In a world...

NC Stage has recently started advertising on 98.1 The River. Check out the radio ad Angie and I recorded. Fun, huh?

Listen online here.

Oh crap! There are PEOPLE out there!!!

True West is opening up this week and we're really excited to get this one up and running. Scott Treadway and I are having a great time working on stage together. He's a very generous actor and a real joy to hang out with. Also in the cast are Kay Galvin, who you might have seen on any of the various stages around Asheville, and Lance Ball, an actor who has worked with our good friends at Immediate Theatre Project in their production of Copenhagen last year.

Had an invited dress rehearsal on Tuesday night with about 40 people in the audience. It went really well but it's always interesting the first time you perform a play you've been working on in front of people besides the artistic team of the theatre. Sometimes you discover things that are funny that you didn't realize were funny. You hear a laugh and think, "the hell???". Then, when you have a chance to think about it, you realize that it is funny. On the other hand, you do something during performance that consistently made the director and the sound designer laugh and then you do it in front of an audience and...nothin'. So you cut it. Oh well.

The most important aspect of the first audience is to see if the way you've crafted the show makes sense as a whole and that it's impacting an audience the way you intended, those little individual aforementioned moments aside. It allows us to gauge what the audience is noticing and responding to. It let's us punch up those elements that need punching up and get rid of the things that aren't working. So each afternoon this week we'll be gauging the response to the show from several audiences, taking notes and then rehearsing the bits that help us make the show as a whole more meaningful. By Saturday night this process should be finished and then it's official opening night and no more rehearsal during the day except for line brush ups with Scott and the other actors prior to the show.

In other news, I asked Amanda to take a little video tour of the set with Angie, who directed the production. The set was designed by Rob Bowen, whose head of the Department of Dramatic Art at UNCA and construction was headed up by Sylvia Pierce of Scenery Concepts. Enjoy!

Designers speak about True West

True West rehearsals are going well: we've started blocking the show, and had one session of fight choreography with Bill Munoz (thanks, Bill!). I'm really excited about getting this show up on its feet.

While Angie and the actors are in rehearsal, our design team is busy building sets, finding props and costumes, and designing the lights and sound. This week, I'm excited to be able to introduce the designers to you and share some of their process. Our Managing Director Amanda did some quick interviews with our designers, asking them all the same question: What has been the most exciting and/or challenging aspect of working on this production of True West? (In theatre, the most exciting and most challenging thing are often one and the same!).

Check out the interview with the designers in the video below, and check back later this week for interviews with the other designers, plus audio clips from our composer Jason Waggoner!