Heart to Heart

Posted by DCA Theater on January 31, 2012 in January - July 2012 Season, Incubator Series: Prologue Theatre Company

Monday night was the first DCA Theater Incubator Series Showcase of 2012! It featured Prologue Theatre Company presenting a work-in-progress called I Carry Your Heart by Georgette Kelly.

Artistic Director of Prologue Theatre Company, Margo Gray, welcomes everyone and introduces her company and the play.

For a month, Prologue has been working hard in the DCA Studio Theater and giving us windows into their process via our blog. Then, in last night’s public staged reading, they shared this piece with the world… and got the chance to talk with the audience to hear their reactions afterward.

Read more »

Talking About Loss

Posted by DCA Theater on January 29, 2012 in January - July 2012 Season, Incubator Series: Prologue Theatre Company

Submitted by Margo Gray, Artistic Director for Prologue Theatre Co., currently working on I Carry Your Heart in the DCA Theater Incubator Series

Art can provide a way to think through an idea that one isn’t ready to consciously process. In I Carry Your Heart, a character who is a poet says, “When I have stuff to process, I write.” As we’ve rehearsed the show, we’ve used poetry to share ideas about the “stuff” in the script that might be difficult to talk about. Loss and loneliness are felt by each character in I Carry Your Heart. Here are excerpts from some poems that have helped us explore the roads these characters travel:

Long Distance II
by Tony Harrison

Though my mother was already two years dead
Dad kept her slippers warming by the gas.

What Came to Me
by Jane Kenyon

I took the last
dusty piece of china
out of the barrel.

Read more »

Poems About… What?

Posted by DCA Theater on January 28, 2012 in January - July 2012 Season, Incubator Series: Prologue Theatre Company

Submitted by Margo Gray, Artistic Director for Prologue Theatre Co., currently working on I Carry Your Heart in the DCA Theater Incubator Series

If I keep talking about poetry, you know it’s because it’s shaped the making of I Carry Your Heart. The poems we read to start rehearsal each day are not random, but are chosen to start all of us thinking about the themes of the play, the ideas we’ll be working on that day, and the world in which the characters live. Here are excerpts from some of the poems I’ve chosen for us to hear. If you had to guess, from reading these, what would you say I Carry Your Heart is about?

How It Adds Up
by Tony Hoagland

Happiness, Joe says, is a wild red flower
                plucked from a river of lava
and held aloft on a tightrope
              strung between two scrawny trees
above a canyon
            in a manic-depressive windstorm.

After Making Love
by Stephen Dunn

No one should ask the other
“What were you thinking?”

Read more »

Knowing You by Heart

Posted by DCA Theater on January 28, 2012 in January - July 2012 Season, Incubator Series: Prologue Theatre Company

Submitted by Margo Gray, Artistic Director for Prologue Theatre Co., currently working on I Carry Your Heart in the DCA Theater Incubator Series

Do you know any poems by heart? I knew a few when I was younger, and memorized some for school over the years, but there are few I could recite in their entirety. However, as we have characters in I Carry Your Heart who read and recite poetry, I’ve been reminded of how powerful words can feel when they have a rhythm to them that you can feel: something that goes beyond the literal meaning. An excerpt from one of recent poems of the day (we read one at the beginning of each rehearsal), articulates very well the joy that poetry can bring:

Prof of Profs
by Geoffrey Block

The prof, with the air of a priest at Latin mass,
told us that we could “make great poetry personal,”
could own it, since poetry we memorize sings
inside us always.

Tess (Lara Janson) struggles with her physical limitations while her son Josh (Conor Burke) and partner (Johanna Middleton) try to help. (photo by Paul Chakrin).

I Thought You’d Be Taller

Posted by DCA Theater on January 27, 2012 in January - July 2012 Season, Incubator Series: Prologue Theatre Company

Submitted by Margo Gray, Artistic Director for Prologue Theatre Co., currently working on I Carry Your Heart in the DCA Theater Incubator Series

The playwright of I Carry Your Heart, Georgette Kelly, splits her time between New York and Chicago. She’s been attending most rehearsals via Skype, which means we’re all used to having Georgette present in electronic form. I think some of us were beginning to believe she was a tiny person who lived inside my iPad. However, she braved the snow to fly to Chicago last weekend, and we had the joy of having her attend rehearsal in person. As the actors walked in one by one, they each exclaimed, “Georgette!” and gave her a hug. Thanks to Skype, we were able to start rehearsals together as old friends. We look forward to having her back with us for the performance on January 30th.

PHOTO: Georgette Kelly watches Lara Janson, Johanna Middleton, and Conor Burke rehearse a scene from I Carry Your Heart (photo by Paul Chakrin).