Tech weekend collided with the devastation wreaked by Japan's earthquake/tsunami, and the threat of nuclear power plant meltdowns. Frighteningly coincidental, one of Charise's inspirations for writing Boomcracklefly was the way in which our technological progress has actually created more trouble for humanity.

Another serious theme for the play is the love/work balancing act. Again, timing: there's nothing like a weekend of 10-out-of-12s to make a person feel like a bona fide workaholic.

Heavy stuff. But then I was talking with a friend today, telling him about the play and all the wacky stuff that happens, and he said, 'how cool!' and I remembered... this play is crazy!

God bless the Boom...

Life is eternal, and love is immortal,
and death is only a horizon;
and a horizon is nothing save the limit of our sight.
~Rossiter Worthington Raymond



Photo by Russell Young
Tyler Andrew Jones as Fulana de Tal
Stephen Lisk as The Phoenix
Anthony Green as The Man who Wishes he had Wings
Angela Bolaños Osorio as The Woman in the Old Silk Dress

End of our third week of rehearsal, we held our first full stumble-thru of the play today. Inspiring and challenging, the actors inhabit their roles, their worlds and most importantly their relationships. There is friendship, disagreement, process and growth.

After the run, it became crystal clear that this play is nowhere near as polarized as it first appeared. At first glance, one could see that certain characters were driven by ambition and others driven by their desire to make a home, but after today it became clear that all the characters are ambitious in their way, and all have a profound desire for home. Just not always at the same time as their partners...

The designers are crafting three distinct worlds for three acts, one world we know, full of imperfection and hope, another one we see in only in glossy catalogues, and the third a strangely post-apocolyptic balancing act between despair and hope.

Click on the photo of Ernest Hemingway above to link to a video news story that Angela found about Ernest Hemingway's house in Cuba...

T minus 14

Two weeks before we launch rehearsals!

We had great meetings with the designers last week and then the whole design team came together this past Saturday to go through the play scene by scene. What a trip, and we couldn't get through it all, but after months of discussing themes, metaphors and interpretations, it was great to hear everyone's concrete ideas.

For example, if The Phoenix is a light-emitting being do we paint a shiny spot on the floor that is his personal reflective surface? Does Hemingway wear maternity tops? Is the box that The Man Who Wishes He Had Wings presents in act one (the one with the twine) the same box that floats by in act three?

We are moving toward a kind of poetry in the design process, everything on the stage intentional, nothing in excess. Inspired by Charise's script.

Looking forward the next couple of weeks as we crystallize the ideas. Actors, your comments welcome! Should be fun...

The Giant Awakens

The blog has been dormant but not the project. In August, playwright Charise Castro Smith came to participate in a week of workshops with the creative team. We sat around the table with the actors and designers, asking questions and making observations that led to a new version of the script.

In September we presented a staged reading of the new script for the Luna Nueva festival and received excellent feedback and questions. The audience found the script intelligent and moving, and wondered how we were going to realize the demands of the script. Someone asked whether the stage directions were going to be read aloud in the show. Someone questioned the science, some asked about the characters' intentions.

Charise took this feedback and crafted her latest version of Boomcracklefly.

Since then Designers have met around the table and to discuss the themes of the play: transformation, power, partnership, love, ambition, entropy, interconnectedness & technology. The themes have yielded images: string, a bed, puppets...

Torie Van Horne, our scenic designer has captured some of these in a mood board of photographs:

http://picasaweb.google.com/torievanhorne/BoomCrackleFly?authkey=Gv1sRgCPmfkbDdw4zWTA#

Stephen Pick, our marketing assistant, then found these photos to draw inspiration for our upcoming photoshoot...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/53706952@N06/favorites/

Your responses to these images?
More soon...

And we're off...!

Delighted to launch this blog with a photo of our only cast member so far, the lovely and talented Emily Gleason, who'll be taking on the role of Lenin, the sister who doesn't die.

As you know, Boomcracklefly is written by Charise Castro Smith, and we'll be producing it at Miracle next Spring. Reese and I have been talking for a few months about the play, a conversation which began with feedback from our play selection committee, Francesca Sanders, Andrew Golla and Karin Magaldi. Some of the comments that have emerged had to do with identifying motivations, learning more about the characters, and finding the core passion of the play. The conversation continues...

Auditions will begin later this week, in the hopes that we'll be fully cast by the end of August (21-25?) when we're planning to have a play development workshop with Reese here at Milagro! So, it seemed like a good time to open up the conversation to our creative team, imagining there are more questions and comments that we can discuss together.

Thoughts?