Touchstone Backstage

One of the fundamental challenges of creating original work is finding a way to talk coherently about it. Or the challenge of doing anything as “intangible” as art and having to find a tangible way to communicate about it – when it itself is its best form of expression. As Jp says, “If I could describe it, I wouldn’t have to do it.”

So, this goes across the board – from the need to have a clear and juicy description of our show for marketing purposes (when we haven’t even finished writing the show!) to the constant writing and rewriting of the mission of a theatre company that’s evolving with different people at the helm but still dedicated to the same values – which are? And can we really say that in public?

Lately we’ve been working on a couple of these challenging “branding” tasks.

The tag line. That’s those brief descriptions that come after the name of the organization. Back 25 or so years ago, Touchstone’s tag line was: “All the world’s our stage – innovation the script.” Later we took up: “The Lehigh Valley’s Resident Professional Ensemble Theatre.” Boring, but… accurate. Or: “Passionate*Provocative*Playful” …maybe a little too cute. Now we’re onto: “Reinventing the Art of Theatre.” Or how about… “Where Life and Art Become One”

…Oh, it never stops.

That’s the way it’s done around here. Taking the ideas and getting them to go around and around in a loop – generating ideas, riffing off of someone else’s inspiration. Until finally the appropriate person puts us out of our misery and just chooses – accepting that it’s never perfect – maybe someday we’ll work it out. We’ll try again next year.

OR

Presently Jp and the Ensemble are working to write “the mission” for the China Project: Journey from the East. Not that we didn’t already have one, but one that was easier to get our heads around, easier to pass on to you, “the general public,” as they say. Here’s some of the scintillating conversation.

I think you get the idea. Language. Perceptions. Endless refinements and adjustments. At least Touchstone is air conditioned.

But it’s all important, very very important. Not just because we want, need folks to understand our intentions, what we’re doing, why and how we’re special – but for ourselves. I think the work is more important in those terms than any other. As an artist, as an arts “institution,” we have to keep crunching what that means, and how to make it real now.

Together, with words, we grasp the ungraspable, our ever evolving and intangible purpose—moment by moment reinventing the art of theatre for our audiences and ourselves.

We want a band that plays loud and hard every night
That doesn’t care how many people are counted at the door
That would travel one million miles and ask for nothing more than a plate of food and a place to rest
They’d strike chords that cut like a knife
It would mean so much more than t-shirts or a ticket stub
They’d stop at nothing short of a massacre
Everyone would leave with the memory that there was no place else in the world
And this was where they always belonged
We would dance like no one was watching
With one fist in the air
Our arena just basements and bookstores across an underground America
With this fire we could light
Just gimme a scene where the music is free
And the beer is not the life of the party
There’s no need to shit talk or impress
‘Cause honesty and emotion are not looked down upon
And every promise that’s made and bragged
is meant if not kept
We’d do it all because we have to, not because we know why
Beyond a gender, race, and class, we could find what really holds us back
Let’s make everybody sing
That they are the beginning and ending of everything
That we all are stronger than everything they taught us that we should fear

Amen! Put that into a tag line.

Last month, we wrapped up our tour of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, for what may be its last performance. After four years living with this production, our last performance, up at Pocono Mountain West High School, was lovely and bittersweet, for a great audience of enthusiastic English and Drama students. At the end of the school day, as we packed up the van for the last time, the students who had participated for the day did what students who participated for the day always did at this point – filled out surveys about their experience. What had they learned? What had they enjoyed?

Our performance is part of the wonderful Shakespeare for a New Generation, a national program of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with Arts Midwest. When we receive generous funding, we’re required to “track” the impact we make, often through asking the students involved to comment on the experience.

Sometimes, the answers are touching, inspiring, adorable. Other times, they just make us crack up. But see for yourself…

How was the play different from what you expected?
“Really romantic”
“I wasn’t expecting a little bit of humor. I really liked it, though.”
“I expected there to be more people involved.”
“The play was very in depth and easy to understand.”
“The voices portraying the character rather than the costumes.”
“Honestly, I didn’t know what to expect, but they blew me away.”

