The BlogPot

if a play happens in the forest

June 3rd, 2006 by StoneSoup

As of this posting, our production of Penetralia has closed and opened. I won’t say that it’s come and gone, but this incarnation of the play is done.

After every show closes, I experience a sense of melancholy. Some shows create a sharper feeling than others. I don’t think I’m alone in Stone Soup in feeling this way, and I think other companies and theatre-people feel the same thing to some degree.

For me, my sadness is usually caused by those who didn’t see the show - those select few (or masses in some cases) that didn’t spend an evening at the theatre seeing my play. I used to take this very personally. In high school it might have been all about the person I had a crush on not seeing my performance. In college, it was about my roommates missing my stage management debut. Sure, I still want all of my friends to support me, not just because I think they should want to see what I’ve spent my time on for the past 4-6 months, but I usually think I’ve helped create something worthwhile and enjoyable that is a relatively inexpensive way to spend a night.
But when you are really “producing” it can’t all be about your friends and family. Often our personal contacts are the only way we fill our seats and this then extends to friends of friends of friends if we are lucky. But it’s not enough any more to do a play for people we know. Especially since Stone Soup is creating plays on specific issues, we are always attempting to reach an audience that will learn something.

What am I really trying to say here? I want lots and lots of people to see our plays. This is not just because we need the money. It is because I love our plays and I want people to see them. It is because theatre needs an audience.
I mean, really, if a play happens in the forest, and no one is there to see it, does it make a sound?
Valparaiso, our first production this season, was not allowed to be reviewed. We were lucky we got the rights at all, but we were not allowed to advertise or to have any press come see the show. There were days in the not-to-distant past that this would not have been a problem in the least. We didn’t know how to get reviewed and to this date we have about 6 reviews that have been put into the cyber world. But Valparaiso was SO GOOD. Sure, oodles of people were at the theatre by the closing weekend. A vast majority of these oodles really liked the play. We managed to get a few people who were not part of the friends and family realm into the theatre from our street theatre shenanigans and having Mr. Don DeLillo’s name attached to the work. And these people seemed to like it too. One of these DeLilloheads wrote me an email complimenting the production as better than the 3 other versions of the play that she had seen.

But, who cares?

Really, what good is it ever going to do this company in terms of getting an audience that one woman wrote me a nice email? We aren’t going to do another DeLillo play, so she probably won’t come back with her friends. I can’t plaster her quote on future press materials because it was just an email, not a published comment in any way. It’s just not fair that one person’s opinion can mean absolutely nothin in the grand scheme of things. And then there are the people’s opinions who mean much more than that.

Oh, reviewers. How you torture me. Why do you not see our plays? Why must your comments, when you do see our plays, be so subjective and alternately congratulatory and insulting? Why does your opinion matter to our actors, our audience, and even to me, the producer? If only we had oodles of reviewers, we would have our choice of who to believe and who not to. We would not have to take that one review as the final word on our production. Some reviewers might agree with our co-workers and parents when they say our production is fabulous. And those would be the quotes to hold on to. To plaster wherever we would like. We might even find a way to more adult about the criticism and take it to heart for our next production. That could be really useful.

But, alas, as with most things worth fixing in the world of Stone Soup problems, this issue could be solved with money. If we only had $1000-2000 to spare, we could hire a magical person who would know how to woo the reviewers, the interviewers, the feature writers. This magical person would spend time calling the right people, writing a polished press release, telling us which photos to take. We would not waste our time floundering, wondering why our material is not marketable enough. It is marketable, dammit. It is enjoyable and I don’t think that is in our heads. We need this magical person, brought to use by magical money and this person is called a press agent. They will hold a microphone up to our play in the forest, and the people will flock to our theatre, and they will enjoy our play, and they will tell their friends and our plays will be seen and make money and be appreciated.
This is all in my dreams. And I’ve mixed my metaphors terribly because I’m so very passionately confused by this subject. But I am going to make this dream a reality for the next show. No more melancholy. No more missed opportunities. We will have press and they will like us. So there.

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should we change careers?

May 7th, 2006 by StoneSoup

Sometimes, we surprise ourselves. Generally, we know what to expect from ourselves - we are honest about our limitations. Of course we love presenting ourselves with a challenge, just so we can really see what we’re capable of.

