Well this week we blocked 39 scenes with 14 actors, a combine, a car, and a severed head…
… assembled a team of five MSU film students to produce the video segments…
… and did a full walk through of the whole play.
Next week we actually get to move into the theatre.
We’ve scheduled the first TLC read tru for May 31 at 5:30. Most of the cast will be there. I’m still looking for a Woody. (If you’re 14 years old you may now giggle.)
So I had this wild inspiration to bring about a half-dozen dogs on leashes onto the catwalk during the coyote cult scene, have them backlit and barking their heads off.
But one of the producers (also my wife) said ‘no dogs.’
Probably smart. Don’t want any heart attacks.
The dog thing would’ve freaking rocked, though.
Talked to Tom Watson’s class at MSU today. Bunch of music tech guys. Recruiting them and their friends for music, sound design, video, etc. for the production this fall.
Sounds like a couple of them had bands and were gonna send me some mp3s.
The sound design is huge for this show (both as a hugely important design element and a HUGE amount of work.) I would LOVE to get a bunch of local music from campus and community for the soundtrack.
Auditions went well. Between the people we saw last night and the ones we’d already read, I think we’re going to have a cast.
And, as usual when I run my mouth, I end up regretting it.
I was wrong about the early auditions.
Having the show cast this early is going to help us get a jump on costumes, which is a big deal.
My favorite moment was when this one guy read for Stanley, the foul, profane, and perverse Hollywood producer. Trying to determine how comfortable he’d be with the S&M scene, I asked him, ‘What’s the strangest, most uncomfortable thing you’ve ever had to do on stage?‘
His response: ‘Well, once in Cincinnati I played a transvestite and made out with a dude.‘
Excellent.
Thanks to everyone who auditioned, and Colter and Cara, both of whom, as it turns out, read a mean Ed.
Michael Dobbs as Ed Caribou, Collaboraction Theatre Company, Chicago 2002. (Photo: Saverio Truglia)
Photos & images from various production of The Life and Times of Tulsa Lovechild around the country:
Auditions tonight for a couple of the roles in TLC not already pre-cast.
Why am I having auditions five months out from the production?
I’m not really sure but that’s what the producers want and, in an effort to protect my health and prolong my life, I’ve become a pick-my-battles kind of guy.
At least it’s just readings from the script. No monologues. Thankfully.
At one point in the early 90s I thought if I heard another monologue from Icarus’s Mother at an audition I might hurt myself.
There must be something about all of this that I like.
During the winter of ’96 I met KellyAnn Corcoran, who was the Artistic Director of Dolphinback Theatre Company, which had just had a big success with their multi-evening presentation of Joe Pintauro’s short-play cycle American Divine. I wrote an eclectic evening of songs and monologues called The Queen of Bakersfield & other tales of dust and moonlight and we produced it.
We had small audiences for that initial run of Queen, but got a really nice review from the Reader: ‘an evening of theatre that looms larger than life.’
We did a second production of Queen, with Russell Muth coming in from LA to direct. This production received a great review from the Trib and got invited to the Chicago Fringe Festival at the Organic in ‘97. We also recorded part of it for broadcast on WBEZ. Unfortunately, the run coincided w/Bulls vs. Jazz in the NBA Finals. Some performances were cancelled and I’d have to walk back to the train station past police in riot gear awaiting the inevitable calamity of another Chicago championship.
Based partly on the successful reception of The Queen of Bakersfield, the Dolphinback company decided to commission another play from me. I wrote them a proposal for this show I was working on at the time called The Life and Times of Tulsa Lovechild. We signed a contract. I finished a draft of the play. We did a reading. They didn’t like it and backed out of the deal.
For the next year and a half, I did readings of the play with friends, submitted it to various theatres around the country, and tried to get somebody in Chicago interested in it. The general response from bigger theatres (ATL in Louisville, Denver Center, etc.) was “nice play, too big.” The response from the various actors, directors, etc. who heard or participated in readings was “cool play, somebody should do it.”
But TLC was about to get the lift-off it needed from another rag-tag band of actors 2,000 miles away in Los Angeles.
Had the first production meeting today for TLC with Tom Watson and Joel Jahnke.
They run the space the space and the theatre program at Montana State University where Actors Theatre of Montana is producing the play in October.
Tom had some cool ideas about the set and we all brainstormed ways of involving as many students as possible.
Since it’s a combined film-theatre department, one of the things we’re going to try to do is expand the video/projection component of the show.
In the previous productions that element has been restricted to the opening sequence (which collaboraction did a great job with in chicago) and the scene title transitions (which i had to fight for in dallas).
We’re hoping we can get a crew of students to create a lot of the stage atmosphere with still and/or video imagery.
Perfect opportunity to explore that aspect of the production in greater detail.
The producers were insistent on doing a lot of pre-casting (quality local talent is available, if not abundant.)
As usual, I wasn’t crazy about being told what to do, but after I was done with the obligatory protest, I was more than pleased with and would’ve chosen everyone already cast.
But just to make it interesting I’ve got an actor coming in from LA to play Ed whom I’ve never met.
Sounds like a great guy and fine actor on all accounts so call it a small ‘x’ factor.
Now if I can just find a student to stage manage and somebody to pull or build about 30 costumes for little or no money, we might have ourselves a show.
Never met a limb I wouldn’t walk out on.
Greg Owens will direct his play The Life and Times of Tulsa Lovechild for the Actors Theatre of Montana in Bozeman, where the playwright and his family have lived for most of the last decade and which is also the hometown of the play’s title character.
