A Laramie Update

Graduate school seems to be moving at the speed of light. When I'm not in a three hour acting class I am studying movement, or voice, or speech. Perhaps I'm reading a book about acting methodology in Japan, or running to an audition, or rehearsing with another student for class, or performing a playwright's new project, I don't know! It's just a blur, but when I have an hour or two I am working on The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later. An event that I continue to be extremely excited for.
In preparation for our reading here at Ohio University, a lot of really astounding information about the project on a national level has come to our attention. One thing that happened was House Resolution 777. This resolution was introduced in Congress on the 24th and actually honors all those participating in the production of The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later in remembrance of Matthew Shepard. As a participating member in the national project I am ecstatic to be recognized by the government, and I hope that such recognition will continue to spur awareness and legislation concerning hate crimes against all victims including those of alternative sexual lifestyles.
So the preliminary event to the mass nationwide reading of The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later (in which over 150 theaters are now a part of) is the live feed that is coming from New York's Lincoln Center. This webcast will be hosted by Glenn Close and will include Judy Sheppard, Matthew's mother. There will also be a a post-production Question and Answer session moderated by National Public Radio Arts and Culture correspondent Neda Ulabay (information from Playbill.com).
I am so happy to be part of this far-reaching, powerful project. A project that displays how meaningful the Matthew Shepard story still is, as well as art's ability to influence a nation. If you're anywhere near a reading please, please, please go see it. Portlanders, that means you! I know there's one at Oregon State University, and the New Century Players are also presenting a reading at Newmark Theater; Portland Center for the Performing Arts in downtown Portland. So, no excuses!

The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later

Also known as possibly the most important piece of theatre I've ever worked on.
Those of you who know the original Laramie Project (the show created by the Tectonic Theater Project about the reaction to the 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard in Laramie, Wyoming) may be wondering what all this "ten years later" is about. The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later is an epilogue to the original play, and it is so brand new that the copy I have has a big bold warning label saying, Share it with only those people you think indispensable and insist to those people that they not share it with others.
How am I so lucky to have a copy? The first year Masters in Fine Arts graduate students here at Ohio University were asked by our professor and director, Shelley Delaney to participate in one of the 100 first readings of the play that are happening simultaneously around the United States on October 12th (the eleven year anniversary of Matthew's death). We begin rehearsal on Monday.
I cannot fully express to you how excited I am about this work and how much the project means to me. I only hope that it proves to be as meaningful, heartfelt, insightful, and inspirational as its predecessor.
This Youtube video was created by the Tectonic Theater Project as a trailer for their new play. I would definitely recommend watching it to understand more about what this piece is. Click here.

First Week in Actor School

Well, I have survived four whole days of graduate school relatively unscathed. Although my muscles are feeling a little worse for wear after the two three hour movement classes I attended this week. I guess somewhere between the spacial awareness viewpoints and the yoga I worked some spots that usually stay lazy.
My other classes include a voice/speech class where we are currently working on Linklater techniques and freeing our breath through a number of very relaxing breath focused exercises. I have a grad prep class with the entire twenty-five or so new graduate students in the school of theatre (playwrights, actors, directors, lighting designers, costume designers, set designers, technical directors, etc.) where we will be reading and discussing a number of books and essays about theatre in addition to doing projects and having guest lecturers. Then, of course there is acting class. Two classes, three hours each, every week. This is a Meisner school (for all of you non theatre practitioners, Sanford Meisner was an American actor and acting coach who developed his methodology, the Meisner technique, during and following his years in the Group Theatre during the 30's. Other famous acting teachers who came from the Group Theatre include Stella Adler and Lee Strasberg. A fabulous book to help understand the Group Theatre and those who arose from it is The Fervent Years: The Group Theatre & the 30's by Harold Clurman.) So right now my Meisner training is all about repetition execises:
Actor A: I like your blue shirt.
Actor B: You like my blue shirt.
A: I like your blue shirt.
B: You like my blue shirt.
A: I like your blue shirt.
...and so on and so forth constantly attempting to be in the moment having an honest response even though the piece of text you are repeating means virtually nothing and becomes rather irritating after a short while. Fun.
What happened late last night, though, was super cool. Every week all the graduate playwrights are expected to write, cast and produce a short play. They're all put on at Midnight Madness beginning at 11:00pm every Friday night. I was asked to be in Garret Schneider's, and while the whole process was rather slap-dash, it was exhilarating. Sometimes you get three rehearsals, sometimes none. Sometimes you get the script two days in advance and other times, like me last night, you're handed the piece an hour before you take the stage. Midnight Madness is wildly popular, and if you're not participating, there's room for fifty people or so to cram into the studio theatre and watch. I love working with our playwrights. They're a talented and passionate group, and I'm already planning to be a Madness addict, so I'll hopefully be in a short piece every Friday late at night.