What new thing did you learn about Shakespeare?
“That his plays weren’t all serious/boring”
“He is SEXY”
“The rhythm.”
“He writes very deep and he has very tough emotions.”
“He used words in a unique way.”
“He knew about laughter.”
“That Shakespeare changes peoples’ lives.”
“He is 450 years old.”
“He wrote for all kinds of people.”
“Nothing new. Our English teacher knows everything!”

What did you enjoy about the educational activity?
“Everything”
“We were able to stand and try out different things instead of just sitting”
“The actors were very friendly”
“The way the actors related Shakespeare to their lives.”
“I love how you can change so easily between characters and I understand the change.”
“It offered something I can bring into practice for myself.”

How did the play, educational activity, or meeting the actors change your ideas about Shakespeare or theatre in general?
“I don’t think Shakespeare is boring anymore.”
“That maybe it’s not as boring a I thought it would be.”
“It helped me to think of ideas for my own role in my school’s musical.”
“He sounds epic.”
“I felt that a minimalist style can be the most moving.”
“I’m already in love with Shakespeare and his beautiful ways. This experience just re-ensured my love and understanding.”
“I thought the actors would be old because Shakespeare is old.”

Please share any additional comments.
“Our school play is December 6, 7, 8 at 7:30 at JBHS. I know you’re busy, but you should come see it!”
“It was enjoyable to watch and I would want to watch it again.”
“Kyle was hysterical.”
“I really hope they come back soon.”
“WE ❤ TOUCHSTONE A LOT. BRING THEM BACK <3”
“I am so impressed with the passion, commitment, and broad knowledge of all the performers.”
“The female actress was my most favorite of them all.”
“My name is Brigid (tell Bill)”
“Y’all are cool! My favorite is the eldest guy.”
“Touchstone is an excellent company and should get more funding!”
“After seeing the play, I went home and started reading it.”
“You guys really are the BOMB!”

Last week was one of my favorites weeks of the year – SouthSide Film Festival week!  I leave work every day as close to 5pm as possible and rush off to see a film, then quick eat some snacks for dinner as I walk to the next venue to enjoy another one, and then if I can handle more hours of film watching, off to yet another one!  On Saturday I spend the whole day (or as much of it as I can) watching even more films before heading off to the closing night party.

Ten years of movies on the Southside.

This year marked the 10^th festival, and I’ve been lucky to attend all but one.  I love walking around town and running into other festival passholders, some filmmakers, some community members, all ready to take in the great films SSFF has brought in for us to enjoy.  After the opening night film this year and for days later, I was reflecting on why the festival is such an amazing event.  Which made me think about why art matters – what’s the value of it?  A question we at Touchstone often need to make a case for when applying for funding.  A question I was recently pondering with a young actor from the Lehigh Valley Charter Arts High School who wondered her value as an actor.

While I’d love to have the perfect answer to this question of value, it’s hard to put art up against, say, food or shelter, especially when considering funding, but we can’t ignore the power of the arts.  If food and shelter are our basic needs, then art makes us human – it connects and uplifts, it unifies and inspires and has the power to transform us as individuals and a community.

So how has the film festival transformed? Well, there are many ways and different for each person, I’m sure.  For me, it’s a greater appreciation for and understanding of well-executed filmmaking and certainly a deeper perspective on the world after seeing films and meeting filmmakers from many countries over the years.  For the community, it brought us together to watch films, yes, but perhaps more importantly, it connected us afterwards about what we liked and didn’t, how someone interpreted a particular moment, why such and such film was better than another, “oh, and you gotta see this film” or “did you watch that one”, etc.

