We Did It!

I am finding it difficult to put into words the full experience of what has happened over the last five months since the group has been meeting, and especially over the last few weeks leading up to the performance. It has been amazing. Terrifying. Exciting. Moving. Hilarious. Unnerving. Inspiring.

At the beginning, many group members expressed doubts about the group itself (what exactly are we doing here… is this going to be interesting or a waste of time) but kept returning week after week, and said they were intrigued and were having a great time. I was told by staff members that with this group of people specifically, if they weren’t enjoying it, they wouldn’t come.

Almost everyone expressed concerns and doubts about our ability to create a finished product, even up to 3 weeks before the performance.

I really can’t express how much the people in the group have changed and grown over the last five months. I took videos of almost all of the rehearsals, so have been able to roughly track the group’s progress, and conduct a qualitative analysis of the effectiveness of the program. I also checked in with participants throughout the process to find out how they felt about the whole thing. The results have been astonishing. It is so neat to see nine people in their eighties and nineties EXCITED.

On the days of the performances, so much of what I saw and heard from the group members was reminiscent of how I felt as an emerging young actress. Being on stage is an intangible experience, and it’s why so many people get drawn into the theatre, in spite of the poor odds of ever being able to live above the poverty line and in spite of the constant struggle. The people in this group got to experience this feeling for the very first time, so late in life.

Close friendships and intimate bonds were the facets of theatre that I loved the most as a young actress and I saw them replicated here at Baycrest. An invaluable outcome of this project has been the connections that were built between group members, the larger Baycrest community, and, I think, beyond. Before the show, the group members were all laughing and talking together easily, and making jokes with each other. Many group members have commented repeatedly on the friendships they have made in the group, with people they had never even met before.

Over the two performances we had between 150 and  200 audience members. It was incredible – and the performers blew everyone away.

One audience member, also a Baycrest resident, approached one of the group members a couple days after the show to say how much she loved the performance and how moved she was by it. The actor invited her over to her room later that day so they could talk about it, and become friends.

Another resident who declined joining the group told me, right after the show, that when he first heard about it he thought it was going to be silly, and he didn’t want to have anything to do with it. After watching the production he had to tell me how wrong he was, and how amazing it was to see these people express and create with such dignity and power.

On our first day back in March, as he was leaving Barry said to me, “I am starting to get a glimmer of interest in the project. Just a glimmer.” Then just yesterday he said with incredible emotion, “We were just a bunch of ordinary people, there was nothing special or extraordinary about us. I mean, we weren’t actors… And you took us… you got us all together and now look at us!”

Nadine has said to me a number of times that she would like to keep the group going, because with her vision and hearing problems, engaging is difficult for her. She felt that this was a stimulating and fun experience, and really hopes that it continues. Everyone is really sad that it is over, and they want to keep meeting. I do too. I hate to just leave it like this. Nora has said that she doesn’t know what she’s going to do with her Wednesday afternoons, “They’re so boring now,” she says. Ned and his companion have said the same thing. Actually, I could go on because I have had conversations with each participant about how they don’t want it to end!

Finding funding for arts programs for this population is extremely difficult. Things are beginning to change but there is still a strong emphasis on treatment, extending life, etc, but not as much emphasis on quality of life. Further, emphasis is placed on funding artistic initiatives for children and youths, but a similar emphasis does not exist for older adults. This is often a forgotten population in so many ways: medically, culturally, artistically, economically, financially – I could go on.

My goal is to launch a kickstarter campaign and get some friends together to do a long bike ride to raise money to keep this group going with the goal of an annual public performance. In addition to that I am also seeking seed funding for a longer and larger initiative that will be directed toward new iterations of this project. I want to see similar experiences happening around Toronto where older people will have the opportunity to generate their own performances. I want to recreate and expand the results I’ve just described in as many places as will have me.

Thank you everyone for all of your support over the last five months! And thank you to all of those who were able to come to the performance. It was so lovely to see you all.

I will update periodically with news about the group, a more detailed description of the performance, etc.

Au Revoir!

It’s Showtime!

One more day, everyone! I can’t believe it.

I have so many butterflies in my stomach about tomorrow and Tuesday but I know it is going to be a beautiful show. And thank you so much to all of the people who have already told me they are coming! I am looking forward to seeing all of you.

If you would like to come to the show, please just send me a quick email (if you haven’t already done so) so I can keep track of about how many people to expect.

Here are the details one last time!

Hooray for You and Me!

