from founding artistic director Joan Schirle
It's the beginning of our season, so we haven't posted for awhile, but you can look for us to be more present as we go through the year. Our summer involved very full workshops, a lot of travel, a new play development, and even some down time. There were lots of weddings in the Dell'Arte famiglia this summer and new arrivals, including a new son for Marketing Director Gannon Rogers, born Oct. 10. Our Mad River Festival brought back for a 30th anniversary one of the Dell'Arte Company's most popular works, Intrigue At Ah-Pah, a Scar Tissue Mystery-- it proved as topical and entertaining now as it was in 1979.
We kicked off the 2009 Mad River Festival with a Lifetime Achievement Award and salute to the great stage, film and tv actor Rene Auberjonois, who credits early work with Carlo as key in his development as a transformative actor. (Photo: Rene with Michael Fields, Joan Schirle, and Jane Hill)
Part of my summer involved the continuation of my voice studies, made possible by the generosity of the Fox Foundation/TCG grant for professional development. I was able to return to workshops with a couple of my favorite voice teachers, Richard Amstrong and Patsy Rodenburg, and to encounter for the first time the voice work of Dudley Knight and Phil Thompson. Richard's wonderful workshop was in Banff, Canada--a glorious spot in the middle of Canada's national park. The other two workshops were in New York, and this year with Patsy I did her Level 3 workshop where we spent four days doing nothing but Hamlet. It was a superb workout. Dudley and Phil have a very physical approach to the work with articulators, accents, and phonetics. Though it was a lot to digest in their six-day workshop, I came away with a much greater awareness of how each of us physically produces our unique sound through the combination of our many parts as well as our experience of language.
Our 2009-10 season opened Friday night with the play the Company has been working on all year, INVERTED ALBA: A Fable & Rondelay After Images of Federico Garcia Lorca. Though still an infant in the way devised plays are when they first emerge, INVERTED ALBA is on its way to being a full-fledged original piece, and we have two more weeks of playing it before revising it yet again prior to beginning its touring life. Working on Lorca for this long has made me think even my own thoughts more poetically; his images are so strong and so evocative, it makes me want to write of insects, flowers, rivers, and how the dawn counts out the tree leaves.... And his prose is as clear and articulate as his poetry. It has been quite a ride to work on this piece with Ronlin Foreman (who also directs and designed the piece), Laura Munoz and Richard Newman as actors and co-writers, and with design team as we moved into production time. I'll write more about this production in my next blog, but I'd just like to thank Sabrina Hamilton of the Ko Festival for giving us the chance to work on the piece for three weeks in August in Amherst. It was there that we were able to develop the movement figures for the piece, working with Donlin Foreman, Ronlin's twin brother, and an amazing dancer/mover/teacher. And that time away from home gave us the research and writing time to forge the many aspects of Lorca's work into one unique piece.
Photo: Donlin Foreman working on Inverted Alba with actors Richard Newman & Laura Munoz, at the Ko Festival
Dell'Arte School is starting its 35th year, with the 3rd year MFA's developing A Commedia Christmas Carol as interns with the Company; the 2nd year MFA's are working on Adaptation Projects with new resident faculty member Lauren Wilson. Lauren's play, The Golden State, which was commissioned by the Dell'Arte Company in 2006, was published by Dramatists Play Service this year, and we'll present a reading of her new play, Suicide Pact, on November 13.
Another new addition to the MFA curriculum this Fall is Archery, taught by our resident Tai-Chi/Alexander Technique teacher Phillip Gerstner. I told him that there are probably dozens of acting schools that require their students to read "Zen & The Art of Archery" but I don't know any others that actually have them learn the art!
Meanwhile, the wind is kicking up outside for the first storm of the Fall...gotta go turn on that heater pilot light and take down the porch umbrella.
Joan
