Heads like mushrooms

Last night, while working on scene two, we decided to have Nils' head floating in a wooden box high above the stage. You will not see the rest of his body. Just his head floating in a box. In the box, his head will be surrounded by miniature trees and a sky. Hopefully, these trees will grow as he speaks.

Ideas pushing up like mushrooms out of the dark, muddy earth.

Confessions of a Theatrical Hack

I took one acting class in college. As a broad and religious rule, I do not go to theatre. I do not like to watch it. I like to do it. Watching it eventually makes me irritated in the same general way it made me irritated back in grade school to sit in class and watch other kids out at recess.

I generally do not 'do' theatre. There have only been three occasions on which I have not worked specifically for Kevin. The first time was back in sixth grade so, maybe, it does not really count. The second time was for Nick at the (now defunct) Dundee Dinner Theatre. The third time was for Susan and 'A Piece of My Heart'. There have only been two occasions on which I have not worked specifically at the Blue Barn. Back when I was doing a lot at the Blue Barn, I received small number of offers to do things at other theatres in town. I declined all of them. The reason, for the larger part, has to do with sentimentality.

I did not learn how to do theatre in any sort of... well... structured way. Whereas other people may have experiences of classes, or grids, or systems, or what have you, I don't. I love the idea of hanging lights (I only know them as lights) from beams and rafters, I love the idea of a house that can maybe only seat one hundred (including the folding chairs). After a week on the job as the stage manager for 'Night of the Iguana', Carol came up to me and, point blank, asked me if I knew what my job was. Kevin had given me some good pointers to get me through but I was feeling rather honest when I told her, "I have no idea." She sat me down and told me a few things and anything else I picked up was rather ad hoc.

After having been involved with the Blue Barn for a little over a year, I think that my experiences culminated in a practical way in putting on 'Nocturne' as part of the 'Round Midnight Series. Thom was in town at the time from New York and brought the one-man-show script with him. Out of pocket, we secured the rights for the show for that weekend. Thom built the two amazing pieces we needed built for the set. The rest consisted of a bench and a chair. We did the lighting and sound together. He acted and I directed. I ran the house and the stage (old hat from earlier, busier days). I ran the lights and the sound. Susan and Hughston were very patient with us.

So that's kind of where I get it. I don't like the idea of working in spaces where there are proper places from which things should hang. Monday night, I went on a short and quiet tirade about how much I would love to do a play in a bathroom. No, I mean, like, in a bathroom. I do buy and read scripts for fun but only from the nauseatingly lofty and entrepreneurial angle of whether or not I would want to do the show. The general questions that decide that are:
"Can I do this show with twenty or less lights?"
"I don't think I can handle more than four actors. Are there more than four parts?"
"Do we really need a set?"
"What if I told everyone that we had no budget?"
"Costumes?!"
"Can we fit the whole cast and crew inside one automobile?"
"Does anyone have an automobile?"
It is a very small collection of scripts...

I'm not sure if this comes across as positive as I mean it. Well, what I took away from the Blue Barn when I left Omaha five years ago was all of the idealistic stuff about theatre and that, in the core of all of those ideas, and dreams, and realizations was, simply, that we can make magic.

We can make magic. We make magic.

That's my ideal of the art, still unsullied by the harsher realities of the business. It is part of what keeps me ignorant, it's part of what keeps me away from productions, and it is what keeps me smiling all the way through every rehearsal and every meeting we have:

We are making magic.

$20 an actor?

It occurs to me that this costume budget is the size I was used to at the Rose. Assuming I had a room full of fabric, a costume rental department that I could plunder at will, boxes and boxes of trim, and all the patterns, shoes, and notions you could wish for. This design is turning into less of 'what can I afford' to 'what am I willing to design to have for myself.' I think I'll have to invest in full bolts of gauze and/or lawn so what I use for this build is affordable. I had another project or two for which it was needed, so I can start to justify it. The main black overcoat will have to be a personal project, or else it will never look as good as I want it to. I had an awesome idea for the women's shoes, but two of the actresses would have to also have a lolita/westwood fetish to want to buy their own pair.

Anyway, I started to put together an excel document of items, starting with shoes, that if anyone already has, can find at a thrift store, or is willing to buy for themselves, will make my life easier. Pictures and sizes and names. I'm going to share it with anyone I know who goes to thrift stores regularly. It's also going to be my way to slowly leak my costume ideas to everyone, including Kevin. So if anyone has a different idea about something I post up, tell me quickly.

