another openin'

It's hard to believe that we only started rehearsing this show on January 6th!! For those who like to keep track, that makes it exactly 46 days since our first meeting. And now we're opening. Pretty impressive that we've been able to pull a group together, get to know one another, create a play and stage it in that short a time!

We sat down before our run-through last night and talked about where we're at. This has been a challenging process for all of us because it's required taking a big leap into the unkown. Most of the cast had never created a play from scratch and certainly not one that didn't have a plot or characters. We've all had to take on roles that we didn't exactly know how to do; and instead of waiting to figure it out, we just started doing it.

This play is challenging not only to the actors, but also to the audience. We spent a long time last night talking about whether anyone would "understand" what the play was about. Well, there will probably be many people who say they don't "get" it, but that's not necessarily the point, right? Here at Youth Onstage! and Castillo, we create "developmental" theater that asks something of its audience. Instead of telling them what to think, we're asking them to see things in new ways. We think that that helps people figure out new ways of seeing and new ways of re-organizing the world. The play is really just the opening remark in what we all hope will be an ongoing conversation with everyone who sees it (and even those of you out there on the web who don't see it). And we hope that people respond in all kinds of ways, including by responding with brand new performances.

As for the future of this blog, it has only just begun! We are planning to post updates from our post-show talk-backs. And I'm also going to ask our cast members and creative team to reflect on the experience. Hopefully, we'll have new pictures to put up at some point. Most of all, though, we want audience members to post their comments.

Tell us what you liked, what you didn't get, what you thought it was all about. Conduct some performance exercises in your own communities and tell us about the results. In other words... keep talking!