The First Weeks of Props

When I started on props I was extremely nervous because I’ve only ever acted before. But I was excited to have the responsibility of putting together an equally vital part of the production. Even though we are still in the beginning weeks of Almost, Maine I’ve learned a lot about what it means to be a leader and the importance of organization.

The first step for props was to create a giant list of each prop listed in the script along with the page number, the character, the cost, where it could be found, etc. Going through the script I spent a lot of time thinking about how the director’s concept needs to fit into each scene. Throughout the script I marked where we could use props that would help convince the audience that these characters truly live on this set; therefore, the props had to reflect the idea of “lived in.”

Allyson Goodman, Madison Ogg, and Travis Cooper

I realized right away that in order to be successful in shopping and presenting ideas at production meetings that my work would have to be clearly put together. By organizing each prop into a spreadsheet I, and the rest of the production team, can follow my thought processes throughout the entire play. This has already proved helpful when we went shopping for the first time. In the middle of a thrift store it’s very easy to get distracted by all the knick-knacks and antiques, so having a concise list of everything that needs to get done has helped me know exactly what has to be found in each store so we can get in and out efficiently. I never realized before how hard it can be for the head of each team to keep everyone on track. In past years, as just a member of a team, I viewed shopping as mainly a time to just have fun while looking around. After just one shopping trip, now as head, I understand how key it is for the leader to keep everyone on task and know at all times what’s going on.

Altogether, while nervous about the challenges ahead and upholding my part in the production to my best ability, I’m happy I get the chance to contribute to a whole different aspect of theater that I haven’t experienced before. Props is a “treasure hunt” and I’m excited about discovering more about what it means to be on a production team.

Allyson Goodman

Properties Production Leader

From the Other Side

I have previously worked on costumes for a teen show, however, I was never a designer by any means. The most designing I had ever done was writing some words on a t-shirt with some puffer-paint. After that, I took a fashions class, where we learned a lot about the fashion industry, but also designed an entire portfolio of a line. This included 10 different designs encompassing a topic or idea. Because of this, I knew I had enough experience drawing clothing and putting together outfits to create something cohesive. Also, I have always been very good with color, and as you will hopefully see throughout the costumes for the cast of Almost Maine, is that color can be a wonderful source to help create a mood.

When I first found out I was a costumes head, I was very nervous. I wasn’t sure If I would have enough time to juggle it all, or if I would have enough time, or if I would even be talented enough to pull it off. The girl who I had worked under before had done an amazing job, always having something for us to do. However, she was home schooled, and probably had a bit more time to plan that I did, as a full time high school student. I have lots of homework, and spend 8 hours learning a day, and sometimes I don’t have times in study halls to work on it. But I decided that I could do this, and that I would do all that I could to make sure that we had fantastic costumes.

My initial thoughts for the costumes for the cast was lots of winter coats. However, a statically dressed cast would inhibit the ability to develop characters, as well as looking boring to the audience. So where does every inspiration- needing-teenager go? Pinterest. However, while looking through what many of the pictures on Pinterest, it was apparent that not many of these people lived in a very cold climate, because they had thin sweaters as a “winter” outfit. So this is where I got the idea to start layering, as well as looking very closely at location and the text for things that needed to be supported for a more diversely dressed cast. For example, a scene takes place in the bar called the Moose Paddy, and here, the characters could have taken their coats off, so those characters could wear thinner things like a button up or just a sweater and jeans.

Next, I was looking at the men’s fashion on Pinterest, and while many of the outfits looked nice, these were men who worked outside, who farmed. They wouldn’t be dressed like a New York Barista. This collage of Pinterest searching helped me create a few different looks, such as actual pieces of clothing, but the items I decided on would need to be way more worn and less polished. Part of what made this necessity for realistic clothing, is not only the circumstances that are stated by the script, and built by the actors, but also our concept of design statement. These pieces of clothing need to be practical, keeping these characters warm on the coldest day of the year, but also expressing the emotional value of their outfits, as well as the personalities of characters we see.

After this initial design process, I looked at our mission statement again, while deciding colors that I wanted to dress each character in. These character’s emotions are such an important part of this production, and I came up with the idea to have a jacket symbolize this layer that these small town folk have up. These barriers that prevent much of the emotions underneath, or the clothing colors and styles underneath to show through. With this, I could create swatches of colors for each character. I actually ended up using a customizable eye-shadow palette, which allowed me to choose the shades that I wanted (including a few shimmers).

