Directing and Acting in Des Moines

This is my first blog post. I am working as a professional actor and director in Des Moines this summer. I am directing Fat Pig at StageWest as a part of their Neil Labute Beauty Plays Series. We are producing three of Labute's plays - Fat Pig, Shape of Things as well as Reasons to be Pretty - in repertory. I am also acting in Repertory Theater of Iowa's production of As You Like It, playing the roles of Corin, the shepard and Charles, the wrestler.

We have been in production meetings for the Beauty plays for about 4 months. That has been a really interesting process since there are 3 shows with 3 different directors being performed on basically the same set. Early on in the process we had a lot of un discussing the thematic similarities that existed between all three shows, and just what we as StageWest wanted to say by doing all 3 shows in rep like. The three directors really then turned to the Scenic Designer Jay Jagim to take the lead on how to unify the shows in the same set. I'm really excited about the world that we have created! The other two shows began rehearsal in the beginning of May. Fat Pig began rehearsal last week. One of the 4 actors wasn't expected to arrive until today, so we were focusing on the scenes that didn't include him. We worked for three days on the scenes involving the two leads and got some really excellent work done, I think. The show is very interesting. It is extraordinarily naturalistic. I typically direct sweeping, grand, epic shows that have some level of elevated reality...like all musicals do, or like Tennessee Williams does with the poetic language, or even like The Seafarer does with one character being the devil. But Fat Pig is really just a play about relatively normal people of today dealing with the challenges that many of us face every day. It's pretty cool to be working on something like this...kind of refreshing. The other thing that is unique with this play is that the majority of the play requires the characters to be seated most of the time. The idea of "blocking" for this show is quite different. Exciting though! We did have a set back. The actor who was supposed to arrive today had to drop out of the show due to health reasons. We are all saddened by this. But I was able to find a replacement for him, who I think will be quite solid. We get back on track with the show tomorrow. :) I'll keep you posted on how things progress.

I'm really excited to be a part of As You Like It. The show will be performed outside in the beautiful gardens of the Salisbury House. I really like the roles I am playing. Even though they are not very huge, they will be quite fun. We have only had the read thru, but have another rehearsal tonight. I'll keep you posted!

Woohoo!