Lisa and Jp at SSFF, 2009

There’s something I call “invisible glue,” that indescribable something that happens when things come together and you’re transported.  It can happen at a restaurant or a party – you’re enjoying the company you’re with, and then all of the sudden, you’ve lose track of time and it’s hours later.  I also feel it when working on theatre here at Touchstone – all of the sudden, the show you’re working on actually works.  The performance qualities, design elements, the playwriting all become one and it’s finally a show.  There’s no one thing that made it work but rather the combination of it all.  At the film festival, there are definitely moments like that, particularly in the shorts.  One film plays and you are not that into it, just not your cup of tea, but the next one plays and it blows you away, you think about for days after; it’s powerful, it works – it has the “invisible glue”.

For me, one week out of the year the SouthSide Film Festival is the “invisible glue” of South Bethlehem.  It’s what brings many of us together and keeps us talking and thinking about it for weeks and even months to come.  So a big shout out and congrats to the SSFF for introducing us to great films and bringing us together for the last ten years; here’s to ten more!

Hello, blog readers and friends of Touchstone!

Blame Google if this translation is wrong.

Touchstone is embarking on its next epic community undertaking! Journey from the East is a two year project that will investigate the impact on Bethlehem, PA of the sudden influx of Chinese transients drawn to the recently opened Sands Casino. The first phase of the project will find the Touchstone artists out in the community gathering stories from local residents and transients alike in order to paint a picture of how this interaction is actually taking place. Dr. Connie Cook and Dr. Dong-Ning Wang of Lehigh University will be aiding the project by enlisting student help as translators to breach the communication divide between the Touchstone artists and our new Mandarin speaking guests. This story gathering process will wrap up sometime in the fall of 2013 and as an initial distilling of these stories, a script will be developed and directed by Touchstone Ensemble Associate Mary Wright in April of 2014.

After this initial distilling, Touchstone will begin work on a second script which will pull from the story gatherings and incorporate elements of the Chinese epic “Journey to the West”. We have enlisted Dr. William Sun, the Vice President of the Shanghai Theatre Academy to lead us in developing a script which will blend eastern and western aesthetics and be performed in Bethlehem’s Southside Greenway Harmony Pavilion. This script will be co-written by Touchstone Founder Bill George and Touchstone Affiliate Christopher Shorr (Christopher is also the Artistic Director of the Moravian College Theatre Company) and directed by Dr. Sun.

In true Touchstone fashion, this production, which will debut in April 2015, will have large scale involvement from the community, augmenting our cast and exploring the issues right along side us.

Wow, that’s a lot of moving parts!

So where are we at now:

• We’ve officially begun the story gathering process!
• Yesterday we launched a blog to help you all be as informed about the project as possible.
• On Saturday, Christopher leaves for Shanghai for an initial meeting with Dr. Sun. We all are very excited to see how this initial face to face meeting moves the project forward.
• Lisa and I have booked our tickets for a visit to Shanghai in October to visit William again during an experimental theatre festival which he is hosting.

Lot’s of awesomeness afoot, and all in the name of cross cultural empathy and making our community a better place! Isn’t art awesome?

If you have any interest in being part of the process please contact me: jp@toucshtone.org or in the meantime check out the blog here (more content to come, I promise).

I heard, not too long ago, from Maestro Funfgeld at a recent Bach Choir dinner, the oft repeated saying of a colleague of theirs when they are in the midst of rehearsals–something to the effect:  it is a joy to make a “work of art”, and this is the “work” part.

Emma Chong and the Ensemble–doing the “work” of art.

The recent production of Ulysses Dreams was an extraordinary collaboration led by Jp Jordan featuring the writing and scenography of Christopher Shorr at Moravian College, the costumes of Mary Wright, Jp’s music, design and direction, Ensemble improvisation and collaborative ideas by the hundreds, Emma Chong stage managing and riding herd on the ensemble, Kevin O’Boyle ‘s music direction, and somewhere in there I was responsible for an aspect of the movement, its early stages.

