Second Wind Theatre

Writing in Elliptical Motion

2012-02-07T13:12:00.000-08:00

Compelling dialogue rarely progresses in a logical, step-wise fashion. Rather, it contains a duality-- a line drive structure on the surface and an elliptical motion below. Furthermore, there always exists a "break" in the linear movement.

You probably remember the exercise where someone asks you to adentify a serious of shapes:

The first you identified as a square; the second as a triangle; and the third you may have incorrectly called a circle. A circle doesn't have a gap in it-- your mind completed this one. It "jumped the gap" in order to make the circular image fit with the others. Good dialogue does the same thing. The little gaps propel the dialogue

forward to the next idea. These dialectic gaps, like the broken circle, are filled in by the imagination of the character who is listening.

Leave Room for the Insanity

Early in my career, playwright Joe Besecker urged me to leave more room for the insanity of my characters. Over time I came to understand that insanity isn't a disconnect from reality; nor is it about the character's perculiarities and quirks (though garden variety insanity often expresses itself in disconnects and quirks). It's about our inherent, irrational nature wreaking havoc on our everyday interactions. We fall prey to it even in the most mundane conversations. A line, statement, or question always has some earlier reference that colors it. Because the characters arrive on stage with a history. When two characters know each other well, that history can be shared; but even strangers carry a history into their conversations. "Could you take out the trash?" carries the history of all the trash takings, of who got up at 2am to care for the baby, of who works longer hours or makes more money. In real life those histories are (hopefully) dealth with and put to bed long before the simple question of trash is raised. In the theatre, we only ask questions where the history is still raw-- where it is a driving force in the direction of the relationship. And that history creates the elliptical motion of dialogue. The line, statement, or question arcs backwards to collect the history of the character and then jumps forward into its expression. If you can pardon this poor drawing, the movement of dailogue looks more like this:

The "Line" is the statement or question of the speaker. The listener connects it to their history, pushes it forward, and thus their reply is to both the speaker's words/subtext and their own history. The logic of the reply skips forward because now they are talking about two things.

Examine the language of Pinter. It's incredibly jumpy and elliptical-- in ways that are often absolutely electric. For those unfamiliar with his work, the size of the gaps can grow so large that Pinter tires out his audience who are left wondering what the characters are talking about.

Now look at Mamet's early work: it's highly repetitive, but at the same time the repetitions draw and build upon the characters' history and jump in their own manner.

As an example, consider the following bit of dialogue from Vigilance (yes, sooner or later I was bound to work our current production into the post). The scene begins with Duncan proclaiming that he built the house Marla lives in. He goes on to say that he never dreamed he would be living in one of those houses himself. This follows:

MARLA: You live in Woodland Hills?

DUNCAN: 2525 Stanford.

MARLA: You're... you won the house?

DUNCAN: That's right.

MARLA: Well, congratulations. I thought you owned a... uh....

DUNCAN: Tattoo shop. That's right. I do some work on the side for my cousin.

MARLA: Building houses?

DUNCAN: Useta. Back when I had to get my hands dirty.

This simple exchange is filled with dialectic jumps and ellipses. Take the first three lines: without ever discussing it, we learn that Duncan has newly arrived to Woodland Hills, and that there is some "issue around how he took possession of the house. The issue has to do with him as a person-- Marla starts to refer to him and then switches to more objective, balanced language ("you're this" versus "you did this"). During the short exchange, the language-- and the silences-- are filled with judgement. That's the history of their relationship, even though this is the first time they've met. Notice when they speak in polite, complete sentences, and when they fragment and jump. A clear example is when Marla asks "Building houses?" and Duncan replies "Useta." He provides information not asked for. The answer is both "yes" and the time frame, delivered in a slightly blunt manner. He, in fact, chooses not to say yes directly. At two points in the dialogue he implies yes, avoiding the opportunity to openly affirm Marla-- first when he could have said "yes I live at 2525 Stanford," and here when he might have answered "yes, back when I had to get my hands dirty." These two aren't enemies yet, but they suspect they might become enemies.

Is this an example of compelling dialogue? I'll leave that to others to decide. But its a clear example of what I mean by jumps and elliptical structure. Are these characters "insane?" Do we see something irrational in their responses? To compare, let's re-write the dialogue without the jumps:

MARLA: Do you live in Woodland Hills?

DUNCAN: Yes, I live at 2525 Stanford.

MARLA: You're the one who won the house?

DUNCAN: That's right.

MARLA: Well congratulations. I thought you owned a tattoo shop?

DUNCAN: That's right. I do some work on the side for my cousin.

MARLA: Building houses for him?

DUNCAN: Yes. Back when I had to get my hands dirty.

We learn the same information, but do we have the same sense of the characters? Of how they feel about this information? Does it have the same energy? Tension? At this point, are we as the audience settling into our chairs for a long scene, or alert to the possibility that things may change in an instant?

So how does one make elliptical choices in their writing? There are numerous ways to approach this, but most important is to know your characters. The ellipses/jumps must come from them. Consider how they feel about each other and what they're saying... and then don't say it. Reflect it. Embrace that even strangers often know the end of each other's sentences and thoughts. And choose moments in time with real stakes behind them. In the above scene between Marla and Duncan, neither character has an overarching objective; there are no big goals or conflicts. This 30 second fragment of dialogue is about testing. Their goal is to understand each other. They're listening and responding. But their history and their instincts tell them that the other is about to become a sworn enemy. And they do.

Make the Most of Your Evening in the Theatre

2012-01-31T10:16:00.000-08:00

Ease Your Parking Pains
Get dinner before the show. Between 3 and 6pm there's no street parking downtown (during weekdays). If you arrive promptly at 5:45pm, you can park on the stree tof free-- the meter maids are gone for the day. That leaves plenty of time for a relaxing dinner.

Dine at One of the city's Best
If you've followed the parking advice above, you've got plenty of great restaurants within walking distance. To name just a few:

Colibri Mexican Bistro, 438 Geary: between Mason and Taylor, across the street from A.C.T. Theatre. <415-440-2737) Dinner Entrees $14 to 18, Specialty Cocktails and wines by the glass $8 to $16.

E&O Trading Co., 314 Sutter St.; San Francisco, 415-693-0303, Dinner Entrees $15 to 26, Full Bar.

First Crush Restaurant & Wine Bar, 101 Cyril Magnin, San Francisco, 415-982-7874, Dinner: Small Plates $8 to 14 and Large Plates $18 to 29, Full Bar.

Scala's Bistro, 432 Powell St. near Post., 415-395-8555, Dinner Entrees: $20-34, Bar menu: $3-16, Full Bar.

Sears Fine Food 439 Powell St. near Post., 415-986-0700, Dinner Entrees: $14.25-29.95.

Azul: Lounge and Tapas 1 Tillman Place; San Francisco, 415-362-9750, Tapas menu with one Dinner Plate: $4-13. Extensive Bar and Cocktail menu.

Wet Your Whistle at the Theatre
Second Wind has always believed that you shouldn't be gouged for a glass of wine or a cookie just becuase you're in the teatre, so we keep the lowest prices in town. Have a glass of Viogner or Zin for just $3. We recommend arriving 20 minutes before the show. (Or try our Elite Pass for special savings.)

Make Sure Your Smart Phone is Smart
Second Wind is the only company in the Bay Area that includes QR Codes in our programs. Access behind-the-scenes videos with your smart phone. You'll need a free QR Reader. Download one from your phone's app store.

Say Hello to an Actor
The concession stand doesn't close when the curtain goes down. Grab and drink and stay in the lobby. After about five minutes the actors begin to emerge in their street clothes. Say hellow, ask a question, or give them a pat on the back.

Running Late? Go with Plan B
If you're running a little late to the show we recommend the Stockton Street Garage. It's the cheapers in the area and about three blocks away. When you arrive at the theatre, buy a drink when you pick up your ticket. You can take it into the theatre. If the show has already started, we do allow late seating, but the concessions bar will be closed.

The Most Intimate Theatre Experience Imaginable

2012-01-27T17:54:00.000-08:00

Second Wind has a new adventure. It's called The Elite Pass. It's a mini-membership that gets you closer than ever to the creative process, and it's perfect for theatre enthusiasts, students, and budding actors, directors, and theatre people. What do you get?
> One ticket to any performance of Vigilance
> Two workshops with playwright/director Ian Walker and Producer/Choreographer Misha Wyatt
> One free "youth ticket" for friends and family 12-17 years of age
> Half off all concessions
> Exclusive behind-the-scenes videos and articles
> And the ability to see the show a second time for free

It's the most intimate theatre experience imaginable. And we've got a video glimpse of the program.

Get your Elite Pass Here.

Four Ways Were Changing Our Relationship to Our Audience

2012-01-20T18:54:00.000-08:00

Transforming our Lobby into a Lounge. Utilizing QR Codes in our program. Opening the bar after the show. Initiating an Elite Pass for the production. Here’s why:

Transforming our lobby

We’ve got a small lobby—it has room for maybe four chairs, and is separated from the theatre by a curtain. It’s not the best of circumstances, and it often requires us to set up folding chairs in the hallway outside the lobby to accommodate early arrivals and overflow. In the past we’ve done things to spruce up our “inner” lobby: lit candles, projected images high up on the walls, filled the space with old show posters, and offered free hot chocolate (that was a big hit). But it still says, “wait here a minute, the real entertainment soon.” It’s a “waiting room.” Why am I telling audience members not to engage in conversation? Not to connect? Not to enjoy themselves? So we’re moving comfy furniture into the lobby and even the outer hallway.

QR Codes

You know, that funny little black and white square with dark speckles in it. If your smartphone has the right app, you can take a picture of it and visit a website or see a short video. Like a lot of marketing innovations it’s become all the rage without a whole lot of evaluation, but I figure within the setting of a theatre auditorium having one person use the QR code gets 2-5 neighbors in on the fun. Want to hear an actor talk about his role? Hear the playwright’s description of the play? Get clues on who done it? All they have to do is open their program, point and click.

Open the Bar

People tend to flee the theater after the show, even if they enjoyed the show. That’s cool. But we also want people to talk about the show and engage with the art form. So even if the attendance doesn’t merit it, we’ll be keeping the bar open after the show and inviting folks to chat with the artists.

The New Elite Pass

Make theatre more than a business transaction of dollars for stage entertainment—that’s what this new program is about. We’re encouraging people to get involved not just for two hours, but two months by offering inside looks, workshops, right of return, discounted food and drink. For just $35, the price of many shows in SF, you get a whole experience. It’s our new adventure. For everyone involved. And frankly, we think it's the most intimate theatre experience in the nation. Check it out at www.secondwind.8m.com/AboutElite.html

So come tell us how we did.

