Guess What!?

The Tempest Project has made history at UNCA!!! Our respondants from KCACTF have invited us to the festival, which makes this the first show in TheatreUNCA history to ever receive such an honor!

The festival will take some time however, and when we return to the festival, the ensemble will be slightly modified. Some of our member will have graduated and moved on, but nonetheless, they will be invited back to be a part of the show.

So, The Tempest Project is not yet overwith. While it has taken a break, it will come back to life and taken on tour next year!

-Mark
Dramaturg

Our little life here has ended with a far off sleep.

Greetings Blog Readers!
Mark here to finalize our last blog! Our show just closed, and our final performance went extremely well. We had a moderately sized house, and after our show closed, our respondents from KCACTF (Kennedy Center for the American College Theatre Festival) gave us their thoughts and opinions on our show. In a brief summation, they loved it!

Our transition into the Diana Wortham Theatre went surprisingly smooth. Our rehearsal went a bit long, but we got out all of our kinks. The next day, (April 9th) we had our morning performance for local Middle School and High School Students. The show went well, but you know, something had to go wrong! During the time of our "talk back" where the students got to ask us as actors questions about the show, the fire alarm (once again) goes off. This time, we can say that it was not our fault! After we were all cleared, we went back into the theatre, gathered our things and returned to UNCA where we awaited our final performance later that night at Diana Wortham Theatre.

And so, this ends our adventure with Object Theatre, and The Tempest Project. This has been an amazing learning experience for us all, and we as an ensemble and crew will all take away something valuable from this production. We will soon hear back from KCACTF with their written responses in addition to a potential invitation to tour with the festival itself. If we are invited to attend the festival, it will be the first time in UNCA history that something like that has occurred!!!

So with that, I shall take my bow, draw the curtain and say goodnight to you all. I hope you've enjoyed following up on our progress as we moved through our production. I also hope you received the opportunity to see The Tempest Project in person and hope that it was a wonderful experience for you.

Good night Theatre goers! And may the lights and boards of the stage soon bring us together again!

Signing off,
Mark

Drawing a close...

Hello to all!

Our performances at UNCA in the Carol Belk Theatre have come to an end, and they have been great.  We had a strong opening, with a good audience.  As the  show ran through the week, our performances and audiences got even better! Today marked our official Strike.  (Strike is where the whole company joins together to take down the set, clean, and restore the space to the way is was when we found it.)  This leaves us with just two more performances.  A 10 AM performance in the Diana Wortham Theatre for local high school students, and a 7 PM performance for the public.  Then once again, our show will close and The Tempest Project will have officially closed.

Moving into the Dianah Wortham Theatre will be a challenge for us all.  The Diana Wortham Theatre is a much larger space, so the actors have to vocally adjust their voices to fill the space so that everyone can hear and understand what is being said.  Secondly, Diana Wortham Theatre is a proscenium space.  While we presented The Tempest Project in proscenium style in CBT, we will be performing in a true proscenium this Wednesday.  This is also a challenge to the actors who will have to adjust their blocking as well.

This concludes today's blog...If you haven't yet gotten a chance to see The Tempest Project, you have one more chance!  Wednesday at 7 in the Diana Wortham Theatre is your final chance to see The Tempest Project before we close!

Oh, What a Show You'll See!

Hey Everybody!

Mark here, once again to give you an update.  We just finished our second dress rehearsal, and the directors couldn't be happier with our progress.  They gave us fantastic notes on how the show is "gelling" and becoming one solid piece!  Today's dress rehearsal was a little interesting!  To begin with, our call time was at our regular 6:00 instead of 5:30.  This gives us an hour before the show actually starts.  It allows us as a cast to adjust to our window of time that we have to get in costume, make-up and set our props in time for the show.  It also allows last minute preparations and warm-up and just about anything you can do before a show opens.

So we started with our rehearsal, and things were going smoothly.  A few kinks here and there, but nothing that can't be fixed by doing things over. (Hey, what are rehearsals for anyway?)  We build the show all the way up to our big banquet scene.  Turns out some of our technicians got a little too trigger happy with their fog machines. Right in the midst of the scene, as you could probably guess, for the first time in my personal history of acting in Carol Belk Theatre, the fire alarm goes off.  Being the well trained students that we are, we instantly get up, exit the theatre and gather at our designated meeting spot.  We only later find out, that while this event was happening, one of our technicians takes a tumble down the steps, and one of our actors becomes sick on their stomach...and it's raining.  Seems to me like someone dropped the "M" word in the theatre, and I ain't talking about Magic either. (If you don't know Theatre tradition...well, look it up, because I can't bear to say it with it be so close to opening night!)  The Asheville Fire Dept arrives, silences our alarms, and we returned to our show, to finish up the last few pages of our script.  Reflecting upon this, I can say that we are ready for no matter what is thrown at us!  If you are coming to the show, I expect that you WON'T be disappointed!

See you soon!

-Mark

We're Ready...

For Tech Week!

