Before the sun comes up to ruin my sleep, here’s a short status update:
After loading in to the theater, our technical director-lighting-and-sound-designer Iain weighs in on where things stand after midnight.
Set and props are in.
It’s always so exciting when the physical space starts to take shape. For the writer, it’s especially moving because you feel all these visual artists responding to the emotional core of the story that sprang from your imagination.
On Sunday afternoons after the show we invite you to stick around & “Talk it Out”
There’s so much stirred up by the story at the heart of this show. It feels important to offer audiences an opportunity to process their feelings. And that’s what we’ll be doing after our Sunday afternoon shows on September 10 and 17. We’ve got a stellar lineup of thoughtful, soulful humans to be our guides.
Helen has a book cover
We are in tech week. Sets, costumes, sound cues and, yes, props are all coming together.
And as of today we have that book jacket design.
Love Letter to the Guardians of the Text
There’s a special relationship between every script writer and the person on set whose job is ‘guardian of the text.’
“Did I write that?” Great actors can make me forget.
It’s also a little shocking to me. I’m sure, because this will be the first in-person production of my work since the pandemic.
We have built it. Will you come?
We are currently hard at work on a Kickstarter campaign to fund our production of What We Get to Keep by Roland Tec at The Hill Arts in Portland, Maine. I have the lucky job of interviewing our actors, Lisa Stathoplos, Lisa Barnes and Gregg Trzsaskowski, talking to our co-producer, Deirdre Nice, Executive and Artistic Director at the Hill Arts and being in a perpetual conversation with the master himself, Roland Tec, to generate our video for the campaign.
Twenty Years Ago, a Roland Tec Play Gave Me One of the Most Terrifying and Thrilling Two Weeks of My Career
The most terrifying moment of my career was hands-down the two weeks in November of 2002 that I spent rehearsing as a last-minute replacement for the lead in Roland Tec’s wonderful play Bodily Function (formerly titled: Rapt). My character, Suzanne Goodman, VP of HR for Global Com, had lines of dialogue on every single page of the script.
Two weeks to learn it.. not to mention inhabit and understand it! I was not an ingenue with a photographic memory and was in a constant state of flight or fight.
It’s a Keeper
Simply put, Roland’s play, What We Get to Keep is my kind of play. I fell in love with his sharp script immediately and passionately - juicy subtext, taut characters, text dripping with humanity, and a finely tuned arc for each character and for the play. Images floated off the page and into my head and heart. I could visualize the whole production, and I could hear Lisa Barnes and Lisa Stathoplos in the roles of Pat and Billie. We would need a male actor to play Pat’s husband, Stan – a very important and meaty smaller role. Roland suggested Carl Palmer and I flipped my lid. I had seen Carl play Satan in a monologue for Some1Speaking and he was brilliant.
I Hope We Get to Keep This
When Suze learned of, then read, Roland’s beautiful, haunting, play, What We Get To Keep, she knew instantly that she wanted to direct it and knew, too, exactly the actors she wanted to cast. Lucky me.
Roland and Suze gathered the three of us together — again, on ZOOM — Lisa in Hawaii, New York or Philly, depending, and Carl, often on “Swamp Time” as he calls it, down in New Orleans, New York, LA, or, wherever the work takes him. I’m in Maine, where artists go to escape. To live.
The night we did a First Read online of What We Get To Keep was magical, kismet.
Pinch me. I think this is really happening.
It’s official. Suze Allen will direct the world premier of my play, What We Get to Keep starring Lisa Stathoplos, Lisa Barnes and Carl Palmer at St. Lawrence Arts in Portland, ME this September and I am slowly allowing myself to believe this is really happening. After 3 years of pandemic isolation the idea that I may soon be sitting in the dark as this play (one that is especially dear to me) unfolds for a live audience. Wow. Pinch me.