MONDAY JULY 9 (schedule for 16-19)

Here's the schedule for the week after this one. (Check back to SUNDAY JULY 1 for this week's schedule.)

• Mon Jul 16
• 7:00 to 8:00 Music rehearsal ALL SKATE
• 8:00 to 10:00 Act III 
• Tue Jul 17
• 7:00 to 7:30 Publicity photos EMILY, GEORGE, PATRICK, LD, WHITNEY, JEFF, RITA (wear a solid color, little or no jewelry, avoid solid white or solid black, ladies wear basic street makeup)
• 7:30 to 10:00 Act I
• Wed Jul 18
• 7:00 to 8:00 Music rehearsal ALL SKATE
• 8:00 to 10:00 Act II
• Thur Jul 19 Act III

The music we're rehearsing on next Monday and Wednesday is the "theme song" for OT, Blest Be the Tie That Binds. It is sung throughout the show and it would be nice if all of you know it, even if you don't have particularly stellar voices. Here's a link to a You Tube of all four verses. Try and listen to it a couple of times through before next Monday.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6lzTJfWdmk

Fun Fact about OT # 4

In Act II, George takes Emily to Morgan's drugstore for a strawberry phosphate (p 53). They end up having strawberry sodas instead. The modern day equivalent of a phosphate would be a coke, but instead of being bottled at a plant, it was made to order while you watched. Mr. Morgan mixes carbonated water and sugary strawberry syrup with phosphoric (or sometimes citric) acid for flavor. A more expensive strawberry soda adds ice cream, what we might today call a float.

SUNDAY JULY 8

I'd like to expound a bit on costumes.

OT takes place in the early part of the 20th Century between 1901 and 1913. (In Act III, Emily's memory of her 12th birthday happens in 1899.) The words and actions of the play are clearly anchored here: doctors make house calls to deliver babies, kids walk to the drug store for strawberry phosphates, a milkman leaves bottles of fresh milk on the porch. Whitney and Rita are working diligently on miming things like stoking wood burning stoves and slicing their own bacon. Peyton and Samuel are practicing carrying their school books with satchels and straps. Mario is figuring out how to parcel out bottles of milk from the back of a horse-drawn wagon.

If you all wore long skirts or knee pants, the audience starts to see a costume drama. Coupled with all of the other vintage things happening onstage, the play starts to acquire an antique feel. This creates a distance between your character and your audience. I want the audience to look at this cast onstage and see THEMSELVES.

One way to make this happen is fast forward your costumes to 2012. So what should you wear? Ask yourself what you would wear today if you were getting ready to go to school. Or preparing breakfast for your kids. Or going to choir practice in the evening after supper. Or working on a dairy farm and driving a wagon. You get the idea. 

Now please don't rush out and go on a shopping spree. Look in your closet. The people in OT do the same kinds of things that we do every day. They don't need fancy or expensive outfits to do it. They simply need to wear clothes.

Nonetheless, I'd like for costumes to sort of fade into the background. If the wedding in Act II reveals a hot pink blouse, a Hawaiian shirt or two, and a bright teal polo, the audience may linger over those bright colors and miss wonderful emotional moments that happen onstage. So, here are some costume guidelines:

• Stick to neutral colors like khaki, navy, linen, denim, white, olive, etc. Avoid highly saturated colors like violet, magenta, lime, etc.
• If your character wears a T-shirt, keep it plain. No slogans or advertising here!
• When faced with choices, solids are better than prints, small prints are better than large prints, and tone on tone designs and plaids are better than loud designs.
• Simple is always better.
• You shouldn't need more than one costume per Act.

Here are some examples of neutral hues.

These are great colors for the show, but 

you're not limited to just these.

Compare the top and 2nd row (good color choices!) 

with the bottom row (poor color choices).

See how the saturated colors say "Look at me!

Look at me RIGHT NOW"

I'd like you to look at costuming your character as part of the process of creating your onstage presence. HFAC normally engages a costume designer for our Mainstage shows, but I just didn't feel that it was necessary for this show. HFAC does have a costume room that will be open to you if you can't find what you need elsewhere. I'll be available to talk to you individually about your costumes in the coming weeks.