An Evening of Theatre

In Baycrest’s Wortsman Hall, main floor, hospital wing

Monday August 13, 2:30 Open dress rehearsal for Baycrest staff and volunteers, family, and friends

Tuesday August 14, 7:00 Performance

I won’t leave many details of our last rehearsal here just now, because of course it went very well – and I need to get back to getting ready for the show.

One think I will share is that, as we were wrapping up, I asked the group if there were any final questions, and Nadine said, “I have a question. You haven’t said anything about what’s going to happen to the group after the performance. Are we going to keep meeting? Because I would really like to.”

I am looking into funding options, because as I’ve mentioned, it makes me really sad to think that we are just going to stop meeting. I have a few ideas, but if anyone else has any, please comment!

See you at the show!

Six Days Til Showtime!

We’re almost there! And we are ready.

One thing I’m finding really interesting throughout this process is watching the different ways the actors are working.

Vocal technique comes really easily to some people while others have to work especially hard to speak loudly and clearly. The people who struggle more have been working incredibly hard, and it’s amazing to see their effort and determination. I think it’s actually visible in the work.

What is also amazing is the support they all show for each other. Those who haven’t been struggling as much keep mentioning with awe how much the others are improving, and those who have been struggling often say how much they admire the others’ work.

We were missing three actors at rehearsal this week, and it turned out that they were half of the cast of Changing Your Lifestyle. So when we rehearsed the play I had to read for three characters. That was pretty funny – I had many conversations with myself!

After the read-through we talked about whether we want to have a talkback at the end of the performance, and nobody had a strong opinion either way. I want to have one so the audience can have a chance to speak directly to the group members about the process. So far, any observations about the group have been filtered through my voice.

One of the Recreation Therapists who has been working with us turned to the group and said, “Let me give you an example of a question someone might ask: Have you been enjoying the theatre group?”

There was an instant response from the group. “Oh yeah!” “Yes!” “Of course!” And then Mara asked everyone to be specific about what they have enjoyed.

People talked about meeting new people and becoming friends, about trying something very different and challenging, and about hearing each other’s life stories. Then Norman turned to me and pointed. “We like HER!” he said, with a big smile on his face.

Whee!!

We then talked about the post-show reception and a few people voiced that they want to be able to invite friends and family. I actually agree – it would be really hard to kick everyone out right after the show. We were just trying to cut down on costs, but it wouldn’t be worth it. So I agreed.

The recreation therapist began asking questions because she is organizing the food. I said something dismissive like, “Oh, don’t worry! It will work out… we’ll just get a bit more.” Then I laughed because I realized how vague I was being and how unhelpful that was. I joked that in my ideal world cookies and petit fours grow on trees.

We were all laughing and Tom raised his hand and waved at me to come over with the microphone. He looked at the group and said, “The fairy godmother will bring the cookies!”

After deciding to double our food order, we all said goodbye. One rehearsal left!

Share the Joy

Our beautiful poster!

This week we had our best rehearsal ever. And it was the first time I realized that, with only two and a half weeks until the show, I am going to be so sad when it is all over. I think a lot of people in the group will be, too. We’ve become quite close.

I had an interview with Steph from Baycrest Matters – Baycrest’s newsletter – and she came to our rehearsal to snap a few photos and interview the participants. There is going to be a small article in the next newsletter about our group and the performance. How exciting!

Dr. Peter Whitehouse came to observe the first half of our rehearsal again, and was able to watch a read-through of Tom’s play. I must admit, the read-through was a little choppy, but we were able to go through it a second time, and the actors who don’t have parts went to another part of the room to work on their monologues with Grace.

I couldn’t believe how well the second read-through went, especially because I made two last-minute decisions leading up to this rehearsal. First, I switched Nora and Katherine’s roles. Katherine is quite feisty (you’ll remember her answer to how to get everyone to leave the theatre after the performance: “we’ll just say… Au revoir!”), so I decided she might be better suited for the role of Raizel, the single woman anxious to be set up with the new gentleman on her floor. Nora’s new character is more soft spoken and keeps her thoughts more or less to herself – until she’s about ready to burst. This is more like Nora, in my estimation.

I don’t know why I didn’t think of reversing the roles earlier. The women felt more comfortable with these characters, and the story flowed much more successfully.

The other decision I made was to ask Ned if he would play one of the characters. His main goal with this theatre group has been to help share other people’s stories, and I suppose I took this to mean that he wasn’t interested in acting. But then I realized, by acting in Tom’s play, he would be ensuring that the story be told effectively.

