Creating Anarchists: Day One

This past Friday, the company that's going to work with me to create my new play gathered for the first time. Well, most of the company. Our director is at Williamstown, working on another project, and one of the actors is in rehearsal for something else. But the bulk of us were there, on the 6th Floor of the Ensemble Studio Theatre, sitting around the table, looking at a partial outline and discussing the world of the play and how I'm trying to build this play. For a first rehearsal with no script to speak of and an nearly finished outline that just rolled off the presses, it was incredibly productive. Just being in the room with these four awesome actors and watching them interact with each other and ask smart questions about the characters as I described them was food for the play. Since this play revolves around families, both natural and created, feeling the sense of what it's like to have these people together is key. And since the characters are being built specifically for these actors, hearing their voices, talking about family, weddings, politics, whatever just helps create the world we'll be living in.

Of course, I had to hide the incredible terror I felt knowing that in about six weeks, I'll have to have a play. That's a bit, well, terrifying. But it's better to be off and running.