"We'll take a cup of kindness yet, for auld lang syne."

And now for the reeeeeeally scary ghost! The ghost of Theatre Future!

Well, not really. The future looks good doesn’t it? At NC Stage we’re looking forward to beginning rehearsals for Boeing-Boeing in the immediate future. Scott Treadway and I have done three shows together over the past year and I directed him in one. But with all that time spent with Treadway over the last year, I’m still looking forward to spending even MORE time with him on Boeing-Boeing.

Later this spring, One Flea Spare will be directed by Angie and I know she’s been looking forward to that one for a while. What an amazing play! And then our Immediate Theatre Project friends, (the ITPeeps) will round out the year with what I’m sure will be an amazing production of the American classic, The Glass Menagerie.

As we wrap up this season, we’re also thinking ahead to future seasons. Next season will mark our 10th season of producing professional theatre in Asheville. It’s almost unbelievable to me that we’ve been doing this for 10 years.

So, what do we do to mark the occasion? Every one around the office is just itching to do part 2 of Angels In America, maybe along with part one performed in repertory… There are other plays on our short list for next season for next season that are pretty exciting to us, but we’re always interested to hear suggestions (feel free to post something in the comments if you have ideas).

As for the long-term future, there are a couple of big projects that Angie and I have been day-dreaming about, which we hope will turn into a reality, just as our daydream of a professional theatre in Asheville has become a reality. One of those daydreams involves another local arts organization, with whom we’ve recently worked, and a possible co-production of a profoundly amazing play. Another involves a collaboration with a funk band on a Shakespeare play. And yet another involves an adaptation of a novel that has a lot of meaning for Angie and me (we were both reading it when we started dating) and a lot of meaning for Western North Carolina. And it would involve music too. How can anything about Western North Carolina NOT involve music?

But of course, all these things are only possible with the support of our community. I hope you’ll take an opportunity before the tax year ends to support NC Stage’s work THIS year.

You can make an instand donation to NC Stage via the JustGive link, and help us make great theatre for Asheville and Western North Carolina for the next year and for years to come.

And don’t be a stranger. Share your hopes for the future on the blog. Visit the Facebook page and become a fan. Follow us on Twitter. But most of all, come see a play in 2011.

Happy New Year everyone! Be safe and keep telling your story!


Charlie

So thankful. A visit from the ghost of theatre present.

I hope your holiday weekend was pleasant and stress free and that you were able to celebrate and commemorate the story that means the most to you. Asheville had a white Christmas, which was actually really pleasant and relaxing, considering the busy fall we’ve had at NC Stage!

How busy, you ask?

We started out with the news that we had been voted readers favorite theatre company in the Mountain Xpress readers poll right before we dove into the Bard-a-thon back in September and about 200 participants read 12 Shakespeare plays over a 48 hour period. And yes, it was fun! But it also raised around $9,000 toward our programming and it was a great kick off to an exciting season.

Immediately after that wound down, and I mean immediately, we started rehearsals for Angels in America. Angie directed that so I was hanging with our kids while she tackled that behemoth of a play. Nearly 2,000 people attended Angels. It’s a play we’ve wanted to produce for quite awhile and we feel very fortunate that we got to do it and that we received such a positive response from the audience.

Then, while that was going on, we started rehearsals for three, count ‘em, THREE productions of Live From WVL Radio Theatre: It’s A Wonderful Life. This adaptation of the movie is something we’ve been doing with our partners Immediate Theatre Project (or the ITPeeps as we like to call them) since 2006.

Production #1 was a partnership with Flat Rock Playhouse, with performances at the Historic Henderson County Courthouse. On December 4th that cast moved to Charlotte where we partnered with the Blumenthal Performing Arts Center for a 2 week run in the Booth Theatre, while a replacement cast rehearsed and opened at the Courthouse in Hendersonville (Production #2) . I directed those productions so I had 2 trips to Charlotte in as many days! Meanwhile, our tour version – Production #3, produced by Immediate Theatre Project, was rehearsing and then went out on a multi-state tour that wound up on December 23rd in Newton-Conover, NC after visiting Maryland, Ohio, Illinois, Georgia, Alabama and Tennessee. All told, more than 5,000 people attended these three productions and experienced the message that “one person’s life touches so many others”.