The month of April saw one big challenge of that kind - The First Annual Barking Beauty Pageant.
The wha? It’s a pageant for dogs. Plain and simple.

Though it wasn’t very plain at all and it certainly wasn’t simple.
It’s hard to say exactly how this idea came to fruition, but if you have met Leslie, you won’t be that surprised. With a background in pageants and an ongoing obsession with dogs, this was an obvious next step. And if it could be a fundraiser for the company, why not? We’ve always enjoyed organizing quirky events, and this seemed even better to us, since it was a whole new demographic. We would not have to beg friends to come to this one. We hardly know anyone with dogs anyway.

And wow, do these dog people get into it or what? Send one email to a meet-up group, and the next thing you know you have 5 chihuahuas in the competition, all of which are already friends.
The companies that cater to these canines are just as enthusiastic. They were over-eager to give us free stuff, send out emails to their lists, link us on their websites, let us leave postcards in their stores.

Somehow we managed to score the Soho Grand Hotel to host the event. And just when we had designed and printed all the marketing materials, we realized we weren’t as lucky as we thought. Or maybe we were more lucky, depending on your point of view. The event was moved to the Tribeca Grand Hotel - just a few blocks away, into a bigger room, for just a bit more money.

So there we were on a rainy Sunday in April, in a room packed full of dogs, dog owners, dog admirers, and dog industry professionals. We constantly looked at each other in disbelief as each pooch pranced down the runway, either in an activewear outfit, a glamourwear ensemble, or sporting an impressive (or unimpressive) talent. Dozens of cameras flashed as each dog was paraded. Everyone hooted and hollered and the winning dog’s owner almost cried with excitement.
Mr. Eli, the 4.8lb chihuahua was this year’s champion - and his saddle shoes, his angel wings, and his squeaky-bear-finding trick all contributed to the well-deserved victory.
We already have people lining up to help, donate or enter in next year’s competition.

While we are so confident of our event planning and executing skills, and the level of professionalism this event showed, we can’t help but wonder - do people love dogs more than plays? It seems the obvious answer is yes. So why do we put ourselves through the grief for something you can’t take home and cuddle with at the end of the night? Why do we stay up late and spend our own money and sometimes cry over something as vague as art when there are cute little things you can dress up and parade around Tribeca?

I think it has something to do with the fact that we still believe a play can change the world in some little way. Sure, one dog raised $44 for the AidsWalk during her talent competition, but that is not the norm for dog behaviour. I’d like to think that any play that tries can successfully change an audience’s perception of themselves or their voting habits or their shopping habits. I’d be happy if we could keep making the dog community feel pampered and loved so we can increase awareness about our little theatre company. But I don’t think it’s a total victory until one of those dog owners leaves the puppy at home one night and make their way over to the theatre.

Posted in General, Fundraising, Theatre, inside scoop | No Comments »

cyber party re-cap

March 31st, 2006 by StoneSoup

In a fit of productivity, and the attempt to have more than one post per month on this blog, I thought I could write about our most recent fundraiser, a St. Patrick’s Day event in Williamsburg.Something I have always liked doing after parties is de-briefing, recapping, reminiscing, as it were. Now that obligations often get in the way of the day-after brunch we used to relish in Astoria, I am left hoping the cyber world will be interested in the re-cap.

I have to first off compliment Ms. Marsha for her creativity and leadership in the event. The girl said with confidence that this party would be a success, and she made it happen. We’re talking $1700 made it happen. She led an awesome committee to securing over a dozen cases of free beer, four talented and entertaining musical acts, (plus one self-serving, not so talented act), a friendly and clean venue, and enough free stuff to fill twenty gift bags.

I really think this event started a new chapter in the history of Stone Soup parties. Yes, there were still jello shots, which we all know and love, but we upped the admission price, included live entertainment, and offered fancy prizes. We didn’t pander to our college crowd, but hosted an event tailored to the demographic we want to reach.

Of course we forgot to get people to leave their email addresses with us. It’s regretful, but I think most people were friends of Stone Soup actors and writers so we can find them again. And of course we were too drunk to keep track of our borrowed sound equipment properly, leading to a confusing week culminating in Nadine’s stressful search for XLR cable. But who said we are perfect? Scientific Tan(gent) certainly flaunted the imperfection Stone Soup has to offer.

