Don Quixote update

As we continue to workshop our devised production of Don Quixote, we’ll post some photos from time to time.  Here’s a couple from the first week of October – our process is to break the story down into shorter parts (sometimes a couple of the 125 chapters at a time) and do a quick “bad first draft”, staging it in just a few minutes.  We video the draft, then watch it back and make decisions about what we could do better, or differently, or more interestingly, then get back up, re-stage it, film it and watch it again.  After multiple passes, we end up with a stronger (yet still rough) draft of the scene.  Over the next month, we’ll take these rough scenes and work through them until we put them down in script form, to tighten the action and clean up the dialogue.

Theo and Adrian doing a rough draft of a scene from Don Quixote for the camera (while Mac and Lydia hide)

In a working rehearsal of the devised production of Don Quixote, we never know what we’ll create

Playing with lighting effects and shadows during a working rehearsal for Don Quixote

Devised Theatre Workshop with Alex Grubbs

Alex Grubbs instructing students on principles of Devised Theatre

On Friday, Oct 12, we had a visit from one of our alumni, Alex Grubbs (’08).  Alex and his wife Bonnie (who is receiving the distinguished Young Alumni award from Belhaven this fall) now live in NYC after completing their masters educations, Bonnie in Education at Mary Baldwin College and Alex in Acting from the University of Virginia.

Students showcasing their combined Devised works

Alex led a workshop of students combined from several classes in exercises in Devised Theatre – a process of collaborative creation for works of theatre.  After some brief introductory exercises and discussions, students developed short works based on personal stories of their fellow classmates, then combined those individual pieces into group performances.

Students working with Alex Grubbs on individual pieces of Devised work