One of the challenges we’ve been talking about since the beginning of the process (before we even cast this puppy with seven of the finest actors I’ve had the good fortune to work with) was the transitions.  It’s important, we decided months ago, to have transitions that are part of the storytelling of the show.  We didn’t want (nor can we afford) to have people in black come on stage, pretend they aren’t there, and move chairs and props around.  What kind of theatrical mileage can we possibly get out of that?  So the challenge became finding a way to stay both inside and outside of the world and time continuum of the play, to accomplish the basic task of getting furniture and props on and off stage while also working on another level to keep the storytelling moving forward.

Tonight was the night to stage the transitions.  I’m really glad that we set aside a whole rehearsal for something that seems to typically rank pretty low on the priority totem pole.  I came in with the idea of working in two time signatures - to have Phil and Meredith (the couple whose lives we follow in this 24-year marathon) in one speed and everyone else in the other.  I’m lucky enough to have the aforementioned brilliant cast that is also willing to jump in and try things, even when prefaced with my “This might be crap, but let’s try it.”  I’m also lucky that even if it starts as crap it’s anything but by the time they’re finished with it. 

I’m happy with what we found tonight.  I know that the shifts will get tighter and (hopefully) inform the scenes as any connective tissue informs the limbs it sits between.  I hope that the audience finds the transitions engaging and that we’re able to communicate a sense - not literally, but more evocatively or expressively - of the lives happening in the gaps between scenes.  I’m excited to see how these moments continue to grow and shift.  I’m excited to have such a brilliant team to work with.  I’m just excited to see and hopeful about what we discover next.

Last weekend, we New Leafers took twenty-four hours out of our busy lives, day jobs, and rehearsal schedules to re-connect with each other and with the company.  We talked big-picture concepts and strategy, we brainstormed, we worked on The Long Count, we got excited about this season, and about the future.

One of the first things we did was talk about our purpose–why are we doing this?  There are plenty of theatre companies in Chicago; what do we do that is uniquely valuable?   And after we’d spent some time articulating that, we re-visited our four-year-old mission statement, which was written when we were a much different company.   All the key words still fit us:  intimate, animate, renewal.  But something seemed off about the end of the sentence - there was this sort of misleading distinction between “artist” and “audience” that raised questions about which group was being valued more, and it was not quite right.

And so we changed one word.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you our new mission statement:

New Leaf Theatre creates intimate, animate theatrical experiences that renew artist and audience.

And then a surprising thing happened as we discussed our values.  (We’ve re-articulated those, too, and will be posting them on the website in the coming weeks.)  Kyra said something earlier in the day about honesty, which really struck a chord with me, and since I was lucky enough to be the person with the marker at the time, I wrote it down.  Honesty.  Meaning honesty in performance, in storytelling, in our connections with the audience, but also, and maybe more importantly, in our relationships and the way we work as a company.    I hadn’t really thought about it before, but as soon as the idea was “out there” in the world, it just seemed so true and so right.  I was so excited that we were able to name that quality and to claim it as something essential to our identity.

Now honesty is a wonderful thing.  Some would say it is the best policy.  But claiming honesty as a value brings a certain responsibility.  And so when the time came to dig in and talk about how we work together as a company… well, sometimes honesty means having really difficult conversations.   And we did.  We talked about hurt feelings, about resentments, about the ways we’ve failed each other.  And it was hard.

But honesty doesn’t necessarily mean truth without tact– we sat in this cozy hotel suite and talked about hurtful things without trying to hurt each other.  And when we uncovered a painful place, we addressed it, sometimes apologizing, sometimes affirming, always always committed to working our way through it.

I used to think that good communication meant that everyone always understood each other, there were no arguments, no hurt feelings, no bumps in the road. In my five years (almost) with New Leaf, I’ve learned that the truth is more complicated, richer, more rewarding than that.  In our work, we talk a lot about renewal, about going through the hard stuff not to reach a happy ending, but so you can earn a new beginning.  This weekend, we put our talk into action.  And now, we begin.  Again.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the idea of vocation: work that requires your whole self — heart, mind, and soul — work that challenges and fulfills, that speaks to some essential piece of you, that makes you more fully yourself.

My vocation is acting. It took me years to come to terms with that, to own it.  Even now, writing it “out loud” in this public forum is a little scary. But it’s the truth. It’s highly unlikely that my vocation will ever pay all of the bills, but as I have grown fond of saying, it’s not about making a living; it’s about making a life. 