So I guess there are a few funny stories to share. Marsha and Teresa DID have to enter a strip club to get some of our donated beer. Nat asked his pet store for a gift bag donation (like a squeeky toy or something) and walked out with a $150 check. And there was a transvestite at the party that no one quite knew.

We are already looking forward to heading back to “The Loft” where the party took place and using their roof space for our summer favorite - Bingo-Picnic-Keg. But up next, we are really taking our fundraising to a whole new level. Look out posh NYC dog owners! Stone Soup is hosting a beauty pageant just for your pet! At the Soho Grand! Who have we become? Will we be classy enough for a whole afternoon at such a swank hotel with celebrity judges? We can fake it, I think. We’re theatre people!

Posted in General, Fundraising, Shameless Plugs, inside scoop | No Comments »

penetrating our naming process

March 28th, 2006 by StoneSoup

A whole month has gone by without a post on this blog, which we promised would be updated regularly. And yet another blog post begins with an apology about not posting. Oh well.

In that past month, we’ve managed to complete a draft of the play, have a fundraiser to help mount the play and even come up with a name for the play.

Naming a play is always a difficult task. A task that often leads us down dangerous, cliche and uninteresing paths. When naming our first play, it was the director’s mom, who in an AIM chat room, finally chose “The Seventh Song.” Luckily, the past four years have erased from my memory all the other terrible ideas we tossed around, but I bet they were as obvious as they were depressing. So this worked, there were seven characters and a song in the play and the seventh character never had his song sung. Deep and mysterious, right? The audience might have been left to reflect a bit on the title after the show.

The next year, our original play ended up being called “Breathe Free,” taken from the quote on the Statue of Liberty. Again, we have to credit Mrs. Blouin, the director’s mom. We liked her idea immediately, but couldn’t quite agree on the right way to splice the phrase. We tried “yearning to breathe free” “to breathe free” probably even “yearning to breathe.” Luckily we settled on something simple. Something that you could interpret however you would want.

Our third play, about labor in the 1930s and 40s was near impossible to title. Nadine and I were on the phone constantly, trying to come up with ANYTHING, just weeks before we opened. Just days before we had to tell the title to our postcard designer. We even looked for Mrs. Blouin online in vain. Realizing we had gone the route of historic quotes the year before, we began to spout off any random phrase we could to each other. Finally, while at the bank, I blurted out one of the most random lines from the show “Just the Front” and it stuck! It wasn’t going to be one of those forehead in hand moments during the play when people realized what the title meant. In fact, we didn’t think anyone would notice when a one-scene-only character said the title. But it did answer to the themes we were looking at - the different sides of an issue and how often our work shows just the facade of who we are. It got people curious when we mentioned it. Needless to say, I like this name alot.

Last year, we barely had a script right before opening, let alone a title. Again, we were desperate. We were saying lines from the show back and forth to each other and finally Marsha suggested something she thought wouldn’t work: “Where You Now Shall Go.” We liked it. It was vague. It was poetic. It was about a journey. All of which were like the show! And it was said early enough in the play that we didn’t expect people to be totally in awe when the meaning was revealed. It was straightforward, said to the cast and audience within the first 5 minutes after the house lights went down.

Now for this show, we set the deadlines early. We can’t procrastinate on something we know will be a battle no matter when we do it. For a month or two, we referred to the show as “The Secret Society” and occasionally just “The Secret.” But the more we wrote, the less that was the point that we wanted to get across. We didn’t want the audience to focus on the secret or the society once we saw the show. It felt a little too early to name the show after a line in the play, since we were still majorly in the editing process and might cut that line at any time. We opened the discussion up to the writers and cast. We all went for the obvious choices. We tried to name the town in which our play takes place, thinking the name of the town might be the name of the play. “Privacyville”? “Secret Falls”? God no! With a little help of the internet (namely dictionary.com and it’s thesaurus), I stumbled upon a very intriguing word. Eric had used the word in Valparaiso so it wasn’t completely foreign. The word’s meaning was nothing like what it sounded. Co-workers raised an eyebrow when I mentioned it to them. The mass email response was not warm at first, but with a little coaxing, I managed to convince a majority of the group that my idea was the best idea. I don’t have many great ideas, let alone ideas that I get defensive over.