I spent the last 36 hours mostly sleeping. I thought it was just my narcolepsy, but then my throat started hurting, and the nose filled up. I just got over being sick a few weeks ago! But that's always been my lot in life, coming down with anything that comes along. So I gave up on my regular wakey wakey rx, and did what I had to to get the design for the black coat done for the Rev so he could get started. It's going to be a picky piece for him, knowing how much he loves a good dramatic black coat; if it wasn't needed for the photoshoot, I would have used Sherri's trick and given it to him at the end of the build.

So, the prospect of 'legitimate theater' has lured me in to obsessing over this new project. Possibly actually reviewed? Really? There are plans to incorporate our costume shop into a real company, but we started out collaborating on spankcandy costumes, then derby uniforms, then burlesque outfits. While I'm absolutely sure that there's decent money to be made with the right business plan with any of these, this is a chance to do the conceptual work that is an artist's dream. Kevin let me in on this project, and I don't want to let it just pass by without making a (positive) mark on it. I treasure my awards and reviews. I don't do the work for them, but I was raised to treasure a cheap printed ribbon for artistic glory. There's no judging table out there for the person that makes the sexiest outfit for a size 14 girl.

I want to show everyone what I'm capable of. I love designing. The other day, I got sidetracked and drew up a rockabilly line in an hour. So I'm going to make this good. I'm going to make it me. And If Kevin likes what I'm going to give him, bonus. It's funny how I can spend time around so many different people, and they all say the same thing around strangers. 'Pope doesn't do anything half-assed.'

This show is about folk costumes and angst up the wootwoot. I can do grief. I can do alienation. And I can definitely do a folk costume. I am my mother's daughter. I just worry that the wardrobe will be considered an afterthought in the conceptual process. To me, there is no part of the acting and tech evolution of a play without the costumes. How does one move or dance? Do you know what your character's clothes says about them? How are you going to light a monochrome, multi-textured item that has to be blown to the sky? How much music do you need between scenes to cover the changes? I've been a part of every aspect of theater except lighting unless totally necessary. Costumes will never be anything but the main pivot point to me.

And what kind of laundry do those girls have to hang up?

Right. Well. It's after 5am. I think I'll snot some more, try to make one or two more sketches, fill out another column in my costume want list, and attempt to not rue my blathering.

Gratitude

This is from writer Kevin Kelly. It's not directly connected to the rehearsals, but it makes me think of Joost's telling about the journeys that he makes everyday, and of his remembering the details of his life with his wife and daughter.

Kevin Kelly's 2007 Christmas Card

Kevin Kelly's This I Believe essay was adapted from a Christmas card he sent to family and friends in 2007. Below you can read his essay in full:

Dear Friends and Family,

Before the news of this year, a little personal story. When I was in my twenties I would hitchhike to work everyday. I'd walk down three blocks to Route 22 in New Jersey, stick out my thumb and wait for a ride to work. Someone always picked me up. I had to punch-in for my job as a packer at a warehouse at 8 o'clock sharp, and I can't remember ever being late. It never ceased to amaze me even then, that the kindness of strangers could be so dependable. Each morning I counted on the service of ordinary commuters who had lives full of their own worries, and yet without fail, at least one of them would do something kind, as if on schedule. As I stood there with my thumb outstretched, the only question in my mind was simply: "How will the miracle happen today?"

Shortly after that rare stint of a real job, I took my wages and split for Asia, where I roamed off and on for the next 8 years. I lost track of the number of acts of kindness aimed at me, but they arrived as dependably as my daily hitchhiking miracle. Random examples: In the Philippines a family opened their last can of tinned meat as a banquet for me, a stranger who needed a place to crash. Below a wintry pass north of Gilgit in the Pakistan Hindu Kush, a group of startled firewood harvesters shared their ash-baked bread with me when I bounded unannounced into their campfire circle one evening. We ended up sleeping like sardines under a single homewoven blanket. In Taiwan, a student I met on the street one day befriended me in that familiar way to most travelers, but surprised me by offering me a place at his family's apartment in Taipei. While he was away at school, I sat in on the family meals and had my own bedroom for two weeks.

