Working With My Character

This week, we have been working more on putting together the lines and blocking of the play. I don’t come in until the second half of the play, and we didn’t get to that scene the other night, so I took that time to further myself. In the past week with no rehearsal, I worked on memorizing, and I am still in the middle of reading Oedipus at Colonus. I also got to look at my character. Vivian taught us about body centers and how everybody has a center. The centers are head, chest, stomach, and hips. I think that my character, Hameon, is a mainly a head center but with a second of a chest center.

We don’t get to see a lot of how Hameon acts. We only get to see how he reacts to Creon’s words. Creon has just sentences his fiancee to death. He is smart by not barging in there mad. You can tell he has thought through his words before he talks to his father, making sure to tell him that he is above all reasonable and that no wife could give Hameon better council that he, then subtle saying that Antigone may deserve honor rather than death. He is very careful as to what he said to his father because he knows his father is a king with a temper. Vivian has also told me that the relationship between father and son was different back then. It is not like the relationships we have today. He is thinking of Creon as the king, and not the father.

It is a lot like the scene between Creon and the Messenger. He knows that he can be killed or put in jail for lies. In a way, I am trying to get Creon to change his mind without upsetting him. If I upset him, he could just kill Antigone, put me in jail, banish me, or maybe even kill me. Creon has been known to lose his temper from time to time.

We ran the scene where Creon finds out about my death. It started a discussion. Should we feel bad for him? His wife and only son just killed themselves, but he had it coming. He sentenced Antigone to death, who is not only his niece, but his son’s fiancee. There are a lot of discussions to be held in these plays.

-Travis Cooper

Haemon/Eddie and Head Set Designer

A Look Behind The Scenes of Our Antigone

And I begin my tenth show at STC… This time, though, I will not be on the stage. In Our Antigone, I have the opportunity to work as assistant stage manager and lighting/sound designer. This has already given me a look into the side of the theater that I have only explored a few times, all of the happenings behind-the-scenes.

In this production, we have a wonderful team that is full of ideas, consisting of: stage manager, Maria Werner Anderson; set designer, Travis Cooper; costume designer, Morgan Reetz; properties master, Allyson Goodman; make-up designer, Sarah Schoppe; and lights/sound designer and ASM, myself. Additionally, all of the actors are participating on one design team (sets, costumes, props, or dramaturgy). Lastly, there are, of course, the adults and ISU students overseeing our process. In this production, we have Vivian M. Cook as our director, Sarah Bennett as our technical director, Lori Sulzberger as our managing director, and Charissa Menefee as the playwright for this original adaptation.

Teen shows are a very unique opportunity for various reasons. Perhaps the most notable is that the production team is made up of teens. The show that the audience experiences depends on the work of the students in every area of the production, since all of the “non-adult” roles mentioned above are being carried out by students. Every Saturday, there is a production meeting, which is followed by a session of work time for each of the design teams. This is the time when all of the ideas that are developed by the designers and further considered in production meeting come to life, as the entire ensemble works together to create the atmosphere of Our Antigone.

Each designer follows a very specific path, meeting many deadlines along the way. Personally, I have been working on lights and sound. This week we did not have rehearsals, as Vivian was at KCACTF, so I was given a wonderful opportunity to put additional time into my design work. After carefully considering each scene, I completed the initial draft of my cue list. This is a document that lists every lighting cue that I plan to include in the show, the action that occurs directly before the lights are changed, and a brief description of the change that occurs when the cue is hit. Here are the first ten cues in the production, to give you a general idea of the work I have been doing:

So far, I have designed twenty-seven lighting cues for this production. However, I believe that one of the most important skills to apply when working on designs is flexibility. I am confident that many ideas will develop and change throughout this process.

I began the design process by researching the Greek ideal for lighting. I discovered that the shows were performed outdoors, in an open-air setting. This seemed to be an obstacle, as we are obviously not performing outside. However, I learned that they would purposefully perform their shows at certain times and days, so the outdoor lighting would influence the atmosphere of the show in an effective manner. It is upon this idea that I based my lighting concept for Our Antigone.

In each scene, I consider the ideal placement of the Sun in relationship to the mood of the scene. I explore many details of the scene to inform this choice. For example, a private scene may have more dim lights, while a public scene may have brighter light. Or a private scene may have contrasting lights on the key players of the interaction and the chorus. I also look at the emotional intensity of the scene and what ancient Greek associations were between colors and ideas. For example, I found that yellow, blonde, and gold were associated with gods and kings. Therefore, I made an informed choice to put yellow light on Creon during a scene where he is demonstrating power over the public.