Fun fact about OT #4:

Our man, Thornton Wilder

Thornton Wilder won the second of his three Pulitzer Prizes for Our Town in 1938. His first Pulitzer was for the novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1927) and the third was for the drama The Skin Of Our Teeth (1942.) This puts him in rare company. The only other playwrights who have won multiple Pulitzer Prizes are Eugene O'Neill (four), Edward Albee (three), and August Wilson (two).

MONDAY JULY 2

In Act I, there are three people in the balcony who ask Mr. Webb questions. I'd like the following actors to play these parts:

• Woman in the balcony (p18) EMILY MORRIS
• Man at the back of the auditorium (p 19) REID SELF
• Artistic lady in box (p 19) DESI STEPHENS

Since these parts are just one or two lines long and are said from the anonymity of the back of the house, it is not necessary for you to come to an Act I rehearsal unless you're already called for something else that evening. I'll try and help you remember this on our call schedules. Just know that you'll have plenty of time to perfect your line delivery in the coming weeks for these small but necessary roles.

Fun Fact about Our Town #3

How long does it take to milk a cow? Howie Newsome has to spend about 10 to 15 minutes to milk just one cow. Let's say he has six dairy cows; he spends an hour every morning and another hour every evening milking his cows, which would produce a total of between 40 and 50 gallons of milk a day. All this milk has to be strained and separated (let's say another 30 minutes, twice a day, unless "some'n goes wrong with the separator" (p 8.) Dairy farms must be kept scrupulously clean, so cleaning equipment and stalls might take another two hours a day. Hitching up Bessie the cart horse every morning and delivering all that milk might take him another hour. So Howie spends six hours a day at a very physical job, on top of which he probably also farms vegetables, repairs fences, nurses sick cows and delivers calves, all of which arrive at 3:00 AM. And he does this 365 days a year. Dairy cows get really perturbed when they're not milked every day. In fact, they get perturbed when their farmers are late or change the milking routine in any way. For an interesting tutorial on how to milk a cow, check out this link:

 http://www.backwoodshome.com/articles2/lewis99.html

SUNDAY JULY 1

Sunday July 1
Below is the rehearsal schedule for the next two weeks. I'm going to cover material in the order that it is listed. Therefore, if I've listed pp 20-40 and your character doesn't put in an appearance until page 30, you'd probably be safe showing up at 8:00 or even 8:30. Our Town is different in this regard than most modern plays; typically, if you're in a scene, you're IN a scene. Wilder has characters that float in, deliver three lines, and then they're gone for the rest of the Act.

If you're unsure as to when you should be at rehearsal, email me at Lisargarza@aol.com.

• Mon Jul 2  (yellow room) pp 20-23, 27-28, and 50-59  EMILY, GEORGE
• Tue Jul 3  (yellow room) pp 1-20, p 59  SM, ALL WEBBS, ALL GIBBS, PROFESSOR WILLARD, HOWIE NEWSOME, JOE CROWELL
• Mon Jul 9  (main stage) pp 39-49, 26-36  MR & MRS WEBB, MR & MRS GIBBS, GEORGE, HOWIE NEWSOME, CONST. WARREN, SIMON STIMSON, MRS SOAMES, REBECCA, EMILY (SM AND SI CROWELL OUT TODAY)
• Tue Jul 10  (main stage) pp 66-86  SM, MR & MRS WEBB, EMILY, MRS GIBBS, JOE CRAIG, SAM STODDARD, SIMON STIMSON, MRS SOAMES
• Wed Jul 11  (main stage) pp 1-36  ALL OF ACT I (except for three questioners from balcony)
• Thur Jul 12  (main stage) pp 37-65  ALL OF ACT II (except baseball players)

Fun Fact about Our Town #2:

The women in Our Town not only made their own bread, they made their own YEAST! None of this tearing open a little envelope business. To make yeast, you boiled grated potatoes with some sugar and a little salt until it was translucent. Adding a cup of old yeast mixture to the new would make it ferment faster. The whole mess only lasted 2 to 3 days before bacterial overgrowth caused it to sour and you had to start all over. Makes you appreciate sliced bread all the more.

From the Director

Welcome to Our Town!

Great job on the read thru last night. Thanks to everyone who filled in for some of our actors who had conflicts. There are still a few unassigned parts in the cast; Katie and I will be filling/assigning those in the next week or so.

