The other night Rob and I were at a party with some of his friends.  One of them remembered Rob had just made his stage debut in the short scene I wrote for the latest Me and Them production and asked, “So, how did the play go?  What was it about?”   Rob started talking about the experience while I remained quiet.  He beams when he talks about it and I enjoy watching him and letting him have the spotlight.  Of course, he gets details wrong, and he doesn’t articulate the themes of the play the way I would, but that’s okay.  I’m usually close enough by to jump in add my own side to the story; correct him when he says we did the play on Flatbush Ave…

The one thing I never add is the true origin of the scene.  I tell people the half-truth and I leave out the truly mushy stuff; that the scene that I wrote and performed with my husband was written as a gift to him.  I was inspired, in a way, by our wedding vows.  In them, I told Rob that one of the reasons I was marrying him was because he makes every day, ordinary things sublime.  I really believe that’s what makes a marriage worthwhile.  It’s not a romantic idyll – don’t let yourself get fooled.  Your soul-mate will never put his dishes in the dishwasher even if the sink is completely full and you will have vicious fights about it.  Your sensitive lover will not write you songs each day on his acoustic guitar but will shave in the sink and never clean it out and you will wonder, “Why am I here again?”   But if you’re like the couple in Landscape of Marriage you get something better.  You get the freedom to be yourself and be totally accepted and loved for who you are.

It was an honor sharing this with my husband.  We had the easiest time rehearsing and developing our performance together.  It was my first time doing live theater in over 10 years and having Rob by my side gave me confidence.  In fact, I will keep collaborating with my husband in different ways as I continue to write and work with Me and Them. 

And really, it gets a little lonely being the only married-over-30 in the group.  I need to keep that guy around for company at the very least!

We’ve been getting some lovely feedback -

Have further inspired current contributors -

And have already been approached by a number of people wanting to contribute and participate in the next show: some very talented writers and directors; as well as a London theatre group who are considering partnering with us.  Thrilling stuff.  I’ll be meeting with our potential partner group in London in a couple of weeks, when I go out to speak at Power to the Pixel, and will post some video of our conversation here.

This cross-cultural idea is especially exciting as it throws up a number of opportunities. A few things we have loosely discussed are:

Swapping content with the London group and vice versa: we each perform the other group’s previous pieces for our next show(s). Additionally we could set up either recorded conference calls or webcam chats between select uk/us actors and directors to discuss their differing approaches on the same pieces.

Or, an actor/creatives swap - a couch surfing sort of thing. Or some kind of online writing collaboration – I’m particularly interested in what just happened with the team version of the flash fiction/creative writing championships online.

Online collaborative writing is also an exciting concept because it could mean this is something that could also be done with contributors from different sides of the US, rather than just limited to NY and LDN based groups. I’ve been looking into a few tools for this already – including blog plugins, wikis and looking at previous or current projects such as One Million Monkeys Typing and Story Mash.  A pleasant surprise this time round was to find a strong team of writers through this process and it would be great to fully stretch and utilize their skills.

Another option would be to use Show Two contributors to craft a longer story out of a series of short ones a la Paris J’Taime.

I’ve also been mulling on how to deal with our growing cast/crew (we need a new name for this) that are potentially out-growing our blog resources in terms of community. Should we branch out to set up a community on Ning or is it too soon to dilute our online presence?  Either way, it’s an exciting thought that when one of us wants to make a feature we’ll have a considerable number of talented people we are instantly connected to, worked with before, trust and know their strengths and weaknesses.

Some great feedback I had on the night of Show Two was from a previous contributor, Eric Contractor who while not involved in this show, came down and enthused afterwards that what we thought we had built was a shout-back to old theater where company comes first and individual egos second, allowing a place to try new stuff quickly and without fear: an interesting -and flattering- insight.

Another thought I had was skill-share workshops – it transpired that two of our actors – Eljon & KIra -also trained as cinematographers, and both Laura and Jane are keen to learn more about blogging. Laura also has extensive trained experience working with actors, exercises etc which I would love to know – it’d be good to do this in a more structured environment where people learn valuable skills from each other for free that they can then put to use at a later point helping each other in a more effective way.

I hope to hold a roundtable for the Show 2 writers and directors to learn what was of value to them in this experience and to hear their thoughts and feedback. If we manage to get everyone in the same place for this we’ll post that here too.

It’s an exciting time and our hope is to use the enthusiasm and excitement we have right now to keep this moving forward at the same pace, to keep momentum while making sure we focus on the right elements of what we’ve planted.

Any thoughts, ideas or questions would be greatly received, this is an open conversation. And anyone wishing to join us please email via the form on the contact page, we are always excited to ‘meet’ talented people – wherever you are!

We are already mulling what next.  For Natalya and I the aim of the collective was always to take it to a new level each time, to add an element of experimentation or to try something new.  For us, this is a space not for perfectionism but a rough and ready one, a place to play and try things out  - so we are at an exciting turning point right now and considering many options both creative, process and cast/crew/partner-wise.  More news soon.

* Unfortunately, as Kira consoled me after the show: “Sorry you couldn’t get it up, it happens all the time”  Being a girl this isn’t something I hear a lot!  But it’s true we failed on the livestream front.  Lesson learnt?  Don’t rely on just one platform (Mogulus in this case) when working with new types of technology, they are all buggy and all in beta.  Next time, I’ll have Ustream, Justin TV and Kyte accounts set up as back-ups so that we can switch straight over to another option.

As I mentioned previously Natalya and I’d worked on Getting Sam before, with her as Melly and me directing.  However, the lead then was an actress called Jacqueline Rose.

