Open Rehearsal: The Court Theatre Blog
Spunk
September 29, 2011
267 students in 267 seats
Yesterday was Court Theatre’s first high school matinee of the season. We had seven schools in attendance and no less than 267 students packed into our humble, 267-seat theater. I’m not normally this unbridled in my enthusiasm, but I have to say: it basically rocked. It was one of those times when you are reminded why you actually chose to work in the arts in the first place.
Allow me to give you some context so you can understand just how awesome this matinee was. First of all, I only saw one student texting the whole time. One! That fact alone is basically a miracle in and of itself. When was the last time you think any of those students went more than one waking hour without texting? Behold the power of theater, my friends. I stood through the performance in the back of the house so I could watch the students’ reactions to the piece. I almost couldn’t believe it, but they were actually leaning in they were so engaged with the material. Amazing. Of course, it was a little rowdier than our more “mature” audiences, but in my opinion, a student shouting out “Girl, you can sing!” to Alexis Rogers in the opening number or “Serves him right!” when Sykes gets his just rewards isn’t a disruption, but a testament to the work we’re doing. What a wonderful thing to provoke such strong reactions. Wouldn’t it be great if all our audiences were so thrilled, terrified, and moved by the theater we produce? I think so. Actually, I’m all about it.
Seriously, yesterday was a blast.
Director of Education Cree Rankin gives a curtain speech to the students before the show begins.
September 20, 2011
Spunk: Opening Night
Opening was…well, absolutely wonderful. The energy was high, the ensemble was on point, and all the technical elements went off without a hitch. It was basically everything you hope an opening will be. The kind of opening that elicits a collective sigh of relief from team production, team artistic, and team admin alike.
This opening was particularly enjoyable not only because of the live music, virtuosic acting, and beautiful design, but also because of the audience. Let me explain: for me, the best kind of theatrical experience occurs when the audience becomes more than just a room full of strangers sitting somewhat awkwardly close together in the dark, staring silently at a single focal point of action in front of them. In my opinion, the best kind of theater-going can only truly be experienced when you feel a sense of connection with the people around you…dare I say…a sense of community.
And honestly, it’s not always easy to sit in a room full of strangers and feel like you’re part of a community. It’s much easier to sit in a room full of strangers and get unreasonably angry when someone’s cell phone goes off or adopt a “why me?” mentality when someone who is 6’4” sits right in front of you. Goodness knows I’m guilty of that one, and I’m 5’10”. However, at this particular performance, I was able to get past all of those petty judgements one tends to make in a large group of people and to start feeling like I wasn’t just having a good time seeing the show with my guest, but that I was having a good time seeing the show with everyone in the room. There were two gentleman sitting in house-left who genuinely looked like they were having the time of their lives at this show. I wanted to go give them high-fives at the end. The audience also helped me see the play in a different way. They showed me moments of humor where I hadn’t seen them before, added suspense to plots lines I already knew, and really deepened my understanding of the material as a whole.
So, in conclusion, I would like to thank the Court patrons from opening night for being so awesome.
That’s my review of the audience; if you’d like a review of the show, check out the links below.
September 16, 2011
Word on the street: Spunk
***Note to Open Rehearsal readers: this blog post is being posted a day late due to some technical difficulties that couldn’t be resolved yesterday. I’d like to point out that this is kind of hilarious due to the subject matter of the post, which is about switching to an online service as a way to improve efficiency. ***
Some of you preview-inclined Court patrons already know this and the rest of you are going to find out sooner or later, so I might as well let the cat out of the bag: Court Theatre has recently moved to an online version of our “fast feedback form.” Well, we’re trying it out at least. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, the term “fast feedback form” refers to the half-sheet surveys that our ushers normally hand out during intermission. Why would we make such a change, you ask? Well here’s what we’re thinking:
1) Not as many dead trees—that’s always a good thing
2) No more interns suffering from existential crises as they methodically enter the data from the fast feedback forms into an excel spreadsheet
3) We get your feedback faster than the fast feedback form could have ever dreamed of.
In celebration of this new, accelerated process and, of course, Spunk‘s opening (which, I might add, is tomorrow!), I am going to share some of the fast feedback we have received from our preview patrons this past week:
“Excellent, Spectacular, and Brilliant! I absolutely loved Spunk!”
“It was Super. Staging was excellent. Casting was excellent too!”
“Great ensemble cast…seamless storytelling…imaginative, touching & entertaining.”
“A wonderful way to start the season—every element from music to sets to voices to dancing was superb!”