Hello again blog readers! This week of rehearsals has been quite a productive one!  We've been doing straight run-thrus all this week, and then fixing our trouble spots.  Later as the week progressed, we went into what I think is one of the most exciting parts of the process- Dress Parade.  There are now links on our website of Dress Parade.  If you're not familiar with what dress parade is, it's where all the actors get in the costumes that have been made for them and they stand under the lights.  This is exciting because we get to see another part of the production come to life.  Directors and designers take notes and will make changes to the costumes as well.

Beginning next week, we move into Tech Week, which is a process of culmination where we bring all aspects of the production- set, lights, costumes, sound, actors, make-up, and even masks into the production.  In other words, its a chance to adjust and work out the kinks before the show opens.  Tech week also allows us to smooth over and bring the whole production to a nice high-gloss polish.  And believe me, what a SHINY production we'll have! Our actors are ready, and things are still coming together beautifully.  Hopefully, you'll join us one night when the show is up and running!

Until then,

Mark

Falling into place...

Hello to all out there! Mark here. I'm writing to fill you in on some exciting news! With a week before "Tech Week" our show is definately coming together. We had our first rehearsal yesterday with our set in place, and we were all using our rehearsal props. I know it dosent sound like much, but this is a giant leap in our progress! With our set in place, and using rehearsal props, the actors are able to become adjusted to the setting, costume pieces, and props too!

Also, keep a look out on our Website! Updates and pictures will be coming in soon!

See you soon! Because we'll be opening!
-Mark

Its coming together!

Greetings again blog readers!  Mark here.  Just here to check in with you all and report that our show is coming together!  We are down to run-thrus in the rehearsal process, with the "oh so dreaded" Tech week fast approaching!  The show opens April 3rd at Carol Belk Theatre.  So, as you can imagine, this is getting to be a exciting and stressful time for all actors, designers, and our directors!  To document our process, I've created a photo album on Photobucket.  It will be posted on our website later.

Keep checking up on us!  As things are falling into place, you should expect to see a lot more activity coming to The Tempest Project!

See you soon!

-Mark

Progress, Progress, Progress!

Hey blog readers! Mark here, your friendly Dramaturg, (and not so friendly) Sebastian here to report what's going on. And here it is...We're taking a break! Yes! Spring break is here for us at UNCA, so the cast is taking a break. But this Monday and for the rest of the week, we hit the ground running, because we'll be having rehearsals every night!

Last week, we were able to do a whole run-thru of the show, and it took us a little over an hour, (an hour and seven minutes, to be exact!). I think that's pretty good! But for now, we're going to enjoy the rest of our breaks, take it easy, and get some rest. When rehearsals resume, we are to be off book! That means memorizing it all!

See you soon!
-Mark

Pictures!

I know you have all been anxiously awaiting the video clips of our rehearsal process, but there's a bit of a hold up. In the meantime, enjoy the photos below as well as our new website!! We were given webspace on the UNCA server and you can now visit us at www.unca.edu/drama/tempest. See you there!


The first draft version of Prospero's robe!!

They're a bit blurry, but you can really feel the power in Prospero in this scene. Also, he will be 6 feet off the ground when the set is completed. He already looks so imposing!

We have a concept, and we know how to use it!

Part of our concept for this show focuses around the idea that all the action of the play is a game of strategy in which the other characters are manipulated by Prospero. To this end, the concept calls for each character to appear as a game piece on a large, circular Byzantine-style chess board. The board will be laid out on stage using sheets of luan (or maybe masonite) cute to shape. These pieces will be manipulated and placed on stage by ensemble members in a stylized way.

We've played in rehearsal before with how these set pieces will be placed on stage, practicing alternately with sheets of paper and folding chairs to get a feel for the movement. Today, we received two prototypes from our scene designer and set construction crew. They look great! They even spiked out the placement and dimensions of the chess board so we can get a feel for the size and shape. We're so excited!!

Greetings!

Hello Blog readers!

This is Mark, and I am one of the two resident dramaturgs as well as actor for The Tempest Project. As our friendly AD Kim put it, we are well underway into rehearsals. The process so far has been a unique experience from any other production I have been involved in. Very soon, you'll see some of our rehearsal process on Youtube, but for now we ask your patience. Also, keep our wiki page in mind. It will be updated soon as well.

Thanks!
-Mark

A peek at what's to come...

Hello all!

it's your friendly neighborhood AD signing on to tell you what's coming up for you here on our blog. As soon as I get the software to upload video, you'll get clips of the rehearsal process so you can follow along with us as we create monumental scenes with movement, people, sound, puppets and object theater. You'll also get to see stills of our rehearsals take by both myself and our two Dramaturgs, Mark (also playing Sebastian) and Shawna. In addition, you will read blog posts written by other company members in addition to myself.

If you'd like more information, check out our wiki: http://tempestproject.pbwiki.com

or our YouTube channel: search for theTempestProject

We'll see you soon!
--Kim

What is this story?

Hello, World!

We are entering week 3 of rehearsals on the world-premier, completely original production The Tempest Project presented by TheatreUNCA. This production will combine Shakespeare's original text of The Tempest with text from W. H. Auden's The Sea and the Mirror and incorporate object theatre, movement and storytelling into a dynamic show that will tour Western North Carolina in April.

There will be lots more information to come: renderings, photos, video, sound clips and more!

Signing off,
Kim
Assistant Director, The Tempest Project