Next was looking for the actual items of the costumes, with color schemes and articles in place. So far, we have found quite a few items, but this is definitely a work in progress. The next step is asking the cast for things they may own and that may work, while keeping true to the original intentions of my designs. This is where the budget of $250 has been extremely helpful, so that we can find things such as boots, or jeans, at places like Goodwill, and do what we need to do to create a great costume. My next big project includes having all final sketches of character outfits with all the colors and items that we expect to see on the characters in the production.

Elizabeth Cowley
Gayle / Costumes Head

The Complexity of Love

Love: noun | \ˈləv\: a feeling of strong or constant affection for a person.

 

I don't know about you, but that simple definition doesn't really help my knowledge about what love is. It does not explain what many people experience. However, being only 14, I could not tell you the first thing about romantic love. Because of this, discussing love at rehearsals has been one of the hardest things we have done so far, as well as personally as an actor. I could describe what love is in a family or friend way, but this description would be very personalized, and may not be how anyone else feels regarding love. But this platonic love is not what is discovered in this play, and that makes these discoveries in scenes so magical, as well as complex.

Without this romantic experience as a source for what this may feel or look like, I go to the next best thing; my family. From what we have discussed, love does not always show itself in the way that movies portray it. Love creates a rollercoaster of feelings between two people, and as they go on this ride together, things aren't always happy. They must put a lot of work into the relationship because they value it, and want it to last. However, this emotional “roller coaster” creates many other emotions, such as fear, sadness, and joy. But this is what makes it love in the end. The fact that these people are willing to work so hard to make their relationship work, continue to grow, and to stay together.

Love isn't about two perfect people. It's about two imperfect people working together for the same end result. There's a lot of times you'll disagree with the person you're with, but instead of getting angry and fighting over it, you respect the other person and do your best to understand why they think that way. But love isn't just what you say, it's also about your actions and how you show your love. Love is a feeling brought on by a multitude of actions. There are the obvious actions like kissing and holding hands, but there are many other ways you can show love.

Discussing love in rehearsals has really helped me become a more honest actor in my scene, and because we’re so open about this idea of love, I feel that everyone in the production has come to a better understanding of this. This has been a really interesting and amazing process, and I’m looking forward to the end result.

Morgan Reetz

Hope

Week One

In the first two rehearsals for Almost, Maine we focused primarily on working to create an understanding of some of the central ideas of the play. Almost, Maine is a play made up of nine romantic vignettes, so, as one might assume, one of the main ideas we’ve been exploring--before we even begin rehearsing with a script--is love. What is love? How do we define it? What different forms does it take? What kind of clichés arise from the experience and why? After discussing the magical realism in the play, we explored the idea by creating small scenes of our own involving common clichés made literal. We worked in pairs for about fifteen minutes, then performed our scenes. Among the clichés were sayings such as “butterflies in your stomach” “getting hitched,” “love is blind,” and “tying the knot.” Many of the clichés were presented in a way I never would have expected, so it was really interesting to see the different interpretations. The exercise was particularly helpful to adjust us to the world of the play and the quirks inherent to the world of Almost.

In the second rehearsal we began to bring our characters into the picture. Initially, the rehearsal space became the town of Almost and we were told to explore the space in character with our scene partners before winding up in the seats at a town chili dinner. Having only read through the play with our partners during callbacks and the read through, the experience of moving through a space sans script or lines was a challenge. Thrown into character and a situation, it was up to us to figure out how our characters move together, how they interact with each other, whether they touch or not. Would Pete and Ginette hold hands? Do Rhonda and Dave walk arm in arm? And it was up to us to try and discover this in character. I’m not sure how successful the actual product of the exercise was, but the experience was definitely a success. Almost, Maine explores ten to fifteen minutes of the characters’ lives. That is one small snapshot we present to the audience, but these characters have whole lives and experiences before and after those key moments. Discovering habits and movement of the characters, as well as the nature of their relationships through interaction under different circumstances is really interesting.

In addition to what might be called the “chili dinner situation” we explored the progression of these relationships. We jumped ahead one year from the time of Almost, Maine and entered into scenes where each pair unexpectedly ran into each other on the street. This exercise was essentially very structured improv since each pair went into the scene without discussing how they thought the relationship had progressed or where each character would be in a year or whether they were even still in love. Each pair went into the scene and together discovered where the characters were and what may have happened. This exercise also helped us explore how the characters interact with each other and further developed the relationship. It was interesting (and occasionally heartbreaking) to see where the actors thought their characters wound up. The scene with Randy and Chad in particular was interesting to see the yearning and pain that had built up from the relationship and, most likely, societal pressures over the year since they fell for each other. 

