Hi Family and Friends!
Unbelievably, our residency is half over. Well, its only been a week and a half, but to me, time seems to be going unusually quickly. Our weekend was very up and down (like the Big Horn Mountains!). We awoke early on Friday and marched in Sheridan's Rodeo Parade. Warming up next to us were a many, many people in pig costumes. At first I was sad that we were not also into pink, fluffy onesies, but I think we looked pretty smart in matching red t-shirts sandwiching Madeleine's red car. Susie provided us with bandannas and cowboy hats and we were on our way. Mostly it was a positive reception, especially when we passed Grace's family and friends. But as we passed, one woman glared at me and said "no talking to terrorists."

And now I will leave you in suspense and with this photo.
Love,
Becky

we have arrived

Hello devoted readers!

As I type this, less than ten feet away, Max and Grace are working on accents and characters. The actors' mornings have been devoted to blocking the two acts and their afternoons are spent on character development. It seems weird to fall into schedule or any sort of normal routine at a place as beautiful ( and perhaps just a little bit magical compared to the concrete and steel of cities) as Ucross, but we have fallen into a nice rhythm. We each have our own rooms, a luxury I didn't even have at Vassar, in three different buildings with common rooms, coffee makers, little libraries and laundry machines. But I think my favorite part is our red, wrap-around porch. I did some work out there this morning and even enjoyed being erratically hit by sprinklers.

We had our first group discussion today about the last couple of lines in the play. A girl from Bethlehem speaks about her friend having been killed by Israeli soldiers and then her feelings about September 11th. They are hard, hard lines, to read, to feel, to think about and finally to perform. And of course, this made it a hard discussion. Everybody has different gut and intellectual reactions to those lines and I struggle to articulate mine in a cohesive, understandable way. I actually, very strangely, felt myself close to tears at one point. But it was also an important, stimulating, exciting discussion (I know there are too many adjectives in that sentence, but the conversation took so many different turns and tones I should include even more to fully describe our dialogue.) We have a long way to go to reaching any sort of decision about the lines- and I am really happy about that. I think these might turn out being some of the best discussions we have.

On a completely other note, we had a little photo shoot today by the mosquito congested river. As we were walking over, the cotton falling from the trees looked like steady flurries of snow. For some reason, I cannot post the lovely group photo from it, but it will be up soon! Amazingly, we actually all look happy (not one awkward half-closed eye in the photo!)
-Becky

Manager Madness

Hello all!!

Managers unite! Hilary and Becky here, No Fog West's Stage and Road Managers, sitting in the Cannons' beautiful living room in Sheridan, Wyoming. We have been in Wyoming for two days now, and have been loving every minute of it. After arriving, we headed straight out to the UCROSS foundation where we will be rehearsing and staying starting on Monday, for an Independence Day Eve Ho-Down. Madeleine and Grace got jiggy with an adorable old man, but we all joined in with the sweaty dancing. After dark, we watched a fireworks display with musical accompaniment. Strangely, The Who's "Pinball Wizard" was mixed in with "Proud to be an American" and Toby Keith's heartwarming song about shoving American boots up people's "asses." Maybe they were paying homage to our British past?

For our first night here, the two of us decided to sleep outside -- our first managerial meeting of sorts. Everything thought we wouldn't be able to make it outside, but we did! We had a wonderful time in the tent enjoying all of the wonderful Wyoming sounds around us, while everyone else slept in warm beds inside the house. Around 8 am this morning the tent became a sauna under the rising sun, and so we headed inside to sleep for another two hours.

Nijae interlude: "I'll write later...I'll write a poem..."
Jamie interlude: "Word."

Then this morning, we celebrated America's birthday by going on a pilgrimage to one of our sacred institutions, Walmart. There, we funded one of the most liberal and American businesses of our society by buying ingredients for baking cookies and brownies for a Donor party we are having tomorrow evening at the Cannon's house.

Tonight we are heading to another ho-down in Sheridan, Wyoming to celebrate the 4th. We are bonding as a company and have grown incredibly close already. Our first production meeting is on Sunday, and Monday we will have our first read-through of the show. Excitement is building!

Talk to you soon!
Much love,
Becky and Hilary

Here are some photos of our antics so far:

Leaving Denver!

Nijae and Baize at the ho-down.

Getting jiggy!

greetings from Wyoming!!!!

we are HERE!! I am sitting at the Cannon's kitchen table in Big Horn, Wyoming with Jamie and Nijae. I think I can speak for all of us when I say how absolutely marvelous it is to finally be here together!