Because of The Fourth of July, next week is a short one. Call for those days looks like this:

Monday July 2: George, Emily

Tuesday July 3: Stage Manager (hereafter referred to as "SM",) all the Gibbs family, all the Webb family, Howie Newsome and Joe Crowell.

As a review for those of you who may have missed it, here are Katie's and my expectations for you:

1. Arrive prepared for rehearsal: This means that you should have your script and a pencil with an eraser. Be ready to begin at 7:00 PM. Take care of dinner, bathroom breaks and phone calls BEFORE 7:00! I typically don't take a break during rehearsal, but you likely won't be onstage for the entire three hours. You can take care of other business when your offstage, but when your onstage, be ready to work.
2. Direction comes from your directors: Katie and I are going to work very diligently in helping you find and create a character onstage. I'm certainly open to your ideas about what you want to create onstage; part of my job is giving you a space where you can create! But avoid giving other actors direction.
3. Keep all drama onstage where it belongs: I love drama onstage, hate it in real life. If you have a problem or an issue with someone or something, talk to me. Or talk to Katie. Our goal is to give you a wonderful community in which you are free to make a character become real.
4. Check the blog once a day: Using a blog to communicate with cast is new for me, but if I use it like email, I'll probably post things in the morning. It should serve as a handy record for what's ahead and what we've accomplished

Now for today's trivia:

Fun Fact about Our Town #1: On page 1, Thornton Wilder gives Grover's Corners an actual location- "latitude 42 degrees... longitude 70 degrees..." This isn't actually in New Hampshire; it's in Massachusetts, about 1000 ft off the coast of Rockport in the Atlantic Ocean. Peterbourough, New Hampshire is believed by many to be the inspiration for Grover's Corners.

Homework for this long weekend: Rita and Whitney need to create a kitchen for their homes in Grover's Corners. Everyone else, Katie would like you to focus on mime this weekend. Take an action that you do every day (eating a bowl of cereal, shaving, driving to work, making microwave popcorn) and identify every action that has to happen. She's already talked to you about the space that objects have; make sure you maintain this space as you pick up a spoon or push multiple buttons on a keypad. Once our kitchens are completed in Our Town, we'll be doing lots of stuff in there. Start practicing now!

Lisa

Welcome!

Welcome to Our Town!

I'm Tracy Clayton, the Producer of Our Town.  I'll be attending rehearsals over the next two or three weeks to distribute the actor contracts Lisa mentioned during the readthrough Wednesday night.  The purpose of the contract is simply to indicate in writing how the HFAC core values apply to you as actors, and what we expect from you from the beginning of rehearsals through the end of strike after the last performance.  I'll also have other information to share regarding discounted tickets for friends and families as well as opportunities for your friends and families to earn free tickets by ushering and providing other services.

This blog will be a key component in the communications process during the production.  You should make a habit of checking it DAILY for updates.  While many things will be communicated during rehearsals, the blog will often be the definitive source of information, especially regarding rehearsal schedule changes, rehearsal room changes and key dates and deadlines.

In case Lisa didn't mention it last night, you are required to notify a member of the production team if you are going to be late or miss a rehearsal for which you are scheduled.  All it takes is a quick phone call or text message, even if you're only going to be a minute or two late.  Unless Lisa has given you alternate instructions, you should typically notify her.

You'll quickly find that our rehearsals start on time and end on time.  That means that you are expected to be in the rehearsal space ready to start at the appointed time.  Please be respectful of your fellow actors and production team by ensuring that you are not the cast member that everyone is always waiting on to arrive.  :-)

Important Contacts

Here is a list of names and titles you'll hear over the next several weeks.  You may not deal with all of them directly, but everyone on the list is here to help you in whatever ways we can.

Producer - Tracy Clayton (any issue or question not covered by someone listed below)

Director - Lisa Garza

Asst. Director - Katie Barton
Music Director - Teri Clark

Garza House Manager - Carla Conover (Ushers, Concessions)

Box Office Manager - Cami Starks (Cast and public ticket sales)

We've got a great cast, and I know that this production is going to be a super way to start our 2012-2013 Mainstage season.

Welcome to Our Town!