And for me, making a life means working for New Leaf.  And while I consider myself an actor first and foremost, I find I get tremendous satisfaction from tasks and projects that sometimes seem far removed from the act of making theatre.  Managing the business of New Leaf  (today that means grant reports, acknowledgment letters,  paying bills, and organizing files) may not be as fulfilling as rehearsing and performing, but it strengthens the foundation of this place that I am lucky enough to call my home.

I often catch myself feeling jealous of friends whose vocation supports them, who have the luxury of spending their 40 (or 50, or 60) hours a week in fulfilling work.

Today, I am simply grateful to have work that I love.

Don’t forget to join New Leaf tomorrow, Wednesday August 27th.

I’m our production manager, so I’m just going to leave you with the bullet points:

Holiday Club: 4000 N. Sheridan Road. 7 PM.

You can win that iPod Touch you’ve been salivating over, and lots of other great prizes.

Two Included Drinks and Food for $30 at the door.

Or get your tickets early for only $25 right here.

Readings of Fresh New Plays by Bilal Dardai and Brandon Ray.

Music courtesy of local Folk legend Mark Dvorak.

A new season of great theater that we are eagerly bouncing off the walls to tell you about.

Oh and that iPod Touch? No service plan.

SWEET. I MEAN: FRESH.

I am not where I thought I’d be five years ago.  But here I am.  And now what?  How can we move forward?  Where do we start?  What’s the next first step?

Well, if you’re New Leaf, you decide to take that step by building your season around the question that is perhaps the scariest thing confronting you at the moment.  And that’s just what we’ve done.  This season, we’ll work together as an ensemble -with some old and new friends - to ask ourselves “How do we build a future from a present we didn’t expect?”

I just sent a “For Immediate Release” to the press announcing our season, and now I’m filled with that butterfly/jittery/first-day-of-school feeling.  And I don’t think it’s the coffee or the fear of typographical errors in my press release.  Because now, for some reason, it’s real.  Here we go.  We’re about to jump in with both feet into this season, this question, not knowing where we’ll be at the other side.  It’s so exciting - I am so excited about this season.  And it’s also terrifying.  In the best possible way. 

So here we go.  Ladies and gentlemen, I am proud to present New Leaf Theatre’s 2008/2009 Season.  Here’s the short info - but pick up the Season Announcement Press Release to get all the goods!

FALL 2008
Six Years by Sharr White
CHICAGO PREMIERE
How does our nation of families hold together through the push and pull of progress?

WINTER 2009
Touch by Toni Press-Coffman
How do you move forward when your worst nightmare becomes your reality?

SPRING 2009
The Long Count - an original piece devised by the company
How do we create this future while we’re living in the present?

Of course, it never quite happens.

So what did we do this summer?
Well, Marsha just got back from 5 weeks in upstate New York, working with the Bakerloo Theatre Project .This was her 4th summer with the company.  This year, they did a gender-blind casting of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, where she played King Alonso of Naples, and various “spirits of the island;” and a stripped-down, very comic production of Anton Chekhov’s Cherry Orchard, where she got rave reviews as Madame Ranevskaya. 

Michelle’s a technical assistant at Chicago Shakes and has been building the set for Willy Wonka, which includes fun things like a pink candy boat, a nut room, a giant TV, a flowing chocolate river, an inventing room, and a bubble room with big and little acrylic balls and blue mylar.  (I totally want to go play on this set.) She’s been monkeying around on scaffolding trying to figure out ways of attaching bizarre materials 16 feet up in the air. Good times.

Jared, as he has for several summers now, is working at Ravinia. He has to be there pretty much all day every day. I haven’t actually seen him in months (so thank God for email!)

Kyra’s working a day job and directing a one act at the side project for the fall titled “The Best Christmas Present, Ever.” She’s also been planning her wedding – and that, alone, is more work than I want to think about right now.

Nick and Jess spent 5 weeks teaching at Cherubs this summer (a.k.a. Northwestern University’s National High School Institute, Theater Division). If you know Cherubs, you know this is a 24/7 job. Nick designed sound for 10 shows and taught sound design classes; Jess directed one of those shows and taught a whole bunch of acting classes. Nick’s also doing all the programming for the awesome Chicago Theatre Database, which is in beta right now and growing so fast it’s scary. 

As for me, I’m working my regular 9-to-5, building an illustration/graphic design portfolio in preparation for changing careers (again), taking classes in bookbinding and digital letterpress, and starting an Etsy shop to sell handbound journals/sketchbooks and original art. 

