Went to add the latest update to the blog and saw that whoops! I completely spaced and didn't add some former posts that I had already drafted. So, here are the bits and pieces you need to know. May, 2015: Hello Ensemble, Just want to keep everyone in the loop! I am moving to Portland, OR with my partner-in-crime, Jordan Mackey, on June 3rd. Thus, I may be a bit off-the-grid, so your patience in June will be much appreciated, as we will need time to unpack, settle in, and start making those connections all over again in a new city. Later in May, 2015: The first Kickstarter reward was delivered last weekend (yay!) when I visited with Shereen Motarjemi to have tea and conversation! For the Tea with Me reward, I've created a sort of "kit" that I bring to each donor's house. In the kit are three different loose-leaf teas to choose from, my Yixing clay teapot, tea cups, tea condiments and fresh pastries! Unfortunately, when I visited Shereen, I was visiting my family in the Bay Area and didn't have my Yixing teapot with me, but I got to borrow my Dad's beautiful Japanese pot, which worked out just fine. :) After visiting Shereen (and thanks to her inquiry: Are you going to perform a tea ceremony?), I decided it would be fun to learn at least a little of the Japanese tea ceremony, and perhaps more about how tea would have been served in Jane Austen's time. I've always wanted to anyway! So that's what I'll be doing between now and the delivery of the next Tea with Me reward!! Out of the three loose-leaf tea options I brought, Shereen choose the Jasmine Green Pearls, which were sublime. We talked about the possibility of making "Pride & Prejudice, an adaptation" an audio book, what it means to ask for help in our pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps society, and the significance of tea ceremony. WOW! Thank you Shereen! Little did I know that delivering the "reward" part of the Kickstarter process would be just as inspiring as the creation of the campaign was. I can't wait to put pen to paper again and think about the possibilities for P&P: already I've been meditating on what this script would look like on film, the full staged production of course, and now, audiobooks....hmm.... If anyone has any audiobook-connections, or film-connections in Portland, OR, let me know! ...because of course that's the other part that's been taking up my time lately. MOVING. Oy. I always underestimate how much time, energy and work goes into moving. And did I mention ENERGY? I keep getting surprised by how tired I seem to get these days, and then I remember: oh yeah, moving is physical and mental. I eagerly await getting to Portland, settling in, and making all those wonderful connections. :) While I was home with family, I was also able to see two of my closest friends, Monica and Amy, also Kickstarter supporters! So I treated them to some tea as well, this time the Earl Grey Creme and Rooibus Chai. Amy is going to become one of my business advisors, and I very much hope to see Monica auditioning for us in the future! And finally, I got to meet Sabrina (who is AWESOME and I can't wait for our Tea in Portland!), visit family friends Sylvia, Cathy and Simone, and see my grandmother, Aunt Donna and Uncle Alan, ALL Kickstarter supporters. It felt so good to thank them in person!! THANK YOU! Their rewards (and all of yours!) will be coming very, very soon. :)
Thank you, everyone, again for your patience with me during this transition. My next update will be from Portland! Hurrah! All the best and all the rest, Caitlin First and foremost, I apologize for the lateness of this update. The last month and a half has been busy, to say the least, but I finally have a moment to reflect, give my thanks and breathe (as much as is possible with a stuffy nose). :) Wow. After many months of preparation, I launched our Kickstarter on March 1st and set my sights on the staged reading of the show, which I assumed would be the event to bring us closest to our goal of $3,000. You can imagine my face when, after only 5 days into the campaign, we made our mark. It was very much like this: And the love kept spreading, and the journey continued, and the ensemble grew. During this journey I spent hours by myself (and occasionally with one or two cast members!) on various street corners, painting the enso symbol, asking for people to paint with me. Those hours were a rollercoaster: Much of the time my thoughts were of how totally pathetic and ridiculous and alone I was, and why-on-earth-am-I-here-freezing-my-butt-off, and please-make-eye-contact-with-me-hello!-I-exist-and-I-just-want-to-make-your-day-better-so-I-can-go-home-and-put-on-a-freaking-sweatshirt. But then there were moments of utter ecstasy and joy: when a family with three very energetic children asked to paint with me (I taped your paintings to the table so you could take them home after the show you saw at the Craterian, I hope you got them!), and the Wanderer who came and sat with me and told me about his dream to create poetic film and travel the world, and even the Texan who called me "sweetheart" and had no interest in what I was doing but just needed someone to listen to his story. Those interactions made it worth every second, freezing-butt or no. Rehearsals started for our staged reading. I wanted to give more. So we took the "reading" and added fully performed, memorized scenes that we rehearsed outside of the scheduled rehearsal time. Logan Anderson composed beautiful, original music for us. Our lighting operator added additional cues to support the story. And I was blessed with a cast that wanted to explore, play and dive more deeply into the text. There is no way we could have created the performance that we did without that extraordinary group of people. They supported and encouraged and lifted me as much I as I tried to support, encourage and lift them. Opening night, I was a nervous wreck, if I'm being completely honest. I had no idea where to stand--by the door, where I was awkwardly watching people donate to my project, or by the stage, which belonged to the cast, or backstage, where my cast needed to get ready without me? Finally I took a very deep breath, decided to do what I'd been doing the last month: make connections. I wandered in and out of the audience, introduced myself, and met the people attending my show. And once I did that, all the nervousness melted away. These were just people! Wonderful, extraordinary people who had taken time out of their busy lives to see this story. Excepting about five seats, we had full houses for both performances. On the second night of our performance, members from the Jane Austen Society of North America attended: they LOVED the show, and would I attend their meeting this Sunday to talk about the project? YES. (insert fist pump here) And the ensemble grew.