So now our play is called “Penetralia,” which rhymes with genitalia, and has nothing to do with that. It is derived from penetrate, but is not sexual in the least. It means:

The innermost parts of a building, especially the sanctuary of a temple.
The most private or secret parts; recesses: the penetralia of the soul

We want the location of our play to be the penetralia for the characters. We want the audience to see the penetralia of those characters’ minds. We want people to be a little bit scared of what’s going on in their own penetralia’s. Mostly, we want people to hear the word and be intrigued enough to buy a ticket to play. Do you think it will work?

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on international travel

February 23rd, 2006 by StoneSoup

Half of our Writing Team (as well as this show’s producer and director) just returned from Amsterdam. Since 2002, when 7 Stone Soupers trekked to China to fuel our research for The Seventh Song, we had been itching to take another international excursion in the name of creating theatre.

One late summer evening, before rehearsals began for Valparaiso, we were talking about what would be the most fitting place to visit for a season about Privacy. What location embraces those things that we in New York City in 2006 make taboo? Short of a nudist colony, Amsterdam seemed to be the best match we could think of.

Sex and drugs are the first things that come to mind when thinking of the discrepancies between the acceptable culture in Amsterdam and NYC. (And maybe that’s why so many of the creative team’s loved ones joined in on the trip, bringing the total Amsterdam contigency up to 12 Americans and 1 Dutch friend who traveled from further south in The Netherlands to join us.)

But is behavior all that different in these two metropolises? In the East Village, people smoke joints walking down the street all the time, just like in Amsterdam. Businessmen and tourists can find a prostitute in either town. But in Amsterdam, no one is going to arrest you for such putting your vices out there in public. Instead of sitting in your car, cruising somewhere near the Westside Highway looking for sex, you can take a leisurely stroll through the Red Light District, smiling back at women behind glass.

It’s not that New Yorkers think no one is taking mushrooms or paying for sex, it’s just that the average person doesn’t want to be out in the open with it. We live in fear (or maybe just our government does) that if we OKed rolling a joint on a break, that everyone would do it. Would this lead to less productive workdays? People falling asleep with bags of cheetos at their cubicles? A whole society of dreadlocked, bongo-playing investment bankers?

It just might be the case that whatever is acceptable becomes the norm. Once we approve something (like taking money for sex), it will be less taboo. It’s legitimate. It’s safe. If we could monitor who was growing and selling weed, if we could require prostitutes to be tested, maybe we’d be safer than we are now.

But instead, we live in a place where people pee on the streets, and get ticketed for it. While in Amsterdam, they set up plastic outdoor urinals on streetcorners. It’s as if saying “We know you drank too much, that’s ok. We know you have to pee, and you don’t have anywhere to do it, that’s ok too. Let’s supply you with a simple tool to make it possible.” No one is ashamed to be peeing. Or to be peeing on the street in front of strangers. We were all thinking about doing it, and now it’s been made possible.

Ok, so maybe our European adventure isn’t exactly going to make it into our next play. (Besides, Red Light Winter is playing downtown, and it seems to have a pretty good handle on addressing what happens when you have sex with a prostitute in Amsterdam.) But I think we realized that secret-keeping isn’t always neccessary. If we were allowed to be open about when we have to pee or get high or get laid, maybe we’d be open with each other about more important things we currently keep to ourselves. Maybe if our government allowed us to be honest about our needs, we wouldn’t be so offended that they wanted in on our phone calls. Maybe it’s healthy for people to share with each other those things we in New York City in 2006 think we can’t.

That’s kind of where our play is going. What happens when we open up to each other? What do we honestly want to keep private? Do we admit something to ourselves when we are more honest with others? Maybe the way we keep secrets isn’t a good thing. Maybe we’ve taken our right to privacy a bit too far.

Posted in General, Politics, inside scoop | No Comments »

and it turned into a bathroom blitz…bathroom blitz…

February 1st, 2006 by nadine

In a recent Savage Love, a tech savvy and sexually self-aware gal wrote in to find out the ethical implications of putting recording devices in men’s bathrooms… because she gets off on listening to men shit. If he disapproved of her enjoying farts through her Bose system, she’d hand off all of her equipment to her grossed out husband.

This girl knows what she likes! Regardless of the shitter’s feelings. And sure, they didn’t know who would be hunched over in headphones while they strained out their last chai, thus, it didn’t hurt them. Right? No?