Lena Menefee-Cook

Rhonda

As I Sat, Watching

 January 14th, 2016

"I want you to walk through the scene and tell me what the most important parts of it are."

I sat in for one of the rehearsals, and listened to this conversation Kivan Kirk had with Ryan Weber and Madison Ogg. As requested, they walked through the scene and told him what the important parts were. The highlights. The turning points. The main topics.

While listening silently in the corner to all of the big moments of their scene, I couldn't help but wonder what the point of the activity was. They'd read their scene, so obviously they knew what the important moments were. I started to worry that Kirk was going to spend the entire rehearsal hitting the major beats of the scene, and making sure they were perfect.

I decided (a personal epiphany, really, because I'm all about those mind-blowing discoveries) that the big moments weren't important. In fact, they were rendered useless every moment and line and beat in between was taken seriously and understood completely and considered just as important as "THE" important moment. And from there, the big moments would flow seamlessly and be that much more important.

The entire rehearsal was spent working the first three lines of the scene, discussing the relationship between the two characters at their points in time, and working through how the feel of the atmosphere would be. Jimmy, sad and alone at the bar, drinking away his worries; and Sandrine, at her bachelorette party.

This took up more time than you would think. My fears of them rushing over the "smaller" moments were put to rest immediately; of course Kirk knew what he was doing.

Kivan Kirk (Director), Madison Ogg, Ryan Weber

Kivan Kirk (Director), Drew Wilson, Elizabeth Cowley

"Elizabeth, take the pillows and throw them down over there. Drew, pick them back up and put them back in their original place."

This ended with both of them running across the room in a rage, trying to win the pillow pile battle. The lines "What are you doing?" (Drew Wilson) and "What am I doing?" (Elizabeth Cowley) were the only things allowed to be spoken.

Performing is, of course, a natural instinct for an actor. The real challenge is being vulnerable enough to open up your entire being to the staged happenings around you and let them take their toll. Instead of performing the action of throwing a pillow from one side to the other, the ultimate goal is to forget that you have a task at all, and be so enthralled in what you're doing that you forget where you are, forget that you're acting, and it becomes as true to your heart as if you'd invented the entire pillow situation on your own accord.

-----

"Ali, I want you to clutch this pillow. Ben, I want you to take it from her."

The honesty of their scene, after forcing themselves to be in the moment, and feel the desperation, was phenomenal.

It's very easy to read the lines and say them dramatically and take every word written on the page and somehow try to string a bit of heart into it. The separation needs to be between the words and the character. We as humans are not our words. Our words express our thoughts and help us voice who we are. But we're living beings - unique with a mind full of thoughts. When reading a character, there needs to be the character, and then the lines on top, helping you voice what the character is doing.

I think once you decipher between those two things, acting becomes incredibly more real. Human. Relatable. Honest.  That's something I see happening at rehearsal right now. The director slowly breaking the barrier between the two.

Objectives. A way for actors to find the connection between their characters and themselves, the intent of their actions and the honest reasons for the character's actions. In pursuing objectives, we escape the risk of being young actors on stage performing lines, and we become people truly living on stage with one another. Unforced emotions and inflections flood the stage rather than cheesy words, unbelievable facial expressions, and loud, pointed jokes.

Ben Sulzberger, Ali Sandler

We move from the situation of Ali Sandler holding a pillow away from Ben Sulzberger, and it beautifully transforms into Glory desperately trying to keep her broken heart safe from East, who would stop the world if it meant fixing her heart.

Mabel McIntosh

What Does Love Mean To Me?

What does love mean to me?

Does love begin when you first meet eyes or cross paths?

This question is what brought us together and what we spent the week discovering further and further. The show Almost Maine has a constant “reload” of that question. When we come together as a group we’re searching through the script and what we already have in our minds to reach the objective of love. Every new thought we encounter, we want to research more.

The way we communicate this love through different stories/scenes is what makes it special. Talking through something with another person allows your brain to be open to new ideas and to explore these thoughts you share.

When we communicate with another person, our mind is pondering that question and applying it through each word we say. This week we put what we know about the 9 short stories we are creating to the test by creating ideas to further use in our scenes. We found our way of thinking when it comes to the word love and how that one word affects our character and their whole way of life. Everyone has had an encounter with love. Whether it be “just as a friend” or “love you like a brother”. What I have learned from this past week is that you shouldn’t be able to label your love. Words are just words, actions speak louder. The comfort and instant happiness you receive when you see a person is all you need.

-Vera Barkosky

Ginette / Villian