The Zoomed Staged Readings are over. The two-day HG yard sale is over. So it's all focus on THE LAST ROMANCE. We've been rehearsing for a few weeks now, and have been power-blazin' memorizing lines. The set hasn't been started. The lights haven't been hung. The poster is finished and will go up soon. And today I realized something: there are four people in this cast, and none of them knew each other before this play. Never crossed paths in life. 

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A new study confirms that although a straight line is the shortest distance between two points, zigzagging is the fastest and the easiest way to climb a steep slope. I think that's what we're doing here on the Hamilton-Gibson mountain. We want to reach the top, but we can't go straight up to a full-auditorium in-the-same-theatre-audience watching a singing, dancing musical with a cast of 50! So we're here just starting the climb with 8 zoomed small-cast productions, actors distanced and even often married. An interesting bunch of folks on this path. Well, there's one guy who got postcards from a dead dog, and a very strange lady who proudly carried a purse, but most are in a very wide range of normal. Audience is sitting at home watching and then engaging in zoom-dialogue after the shows. All as safe as anything can be in the world as it currently exists. So we stop for a moment, take a breath, and smile at each other as we look down on how far we have come on the first "zig" of the zigzag.

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Or "In Your Shoes."  It's the story of a joint project between two schools, Patrick Henry (a small conservative Christian school) and Georgetown (a liberal school).  Performing One Another uses theatre tools to help students accept different perspectives.  Two individuals, one from Patrick Henry and one from Georgetown, pair off and write on a given topic, and then they swap words.  This whole story was on PBS "Canvas" on April 6. You hear them saying each other's words.

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I participated in a zoom meeting with theatre directors from all over the country last night. This “conference” is usually held just previous to the bi-annual AACT (American Association of Community Theatres) National Festival. This spring it was scheduled to be in Ashville, North Carolina and I was planning to attend. Well, the festival is going to be virtual in June, and AACT decided to have two of these conferences, one on the East Coast and one on the West Coast. I missed the March East Coast one, so I'm joining the West Coast, with a three-hour time difference.

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