What belongs to us anymore? All we really get is (hopefully) brains and bodies, but, bizarrely and often publicy, it becomes somebody else’s. Our vaginas aren’t ours, as of January 31st. They belong to the Supreme Court. Penises either, although they are a wonderful management tool. All of Terri Schiavo’s body, history, and sad story became a weapon for the right and left.

But this is double edged, right? For all the outrages, should we ever hand off responsibility for our bodies, in case we can’t control them ourselves? Do the dulcet notes of a fart, bouncing off porcelain public bathroom walls and into the appreicative ears of a fetishist really belong to the guy who made them, once expelled?

Speaking of penises, in Medina, Ohio, Sean Talty was forbidden by law to procreate. Outrageous! Civil rights infringment! No sex in the champagne room! But Sean was also the father of seven children, by five women and owed $38,000 in child support. So was it appropriate for the state of Ohio to sign the lease on his dick? I kind of think so. I also think it’s sad and gross and funny. Maybe if he wasn’t responsible enough for it, he didn’t deserve it. But then what about the woman, however stupid, who has sex with him, risking having a child and sending a man to prison? Whose business should her decision be? Do we really own our bodies, and do we really deserve them?

The federal government is authorized to examine your personal health under the Health Insurance Portability and Accounting Act of 1996 (HIPAA), often without a warrant or any real notice given to the patient. Doctors and labs must report to the Health Department the names of persons with HIV infection, HIV illness and AIDS, and report the names of sex and needle– sharing partners of people who test HIV+. Scary. Then note this- it’s voluntary to disclose the names of your partners to your doctor. We have to give it to the government , but when it comes to people we fuck, it’s “Eh, whatever you want”. Doesn’t a person who has been unknowingly exposed to HIV deserve to know? What about them? Or, was it their own behavior that led to the possibility of contracting it, and thus, maybe should have made more responsible choices about what they did with their body?

Savage told the girl to give up her shit recording devices. The guys who used that bathroom had their privacy violated, because they didn’t know they were being recorded. There are so many contigencies and threats and consequences about what we do with our bodies, and it’s something that needs to be explored in our own choices, as well as the way we look at our government’s.

Listening to people shit sounds pretty gross.

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I’m the funky blog frog- hippety hop!

January 30th, 2006 by stephenie

Does this make me an official blogger? Can I call myself that? Because then I would be super hip.

So it’s official, my friend Craig sent me a link today about Chicago police busting a group of taggers by monitoring their myspace accounts. And we all thought online journals were private!!! Please.

But I think this hits on something- bragging rights. Showing off for attention, and peer approval, for lifestyle affirmation, isn’t that what all this blogging and posting and cyperchat is all about? I mean, who’s gonna give you kudos in your real life, your mom?

Popularity, celebrity, reality TV, it’s apparently one of our universal instincts to attract attention, to seek peer approval. This of course, is in direct conflict with our other universal instinct to keep things private. Well well well, perhaps it’s just the good, the bad, and the ugly.

What’s it all about? Social influence. We want the liberal world to see how cool we are, we want the conservative world to see how innocent we are, and we don’t want anyone to see how dirty we are. The problem is, we all want the same treatment, but we’re extremely judgemental and suspicious of everyone else. Could it be, perhaps, because we know that, “shit, if I’m embellishing and editing and hiding, depending on who’s paying attention, then everyone else probably is too!”

I love those people who argue, “well if you don’t have anything to hide, then you have nothing to be afraid of.” Hello! We’re human beings, we all have something to hide, depending on who’s looking. We’ve all done something “wrong” at some point in our lives, depending on who’s judging, and we all have our private moments that aren’t wrong, but that we just don’t want to share with anyone else. These things are ours, they are special, precious, belonging only to us. Our privacy allows us to know ourselves better than anyone else, giving us our identity.

And then there’s those things we’re proud of, our bodies, our sexuality, our singing voices (for all you American Idol participants), our tags, our partying; but how much of all this infringes on everyone else? When does it become a matter of invading someone elses privacy? Well, tagging, duh, no one over 30 wants to see that, and taggers should know better by now not to get caught. TV shows, well, you can always change the channel. Online chatting, blogging, hooking up? That all depends on who or what you’re talking about or to, and who finds out about it. But let’s all get with it, you enter at your own risk. By going online, you’re virtually signing an imaginary release form that allows the world to use and abuse you however they like. And some of us like that!