Vigilance runs February 2nd thru the 25th at The Phoenix Theatre.

Vigilance in Rehearsal, Week Three

2012-01-16T17:13:00.000-08:00

It's been a while since we posted a video entry to our blog. As we turn from staging to run throughs and polish, we offer a look back on what we've been up to.

We've got a few more tricks up our sleeve for this production. It's never too late to get tickets!

VIGILANCE

by Ian Walker

February 2-25th at The Phoenix Theatre, 414 Mason St., San Francisco

A hostile newcomer drives his neighbors down a path of mutual destruction, laying bar long-buried secrets in this richly imagined, NY John Gold Prize-winner thrill from Bay Area playwright Ian Walker.

2nd Wind's 5 Most Useful Posts for Producers, Directors, & Designers

2012-01-05T13:09:00.000-08:00

Second Wind’s blog has posted over 60 entries into our behind-the-scenes diary over the past four years. So we’ve decided to cull the best of our resources and guides for producers, directors, and designers (sorry actors, you’ll have to wait your turn). Here they are:

Your Design Portfolio / Getting Hired
Advice from the pros and tips for sealing the deal. Get hired as a designer.
http://secondwindtheatre.blogspot.com/2011/12/your-design-portfolio-getting-hired.html

Strategic Marketing Plan for Theatre
We lay out our complete marketing plan for The Tender King, no holds barred. How does yours compare?
http://secondwindtheatre.blogspot.com/2010/11/my-least-favorite-thing-about-producing.html

Starting a Visual/Emotional Palette
You’re a director—what do you know about design? Help on using visuals to hone your directorial work, and communicate better with designers.
http://secondwindtheatre.blogspot.com/2010/03/starting-visual-emotional-palette.html

Taking the Press Photo
We share our top six tips for a knock-out press photo.
http://secondwindtheatre.blogspot.com/2010/03/starting-visual-emotional-palette.html

Ah Paperwork!
Nobody likes it; everybody’s got to do it. No, I’m not talking about death— I’m talking about paperwork. We share some of our more useful examples of forms for producing, including press releases, contracts for designers/actors, rehearsal forms, marketing tools, etc.
http://secondwindtheatre.blogspot.com/2008/11/ah-paperwork.html

And a bonus... Mastering the Art of the Question

Directors are forbidden to give "line readings" and for good reason. Telling an actor exactly what you want is a sure-fire way of creating an awkward, unconvincing performance. There are a number of ways to "guide" a performance; the most effective technique is about asking the right questions that create a common viewpoint. And it cannot be practiced-- or utilized-- enough.

http://secondwindtheatre.blogspot.com/2010/03/mastering-art-of-question.html

Your Design Portfolio / Getting Hired

2011-12-21T09:02:00.000-08:00

Personally, I don’t know much about putting together a designer’s portfolio. I know I like pretty pictures, so I understand that a bad portfolio can undermine a good designer’s work. So rather than pretend that I have expertise in this area, I’m going to link you to someone who apparently has: Pro designers Chuck Meacham and William Kenyon write about how to put together your first design portfolio, or improve your current one.

http://schooltheatre.org/publications/dramatics/2006/05/building-your-first-portfolio

I may not be an expert on putting together a portfolio, but I as a director and producer I judge them as a part of the hiring process. Variety is a key element, and I like to see the most unusual designs they've created. I also like to see the work in progress: sketches, sketches in development, and fabric swatches if you’re a costumer; lighting plots if you’re a light designer, etc. I’ll explain why:

Your portfolio is both your foot in the door and the final piece of icing. The finished examples of your work are what will get you an interview. The work-in-progress is what will get you hired.

Here’s what’s true for me as a director/producer. If I call you in for an interview, I already believe you’re talented enough to do the job. I’m interviewing you because 1) I want to know why you versus another candidate; and 2) I want to get a glimpse of how we will work together. Focus on what makes your work distinctive and unique, and tell me something about how we’ll collaborate. Whenever I interview anyone—whether a designer or a crew person—I always ask two questions: What do you need to do your best work? And how can I as the director/producer support you? When we finish the interview I want to know how to proceed with you in that position.

The First Read Through

2011-12-16T15:26:00.000-08:00

Our first week is done. And I have to say, I'm honored by the actors who are contributing their talent to this production. After a week of table-work, I'm deeply impressed by the level of empathy they hold, their ability to step inside the characters and see the world from their perspective.

Table-work is always a bit challenging for me; I'm never as helpful-- or insightful-- in a chair as I am up on my feet. We've spent an entire week doing it (our only week of rehearsals in December). The cast has been, let's say... patient with me.

I usually do a video montage of our first read (that'll appear on our Elite Pass pages soon). This time, a few images:

The majority (and best) of these were shot by Olya Gary.

And remember, it's never to early to buy Tickets!

Ficke Me

2011-12-12T13:24:00.000-08:00

Anyone paying attention will surely note that I'm not a regular blogger (or tweeter for that matter). Once in a blue moon I'll explain that 2nd Wind's Blog and Twitter only come alive when we're in production. We had a short hiatus this year, so that period of silence was longer than usual. But as you can see... with each word that skims past your optic nerve... I'm writing again. Which means we're producing again.

The problem with only writing when in production is that it leaves the impression that our blog is little more than a marketing tool designed to part you, the reader, from your hard-earned cash. But the truth is that while my "noise" is sometimes about ticket sales, my "silence" is never about that at all. Only the luckiest of artists doesn't pine for more time to create. The hours are elusive, and it takes days, weeks, and sometimes years to fashion a single piece. When I blog or tweet (especially if I'm trying to tweet about something other than my lunch), a fair a mount of time vanishes into planning and implementation. It uses a different part of my brain, and the writing juices stagnate and dry.

This blog is devoted to opening up the process of creating theatre. It's about holding a shared space for artists and audiences. I believe that to be hugely important. I believe that the mystery and magic of creation is so deep, that sharing it-- unveiling its secrets-- only leads to deeper magic. But writing... writing is something different.

Playwrights are constantly encouraged (and badgered) to be collaborative artists. We're asked to workshop, develop, co-create, and explain. Sometimes these requests come at the perfect time to aide our work. There are writers who thrive on this interaction; and yet I don't think it should ever be considered integral or expected. The idea that artists should be collaborative frankly irritates the bejesus out of me.

Actors need privacy to explore and take risks in order to give the most truthful, powerful performance they can. Designer's need quiet and solitude to create and refine their ideas. Playwrights, tasked with creating a rickly detailed and complete world, need privacy and solitutde to imagine, explore, and document that world. So while at times I wish I could continue the online conversation, there are periods when I need to withdraw into my creative cave, my only offering being the promise of something wondrous upon my return.

Over the next three months we're going to being pushing the boundaries of the sharing process. This blog will come alive again. This time round, I'm hoping to open the discussion even further, talking with theatre pros from other companies and organizations. In addition to producing a new piece of theatre, we're exploring some new ways of doing business-- of involving audiences and promoting discussion. So come back and join us on the journey. It's sure to be a ride.

Vigilance

Feb 2-25

Phoenix Theatre, SF

http://www.secondwind.8m.com/

Opening Night in 57

2010-11-24T19:26:00.000-08:00

Busy, busy, busy. Not much time to write even after a splendid Opening Night on Saturday. Watching the show come together over the past couple of weeks, I wasn't sure what I'd think of it. It's a puzzlingly difficult script to illuminate; it's very easy to blur over moments that are pivotal, making the story flat and difficult to relate to. Then the hecticness of tech wreaked havoc on my ability to watch the play. I was too busy watching the lights, or the set, or sound. The costumes were pretty marvelous right from the start so that wasn't an issue. But sure enough, coming first Preview the tech elements fell (mostly) into place, and the actors arose from the ashes of chaos.

Opening night of a World Premiere is truly a thing to behold. Usually, a play takes a big step forward on Opening, becoming richer and more fleshed out. Typically, you have a sense of what to expect/hope for. With a world premiere, you only have the "ideal" of it in your head; you have no idea of whether or not the play can reach that ideal. If it fails to reach the pinnacle of your imagination, it's impossible to know whether it's the fault of the production or the play. I'm very happy with this incarnation of The Tender King. I see my play. On Opening Night the performances were rich and lush, the story clear, and the emotion palpable. I've still no time to really focus on this blog, but here are some images from Opening Night, in 57 seconds. Pardon its hasty construction....

Oh Tech Week

2010-11-19T12:14:00.000-08:00

The trials and obstacles of tech week are really quite predictable. You'd think we'd be able to plan for them. You know the set will fall behing, the lights will look like mud after you put them up, the hours will disappear, the furniture will look wonky, and a hundred of "issues" not present in the rehearsal hall will suddenly appear. That's tech. I've been at the theatre every night past two AM, so this blog has suffered. I've got nothing of my own to share, but who doesn't like Jon Stewart? Here's a clip of him discussing interrogation techniques that spirals into his view of Truman and the use of the bomb: http://tigerhawk.blogspot.com/2009/04/jon-stewart-opines-on-harry-truman-and.html

We Open Saturday!

(Tickets here)

A Strategic Plan for Marketing a Theatre Show

2010-11-11T10:20:00.000-08:00

My least favorite thing about producing theatre is naturally my most stressful. Something I’ve learned over the years is that the things that are the most stressful for me are things that I have the least control over. And when I’m talking theatre, my most stressful/least favorite thing is trying to get butts in seats.

Butts-In-Seats falls into my marketing toolbox. I know I’m not alone in this, but there are essentially zero examples of marketing/advertising plans out there for theatre, especially smaller theatre. What you kind find in books are too general for a company producing in a specific city, and often out of date. I know; I’ve searched. And other companies don’t share— it’s like taboo, a jealously guarded secret. We will post Youtube video of our shows, talk about our process, throw out a few marketing tips, but the bulk of our marketing plan is secret. It’s a competition. There are limited resources.

I don’t like that idea. So I’m doing it. I’m sharing our marketing plan for The Tender King. It’s complicated, but I’ll try to be both thorough and succinct. This post is just about the strategic plan for marketing an individual show. It’s not about company marketing, outreach, branding, or crafting your message. Those are other techniques. This is about where we put our dollars, why, and when. I’ll do a follow up blog with learnings from this show’s marketing strategy… what worked and what crashed.

First, it’s important to remember that effective marketing is constantly changing. The resources, tools, and what’s effective is constantly evolving. Some of my approaches are probably becoming outdated; others just coming into fashion. You have to work to stay on top of trends.

