|
11/21/2016 0 Comments The Final DaysAs he prepares for load in and technical rehearsals at the end of this week, director and designer David Hanzal reflects on the rehearsal process for The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood: I can’t believe that four weeks of rehearsal have come and gone! We’ve sweat, we’ve fought, we’ve cried, we’ve re-thought and re-written the opening and closing scenes more times than we can count. We’ve had nights where our experiments have failed, and nights where I have thought to myself, This devised new work thing is too hard! This is the last play I’m ever going to direct! But then we pick ourselves back up and go back into the rehearsal room the next day, and it always gets better and we always discover what the play was meant to be. We move forward. We revise. We refresh.
We have two days of rehearsal left, before we take a couple of days off for the Thanksgiving holiday. But even though we’ll be “away” from the rehearsal room, I know that my director-designer-creator brain will still be firing away at top speed: Am I taking care of the audience? Are all of the dramaturgical systems tracking? Will we ever find the “right” ending? Is the play compelling… and complicated? Are all of the visual and design elements working together to evoke Beauty’s visceral/creepy/magical/sexy dream world?
When we come back the day after Thanksgiving, we will be loading into our performance venue, adding technical elements (lights, sound, costumes, and set), and adjusting our blocking and choreography from small rehearsal rooms to the vast scope of the Red Eye Theater’s stage. It’s quick, it’s stressful, and it’s exhilarating. (Coffee helps.) Even though rehearsals for a new, multi-disciplinary, ensemble-driven play are never easy, we’ve emerged stronger, more articulate artists, and we are now more specific and more intentional about the choices that we are making as storytellers. From questions come conversation and exploration, which breeds a product that is richer and far more complex than what we could have created all on our own. I’m proud of the work that we’ve created together, collaboratively, and I can’t wait to share it with an audience, starting December 2.
So, please – join us for this new, never-before-seen, original work of theatre before it’s too late. Because, after we close on December 11, this magical world that we have created will cease to exist forever.  Tickets are selling fast! More information about purchasing tickets for The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood may be found here.
All photos by Logan Verdoorn
0 Comments
11/14/2016 0 Comments Many, many hatsStage manager and assistant director Sofia Lindgren Galloway writes about the rehearsal process: I met David when I was a reference for a costume designer he hired three years ago. He had just finished his MFA in directing and moved back to Minneapolis. I was a recent college graduate and had just moved to the Twin Cities to start my own directing career. We’ve been keeping in touch about our directing paths and I’m SO EXCITED to be joining him as his assistant on The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood. I met playwright Kat Sherman and choreographer Justin Leaf last December when David invited me to a couple devising workshops for a “performance work inspired by early variations of Sleeping Beauty, and potentially structured as the dreams that Sleeping Beauty has before she wakes up.” A few months later, after the spring work-in-progress presentation with Savage Umbrella’s Night of New Works, I was invited back as David’s assistant and stage manager.
Left: David tries a crown on Torre; Right: Patrick (left) and David (right), working with the Crone costume I have worn many hats in the last few months as Stage Manager, Assistant Director, composition participant, rehearsal photographer/videographer, and one time post-clogged toilet cleaner. The most exciting thing about working with Collective Unconscious Performance is that we’re all wearing several hats, and often at the same time. David is simultaneously staging moments and designing them. Kat will come into rehearsals with script edits and then jump into a composition. Justin is bouncing back and forth between playing Beauty and choreographing dances. Even the cast is playing multiple roles. They move from mask work, to puppeteers, to dancers, to actors in a matter of minutes; both in rehearsals and in the performance! The versatility of the artists involved with this production is astounding.