I think maybe the only real violation of privacy we’re all really concerned about, is the whole picture. We just don’t want EVERYONE to know EVERYTHING! We need to have control over what we expose. This control is our peace of mind. We deserve to lose the right to that control when we violate others (ie wife beaters, child abusers, etc). But as the times change so quickly, as technology and biological advancements hurdle society light years into the future, what can we do to protect our right to control our own exposure?

The people of Iceland are grappling with this right now. If the government asked you if it could post your genetic history online for medical research, would you say yes? The people of China don’t even get a vote, they’re ability to google in peace is gone. Cloning and DNA-altered babies and fingerprint identification are all possible future scenarios.

Looking at this biologically, in order to evolve we must adapt, in order to adapt we must be diverse, in order to be diverse we must be free, in order to be free we must have privacy (freedom from influence of others, control over exposure). In order for the human race to survive we really need to figure this out! Well, that and global warming.

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sex, and the sitting, and posting, and waiting game

January 26th, 2006 by josh

recently, stone soup embarked on a new way in which to create our second season production; in which we create an original work based on a central theme to the overall season, one that follows an already published and produced play. we decided that instead of workshops, where the actors come up with characters/situations and write vignettes that are pieced together through improv and later writing, we would collectively write a play through a few meetings and then divide up into smaller groups to focus on specific themes/ideas, then come back together and give all this research, writing and creation to a team of writers who will write a more “standard” type of play.

privacy.

sex.

porn.

history.

here are some initial thoughts on the subject from the point of view of a gay stone souper.

The shame and fear of reprisal and/or exploitation that can be common for women, people of color and LGBTQ people to feel as it relates to their sexuality and appetites is closely related to the way in which those people are viewed by the majority or mainstream. I don’t know how many times I have been exposed to my own hang ups of being “found out” on thinking certain thoughts, perusing items-books-images-situations, and thought to myself - if anyone found out they would be grossed/freaked-out. It’s probably the most common form of shame related to a person’s privacy/private life and actions, because it seems to me to be central to identity in our “day and age.”

There is no issue more polarizing, it would seem, than an individual’s sexuality and the way in which they express their sexuals wants and desires. What people do in their beds today, or for sexual pleasure, has become one of the most obvious and superficial forms of identity and “classicfication” of people into societal subsets. That is, of course, it can be much easier to understand “something” or “someone” if it/they is/are compared or separated or grouped as according to other things. I digress.

The relation of shame with/to cultural taboos formed and purported by the straight-white-educated-male dogma. As most of us in Stone Soup are on the outside looking in on that phenomena, it can sometimes be hard for us to relate, and easy for us to judge or feel left out, singled-out or overlooked.

Relating sex to shame and shame to sex and privacy, I can give a little bit of perspective to the internet-based dating scene that has grown wildly popular in the last couple of years in particular in large, metropolitan areas (and to some extent, more rural populated areas of the country) where young - and older - men alike are finding one another in “men seeking men” message board areas and leaving their personal information and even photographs in hopes to arrange for a date or a sexual fling - for lack of a better euphemism…in light of this, and since we are breaking thru ideas of privacy and secrecy, i can tell you that, speaking from personal experience, it can be very liberating to do this sort of thing. Granted, i have only ever done it once - but there was this feeling of adventure and excitement that it can give someone; that you are doing something so extremely personal by means of an entirely public method - i.e. a public message board that can be read by literally anyone in the world (with internet-access.) I am not defending it, there are have been people who have negative, and even harmful experiences through this type of internet-sex-use.

Simple. LGBTQ people have been overlooked, singled out, harassed, excluded, and otherwise been marginalized in our society. We can take part in the mainstream discourse so long as we keep it “in our bedrooms” and “in the closet.” Even today, and even in large, cosmopolitan places like New York, gay people continue to fight for the right to express their love, their emotions and desire for one another the same way that heterosexual people do - out loud and in public.

We continue to keep our sex and private sexual activities out of view, and over the past few decades I have seen the following trends… In the 70’s there were bathhouses, in the 80’s there were clubs and Central Park-Rambles, the means by which gay people keep their sex anonymous and private change with the times and circumstances. Today we have internet message boards and chat sites that seem to have one function, hook up with the closest, hottest, horniest person imaginable.