A recent TCG survey found that on average, 12% of theatre budgets were set aside for marketing. That fact isn’t entirely illuminating (were companies successful at 12% or is more better?). But it’s a starting point. Previously, our budgets were closer to 7%; so we beefed it up for TK.

In developing a strategy, you have to examine your strengths and weaknesses. For 2nd Wind, a prevailing weakness is that we only produce two full shows a year. Audiences forget who we are; critics forget us or turn over; branding efforts don’t carry over to the next production because it’s too far out. There are ways to address these weaknesses (most of which we don’t do) but I won’t get into that here.

Our strengths are in our ability to plan, create “content” (video, images, blogs, and tweats) and the amount of time we have to do marketing. Over the years I’ve concluded that the most effective marketing is not money-based. Good marketing is about footwork; it’s about word of mouth; and it’s about status. The latter two (word of mouth and status) are severely hampered our two-show schedule. So planning, content, and footwork are our weapons.

Since all of this is about getting butts in seats I’ll make a pitch here. Come see The Tender King. Tickets are available at: http://www.secondwindtheatre.com/. There, I’ve justified my post.

Where the Dollars Go:

Postcards:
> 1st Batch of cards: $50
TBA Distribution: $45
> 2nd Batch of cards: $75
Mailed: Postage: $120

Google Advertising: Visual Ads (Display Network):
This turned out to be a waste of money. After the first $50 or so, we switched to advertising on the SFGate top banner. This was mildly more successful. For VIGILANCE, we'll be experimenting with Facebook's advertising system & reducing our budget to $300.
> Paid per click $800

Enhanced Website Listings: $100
SF Gate (the SF Chronicle’s website)
Citysearch.com

Paid Newspaper Distribution $30

TBA Website Ad: $140

Email Blast: $65

TOTAL Marketing Budget: $1417

In this current strategy, the Google Ads are new for us; they’re also the most expensive element. Everything else we’ve done before.

The budget indicates what paid tools we use, but not how they’re implemented—or which non-money tools we use. In theatre everything is about the details, so I’ll discuss them:

POSTCARDS:
For this show, we printing one batch of cards early and are using Theatre Bay Area’s distribution system, which places stacks of cards at 20 locations. These will go out 6 weeks before opening. A second batch will be mailed 3 weeks before opening. The batches are different versions of the same card, in part because we’ll have the chance to put actor images in the latter card. I also plan to put a discount code for $5 off (King1945) on the early card, which can be redeemed on full-price web purchases only.

PRESS RELEASE:
Your press release and your listing release are vital documents (they are two slightly different formats). Write them early, a month before you cast your show. Then re-write them. Write several different show blurbs of various lengths. Describing the show is less effective than describing the experience for the audience; be sparing with adjectives and when you use them avoid cliques or common ones. Let “exciting” become “breathless.”

ENHANCED WEB LISTINGS:
This is where your listing release comes in. We used enhanced web lists for our last production. How directly they relate to ticket sales is unclear, but they do allow for you to place more content (images, links) on the listing, so we utilize one of our strengths.

NEWSPAPER/ WEBSITE LISTINGS:
2nd Wind uses Fullcalendar.com, a service that posts to newspapers and event websites. This was disaster number two (after the Google ad investment). It worked well last year, but this year they missed their posting deadline, then included my email in a craigslist posting that generated a huge amount of spam for 6 months. Unfortunately, there's no shortcut here. We're back to posting by hand, individually.

Early Listings: Hand Done 6 weeks before Opening
> Fullcalendar: 4 weeks before Opening
> Follow-up to important listings: 3 weeks before Opening

TBA WEB ADVERTISEMENT:
TBA (Theatre Bay Area) operates their own Half-Price ticket booth and website. For our last show, we purchased a banner ad. It was not effective in raising sales through their site, but I’m proposing a second attempt. Adjustments: I plan to pay a little more attention to the ad design, post it early, and link it to our full price tickets.
> Purchase Impression Add 10 days before opening (20K impressions)
> Evaluate whether to buy an additional 10 days
Sorry TBA, this didn't turn out to be particularly effective. It's very difficult to evaluate advertising like this, but I was dismayed by how few ticket sales we had through their website.

HALF-PRICE TICKET VENUES:
There are two half price ticket dealers for SF.
Goldstar: Goldstar is very popular Half-Price ticket website. Half-price or less, actually. They order their listings based on popularity of ticket sales, so giving away a few free ones gets you off to a good start.
> 10 Freebies on Preview
> 7 $8 Tix for Opening; 7 half price
When I post on Goldstar, I leave out one performance date. Then, after the show is up and running (and presumably we’re not as noticeable in the listing), I offer up that performance and we get a special announcement. We provide 15-20 seats to Goldstar for each performance (it’s a 60 seat house)

TIX Bay Area: The Other Half Price vendor
> Submit Full price ticket listing 3 weeks before
> Submit Half price ticket listing 1 week before

EMAIL BASED PROMOTION:
Email Lists
2nd Wind uses Vertical Response. It’s a pay service that helps you design emails and send to your list. It’s worth the price because you can track whether your emails are opened or ignored, and whether someone opened the email and did/did not click on the link to your website. This allows you to target your follow-up. Email ignored? Re-title and send again after a few days. Opened but did not click on link? Send the same title after we open.
> Full list Blast 12 Days before (on a Tues or Wed between 11-4pm, because that’s when people are bored)
> Follow up with UnOpened emails 8 Days Before Opening
> Follow-up with Opened but Unclicked emails the 4 days before Opening
> Follow up with all other Opened 3 days after
> Full Blast (or All Opened) 2 weeks after Opening; or if there’s a good review:
> Article Blast 3 days after appearance

BayAreaTheatreBums:
Bay Area Theatre Bums is a list serv: they send out blasts to several hundred theater people who have joined. It’s rather over-used, so things are often ignored. But, we list:
> 2 weeks before Opening
> 3 Days before Opening
> If there are any reviews/articles
> 2nd Week after Opening

SNAIL MAIL LIST:
Our snail mail address list is pretty small—just 400 names. We send postcards to this list 16 days before Opening.

CRITIC INVITES:
Timing your invites is difficult because preferences vary. Many don’t decide more than two weeks ahead; others are booked by that time. Send your press release in the body of the email, avoid attachments.
> Early-Invitation to all critics 6 weeks Before Opening to get on their schedule. Email works best. Follow-up with a call three days after your email blast.
> Follow-up invitation to critics 10 days Before Opening: this is a combination of emails and calls, depending on what contact info I have and the relationship
> Remember to invite Bloggers!

GOOGLE ADVERTISING:
I have used Google’s Adwords program, which places a sponsored links in the right hand column of their search pages. I don’t find it to be effective in generating ticket sales. Nonetheless, we are planning on using their visual ads program this time round, which places real advertisements on related web pages, and can be limited to your region. We’ll see how this works out. Can't tell you how frustrating and ineffective I found this experience. Others may have better success, but I found all of the best key words were priced above what we could afford for our show size.

There are some alternatives: a paid listing in the SF Chronicle. We’ve done this before, costs about a $120 a pop (for one day, I usually pick Thursday). I haven’t found it to be effective, based on who we are as a company. I think it’s a useful guide for visitors to SF, but they are less likely to choose small theatre.

OTHER ACTIVITIES:
Be sure to list on Yelp and Going.com.
Should you start a company blog? They’re time-intensive. Do they sell tickets? I don’t know—buy a ticket, come to the show, and tell me what you think.
Twitter? In my opinion, Twitter is not a good tool for marketing individual shows. There have been numerous articles on why this is the case.
Craigslist Events? Why not?

BASIC MARKETING TIMELINE: Date from the Open Night

8 Weeks before do your Early listings
6 Weeks before Postcard to TBA for distribution
6 Weeks before Set up online ticketing service; Critic Invites
3 Weeks before Do Fullcalendar listing
3 Weeks before Mail 2nd postcard; set up Goldstar; first email Blast; Critic Follow-up, TBA ticketing
2 Weeks before Set up Google Ads, Fullcalendar follow-up, BATB listing
10 Days before Critic Follow-up2, Enhanced Web listing
7 Days before TBA Ad
5 Days before Going.com, Yelp, Email follow-up
4 Days before BATB listing
1 Week AFTER Email Blast follow-up, BATB

A couple of things to remember: First, you can’t start designing your marketing materials early enough. Do as much as you can a month before you’ve cast the show. Your images, your ad copy, are crucial. Second, marketing doesn’t end after the show opens. You have to keep updating and sending out.

And finally, decide what you think the buying cycle is for your company. A “buying cycle” is the number of days from when a potential audience member hears about the show to the time they purchase a ticket. For 2nd Wind, I think it’s about 10 days for planners, and 4 days for “impulse” buyers. Very few hear about the show and decide to go that night. They may not commit to go until a day or two in advance, but it’s been stewing in their subconscious for several days. That means there’s nothing I can do to boost sales the day before—I have to plan at least 4 days ahead

This, again, is just the “product” side of marketing—the concrete things we do. It doesn’t illuminate how to talk up a show, make people feel included, or design ads or copy. So what do you think? Any ideas/strategies I haven’t mentioned? I challenge you to break the taboo and share your knowledge.

Oh and most importantly—come see The Tender King. Tickets are on sale.

How War Propaganda Shapes Us

2010-11-06T11:49:00.000-07:00

It's been a bit longer than I'd like since my last posting-- I promise the next one will come sooner (it's already in the pipeline and it's a doozy). Rehearsals are progressing really well; tix are available anytime you want to grab 'em at http://www.secondwindtheatre.com/. But today's video entry is a look at war propaganda images from WW2 and the subtle "amplification" used today. At the suggestion of historian Ronald Takaki (Hiroshima: Why America Dropped the Atomic Bomb), I began to study how propaganda (and it's opposite, censorship) contributed to our decisions. Today, the Pentagon calls propaganda that we generate and then start to believe oursselves "incestuous amplification." What makes proganda so powerful is that it's not just about shaping public opinion about the enemy, it's about shaping opinion about ourselves. We build polar myths.

The Origins of a Play

2010-10-27T17:42:00.000-07:00

A play idea is a gossamer thing. It begins, deformed, in the primordial darkness of one’s subconscious, awaiting a spark from above. A new idea to ignite in the heavens and dive down below, creating a chemical reaction. For a play idea is never one idea, it’s an interconnected set of molecular ideas that bind to each and create their own energy. Old ideas are fomenting beneath the surface of consciousness; and finally a new idea—the right new idea—brings them to life.