The Kickstarter Enso Ensemble is now international, includes people I have never met before in my life, and people from all kinds of backgrounds, interests, and livelihoods. Your generosity has allowed us to meet (and surpass!) all three of our goals so far: 1. We will be producing a full production of "Pride & Prejudice, an adaptation" 2. We will be able to pay everyone involved with the full production 3. We will be touring P&P (or scenes from it) to high schools across Oregon THANK YOU for making all this possible. THANK YOU for your generosity, love and support. And THANK YOU for irrevocably changing my life. All the best in the world, Caitlin As of yesterday, we have officially begun rehearsals for the staged reading of "Pride & Prejudice." Unlike most staged readings, we do not have a narrator reading the stage directions. We have 6 rehearsals instead of 1. And parts of our reading will not be 'read' at all--the actors will be on their feet, fully memorized, ready to go. Then again, we hope that in some ways, we're not like most theater companies. Because of the nature of this piece, and the type of work we are creating (ensemble-based, movement-driven), I felt it was necessary that our staged "reading" go beyond the script, just a little bit, to showcase the atmosphere of the piece. It also gives the actors a chance to dig in and sink their teeth into the material. Last night I was honored to sit and listen and watch while a group of people (most of whom I had never met before the audition!) made this text I'd been working with for two years, come to life. How does that happen? How does the formation of an idea in my head bring a group together that perhaps would never have been together otherwise? I wrote those words at a table in Starbucks, the guy sitting next to me giving me strange looks as I silently mouthed the phrase I'd just written, giggling to myself and tapping the table in rhythm (for the Netherfield Ball scene, the actors create a poem of sorts that generates the atmosphere of the dance). And now my characters were real people, laughing and chatting and fighting and loving. It's a surreal experience. And I won't deny there's always that ego voice that appears and waits for someone to say, "MY GOODNESS, Caitlin, this is the greatest play ever written!! You've captured the essence of Austen, modern-day teenagers and all of humanity in 114 pages! WELL DONE!" But of course... ...that wouldn't satisfy the craving. We are always wanting more love, more reassurance, more validation that what we're doing is meaningful. So I try as best I can to let that voice be there but I try not to attach myself to it. I take small satisfactions from our 15-year old playing Lydia, who has a moment during rehearsal when something clicks and she gets it, and there's this beautiful "ah ha" look on her face as she frantically scribbles notes in her script. Or the way the energy in the room perks up and closes in when our Elizabeth and Darcy are going at each other--our first "ensemble" moment. I remind myself that THOSE are the moments that matter, because those are the moments that turn into real, tangible connection on stage, felt by the actors and audience alike.
I forget sometimes that this is a process, and that it is not going to be perfect. I am not going to be perfect. And that's okay. The ancient Romans believed in an entity called "The Genius." Creativity did not come from a person, it came from an unknowable, divine source. Michelangelo was not "a genius," he had a "Genius" that lived in the walls of his studio and would invisibly assist him with his work. (there's a point to all this, I promise, stay with me.) Because everyone accepted this idea, no one person could take full credit for their work. If your work was awesome, you didn't carry the full responsibility for that, because everyone knew you had help from your Genius. And if your work bombed, well, then everyone knew that your Genius just sort of sucked that day, so it wasn't all on your shoulders. This created a protective barrier for artists from the results of their work. Then the Renaissance came, and rationalism, and divine spirits were pushed aside in favor of man being at the center of all things. And we lost that protective barrier. I try to remember this idea when I get caught up in my "perfectionist" cycle. It eases the burden and reminds me I am not the sole creator and puppeteer of my work--there are so many forces at work in this universe that I just do not have control of. All I can do is show up and give my best. If my Genius wants to join me today, great. If not, at least I can say that I was there and I gave it my all. Today is our second day of rehearsal. Let the record show that I will be there, Genius or no. Spreading the love, Caitlin P.S. You can find out more about the concept of the Genius by watching Elizabeth Gilbert's TED talk here. WOW. That about sums up how I've felt watching this campaign take off over the last 5 days. That and so much gratitude, appreciation, thankfulness, bewilderment, amazement, love, excitement and more. There's been a lot of jumping-up-and-down-with-fists-pumping in my apartment.