Rehearsals are looking fantastic, and I can’t wait to continue to face the many challenges that are coming up during this process. I hope to see you all there!

-Ben Siegel

Lighting/Sound Designer and Assistant Stage Manager

Blocking to Memorizing

This week we finished our blocking, which was a lot of fun. Blocking means that we went through and put down actions into our words. We write out where we are moving and with what lines. It does more than that though. Blocking is really helpful because it gives a chance to run the scenes with our scripts to give us a chance to look at it before we have to go off memorizing our lines.

In teen shows, or pretty much Story Theater Company production, the kids get to pick the blocking with the director. We get to help suggest things, we get to be the naysayer, and we get to question what Vivian is doing. Though most of the time Vivian has it right on the nose, we sometimes don’t feel it works and we want to change something, we have the opportunity.

On top of the blocking, the next step is memorization and that is one of the hardest parts. There are so many different ways to memorize. The best way that I have found is repetition. You read through it and say what you know, and when you get stuck, you look back at the script and keep going.

We didn’t have rehearsal this week, so I have taken this time to look over the other plays and to memorize. I have a big scene where I stand up to my father Creon because he sentenced my fiance to death. I have a big monologue. The thing I need to do most right now is to go over it with Josh. I can memorize the monologue pretty easily, but it’s harder to memorize a conversation where lines go back and forth. We are on our way to having this play in the bag.

-Travis Cooper

Haemon/Eddie, Lead Set Designer

Adventures of the Set Waffles

For this play, I am not only acting, but I am also the lead set designer. In teen shows, everybody is put into a group and it is primarily teen lead. Vivian directs of course and we have adult supervision to make sure we are being safe, but other than that, the teens are pretty much running the show. We have teens doing set, costumes, makeup, and dramaturgy. Each one of these are crucial to the production. Last year, I was in the teen show Almost Maine and that was not only my first teen show, that was my first show. I was with the props crew on that show and I had a lot of fun, so I decided I would lead a group this year, and I got put on set.

I have some experience with tools and things like that because I work with my dad a  lot in the garage.  Last year I was on props, but all the groups connect. I realized this a little bit last year, but this year, being a lead designer, I realize just how much collaboration is needed between the groups. Colors on the set need to match the colors of the costumes. We talked a lot. I have the set already designed and part of it is made. We made a ground plane on the first day because Vivian needed to know what she was working with during blocking. It looks like this:

Vivian requested a lot of levels, so that’s exactly what I gave her. We have essentially a big set of platforms that rise in height as they go back against the wall. It is like a big staircase with little staircases coming off the sides. One of the challenges was that the script calls for two rose colored pillars. I included them, but now the trick will be to get Styrofoam and make shape it and paint it to look real. Sarah also knows a lot more about these thing than I do, so I am lucky to have her and my crew Asher, Gerrit, James, and Anika. We call ourselves the Set waffles and our catch phrase is “Bruh digity”. We are also working on giving each other nicknames. You can tell how close we are and that we all have a good time while being productive. I am very grateful for my team. They always help and get things done fast and efficient. I am so excited to see the whole set in its full beauty and I hope you all enjoy it as well.

-Travis Cooper

Hameon/ Eddie/ Lead set designer

My Mind Baby

This first couple weeks of rehearsal have been very informative for me. I learned more about Greek Theater than I have in any of the Greek Theater camps I have been in. Greek theater is such a complex thing because it all connects. The first week, we weren’t working on my scene, so I took that rehearsal time to read the first play in the series of three. ANTIGONE is just the third play in a trilogy. I was interested because, in this play, it talks a lot about characters and past experiences that aren’t in the play. I wondered who they were, so I read the first play, and I realized that a mass majority of these characters are all in one family. So, to help me understand who is who, I made a family tree. It looks similar to this one.

I was confused, because according to the play, I am engaged to my cousin. So, I took my question to Vivian, and she has done a lot more research than I will even begin to do. This is just a little bit that I did to understand it, because I am not on dramaturgy, but I feel everybody should understand how their characters connect and relate to one another. Anyway, Vivian told me, that for the greeks, it was not unusual for cousins to marry each other. I did some research and it told me that they did this because they wanted to keep the royal blood in the family, but cousins were as close as they went (accept for the case of Oedipus, but that’s a different story) and this was usually an arranged marriage by the guardians. Each city had their own laws about marriage.

