Director's Page | cranefable2015

The Director's Notepad

Tuesday, May 12, 2015

Today is the first workshop with the Crane cast and team. Our goals are to begin experimenting with the movement vocabulary for the show and do some team building.

Since our characters are crossing the line between being more animal-like at some times and being very human an naturalistic other times, it's going to take some trial and error to decide how much of each side is effective for the story. Maintaining the humanity of the characters is going to be key to tying these animals into the history of the 442nd.

Team building is going to be really important as well, something I'm very happy to have Tyler on board to assist with. This cast is going to be supporting each other - figuratively and literally - and needs to know that their teammates will be there to catch them. In addition, we've had to switch out one of our actors. The rest of the group has had a chance to play together, but now we're mixing in a new person.

Should be an interesting evening of play!

Sunday, April 12, 2015

I've been sitting on tis for a few days now and am excited to release our official logo for the show!

This piece of art was created by Creative Team member, Ruthie Rado, through a series of conversations about what we were trying to capture about the show and what energy we wanted our logo image to convey. I think this piece is a beautiful combination of a child-like playfulness in the pen and brushstrokes, with a homage to Japanese-American history in the crane (and showcasing our main character), and reminding us in the color choices that this is, at its heart, an American story about community and inclusiveness.

I hope everyone loves it as much as I do!

Wednesday, March 11, 2015

We've had an exciting few days of auditions and seen a crazy amount of talent come out to play with us. I'm always amazed by the way actors can put themselves out there for judgement they way their line of work asks them to. Knowing that this piece would require skills from both traditional drama all the way over to silly comedic physicality, we really put the groups through their paces with a number of movement activities, guided and creative. Everyone was completely game and it was a joy to look around and see actors, most of whom had never met before, playing, laughing and smiling during our workshops.

It's been important in our pre-production meetings that we create not only a great show, but an environment where everyone felt safe and free. I think we achieved that in our process so far. It was also reassuring to find how well our creative team worked together. The baton of leadership was smoothly passed among us and the level of trust and sense of fun in the room made these few evenings a joy to be a part of.

Now comes the hard part. When you see this much talent, you wish you had enough spaces that you could include all the amazing people you've seen, but it never works out that way. Hopefully, I'll be back on in a few days to announce our cast!

Sunday, March 8, 2015

I'm Hope and I'm the director of The Crane Fable Project. I can't believe that after all our planning that the audition process begins tomorrow!

I've done a good amount of directing during my years in Los Angeles, but this will be my solo directing debut here in DC. I do feel like I'm ready to come back to it... The ideas are stewing to a boil, I've assistant directed a few things, and being a stage manager uses lots of similar skills.

I've put a great deal of thought into the show in the last few months and now am really thinking about what the human component of telling this story is. Not only do we need the raw talent and skills of movement and strong character choices, but we know that this is going to be a heavily collaborative process. I need every member of the team to come in ready to contribute their thoughts and energy openly. Hopefully, the design of the audition process will encourage that tone - a group movement workshop that uses some of the real pieces of music we're generating for the show (thanks to our awesome sound designer, J.)

On the techinical side, there are some exciting ideas floating around for the animal costumes and our early prototypes for the masks have tons of promise.

I hope I have everything sorted and printed... Here we go!