So of course the first read-through was choppy! Three people were reading parts they’d never read before. But the second time through was so good, and any of my anxieties about the play have dissipated. It was lively, fast paced, funny, and meaningful.

With ten minutes left we read through our group poem and, like the play reading, it was fantastic. My only directions were, “Be energetic! Be loud! Listen to everyone else when they speak!” Woot! The two people who had to memorize their lines did so with no problems and picked up their cues without delay.

I am so excited!

My one-on-ones were so nice this week too. Fiona and Barry both told me how much fun they are having, and how much they enjoy the group and our one-on-one time together. Then, when I was meeting with Norman and told him I had to go meet with Ned he said, “Yes, go share the joy.”

That made my day.

Three Weeks to Go!

Last week as I was going through my notes and preparing for our rehearsal, I realized that each section of our performance is completely written! I was floored. I assembled ten copies of the full script from beginning to end, put them in fancy duo tangs, and highlighted each person’s lines.

We can still make changes to the performance, but it felt so good to hand those out to everyone at the beginning of our last rehearsal.

We had a really productive meeting, and managed to get through the first half of the performance, which includes all of the monologues, and everyone was very pleased. I think it was good for us to have a more concrete sense of what the evening will actually look like.

One problem we’ve run into is that a few people have trouble turning the pages of their scripts, so I’ll have to come up with a solution. Fay doesn’t have a part in Tom’s play, so I think I will just give her a laminated double-sided copy of her monologue and that’s all she’ll need to hold. I’ll do the same for Nora, and then will have a few assistants on stage to help people out during the reading of the play.

After seeing it done as part of the full performance I might like to cut Fortunately/Unfortunately – even though at first I thought it was such a great idea. I just think that the pace of the performance might be more consistent if we leave it out. Improv is great, but perhaps not for this sort of event. I’m going to run it by the group next week and see what they think.

I had a one-on-one meeting with Fay the day after rehearsal, and she had been practicing her monologue A LOT. It sounded great. English is not her first language so I think she’s a little worried about reading it and about everyone understanding her, so she keeps reassuring me that she will sound good and that “everything will be ok.” I already know that, Fay!

She also wants to sing a song in the performance. She had mentioned a couple months ago that she didn’t want to do so, so I’m glad she’s changed her mind. I think it would be a really nice way to end the performance. The other theatre group I work with at Baycrest, The Terrace Players, finished their last performance with a song and it was really nice. The audience even sang along and there was an encore (check out page 5 of this newsletter to read about the performance).

People won’t be able to sing along to Fay’s song because she wrote it herself, but perhaps there will be an encore…!!

I’ve had a few one-on-one’s with Barry to write the introduction to his poetry and to help him memorize his section of the group poem. During our meeting I gave him a direction, and he responded by saying, “Yes, but I’m part of a whole, right? I need to be aware of and respond to what the people around me are doing on their lines too.”

We are all working really hard, and everyone is dedicated to the performance. Nora has a very quiet voice, but is making a pointed effort to speak loudly. Even Barry commented on her improvement. As I mentioned, Fay is practicing a lot on her own. Tom has told his whole family about the performance, and it looks as though they will all be coming. Barry is also expecting a large crowd – he asked for twelve invitations (I was expecting to give everyone four or five!).

Three weeks to go!

Again – if you are interested in coming, shoot me an email at: aynsley@aynsleymoorhouse.com

And… We’re Back!

And… We’re back! Thank goodness.

Our first rehearsal following our nearly one-month hiatus was really productive – we fired through everything we needed to accomplish. I think everyone feels that since we lost so much time we’ve really got to hustle. There is a buzz in the air nowadays!

Everyone really liked Grace, and seemed happy to have her on board. She is lovely, so this was not surprising at all.

We quickly went over the schedule of events for the performance, did some relaxation and vocal warm ups, and then went right into working on the poem that we had been working on over the last few months. The poem is called, “I’m Fine, Thank You.”

If you remember, we had been reading it chorally and I was pretty sure we could pull it off beautifully. We had begun to add gestures and the whole piece was becoming quite animated and exciting. Then at our last rehearsal Barry commented that we “sounded pretty ragged.”

After some humming and hawing I decided to propose that we try something different – each person reciting two lines on their own, one after the other.

So that’s how we practiced it this week, and it sounded and looked amazing. We all agreed that we preferred it this way. Not only does it sound clearer, but each actor has a chance to work on and showcase their expression and acting skills. It’s also quite neat to see how each person approaches the text differently.