Left: Composition moment (I swear I’m somewhere in that pile of bodies); Right: Alana (left) and Mikey (right) waiting for their next pose in a song We spent the first two weeks of rehearsal training in Viewpoints, Bunraku puppetry, shadow puppetry, and composition work. By devoting time to those specific ways of creating performance, we have learned to move from one to the other quickly in rehearsals. In week three, we’ve moved into staging the show based on composition work. In a matter of days, we’ve managed to stage almost all of the play and by the time you read this, we’ll be well into running the show! (Just don’t look at my blocking notes… they won’t inspire confidence… haha)
Left: Justin teaches choreography; Right: (Left to right) Sarah, Alana, Jessie, and David learning how to use shadow puppets It's exciting, it's challenging, and I think we will create some really beautiful moments beyond our wildest dreams! But, maybe not beyond Sleeping Beauty’s wildest dreams. I guess you’ll have to come find out for yourself! :) ~ Sofia  Patrick, in a moment from the scene “Sun, Moon, and Talia”
11/7/2016 1 Comment Choreographer and performer Justin Leaf writes about his creative process for "The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood"David Hanzal and Katharine Sherman first invited me to play the role of Beauty in their upcoming production of The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood, and I was later engaged to provide dances for the multidimensional performance work premiering next month at the Red Eye Theater. With my history as a choreographer equally comfortable in concert halls and cabaret theaters, the project was good fit for my range, blending the classical beauty of an ethereal fairy tale with more modern influences of pop dance styles, including burlesque and hip hop. Also, my penchant for the dreamlike had been a hallmark of my choreographic work, evident in dances I’d made for Minnesota Dance Theatre and James Sewell Ballet. And so now I was invited to enter the world of Beauty’s dreams and illumine the musical sequences with a distinctive movement dimension. The choreographic process began last spring with a work-in-progress showing in Savage Umbrella’s Night of New Works series. In collaboration with the ensemble, I developed three of the dances at that time. David shared his intentions for the scenes to be choreographed and often provided links to source material that inspired his vision. I would reference this material, allowing it to loosely inform my own vision.  I ran with the delicious dichotomy captured in what I saw in this new rendering of the story: both poetic gravitas and campy satire. Some of the dances lean toward one end of that spectrum, while some lean toward the other. And sometimes they are interwoven—a sort of dark humor pervading Beauty’s dream world. But also gorgeous, creepy, wild, wistful, obnoxious, exalted, and sublime.
However, that first iteration was specific to the alley-style seating arrangement at Savage Umbrella’s SPACE and to the performers who were working with us then. Coming back together to prepare for the Red Eye Theater production, we have begun transforming the orientation of the dances for a much larger proscenium theater. Also, we’ve been incorporating refreshed intentions and additional performers. In the midst of this process, working both inside of the dances as a performer and outside as choreographer, I have a unique perspective on the work, seeing it from different angles. I also get to experience the approach of “theater people” and bring my dance perspective into the mix. Through this collaboration, we discover new avenues for creating the movement sequences that help to bring The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood to life. 11/1/2016 0 Comments This week, playwright Katharine Sherman delves into her (re-)writing process for "The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood"i’m doing edits. we had a read-through at our first rehearsal, which of course disturbs your perception of the play and makes you see and hear all kinds of things you haven’t seen or heard before. the fact that you’re hearing it spoken, instead of reading the words or looking at paper instead of a screen or hyper awareness of the other minds and eyes and voices in the room, encountering this thing you wrote for them for the first time - whatever alchemy it is, you walk away with edits. i see my edits as separate from rewrites. i have rewrites to do, too, post-read-through, but i’ll get to those. (tomorrow). edits aren’t about story or pacing or tone or character arc they’re mostly about rhythm sometimes they’re about rhyme. edits are analogous to line notes, except the correction is both for and from me, my ear telling me that i wrote a line wrong, that there’s a better way for it to sound. one of the edits i made tonight was to change the word “truly” to the word “so.” you’d think that wouldn’t be madly important, but.  i’m bad at writing about writing. absolutely terrible. to me writing is this secret sacred silent thing that you just don’t discuss. progress, you can talk about. process — i have no idea. i daydream till i panic, then i write. but editing. editing makes sense. i hear a line and it sounds wrong. it needs a tweak or a tune or a rhythmic shift. maybe i can’t articulate this any better than i can anything else about writing. so here’s an example:
another thing i’m really interested in when it comes to writing is notation, arrangement of words on a page. i feel like the same applies for line edits. tonight i made a document, that i hope makes intuitive sense, in terms of what changes have been made to lines and how the new ones will read. will it make any sense to the actors? this and more highly self-conscious ramblings on the process of play-making, coming up!  We can’t believe that the first week of rehearsals for "The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood" has already come and gone. Here are a few photos from our first week:        We hope to see you at the performances, Dec. 2-11 at the Red Eye Theater.
Purchase your tickets here! 10/20/2016 0 Comments As we prepare for our first rehearsal of “The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood”, designer David Hanzal fills us in on his creation process for some of the puppets and masks for the production:What’s most inspiring to me about the creation process as a theatre designer is how hands-on it all is. In our digital age of the internet and Netflix streaming and instant gratification, there is still no instant “on” button for art-making and visual design in the theatre. Design and construction in the theatre is a craft; time and energy must be spent, and everything has to be created by hand. And while the construction materials might begin as ordinary - fabric, paper, clay, and paint - they can be re-imagined as something extraordinary and magical.  For the bunraku puppet of Beauty, the construction process was incredibly time-consuming and detail-oriented (I often joke that puppet-making feels like giving birth and that the puppets I make are my children! ;-) ). First, I designed the silhouette of the puppet on paper, before tracing it on to muslin. The muslin was then hand stitched with carpet thread and filled with cotton stuffing. The face, the hands, and the feet of the puppet were sculpted in clay, which were then covered with five to seven layers of paper mache. After the paper mache sculptures dried, they were split open, the clay was taken out, and they were sealed back up again. Finally, paper clay was added on top of the hollowed-out paper mache sculptures for added texture, and then they were painted. Once the bunraku puppet’s body was assembled together, I moved onto styling and attaching the wig, and stitching the pink princess gown (with the help of some very talented stitchers - thank you, Libby and Ilana!).
