Initial Exploring

This is my eighth show at Story Theater Company, and I have never had the same experience twice. That is one of the most beautiful things about every show at Story Theater Company. We discover the show together. Everybody is story-centric and everything we do is story-centric. We take the time to discover the best way to tell the story and explore several options. I have been in productions where the director decides how the show is going to look at tells you what to do in order to make it look that way, but Kivan has a loose concept for the show and allows us to the discover the show together. A show is much more engaging for an audience if it is relatable to real circumstances, and you can’t tell that kids are just on stage “performing”.  In most children’s theaters, they create stereotypical and corny shows, but I think that the level of discovery that we have at Story Theater Company overcomes that obstacle that every children's theater faces.

We began to explore at the very first rehearsal, the read-through. In a typical read-through the cast sits down together and reads their lines. Unfortunately, this form of a read-through makes people think about how to say their line well, instead of how their character reacts to others and contributes to the story. There is also the constant temptation to get bored and stop leaning in whenever it isn’t “your scene”. To avoid things like this that are harmful to exploring the show, our initial read-through involved more discoveries since we used a different format. We used the rehearsal space as a playing space. We would go into the playing space when our character was on stage. You said your lines, but you also moved and could see connections with other characters. This was a much more fascinating method since it was easier to visualize everybody’s ideas coming into the show. Everybody inhabited their characters in fascinating ways, and I know that this cast will be capable of finding the most interesting way to combine their characters and ideas into a new and amazing telling of Honk!.

You could also see relationships between characters through the way they interacted with each other in the playing space and the amount of space they put between themself. For example, Penny and Ugly stood much closer to each other at the end than they did at the beginning since their relationship began to blossom throughout the show. I also thought it was very interesting that there was already so much energy and commitment coming from characters. This read-through really demonstrated to me how much of a difference having a lot of energy can have on your performance. People like Parker McIntosh and Zander Reed blew me away during the first-rehearsal, and I realized as I reflected on the day that they were also the people who were constantly focusing a ton of energy towards the story.

On Saturday, we had our first choreography rehearsal. When I heard that Elizabeth was coming back to do our choreography I was so excited and so was everybody else. Elizabeth has spectacular ideas for the choreography, and I was very impressed by the fact that everybody always was doing something and there was always a reason behind it. However, this choreography has led to a lot of challenges for me. I have minimal dance experience and struggle to get into a place where the dancing is natural. I tend to hold a lot of tension in my body, so I worked a lot to find that “natural place”. I will continue to work hard at learning, mastering, and enjoying the dances in this show.

I am thrilled to continue to explore this production open-mindedly.

Ben Siegel

(Jay Bird)

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Wrapping Up Our 10th Season!

Welcome to STC's production of Honk!, a modern, musical adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen's The Ugly Duckling.

In the last month, we've started production meetings, made it through auditions, and put together a cast of more than thirty students, all ready to commit their time and honesty to bringing you another stellar production.

Our tenth season has been amazing  - we've staged our first company adaptation, expanded our workshop programming, and opened our third teen show in our new black box theatre. With every show the kids exceed our expectations and blow us away with their boundless imaginations. All we can do is to continue to challenge them.  Honk! will be the perfect show to test their creativity. Here are a few of the elements we think will be challenging :

1) It's not a Disney musical and therefore is not ground into their cultural consciousness. For most of the students, they had never heard this score before the audition instructions were published.

2) The musical is done often by community theatres and middle schools and often their final product looks the same. It is easy to read this play and skate along it's surface but we will be pushing the students to dig in, do their dramaturgical research, question the cliches, and discover the play anew for themselves. We want a production that is the expression of our specific ensemble and that resonates with our specific audience.

3) For musicals especially, it is easy to get lost in the idea of spectacle and become blinded by the spotlights, flashy choreography, and intricate set pieces. We will spend a lot of time studying book musicals this production. A book musical is a fully integrated show. This means that every element (choreography, staging, costumes, singing) is only important insofar as it helps advance our story. Nothing can be done for show. Everything must reveal something about the characters, their relationships, or their circumstances. This has already proven a wonderful challenge to the production team, and we are excited to see the kids grapple with and overcome this obstacle as well.

4) Honesty. Our core acting curriculum at STC is based on the idea of listening to your circumstances and responding in an organic way. What is the best way to achieve this honesty when you are breaking into song? Or into dance?

All of these challenges will keep us on our toes and push us to excellence. Honk! is sure to wrap up our tenth season in a wonderful way

This last year has been special in many ways, but the best part of STC's tenth season has been you!

You have been more involved. You have read our blogs. You followed us on Facebook and Instagram. You've brought your friends to our shows and talked us up. Thank you!!!

