After a long week of auditions and meeting new people, A Midsummer Night's Dream is cast!
I really enjoyed the auditions and the only hitch came on Thursday night. After the auditions that day I mixed food poisoning (I really shouldn't eat out) and pepto bismol (I thought it was just heartburn...warning, very BAD idea) and spent Friday in the hospital. On Saturday, my Stage Manager and business partner Racole and her sister half carried me into auditions where I feebly sat and watched talented people traipse around in front of me as  I sipped clear liquids.
Although still not truly eating, I felt better on Sunday. Before Sunday Standards (my radio show) I laid all of the headshots, resumes and audition forms out on a big wooden table and went to work. I sifted through them and started assigning roles to names until the whole show was cast.
One of my favorite moments in casting is when I know I am going to cast an actor, I just don't know as which character yet.  I hold their headshot in my hand as I glance over the character list and flip through the script until something lines up in my head and I say "Ah, yes! This actor should play this person!"  This process of discovery is so exciting, I get to take plain words on plain paper and then in my imagination I lift them up to life and place real people's faces on the character names with the lines coming out in their voices. This excitement is, of course, continued throughout the rehearsal process as I get to watch my imaginings become reality and guide each actor as they become the character my mind created from the words on a page.

Today the Geneva City Counsel votes on our special use permit for space #3 (on Third Street, the one with the garden). Wish us broken legs!!!!!!!!!!!

Thank you for reading my blog, there is more to come! Please leave a comment (even just saying "Hi!") and let me know you were here!

We saw a lot of people at auditions this weekend but we still didn't get enough to cast the entire show. So, we are having more auditions on Thursday and Saturday. I am eager to get started, we have just two months until we open! I have all sorts of fun ideas for rehearsals and I intend to spend most of my time in the next few weeks rehearsing with different groups in the cast.  I would like to have a cast of at least 25 people, which might seem like a lot but if you think about all the different story lines that weave together in Midsummer it really isn't.

Things are moving along in the search for space as well, the city of Geneva will soon be voting on the approval of our permit for one of the spaces we've been looking at! I hope to be in there soon, putting together the set and rehearsing with the cast.

In other news, I now have a directing intern! I would like to welcome Brittany William to my team. I'm very excited to be introducing her to the cool world of directing!

We also have been discussing our next show. Our second production has been decided on, it is one of my favorites and we will be announcing it soon!

Stay tuned... more to come!

Auditions are this weekend and requests for times slots have been coming in so fast I'm wishing I had taken on an Assistant Director just to help me get back to all of these people.  (Anyone interested?)
I am really looking forward to auditions. I'm really looking forward to meeting all these people and seeing how they can fit in to this production. That is one of the things I really love about directing. Probably because I'm a daydreamer. I get to meet all of these people and see potential in them, see how they could transform into the characters I've been daydreaming about.  Then I get to work with them and talk with  them  and  suddenly the daydreams are walking, talking, life-like characters embodied by these  real people; these awesome people who temporarily transform themselves into this daydream and make the daydream a reality for everyone who comes to see the show.
The rest of our production has been coming a long as well. We interviewed people for the technical director and publicist positions this week.  I knew we'd found the technical director we'd been looking for when, at his interview, the charming Vincent Shade announced that he had just returned to the States from New Zealand  where he had been hired as a production assistant for The Hobbit. Even though The Hobbit is still waiting to happen while the Tolkiens and the movie studios wage legal battles, he spent a year there learning about blacksmithing and living in Hobbiton. After hearing a few of his stories I am ready to pack up my bags, move to New Zealand, and become a barmaid or something just to be there. But I have to direct Midsummer First.  Maybe we should just move the production to New Zealand and be a traveling troupe of players entertaining the waiting film crews... See? Daydreaming again.
In other news, Jodi Carney accepted the position of publicist, which is wonderful, because we really needed help getting the word out about auditions and doing press releases and once we are looking for audience members it will be a crazy amount of work. So, thank you Jodi for taking on that herculean task.
I will get back to you with more updates soon, but please leave a comment on this blog and let me know you were here.

Yesterday was a great day for Storefront Shakespeare!
In the morning Racole and I went to look at a couple locations on Third Street in downtown Geneva. They were both in between Caribou Coffee and First Street Cantina. The first one we looked at was a large empty space with high ceilings and great acoustics. It had an easily accessible bathroom and a separate back room that could be used as a backstage and the backroom had a hallway leading away from it to a back door that would be perfect for a Stage Door! There is a large counter built into the space but we could incorporate that into our set design. The landlord's charming agent explained that the space had been empty for a while and that they would like to have some foot traffic coming to it. The space is right next to a spice shop and the wonderful sent of spices drifts through the air and is very atmospheric. 
The second space the agent showed us was similar but without the spiced air and with a less convenient backstage area so we told him that we much preferred the first location. He said he would talk to the landlord and that we would talk again on Monday after the holiday.
We also got a call back from the agent of another place we looked at last week saying the landlord wished to meet with us!
Later that day, we went to meet with Emily the owner of Sky Yoga studios in her new location that she will be moving into May first.  It is a lovely, high ceilinged place with a corner of the room sectioned off by beautiful columns. As a director, this separate space was very exciting because off  all the ways I could have my actors use it, all the cool blocking that could happen around it.
We came to an agreement with Emily, and Sky Yoga Studios will be one of our performance locations! So thank you Emily and Sky Yoga Studios, supporters of the Arts! (For more information on them go to http://skyyogastudio.com/ )

I hope to post audition times and locations within the week but expect them to be April 17th and 18th!
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