Then MEANWHILE, Angie was directing scenes from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream for the Asheville Symphony Orchestra’s performance of Mendelssohn’s Midsummer at the Thomas Wolf Auditorium in mid November. It was a fantastic blending of actors, instruments, and voices.

We’re pooped. But it’s a good kind of pooped, and we are really enjoying the quiet of the snow before the storm of the second half of our season. More on that in the third email you will be visited by soon.

So as I reflect on the first part of the season with its great partnerships and collaborations and think to the next part, I’m reminded of something I read earlier today. (ok, I was perusing Twitter and came across this tweet); “Do NOT use this week to plan for 2011. Devote this week to thanking folks for support in the past year.”

If I don’t say it enough, let me say it now. Thank you. To all of the people who value theatre and NC Stage, to the hard working professionals that it’s my privilege to work with every day, to the board of directors, to everyone of you who’ve attended a play or convinced one of your friends to come see a play, and to every one of you who’ve contributed time, resources and money to NC Stage. Your support counts more than we can ever express and we are indeed lucky to be in such a beautiful, supportive place with people like you.


JustGive.org

Director speaks about rehearsing "Beauty Queen"

I asked Angie Flynn-McIver, director of our first production of the 2009-2010 season, co-founder of NC Stage and my wife of 9 years as of October 14th, to write something about her experience while directing "Beauty Queen". Hope you enjoy and come see it!

Just a collection of thoughts about The Beauty Queen of Leenane as we head into the final week of rehearsal:

Twelve days into rehearsal. We’ve got Monday and Tuesday of the coming week to continue to work scenes and polish moments, then we start running the show, then tech, then first preview the 21st. This thing always happens when I’m directing—by the second day of rehearsal, I’m bone-tired. I don’t know if it’s because of the extra hours at work or the intense focus it takes, but I can’t get enough sleep. The actors say they are having crazy dreams—we’re all being taken on quite a ride by this play.

Here’s some stuff I’ve spent time thinking about the past two weeks:
• Who is lying?
• Who isn’t lying?
• How would the world of the play be different if this lie were true?
• How much sex has the main character had?
• What is the ideal ratio of perceived threat to unquestioned actor safety that can be achieved in front of an audience (in other words, how real can it be before it’s too real?)
• What outfit says “I’ve given up” versus “I may give up soon”?
• How do you pronounce “Leenane”?

Mag and Maureen Folan are mother and daughter. They live together in a small cottage in a small town in Ireland, and they spend almost all of their time together. However, instead of, say, taking up cooking or cross-stitch or volunteering at the church food pantry, their mutual hobby is tormenting each other. Mag nags at Maureen constantly, insisting that she be waited on hand and foot though she’s capable of doing many, if not most, things for herself. Maureen takes petty revenge by only buying cookies her mother hates at the store and leaving lumps in her nutrition drink. Thank god for the funny moments in this play—there are a lot, and they can’t come too often for me!

This play is challenging. It’s different from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead—that was a very heady play, plus a hell of a lot of blocking and problem-solving. “Beauty Queen” is tough because it's all heart, no head--the main characters are stuck in a terrible relationship, and they are not people you want to spend a lot of time with in real life. And in fact, though their behavior is extreme, I can still see myself in it. I am a mother and I have one; I am a daughter and I have one. I am not the caretaker for any elderly relatives, and I certainly don’t plan to emulate any aspect of the relationship depicted in this play. I do think, though, that anyone can find themselves behaving badly towards those closest to them, indulging in petty comments, striking at the most vulnerable places because we can. There’s a reason this play was an award-winner and has had many, many productions in many countries—the rhythms of domestic annoyance are familiar to us, as familiar as the faces of our loved ones. The way they play out in this story is extreme, even epic, but their structure is repeated in homes of every size and location.

I didn’t go into theatre with the goal of learning about myself, or questioning my own behavior, or analyzing my relationship with my kids or my parents or my husband. But the incredible gift of this kind of work is that it happens anyway. The cast and I are sitting around talking about the play, figuring it out line-by-line, and parallels spring up in my mind, and in the minds of the actors. Everyone has an illustrative story to share, a metaphor, an “oh, yeah, that happened to me”. And when we make these links, we learn. Maybe we identify an aspect of our own interactions that isn’t all it could be, or we think more about kindness, or, frankly, we just become better theatre artists because we’ve expanded our experience.