We are thrilled to be in cohoots with some talented designers for our piece: Mark Schuyler on lights, Jenny McNee on costumes, and JP Scheidler on set. Shannon Worrell is contributing original music and Josef Beery is designing original book props.  Ain’t we lucky??

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

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.

S.

Martha combined the performers’ individual chair etudes into one, putting them all on the floor together, with Kay as teacher and the others as students in their chairs.  This work continued throughout the weekend, with Martha introducing different dynamics and the performers working on their own material but sharing the space with the others and letting that information influence them. I do believe a scene is forming…

Doreen played on the swing but isn’t content with the rigging yet and her grip yet; Kay creeped us out wonderfully with her Big Bad Wolf/Mother material; Sian and Jennifer worked on combining Sian’s fan material with Jennifer’s striptease etude. I am finding us the right shoes.

The group did table work where we reviewed the structure of the piece and ideas for what text we are using where.

And finally, note to self: never send funny YouTube videos to Martha if you don’t want to see them in our play!  Martha had them choose and learn a few steps from the groovy Gwen Verdon number “Mexican Breakfast” and from the contortionist trio The Ross Sisters (“Solid Potato Salad”). Genius, is the group consensus.

-Kara

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 material created at this point in the process, we have no idea exactly how it will be used in the piece. (well, Martha might but she’s not telling).

The performers also worked on their individual etudes, exploring opposing dynamics suggested by Martha.(lower left photo)

See our Media page for video samples of this work.

Kara

All in all a good couple of days and a very interesting and educational experience. It is fascinating to navigate collaboration and communication with someone whose vocabulary is similar but just a bit different and we are looking forward to the rest of our work together with Katharine. We will be getting some Alexander schooling from her as well.

Sian

As it turned out, after warmup (Mao exercises, vocal, singing I Hunger & Thirst) we needed to hash out in a discussion which parts of the scene we all deemed essentially and necessary for our etude. We also had to figure out who would be playing which role and which roles could be cut out. Even though it took awhile, it was still pretty amazing how smoothly we worked out some sort of scheme to base our etude on. We decided that aside from Kay (who would play the Royall Tyler
role) the rest of us should play a character closest to the Peabody Sister we were already researching for Transcendental America, the working title of our performance. Sian is Sophia, Doreen is Mary, and I’m Elizabeth.