When I met one-on-one with Fay the next day she told me that she had been practicing on her own. She recited her two lines for me, and her dedication to the meaning behind the words and the pride that she took in the performance of it was just beautiful.

After the group finished working on the poem a few people recited their monologues. Again, I could tell that everyone is becoming very aware that the performance is just around the corner. It’s no longer something we talk about in the abstract – and this awareness seems to be an extremely positive thing for everyone. This, to me, is testament to the fact that having a product to work towards is vital to this sort of project.

Next we went through Tom’s play, Changing Your Lifestyle. Since we hadn’t been able to meet in such a long time I decided that I had to make an executive decision on which sections of the play will be read during the performance. Grace and I went over the script together and she gave some really great suggestions.

The reading took about twelve minutes, which I think is a perfect length. Everyone seemed to agree, and almost everyone was happy with the reading. Barry and Fay both expressed that they thought the play was great. Katherine enjoyed it too, and let us know – three times – that “we wouldn’t want it to be any longer.” Most importantly, Tom was very pleased. What a relief!

When I asked Nadine if she liked it she replied, “No.” Now, she is not a negative person, and in the past had expressed that she really liked the play. She went on to say that she “kept losing the thread” of the piece because although everyone began their lines very clearly, their voices dropped off and became quiet before they were done speaking.

This is a really common problem for actors and I was grateful that she brought it up. I talked about it with the group, explained that it’s a common issue, and said that we’ll work on it over the next four rehearsals.

We had a few minutes left in our rehearsal so Nadine performed her monologue. It is such an inspiring piece and leaves a very positive message about living for the moment and being happy with what you’ve got. When she was done everyone exclaimed about how much they enjoyed it.

As we were leaving I remembered to tell the group about the reception that will follow the final performance – it’s a reception just for us – and everyone was delighted. We are going to have a champagne toast and petit fours, and lots of hugs and tears and goodbyes I am sure.

Then Fiona asked, “What will we do with all the people who came to see us perform? Will we just kick them out?” And I said, yes, this may be a problem, but we’ll make it work.

Katherine said, “We will just say… ‘Au Revoir!’”

Problem solved.

Performance Dates!

Well, believe it or not, our last rehearsal was in fact cancelled due to the illness going around The Apotex and then to top it all off, I had to travel home to Winnipeg this past week to visit my family.

So… our group hasn’t met in almost a month! Eek!

I feel good about where we are, but I’m anxious to get the group back together again. We have such a good thing going on and we don’t have much more time together.

Things like this are bound to happen when you have a group in a nursing home but at least it’s not the final performance that was cancelled (knock on wood)!

Instead of the rehearsal I had some one-on-ones. I scheduled a meeting with Ned to go over his introduction, but one of us got the time mixed up, and he waited for me for an hour in the rec room. He even told me that his granddaughter had wanted to meet me, and had sat with him for forty-five minutes before she had to go to work. It was such a shame, and I felt so guilty!

Nevertheless we had a great meeting and he really is going to be a wonderful MC for the evening.

I also met with Nora to finalize her monologue. She has expressed concerns to me over the last few months that her stories aren’t interesting enough, but if only she knew! Her monologue is terribly charming – it’s the story of how she and her husband met and fell in love as teenagers in the early 1940s… I don’t want to give too much away, but I’ll just say that it includes some confessions about breaking the rules at a summer sleep-away camp.

With just a month left, I’ve had a lot of planning to do, so most of my time has been spent on coordinating the performance, publicity, technical requirements, a reception, etcetera etcetera. So, in order to ensure that I keep on top of all of this while mostly focusing on the artistic side of the project, I’ve brought a Production Assistant on board.

Grace Smith is working on her PhD in Canadian Theatre History at the University of Toronto, and works in theatre in her spare time (which of course she has very little of), mostly as a director and dramaturge. I’m really looking forward to working with her.

And… big news:

We have finalized our performance dates!

There is an open dress rehearsal on Monday August 13 at 2:30 pm, when we are inviting interested Baycrest staff, residents, and researchers to come see what we have been doing. It will be our first time performing in the space and audience members can expect a bit of a work-in-progress if they come to this performance.

Then our final performance for family and friends will be held on Tuesday, August 14 at 7:00 pm.

If you are interested in coming to either the dress rehearsal or the final performance, I would be delighted.

Please email me at aynsley@aynsleymoorhouse.com, and I’ll be happy to reserve you a seat and send all of the details.

Until next week!

Hooray for Hollywood!

We’re getting down to crunch time – there are only five rehearsals left until our performance!