One remembrance triggers another; I could easily list thousands of such gestures without much trouble, because – and this is important – not only did I readily accept such gifts, but I actually came to rely on them being offered. I could never guess who the messenger would be, but kindness never failed to materialize once I put myself in some position to receive it. As in my hitchhiking days, I began my days on the road in Asia and elsewhere with the recurring question: how will the miracle happen today?" After a lifetime of relying on such benevolence I have developed a theory of what happens in these moments and it goes like this. Kindness is like a breath. It can be squeezed out, or drawn in. You can wait for it, or you can summon it.

To solicit a gift from a stranger takes a certain state of openness. If you are lost or ill, this is easy, but most days you are neither, so embracing extreme generosity takes some preparation. I learned from hitchhiking to think of this as an exchange. During the moment the stranger offers his or her goodness, the person being aided offers degrees of humility, dependency, gratitude, surprise, trust, delight, relief, and amusement to the stranger. It takes some practice to enable this transfer when you don't feel desperate. Ironically, you are less inclined to be ready for the gift when you are feeling whole, full, complete, and independent!

One might even call the art of accepting generosity a type of compassion. The compassion of being kinded. One year I rode my bicycle across America, from San Francisco to New Jersey. I started out camping in state parks, but past the Rockies, parks became so scarce I switched to camping on people's lawns. I worked up a routine. As darkness fell, I began scouting the homes I passed for a likely candidate: neat house, big lawn in the back, easy access for my bike. When I selected the lucky home, I parked my bag-loaded bike in front of the door and rang the bell. "Hello," I'd say. "I'm riding my bike across America. I'd like to pitch my tent tonight where I have permission and where someone knows where I am. I've just eaten dinner, and I'll be gone first thing in the morning. Would you mind if I put up my tent in your backyard?"

I was never turned away, not once. And there was always more. It was impossible for most folks to sit in their couch and watch TV while a guy who was riding his bicycle across America was camped in their backyard. What if he was famous? So I was usually invited into their home for desert and an interview. My job in this moment was clear: I was to relate my adventure. I was to help them enjoy a thrill they secretly desired, but would never do. My account would make an impossible dream seem real and possible, and thus part of them. Through me and my retelling of what happened so far, they would get to vicariously ride a bicycle across America. In exchange I would get a place to camp and a dish of ice cream. It was a sweet deal that benefited both of us. The weird thing is that I was, and still am, not sure whether I would have done what they did and let me sleep in the backyard. The "me" on the bicycle had a wild tangled beard, had not showered for weeks, and appeared destitute (my whole transcontinental trip cost me $500). I am not sure I would invite a casual tourist I met to take over my apartment, and cook for him. I definitely would not hand him the keys to my own car, as a hotel clerk in Dalarna, Sweden, did one mid-summer day when I asked her how I could reach the painter Carl Larsson's house 150 miles away away.

The many times I was down or dazed, and a stranger interrupted his life to assist me is a less perplexing mystery to me that when, for no reason I can comprehend, an impoverished legendary Chinese painter I had met only 20 minutes previously insists that I take one of his treasures. I'd like to think that I would, without hesitation, drive way out of my way to bring a sick traveler to the hospital, but I am having trouble seeing myself emptying my bank account to purchase a boat ticket for someone who has more money than I do. (Yep, that happened to me.) But this kind of kindness happens when you travel with an openness to the gift.

Yet while I rely on miracles, I don't believe in saints. There are no saints even among the gentle monks of Asia, or I should say, especially among the monks. Rather, generosity is rampant in everyday lives, but no more in one place, race, or creed than others. We expect altruism among kinfolk and neighbors, although the world would, as we all know, be a better place if neighborly and family kindness happened even more. Altruism among strangers, on the other hand, is simply strange. To the uninitiated its occurrence seems as random as cosmic rays. It seems like a hit or miss blessing that makes a good story. For that reason the kindness of strangers is gift we never forget.

But the strangeness of "kindees" is harder to explain. A kindee is what you turn into when you are kinded. Curiously, being a kindee is an unpracticed virtue. Hardly anyone hitchhikes any more, which is a shame because it encourages the habit of generosity from drivers and nurtures the grace of gratitude and patience of being kinded from hikers. But the stance of receiving a gift – of being kinded — is vital for everyone, not just travelers. Many people resist being kinded unless they are in dire need, or life-threatened. Since I have had so much practice as a kindee, I have some pointers on how it is unleashed.