I am not going to lie: the last five days have been EXHAUSTING. I am learning very quickly that running a Kickstarter Campaign is basically my other part-time job. But by asking myself every day "What can I give?" instead of "Please give us money," I make working on the campaign another artistic outlet. An ensemble is forming across the nation and even internationally in support of this idea: the idea that storytelling can change lives and make us better people. Last Sunday we had a lovely group of people over to celebrate the Kick-off of our Kickstarter. Jordan and I being huge board-game people, we brought down our games, broke out the spinach dip and had a great time! Plus, throughout the day, those sneaky characters of P&P started taking over Twitter, which was all kinds of mayhem fun! If you missed it, you can see the whole thing here: #PandPcharactersTAKEOVER. And who knows? They may make a reappearance... Here's what's been happening on my end: ~Logan Anderson (our composer) and I continue to meet to talk about the music he's creating for our show. ~The cast of the Staged Reading of "Pride & Prejudice, an adaptation" is preparing and promoting. ~Why should we have to wait for the Staged Reading (April 3rd and 4th) to create art related to this show? We're artists, right? So that's what we do! This Friday, fellow co-artistic director Jordan Mackey and I are Viewpointing to Logan's music at Ashland's First Friday event. Next week I'll be taking anyone out to tea who wants to meet me at the Limestone Coffee house and learn how to create a Regency-style letter. Later I'll be teaching people how to paint the "enso" symbol. And we're hoping our cast will perform some scenes from the show outside, for everyone to enjoy. ~Every day of this campaign, I am sending you, the world, our audience, a gift. The gift is sometimes a photograph, sometimes a quote, sometimes a video or sometimes a scene from the play. Whatever it is, the intention is always the same as our campaign: Spread the love. Here are the gifts that have been sent out thus far: We have auditioned and cast an absolutely wonderful ensemble to be a part of our staged reading of "Pride & Prejudice, an adaptation." I was thrilled, honored and humbled by the turn out to our auditions, and was even more pleased to find that the group of people we've assembled aren't just individually talented: they work together beautifully as a whole. An ensemble.
As a director, when I'm casting a show, much of what I look for is how well the group works together. This is why I tend to run my auditions a bit differently than most. Instead of spending two hours calling in individuals to read or perform a monologue, I like to involve everyone at the audition in a group exercise of some sort. At this audition, I asked the auditionees to take a scene from the script and create a "sound-scape." A sound-scape is the atmosphere, background or feel of a scene, created using just sound. The actors could use the words on the page, but they could also use vocal gestures (any sound created by the voice that isn't a word), their hands, objects, anything that was available to them in the room. The only objective was to "create the atmosphere of the Netherfield Ball." This ensemble created an absolutely stunning sound-scape. They filled the room with the swish-swish of dresses, the anticipation for the evening, the laughter filling the room and that feeling of getting lost in a dream world. It was an amazing thing to have a group of people who had never seen this text before, who had never done this type of work before, come in and create a world out of a piece of text I wrote at a Starbucks over a year ago. And all this in just half an hour. We start rehearsals March 21st, but I can hardly wait! Already the cast has been brainstorming and creating wonderful pieces about their characters and the show. If you are in the Southern Oregon area April 3rd and 4th, I can promise you, you are not going to want to miss this. RSVP to our Facebook Event for the Staged Reading here. Just two days ago we filmed our promotional video, scheduled to air when our Kickstarter Campaign kicks off, March 1st, 2015. Filming always takes longer than you think it will, but we only had three hours and it all had to get done. For me, it was a wonderful reunion with students of mine that had worked on the Oregon Conservatory of Performing Arts' production--I hadn't seen most of them for several months. I had forgotten how magical and incredible Viewpoint work can be with an already-bonded ensemble.
