SOSEblog+news
Alex Sep 04
Saw HYPERBOLE: epihany yesterday afternoon and really enjoyed it. I came with my wife and daughter and they enjoyed it as well. Barbara - nice job with the hands and torso acting in "Boy Meets Girl" - one of our favorites of the afternoon and to Michelle Ingkavet's acting work, too! It was one of my best experiences watching mask work.
The use of music was effective and added emotional texture to the pieces.
Michelle I. Aug 24
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It's half-way through our mere 12-show run and this 11-member cast has been enjoying some great backstage moments. Being the only SOSE member in this cast, (plus 2 core-team directors from SOSE) at first it was just like being in any ol' cast of a show where performers from various backgrounds come together. There were various talents and strengths, personalities and levels of experience. Plus, it was a bit displacing for us to rehearse for the first three weeks all the way down in Santa Ana. (Son of Semele was still being utilized by "The Mysteries" back when we started rehearsals.) But since we moved up to Son of Semele and opened two weeks ago, the production has really come a long way. I am very proud of this unique show. Even though I am the only official SOSE member in the cast, I feel that as "representatives" of Son of Semele/Rogue Artists, the professional cast of "Hyperbole: epiphany" has come together to produce a wonderful evening of art. With two more weekends to go, the epiphanies are still arising...
Adam S. Aug 02
SOSEvideo 01: Kristine's live birthing
[QuickTime | 00:19 mins. | 4.5 MB]
And now, for the very first instance of SOSEvideo, I give you esteemed HYPERBOLE: epiphany director Kristine Aubert in a live performance of the lamaze track to her birthing piece. For the best effect, I highly recommend headphones.
Yes, this will be in the show. No, Kristine will not be performing it live.
To watch, simply click the image/link above to view in your browser, right- (or command-) click to download the movie, or click here to add the SOSEaudio & SOSEvideo podcast to iTunes.
Adam S. Aug 01
I just got home from tonight's post-mortem of The Mysteries. It got me thinking, naturally, of all of the things we could be doing better on epiphany as we head into tech. There are a lot of things I wish were running smoother, being handled more promptly, being dealt with more diplomatically. I was all set to write a serious email expressing some of my concerns. And then I find this waiting for me:
Well, not just that, but a series of thats, which made me extremely happy. I'm not going to tell you what he is, except that he's a character in one of my pieces, and if you ask Carrie, she'll tell you his name is Magellan. To tell you any more would completely ruin the surprise. But, seeing that guy in my inbox just now (a present from Patrick, who's the kind of brilliant that catches you off guard) was exactly the reminder I needed that, despite all the stress and frustration that goes along with any show, I'm really excited by what I've been working on for the past few of months. When I first saw that image above, two weeks ago, it was so obviously right that we rethought the entire piece to focus on the black-and-white design. Now I can't imagine what else it might have looked like.
This show has been very different for a lot of us. With that comes unique problems and unexpected conflicts, but also unprecedented rewards.
Adam S. Jul 28
So much has happened on epiphany since the last time I posted. For one, we have actors! Yes, those are three of the shining faces you won't be seeing come opening night (no human faces, remember?). So I thought I'd show them to you now (and, as always, you can click thru to my Flickr set of my epiphany photos thus far).
It's very odd to all of a sudden be working with actors after having these ideas in our heads and then on paper and then in the workshop for so many weeks. Finally being able to play with other folks and really explore these little stories of mine has been great for me, though. Last weekend we did our first stumble-through of the whole show. It really helped put the individual pieces in perspective, and gave us all a good look at the shape the show was taking. Now it's back to stressing out about puppet building and fine-tuning in rehearsals.