I believe the generous gifts from strangers are actually summoned by a deliberate willingness to be helped. You start by surrendering to your need for help. That we cannot be helped until we embrace our need for help is a law of the universe. Receiving help on the road is a spiritual event triggered by a traveler who surrenders his or her fate to the eternal Greatness. It's a move from whether we will be helped to how: how will the miracle unfold today? In what novel manner will Good reveal itself? Who will the universe send today to carry away my gift of trust and helplessness?

When the miracle flows, it flows both ways. When an offered gift is accepted, then the threads of love are knotted, snaring both the stranger who is kind, and the stranger who is kinded. Every time a gift is tossed it lands differently – but knowing that it will arrive in some colorful, unexpected way is one of the certainties of life.

We are at the receiving end of a huge gift simply by being alive. It does not matter how you calculate it, our time here is unearned. Maybe you figure your existence is the result of a billion unlikely accidents, and nothing more; then certainly your life is an unexpected and undeserved surprise. That's the definition of a gift. Or maybe you figure there's something bigger behind this small human reality; your life is then a gift from the greater to the lesser. As far as I can tell none of us have brought about our own existence, nor done much to earn such a remarkable experience. The pleasures of colors, cinnamon rolls, bubbles, touchdowns, whispers, long conversations, sand on your bare feet – these are all undeserved rewards.

All of us begin in the same place. Whether purified or not, we are not owed our life. Our existence is an unnecessary extravagance, a wild gesture, an unearned gift. Not just at birth. The eternal surprise is being funneled to us daily, hourly, minute by minute, every second. Yet, we are terrible recipients. We are no good at being helpless, humble, or indebted. Being needy is not celebrated on day-time TV shows, or in self-help books. We make lousy kindees.

I've slowly changed my mind about spiritual faith. I once thought it was chiefly about believing in an unmeasurable reality; that it had a lot in common with hope. But after many years of examining the lives of the people whose spiritual character I most respect, I've come to see that their faith rests on gratitude, rather than hope. They exude a sense of being indebted, and a state of being thankful. When the truly faithful worry, it's not about doubt (which they have) but it's about how they might not maximize the tremendous gift given them. How they might be ungrateful. The faithful I admire are not certain about much except this: that this state of being embodied, inflated with life, brimming with possibilities, is so over-the-top unlikely, so extravagant, so unconditional, so far out beyond physical entropy, that is it indistinguishable from love. And most amazing of all, like my hitchhiking rides, this love-gift is an extravagant gesture you can count on. No matter how bad the weather, soiled the past, broken the heart, hellish the war – all that is behind the universe is conspiring to help you – if you will let it.

My new age friends call that pronoia, the opposite of paranoia. Instead of believing everyone is out to get you, you believe everyone is out to help you. The story of your life becomes one huge elaborate conspiracy to lift you up. But to be helped you have to join the conspiracy yourself. You have to accept the gift.

Of course in the daily grind giving is always more holy than getting. That's what a Christmas season celebrating the gift of redemption is all about. Please share your abundance, while you can.

But I've only slowly come to realize that good givers are those who learn to receive with grace as well. None of us deserve what we have; all of us need help. From my perspective, the origins of this Christmas season lie in this eternal offer: although we have done nothing to merit it, we have been offered a glorious ride that will transcend the ills, failures, hates and destruction of this existence, if only we accept it. To accept the gift requires we surrender to our need for the gift, and to the truth that we don't deserve it. The outreach to this charity begins in the same humble position a hitchhiker gets into when he stands shivering on the side of the empty highway, cardboard sign flapping in the cold wind, and says, "How will the miracle happen today?"

We had a lot to be grateful for this year. My brothers and sister and parents are all well. Gia-Miin's mother moved from Taiwan to a house near our neighborhood. To keep her mom company, another of Gia-Miin' sisters lives with her. There is now a critical mass of Fuh family in Pacficia. We all returned to China for second adventure into remote villages. There were 9 of us, including my mother-in-law (80) and my brother's son, Rhy, who came to keep Tywen (11) company. We ate a whole lot of strange food (even for Gia-Miin), got snowed in Tibet, climbed to a high-altitude Yi mountain village, and strolled along the canals beside the Grand Canal. Missing from this trip was Ting (16) who was visiting colleges on the East Coast accompanied and chauffeured by my sister Colleen, and Kaileen (18) who was at school at Pepperdine. This past autumn, Kaileen spent a semester abroad in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She's reluctantly home for the holidays, wishing she was still in BA, as they call it.

