Tuesday, June 12, 2012

A Midsummer Night's Dream: BLESSED

swimming in a sea of costumes
It is absolutely crazy to think that this was our last week of rehearsal before tech week! We kicked off the week by pulling costumes. Bradley University very graciously let us go into their warehouse and pull ANYTHING we wanted. There was SO MUCH to choose from, at times it was hard to find each other in the maze of racks. We are so lucky to have Bradley as a resource. SO if anyone from the Bradley Theatre Department is reading this: THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU! Our actors look amazing!





We were able to pretty much costume all of our actors! We filled up both Andrew and Sarah's trunks.



We then filled up a good portion of the porch with all the costumes and did our costume fittings on the porch! Hooray for grassroots theatre! 



The week leading up to the opening of the show was filled with work, work for the show, rehearsal, work for the show. Andrew and I tag teamed flyering, making poster boards and tying up loose ends while Sarah dealt with pretty much all things costumes. All the while, it felt like we were in pretty good shape. We were able to put together the tedious little things because the big things were all taken care of. It was great! Taylor was a huge help, too! He put up our posters, wrote line notes, helped set up and clean up. It was a blessing to have him!

 Andrew painting our Wall and Taylor working on line notes. 

COSTUME PARADE!

tech week!

First Dress! playing games to warm up!


SPEAKING OF BLESSINGS. Our catch phrase for the show was "Blessed". No doubt, the production was being led by a higher power whether it be God, the Universe, Positive Energy...SOMETHING wanted the show to happen and it wanted certain people to work on it.
Too many things seemed to just fall into place for it to not be true. Whenever we would feel this power or WHATEVER we would just look at each other and say, "Blessed". There was such peace and love and JOY throughout the process, we were SUPPOSED to do this.

Now, this isn't to say there weren't any hard times. There were actor egos,  frustration over the music, and scheduling conflicts, but at the end of the day...we did it!

We were able to bring 21 people from all walks of life, with various amounts of theatre experience and even more varied SHAKESPEARE experience together. We were blessed with Cree, our musician who jumped in at the last minute. We had people from the community WANTING to help us and promote the show, we had beautiful Camp Wokanda to play in and the people who worked there helping us all along the way. And then all those who came to see the show. This included family member, co-workers, professors, friends, and people from the community...everyone brought together to be swept away in a story. A countless number of people believed in us and trusted us with a couple hours of their lives... and in regards to the cast MANY MANY hours of their lives. We were all brought together for this one purpose: to be swept away by a story. The culmination of each and every one of our lives brought us to that moment and we all shared it. Isn't that what theatre is all about? Isn't that what ART is all about? That moment, we can never get back. Even if we remounted the show...NOTHING will compare to THAT exact moment, THAT show, THAT experience.

I am still amazed that we were able to pull it off. With no one to lean on but each other. But we didn't need anymore than that. The show was blessed.



THE WORLD ONLY SPINS FORWARD. 
THE TIME IS NOW.
THE GREAT WORK BEGINS.