We believe that an informed audience is an invested audience and so it is our goal to continue this conversation; to tear back the curtain and let you into our process. As we move into rehearsals for  Honk! we will be posting pictures, videos, and  blog posts for this show. Check in on Facebook or Instagram and spread the word!


Kivan Kirk
Artistic & Education Director

March 3rd

Hi! How are you? My name is Maria, and I’ve been stage manager for all three Story Theater teen shows so far. If you don’t know what I do or what it’s like to go through the process of putting together a show from my point of view, you’re in luck!

The basic duties of a stage manager are to run production meetings, record the actors’ blocking, and make sure rehearsals and the production schedule run on time. Most importantly though, stage managers are the link between the production teams and the director and actors. The name “stage manager” is a pretty good description in and of itself, because most of the job is literally managing the stage - helping the director figure out where he/she wants the actors to do and then where the different set pieces and props should be placed. After that, there needs to be communication with the props and set department either during or outside of production meetings so they know what the director wants.

Although all of that still proves true for the teen shows, it’s a little bit different. In most shows, the actors have no clue what is going on in production meetings. They don’t know what the set is going to look like until tech week, and the same goes for what props they will be using or what costumes they will wear. Likewise, the production teams also don’t know what the show looks like until tech week. But with the teen shows at Story Theater Company, the actors form the production teams; they are part of the process of building the set, finding props, and putting costumes together. We also have a dramaturgy department, which researches the background of the show and specific details of it so that the actors can have a deeper understanding of where the show came from, helping them to become more invested in it themselves. As stage manager, I get to witness this every year. I get to watch everyone’s excitement when they discover something new about the script or finish a big set piece or find that really elusive prop or costume piece. During tech week, I, along with the rest of the cast and team, get to see the whole production come together. And that’s only half of why I love my role.

This play is set up very interestingly. It is comprised of eight vignettes along with a prologue, interlogue, and epilogue, and each scene only has two main characters. This means that the actors are only interacting with one other person on a regular basis, therefore the communal aspect of theatre was absent. In order to rectify that, we brought everyone together in transitions. Between vignettes, the actors create a community that gives the audience a snapshot of the everyday life of the people in Almost.

But what about during rehearsal? As stage manager, I attend every rehearsal, and in that time I witness all the blocking and tactic changes as well as all the discoveries that the actors go through with Kivan. This year was especially interesting though, because Kivan began with having the actors split their scenes into sections based on the ideas and actions. Then, the actors would just improvise their scenes in order to learn the emotions and become comfortable with being honest and vulnerable. Only after they mastered that would they start to use their scripts, combining the honesty with the correct words. In the end, they would hopefully feel like the only words they want to use are those from the script.

I also send out a lot of emails, but that is almost irrelevant. To me, the most important part of what I do is making sure everything runs smoothly and that everyone has everything they need to do well. I love being able to work with such creative, expressive people, and the most rewarding part is getting to watch all of our hard work pay off during performances.

Maria Werner Anderson

Stage Manager

Let's Be Honest

Working on Almost, Maine has been such an amazing and different experience. I have never participated in anything like it before. With this being my first teen play, I’ve had almost nothing but new experiences in this production.

Because it’s a show made almost entirely by teens, we get little direction. Yes, adults are there to help with anything we need and to “polish” things up a bit, but, we definitely have more freedom in how we want to play our character and how we want the scene to look. In a way, this can make our scenes more honest. If we truly put ourselves in the place of that character, and ask ourselves, “What would they do?” it helps us to make our scenes so much better.

In my scene, The Story of Hope, it’s been extremely difficult to stay completely honest throughout the whole scene. Because my character has so much to say, it’s hard not to rush through it. Through this whole process, Kivan has really helped me become more and more honest with every line and to really search and discover everything that I say.

I’ve learned, more in this show than any other, that your lines can’t just be yourself reading them. It must be your character that reads them. Don’t get in the mindset of, “How would I say this in this situation?” think more, “How would my character say this in this situation?” “What’s going through this character’s mind?”

Being completely honest is such a huge part of this show because these are all normal people, with (mostly) relatable problems. These aren’t silly characters with crazy situations that would most likely never happen in real life.

Though I have so much more to learn and so much more room to improve on my honesty in acting, I’ve improved so much with being honest during Almost, Maine.

Morgan Reetz

Hope

Technically Almost Done

I'm writing this while watching one of the final tech rehearsals for STC's production of Almost, Maine. I've been grateful for the opportunity to be a co-technical director for this show. It's been a lot of work for everyone involved, and I'm happy to be breathing a sigh of relief this early. The set is mostly painted, the lights are mostly done, and the special effects are mostly finished. This show is, mostly, ready to roll.