And who can blame us really, it’s just so damn easy to sit at home in your bed and post a pic on a message board, get about thirty responses with corresponding photos; pick the cutest and closest person and arrange to meet, and hook-up. Get off. We think that it is private, but it can be viewed by anyone; we think that we are anonymous, but we can be tracked-down.

JT

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letting go

January 26th, 2006 by StoneSoup

One of the main challenges of starting your own theatre company is having to do everything. It’s hard to say whether or not this is harder than letting other people start doing the things you used to do all by yourself.

I guess since the company started when most of us were in college - or held day jobs with very little responsibility, or did odd jobs while we tried to figure out to do with our lives - it was much easier to find the time to do everything. Like costume shopping on a Wednesday morning. Or lounging on a sidewalk for a street theatre project during corporate lunch hour. Or sitting in the park for a “production meeting” on a summer evening. But as we get older, or bills get more independent from our parents, we have to spend more time behind desks and computers. Working for something other than Stone Soup.

This makes it all the more exciting when Stone Soupers step up to the plate and decide they want to do something concrete to make the next show happen and to keep the company running.

No longer is Leigh slaving away in front of the most pathetic web-update software, struggling to post a picture or a cast list. Ah, the good fortune of dating someone in web design and having a Stone Souper (shout out to Nat) who worked diligently during his weekends and office time to develop a simple back-end way to update with a few clicks. But it’s really Nat’s go-getter attitude that made this whole web thing better than imagined - finding cheap web hosting, researching blog software, creating a mass email list and much more that might not be evident to the casual stonesoupkitchen viewer.
No longer is Nadine hastily sending out solicitation letters all by her lonesome for the next fundraiser. How lucky are we to have Marsha who works at a very important and successful non-profit. She could single-handedly organize any event. But now she doesn’t have to be single-handed. She has many hands. Like two dozen, in fact, who are all meeting this evening to plan a sure-to-be-successful spring event.

No longer must Leigh be the one to be at every rehearsal, just to tell actors where to go or what to say. How lucky to find someone who is actually INTERESTED in organizing and problem solving and technical things like lights and cables and ducts. Wow, this is Nat’s 2nd shoutout in one blog entry! Intense! Welcome to the production staff, buddy. All the work and so very little of the glory. If anyone will do it sans complaints, it’s you.
These are just a few examples of how people are starting to take initiative with Stone Soup nowadays. I haven’t even gotten into all the volunteer hours (140 and counting) that these people have done to knock money off our theatre rent. Or how willing everyone was to give up either acting in or writing the next show, in the name of productivity and sanity. Or how one day, one day very very soon, other Stone Soupers will be posting on this here blog. In the name of posting diversity and abundance! I eagerly await someone else’s babble.

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and after another long delay

January 18th, 2006 by StoneSoup

Whoever said theatre people are a bunch of no-good, lazy, unfocused losers probably was monitoring how good we’ve been about posting on our blogspot blog. Sorry, but we get busy rehearsing/producing and then recovering from the whirlwind 3 months of ignoring our laundry and our significant others while trying to put on a play. Thank God we only do this twice a year.
But now, thanks to the technical skills of everyone’s favorite guy that knows everything (that’s you Nat!) we have a blog ON our own website. If this isn’t the coolest, most exciting way to blend relatively unprofessional chatter with our regular self-promoting web presence, I don’t know what is.

We’re hoping this blog will gain some focus and a whole team of writers with the new set-up. Check back regularly for everything from political/theatrical/politically-theatrical musings, to fundraising trials and tribulations, to behind-the-scenes rehearsal updates.

Just a brief update on what’s planned for now until Memorial Day:

We’re creating our own show about Privacy.
Instead of the usual bust-every-actor’s-butt style of collaboration, we’re dividing up into a Writing Team and an Acting Team. These teams will do exactly what the names suggest: Write the play and then Act in said play. (And it will be so intense that it deserves capital letters). This play will take place at the Actors Theatre Workshop, the lovely clean and cushioned theatre in which Valparaiso took place.

We’re fundraising like five grand.
What else is new? We need tons of cash that we don’t have. Look out for a surprise gift box party and a puppy beauty pageant. No joke. There will also hopefully be a boardgame night and maybe some other low-key events when cash runs low. Do you have money-making schemes or rich friends? Send them our way (or better yet, to the donation link on this page)

That’s all for now. Feel free to peruse the archives as we struggle to fill this blog with new and relevant content.