Beneath my surface in primordial darkness sat ideas about intimacy, about whether truth was necessary for intimacy or if lies could produce the same bond. About language, which can hold both truth and lies, power and weakness. About the damage that can come from compromising one’s integrity. What these ideas needed was a spark.

About a year ago my fiancée, who’s a bit of a history buff, reminded me that Truman only had a high school education. He’d attended a semester or so of college, but that’s all. And I was struck by two things: first, how a farmer’s boy managed to become president of the United States without higher education; and second how a president just three months in office could have made the decision to drop an atomic bomb. The weight of that decision. I realized I had many preconceptions about this, but no real knowledge of the event.

My favorite question as a playwright is “how did we get here?” I often see the end of my plays very clearly—before anything else is in place. Then the beginning appears; it’s the middle that’s murky. I knew Truman’s beginning, of course, and I knew how the story ended. I had strong feelings about them already. An important rule of playwriting is to never write plays about things you have black and white feelings for. The work comes out lopsided, lacking dramatic energy because there’s no real opposing force, and you’re inclined to preach. It’s a rule almost as important as always write plays about things you have black and white feelings for. Not that all plays should fit into that category, but if you feel that way about something you should write about it. If it’s that clear, that simple in your mind, you haven’t explored it and you don’t understand it. Getting to know characters I find distasteful is some of the most rewarding writing I’ve done, and some of my best. Characters who stand for things I don’t like will always have clearly independent rhythms in their speech; I have to find the truth about their viewpoint, what is honest and sincere. I grow, and their characters are often more richly three-dimensional. Writing about characters you deeply admire is a rather sickly experience in comparison.

The Truman I knew from history books was beloved for ending the war, for always speaking plainly, and for keeping the interest of the average working man at heart. I had my doubts about the first point; during the course of my research I developed a new appreciation for the second point, his tendency to “speak his mind.”

In order to do his character, and that moment in time, justice, I realized I had to get some distance on it. In doing so, the characters of Will and Mel arrived. Truman became Harry. Harry could be more human, less constrained by our predetermined expectations of him; he could symbolize more than himself. The Harry of my play isn’t supposed to be an exact replica, a precise personification of Truman. I don’t think that’s possible; there were only a handful of people who ever really knew the complete man because he was a complex and somewhat guarded fellow. His biographers might claim that they knew him by his deeds and actions, but in the 1990s our knowledge of those deeds began to shift with the release of declassified documents. It raised questions about the events, and thus the man. I became fascinated by those questions, and they became one of the focal points of the play.

But the play is equally about Mel and Will (who never leaves the stage). They bring forth the older questions about intimacy, truth, language, and integrity. In the end, they became the heart of the play, a passionate, violent, and lyrical organ within the framework of history.

A Secret History

2010-10-22T13:42:00.000-07:00

The backdrop of The Tender King is a secrety American history, documents that were either kept classified until recently (and then released with little fanfare), or aspects of the war that were known but quietly swept under the rug. Today's rough-and-tumble video entry examines just one aspect of this veiled history-- the plight of German soldiers after war's end.

For more on the historical events discussed in The Tender King, visit www.secondwind.8m.com/history/behindthetenderking.html

Press Photos... Step One

2010-10-16T00:12:00.000-07:00

At Second Wind we use a two-step process for press photos (I don't think that's particularly uncommon, but it took me a while to accept it as natural). To be honest, we don't do our first round of photos as extensively, or as early as we probably should. The truly ambitious shoot their photos three months in advance. The idea behind early photos is to have visuals ready to promote the show for monthly publications. However, shooting photos that far ahead of opening feels so disjointed and inorganic to me that I've resisted. I'm not connected to the show yet; I may not even be cast yet let alone have images in my head. So we take time out during our first week of rehearsals to shoot just a handful of shots that we can use.

Since I haven't staged anything yet, I refer to my "visual palette" for ideas-- I wrote a blog on it here. And I did a piece on elements of a successful press photo here. Today's entry is a behind-the-scenes ditty on the early press photos for The Tender King.

A tip for making your show images easier to find on the internet: Right click on the file, go into properties, and given each image a clear title, name, and tags. They're searchable.

And We're Back... The Tender King

2010-10-13T16:33:00.000-07:00

On Monday we started rehearsals for The Tender King... a sexy, provocative, and controversial thriller about secret politics at the end of World War Two. It's derived from hundreds of declassified documents from the Truman era, as well as biographies, memos, and letters. Join us for a peek behind the political curtain-- you can start with our promo clip and first rehearsal:

Dark Now, Light Later

2010-08-30T17:21:00.001-07:00

Yes, the Second Wind Blog has been dark for the past couple of months. Our tradition is to only post when we have an active production; we've been blessed with a break this summer.

All of that will end soon (October 15th, as a matter of fact), as we gear up for the world premiere of The Tender King. The hours immediately surrounding Harry Truman's decision to drop the bomb on Japan is the subject of this production. Derived from hundreds of declassified government documents, Truman's personal letters, minutes of high level meetings, biographies, diaries, and historical analysis, The Tender King is a shocking portrayal of a history veiled from the American public in secrecy. Our upcoming blog will delve into both the historical accuracy of the work, and the production process of bringing it to life.

See you soon....

Blocking: From Abstract to Visible

2010-04-01T15:56:00.000-07:00

Between Ashes to Ashes and St. Nicholas, the process of blocking has been a fairly intense workout. At the beginning of Ashes Pinter indicates and Devlin is standing and Rebecca is sitting; at the end of Ashes Pinter indicates that Devlin is standing and Rebecca is sitting—and that’s about all you get. They don’t engage in any physical activity, and what we discovered is that they don’t even touch until the end. Nicholas posed a similar problem: it’s a one-man play where the character is supposed to tell us a story rather than show us the story. Neither play offers much in terms of obvious movement.

A play, in some respects, is a challenge to make the abstract visible. Athol Fugard described it as creating “truths the hand can touch.” For me, blocking is dialogue. Movement, whether a threatening approach or simply leaning back in a chair, is a “reply.” Ultimately, you should be able to cut the sound and still understand the play in all its nuances. There’s no wandering about the stage or lounging in a chair.

For Ashes, I employed a couple of techniques to “reveal” the blocking—much of this past week has been about blocking the show. The first technique was with the help of the set designer. In addition to the “two chairs” that Pinter describes as the set, we added a chaise lounge. Because they don’t have a back, chaises are very flexible in terms of how you can sit and move on them. They also create a third level (lying in addition to standing and sitting). They're flexible, which is why they appear more often on stage than in real life. The characters drink during the course of the play, so we situated the bar cabinet in the thrust where they would have to cross to it. We placed the chairs at an inconvenient distance from the coffee table—though frankly I think this will change; it hasn’t been that useful and it’s awkward as hell.

With just two characters (and no physical activity as a part of the plot), the question of whether they are moving away or towards each other becomes important, and also closer or farther from the object of their discussion. Are they trying to connect or avoid? Is the immediate conversation soothing or fearful? For a small section of the play I did an exercise with the actors. In the scene, Rebecca is talking about her lover, but also digging through her hazy memory to a terrifying truth about him. I had the actors sit facing each other on a bench and gave her an object. If she felt her words were advancing towards the truth, she was to move it towards him—making it a shared object; if his questions or her words made her retreat, she was to move the object away from him and closer to her. She had to move the object once for each sentence she spoke. The result was something like this:

REBECCA: Did I ever tell you about that place ... about the time he took me to that place? [TOWARD]

DEVLIN: What place?

REBECCA: I’m sure I told you. [TOWARD]

DEVLIN: No. You never told me.

REBECCA: How funny. I could swear I had. Told you. [AWAY]

DEVLIN: You haven’t told me anything. You’ve never spoken about him before. You haven’t told me anything. What place?

REBECCA: Oh, it was a kind of factory, I suppose. [AWAY]

DEVLIN: What do you mean, a kind of factory? Was it a factory or wasn’t it? And if it was a factory, what kind of factory was it?

REBECCA: Well, they were making things --- just like any other factory. But it wasn’t the usual kind of factory. [TOWARD]

DEVLIN: Why not?

REBECCA: They were all wearing caps ... the workpeople ... soft caps ... and they took them off when he came in leading me, when he led me down the alleys between the rows of workpeople. [TOWARD]

DEVLIN: They took their caps off? You mean they doffed them?

REBECCA: Yes. [TOWARD]

DEVLIN: Why did they do that?

REBECCA: He told me afterwards it was because they had such great respect for him. [AWAY]

DEVLIN: Why?

REBECCA: Because he ran a really tight ship, he said. They had total faith in him. They respected his ... purity, his ... conviction. They would follow him over a cliff and into the sea… [TOWARD]

The exercise helped identify when she was retreating and when advancing; we then simplified and translated that to movement on her feet. I like this exercise because when you move on your feet it can feel awkward, obscuring the impulses. By starting with an object, the impulses remain clean.

Impulses, of course, are the key. Finding and acting upon the impulses. Acting upon them and then honing them. One can sit on a chair in retreat, but one can also curl up on a chair in retreat. There are, we discovered, dozens of ways to half-ignore someone onstage. We played with knitting, testing the perfume sample in a magazine, lying down, and rattling the ice in one’s drink.

Edward Albee said, "Every line has two purposes — one, to delineate character, and two, to advance the plot." If every line advances the plot, then every line is an action, every action has an impulse. It’s delineated by being honing down to the right expression of that action for the character.

Mastering the Art of the Question

2010-03-26T16:46:00.000-07:00

If I had I wouldn’t tell you how even if I could.

I think it’s important that asking a question is a real act of inquiry. If there was a template for the art of asking a theatre question, then it assumes a template for answer. The purpose of the question is not to find a complete answer, but to find an answer that opens the door to a more resonant mystery. Twenty years into being a director, I’m still understanding what questions to ask and how to ask them. But I’ve learned something, so like any good invitee to a potluck, I’ll share what I have.

The Question is particularly important when dealing with Pinter. His characters exude history but rarely explain it; he presents the actor with a myriad of choices without much of a road map. Yet his work only comes alive with the actor knows in their core the what and why. For the past week we’ve been exploring questions on our feet in rehearsals. What does that look like? We’ll run a segment; ask questions; run it again with those answers in mind; then I’ll provide some direction in terms of blocking or physical activity (never full blocking); and we’ll run it again.