I think this story adaptation relates to me a lot. I think it would relate to any high school or jr. high student. The adaptation that was written I think specifically for STC kids. It covers everything from homeschoolers, to grades, to not understanding a script, and pizza. These are all things that STC kids deal with. We have homeschooled kids, we all have had our troubles with scripts, we all like pizza. There are  many other similarities in this, but you have to come see the show to see it. I hope you enjoy the show.

Travis Cooper

Hameon / Eddie / Lead set designer

Experiences So Far and Ensemble Experiences

    I am always amazed at how each show that I am in at STC is different from each of the previous shows. Every show, I learn something new that I have never learned before. This show, we have been focusing a lot about circumstances and how we can apply circumstances to our acting. We have also been focusing on some other very cool things that I am excited to share with all of you!

    The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe has been a fascinating play to work on so far! I can already tell that with all of the work that the actors and actresses are putting in that this is going to be a great show. Compliments aside, this show has also served as a portal for many new members to the Story Theater Company community and it has been such an honor to work with all of the new members! I love watching all of the newcomers act, I learn so much from seeing fresh new faces at Story Theater Company! So many things have been going on during rehearsals and I have learned so many new things through the course of this production.

On our read through day, we continued a read through style that we did for some of our more recent productions. When we were in scene, the actors and actresses would go up on the stage and work together to create a scene that went along with the lines that they were reading. This read through style is better than just reading lines for many reasons. One reason is that it gives actors and actresses a chance to lay out a scene’s framework and get ideas out at the beginning of the rehearsal process rather than waiting until the middle of some random day to finally say “Hey, I’ve been thinking...” It is also a great way to build the start of different relationships with different characters. When we just read from a page, it doesn’t build anything other than some line memorization or some honesty practice. When we go out and perform a scene, it builds more things than just honesty and line memorization. The read through was great and gave us a chance to really utilize this new type of read through that we have created and critiqued over a big window of time.

    So far, there have been so many different cool aspects that we have used during the rehearsal process. One of my favorites is the stage combat. Almost every rehearsal we have a specific amount of time allotted for working on our battles during the end of the show. Stage combat hasn’t just taught us how to safely fight onstage honestly, but it has taught us about trust and cues as well. The most important aspect of stage combat is trust. If you don’t trust your partner, you will get nowhere in making a successful stage fight. It’s as simple as that. Trust is the foundation on which stage combat is built upon. Cues are another important part of stage combat. You need to make sure to make your cues big when you are fighting. When they aren’t as big as they should be, the fighting can be unclear and unconstant (and unsafe!). We can apply both of these things into normal acting. It’s surprisingly simple and concise. You have to trust your fellow actors and actresses onstage and offstage and you need to pay attention to cueing and how you cue other people. It’s that simple and that’s why stage combat is a great way to work on trust and cues.

We have worked tremendously on our circumstances for this show. On Wednesday our director told us to discover another circumstance for our character. At first I was a little puzzled. As an ensemble member, I already have so many circumstances for my character, so why do I have to think of more circumstances? Then I remembered somebody saying that day that since Narnia is a fictional world, the circumstances are more extreme due to all of the different things that can take place in a fictional world. Some of my circumstances are that it has been winter for hundreds of years with no Christmas because the witch is in power, the witch’s spies are always watching every move and every decision I make, and the Pevensie children are here to fulfill the prophecy that can save us from the endless reign of the White Witch. Because those circumstances could never be true in the real world, people usually don’t take them as seriously as they need to be. When we acknowledge that these circumstances are more extreme in a fictional world due to absence from the real world, we are able to understand why they are important and apply them better to our story.

Now it’s on to finally discovering a new circumstance. Most people think about the mental circumstances that different characters have, but I feel like some of the overlooked physical circumstances need to be acknowledged as well. As a part of the ensemble, my character has probably been through a lot of battles with the witches spies already. This makes me tired, hungry, thirsty, and physically wounded. I feel that it has been a while since we have been in a battle, but this doesn’t mean that all of our wounds have been treated or all of our needs have been filled.

Something related to physical circumstances are body centers. I remember that my director Kivan really liked to talk about body centers in some past shows that I was in, but lately we haven’t really been talking about them too much. We have talked about them here and there and I’m pretty sure that everyone takes them into consideration, but these relate to our physical circumstances more than most people think. Body centers are points on your body where your character leads in walking and in basic movement. Because Aslan’s army has been through countless battles, our body centers could be towards our head or shoulders to make it seem like we are tired and weary. Because we are proud of our work as soldiers, our body centers could be towards our chest or stomach. We also have to take into consideration our characters physical appearance and mental state while choosing our body centers. Our body centers can also change throughout the story because of our character’s physical and mental state as I mentioned before.