Holy Moly.

And – as luck would have it – we had to cancel our rehearsal this week. In fact, all programs were cancelled because there was an illness going around on our floor. I am not even supposed to meet one-on-one with anyone who lives in a certain section of the building. That’s about half of the group!

Luckily, three participants who live in a different section were still able to meet with me. So, instead of having a regular rehearsal with warm-ups and improv we kept it more informal.

It was a really productive meeting, and I think the intimacy of having just four people there really helped.

A major piece of business we discussed was creating a title for our performance. Katherine came up with, “Hooray for Hollywood!” Ned loved that, suggesting that “Hooray for You and Me!” may be more appropriate for our group. We then added the subtitle, “An Evening of Theatre.” I thought this was really charming, and now we just need to run it by the rest of the group.

We were able to spend quite a bit of time on each monologue this week. Norman speaks slowly and quietly, but when he performed his monologue the others were fully engaged and supportive. Ned even suggested that the audience would be interested in another story that Norman had shared earlier this year. So as a group we added this short story to the beginning of the monologue, and we were all very happy with the final product.

Last week I mentioned that I was concerned about everyone having enough to do in the performance. I think we are handling this really well, and I don’t really see it being a problem anymore.

One person I was concerned about was Ned, because although he has a directorial role in the group, I really wanted him to be on stage.

You may remember that he is always very positive and really believes in the importance of this group and in Apotex Residents’ stories being heard – both at Baycrest and beyond. This week he voiced that he would like to introduce the performance to the audience.

How perfect! Why hadn’t I thought of this before?

At one of our first rehearsals he said, “I know that the people in this room have a lot to say, and I want the rest of the world to know that too.” I think having a participant in the program saying something like this to the audience will be very powerful.

I was also concerned that a few participants have trouble seeing and wouldn’t be able to read a monologue on stage. Well, it seems that we’re beginning to solve that problem too.

When Nadine and I met one-on-one last week, we wrote her story out, chose a few key points which she memorized, and practiced a few times. Now she is able to improvise the whole thing while hitting those key points. If she gets lost, we’ve come up with a few questions I can ask her to move her onto the next point.

She is an amazing woman with many stories. The one she chose is the simplest and sweetest, and it’s the one she felt would resonate most with the audience. We both think that it has a very important message.

My fingers are crossed that programs are back on next week, and that the group will be able to meet. But I guess we just have to roll with the punches!

Groundwork

The goal for this week’s rehearsal was to create a timeline for the performance. Making the timeline took forty-five minutes, but by the end we had mapped out the entire performance down to the minute.

I taped a giant strip of packing paper to the wall and then had a separate piece of paper for each performance section. We pinned the sections to the packing paper, moved them around, added sections and took some away until we came up with a sequence of events that we were all happy with. We now have something concrete to refer to.

In spite of some gentle grumbling from one of the participants about the amount of time we were taking over it, making this diagram was essential. We all needed to have a sense of the final piece, and now we are all able to see it visually.

This is what we came up with:

The group has agreed to do an improv game in the performance (I think this is really exciting and brave!), and we decided on Fortunately/Unfortunately. It’s the quickest and most concise, and everyone is very familiar with it.

Seven of the nine members will be doing monologues. Tom isn’t doing one because he feels that his stories are best told in the play he wrote, and Norman is participating in the group as a director rather than as a performer. He has said on numerous occasions that he is interested in helping others tell their stories rather than in telling his own.

About half of the participants have already written a monologue and the others will have theirs finished by the end of June. I’ve met with everyone privately at least once to work on these, and have been recording our conversations. I hope to create digital stories with each participant in addition to the monologues so that everyone can have a web presence.

We’re doing choral speaking with the poem that Fiona brought in, and then are ending our performance with the play. Tom is comfortable with doing an excerpt of it as a teaser, and we will have printed copies of the entire play for audience members to pick up on their way out.

The digital components of the performance will happen sporadically throughout the hour. These are: three of Barry’s poems, Edward’s digital story, and an interview between Norman and Barry.

It is going to be a whirlwind performance – and I can’t wait.

After making the timeline we still had fifteen minutes of rehearsal left, so I took everyone through a quick physical and vocal warm-up and then we practiced our choral speaking with Fiona’s poem.

When we were done going through it once Barry said, “That sounded pretty ragged.”

He wasn’t lying. I’m hoping we can rehearse it enough with everyone speaking in unison, but if it doesn’t work perhaps everyone can be given a couple lines to memorize. We’ll see what happens.