Before discussing the mechanics of Questions, it’s important to understand that it’s a specific tool, for a specific task, with strengths and weaknesses. Some directors ask almost no questions, preferring to give “direction”; others ask questions almost exclusively, a self-guided tour for the actors in developing the piece. Questions are especially good for creating specificity (of history, emotion, and action), and common understand among the characters. They can be used to develop blocking based on the identified emotion and action. Their strength comes from being generated by the actor who is seeing the answer with many more nuances than if you had told them your answer. But there are other tools that can be useful. You can “paint the picture” for the actor to find the emotional texture you’re looking for: “This is frustrating” becomes “it’s like trying to carry a leaky pail of water up a mountain to a dying friend.” I wouldn’t use that particular example, but it’s much more specific than frustrated or angry. Another tool is to provide blocking that shapes the emotion: “fix her a drink, but make as much noise as you possibly can doing it.”

The weakness of Questions is that they are time-consuming and you may not get the answer you want. If the actor gives you an answer you don’t agree with, you’re obligated to try it—not just because you’re a schmuck if you don’t, but because they may have found something you missed. Generally speaking, I ask more questions in the beginning of the rehearsal process, use blocking as a shaping tool in the middle, and paint more pictures towards the end.

In my opinion, I’ve yet to find a book on directing that does a good job of teaching how to ask a question. “What’s your character’s favorite food, favorite color, favorite drink?” are, frankly, stupid questions. “Are you close to your parents, did you go to college, what was your first sexual experience?” are only marginally better. “What happened the moment before the scene started, where are you coming from?” are important questions that should be asked—but they’re also generic. There are other standard questions that are vital: What do you want in this moment (what’s your objective)? What do you think this means to the character? What are you feeling? How does that feeling come out physically (sweaty palms, damp chill, lumpy stomach)? What do you do to hide that feeling? All of these questions should be asked in the process, as well as questions about whatever facts and guide posts the script provides. For example, it may mention where they met, and it’s good to make sure both actors caught the reference. And you can ask follow-up questions about the specifics of that meeting—who approached whom? Was there an immediate attraction?

But how do you find the deeper questions that affect the performance? That are unique both to the script and to the actors embodying the roles? As written, it is very easy for Rebecca’s character in Ashes to Ashes to be dislocated and morose; she is grappling with enormous denial and grief. But this loses its impact if it’s all we get to see of her. In the early rehearsal process it’s important to delve into the grief, denial, morbidity, and dislocation in order to make it real. But the script doesn’t provide many clues as to the opposite side of her character, how she manages to make it through the day without driving herself and everyone else to suicide. To explore this issue, I asked her if she had lunch with her girlfriends. Yes, regularly. How did they see her? In their company was she charming? Effusive? More competent, able to organize, make things happen, was the answer. She was very efficient, controlled. She was somewhat of a leader. It was not exactly the answer I expected, but it was distinct from dislocated and morose, and it was playable. The compartmentalized aspect of her answer made sense, given Rebecca’s tendency to start new conversations with, “By the way, did I mention….”

Observing what the actors are doing and comparing it to my expectations (or defining the problem I’m seeing) is the first part of the process. The observational aspect takes the question beyond the generic into what is specific to the play and the actors. It takes practice but is easier than working back to the question. To find the question, it’s helpful to determine if the “problem” you’re seeing is about vague motivation, or how something looks in a more physical sense, or an emotional state (they look agitated but really the character is in control here). Compare it to the vision you had in your head. Then ask what it is about the their history or desires that makes the character look the way it does in your head. Why are they in control? Perhaps because they are a powerful businesswoman. If the script doesn’t state that, ask it as a question. If it does state that they are successful in business, ask if they’re accustomed to being out of control or on the losing end of a deal.

Over several rehearsals I noticed that the actor playing Devlin was very comfortable touching Rebecca. There was a lot of ease and power in that choice; it felt almost like ownership. But we’d established (through earlier questions) that she had more money and that he was the one who needed answers from her. His comfort in touching her was the right embodiment of his motivation—to control and take power—but it felt at odds with how successful he is at it, and it was different than I had imagined in my head. But that’s just in my head—my observation. Was I missing something? So I thought backwards to the core of their interaction. I asked them what their sex life was like. The answer: almost non-existent. Who was responsible for that? She put up walls, but he was never all that active or interested before. They were not an affectionate couple. So we agreed to try it with him rarely touching her. Not only did that reshape the blocking, it further defined his character. Suddenly, he was in conflict with himself, wanting to physically control her but unable to break through the walls of taboo. This is particularly important because in the end he does so. The journey, we discovered, is the major arc of his character.

Starting a Visual-Emotional Palette

2010-03-21T09:10:00.000-07:00

I don’t think I asked a single one of the questions from my first post during the read-thru rehearsal. Just goes to show how useful my prep was. To be fair, we did cover all of those questions in the second rehearsal. After the first read, we talked for quite a while about the origins of Ashes to Ashes. It’s one of the few plays that Pinter actually attributes source material: he wrote it after reading Sereny’s biography on Hitler’s architect, Albert Speer. Perhaps he felt safe in revealing his source because the play has nothing to do with Speer on the surface. But that’s just the surface. Albert Speer was a part Hitler’s inner circle; he was tried at Nuremberg and sentenced to 20 years. He is the only one of Hitler’s inner circle who claimed that what the Nazi’s did was a horrific crime, and they should be held responsible. He also claims—and there is some reason to believe it—that he was unaware of most of those crimes. He was deeply moved by the testimony of victims at the trial, deeply repentant for their wrongs, and adamant that despite his contacts and duties he had no knowledge. Sereny was fascinated by how the mechanism of denial could keep Speer truly in the dark, what subconscious monsters must have been nibbling at the edge of his thoughts, and how truth and penitence came hand in hand to Speer. In that respect, Ashes to Ashes can been seen as the inner dialogue between these elemental forces in Speer’s head. If so, then the common interpretation that Rebecca’s mind “decomposes” at the end is incorrect. Lisa-Marie and I agree that there is something else at happening, and she had an idea what it was; to find out what you’ll just have to come see the show.

We’ve had three rehearsals so far, but before I get into that, I wanted to talk about one aspect of the director’s prep—specifically the visual/emotional palette. I think it’s especially important with Pinter because he deals so thoroughly in the subconscious. Before meeting with designers and actors, I spend time trying to find images that connect on some level with the play. Pinter said that Rebecca is like a woman drowning, so I immediately gravitated towards water images. I look for matches in tone, color, and subject. Saying: “The play is like…” is a good starting point, and then free-associating through image connections. These become helpful in talking with the designers and communicating the feel of the world to the actors. As a result, are walls are going to be fabric, reminiscent of a sail. The color palette for the set and the costumes is built from this standpoint. And the sounds of water, being underwater, will become part of the sound design. I’ve put together a short montage of some of those images. The second half of the short video are some shots of our read-thru and a few exercises.

For those interested in another aspect of the production, you can see the step-by-step development of the postcard for Ashes to Ashes on the 2nd Wind Website here: www.secondwind.8m.com/Behindscene.html

The Director's Excavation

2010-03-14T23:38:00.000-07:00

Harold Pinter

Typically, by the third read I feel I understand a script. Then, on the fourth I discover new things about the characters. By the fifth or sixth read I'm comfortably in charge of its rhythms, resonances, character motivations, and relationships. With Ashes to Ashes by the sixth read I wasn't even at the first stage of overconfidence. Now, on the twelfth examination I'm beginning to understand its rhythms, structure, and some of its resonances, but much of the play remains a mystery. That, precisely, is Pinter, and what makes his work such a directorial challenge. I think that's why I prefer him to Beckett-- Beckett's work is one of the few that makes sense of Mamet's absurd advice to actors to "just speak the lines" as written. The grunt of the interpretation is turfed to the audience. But with Pinter, the real work lies in the rehearsal process-- it can't be completed in the director's head, nor tasked to the viewer. The challenge is unearth what resonates for the actor, select which choices are supported in the script, then build a cross resonance through the structure. To do this, we need to excavate ourselves as well as the characters.

Too many blogs are errant ramblings through the writer's thought process. I'm going to do my best to make this blog practical: not a tutorial (that would be far too arrogant), but a road map of how we got to the final product, the questions, exercises, discoveries, and tactics. I'll focus on the directorial process of Ashes to Ashes, and do my best to update twice weekly. Unlike the previous Second Wind episodes, this blog will be more text, less video.

It you are unfamiliar with Pinter's Ashes to Ashes, I highly recommending finding a script. It very much epitomizes what is meant by "Pinteresque". While the definition of this term has fluctuated-- sometimes insightful, sometimes silly-- I think it's best defined by an emotionally charged, visceral language within an abstract situation. It's characterized by deeply emotional (often menacing) words in a world whose characters, relationships, and rules aren't clear. Rebecca's first words in Ashes are a revelation that her lover used to hold her throat, bring his fist to her lips, and command her to kiss it. The listener, Devlin, is perhaps her husband, perhaps a current beau, perhaps her therapist. Rebecca maintains the act is one of adoration towards her, and even though Devlin is the one demanding answers, one feels it is Rebecca who is in control of the interview.

Tomorrow is the first read for Ashes, with Lisa-Marie Newton and Lol Levy in the roles of Rebecca and Devlin. I'm thrilled to have Scarlett Kellum and Fred Sharkey returning as costume and set designers for the production. First rehearsals are all about character analysis, discovering what makes these people tick. As a director, I find equal important in asking questions and providing my viewpoint. What questions I'll ask my actors depends on the prep work they've already done; but I've written a few starters: are these two husband and wife or something else? Who has more money (and thus more status)? How does Devlin organize the myriad of details he collects? Did Rebecca actually have a child? And for the actors personally-- what unspoken secret or history exists in your family, and how did it shape your life?

A Chat with Our Costume Designer, Scarlett Kellum

2009-11-17T08:06:00.000-08:00

This is my second "tour of duty" with Scarlett Designer Scarlett Kellum, and I only become more impressed with her artistry the longer I work with her. In particular, her attention to the details of design that bring out character. Besides that, I'm sure she could turn an old discarded hat into a designer shoe if need be. Here she talks about the process of designing for The Woman in Black. This episode is directed and edited by Sorta Lim, with Richard Enriquez as Director of Photography.

Taking the Press Photo

2009-11-10T08:47:00.000-08:00

The other day I was searching the web to find a good resource on how to take a good press photo. I found surprisingly little. So I thought I'd share a few of our learnings on marketing images and archival images-- and since it's a visual media, I've included many of ours from the past four productions. There's a difference between the press and the archival, which I discuss in the video, though I've used both the Vlog. The points I do my best to adhere to?
1. Shoot in color with at 300 dpi in the final image
2. Submit photos with strong contrasts
3. Play with angles and height
4. Place your subjects close together
5. Chose a moment that is dynamic and tells part of your story
6. A strong press photo should ask a question

Just 3 more performances of The Woman in Black! Grab your tickets now for the show Albert Goodwyn calls "taut, gripping suspense."

http://www.secondwindtheatre.com/

A Brief Chat with Our Set Designer

2009-11-01T08:04:00.000-08:00

Veteren set designer and actor Fred Sharkey introduces the question, "Do we need a set design at all?" Today's post was directed by Second Wind's, Sorta Lim; the Director of Photography is long-time collaborator Richard Enriquez.