So now it’s August (yikes!), and here we go again…kind of panicking as we realize that we’ve got a fundraiser on August 27^th to plan; we’ve got a short play in the Abbie Hoffman festival that needs to be rehearsed, teched, attended, etc.; rehearsals for our fall show start August 25^th and production meetings start now; we had callbacks last Saturday for our winter show, though we can’t finalize a cast quite yet; and we’re committed to creating an original piece for a spring workshop production, which we really need to write one of these days (much more on that later). We’ve got grants to apply for, an improved box office system to roll out,  a fiscal year to close out and another to open, marketing to design, press releases to write, and branding decisions to discuss.

Welcome back, everyone!

So okay, we go away, I’m in casting and preproduction for my next show (bobrauschenbergamerica with Chicago Fusion Theatre, coming in September!), not really thinking about much else. And then, about a week ago, I get an email containing three scripts and a casting breakdown. In the email, Jessica suggests that I direct Raptor & Scavenger, a play by Bilal Dardai, with actors Max Lesser, Alyse Kittner, Tiffany Topol, and Mark Chaitin. Now, Max and Tiffany I’ve seen in New Leaf shows, and I know they are the tops. And Bilal is in the first show that ever made my head explode in Chicago (Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind, natch) so I’m already kind of starstruck. Then I read the play. Which is ridiculous. You want to see a script that will never, ever be fully staged despite its taut comedy, fun parts for actors, and breathtaking climax? Come see Raptor & Scavenger deny physics, the fiscal realities of production, and animal-cruelty laws three times on Saturday.

So okay, I get the script, I read it, I say “Sweet Christmas, what in the name of Bertolt Brecht do I do with this?” I make some notes (”have an opinion about that guy”, “SCREAM THIS”, “wha??”) and I put it away and recommence freaking out about casting my own show.

Thursday comes. Parking by the LPCC is usually a fool’s errand, but I get there early and find a sick spot right outside. I head into the space to look around, re-read, make more notes. This room is gorgeous–it’s just big enough for theater but it still feels like a real room. I love sitting on the little stage I’ve only ever seen used as the booth, which hangs, dark and empty, off the north end of the room, looking down on the big wood floor where the shows happen. Or no, my favorite part is the low swimming pool in the ceiling. No, it’s the Abe Lincoln fireplace. I’ve wanted to stage a play in here for like a year. The cast trickles in, Jessica’s there, and Kyra, and Bilal (who is awesome, it turns out). There are two more scripts that I haven’t read (oops). We sit in a circle and we get down to it. Jessica says, “Let’s start with Raptor.” And looks at me. And everyone looks at me.

I start talking about how I want to use the room, and the cast’s relationship with the audience, and it’s all a bit pie-in-the-sky for a ten-minute play that’s sharing its one 3-hour rehearsal with two other pieces. But everyone in the room–six actors, three directors, and two writers–gets involved. Those who’ve played at New Leaf before are telling me some of the room’s staging secrets. I’m trying to reconcile what I see in Bilal’s script with the needs of the other shows, but everyone’s saying “Just go with it, let’s play.” So we do, and it’s the most fun. Suddenly, we’ve got a seating arrangement that everyone is excited about. The cast is working incredibly fast, information is flying around the room. I’m shouting “Someone tell me where the tiger door is!” (someone does, and they’re right–the Abe Lincoln fireplace).

Three hours later, we’ve got three plays staged. Each one is unique in tone and visual concept. Each one flexes the space, and maximizes the creativity of our six brilliant actors. Each one is a blast to watch.

Tonight was one of those rehearsals.

I’m getting up super early on Saturday to take the bus from Pilsen for the show, and I CAN’T WAIT, SERIOUSLY.

About a month ago I issued a challenge to three of New Leaf’s playwright friends: Given identical lists of some of the features of Chicago’s Mid-North Neighborhood, create a ten-minute play using anything on the page as an inspiration, starting point, setting, character - anything - but you have to somehow incorporate something about the neighborhood on that sheet of paper.  

I was excited to see what these three gentlemen - as different from one another as they can be - would come up with, espeically because this is no idle exercise.  This Saturday each of these plays will have their world-premiere reading as New Leaf’s contribution to this year’s Mid-North Association Summerfest.  At 11 AM, 1 PM, and 3 PM, staged readings of all three plays will be presented in our home at the Lincoln Park Cultural Center.  This was arranged long before seeing the plays, even before officially broaching the subject with the playwrights.  It was a bit of a leap of faith, espeically since we’re hoping that this event will be a way for us to reach out to people in our neighborhood who still look at the LPCC and say “There’s a theatre in there?”  After all, first impressions are a tricky thing. 