I'm traveling a bit more this year, and writing more as well. I'm writing about what technology means, as in, what is the role of technology in our lives? There's more and more technology, but where does it fit in the cosmic scale of things? That philosophy sounds as airy-fairy to me as to you, which is why I am having trouble actually writing it. Just to keep my feet on the ground, I also continue to review tools for my web site, Cool Tools. To relax I made a few new photo books. I'm working on one about Burning Man, which I've been photographing since 1995.

And I am working on being more grateful. I'm aiming my thanks at the thousand of things we take for granted, things that would be a miracle if they only happened once. I noticed a pigeon the other day. It had fantastical colors, incredible bearing, and shimmering feathers. I feel sure that if there were only one of these specimens alive in the world, we would all agree it would be the most beautiful bird in the world. We'd push and shove to see it. Almost every moment in our lives is a pigeon overlooked. May we notice and be grateful. Sometime in the past, our lives intersected in real life (not on the computer!) and I wish we'd intersect again that way soon.

Peace,

Kevin Kelly

Somewhere there is a well

I actually wrote this first in another blog. Don't tell Kevin but I was not thinking about the play at all... but, going back and reading it, I do not feel remiss placing this here, too. In some
places at some times, people sit in a circle and pass a thing around-- usually a bottle of booze, or a rod, or a staff-- and whoever has that thing in their possession has to say something.

The world is simple: there is a house; there is not a house. There is building and then there is not building. Life and then not life. People who believe happiness is dependent upon a larger, metaphysical good will never be happy. People who need everything to be good will never find peace. Peace is in the silence between crashing waves. Peace is in the silence during the shortness of breath between sobs.

If the world was benevolent, then every five year old girl would befriend every animal she tried to pet.

But.

The world doesn't hate you.

You are. And it is. And anything more that you could want is selfish. Life is building and destroying what was built. Even the pyramids will one day crumble to dust and something beautiful will grow out of that dust.

I was watching a forgettable movie a long time ago and a dreadfully sad song was being played on a record player in the scene. The woman remarked, dreamy-eyed, "that is so beautiful." That is so beautiful. If all we do is count the 'happy' moments in our lives as the beautiful moments in our lives, then we will always feel short-changed, cheated, and deprived.

Happiness is waking up and maybe finding food to eat. Happiness is walking through a dream, a ringing in your ears, and you wake up one day and discover that you are married, and that you have beautiful children, and that you have a photo album full of smiles and wrinkled shirts. You can not help but live every minute of your life. Choosing to engage it, though, is something else.

There were two towers in New York and now there are none. The sadists in New York want to build a tremendous monument to the fact that people died. But people die every day. I went to Ground Zero (no, I do not mean Nagasaki, or Hiroshima, or Dresden). I went to Ground Zero and it was beautiful because it was the only place in lower Manhattan where the sky opened up. The din of the city had nothing to bounce off of and the echoes were lost in the sky so that silence, for a moment, came down and gently held you, and there was peace there.

Ground Zero is a clearing violently cut in the forest and now flowers can grow. In one hundred years, nobody will care about this ground zero. Nobody will care about monuments and 'never forget'. We always do. It isn't sad. Those people touched other people and those people will touch others. This is the only eternity granted to us mortals, these deeds we do. And we'll pass, and others touched by us will touch others and those others will touch others and an abstract piece of us will live on, having touched the Earth, and the sea, and the trees. And echo slowly fading. That's okay. All songs end.

I drove by a house and there was a family there. I drove by later and there was no house and there was no family. I do not know where they went or if they even escaped from the house.

Life is beautiful because it is fragile and only five minutes long. What do you do with those five minutes? Who are you? How loudly do you call up to the stars and to the immortal sky, "I am here! I am alive!" Will they remember you when you are gone?

In Pakistan, they still use as a highway a portion of the road cut by Alexander the Great on his quest to India.

He was twenty eight when he died.

Scientists and adventurers are discovering cities and roads in the sea off of the coast of South America, places where people lived, and walked, and loved before the sea rose and slowly and gently swallowed them.

When I was at a beach on the Northern tip of the Washington Penninsula, as the tide was coming in, I wrote my name in huge letters in the sand. I dragged my foot like an enormous wedge and wrote it so that even birds in the sky could read it. I sat down and watched the waves patiently rise and erase it. I watched myself die and be forgotten. It was the most liberating thing I have ever experienced.

Nothing you love will ever be taken from you because nothing you love is yours. Everything you love is something the world is sharing because the world loves you.