For me, the process of creating this work was a bit like Dante’s trek through the different levels of the inferno and back (I think we made it back, not sure yet.) –starting with the reading and studying of the text, originally conceiving it as a two person “story-telling” epic and then turning it into an ensemble created Odyssey with basically twelve chapters which evolved into an eight scene then seven scene sequence with music that was to cover the Illiad and the Odyssey material, focusing on Odysseus’s relation to women in his journey.  Along the way, ideas about doing a Western version, a film noir version, a comic version–all fell by the wayside.  I still remember the rehearsal where we worked the Cyclops scene again and again, all of us working with a single, large cardboard eye on a long stick (think perhaps a bleary-eyed Sauron out of the Lord of the Rings films) or the Lotus Eaters done on a small puppet stage we’d jury-rigged–none of which made it anywhere close to being in the final show.

Try as hard as we might to “bottle” the creative process and get it to be obedient to rules and regulations, in my experience, it is always messy.  That’s not an excuse for messiness, but it’s a reminder that when the dragons come out, when hearts catch fire, it is impossible, try as we might, to be certain no one will get burned in the heat. It is the physics of trying to put something that wants an infinite amount of time and effort into a finite entity and form.  It’ll fight not to be squeezed into the bottle.

Here’s a brief video, late in the process, Jp working us in the Penelope sequence.  Notice the notes on the wall that track our thinking over the months, the use of ragged blue-green cloth since we didn’t yet have the proper cloth for performance, the fact that we’re working without one or two of the ensemble because of scheduling conflicts–which means we can’t fully create the waves we’re trying to suggest…  So much of the work is still in our imaginations, untested, and this is just a week and a half before opening; we laugh in the midst of our agony.

The only thing of which one can fully be certain is that it’s necessary to be comfortable as best one can with one’s discomfort–fear that things won’t come together in time;  frustration with being misunderstood;  shame at not being able to contribute perhaps for reasons of time or circumstance or abilities;  anger that no one listens, or jealousy that so and so is always the one listened to;  fear of making a fool of one’s self;  sadness that the work never seems to be good enough or that it is just simply bad or that it’s all vanity.  The collaborative creative process is sometimes a delight and often an agony.  There you go.

And in the end, we get what we get, knowing, if we can work together, support each other, listen and have clear decision making processes, we’ll move forward collectively making something that is greater and potentially more powerful than anything any of us could have made on our own.  Perhaps at it’s purest, it will be something that transcends and expresses a beauty that comes from a consciousness that is greater than our own–that of the ensemble itself.  I applaud Touchstone for its creative courage and for what in the end was a beautiful “work of art”.  One can’t ever be certain about such judgments, but it was, certainly, a lot of work!

The incredibly good looking Darkness family, in costume

There are so many reasons that Young Playwrights’ Festival is my favorite time of year: piles of giant cardboard props accumulating all over the building; costumes for animals, objects, and supernatural creatures hanging off of anything hang-off-of-able; directors playing music from their plays around the office as they assemble sound cues (this year, Mr. Bill George has discovered a deep, abiding connection to the music of Taylor Swift); and gleeful anticipation for a magical performance night.

One little detail I look forward to every year is borrowing.

A lizard costume. Really!

It’s a simple thing to enjoy. It’s now a tradition that I contact the beautiful and talented Pam up at Lehigh’s costume shop to borrow a knight’s outfit, half a dozen lab coats, a set of crowns, a lizard costume (really!) to give my play a little more visual oomph. I have no eye for costuming, but I count myself incredibly fortunate to be able to borrow from Pam, who is a costume goddess. This year, my costume search also had me wandering over to the fabulous and talented Bill at PYT, also willing to lend a helping hand.

In need of a couple of thrones this year, I grabbed the wonderful and talented Caitlin from Lehigh’s scene shop and drove out to Allentown, where they have their warehouse, and borrowed two poofy red chairs.We carried the chairs downstairs via a wonderfully creepy, manually operated old-fashioned elevator (really!), with shafts of sunlight illuminating dust motes as we went. Sweet.

But this year, something new and exciting is happening. This year, I’m actually loaning, too.

