Day four- Hope vs.Faith

Howdy,

Lea is in town from Florida. Yeah. Great costume ideas. But mostly what is happening regarding technical elements really is the basics of practicality. There is the version of what is necessary for the audience to experience the story vs. what is functionally required for the ensemble to learn about the play. I'm truly enjoying the functionality of the workshop. But realize to benefit the play starting next week we need to start to include design elements, eg. orange crates, bedding, the right jars holding the flowers, all of it moving beyond functionality will inform the behavior of the actors.
Saw Betsy today - who is working on tech load in for Penalties and Interests - which I believe begins performances on the 10th. Anyone reading this should check that out. It is a very funny play.
It is fascinating, developmental theater on any level seems to not have enough support or resources to fully realize a show. Less may not always be more, but it is guaranteed that less is achievable.
We had two drive by's at rehearsal today. Marieke and Trevor. Lovely to have them there.
The play is revealing itself more and more. Today - it revealed the fear of hope, the pain of not getting what you want. And the need of faith, Faith, the belief in something in the absence of proof. I will write more and more on this, maybe, later during the process because I can't talk too intelligently about this tonight. But what I can say - is that the conflict of hope and faith in today's rehearsal illuminated the moment when this beautiful, Sweet Storm, may not succeed. The conflict was there in The Barn Series, but again the depth of a workshop helps to strengthen that moment. The strength of process and time for investigation allows for the characters to risk failure. Failure is what allows the play to surprise us, and to go to a place where the story has to be told. I believe all actors, directors, and writers risk failure and understand this in the process of a reading - but the willingness to risk failure tends to go hand in hand with the numbers of hours of rehearsal before being put in front of an audience of the public. Because the obligation is to tell the story of the play...make sure they get the story. In the workshop the obligation is to make the sure the play is aware of the story it is telling.
Okay, enough of this blathering, I'll have faith that it made sense, and I'll let go of the hope of sounding smart.
Also, David Jackson - was the one who recognized the true stakes of the event in the play today... the moment this perfect marriage was courageous enough to ask if it was over.
Oh, and thanks for reading the blog - I'll have an open rehearsal date for you tomorrow.

Goodnight,

Padraic