tickets for My Inner Orc here.

You can enjoy Tom Jewett’s gorgeous image for the show right here :

You can read writer Allen O’Leary’s thoughts about it all here.

And mine here :
So, what’s to say?
I don’t often work like this : writer, script, meetings, script, talk to writer, script, actors, rehearse, rehearse, writer, actors, rehearse, designers, rehearse, show.
I’ve usually worked more like this : idea, people, idea, talk, people, move, idea, talk, people, feel, idea, move, feel, people, idea, feel, change, show.
And I’ve usually preferred the latter to the former. By far.
But in this case … I’m loving it. I’m sure it helps that we have a great cast of gorgeous people, many of whom I know well and have worked with before. I’m sure it helps that Allen is a very generous and amenable writer, Kate and Scott are fine designers, and there’s an actual production team ready and willing to support the whole, but …
the main reason (I think) that I’m enjoying it is we’re making a ‘proper’ (trad, written, scripted etc etc) play in Open Space.
That is, at least most of the time (not when I’m on the phone to Kate the designer and we’re choosing between one item of furniture and another), but in the actual work in the rehearsal room, the actors (and anyone else who turns up) gets to call sessions, to say what they want to work on, to do it in their time, to contribute their own great ideas, be part of the deciding what we do AS WELL AS the doing of it.
I don’t have to pretend I know everything, or know better than all of them (how on earth could I?), they don’t have to pretend to like doing an afternoon’s work on one scene when they’d all rather be working on another. Or five others.
And so far, so very good.
It works. Even with a ‘proper’ play.
I still feel like I’m ‘directing’ – ie, encouraging, helping, supporting, aiding, challenging, loving; the actors still feel like they’re doing their job, but we’re doing it together, in all of our own time, with all of us taking responsibility.

And yes, I do hear the question floating through the ether, “But whose vision is it?”
The answer is, “It’s ours.”
Who but an egomaniac would want to create only their single vision from a shared project, when the broader, wider, deeper, stronger vision of all could be created instead?

Some don’t-tempt-fate part of me feels compelled to add there’s plenty of time for it all to go wrong yet. But I don’t think it’s going to. We’re working really hard and having a great time. Yay.