Teasing Social Relevance from Traditional Scripts

2009-10-28T18:25:00.000-07:00

One might wonder why Second Wind, a company that specializes in plays with social or political relevance, would choose a simple ghost story. The Woman in Black has no pretensions about being more than a good yarn, so it’s certainly a stretch for it to fill our mission. Whether you’ve wondered or not, today I’ll talk about what we did to tease out social relevance, because I think it is a technique that can be used much more broadly—in looking at a variety of scripts, but also with concepts like non-traditional casting.

First, I’ll be blunt: it is a stretch. It was meant to be a stretch. Being alive and vibrant as a company means bending a few rules, even when it comes to your mission. Then you look at how to bend them back. Second, I believe every story, every relationship, has social relevance when examined within its true context. Ghost stories are traditionally morality tales in Western culture, so I began by looking for moral resonance. Young Kipps, a lawyer (okay, some weird morality issues right there…) displays a considerable amount of arrogance and a sense of superiority, especially when dealing with the town people. This seemed like a nice touch, in that we tend to look for reasons why there is a downfall. It was also the first step towards identifying status and power issues.

The script is completely obtuse about the time of the play. It seems to be set somewhere close to the turn of the century, but if you try to add up the dates, ages, and bits of technology (flashlights, cars, telephones, etc.) what you get is complete nonsense. By adjusting the length of time between events, however, I found that the play situated itself nicely at 1931, the heart of the British Depression. That opened up the possibility of exploring ideas of poverty, economic disparity, and what it forces people to do. There were two references to money in the play—“You’ve paid me for the day,” and later a line about a young woman who had to give up her child because “she had no choice.” Both of these references are typically run-over with little emphasis in other productions. We didn’t run them over. Instead, I added two points where the old solicitor pays the young actor for the day. Then, during one of the transitions, I started the scene with the actor mending his coat with needle and thread. With the young woman’s voiceover, we made sure to highlight her necessity, and between each of the characters we spent time exploring and defining their economic status. The British, certainly during that time period, were very class conscious. These seemed like good starts, but it’s all subtle work. I looked for other avenues to get at the idea of money. The pre-show music highlights not just jazz from the era but Depression songs, including “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime”, and “Are You Makin’ Any Money?” At intermission I contrasted that with several waltzes, an aristocratic dance. Costumes also played an vital role in defining class and economics. Overall, the teasing out of social themes was quite understated, but I think it adds to the richness of the show, and sense of detail. I also hope it makes the characters more three-dimensional, and easy to identify with. You’ll have to tell me whether it worked or not.

From a company standpoint, we also did some things to take the work beyond the proscenium arch. As I’ve said before, The Woman in Black is also a celebration of theatre. A play within a play, it relies heavily on the most basic elements of the theatre: sound, lighting, set design, as well as suspension of disbelief and the audience’s imagination. In that spirit, we focused this Vlog on more technical aspects of producing theatre, rather than drone on and on about the show. We started a Twitter account (http://twitter.com/2ndWindThtre) specifically for theatre tips and inspiration. And finally, the theatre ads you see in the program we donated to the companies in an effort to support other Bay Area groups.

In the end, we didn’t want to turn The Woman in Black into some avant-garde or revisionist production. The story is just too darn good for that. How good? Yesterday, Albert Goodwyn wrote: “Second Wind Productions effortlessly enthralls with their taut, gripping suspense and intense pacing. The suspense in this play makes the grueling tension all the more scary.” You can read his full review here: http://doctortheatresbliss.com/

In Front of the Scenes

2009-10-25T20:52:00.001-07:00

I must apologize for my absence. My excuse is that on October 18th we began load in and technical rehearsals for the show, which was to have its first audience five days later on October 23rd. Despite its simplicity, The Woman in Black is surprising difficult, technically. There are twice the average number of sound cues (triple letters, for those in the know), and at intermission we had to switch from the patch system to the page system to accommodate all the light cues. Furthermore, the play requires a great deal of precision to suspend the narrative. It's a fast moving river that escalates as the action progresses. But I'm back, with a preview-- in front of the scenes-- clip from our Sunday matinee.

www. secondwindtheatre.com

Memorization and the Director

2009-10-14T00:34:00.000-07:00

Occassionally, companies and productions require the actors show up to the first rehearsal already off-book, but it's much more likely to have that first read be almost "cold", with the process of memorization beginning from the first day. When there are only two actors-- such as in The Woman in Black-- that can be a huge task. So today we looked at the director's role (and responsibility) when it comes to the actors being memorized in a timely manner, and two approaches to make learning lines easier.

What landed on the cutting room floor (if I can be so grandiose) were some tips for the actor's process, so I'll mention a few here: First, memorize in small pieces-- don't try to accomplish too much. I often spend 15 minutes first thing in the morning going over a section before I start the daily shower/breakfast routine (so I can run them in my head) and then I spend 10 minutes in review before heading off to work. By far the most helpful tip I can offer is to review the lines of scene both before you work it in rehearsal, and then the following day. Actors sometimes review lines before a rehearsal and then move onto the next section without returning to the pages. Even 15 minutes in post-rehearsal review can be enormously helpful.

But todays video entry is on the director's role, and two ways the director can set the actors up for success.

Did I mention tickets are on sale for The Woman in Black? Now would not be too late to purchase them.

Does Twitter Work for Theatre Companies?

2009-10-09T11:30:00.000-07:00

I’ve spent some time looking at this issue, and as you can see from the left hand side of my web page, I’ve subscribed to Twitter. Does it work? Is it a flash in the pan? Well, I want to hear your comments.

But I did do some research. According to PEW, the largest demographics of Twits are 18-34… no surprise there, really, though it is interesting to note that only 1% of Twits are under 18. They are overwhelming white (81%), and childless. Sadly, they tend to have less money. Equally distributed among men and women. And most do not have a graduate degree, though equally distributed between HS graduates and bachelor’s degrees.

Tuesday is the most active Tweet day, only 5% of accounts have more than 100 followers; 20% are never used.

Twits tend to sign up then drop their account: 60% last less than a month. The majority, about, 40% use it to keep in touch with friends; 28% use it as a pass-thru tool to update their status on social network sights such as facebook and their blogs; and about 25% use it for “news”. According to Linkedin (okay, maybe not the most stringent of researchers) only 8% of businesses view Twitter as a “very effective” marketing tool. (I tend to agree.) In fact, the main people touting the effectiveness of Twitter appear to be marketers themselves. How to effectively use social marketing is endless fodder for marketing individuals blogs, twits, and articles. But do people use Twitter to get info about what to see and do? Does it work? Who does it reach? If you’ve got a success story, leave a comment and tell us!

So if I’m not a fan, why am I doing it? Good question. First, I put a lot of time into researching it and setting up an account, so I’m planning on using it for a little while to get the full experience. Second, I’m wondering if the tips and tricks I’ve read will make a difference in my experience. Not everyone researches how to use a tool before they go out and start hammering. And third, sometimes a marketing campaign is designed towards depth, and sometimes towards breadth. We’re currently in a breadth mode, so even a handful of new contacts, relationships, and audience members are a victory. And we’re using it to create depth to our outreach: our twitter updates are focused on real tools, ideas, and inspirations rather than bland, reiterative marketing of current activities.

It's also important to consider your audience demographics and buying cycle. Is this your crowd? Do you want them to be? Tweats are very ephemeral-- they come and go as quick reminders with no lasting impression. But (perhaps) if timed to your audiences' buying cycle, the nudge can come at just the right time. As long as you don't overdo it and the twits become a nag. For that reason, I've focused http://twitter.com/2ndWindThtre away from our current show.

Through my Twitter research, I did find a few tips that I thought I’d share:

1. Don’t sell on twitter, engage
2. Follow and respond to other’s twits
3. If you don’t have any news, give them someone else’s
4. Update. Every other day is too little, 5x a day too much
5. Keep a notepad to write down twits for the future.
6. The number of followers is not as important as the quality: it’s social.
7. Have a goal and an identity for your twitter page, make a plan to reach it

How to Expand Your Following:
1. Post on your website and blog
2. Respond to someone else’s twit, they may start to follow yours
3. Put your twitter in the signature of your email

Rehearsal Peek in 2 Minutes, 22 Seconds

2009-10-04T23:53:00.000-07:00

Today's post is a visual peek into our rehearsal: 2 minutes, twenty-two seconds from behind the scenes. Tonight was our first stumble through. Like every first, it had more than one painful moment; but the strength of the story-telling is already beginning to shine. As a director, I like to identify the strengths of a piece, and then focus on its weaknesses. Strengths (an aspect the playwright focused on during the writing process) will almost always blossom on their own. The main strength of The Woman In Black is in the story-telling, so it's no surprise that's what stood out in the first stumble. Now the fun begins.

Do/Don't Review This

2009-09-30T15:57:00.000-07:00

All of us want glowing reviews for our work. Professional reviews. We believe they will bring audiences and lasting recognition; we believe they will be useful in obtaining grants. Though we hold fast to our public assertions that we don’t need them for personal validation of our creative talents, we secretly covet the words when they glow. For the past few years my faith in these beliefs has waned. I’ve seen glowing reviews do nothing for audience attendance; I’ve grown to understand that the only thing that brings lasting recognition is consistent and continued quality in one’s work. And the eruption of audience reviews on sites like Goldstar Events and other places have shown themselves to have a more immediate impact on ticket sales that traditional reviews, even if I can’t attach them to a grant application or clip them to a play submission. I don’t mean to diminish the value of a professional opinion; I’m just recognizing its changing place in a changing world.

I was intrigued, then, when I learned of a controversial blog written by Melodie Bahan, the Director of Communications at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, entitled “Don’t Review This”. She stressed that “too much emphasis has been placed on theater reviews to the detriment of arts. Does the average newspaper reader even skim – much less read – a review of the latest production from a small theater company she’s never heard of and has no intention of seeing? Probably not. But she might well read movie reviews and almost certainly reads feature stories about the movie industry, even if she sees only two or three movies a year. I believe it’s because, in part, newspapers provide stories about the film industry that explain and inform, yet provide little real coverage of the theater community in this town.”