From my personal costume closet, last seen in YPF 2011’s “Killer”

Two out of three princesses are getting costumed from my stash of princess dresses (did I not mention? We have three “princess plays” in this year’s Festival) (really!). Oversized cardboard prop #57 is made from a box that lived in my bedroom closet. I also get to throw in costume proposals for a witch, a genie, a hoard of creepy villagers, all out of costumes and props that I own. I love it. I love recognizing items onstage and seeing them as part of someone else’s play.

In the bigger picture, I think this makes me smile because this is part of how theatre – especially a community of theatre artists living and working close to each other – works well. If person A doesn’t have it, person B can lend. If person B doesn’t have it, person A can lend. We support each other. And it makes all the difference.

Now, then, I’m off to spruce up my beautiful borrowed thrones.

See you at the Festival!

Ladies and Gentlemen, allow me to take a minute to introduce you to the amazing talent in the Ulysses Dreams pit band.

Erick Black
I’ve seen Erick play with two different projects in recent history and have been blown away every time by his drumming; exact without feeling static and dynamic without feeling overplayed.  Here’s a link to some recent stuff:  http://www.reverbnation.com/thetank

Jason Hedrington
If you didn’t already know Jason from his countless years on the Lehigh Valley music scene, you may have seen him perform on the Touchstone stage as both a Musical Director and Performer in our Christmas City Follies series.  Jason is a Touchstone Apprenticeship alumnus and most recently played at Touchstone as a member of the Pan’s Ball house band.

Dan Leathersich
Been rocking and pouring drinks over rocks with Dan for the last 17 years.  The Leathersich fronted The Remarkable Stims who were a featured act at last summer’s Pan’s Ball.  Here’s Dan’s (along with Chris O’Donnell’s) most recent project:  http://www.blindpigeonrecords.com/the-remarkable-stims, http://vimeo.com/48952344#

Kevin O’Boyle
Our fearless Musical Director and Band Leader.  Kevin served with me on Christmas City Follies a couple years ago as Musical Director.  Most recently he served as drummer for the Pan’s Ball House Band.  Here’s a link to his most recent project:  http://www.thesugarpills.com

Chris O’Donnell
Multi-instrumentalist and all around rock star, Chris was last seen as Touchstone playing in the two piece rock outfit The Remarkable Stims.

Daniel Sottile
Straight from working as Sound Designer on Allentown Public Theatre’s Parallel Lives, Daniel brings with him the experience of serving as a brass player in one of the Marine Corps bands.

It’s an honor and privilege to work with such talented people.  Thanks for all your help in bringing the beauty of music to life (while at the same time melting faces)!

See you at the show!

I just returned from Italy visiting five amazing and unique cites, seeing incredibly mind-blowing art, walking down the same roads as Julius Caesar, and so much more! So of course, I jumped at the opportunity to do my blog post early because I should have a million things to write about… but I struggled last week finding the right story.

Perhaps it was from the jet leg or because my mind is still absorbing all the experiences, or maybe it’s because once I returned it’s back to business as usual.  No time to sit and eat a leisurely dinner, wander through art galleries, explore ancient cities, or just people watch.

In any event, while working late tonight playing catch up and strategizing how to juggle once again too many things, I threw on some music (switching from Bad Religion – heading to their show on Sunday – to Gogol Bordello – high energy, gypsy punk which helped me through organizing Board packets for the meeting – then finally fun. – of which I’ve only heard one song but they recently won best album of year so I’d try them out.)

The music from one to the next changed my mood and uplifted or motivated me – reminded me the power of art, why I work insane hours to create art here, and reminded me what our tour guide said when he (trying hard to assuage our disappointment at NOT seeing the Sistine Chapel due to conclave preparations) explained that Michelangelo stood 70+ feet in the air bent backwards in order to paint for years at I forget what age, but way past when he should having been doing it. BUT he did it, and it’s amazing.