My spider has gone through several more revisions - we tore apart the first one to mold the body for the final version, but then that wasn't remotely ready for rehearsal, so I had to do a second rev out of the box from my DVD burner - but he's finally got all his appendages and controls attached, and is just waiting for his head to be done. I've also dubbed him "Webb." I'm purposefully not posting any pictures of Webb closer to his finished form so as not to ruin the surprise - on Saturday we had the designers gasping when they saw him walk across the stage. If you want a good look, buy your tickets and grab a front row seat - I guarantee you'll get a great view of his arachnidian rhetoric.
Adam S. Jun 18
I never thought I'd write a list that included 2 hamsters, a spider's bed or alter, and, 1 shadow web full of trembling wheebles, yet that's exactly the sort of things that ended up on my list of items that I'm going to need to build for HYPERBOLE:epiphany. With auditions happening in less than a week, on Thursday we locked down which pieces are going to make in into the show, whittling it down from all the great ideas that have been flying around an unassuming Long Beach garage for the past month.
I'm really excited about the pieces I'll be directing. I've got some of the most technically challenging material, which means I might not end up with exactly what I'm imagining, but it also means that I got to spend today making this:
It's a mockup for a spider puppet for one of my pieces. He may not look very impressive at this stage, but a few hours work convinced me that this design - which I was initially resisting, because it confines the performers to below the puppet - is actually going to look great, and give me enough flexibility in staging to make him do all the things he needs to. With a few simple changes, we were able to take the number of performers needed to operate this puppet from 5 down to 3, which is a big improvement when there are three other groups of puppets onstage at the same time.
Speaking of performers, it'll be interesting to see what auditions next Saturday shape up like. We've got over 60 people signed up to audition, including a pair of Chinese acrobats and a fire dancer! Lots of people who would likely never show up at a regular SOSE audition. There have also been a few confused folks, who don't quite understand the concept of performing without their faces or voices. ("You mean a mime, like on the street? Well, if that's what you mean, then yeah, I know about that.") And, thanks to some interweb magic from the folks at Technorati, I've already know a bit about Jonathan Nail, who wrote about booking his audition and linked back to SOSE. Go theater geeks!
I've got a lot more SOSE stuff to post, but keep checking my Flickr stream for new epiphany photos, and I'll have another update after auditions.
(You can click the photo to see my photoset of all the H:e photos I've taken so far, including several stages of our first practice masks.)
Sean Jun 01
This is one of my first official blog entries and I'm so excited that it's on the SOSE site. This blog is really a fantastic idea and I look forward to sharing the tangents and creativity that flow during the HYPERBOLE : epiphany process. This show is already surpassing the last two HYPERBOLE's and a lot of that has to do with the excellent Core Team working to develop the storyline and pieces wtihin the show. Now if only all the masks were already built... We are about 80 days away... doesn't seem possible.
Sean.
Adam S. May 23
Last Saturday was our first meeting for HYPERBOLE:epiphany, the upcoming collaboration between SOSE and the Rogue Artists Ensemble. Barbara and I are on the "Core Team," which is responsible for conceiving, collaborating with the designers to create an aesthetic, and ultimately directing the pieces which will make up epiphany, this year's production in the HYPERBOLE series. There are also two Core Team members from the RAE Company (which is analogous to SOSE's Associate Members): Kristine and Miles. The four of us, along with Sean (the RAE artistic director and the production director for epiphany) are going to be spending a lot of time together talking, playing, and building - in HYPERBOLE tradition, all characters in epiphany will be masked or puppets.
I spend a lot of time working creatively in front of a computer and with digital media. While I love that to death, it was really thrilling (and remarkably zen) for me to get creative with my hands in the real world last weekend. The Rogues work in a different way from SOSE, which really appeals to my sense of play and exploration in theater, and makes me want to get my hands dirty. There's an exciting road ahead of us before epiphany opens in August, and I plan on sharing a lot of that creative process here, with as many pictures, audio, and (hopefully) video that I can manage. Stay tuned for more mask madness.
Click the photo to view my pictures from our first Core Team meeting, plus the Core Team auditions.
Here's the Rogues' epiphany page.