The Events

So this coming Friday, yours truly will be performing on stage at the Guthrie Theater. 

Yup. One night only. SRO. All that jazz. 

 

It’s a small cast, sparely designed play that centers around one woman’s struggle to process her thoughts and emotions after a young man walks into her community choir rehearsal and starts shooting people.  
It’s sort of a response to the mass killing that happened in Norway in 2011, but also as a way of looking at how people survive in the aftermath of any mass killing. 

While the cast and crew are small, one of the big portions of the play is the on-stage chorus. They use different community choirs for every performance to better connect with the audience and also to make everything less “performed” and more “real”.

It’s all very “loose” and we don’t even wear performance attire– just everyday street clothes. Like we would wear to any rehearsal. (Although being a gay chorus, you KNOW everyone will gussy up a bit). 

The choirs also act as a “Greek chorus”– singing the emotions and telling parts of the story. They form a backdrop to the main protagonists memories and add counterpoint to her struggles. 

There are six songs that get performed, varying from fun and frivolous to ambient to darkly emotional to reaffirming. There are also some spoken lines of dialogue- although we don’t know what these are just yet. 

The point is to keep us in the dark as much as possible so we see the play unfold at the same time as the audience.  That way we form sort of a mirror so the audience can see themselves in the chorus.

I’m a bit nervous, because I want us to do well, but I’m also pretty excited. It’s a really cool opportunity. 

And afterward I’ll be able to say I was in a play at the Guthrie.