focus on writing the accompanying paper about the process of designing the show.  That will be due towards the end of the semester, so I'll be chipping away at it over the next couple months.

Three of the Woyzeck renderings

Because this is my thesis, they displayed a good portion of my work from my time at IU.

Happy to have gotten to this point

 Some sneak preview photos from photocall.

Oh, and I suppose I also have those classes I need to finish...

Cincinnati Part One: The Fringe Festival

A fringe festival is a lot like summer camp.  Specifically (and strangely) church camp.  I don't know if you, dear reader, have ever been to church camp but if you have then you basically know what a fringe festival is like.  Just replace the spiritual classes and lessons with theatrical performances, songs around the campfire with socializing around the bar, and that feverish desire to replicate the spiritual high at home in your daily life (which eventually returns to your usual routine of being spiritual on Sunday) with an inspiration to create... anything! everything! (which eventually is overcome by the need to make ends meet and create on your one day off)  Unfortunately, like church camp, the fervor of devotion and participation just can't be maintained for too extended a time, and, much to the chagrin of the artist, the show must end.  We exchange email and twitter with plans to keep in touch, and hope that we can apply what we've learned to the next project so we can return again the following year.

We even have a camp photo!

Six Months Later...

... and our lives are basically completely different from when we last checked in.  For one, I'm the now the cook.  At least for the summer, while Ben is the busy one and I have oodles of time (relatively)  A lot has happened and, honestly, I'm feeling a little overwhelmed with the task of trying to catch up.  Then again, I'm generally feeling a little overwhelmed today - you should have seen me cook pizza.  Don't get me wrong, it was delicious, but let's just say I'm glad no one was there to witness it's creation...

I'm also a little ashamed because I was doing so well last year blogging once a week and here it is May and we haven't made a peep.  So somehow I must find a simple way to bite the bullet and give a concise and interesting review so that we can start fresh.