Welcome to the Playground!

Welcome to the blog for Gruesome Playground Injuries and thank you so much for supporting this project...it REALLY means a lot!

First, here's the kids:
Doug - Peter Prouty
Kayleen - Kelly Komlen-Amadei

And here's the rest of us:
Director - Jordan Whalen
Stage Manager - Devon Davey
Light, Set, Sound Designer - Brian Scruggs
Costume Designer - Sara Hymes

We are about to begin our rehearsal period leading up to opening of the show on Friday, July 27th. I gotta say, this process is FUN. We've already held a couple of read-throughs and creative meetings which have been very enlightening.

First, a little bit about how we're approaching the show. Collaboration is the big word here. The culture at rehearsals is if you have a good idea, inject it into the conversation. I think it's important to have everyone involved and speaking up. In my experience, people are more invested when their ideas are shared and implemented. That's what I want. This might not work for every rehearsal process or every play, but we have the luxury of having a great script that provokes creative thought/conversation and only having six people as part of the team. It's been a very educational and informative experience so far.

Rehearsals. The biggest challenge I'm facing with this show is staging. I want to try things I've never done before. Yes, this comes back to the beautiful performances we all saw in Russia (Peter, Kelly, Sara and I did the Month in Moscow program). There's a freedom to their productions that I just don't see over here very often and I want to this production to have that feel.

So how do we do that? The answer is, well, we're figuring it out. We're using picture files, which I first used with Lavinia Hart. Kelly, Peter and I are all bringing in pictures that illustrate some part of the play/character/atmosphere. These are a great way to provoke creative conversations. By showing these images, it allows each of us to see how other's see a particular part of the play. Seeing a certain image might spark different image in someone else's head, which then leads us to something more EXACT. This allows us to understand this specific story more intimately.

We're also experimenting with etudes. Etudes are improvisations done by the actors to, again, promote an intimate understanding of their characters or the world of the play. One of the challenges for the actors is to play these characters at ages 8, 13, 18, 23, 28, 33, and 38. That's quite the range. By doing these etudes, we're trying to avoid caricature performances and find more specific and realistic portrayals of the characters.

Specific images from the picture files and breakthroughs we find with the etudes will hopefully help us find a fresh way to stage the play. Costumes might not be 100% realistic, but rather suggestive. Same thing with the set. And with all of these discoveries we're find our interpretation of this play.

We'll be keeping you posted pretty regularly about this project. Once again, THANK YOU so much for your support!


Jordan