Rehearsal Playground
Happy Saturday, friends. Welcome to EA’s Rehearsal Playground. Each week we’ll celebrate our Mainstage material and capture graveyard echoes emanating from EA’s Spoon River.
Paid members have a Mainstage Rehearsal Challenge + Weekly Character Challenge waiting beyond the paywall below!
Graveyard Echoes
excerpts of The Spoon River Anthology (Edgar Lee Masters)
The Unknown
Ye aspiring ones, listen to the story of the unknown
Who lies here with no stone to mark the place.
As a boy reckless and wanton,
Wandering with gun in hand through the forest
Near the mansion of Aaron Hatfield,
I shot a hawk perched on the top
Of a dead tree. He fell with guttural cry
At my feet, his wing broken.
Then I put him in a cage
Where he lived many days cawing angrily at me
When I offered him food.
Daily I search the realms of Hades
For the soul of the hawk,
That I may offer him the friendship
Of one whom life wounded and caged.
Ready to give The Unknown a forever home?
Cinema Elysium Presents
The O. Henry Museum
Weekly Character Challenges
How It Works
The first three Saturdays of each month deliver weekly character rehearsal challenges straight to your inbox. Something dynamic, something experimental, something transformational.
Something to push the boundaries of truth in character.
The last Saturday of the month features a video rehearsal (also later available on-demand) where we … well, we go a little nuts. We set free our solo work in exciting, experimental ways - evolving, enhancing, and challenging our work.
March through July: EA’s Spoon River
August - November: Anton Chekhov’s Plays
Monthly Mainstage Rehearsal Project
How It Works
On the first Saturday of the month, our MainStage rehearsal project gets posted exclusively for members to play with all month long. Your posted material always receives feedback taking your creative work further.
Each project builds out an array of rehearsal tools, applying them to work you’ll remember forever. The stuff that makes acting worth investing in. Worth believing in.
The monthly projects are tailored to move at your pace - and are available anytime you’d like to revisit them. The work is timeless. Apply your discoveries to any new character, any new world that finds you in your training and professional life.
March through May: O. Henry
June through August: Oz
September through November: Stravinsky’s A Soldier’s Tale
It’s about your creative potential taking you where no one has gone before. It’s time to roar.
Getting Started.
Find Your Character.
DM Me Your Choice On Discord.
Wait For Confirmation.
You’ll receive a direct message back on Discord confirming your choice.
Then It’s Game On.
From that moment on post only in-character when chatting on Spoon River channels!
Have Questions?
Ask them as yourself :) by DM or any non-Spoon River channel on Discord.
THIS MONTH’S VIDEO REHEARSAL: Saturday, April 2nd (10-11am pst)
All video rehearsals available on-demand as part of your paid membership.
Your Weekly Character Challenge
Divide your character’s life into three chapters.
Find the song that captures what each chapter really felt like when you lived it.
It’s one thing to remember back to our childhood and taste our young self through our current tastebuds. It’s another thing entirely being that younger version and tasting the world around you. That difference is the difference between the idea of what it was like vs. the taste of what it was actually like.
Beginning with wonder & curiosity and tasting from within the soul of your character, go on the hunt for a song that captures the taste of each chapter … to you! It doesn’t matter in the slightest whether “others” get it. You’ll know you have the song, when anytime it plays it does the work of pulling you back into the soul of the character at that chapter/stage of your life.
Allow this to be a hunt … an adventurous search to get closer and closer to The Song by scratching and clawing until one gives you The Click. There is no work you have to do … the song ignites what it felt like being in that chapter of your Spoon River life.
3 songs total. Maybe they work together. Maybe they clash.
What you’re left with is music that does the work of carrying you through your Spoon River Life Story.
ALL WEEK ON DISCORD
I’ll be providing feedback for your posted work and available as a teammate for the discoveries and challenges inspired as you explore.
This Spring we’re unlocking deep truths, forging character connection, and working from the depths of artistic beauty and creative love.
Getting Started
Read (All) The Classic Shorts.
Your Monthly Mainstage Project
After reading all the short stories - step away for a day. Your character will be the one most living in your soul after that full day is up.
This month, please Creatively Communicate what only you can taste of the heart/soul connection you have with your character.
Find the image that captures the connection.
Find the song that captures the connection.
Find the object (one you can actually touch vs. discover online or see behind glass in a museum) that captures the connection.
Find the poem that captures the connection.
Create an original piece of Creative Communication that captures the connection - adding/expanding on the forms of expression listed above.
ALL MONTH ON DISCORD
I’ll be providing feedback for your posted work and available as a teammate for the discoveries and challenges inspired as you explore.
Rehearsal Playground