Good look for Phyllis

IGNITE! READING

DAY 17 JUNE 10th

Yesterday and last night were very productive and I feel relatively calm about our reading. I think we are in pretty good shape. We took time separately during the day and then came together at night to look over the script and work on our clown turn. Meg's good buddy Nickey came over to offer an outside eye to our clown work. It's funny, I think I figured because we did a similar turn together 3 years ago, we could just jump right into it. God, no wonder it felt frantic and all over the place! So we worked it out beat by beat, looking at all the wonderful details we could bring to it. It was like everything was at either impulse .5 or 6 and nothing really in between. Now we have a whole lot more to play around with, and a much tighter turn.
As for today, I sent Meg the draft of the scene I was working on and she's writing now too. So once we get together later this afternoon we should be just about ready to hand in our draft. HOLY CRAP!

DAY 16 JUNE 9th

It's been a bit of an emotional roller coaster this week, but there is light at the end of the tunnel! Our draft has to be sent to Amy Lynn by tomorrow afternoon...YIKES! I think we are in amazing standing, considering how little time we've had to throw this thing together. I find it difficult to not stress over the fact that we will be reading a draft. I guess I'm more of a perfectionist than I let on. I just need to trust that what we do have is great. It is just a very vulnerable place to be- to show something that has a lot of promise, but that is unfinished. I guess all we can do at this point is polish what we can and have fun. It is a play! I want to play!

DAY 11 RECAP ON DAY 12

Holy moly, day 12!! We are taking a much needed day off today.

But YESTERDAY. What a day! We tried to do work and did a bit...but realized we were pretty wiped out. So we took it easy with trashy TV before our meeting with our dramaturge Amy Lynn Strilchuk and designer Jed Tomlinson.

I'm not going to lie, I had not only never met either of them before, I've also never had a dramaturgical meeting before, so I really had no idea what to expect. It was incredibly helpful. They both gave us really solid input. For me, the read helped to illuminate where in the script I felt really comfortable and where I got lost, which is a great thing to discover. We also generated a ton of possible ideas/themes/metaphors to play around with. To be honest, there were points in the meeting where I began to feel incredibly overwhelmed by how much work we still need to do and how little time we have left before the read for Ignite. Thank God for Amy Lynn reminding us that we are not seeking to have a polished script by next Saturday, but instead are opening up our sketchbooks to an audience to show our process, to show where we are. She encouraged us to show what ever we like- if we need to omit scenes, do it. If we want to read things out of order, fine. If we have things that we are unsure of where they fit, but we like them, that's great too. So that encouragement and advice not only relieves the pressure, it also permits us to continue at the pace we have been working at without feeling a mad dash for a finish line. I hope to remember this when the stress of knowing we will be reading for a larger audience kicks in next week!