How To Hold A Knife

Photo of the Day: Dave talks to the campers (left to right: Corrine, Phoenix, Desi, Hudson, Jade) about how to correctly drag a body.

Today’s Date: June 18, 2022

Show Title: Mucedorus

Director: Dave Quay

Staff Crew: 

Stage Manager Devlin Ford

Dramaturg Daniel Skinner

Stage Management intern Lydia Babcock

Dramaturgy intern Percival Walter

Production Production intern Mia Randers-Pehrson

(A quick note before we begin: Devlin is back!!! We missed you, thanks for showing us how to hold a knife, and giving me the title for this blog post, I felt it encapsulated a lot of the themes of today. You’re epic.)

Warm ups YET AGAIN! I’ll never get tired of writing it I swear. Because we have blocked the whole show (huzzah yay applause, so proud) today was focused on fights and music. After our lovely warm ups Dave worked the fight between our beloved hero Mucedorus and the vile villain and hired assassin Tremelio (Hudson). The style of the fighting is very comical, sound effects being provided by the lovely Sophia on her bespoke violin. We greatly thank her for her crazy cool string instrument skills and all of her other cool skills. After this Looney Tunes esque charade, we moved on to yet another cartoon of a fight with Bremo vs. Mucedorus. It was all very slow mo and yet again full of violin hijinks. The next puzzle was the removal of Tremolo’s body from stage. This may seem deceptively simple. “Why Percival, why can’t the campers just drag Tremelio off stage? All they have to do is drag.” Well I’ll tell you hypothetical reader, moving bodies on stage is a very serious business. Not just for artistic reasons such as stage picture, but also because body dragging requires touching people. I know, this seems super obvious, but moving someone else takes a lot of conversations about boundaries and making sure everyone involved is safe. The campers did a fantastic job of taking care of each other by blocking the move without touching each other. We’ll practice the physical drag later, but for now, we have the shape of the move. Guess what! We did the exact same thing for Bremo’s body drag. It really is a puzzle, I mean, blocking anything is a puzzle but it’s just so fun to watch Dave and the campers figure it out. We ended rehearsal by working music, specifically the show song that will be the motif of the play. I can’t wait to see it all come together, the music as well as the production as a whole, it’s really beautiful that the song is a metaphor for the cohesive nature of the narrative and the characters. The show song is Capable of Anything by Ben Folds, take a listen if you feel so called, or, watch the campers when they perform in the final show.

• From the play: “The head?” “The very head” -Mucedorus (JD/Froggy), Bremo (Hank)

• From the director: “Creepy as hell” -Dave in response to the entire cast making strange tonal noises
• From the cast: “Funny.” -Donovan
  • BONUS CAST QUOTES
  • “I can die sideways.” -Hudson
  • “We’re vampires Percival.” -Esme, about me turning on the lights, I’m sorry.
• From the staff: “That’s not how you hold a knife, this is how you hold a knife” -Devlin
  • BONUS STAFF QUOTES
  • “Next up we have the Tremelio body removal” -Lydia
  • “Don’t colonize my hat, it’s an anti colonialist hat.” -Percival
  • “I can’t read.” -Daniel
  • “Don’t quote me on that.” -Mia
• From the set: *hitting Bremo over the head violin sound effects* -Sophia
  • BONUS SET NOISES
  • *Natalie’s amazing Segasto side eye noises*
  • *strange tonal screams* -everyone

This is the section where I talk about the learning process, general observations, and what I’m learning. Something I am learning is the delicate balance of taking care of yourself whilst also doing your job and being there for those who need you. I arrived late to rehearsal today. That’s ok. I needed the time to take care of myself, I took care of what I needed to take care of, and I was still able to be here for the last two hours. I want to write about this because I feel like self care (a frustratingly loaded term but one I do not posses a good replacement for) is very often not documented in theatrical spaces, and I want to do that. Taking care of yourself is a SKILL, it is not something that you learn easily, and it takes time. It’s really wonderful being able to be there for the campers and to see them start to learn how to take care of themselves. I’m very proud of them and I know just how difficult it can be to be your own advocate when you’ve had such little previous experience. Whenever they express their needs, correct someone on their pronouns, clarify their intent, or anything that they do to put their safety first, my heart lights up. When I was a camper I struggled with the same things, but seeing the campers do what I very often failed at gives me a lot of hope. I’m learning a lot, and I know they are too. In sum, if you haven’t already today, ask yourself what you need, wait patiently, and listen. I promise you’ll want to hear the answer.