So, even if I still can’t comprehend standing on the streets of Pompeii and peering into the foyer of a house over 2000 years old to see a mosaic of a dog with the words “Beware of Dog” below it, what I can comprehend is that the essence of humanity has not changed all that much. We create beautiful art, we build communities, we destroy them, we struggle to survive, for meaning in our lives, some struggle for power and misuse it, many others don’t and we carry on leaving what we can behind for others and hopefully leaving a better, more beautiful world.  And we do this year after year, century after century.  Sure we’ve progressed, better technology, medicine, etc., and hopefully we aren’t still participating in the same games held at the Roman Colloseum, but we are at our core the same.  Which is not an earth shattering statement but one that is often forgot.

So maybe that’s why I “bother” to create art that connects us, helps us reflect on our commonality, instigates conversation on our differences, and hopefully leaves behind an imprint that changes us for the better.

Okay, enough pondering the meaning of life and back to work!

[discussing detail work]
BILL: You have to find the right balance of accomplishment and blood.
EMMA: Blood and accomplishment are two of my favorite things, Bill.

[discussing progress]
BILL: I’m discovering that the better I get, the worse I get.

[discussing the beginning of a new day]
GREG: Are you well rested?
BILL: Yes… now we have to wake up.
EMMA: And survive two shows.

And on that note, it’s showtime in forty-five minutes. Later!

“Wait, does that require a computer?” That was Gary’s response to the question of who was going to write this blog about our Fresh Voices: ReEvolution experience. Let’s just say that the computer is not Gary’s favorite tool for communication, except when he uses it as a scene partner on stage.

That presents an interesting question: what is a good tool for communication?

I’d like to think that in today’s technology-driven world, communication is more efficient than ever before. It’s so easy to share every fleeting thought with tweeting, texting, status updates, iChat, Skype, etc. It’s no longer a novelty to see a friend, neighbor, co-worker, or even your 12-year-old nephew carrying around an iPad.

The iPad is the cream of the crop when it comes to communication. An iPad can do pretty much anything! But can an iPad write a play? Even more specifically, can an iPad help four completely different people write a play together?

Well, to make the disclaimer now: No iPads were used in the making of Fresh Voices: ReEvolution, and no apprentices were harmed in the process!

We used an ancient material known as paper, and even dusted off the old Crayola washable markers. WOW. And yet, I have never experienced a creative process with such efficient and poignant forms of communication.

From the first day, not knowing where else to start, we mimicked the Touchstone brainstorm approach of writing ideas on sticky notes and sticking them on a large piece of paper on the wall. This then lead to more sheets of paper where we expanded ideas into lists. Lists turned into concepts and the concepts evolved into the components of what would soon be our ensemble piece.

After the first week, we had almost covered one entire wall of the rehearsal space. We had diagrams, charts, timelines, and graphs all aiding our creative process. This was how we communicated. When words failed us, we grabbed the marker and the blank space on a piece of paper, taped it to the wall and presented our idea to the group visually. In a room filled with four individuals who could not be more unique or with artistic backgrounds more diverse, we had to be creative in our expression. If you saw our individual pieces, you know what I’m talking about. Regardless, we never moved on to the next point until we were all on the same page, often times literally.

I remember one specific moment in writing our Lemonception script, when we had encountered an obstacle. How do we get to the end? We knew we wanted lemons to fall from the ceiling but we were not sure how to get there. Then, one person began to brainstorm out loud and within seconds we all knew what was going to be said and out of sheer exhilaration for the simultaneous discovery, we all leaped from our seats unable to contain our joy for arriving at the solution together!

To whatever degree technology invades our personal and work lives, I can confidently say that it will never replace the intensity, immediacy, and intimacy of communicating face-to-face with another human being in the same room. That is why theatre will never be a lost art form. There is no iPod, iPhone or iPad that can replace real eyeContact.

We all learned priceless skills through the Fresh Voices process. We lived through the journey of creating original work out of nothing. We managed our own budget, marketing, and production elements. We directed, designed, composed, and performed in the same breath.  But the best skill we discovered was how to communicate as a real ensemble. We learned when to respond and when not to respond. We learned how to listen. But most of all, we learned that live, in-the-moment, human communication is vital in creating anything worth pursuing.  And no, Gary, we don’t need a computer for that.