As of December 9th, I finally finished my first semester of the MFA here at Mary Baldwin.  With 3 new shows opened, two of which will tour (As You Like It and The Winter’s Tale), I am ready to take a couple of weeks off and prepare for the spring.  It’s been an exciting 19 weeks since the company started our professional work, and we are all gearing up to bring you even more great content in the spring.

Starting the week we are back, the company will present a staged reading of company member Chad Marriott’s The Missing Mechanical, and then we will tour our education show several times.

Later in January we begin work on The Knight of the Burning Pestle by Francis Beaumont in which I will take on the Venturewell track.  There are several unique changes to mounting this show.  First we have no official director, so the ensemble will work together to stage scenes, and bring our motley set of skills into play to help each other.  Second, we only have a week in which to rehearse and prepare for our performance, so the real challenge will be in helping each other as much as possible to get every second out of those days.  Third, we are working from cue scripts, and only have our lines to work from (see the fun photo below), so I have plenty of text work to do during break to be off book before we begin rehearsals.  Finally, as there is no director, there is also no design team.  That means that while I will likely help to stage violence, it will not be in my usual capacity as company fight director – a change I look forward to tackling.

Then after we open that show (dates to come soon on my facebook page), we have a week of downtime and touring in which we will actually be preparing to welcome guest director Vanessa Morosco.  Vanessa will direct us in our final show of the season Pericles, Prince of Tyre.  In the only show of our season directed by an outside guest, I am taking on the role of King Simonedes, a role I am enthusiastic about working on.

During that 3 week period we will not tour, but will rehearse extensively, so lots of photos and posts to come from that I am sure, both here on the blog and on my other social media platforms.  Be sure to follow me on my Facebook and Twitter pages (links are at the top of the page), for more updates.

I cannot wait to have more to share, but for now there are plenty of things for me to be getting on with as this break continues.  I also may have some good news to share in the weeks to come, so come back and see me soon.

Ciao

-Glenn