Thinking about all of these things has given me a whole different perspective on how circumstances are handled, how they are applied, and how physical circumstances can be applied to body centers and other aspects. When any theater company takes these aspects of theater into consideration, they can turn their shows from good to great!
Now I should probably stop writing before this blog post takes up another page! If you have read this far you must be very committed. I admire you for reading my long long post.

Ryan Hinderaker
(Battle Boar)

Discoveries from our First Through

On Wednesday, we completed our first complete run-through of The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. It helped me to make many discoveries about specific concepts that actors must consider, as well as discoveries that are specific to my character, Mr Beaver.

    While I was onstage, I felt that our biggest obstacle was the lack of energy. One of our strengths at Story Theater Company is typically our strong listening, both on and off stage, and I felt that our listening was strong throughout most of the run. Since we are listening to each other so intently, we feed off of each other’s energy. We always build on each other’s ideas. If somebody has low energy as they share their character’s idea, it impacts the energy of every other actor/character in the scene. If we do not come into the scene with strong enough intentions, it hinders everybody’s ability to fully explore all of our options. We must fully commit to one idea before we can decide if there is a better one. Since it is still early in the process, it is understandable that many of us are uncertain about pieces of our acting and blocking. However, we cannot allow these uncertainties to lead to hesitancy. One actress that was very engaging during the run-through was Morgan Reetz, who is one of the actresses playing the White Witch, because she was able to overcome this obstacle. When she entered for the first time, she exerted an incredible power over Edmund. Not only did her commitment terrify and amaze everybody sitting in the audience, we were able to accurately analyze the blocking and acting of the scene. She truly showed what the characters and scene could be, and it will be very beneficial to further exploring that moment, as well as the character of the White Witch. In a later scene where Morgan gave a speech to her followers, I was fascinated by the way her energy was shared with the ensemble members. It proved to me that energy is contagious on stage.

This scene also helped me understand where your character’s energy comes from. I feel that you gain energy with strong adherence to circumstances, or facts about the story. When you boil down your circumstances and make them as specific as possible, you are able to become more personally invested in the story, since you are able to determine exactly what your character wants in each moment, exactly what may be keeping your character from achieving this goal, and exactly why your character needs to achieve this goal. This was proven to me in this scene, because there was a clear split between the actors who had specified their circumstances in this moment and those who had not. Some of the characters didn’t seem like they really cared about what happened, or their only motive seemed to be their desire to please the Witch. This mindset was a strong contrast from those who had specified every fact until they cared about everything that happened. I came to this conclusion after seeing a difference between characters with a lack of energy, characters with unfocused energy, and characters with focused energy. Those with a lack of energy or unfocused energy drew my attention away from the story and were not leaning in as much, while those with focused energy were incredibly invested on a personal level, making audience members care more about the story.

    Throughout the process of creating this show, I have learned so much from the acting of new artists at Story Theater Company. Each of the actors has a strong set of strengths, and they have helped me understand many important ideas. One of the most thought-provoking actors is Nate VanDyk.  He is always in the moment when he is acting, and every action he commits is related to what had just happened to him. This results in a very honest performance, as he is truthfully considering how his character, Edmund, would react. When you are watching Nate perform, you become incredibly engaged in everything that is occurring in front of you. He is working so hard to achieve his objective, and you are able to feel the importance of every one of his tasks. However, he is able to avoid the trap of becoming unrealistically intense or fighting as hard as possible without a break. He explores various dynamics, making his performance more relatable to the average person, who experiences a wide range of emotions. Nate’s fascinating balance between keeping the stakes high and remaining relaxed has helped me understand more about the potential depth of characters, and he has helped me realize that it is more important to let each obstacle hit you than it is to aggressively pursue your objective all of the time.

    We have been given the opportunity to make an endless amount of discoveries about theater, as well as this specific story, and these thoughts are only the beginning of the explorations we have been able to delve into. I am thrilled to continue to work at these issues and the other obstacles that we will face as we continue this process of creating Narnia, and I am extremely excited to specify all of the specific moments in this piece of storytelling.

Ben Siegel

(Mr Beaver)