These past few days turned out to be a sequence of ups and downs.  We kept working on the Cassandra idea developing, talking, debating, brainstorming, questioning, outlining, and doing a little bit of improv along the way.  But each time we came up with a great idea we would question it a great deal and keep back tracking a little.


On Thursday we decided to step outside and head to the park to do some work in the great outdoors, and get a fresh perspective.  We went through some improvisations between the characters, who we believe, live in this world.  This helped us find some really interesting dynamics within the world and more importantly between the characters.


On Friday we had a truly fantastic breakthrough day.  We sat down and outlined the entire cast of characters and decided what each character wanted, what they needed to know, what they needed to experience and what they needed to find out from others.  It was so invigorating.  We were all astounded at the end of the day to find out that we had spent the entire time sitting around one table tossing out ideas and creating the skeleton for a show!


Then came Saturday - this was a special day in a new space, with new people, we invited two fantastic theatre artists, Sarah Doherty and Chris Braak to join us for the day.  They helped us improvise some scenes to learn more about the characters, their relationships, and the world of the play!


Sunday we did some more basic planning and catching up and then it was time for Monday.
Monday, Monday, can't trust that day.
This was the day in which we sat around in the stuffy, humid house, and tried to think of more things to add to the show.  Ways to flesh out the outline.  But it was so hard.  We hit a major wall, and by the end of the day it was so hard to think of anything new - we had to debate whether or not it would be a good idea to take a break and do something totally creatively different before actually taking a break to do something creatively different.  By the end of the day, I will admit, I was done!


I kept looking at my computer screen at the outline we spent 6 hours working on thinking - oh no.  We have nothing!  This is nothing - we have nothing to show for our 9 days of work!  I was totally freaking out!!!!  My brain was so fried and I was so lost in the story and the questions and the details and the myth and the play and the improvs and the doubts and the fears and the little voice in my head saying, "no one will like this."  That I just starred at the computer moving the pages up and down hoping that some kind of answer would come to me.


No answer came to me, instead the brilliance of these dedicated Iris company members pulled me out of my abyss of doubt and fear.  We pushed through the freak out and finished the outline.  It was still pretty bad, and I'm pretty sure half of the ending was written in a complete state of ridiculous delirium, but it was worth it.  When I went to bed I felt myself thinking, "well at least we finished something, we stuck with it and we finished it, and it was hard, but really fun, and now we get to see what happens tomorrow!"


more to come....