“Wonderfully creative production. It was funny, dramatic, thought provoking and well acted. I really enjoyed it.”
Well, thanks everyone!
September 13, 2011
Spunk signage: a tale of wasps and woes
For the past few days, I have been attempting to change the kiosk sign in front of the theater from last year’s Porgy and Bess poster to the new poster for Spunk. Time for a new season with new shows and new artwork. In with the new, out with the old. Sounds simple enough, right? Well…not quite.
I’ve got one word for you: wasps.
That’s right. I’m being prevented from doing my duty to Court Theatre as a member of the marketing department by bugs. How is this possible, you ask? Well, these wily wasps have set up shop in the recessed frame around our kiosk sign, meaning that if I open the front panel to change the artwork, I will effectively be crushing a wasps’ nest and some very unhappy wasps.
I know what you’re thinking—just have the wasps nest removed. An excellent idea. I put in a call to University of Chicago’s facilities services to do just that, and they very graciously came by and removed the wasps nest since I am obviously too chicken to go near it. Problem solved, right? Well…again…not quite.
Although the nest is now effectively gone, there seems to be one monomaniacal wasp that refuses to leave the kiosk sign. I call him Ishmael. I walk by the kiosk sign several times a day, in the hopes that this excessively determined wasp will have called it quits and vacated his post, but to no avail. Is he traumatized by what occurred to his nest? Is he intoxicated by the power of besting a creature five million time his size? Why does he stay when all his wasp friends have left? I have attempted to unpack the psychological implications of such wasp behavior, but I’ll confess, I can’t understand it. I think it’s mostly that he enjoys taunting me.
All of this is to say, that if you have walked by said kiosk sign and noticed that we are still advertising Porgy and Bess, please rest assured that we are aware of the situation and are trying to resolve it as quickly as possible. In the meantime, if any of you readers out there are “wasp whisperers” or experts in animal behavior, please, do let me know. Here’s a picture of the sign I’m talking about—although you can’t see him, Ishmael is lurking in the shadows of the upper left-hand corner.
September 8, 2011
Some truly fascinating facts
First order of business: tonight is first preview for Spunk—hooray! Okay, now that we’ve taken care of that, onto the blog post (which, I might add, I just spent quite a bit of time crafting and editing only to have it lost to the demons of the internet, but I WILL prevail)
I’ve been wanting to do some more dramaturgically-inclined posts to give you some more context about the show, but I’ve been too busy running around writing posts about chickens and penguins, and now I’ve been beaten to the punch by my own organization (Spunk’s program articles are up on our website.)
I highly recommend you read the program articles, as the topics of Spunk , Zora Neale Hurston, and our production are practically bursting with fascinating material, but just in case you’re in a bit of a rush today, here are my top ten most fascinating facts about what is, in my opinion, the most interesting piece of this theatrical puzzle: Ms. Zora Neale Hurston.
1) At the age of 26, Zora claimed to be 16 in order to be accepted into a high school program so she could continue her education. She never reclaimed her real age.
2) Zora grew up in Eatonville, Florida—one of the first entirely African American cities to incorporate after the Emancipation Proclamation and was therefore never “indoctrinated in inferiority”*
3) Zora was infinitely charming and almost always considered the life of the party. She was blessed with “the gift of walking into hearts” as one friend eloquently stated*
4) Her short story “Spunk” won second place in a contest put on by the literary magazine Opportunity and helped launch her career. Funnily enough, however, “Spunk” isn’t one of the short stories featured in George C. Wolfe’s adaptation, Spunk.
5) Although an indisputably bright light of the Harlem Renaissance, Zora often butted heads with her intellectual counterparts. Richard Wright once dismissed her work as having “no theme, no message, no thought”*
6) In addition to her extraordinary writing career, Zora worked as an anthropologist under Franz Boas.
7) Zora never received the financial rewards her work merited; the largest royalty she ever received was $943.75.*
8) Zora’s body of work fell into obscurity until interest was revived by Alice Walker’s article “In Search of Zora Neale Hurston,” published in 1975 in Ms. magazine
9) Zora was buried in an unmarked grave in 1960 until Alice Walker purchased a tombstone for her in 1973 that read “Zora Neale Hurston: A Genius of the South”
10) Zora has many famous quotes, my favorite being “When a man keeps beating me to the draw mentally, he begins to get glamorous.”
Okay, that last fact was more of an opinion, but the point is that Zora was one fascinating lady.
*quoted from the writing of Valerie Boyd in her articles “She Was the Party” and “A Protofeminist Postcard from Haiti”