Rounding Third

After so many days of blogging about the places I've seen along my road trip, I am finally back to blogging about theatre. Gasp! Professional theatre in Southern Ohio? That can't be! I didn't even have to go to Cincinnati to see it. In fact, I only had to go up to Nelsonville, the town just fifteen minutes up the Highway from Athens. How is this possible? After several years of wanting their own professional company where equity and professional artists can come create, the theatre faculty of Ohio University found themselves with not only many very talented professors, but a few very talented spouses of professors, and after doing some staged readings and workshops, they were finally ready to open their company, the Brick Monkey Theatre Ensemble, with their premiere production of Rounding Third by Richard Dresser. That opening was last night, and you'd better believe I was there.
New beginnings are always so exciting to me. If theatre is dialogue then new beginnings, be it new artist, new concepts, or new companies, are adding voices to conversation. They enrich our understanding and view of the world.
Before I discuss the show, let me just quickly say that I really loved their space. Stuart's Opera House in Nelsonville, Ohio is one of those old pre-ninteen hundreds places where you can still feel the residue of the burlesque girls and the traveling Vaudeville acts. It was magical. Of course, those who know me know that I think any theatre is magical, but trust me, it's a lovely space.
The show they chose, Rounding Third, was the perfect end of summer show. It's the story of two little league coaches with opposing views of guiding children spending their first season together on the field. I found it funny, touching, and above all, cute. Ledger Free and Brian D. Evans who made up the small cast did a great job handling the juxtaposition of the two characters. I really enjoyed watching them.
Congratulations to all involved, especially director, Dennis Lee Delaney. I was a wonderful premiere performance!

Athens, Ohio

Not Athens Greece, but it's still a really great place.
After several days on the road and a few days getting acquainted with the town, I sent Dad off to the airport in Columbus this morning, and I am now free to enjoy graduate school on my own.
Well, not quite on my own. In the incoming class of actors there are eight students. A small number, but it does not include all the directs, playwrights, and designers who will also be joining us. A primary order of business for the eight of us actors was to get to know each other, and we've already gone out together a couple times. They all seem to be really great people and I'm excited about working with them. We have five men and three women (one of which is my housemate, Marissa, who I adore), and we range in age from 22 to 34. My classmate Jon and I are the 22-year-olds, and I keep joking that we're the babies. Jon also recently completed his undergraduate and is from Montreal.
The town, campus and countryside are lovely. Yesterday, Dad and I drove the forty minutes to the West Virginia border and had lunch overlooking the Ohio River, as we had over the Mississippi a few days prior. I included some photos of the river as well as campus and town. There are very endearing old brick roads all over the downtown area which is only a short walk from my house. These roads, along with the old Victorian houses make Athens feel very quaint. The neighbors are so welcoming and gentle here that it all feels a little back in time.
Marissa, a New Yorker of ten years, and I, a recent North Portlander, both commented on our walk home from campus today that although we would simply ignore the sound of sirens at home, here them seem out of place, and make us turn our heads wondering what had happened.
That final photograph I uploaded was meant to illustrate one more point about Athens. It's quite a party town for the young frat boys, and evidence of that culture is everywhere. Luckily, I will be spending so much time in Kanter Hall (the theatre, of course) that I imagine I will miss a lot of the party life. Fine with me!
I'm sending you all my love from Ohio. As my Portland friend, Michael Buchino, informed me, "you can't say 'Ohio' without saying 'hi.'"