While the puppet and mask design construction process has been underway for months now, this is still only the beginning! It’s not until these puppets and masks are animated in the rehearsal room by the performers that they will truly come to life. I can’t wait to begin rehearsals on October 24, when we’ll start to make the inanimate animate. Until then...  10/18/2016 0 Comments Designer David Hanzal writes about creating the scenic world for "The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood":This blog post is all about LEAVES!!!
One of my favorite scenic designers in the whole wide word is Michael Levine. Many years ago I saw a production of "Eugene Onegin" that he designed at the Metropolitan Opera, and I was amazed at how he created a vast array of environments and seemingly endless revelations of space almost solely through buckets of autumn leaves, atmospheric lighting, and a sparse smattering of household furniture. When dreaming up the visual world for "The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood", I knew that I wanted to create the environment of a creepy forest that was as equally malleable, as my memories were of that production of "Eugene Onegin" from years back. Without any support from a scene shop, I set out to create thousands of autumn leaves on my own. Since real leaves would disintegrate and negatively affect the allergies of the cast and audiences--and artificial plastic leaves were much too costly--every single leaf had to be made by hand. Brown butcher paper was first painted, and then often sprayed with a second layer of paint for additional texture, before being cut out. After that, each leaf was crumpled and then unfolded by hand to re-create the texture of a life-like leaf.
I can’t wait to enter the rehearsal room with my collaborators, and see how we can create a shape-shifting forest in Beauty’s dream world, just through leaves, movement, light, and sound.  10/8/2016 1 Comment Our production designer David Hanzal lets us in on his conceptual process for the costumes in our upcoming production "The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood":For me, the costume design for this production is kind of like John William Waterhouse-meets-Courtney Love:
I think one of the most interesting things in the fairy tale “Sleeping Beauty” is the passage of time. At the eve of her sixteenth birthday, our fated heroine pricks her finger on a spinning wheel...and promptly falls asleep for one hundred years. One of the issues that I had with so many of the illustrated books and media adaptations that I poured over during the research period for this project, was that even though Beauty sleeps for a century, there hardly ever appeared to be any advancement in clothing and design from when she fell asleep to when she woke up. I mean, people - we are talking about one hundred years here! I chose John William Waterhouse (1849 – 1917)’s paintings as my inspiration for the style of Beauty’s world before she fell asleep. Waterhouse is interesting to me because he is a man painting primarily in the Victorian and Edwardian periods, but his subject matter was exclusively female characters drawn from fairy tales and myths (which were often vaguely medieval). There’s something incredibly “once upon a time-time” about his visual style and the silhouettes of his subjects, in the way that he fluidly borrows influences from both the medieval and Victorian periods.   When trying to conceptualize what Beauty’s world looked like 100 years later post-slumber, I thought to myself: If 1890 is the absolutely latest date we can associate with Beauty’s world before she fell asleep, what would the world look like once Beauty wakes up 100 years later? I immediately thought of Courtney Love’s kinderwhore look from the early 1990s: the Lolita-esque nighties and short-short baby doll dresses, the white lace, the smokey black eyes and red lips smeared as if worn to bed. The perfect combination of innocent and sexy, and a superlative expression of Beauty’s budding sexuality.
 And, lastly, who hasn’t been inspired by the many fairy tale-themed photo shoots that have appeared in Vogue over the past several years? A perfect blend of “once upon a time-time” fairy tale silhouettes, juxtaposed alongside anachronistic details and high fashion. Perfection, I tell you.
9/22/2016 Our Journey Begins!We can’t believe that we’ll be starting rehearsals for The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood in a month! Since our workshop presentation this past April, we’ve completely re-written the script, held auditions and added four wonderful new performers to the cast, assembled our production team, and constructed several brand-new puppets and masks! Starting in mid-October, we will be updating you on our rehearsal process on this blog at least once a week, as we prepare for our opening night at the Red Eye Theater on December 2! Keep your eyes peeled. Fondly, David & Kat  |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
August 2020
Categories |
Search by typing & pressing enter
RSS Feed