In advocating for theatre “journalism” rather than reviews, Bahan wants coverage that gets inside of the theatre world, a look within productions, coverage that builds a sense of community between artists and audiences. I say "Amen" to that-- it's what this blog and our Twitter page (http://twitter.com/2ndWindTheatre) are all about, building a community. She goes on to write:

“The readers of the two major daily newspapers in this town would be better served by forgoing hastily-written, ill-considered snapshots of an opening night performance and focusing instead on actual journalistic coverage of the arts. I’m not against theater reviews; I’m against theater reviews that are poorly written, thumbs-up-or-down laundry lists of actors and designers that don’t do anything to illuminate the production or give readers a real sense of the experience.”

I don’t know if I agree completely with Bahan’s a solution to diminishing theatre reviews. I rarely read movie reviews and almost never skim feature acticles about the movie industry. But I’ll admit I’m intrigued. And it’s definitely worth some discussion. With reviewers been forced to critique productions in a hundred words or less, it's almost impossible to write something that illuminates the art of a single show. Consider how many artists contribute to a show: set, light, sound, costume, prop designers and graphic artists-- not to mention stage managers, tech operators (have you ever seen sloppily run lighting? it can ruin a show), directors, choreographers, and actors. You could fill a hundred words just placing names to occupations. More importantly, I think Bahan's article poses a question about the role of the reviewer. And that's a whole 'nother ball of wax.

You can read Bahan's full article at:
http://www.minnesotaplaylist.com/magazine/article/2009/02/01/dont-review

Stage Picture vs. Blocking

2009-09-27T02:01:00.000-07:00

Today's post is about the difference between stage pictures and blocking, and how they work together. It took a bit longer than anticipated to put together, so I'm not going to write much-- just post. But! the defining characteristics I'm trying to get at are their strengths-- stage pictures' ability to provide focus, perspective, and relationship; while blocking is about action. As I wrote in a Tweet last night (and you're all invited to follow the enhanced/abbreviated discussion on Twitter), blocking is dialogue. Dialogue is action. Action becomes present through specificity, intention, and responsiveness. You should be able to tell the story in blocking, without use of words.

The Unappreciated Art of Props

2009-09-21T23:17:00.000-07:00

I'm thinking back to the last time I read a theatre review that critiqued the props used in the show. It was a production of... well, never, actually. It is an under-appreciated art. Yet there are people who take it quite seriously. Eric Hart for one, who in addition to designing for the Public Theatre, keeps a pretty healthy blog at http://www.props.eric-hart.com/. There are others, of course-- like Meredith Ries who has just started her own blog at http://meredithries.wordpress.com/ called Malaprops. Looking for a quick resource on when something was invented? Artslynx.org is a good starting point.

I'll have to admit I'm not very prop savvy. Working on a turn of the century period piece has left me with my nose in Google, trying to figure out what remarkably simple things looked like in 1860, 1900, and 1930. Wallets. Pens. Briefcases. Flashlights. Every object on stage should have its own story, history. The process has reminded me to appreciate the art of prop design, and those who do it well. So....

On Eric's blog I read an interesting article on how to read a script as a Properties Designer. It's just the beginning of the prop design process, but it seemed applicable to every show, large or small. I've re-posted it here:

How to read a script

By Eric Hart Published: August 17, 2009

A prop master develops a prop list by reading the script. The director, designer, and/or stage manager may come up with their own prop list; you still need your own so you can get working right away, and so you can make sure the rest of the production team has considered all the props that may be in the production.

First off, if your script comes with a prop list in the back, don’t use it. These are from the original production. The design and direction of your production will certainly be slightly altered, and can even be totally different.

Read the script twice. The first time is for fun, to get an overall feel of the play. You want to be able to have an intelligent conversation about the play with the rest of the design team. You don’t want to be the one at the meetings going, “Wait, Juliet is a girl?” The second time you read through it is to start noting props. Have your own copy of the script so you can mark it as you read. This script should live in your prop bible. Mark the page number of the prop on the prop list for easy reference later.

You can find props references throughout the script. The scene descriptions will give descriptions of the set furniture and some set dressing. The stage directions will tell you what hand props are being used, and how they are used. The character descriptions can give more clues about hand props, and can also hint at possible costume props. Even the dialogue can hold additional prop notes.

Look for clues on how a prop is used, and what it needs to do. If a chair is introduced on page 3, and on page 42, a character leaps on top of it, that needs to go on your prop list. A designer will usually decide what a prop must look like, but it is up to you to figure out what the prop needs to do. The director will also determine what a prop needs to do in rehearsal, but it helps to know as soon as possible if anything on your list will take some time or effort to build or acquire.

One final bit of advice comes from Bland Wade, who reminds you to consider all the ramifications of a stage direction, rather than what is merely written down. When a script says a character enters “smoking”, you need to ask what kind of cigarette he has. Where did it come from: a pack, a cigarette case, a friend? Where do the ashes go? Does he light it on stage? With a lighter or matches? What kind of lighter? Where does he extinguish it? In an ashtray or the floor? One simple stage direction can lead to a page’s worth of props.

http://www.props.eric-hart.com/

Applying Table Work to the Play

2009-09-17T11:14:00.000-07:00

Four days into rehearsals we've wrapped up our table work analysis of The Woman in Black. Today's entry is a small glimpse into how table analysis brings out the complexity of character relationships, even within a narrative as straightforward as a ghost story. Photos by Sorta Lim, with a little help from Richard Enriquez.

http://www.secondwindtheatre.com/

Director's Tool: The French Scene

2009-09-14T09:30:00.000-07:00

Today we're looking at a script analysis tool called the French Scene. It's useful in both understanding the pacing and relationships of a play, and in developing rehearsal schedules-- who to call, how many pages they have together, and from that you can calculate how much time you should allot. For rehearsals, I typically allot four minutes of rehearsal time for each page of script. This is each time I return to a scene. Altogether, I'm likely to spend 75 hours in rehearsal before Tech, or about 40 minutes to a page. But I'm getting ahead of myself. For now, the French Scene....

You can find my French Scene diagram for The Woman in Black here:

Selling the Complex Bundle called Theatre

2009-09-11T17:55:00.000-07:00

THOUGHT FOR (TO)DAY

I ran across this article at The Artful Manager and thought it posed what is both a common and an important question for theatre producers. In true internet fashion, he is (of course) quoting someone else’s article. So in the “I am quoting he is quoting, we are quoting, quoting all together” spirit:

What, exactly, do you sell?

(From Andrew Taylor of The Artful Manager)

Doug McLennan provokes a rather central question in his Diacritical blog are arts organizations in the business of selling tickets? Says McLennan: “If you believe your business model is the classic consumer transaction (I make the performance, you buy the ticket) then you're done. Sorry. That's a Manufacturing Economy mindset, and while it worked when choices were limited, now that you're competing in the infinite marketplace.”

He goes on to suggest that arts organizations are providing a much more complex service than a play or a performance or an exhibition, and that arts consumers are seeking a complex bundle of goods in their purchase decisions.

“People aren't comparing you with other orchestras or theatre or dance companies; they're measuring whether classical music or theatre or dance is something they want to choose at the moment. They're deciding whether they want an active or passive experience; they're trying to determine what level of social encounter they feel like today. They're weighing whether they want a predictable, known, comfortable quantity or whether they want to be adventurous and try something new.”

His provocation is right on the mark, and central to any thoughtful discussion of the future of arts enterprise and cultural management. But I'd suggest that it's missing an important wrinkle. The deeper challenge for arts organizations is that they DO sell a product, even as they DON'T. That is, an important segment of any arts audience doesn't recognize the complex bundle they're seeking when they buy a symphony or theater ticket. They've come to use that event as a placeholder or proxy for that bundle, without even knowing it. To this core group (often the most passionate about the art form, the most loyal buyers, the most committed donors) the bundle IS the product. And as you innovate around the delivery or context of your creative work, you challenge their passionate connection to the discipline's tradition.

by Andrew Taylor

The idea of theatre as an experience greater than the sum of visual and auditory sensations—that there is an experience of community, that it is a social gathering as well as an event—and that it is not confined to the action upon the stage is one that I’ve pondered for quite a while. If anyone else has found ways to highlight, emphasize, and promote those aspects of the theatre experience, please leave us a comment and tell us about it.

A Woman: First Read Thru

2009-09-08T20:56:00.000-07:00

Welcome back and welcome in the first read-thru for The Woman in Black. For this series of video blogs we're aiming to be even more interactive than ever, pulling the veil back on the nuts and bolts of producing small theatre. This series will combine video and traditional blog entries in an effort to examine crucial elements of running a company.

For our first entry in The Woman in Black series we have a peek behind the scenes of our first read-thru of the play. Enjoy.

From Meadowland to The Woman In Black

2009-09-08T20:39:00.000-07:00

As of 8:54 on Tuesday, September 8th, Second Wind's behind the scenes video blog is back! As a courtesy-- and because we decided that this new installment of our blog would focus more on skill-building tools for small theatres-- we've included all of the old posts from our January 2009 production of Meadowland. We haven't been dark all that time. We co-produced a one-act play called Marked ably directed by Richard Enriquez and written by up-and-coming SF playwright Cassandra Lewis as a part of the Bay One Acts Festival. We also presented the staged reading of my new play, The Tender King, and redesigned the 2nd Wind website to make it more interactive-- a project we're still building upon. And we've been in pre-production for our Fall show.

On October 23rd, Second Wind will open its production of The Woman in Black at The Phoenix Theatre in San Francisco. From now until then we'll be posting a behind-the-scenes look at the production process, along with some of the "how to's" of production. The Woman in Black is an autumn spine-tingler, the perfect Halloween night out-- and one of the most famous theatrical ghost stories in history. It's also a wonderful celebration of the art of theatre and story-telling. Tickets are on sale now, so snatch them up while you can at www.secondwindtheatre.com

The Wrap

2009-02-18T15:21:00.000-08:00

It's all over. My film director and photographer Richard Enriquez put together a timelapse photography video of the tear down and load-out... a fitting wrap to the process. Recently, I heard an interview about copywrite law. Issues of what is public domain and private/commercial domain are fascinating to me, but I was also drawn to the idea of what is permanent and what is ephemeral. Movies, music recordings, and books are all (essentially) permanent; theatre is ephemeral. And as much as I will miss this show and everyone in it, there's something beautiful in the fact that it has a lifespan, that it will persist only as feeling and memory. I decided that this blog, which was designed as a rough and tumble, unpolished diary, should also have a limited life. So come March, I'll be taking it down. Should Second Wind decide to blog another project, it may reappear. So, as au revoir:

Multi Media

2009-02-12T10:20:00.000-08:00

The show is done and in a day or so I'll post our time-lapse photography of the tear down and load-out. But for now I promised my brother that I'd post a segment on the mult-media/performance art aspects of the show. It's somewhat theory based (how the media interacts with the themes and dramatic action). And I've been plagued with technical difficulties: the auto exposure meter on the camera didn't lock and it jumps in a very irritating fashion. Also, the video wouldn't upload to my blog yesterday, so for the time being I'm posting it at vimeo: http://www.vimeo.com/3188442 .