Jackie did a fantastic job in the role, but when I started thinking about shooting the play as a short (as it was originally written) back in July I felt we needed someone older.  Jackie is in her early twenties, Melly in her early thirties and more reassured, worldly – something easier to carry off on stage but not so much in film.
That’s when Natalya introduced me to Elizabeth Alice Murray, a talented writer/director as well as an actress.  We met in a little café off Union Square in August and talked for an hour.  She read for the part and I cast her on the spot.

However, the combination of our three busy diaries (summer holidays, other shoots/work, traveling) meant the shoot was pushed, and soon Natalya and I were already starting work on Show Two for Me & Them.

Originally I’d written a piece called Darwin, Adam and Eve for Show Two, in which four NYC friends meet for dinner and discuss the disparities between their families’ traditional hopes for them and their actual lives, but when the writers met for script workshop we all agreed it was too long a piece for the collective.  We discussed how I might split it into two pieces instead but I wanted to save it and spin it into something more complex rather than simplify.  Rather than rush out a new piece for the sake of it, I suggested we use Getting Sam and Natalya agreed.

We went back to Elizabeth but she’d just won a webisode competition for her awesome series Café Conversations so was hard at work moving forward with that.  Step up, Amy Gironda, an actress Natalya had met in a recent class, and we had our new Lorelei.

With previous creative work I have either cast friends or gone through extensive casting sessions but Me & Them engenders a faster, hit-the-ground-running approach than more intricate film projects.  Also, I trust Natalya’s judgment so went with her casting blindly.  As such, I was on tender-hooks when it was time to see what the two of them –Amy/Lori & Natalya/Melly - had done with the piece and I was thrilled.

Though sick, at dress rehearsal Amy was a consummate professional and jumped into the role with full energy.  Seconds after dozing in a chair with flu she was battling Natalya in a dazzling array of verbosity.  I loved what they had done with the piece, which was infuse it with vigor by understanding that for the friendship to be believable and for the beats to fall in the right place, the dialogue needs to be extremely fast: the characters need to almost talk over each other, and use the words as ammunition.

An added bonus was that Amy physically looks very similar to Natalya – I’d always imagined Lori with longer hair, being the shyer of the friends – it tends to give people something to hide behind – but this mirror image presented to the group was a pleasant visual surprise and actually made sense given the script.  Natalya’s first comment on reading Getting Sam had been that she felt the two characters were the two opposites sides of me – and here they were, battling it out.

As I smiled I remembered the term “happy mistake” my fine art professor repeated to us again and again in college – that often it’s the unintentional marks on a page that lead you to a new, advanced place.

Given the chaos and speed of the event overall and Amy’s sickness I left notes for our next rehearsal – we have one scheduled between dress and performance.  Initially I’d been worried that this was not enough and too late in the day, but now I saw that it was only minor tweaks that were needed: Amy to temper Lori with more vulnerability at certain points, a few pacing variations in speed and volume and a few physical interaction notes, that’s all.   I’m excited to work with them again.

Dress rehearsal last night was…a riot.  In all (positive) connotations of the word. 

Jane had sent out two – capitalized, bold – emails stressing the importance of punctuality and surprisingly all seventeen people, arrived, at my place, on time, sets, props and costumes in hand – including the enormous dumpster Natalya had crafted out of wood - pumped up to start.

Everyone was buzzed and excited to meet their co-stars for the first time – working in five separate groups means mid-point rehearsal, or in this case dress rehearsal, is the first time a lot of us meet - except poor Amy who was starting to come down with the flu.  She slept amidst the chaos, then jumped up at the end like a true professional, killed her part, made her apologies and hobbled home.

Some members were not off-book, which is of course a worry, but I have every faith that they’ll get it down in time. 

And then there was the requisite drinking that comes with both relief, getting to know the newbies and catching up with old friends…

I’ll let the photos and video tell this one.

PRE INVASION

Manhattan view from Greenpoint apartment

PRE REHEARSAL

Rob & Christa rehearse Landscape of Marriage

Eljon & Paul in A Good Day

Talking through props

Downtime

The guys share a joke; Kira makes a call; Amy sleeps, exhausted

About to start rehearsing Getting Sam

POST REHEARSAL

Yes, that’s a crowbar amongst the scripts on the floor

DRINKS

Photos by Julie Asyrian

We met for about two and a half hours on both Saturday and Sunday. It was pretty amazing to see everyone in action. Laura started rehearsals with these warm up exercises which seemed super neat to me, really interesting and fun. She did one called ”Negative Space” where one actor  made a pose with their body, and the other actor posed around them. So, they formed an intertwined body sculpture of sorts. She did other vocal exercises and body warmups as well. These all took about a half hour.

The other hour and a half was spent rehearsing the play. Laura would have Paul and Eljon start the play, and then she’d stop them when she either A) saw something that really worked well, and B) Felt a particular section could have ran better. (That’s how it seemed to me anyhow.) Laura has a very similar sensibility to me, and it was so great that she would somehow express thoughts I was having as I watched. The great thing is, that I have such confidence in her ability as a director, that I didn’t feel like I ever had to interrupt and give my opinions.

The play seems to be evolving a lot in terms of body movements, and the actors being comfortable enough being “in a relationship.” They cuddle at points now and every day seem to be more open. 

Laura is meeting with actors today for another rehearsal at Paul’s house and then our next rehearsal will be the dress rehearsal, this Wednesday.

Come down, drink, support, introduce yourselves.  We look forward to seeing you on the night.

And if you can’t make it down to the venue, remember you can watch it right here on the site via our live stream.

You can see more of his work on his site Salvation Design.  Thanks so much Sal, Me & Them loves you too!