PEP | Performers Exchange Project » Process

Assembly, a potluck Artists Salon at the Bridge, now open to public

Jennifer — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 01:25:40 +0000

About a year and a half ago, Jennifer Tidwell and Sian Richards of PEP invited all the artists they knew to a monthly gathering at the Bridge called ASSEMBLY. The purpose was to create a forum whereby all types of artists in Charlottesville could socialize, present works in progress, request help on projects, and seek collaborators.

It remains our belief that more unity and collaboration among individual artists in our town will lead to a more vibrant and mutually supportive arts scene in Charlottesville, and might yield a voice to speak to local government and funding organizations.

Originally the group was a word-of-mouth, by-invitation sort of thing, but now PEP is opening up ASSEMBLY to anyone interested in the Charlottesville area. It happens the 2nd Sunday of every month, from 8:00 to 10:00. Here are the remaining dates in 2010. Mark your calendars and check it out!

September 12
October 10
November 14
December 12

Our Trip to Hollins for the MFA Workshop

Jennifer — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 14:43:11 +0000

Yesterday, Sian, Jennifer and I headed to Roanoke for an afternoon of experimentation with Hollins U’s MFA Playwright candidates. They were very game – took their shoes off, threw themselves (unrehearsed) into some Chairman Mao exercises and basically did whatever we told them. Suckas.

Seriously, it was fantabulous to see so many playwrights with experience as actors, directors, theatre technicians – and all interested in the collaborative process of building performance to boot! They created short individual performance etudes, wrote short bits of text (natch) and used these elements, in groups of three, to create super short performances. Of course, they had some random inspiration to contend with: tarot cards and other source material around Gypsy history, folklore and fortune telling. This source material just happened along, and since we PEPsters are in love with the value of randomness, well we just took the ball and ran with it.

Anyhooters, it was gangs of fun and the playwrights concocted some impressive stuff, so here’s a shout-out to all our willing and very able MFA students for participating in our experiment. And many thanks to Todd Ristau, our host.

Just as an FYI, we’ll be in Roanoke on Monday evening, July 5, at the Taubman Art Museum for a “talk” about our performance history, how we got started, how we work and other unbelievably earth-shattering information. Don’t worry peeps! Even though it’s a “talk,” we promise it will be lots more fun than the usual variety (think disgruntled parents, principals, significant others).

If you’re curious about our lovely mistress Process, and wonder when you too might meet her, just jingle us up or email us, (or whatever you 21^st century peeps do) we’d love to work with you…

Martha

Part Two

kara.burke — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 20:09:59 +0000

Pressing forward into the world of text development, we PEPsters began staging the skeleton of Part II during our last rehearsal weekend. Part II focuses on the dilemma of artist vs. wife and centers on Sophia Peabody and Nathaniel Hawthorne with appearances from Frida Kahlo and Phyllis Diller – our American and Central American “Ann Sisters”.

Martha asked us to create a new etude for Part II, which literally had Sian tied up in knots. The etude also reclaimed some material/ideas about wacky medicinal techniques from the nineteenth century that we discussed much earlier in the rehearsal process. It’s interesting how ideas from conversations discussed over a year ago are finding their way into the world of play. Sometimes it feels like an idea crops up in the moment, only to be discovered that it was actually a notion from our early rehearsals – the product of a yearlong rehearsal (or sketchy memory).

In other news, our designers are also moving forward with the set and costumes – and notions of the Victorian-era-meets-the-modern-age theme are developing throughout the architecture and clothing. As Sian said in the last blog, it’s exciting to collaborate with designers on this project, and especially interesting to hear them articulate their ideas based on reading the script and listening to our description of characters and action. Yet another layer to add to the mix…

Doreen

Part One

sian.richards — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 16:02:47 +0000

After a brief summer hiatus, we Pepsters got back in the water in August. We had in our hot little hands the text for act one, and we set out to put together our physical material and text for the first act over the course of our working weekend. Martha took bits and pieces from etudes we had made and edited them together. We applied the text to this material and poof! We had an outline of the scenes in Part One. After over a year of work, it felt good to have the bones of the first section of the show in place. There is much to add to what we have done and a lot more show for us to put together but we have a hint now of where we are heading. It seems to involve some talking wild life. That’s all I will say about that.

In other news, Martha, Sian, Doreen, John Paul, and Mark S. all got together for a production meeting. It was the first opportunity for our designers to get in the same place and talk over all the ideas floating around about the set and lights. This is an exciting experience for PEP. We have certainly made set and lights happen before, but we have never collaborated at this level, in fact we have never had a costume designer at all, other than ourselves. I think we are now in a moment of inhale. Starting this month things pick up and we will start running faster and faster towards our performances at Live Arts.

Your Chance to Write Something for Our Script

Jennifer — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 04:49:06 +0000

The original play we are working on, Our American Ann Sisters, is an exciting experiment in community collaboration. Our script, which we’re writing in parallel with the development of the actors’ physical score, is part of this experiment. Some of the text for the script has been written by PEP members, some has been stolen from other dead and living writers (under Fair Use, of course) and some will come from YOU. This month, we are commissioning original material from the writing public at large and through Live Arts’ Playwrights Lab to include in our script.

On Monday, June 15, at the Playwrights Lab at Live Arts (6:30-10:00), anyone can come and in three hours write a scene for our show based on an assignment we’ll give out.

I’VE HEARD ALL I NEED TO KNOW… SHOW ME THE DETAILS!