I've never been involved in a show quite like this one. Not only are all of the actors part of the technical work - several of them are also lead designers. The range of creative choices and the amount of dedication required from everyone is staggering. We've tried to create an environment that encourages self-reliance, but also makes it okay to seek out help. I hope we've been successful.

The level of collaboration inherent in the format of the teen show has also impressed me. Each Saturday, everyone from all of the technical teams works together in the same space. This presents some challenges of its own, but regardless, the amount of interaction between the teams is fantastic, even if it's not always focused...

This show has presented some other challenges, too. It's a new space for us, and we owe a lot to Reggie for breaking it in. Still, in the last couple weeks, we've had to figure out how to juggle renovations, rehearsals, and technical work. A couple of new lights are making their debut, and check out that shiny black floor!

When we started this process, we knew we had put together an outstanding company of teens. Nothing about that has changed, and I'm excited for them to be sharing it all on Thursday.

Mat Wymore

Technical Director

Transition Time!

Not only is it important to be be actively engaged in scene, but while out of scene too. It’s very important to know when you’re involved in a scene change or a task offstage; other cast members are counting on you. This became very important when STC started tackling the transitions between vignettes this past Thursday.

Usually, there are transitions in a play for the sole purpose of getting props and set pieces on and off stage expeditiously in order to move on to the next scene. The unique thing about Almost, Maine is that we didn’t necessarily create the transitions in the hope of being expeditious. We decided to create the community of Almost, Maine by using the transitions effectively to shown character interactions. This was a really cool idea, but we had to remain with the idea that these transitions were not supposed to be “precious”. There’s a very good line in the director’s concept statement for Almost, Maine: “Our production will attempt to shuck the preciousness from the scenes, allowing these scenes to operate as the mirrors they are, accurately displaying the ambivalence that springs from the pursuit of love.” We can’t use transitions as an excuse to not follow the pursuit of love. Most scenes end in a spot of tension or questioning. We don’t know what’s about to happen, so the transitions should hopefully continue those feelings.

The first transition was from the prologue into the Her Heart. It had already been roughly planned out and shown to the rest of the cast a few rehearsals earlier. I hadn’t been in attendance the first night the transition was blocked so I was given the privilege to watch as Kivan worked out some kinks with the cast. I learned here, or a least I now believe that it’s just as important to sit back, take it all the information in, and process the images on stage as it would to get up and do it. My perspective was completely changed. I watched Kivan make only slight changes, but with considerate enhancements to the transition. This may have been the way two people acknowledged one another, or how one took another’s hand, or if recognition of a face created this facial expression or a different one. Once it was done right, you could almost hear the magical “click” as the pieces slid into place, it was very satisfying. After the transition was running smoothly, it was time for my character to be added.

First, Kivan asked me to walk with Rhonda as she entered, and I felt like it probably could have worked, but something just didn’t feel right. We tried it once or twice, but then Kivan asked me to enter with Gayle instead. Gayle and I know each other in Almost, I’ve given her love advice before, so it only seemed fit if we were talking together. Gayle then has an interaction with Lendall where then, we exit. The next of the transitions went according to plan and we finished 4 more transitions.

The growth of a scene, transition, or play as a whole is really important if it can be looked from different perspectives.  Sometimes on stage, we may think what we’re doing is really clear but to the audience it may not. So having feedback for things like that is crucial. I’m glad I got to see both sides of it on Thursday. We’ve now got all but two transitions blocked and I’m so excited to see how the last two transitions go!

Jayna Wanamaker

Marvalyn / Head of Dramaturgy

The Story Behind 'The Story Of Hope'

This week we worked on the Story Of Hope. I think this scene, done right, can make everybody's heart drop as does mine every time we practice it. I think that there are a few main things that make this scene very sentimental and beautiful.

The “thing” is that the situations of these characters are not fun for either of them, and bring back painful memories. This scene can take your breath away. I personally love the scene, but am finding it difficult to act in it.

Working with Morgan has been amazing. She comes into every scene already in a full emotional state every time. She speaks so much, yet she still keeps every line honest. If I were reading that many lines, I would find myself without any expression. Even when I don’t speak in our scene, I am struggling to find the honesty that she brings to the table.

A big part for our scene, too, is listening. Most of our scene is spent listening to one another, and throughout the whole process of listening to everything, the character’s emotion changes over and over and over.

But Morgan and I get along very and well and Kivan has helped us come as far as we have. I am very excited for this scene.

Travis Cooper

Dave