This, of course, is a fine lesson in multimedia. Multimedia technology yearns to screw up. Two days before opening I reached the conclusion that my laptop wasn't powerful enough to run the video smoothly. We bought another (an expense not accounted for in the budget), loaded it with the programs and files, tweaked, and programmed. That night-- our final dress-- we discovered it had a bad power board and it died before the run. I took it in the following day thinking that it was the power cord. By the time we worked it out, it was too late to contact the software distributed (who had placed a limited number of downloads per purchase), and we had to gerry-rig the show another way. Finally on Opening, without ever testing the computer/software/programming in a full run, we opened the show to a full house. The lesson? Always have back-up. Though we never had a significant tech malfunction after that, we always had a spare computer and a spare projector in the theatre.

So this video entry goes out to the Performance Art class at UCD.

http://www.vimeo.com/3188442

Opening Weekend

2009-01-15T12:25:00.000-08:00

I'm on the run so I won't say much: here is a photo montage from the show. It provides a little taste of the final product. We took many of the photos for the press, so they're also examples of what we think make for good press photos. What makes for a good press photo? RC Staab, my friend, fellow playwright, and ad man for the SJ Mercury News says: "you should have at least two photos, one that is horizontal for tabs like Sunday's Datebook -- 5x7 is fine -- and one that is a strong vertical for ROP (when you think about, papers are strongly vertical). A third photo, more square -- black space around -- would also be good." Of course he told me this after I took my pics.

So far both our Friday and Saturday performances on opening weekend sold out-- despite having not been listed in the Chronicle (thanks Chron, the only thing worse than poor service is unreliable service). Tonight's performance also appears that way headed....

Get your tickets while they're hot: http://www.secondwindtheatre.com/

Oh Where Oh Where am I? Tech!

2009-01-12T11:47:00.000-08:00

My long absence (fueled only slightly by difficulties with my blog server) is a statement in itself. Tech was grueling: 12 stright days working at times until six in the morning-- and never quitting before 1pm. I fell sick for two days near the beginning. People fell off the stage. Repeatedly. We discovered one of our computers didn't have enough processing power to run both the video program and the videos smoothly so we bought another laptop, programmed it, tweaked it, and then learned that it had a faulty circuit on the power board that kept it from running reliable. We returned it on opening day, programmed, tweaked, and threw it into the mix. After having never seen all of the media elements together in the same show, we ran without a hitch to a standing-room only audience on opening, followed by an over-sold audience on Saturday. But all of that is another entry; this one is a little behind-the-scenes of tech itself.

We're open! So you can buy tickets at: http://www.secondwindtheatre.com

Sound Design

2008-12-24T20:39:00.000-08:00

I've been off-line for the past week because rehearsals are on break. During the last week the show started to slip steadily behind where I wanted it to be in terms of the actors' readiness; then it took a nice step forward in the final run-thru. We're still two days behind in my estimation, but it's not so far that we can't get back up to speed during tech if the actors stay on top of their game.

Break from rehearsals does not mean a break from production, though. There's still publicity to do (though primarily prep work, since nobody's in the office, now); video footage is being edited, tech tools-- like the Arkaos VJ program and SCS sound controller-- are being tested; and I've re-focused my attention on the sound design, which is the topic of today's post.

It's difficult to give a concise, helpful summary of how to design sound for the theatre, especially in a video blog, so I've added a written overview of my process here. It's not quite a tutorial, but close.

http://www.secondwindtheatre.com/

Two Days of Filming

2008-12-16T01:53:00.000-08:00

We went into the studio this weekend to shoot about 3 minutes worth of footage for the production. We scheduled six hours over two days to get it done. To say I'm proud would be ridiculously arrogant, because the real work, the real creativity and beauty, the real accomplishment was by others: the filming, costumes, choreography, and acting was the result of other people's inspiration. Many thanks to Colin Day, our Director of Photography who also made it possible to work in a real studio, and Richard Enriquez, film director for the sequences. This one is worth watching....

Ticketing, website, info and more: http://www.secondwindtheatre.com/

On Directing as the Playwright

2008-12-10T16:20:00.000-08:00

We're entering a more frenetic time, production-wise. The flurry of activity and tension is due to the fact we're scheduled to film the video segments of the play this weekend-- and thus need costumes, lines, and scene work to be spot on-- and also because we're about two rehearsal days behind where I'd like to be. It's unusual for me; most of the time I'm able to pace the process more closely, but so many elements (and as I've said before, so much physical movement) have made it more difficult. Yesterday was the first formal "off book" day. It was rough, but in general they did pretty well. There are glimmers of beauty, but a lot of mud to clean up. So I thought I'd talk about my approach to directing, particularly as it relates to the strengths and weaknesses of being the playwright.

Purchase your tickets here!

Inside a Rehearsal

2008-12-08T10:49:00.000-08:00

This time it's an inside look at rehearsals in moving images. I've shied away from taking footage of scene work because I think it's too intrusive. It's too easy to start acting for the camera (for both the actor and the director). But Thursday's rehearsal was focused on integrating movement and fight choreography into the scene-work, giving an opportunity to shoot a little more tape. We've slipped about a day behind in the rehearsal process; there's just too much physical work to cover, and it always takes longer than one expects. Where we'll make it up, nobody knows. It's particularly frightening, because we'll take a 11 day break for the holidays, and if we're not solid before then, the show could slip dramatically. On the bright side, Arthur Keng returned from NY after 2 weeks out of rehearsals very much ready to go. When a moment catches fire for the first time in rehearsal is a blessed thing.

Visit us: www.secondwindtheatre.com

Why Meadowland, Why Now?

2008-12-03T14:34:00.001-08:00

Rehearsal, rehearsal. On Monday we focused primarily on the romantic scenes between the Investigator and Sister-in-Law. They're right at that tentative point where the memorization and the emotional journeys are almost connected. So close, in fact, that I felt bad knowing that we weren't scheduled to re-visit the scenes for a week, and I asked them if they'd be willing to rehearse with the AD and AAD on Tuesday, while I worked the dance and fight choreography with Misha. They agreed, and that's what we did. I hope to have some footage from yesterday's choreography up soon.

But today's topic is why Meadowland, why now? What made us take on this work right now, from both the artistic and the political perspective.

Visit Second Wind's website at:

www.secondwindtheatre.com

90 Seconds in a Costumer's Meeting

2008-12-01T10:21:00.000-08:00

The title pretty much says it all: a brief look at a design meeting with Scarlett Kellum.

Ah Paperwork!

2008-11-29T17:00:00.000-08:00

Theatre companies don't exist on creativity and inspiration alone. I thought today I'd address some of the organizational aspects of producing theatre (and the creativity--and discipline!-- that goes into getting things done) by sharing some of our production materials. There's always more, but here's a taste.

http://www.secondwind.8m.com/Production%20Papers.html

See you in the theatre...

Where's We're At

2008-11-28T18:46:00.000-08:00

Where We're At as of Friday, November 28th. A simple update.

www.secondwindtheatre.com

Masks and Fight Choreography

2008-11-26T01:56:00.000-08:00

Okay, it's two in the morning, I've spent 10 hours of my Sunday in either production meetings or rehearsals (I ended up bookending a 4 hour rehearsal with design meetings), the light in this shot is beyond awful, and I'm having trouble forming sentences. Not my sharpest entry. Maybe it's the whiskey. But if you jump about a third of the way in there's some nice footage of our fight choreography excersizes, and some face casting for masks. We also worked the "romantic" scenes, but you won't see any of that. Thanks to Richard Enriquez for his camera work (and everybody else for their commitment).

What is Meadowland?

2008-11-21T21:47:00.000-08:00

All these entries and I still haven't told you anything about the play? Well, that'll change here. A brief introduction-- with no spoilers!-- on Meadowland, which happens to be based on a 12th century folk story from Japan.

www.secondwindtheatre.com

Oh Yeah

2008-11-21T21:37:00.000-08:00

I should say who's appearing in the First Read-Thru segment below. The cast is:

Leon Goertzen*
Michael Uy Kelly
Arthur Keng
Sang S Kim
George Q Nguyen
Alan Quismorio
Nonoko Sato
Pearl Wong
Michael Wu

Also pictured: our Stage Manager, Jennifer Blancas; Choreographer and Associate Producer, Misha Wyatt; our Costume Designer, Scarlett Kellum; Assistant Director and Film Director, Richard Enriquez; and our AAD, Natalie Palan.

* Actor's Equity. This is an AEA approved project.

First Read-Thru

2008-11-17T22:36:00.000-08:00

Rather than have me describe our first read-thru, I'm going to rely on pictures being worth more than my words. At Second Wind we like our first rehearsal to be casual; too often, the cast doesn't get to know each other until after the show opens. Photography by Richard Enriquez (all the good shots) and myself.

www.secondwindtheatre.com

Auditions

2008-11-14T13:39:00.001-08:00

Auditions: they're nerve-wracking on both sides of the auditors table. Hard on actors, and hard on the producer/director-- at least that's how I feel about it. They're actually my second least favorite part of the producing process. So here's a bit about how we tricked-out our audition process to get hard-to-reach actors, and the inside scoop on what I'm looking for in an audition. And I promise the next videos will be shorter...

As always, you can hop to our website for more information about the show, buy tickets, and have a generally fine time at: www.secondwindtheatre.com

Getting Started

2008-11-12T13:36:00.001-08:00

Finally! I got off my duff and posted the first video entry into the MEADOWLAND video blog. It's more rough and tumble than polished, which is what's I'm going for. I'm already cast and in production meetings with a great team of artists. More to come....

What's to Come

2008-09-20T15:04:00.000-07:00

This is just a place holder for what's to come. This is a video blog for Second Wind's production of MEADOWLAND, by Ian Walker, hosted by Ian Walker. My hope-goal-desire is to post an insider's account of the production process, with new video's every other day (starting with the first day of rehearsal, November 16, 2008). I'm going to add a few pre-production posts to give some background, starting next week, and ramping up as we go along.

Until then, welcome.