7 of us drove from Denver to Big Horn yesterday, about a 6 hour drive up the entire length of Wyoming. Jamie and I each had the experience of driving the fabulous No Fog West van, a vision of white as it tore up Interstate 25. we christened the van with a dashboard hula girl but have yet to name it. we'll keep you posted.

about 30 minutes after we arrived (hugs and hysteria and happiness abound!) we all piled into Adam and Grace's cars and drove about 30 minutes to Ucross, where we will be living and rehearsing as of Monday. the Ucross Foundation hosts a big 4th of July hoedown every year, complete with a live band and ice cream cones and elephant ears (a HUGE piece of fried dough, which Jamie and I most willingly split) and fireworks and it was a BLAST! tonight we are doing some more fireworks and 4th of July festivities in Sheridan.

hope you are all having a happy holiday!

love,
Baize

Parts!

Hello!

It's Max again. Adam and I were just talking and he said that it was nice to have the parts everyone was playing on the blog last year and suggested I do it again, so here we go:

Nathan Birnbaum: an Ex-member of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, Matthew, a former Secretary of State, Aftab

Baize Buzan: Phoebe, Michelle, Caroline, Momsie

Grace Cannon: Rima, Another former Secretary of State, Linda

Adam Colton: an ex-member of the Irish Republican Army, an Archbishop's Envoy, Dermot

Nijae Draine: an ex-member of the National Resistance Army, Uganda, the wife of a former Secretary of State, a Bethlehem schoolgirl, a Waitress

Madeleine Joyce: Edna, Nodira, Ingrid, Marjory

Mike Marshall: a Colonel, an ex-member of the Ulster Volunteer Force, John, Jad

Jamie: an ex-Ambassador, an ex-member of the Kurdish Workers Party, Faiser

That's it! Everyone shows up in Wyoming today and we leave for the artists' colony on Monday! We've very excited.

See you soon!

Westward Bound!

this is Baize Buzan excitedly saying hello hello hello! I am a member of the company for NFW's 2008 tour and I am writing today from gray Boxford, Massachusetts bursting with excitement and anticipation as I look towards next week!!

hard to believe that in just FIVE DAYS! from today we will all be together, beginning our Western theatrical adventure. the amount of people that have stopped me when I am explaining my summer plans to exclaim how amazing and beautiful and fantastic Wyoming is has been pretty noteworthy. I have no doubts in my mind that it (and Colorado, and Utah, and Idaho!) will live up to the tales that these people have shared with me. I am extremely thrilled to be spending so much time in a region of the country that I have never before been to - so excited, in fact, that among all the line preparations and research, I have been planning my wardrobe as well -- shocking for those of you that know me! I was shopping with my sister a few days ago and tried to find a Wyoming cowgirl shirt, but alas! no luck. guess I will have to wait until I get there.

the amount of information I've learned doing research for my four parts has been extremely intriguing and enlightening. I'm really looking forward to uniting with this wonderful, talented group of people and dissecting all of the complicated bits and pieces of the text and truly making this play ours.

so -- until next time, at which I anticipate (and pray) that I will be fully memorized, packed (or unpacked?), and prepared....ciao!

love,
Baize

Just a little introduction....

Hi, I am Rebecca Katz and I will be the road manager this summer! Right now I am at one of my favorite places, a tea lounge in Brooklyn, doing some research on grants and potential sponsers. The Rolling Stones just started playing from the loudspeakers, making it a pretty perfect enviorment to get excited about the summer. It is hard to get back in the swing of working again, especially since I have come to associate work with extreme stress and final crunch. But this should be a completely different experience, one of driving passion and fun. I have already had some interesting conversations with people about what we are doing this summer. My mom and I had a really intense discussion about terrorism. We have never talked about what September 11th meant to her. I live in Brooklyn and my mom worked in downtown Manhattan when it happened. I have actually just been sitting here for a while trying to figure out what to say about the discussion. For me and my Jewish, New York community, terrorism and its ideological and practical relationship to Israel and the World Trade Centers is the controversial issue. Terrorism is not a remote concept or experience, but one that has personally affected every person I know. My mom asked me why we were addressing this issue, questioning if maybe perhaps terrorism was too controversial and complex and should be left alone. My mother, a former social worker and an amazing, open woman, has never encouraged me to not talk (and talk and analyze, and then talk some more) about anything. But there she was, raising the idea that maybe some things were too emotionally heavy and dangerous to be explored. I was actually shocked for a moment. To me, it was so instinctively necessary that we needed to open dialogue about terrorism. I am still struggling to articulate that base reaction. If terrorism meant something to me and to others, if it changed our generation and our society, it must be explored. Its rawness as a subject only proved its necessity. We, as a post-9-11 America, have a newly intimate relationship with terrorism than before that day. Yet we have not taken the time as a society to explore what that all means. Has our definition of terrorism changed? Should it? Can a discussion of terrorism ever be divorced from its emotional connotations? What does that mean about the way we, as a country, approach terrorists?

I think that conversation between my mom and I was one of the most adult and interesting conversations we have ever had. It further emphasized the importance of the discussions after the performances and how much heart and sensitivity we need to put into them. But I think within those discussions will be moments and ideas that will change the way we look at the world.

-Becky