Here are some pictures of some buildings, computers, lab-tops, cell-phones, news events to help the cast get to know 2004 a little bit better.

· Released in 2004, the Motorola RAZR cell phone became a social phenomenon in the United States, grabbing 6.2% of US phone sales in the fourth quarter of 2004. It wasn’t simply a phone; it was a fashion statement and accessory, a cultural icon for the cool.
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· The report finds that 75 percent of teens between the ages of 12 and 17 now have cell phones, up from 45 percent in 2004. And the number who say they text-message daily has shot up to 54 percent from 38 percent in just the past 18 months.
The survey, which was conducted with scholars from the University of Michigan, finds the typical American teen sends 50 texts a day, and a sizable number send double that or more. Some teens text their parents, though most youngsters say they prefer to speak with them by phone.
The long awaited World Health Organization Interphone study of more than 5,000 brain tumors that occurred between 2000-2004 and cell phone use failed to deliver a knock-out punch. This thirteen country report found what every study that has ever examined people who have used phones for a decades or more has determined - top users of cell phones had a doubled risk of malignant tumors of the brain.

Disturbing…right?

Click Image to Enlarge. ”Cell phones” by Chris Jordan
Photographed at a landfill in Orlando, 2004


Singapore, July 30, 2004 - Toshiba Singapore Pte Ltd, Computer Systems Division (South and Southeast Asia Regional Headquarters) today announced the availability of the PORTÉGÉ R150 lightweight petite notebook computer.
Acer Aspire 4315-2004 Notebook PC - Intel Celeron new





2004: Apple PowerBook G4

okay...for some reason i was unable to uploud any pictures. sorry about that.
mehheee

wants and objectived...what what!

character work

The cast will now comment about their characters, as explored in rehearsal on Friday.

Take it away, ladies and gents!

I am not my

What a fabulous rehearsal we had tonight! I went in a bit nervous, because I was going to use an exercise I had done in the physical theatre workshop I took in June, and I could only remember doing the exercise, but not anything precise from what Michael (the facilitator) had said. The actors all fully gave into the exercise, however, and blew me away. Here's a clip from the exercise:



I also wanted to share some photos from various rehearsals.

Our first read-through:


The magnificent Cassie Ahiers, stage manager /assistant director of sorts

Look at that seriousness! From left to right: Jack Gallagher (Jacob et al); Diane McNulty (Jewel); and Paul "Pauly Pocket" Cervenka (Young Man et al). It's ridiculous how good Jack and Diane (!) look together as father and daughter.

Some of our lovely ladies: Maggie O'Keefe, who is the assistant projection designer, but was so kindly filling in for another actor that day; Emily "Meow" Williams (Samantha); and BrittneyLove Smith (Beatrice et al).

The cupcakes I made for the first read-through. Pumpkin with apple butter frosting. They were just so-so, not my best work ever.

Contact improv with our choreographer, Sarah Seeber:

And from the design meeting:

Alex Bozeman, our set designer, sharing her inspiration and ideas with the seemingly baffled Pauly Pocket and maybe less so Kelly Baskin (our ASM).

So many thoughts!

I wrote this last night, but my internet wasn't working, so I'm just publishing it now:

Just got home after a wonderful rehearsal, started off with design presentations from Nivan, Alex, and Ben. It was all very conceptual, and might have been hard for the cast to dive into, but that's okay, because we are at six weeks til load in! And I think we're onto something really ... well, really rise in my stomach and chest wonderful. I can't really describe my excitement - you'd have to see it in me.

Ben - something to think about - where the scenes are places on stage. When would it, if it does indeed, be helpful to put scenes in the same area on stage?

The disco ball breaking - I had a thought about this last night during while salivating in the performance (as Alex noted) that is Jonsi. He used these lights that flashed, along with rain being projected on stage, getting faster and faster ... well, you just need to see it to understand it. But holy mother of god, was it affective. A(h) - ffective. If we used those lights right as the disco ball breaks (which could be behind the rear projection scrim, and thus hidden or taken up), sound of the breaking with blackout, sirens wailing (they don't have to be literal sirens wailing, I fully believe that there should be a distortion of sirens wailing) then fade up on them in a cab, kind of blurry...hazy. Not quite all conscious.

That could possibly work.

Ah yes - in rehearsal tonight, Emily Meow brought up that if we say that something isn't real, we lessen the importance of it . Such an intuitive, completely valid point. So instead of discussing reality and dream worlds, I invite us all to say what they really are - conscious and unconscious. Out of conscious perception. Not completely conscious. Hallucinations - a state of mind experienced by so many Americans, when they are hopped up on caffeine or sugar, or drowning in preservatives or booze.

James Joyce's Ulysses

I have been watching a dvd on Joyce's Ulysses, and I wrote down a great quote to share with you all. It was said shortly after Ulysses was published in 1922 as a commentary on the book's significance.

T.S. Eliot writes:

“I hold this book to be the most important expression which the present age has found. It is a book to which we are all indebted and from which none of us can escape. Joyce had made the novel obsolete by replacing the narrative method with the mythical method. Instead of telling a story from a particular and consistent point of view, as 19th century novelists had done, Joyce manipulates a continuous parallel b/t contemporaneity and antiquity; that is, between life in early 20th century Dublin and the mythic episodes of Homer’s ancient epic called The Odyssey. Joyce used ancient myth as a way of controlling – of ordering – of giving a shape and significance to the immense panorama of futility and anarchy, which is contemporary history.”

The professor giving the lecture (James A.W. Heffernan) also said:
It is a novel of flesh and blood, of pain and passion, music and laughter, a symphony of human voices.
on the characters - Joyce wrote what they do, think, feel, imagine, and fantasize about.