It sounded much better the second time we went through it because everyone had more confidence. We also added gestures, and the movement gave certain parts emphasis. I told the group that we are going to practice it every week until it’s perfect – or until we decide that it’s so “ragged” that we have to stop!

At the very end of rehearsal Katherine read her monologue for the first time, and it was spectacular. The group was really happy with it, and I think it got everyone excited about their own monologues.

My days at Baycrest have become very full because I’ve been meeting individually with each member of the group. This week I went in for an extra day to catch up with Tom and Nora. Being busy like this is amazing – all of these meetings have been incredibly interesting, and I have such a nice time sitting and talking.

We’re on a good track. My only concern now is to make sure that everyone in the group feels that they have a big enough contribution to make during the performance. There are two major factors. First, a few group members are unable to read because of vision impairments, so reading a monologue will not be possible. The other thing is that there are only six characters in the play, meaning that there are not enough roles for everyone. I already have some ideas, and I’m confident that everything will become clear very soon.

But of course, if anyone has ideas, feel free to comment!

Quality Over Quantity

Over the last few weeks, Tom and I have been editing his script and he gave me permission to do some cutting and reorganizing on my own. I shortened it to what I thought would be a manageable length and put all of the pieces into an order that made sense.

Then this week I brought the script to rehearsal for a full read-through. Tom was a little upset with some of the cuts I made, but even with the cuts the reading took twenty-five minutes, which is far too long. We need time for everyone else’s contributions in the performance as well!

I completely understand how he feels about the cuts. This is his first play, and each part of it is precious and incredibly meaningful. Not to mention that he’s been up late many nights working on it. It can be quite difficult and unnerving to work with an editor or dramaturge, and maybe it would be best for us to do any major cuts together from now on.

He and I will meet early this coming week to go over the script and decide whether it might be best to keep the play entirely intact – by putting back the sections I had cut – and only read a few selections from it in the performance. We’ll see what we decide.

The read-through was really hectic for me. I was running around with the script making sure everyone knew where we were, passing around the microphone, reading stage directions, and playing one of the characters. I was in a million places at once and didn’t get a sense of how it went.

So after we were done I waited nervously for the group’s response.

For the most part they really liked it! Everyone had a lot to say and all of the responses were measured and well thought out.

Some said they felt it was too long, some said it was just right, and some said they couldn’t be sure yet because it was just the first read. Either way, everyone said that they enjoyed the content. What a relief. We can work out the length of the piece over the next two months.

We are just about halfway through the program now, so I called a meeting with the two Therapeutic Recreationists who I’ve been working with. I wanted to get a sense of how they think the program is going so far. They assured me that it’s a great success, and that the group members are enjoying their time with me and that they are really engaged in the project.

They also gave me some great advice. They said that the participants are keen to have a sense of how the final project will look, and suggested that the best way to address this would be to help the participants see the project visually.

So next week I’m going to bring in a giant roll of paper and will make a timeline of the one-hour performance. The beginning of the show will be on one end of the wall, the half-way point in the middle, and the end at the other end of the wall. On separate pieces of paper I’ll write down each of the possible aspects of the performance which can be taped to the timeline, and as a group we’ll come up with the order of events, how long we want to take over each part, etc. The suggestion was to be as specific as possible and plan it down to minute detail.

I love this idea. It will help all of us see the big picture, and this way the group members will design the final shape of the production, not me.

The other big piece of advice was to focus our rehearsals entirely on the show from now on. This means no more Fortunately/Unfortunately or improv games, and it means having just a short and precise warm-up period.

I really want to include improvisation in the performance, but I’ll have to run that by the group. If they’re down we’ll continue doing improv during rehearsals, but not every week, and not as a warm up.

I’ve decided that, at least for now, I need to focus on working with the core group members for the digital storytelling aspect of the project. I wasn’t aware of the time it takes to build participants’ trust, so trying to get eight or nine other people involved in this short amount of time was simply unrealistic.

I think I expected everyone to trust me right away and to jump at the opportunity to tell me all of their personal stories. In some cases this has happened, but as I’ve mentioned, that hasn’t always been the case. This is fine – it’s a learning experience – but rather than spend time trying to get new people on board for the project at this point, I think my time will be better spent making sure that the current participants are getting the quality of attention that they all deserve.

The members of the group already trust me, so I want to make sure they get the most out of the project. Quality over quantity!

This has been a big week for me, and a really positive one. I’m looking forward to these more focused rehearsals and to finding out what shape the final project will take.