PEP | Performers Exchange Project

Oct 3&4 -We read through Jennifer’s draft of the third and final part of our play.  On the floor, Martha worked with the performers on vocal dynamics, and continued etude work from Parts One and Two.
We are thrilled to be in cohoots with some talented designers for our piece: Mark Schuyler on lights, Jenny McNee [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

The performers started by their usual warm-ups, and then reviewed the dances. Lest rehearsal grind to a halt so early, Martha named Doreen as Dance Captain since Katharine was not here to lead them and my videos from last rehearsal weren’t working and certain areas were, um, spotty.
Martha combined the performers’ individual chair etudes into [...]

In April, the Ann Sisters gang continued their work refining the dances that Katharine taught them (upper left photo). Currently there are 3 dances: one square dance-like number, one ballet-like number and one that involves marching. The square dance is very fast, but the gals kept at it until they had it cold. As with [...]

 All the PEPsters were together again for our March working weekend. Martha joined us from down South and we spent all day Saturday and Sunday together (like we do) working on our show.  We made some headway on some of the administrative aspects of making theatre and had a good table work session on Sunday, [...]

Hey there, blog readers. Jennifer here. Our most recent rehearsal took place without our director, the evil genius Martha “The Baroness” Mendenhall. A few weeks ago, Sian, Kara, Doreen, Kay and I gathered at our rehearsal space with the task of creating a group etude (our term for a repeatable sequence of physical actions) based [...]