I tell wonder-filled stories about hope and healing
This picture will be my expression from now until the end of our Sunday night performance. Helen Keller once said, “Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.” Thank you times a million to everyone who played a part in getting us to tonight’s opening of Sing After Storms, particularly the stellar cast and production team who gave everything they have and then some to make this happen. In the immortal words of Hall & Oates, “you make my dreams come true…” Let’s go, on with the show!
Tomorrow marks two important milestones: the opening night of Sing After Storms and my two-year anniversary of starting my company, Chasing Down the Muse. If someone had told me two years ago that June 18th my first original play would open in New York City with the talented team that’s on board, I would have laughed myself silly. When we take a chance, a really big chance, amazing things can happen. It’s all possible: yes, we can sing after storms, and yes, we can chase down the muse. First, we must have the courage to begin. Then, it’s a matter of daily dedication and effort.
Tonight we’re taking another giant leap forward with Sing After Storms, perhaps the biggest one yet. We go into tech and move into the theater that will house our production. We’re setting and locking sound and light cues, prepping costumes, and for the first time, actors will run the show in real-time with all of the tech elements. This is where the rubber meets the road and it’s so flippin’ exciting. We open exactly one week from today. May the theater tech gods be smiling down on us for a smooth process—goodness knows this team has earned it!
There is a lot of prep work that goes into any creative endeavor. In theater, there are the acts of writing, casting, and rehearsal. In the kitchen, there are the steps of deciding what to prepare, gathering all of the ingredients, and measuring each component. Then the magic happens—we put it all together and see what we’ve got. That’s where we are with Sing After Storms as we began our final week of rehearsals yesterday. We’re all working our tails off, holding hands, and taking the leap. Together.
While the stakes of every project are different, the emotional process is the same. We lavish so much love and attention on each small piece and then we have to jump off the cliff and see what we’ve got. It can be equal parts nerve-wracking and exhilarating. For me, every creative act is always both. It keeps me on my toes while my heart flutters. I just keep breathing, and working, and somehow that’s always enough. We have to trust, ourselves, our collaborators, and the spirit that moves us to ever create anything. In the end, that trust, our hands, eyes, ears, and heart, are all all we’ve got. And they’re more than enough. Always.
“What hope there is for us lies in our nascent arts, for if we are to be remembered as more than a mass of people who lived and fought wars and died, it is for our arts that we will be remembered. The captains and the kinds depart; the great fortunes wither, leaving no trace; inherited morals dissipate as rapidly as inherited wealth; the multitudes blow away like locusts; the record and barriers go down. The rulers, too, are forgotten unless they have had the forethought to surround themselves with singers and makers, poets and artificers in things of the mind.” ~ Maxwell Anderson, “Whatever Hope We Have” from Michael Eisner’s book Work in Progress
I finally saw the movie The Monuments Men, the story of 7 brave men who recovered 5 million works of priceless art that were stolen by the Nazis during World War II. The movie passionately and astutely raises the questions, “Does art matter, and if so, why? And is it worth dying for?” At one point an answer is clearly articulated: if we lose our art, then we lose our culture and history; and if we lose that then it’s as if we never existed. As someone who started a career in the arts, had a career in business, and now is determined to combine the two, I couldn’t agree more. Art matters because it holds our essence, the very seed of who are and what we care about. It is us. Creating art is the only thing we can do that lets us connect across the generations, long after we’re gone. It’s the only mark we can truly leave with the world.
We’re moving right along with ticket sales for the play Sing After Storms. Our Saturday night show on June 21st at 9:00pm is nearly sold out. We have a few more tickets left for Saturday night, as well as seats available for Wednesday night, June 18th at 8:45pm and Sunday night, June 22nd at 9:30pm. Grab tickets for $10 with our special friends, family, and fans discount: http://www.eventbrite.com/e/sing-after-storms-friends-family-and-fans-discount-tickets-11129220799
So so proud of the Sing After Storms team! We did our first complete end-to-end run last night and I am continually amazed by their commitment, dedication, and passion for this work. Art saves us. Every time. In every way. We are lucky to have it, to feel its power in our bones.
I love The Huffington Post‘s Good News section. Yesterday I read this article about a teacher turned artist who gave up her successful and steady career in education to follow her paintbrush and her heart. It lifted me up and I bet it will lift you up, too. Enjoy! Meet Layla Fanucci.
“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
I think about this line on my way to every rehearsal for Sing After Storms. A piece of my past is embedded in every character, every line. I wrote the play to make sense of things on the page that never made sense in my life. I suppose that’s why anyone ever writes anything—to be helpful, to be free, to be heard. We move forward though we can’t help but be informed by where we’ve been and what we’ve survived. It can dicey territory. We can be sucked into the past or use it to buoy us up and over it. I choose to let it help me rise, and intend to lift others in the process.
Yesterday Sing After Storms hit a huge milestone: we’ve now run every scene in the show, I’ve met with all of the production team members, and marketing materials are hitting the streets. A play is a vertical journey up a mountain and every once in a while you hit a plateau in the road so that you can rest and gather your thoughts and emotions for reflection. It’s a brief though necessary rest stop. We’ve got all the pieces; now it’s a matter of refining them and putting them together to tell a story that’s authentic, powerful, and memorable. I have no doubt—not one—that we will get there. Here’s another sneak peek at the work going on behind-the-scenes thanks to the abundantly talented photographer Marita La Monica and her trusty camera.
Christa Avampato 