Sunday, September 26, 2010

Bil - We Are Master Builders

Read it in the Reader!
In case you haven't already heard, "Devilish Children and the Civilizing Process" has been named a Best Bet from the Fall Arts Guide in the Chicago Reader. Thanks, Reader!

In hopes of living up to the Reader's prediction, we've been working furiously not only to memorize our lines, but also to build the set.  We've also been working really, really, really, really hard to find our characters.  Since our characters are all children, we've been trying to find innocence, immediacy, and the ability to switch emotions in the blink of an eye.
You'll never guess which colors we chose.

Unfortunately, we've been working both projects at the same time, and now it looks like our set was constructed by a bunch of toddlers.

That's okay, though.  We'll milk that charm and run with it.

This is possibly the first proscenium stage that most of us have worked on in a long, long, time.  It's certainly Dream Theatre's first proscenium stage, even though it's just a mock proscenium set inside our big black box.  It's more of a beast to work with than we all remembered; all those basic acting things like "cheat out to the audience" and "speak loudly and clearly" are now heightened, and our the wings of the set present a unique-to-us (but actually quite normal) logistics problem.  So, in another Dream Theatre first, we actually spent today writing down our entrances and exits, and placing chalk outlines where our props are supposed to be set.  IT'S LIKE WE'RE PROFESSIONAL OR SOMETHING.

But if you're thinking Dream Theatre is trying to turn itself into the next big Broadway house, you're wrong.  This set is no ordinary set, and our story is no Eugene O'Neill rip-off.  We're not aiming for "professional" in the stuffy sense of the word, we're aiming for "prepared."  Being prepared is the only way we're going to blow the audience's unprepared minds.  This is one tricky play, and we're gonna burn through it like a comet through the stratosphere.  We need to be precise in our execution.  We need to be all grace and manners.


No comments:

Post a Comment