Viewpoints is a movement-oriented method for training actors developed by a phenomenal woman named Anne Bogart. I studied her work in both high school and college and have been fascinated by it ever since. I used Viewpoints to work on scenes from "Pride & Prejudice" with my students at OCPA, and they took to it like fish to water. I was happily surprised to find that within five minutes of starting our first Viewpoint session, the entire group was completely dropped in, ready to go. Considering that none of them had done any kind of Viewpoints since last summer, the connection that they were able to find was pretty impressive. Once everyone was ready, we prepared for the first shot, filmed by fantastic student film artist, Bryn Lanning. Keep an eye out for that name--I suspect you'll be hearing it more regularly over the next couple of years. I could not have asked for a better, more focused, generous, open-hearted ensemble. Working entirely off of oreo cookies, we managed to film everything we needed and then some in that three hours. I've posted some photos that were taken during filming for your enjoyment. Look for the full promo video March 1st, 2015, when our Kickstarter Campaign officially kicks off, and we'll be sending out some additional teaser trailers as we get closer. Thanks for reading! My Dad is a playwright--he's been writing shows for his non-profit, the Castro Valley Dramatic Arts Academy, for about 15 years now. When I talked to him about my writer's block, he suggested thinking outside the box. So I did. I called up my best friend and we grabbed every hat we could find, my camera, a tripod, and what I had of the script thus far. We set up the camera in the garage and filmed everything that I had in the script, using nothing but hats and angles to distinguish between all 13 characters. We had a blast! Not only was I getting valuable feedback on my script, my passion for the project was renewed. I edited the video together and played it for my family, asking for feedback on the clarity of the story and characters. Later that summer I moved to Ashland, Oregon with my partner in crime, Jordan Mackey. Filming became more difficult to do as most of our time was spent looking for work, so I went back to writing whenever I could. I got a job at a retail store in town which was right next door to a Starbucks. I made writing my treat to myself at the end of my work day--I'd leave work, head to Starbucks, get a chamomile tea and muffin, and sit down with my laptop. It became such a regular event that I started to know the baristas, and they knew me as the girl-who-is-writing-a-play-and-can-never-decide-what-drink-to-get. I will never be able to thank those girls enough for their patience with me while I tried to decide between saving money and getting the actual drink that I wanted. By December my schedule was becoming increasingly busy and I was finding it more difficult to make time to write. My best friend had been encouraging and supporting me every step of the way, but as time stretched on and on and the script wasn't getting any closer to a complete first draft, she put her foot down. "By the end of February, you need to have a first draft," she told me. "Okay" I laughed, but something in me resolved that by February 28th, 2014, I would click send on an email to her that contained the first version of that script. And so followed more Starbucks-sessions, mornings with my tea, my laptop, and my grandmother's well-loved copy of "Pride and Prejudice." Held together with duct tape and a rubber band, I had to be extremely careful as I searched through those faded pages for the dialogue I needed. December finished with a trip back home for Christmas. January and February flew by until I found myself, on February 28th, at Starbucks, with the store about to close, pressing send on an email addressed to my best friend, with an attachment that read "Pride&Prejudice_adaptation_FirstDraft." As I walked home that night, my feet buoyant against the pavement, I realized that this was not my first attempt at an adaptation of "Pride and Prejudice." I had completely forgotten that about 8 years ago I had attempted to write an adaptation of it for film. When I got home and looked through my journals, there it was, my military adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, with Darcy a General and Elizabeth a Sergeant, divided by their rank. I had stopped writing when I realized I knew nothing about the military, let alone screenwriting. I had started it just months after having fallen in love with Jane Austen for the first time at that New Years Eve party, age 14. It seemed Austen was going to be in my life, whether I knew what I was doing or not. This is Elizabeth Bennet's first line in "Pride & Prejudice, an adaptation", and it was written in a moment of total frustration with the writing process. I had been working on the adaptation for a couple of months and was about 20 pages in when I realized I had no idea what I was doing, or where the piece was going. Sure, the story was pretty much laid out for me, but I wasn't a writer. What did I know about adapting novels for the stage, or any sort of playwriting, for that matter? The thrill of starting a new project was gone, and now all that was left was the work: sitting down at my desk day after day and clunking out pages. It seemed a bleak and tortuous future.
"Beginnings are always easy for me. I see an image and BAM, it starts. But middles...How we get there....Not so much" I typed ferociously into my laptop. I stared at the blinking cursor, my fingers hovering over the keyboard, all those stupid, blank pages taunting me. I closed my laptop and was done for the day... This was one of my favorite pieces of acting advice, given to me by a wonderful mentor of mine when I was struggling to fight the "editor" voice that haunts almost every actor, theater artist, and quite frankly, most human beings I've encountered. This advice is constantly at the back of my mind as I dive into the process of creating a theater company. All I can do is start with where I am today, right now, and allow myself to change, improve, make mistakes, learn from them and keep moving forward.
At 13, I fell in love with Jane Austen at a New Years Eve party... |