Heather Goes a Long Way to the Theatre 05

I apologize for not blogging yesterday, but afterall, we weren't on the road. We were in Iowa visiting relatives. Lots of relatives, and after a day of running around with small children, catching locusts and playing volleyball, I was thinking less about blogging and more about crashing. Here are some photographs I could not upload on Aunt Maryjoe's Iowa backwoods computer.
Today, Dad and I were back on the road! We gave Maryjoe a hug goodbye and took off across Iowa. The scenery was lovely, but both of us were happy to be making progress again on the highway. A few hours later we crossed into Illinois right over, get this, the Mississippi River. I had never seen the Mississippi in person before, and having been excited about it for days, I made Dad stop for a picnic lunch on the Illinois side looking it over. I'm a fan of Mark Twain, and looking at the river that Tom Sawyer and his friends swam across to their island and Huckleberry Finn road down on a raft with Jim, the escaped slave, made me feel much closer to the author. The last photo I included in this post is the view we had of the Mississippi over lunch.
We must have been well-rested from the day before because Dad and I breezed quickly through Indiana as well, skirting around the Indianapolis beltway. We had full intentions of just pressing on and reaching Athens, Ohio, our final destination, tonight, a day early. Upon calling my landlord, however, we discovered that he has been painting my floor with a sealant today and that we would die of fume inhalation if we stayed in the house tonight. So we scrapped that idea.
Instead Dad and I are staying in a very nice hotel between Dayton and Columbus, Ohio. We'll only have about two hours to drive tomorrow and then I will finally be at my new home! I'm so excited to begin unpacking and getting myself in gear for my MFA in acting! Of course, it is a little bitter sweet to end such a fun road trip, and I have also really enjoyed blogging my experience. Thank you all for reading. Soon, probably tomorrow, I will write and tell you all about Athens!

Heather Goes a Long Way to the Theatre 04

Alright, this is frustrating. I have so many beautiful photos from today, but I am unable to share them with you tonight because I am at my Aunt Maryjoe's farmhouse in Iowa using their painfully slow country computer. We're an hour outside Omaha, Nebraska and the internet just isn't hopping out here. Oh well, I promise I'll post the photos of today at my earliest convenience.
Today our trip across the United States took us all the way through Nebraska, the home of Arbor Day, or so we were informed by the welcome sign crossing the border. Strange that a state with what I, as an Oregonian, would call relatively few trees created a holiday dedicated to celebrating trees.
Well, they may not have pine forests, but they do have thousands of miles of corn fields. Corn, corn, corn, stretching as far as you can see. Often we'd see a big old red barn out in a field, but again, our view of it was obstructed by corn. Sometimes we'd see a break in the crops and a lone dirt road would stretch out with absolutely nothing on it until it either disapeared over a rolling hill or simply faded into the horizon.
Something that I've found fascinating about this area is the overwhelming amount of grasshoppers. When walking along the edge of a field they all jump away just as I put my foot down as though I was splashing water as I stepped. Their hum and buzz is deafening. I've found that if I stand quietly for a few moments I can hear the chirping and whispering of trillions of grasshoppers that inhabit hundreds of miles of field and farm. It is a unique and lovely sound. I am convinced I have never heard anything like it.
Upon stopping at one rest area, Dad and I became very preoccupied with catching and photographing the grasshoppers (I'll have to share the photos with you at a later date). I was fascinated with the different kinds and sizes I could catch. We were, in fact, so interested in our endeavor that I began to wonder how we would explain to our relatives in Iowa that we were delayed because we stopped to take pictures of bugs.
Anyway, now we are at Maryjoe's country house in Iowa, and we're taking a break from driving tomorrow to stay here and visit with a bunch of the relatives on my father's side of the family. My father's family, by the way, grew up in a fairly rural area of Michigan. There were seven children in the household, and I am excited to say that after twenty-two years of life, today after meeting Maryjoe and tomorrow after meeting Uncle John, I will finally have met all six of Dad's siblings.
I think that Iowa is breathtakingly beautiful. So far there are just as many farms and corn crops as in Nebraska, but the landscape is a little more varied as upon reaching Omaha, the terrain became far more hilly than flat. It feels strange to be so centralized in the United States. I feel as though I am the farthest away I could be from any ocean. I am landlocked.
One more happy thing I'll mention before I sign off, Dad and I crossed the Rocky mountains yesterday, if you'll remember. That means lots of different animal species that never got to the west coast. I was taking a walk this evening in a corn field, and began to see several of a specific little creature that is a favorite of mine. Fireflies. Silently lighting up and then quickly fading again as though people were standing among the corn stalks lighting matches and blowing them out over and over again. Wonderful.
I'll post pictures as soon as I can. Goodnight, from middle America.