It is not sad. These are the truths that we know at that exact moment when we fall asleep when we are five years old. We die every time we fall asleep. We may never wake up but we trust something. We do not even trust that we will wake up, but we trust something.

Many people say nothing and pass into death quietly.

Oscar Wilde made a joke.

Ludwig Van Beethoven kept his fist raised in the air as he died. It did not fall until he was dead.

The universe is not beautiful because it provides for us, or takes care of us, or lets us believe we are forever. The universe is beautiful because it allows us to experience it for a moment and that moment, this delicate moment, is worth death and, this life, worth all of its pains, and sorrows, and miseries. To be exultant is not to be happy. To be exultant is to be alive.

'I sound my barbaric YAWP over the rooftops of the world'.

Lovers, and philosophers, and murderers-- they all contribute to the song, they are all part of this choir and every voice, no matter how 'sweet' or how 'terrible' adds something.

Without villains, we would have no heroes. Without sorrow, we would have no hope.

We would not have God if we did not need God.

This. This life. It is so beautiful.

One moment, there is a house. The next, there is no house.

It is so beautiful.

It's freezing outside and very cold inside the Barn. The kind of cold that creates its own silence. Everyone is wearing scarves and jackets and hats at rehearsal. Chilly toes. That takes me back to the very first year, the darkest part of winter of 1988 - one floor above where we are now. Our first show opened right around now and it was one of the coldest weekends in Omaha history. Huge, thin warehouse windows from the 1890's, where the icy wind actually blows straight through the glass, it seems. And we were young then. Really young. Just a couple of seasons ago. It does feel like it in the strangest way. Is Omaha the midwest Brigadoon? Everything here resonates so much that it's easy to have time vertigo. Tonight we launched into scene one. All these things begin growing from some invisible soil. Some sort of really lush winter garden. My nose is like a long frozen moon orbiting above my face. Nils said he is having very vivid dreams from the play. Mine have been strongly affected, too. More around working with everyone. How many are having dreams colored by this? Still waiting to hear the train whistles at night. One of my favorite parts of this town. Trains wailing deep in the bitter night.

Hey! Forced honesty!

So, it's not like I've never costumed a show before, but at the moment, I'm kind of intimidated. After doing Vieux Carre (sp), I took myself out of costuming at the blue barn. Having to search through every thrift store in town for the most boring clothing was just tedious. But I'm back at it now, although with a whole new set of tools at hand, the foremost being the Reverend. You know, Steve. The guy who actually has to do the work. Best friend. Yadda.
But this show is so darn conceptual, I just don't have a grip on it. I need to read it on paper. Somehow, trying to read this play on my computer feels as though it's keeping me from understanding it. Perhaps I'm trying to read it too quickly. I can't write myself notes on the side. And it's hard to grasp how far things are progressing without having so many pages in front, and so many behind.
And then there's Bill, who seems to not only have a full grasp of the show, but has come up with Great Ideas. I don't have Great Ideas yet. I have the ideas that will not embarrass the actors to be on stage. It feels like forever since I really put the work in on a 'legitimate' theater piece. Just yesterday, I finally started unpacking my scripts and designs from the Rose. It's been a year since I had looked at it, and it felt comforting to page through my sketchbook. Dear lord, how many costumes have been cranked out of my shop last year without even a design? I'm a gut costumer, and this play is going to need more than instinct.
So, I'ze going to cancel my afternoon appointment, head for the nail salon, and get to reading. Some may suffer for their art. I prefer to do mine while getting a pedicure.

The end of solitude
Just getting started here in Omaha on the premier of The Tulip. Last night I met with the design team - a wonderful, eclectic group of talents, and tonight I meet my cast and have the first read through. This is the point where years of desperate, solitary work begins to have life breathed into it by other human beings. All their hearts and minds and bodies, the bottomless reservoirs of their lives, pour into every curve and cranny of the flat, black letters on the page, and upward it begins to grow, kicking its way into the flesh and blood. It's a wildly strange and wonderful experience. Tonight will be the first time I hear others read the words. What a rare blessing - to be able to explore life like this.
Posted by Hobo K at 10:03 AM 0 comments

The Tulip Play

Hello and welcome!

This is a blog by the cast and crew of the premier production of a play called The Tulip at the Blue Barn Theatre in Omaha, NE. We are just beginning rehearsals as the blog begins. The hope is to get a great multi-perspective journal on the process of creating a new work for the stage, and this new work specifically. Please enjoy and feel free to comment.