On Friday, these three lovely men (Bilal Dardai, Brandon Ray, and Dan Rubin) e-mailed me copies of what they’d created.  The three pieces I received are as different as their creators are and do exactly what I hoped they would - examine the inspirational aspects of New Leaf’s neighborhood in three distinct ways.

I was clear in the beginning that these are going to be staged readings, so that the guys would feel free to write something as fantastical and “unproducable” as they like.  I think Bilal really took up that gauntlet and rocket-launched it; his piece is incredulous and ridiculous in so many ways - it is truly delightful.  Dan has created something that is structurally and thematically fascinating to me and I can’t wait to hear it out loud.  And Brandon’s piece, the most naturalistic of the three,  is full of richly developed characters (yes, developed characters in 10 minutes) in three respective, instantly recognizable crossroads with which we can all empathize. 

On Thursday we’ll be assembling three directors, six actors, and two of these lovely playwrights to work collaboratively for a few hours to wake these texts up and get them in the air before showing them to the public on Saturday.  I’m finding this process (abbreviated though it may be) to be just exhilarating.  It’s reminding me how lucky I am to be in the company of such creative minds.  I can’t wait to see what happens next!

By the way - the images above remind me of the three plays.  Intrigued yet?

I was so nervous.

I had done my research.  It looked great on paper.  But meeting, live and in person, for the first time, is always scary.  Part of me is totally cool and level-headed, telling myself that this evening is just about getting to know each other, trying to find out if we’re a good fit.  Another part of me is excited, wildly hopeful, thinking, “this could be the start of a really wonderful relationship.”

I am not talking about a blind date.  I’m talking about a play reading.

Here at New Leaf, reading plays out loud together is a long-standing tradition and the cornerstone of our season selection process.  When someone in the company finds a GEM of a play (that’s “Good Enough to Mention” for those of you as acronym-obsessed as we are), they pass it along to one or two other company members.  Eventually, we all read the play on our own. When we find a play that speaks to our mission, that explores the questions we’ve been asking ourselves, that excites us as artists, then we know: we have got to meet this play in person.  We invite friends of the company to come read with us, we sit in somone’s apartment with pizza and wine (and the occasional crudite) and just…get to know each other.

There’s a lot riding on that first meeting.  We know what we’re looking for - does this play fit that?  We know we like the play on paper - does it come alive when we give it a voice?  We know we really want to get started on next season, but we don’t want to settle on something just to have it.  At the same time, we know that no play is perfect.  It’s nerve-wracking.

Over the last several months, we’ve met some really great plays.  Plays we would totally recommend to a friend.  Plays with a pretty face, a sense of humor, and a great personality. 

And we’ve met two plays that we’d like to get to know a little better.  They’re not perfect, but we love them for who they are.  They touch us, inspire us, challenge us.  We’re ready to commit.

Stay tuned for our 2008-2009 season announcement…

So when we put out our casting call a couple weeks ago, I crossed my fingers and hoped that the submissions would start trickling in.  And then they did more than trickle.  Even though our deadline for submissions was a week ago, I’m still receiving headshots and resumes.  To date, over 400 actors have requested an audition.  400.  Can you believe it?  What an absolute embarrassment of riches.

This is great and exciting news - until I think about how we only have about 150 audition slots.  Which means that it is physically impossible for us to see more than half of the actors who submitted.  And since this year we’ve moved away from the first come, first served system we’ve had in the past, we are faced with the terribly daunting factor of choice.

Anne Bogart talks about the violence of articulation (I love that phrase) and how making a choice neccesarily voids all the other options forever.  Robert Frost talks about the “road  not taken.” And I talk about my irrational fear of missing out.  All of these things make scheduling general auditions for a non-equity theatre of limited means distressing and just–hard. 

I’ve got my spreadsheet and my system (such as it is) but it feels so far from foolproof, and as a once upon a time generally auditioning actor myself, I’m feeling incredibly guilty that I can’t see everyone.  Because I want to - I so very much want to!  So I’m trying to Frankenstein these days together, getting confirmations from actors to try to eliminate the “no-show” factor, reducing breaks so that we can see as many people as we can, and I guess at the end of the day I’ll just have to keep crossing my fingers and keep hoping for the best.  There are so many roads - and I just can’t take all of them, no matter how much I’d like to.