I am very pleased to announce that a rough cut of one of the performances of Sing After Storms is now available on YouTube thanks to the Compass Yoga YouTube channel. Please feel free to view and share! We’d love your feedback in the YouTube comments section. Link to the YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNZgdrLJ8oc
The amazing cast and production team of Sing After Storms! (Love to Marita, Celia, and Anuja who aren’t in this photo, but who are an integral part of the team!)
We wrapped our final performance of Sing After Storms at the Thespis Theater Festival last night. Now, I feel nothing but love, gratitude, and joy. All of the stress, long hours, and enormous amounts of energy and effort were absolutely worth it from beginning to end. Now I just want to say thank you—to everyone who supported the show, who attended a performance (or 2, or 3!), and to the incredibly talented cast and crew that made this dream happen. I promise you this: I will do everything in my power (and then some!) to continue to carry this show forward. We’re just getting started.
Whether we fall or fly, the first step is the same: we must leap. I’d much prefer to try and fall than wonder if I could have ever flown. Congrats to the Sing After Storms team on a wonderful opening. You said yes, took the leap, and you didn’t just fly—you soared.
Grinning playwright / director moment captured by the life-saving Robert Flitcroft
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.
We had our tech rehearsal for Sing After Storms last week and for the first time got to see our amazing cast with lights, sound, and in costume on the set. Here are a selection photos a la the amazing Marita La Monica!
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.
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