At the End of the Road

This class has been really great and I have learned a lot through devising a piece of art with six other people. Personally, whenever I think about writing a play, I see it as a very daunting and overwhelming task. And with the addition of six other people, devising a play within a democratic framework can even seem more overwhelming. I loved that to create the realms we split up in groups and put the scenes on their feet. We then had two great ideas for every realm and we could compose from there. It’s also nice since some people are better at improv and thinking on their feet and some people are better writers. This process allowed both types to do their best work. Plus, both aspects of writing and improving together were a lot of fun!

I feel like our group really worked well as an ensemble. I know in one of my first posts I mentioned that I was nervous in working in a group, since usually in group projects it ends up one person doing a lot of the work and carrying the others. I did not feel like that at all with this group. I think we all shared an equal amount of respect for the project, for the community, and for each other. It makes me really excited thinking about how well we worked together creating this piece and how that strong ensemble feeling will carry over to the actual performance of the piece. I am proud to have been a part of this process!

Design Proposal

Budget: $3500

Forum

Since the play will take place in the Thrust Theater, I would like to see the space converted into a sports arena. I think this can be done with marking off the seating to illustrate two competing teams- “The Lard Ball Team” and the “Theater Students Team”. So, half the theater (sections A-C) can be assigned “The Lard Ball Team” and the other half (sections D-F) can be assigned the “Theater Students Team”. I think we should post signs on the walls of the section denoting which team they are sitting in support of. I like this idea since it is using the space to create a mood of competition and fandom. I also really liked Amy’s idea of painting the stage floor with chalk paint. I think the chalk can be used to denote time (how much time is left in a game), space (what are the boundaries), and score (keeping score of what is learned or who is winning). I also think it can be used to replace a lot of props in the actual show by being more creative and drawing them (further illustrating how theater students don’t need a lot of money since they use the resources they have). Also, I like the idea of doing a pre-show and/or half time show in the lobby of the theater. I think this will give audience members the feeling of a real sports game. Here are some ideas: For the pre-show we could have loud music playing, an announcer introducing the “players”, the players warming up, audience members playing cornhole, etc… I think the images of cornhole, introducing the players, and players warming up really helps set up the play. Also, another idea is to have an intermission where the half-time show is in the lobby and people can watch the show as they are going to the bathroom. This half-time show can include a dance routine, a band, a cheer, a song, or letting kids or audience members try and make a half-court shot.

Facsimiles

For facsimiles, I think it would be nice to decorate the lobby doors as the YUM Center with nearby buildings being represented (Actors, Humana). This could give the audience members a known reference before even entering the playing space. Also, I think familiar signage should be used in the play such as creating the show programs in imitation of the UofL sports teams programs. I think it would be nice, if possible, to put our picture, jersey number, height, position or sport of choice, even if its theater related. Also, I think the way we market the show should be reflective of the community and culture so that the YUM center and other iconic Louisville sports buildings (Bats stadium/ UofL football stadium) are reflected in the show poster. I think this will draw attention and interest.

Folk

I think the local culture can in one way be represented in our jerseys showing our Cardinal Pride with the jerseys being red and black. I think also the cheerleader’s uniforms and pom poms should be red and black. I think it would also be interesting if we could collect recent sports newspaper articles from UofL and make something from them. This way we are taking something from the local culture and using it in another innovative way. Maybe, we could make a backdrop with a collage from the newspapers. This way, we could create a backdrop that would include the community for a low cost.

Found

I think a lot of our sports props and gear will be found objects. For example, I have pom poms and at least one football. I am sure others in the group can bring/donate a ball or sports prop.

Fabrication

I think it would be nice to have something in the lobby where the audience could contribute before the show or during intermission. For example, having a chalkboard or dry erase board where they put their favorite team or a voting ballot where they could vote on which team they think will win in the play. I think both of these could involve the audience in the game.

Itemized list

Item	Price
Posterboard (for signs denoting teams)	I have posterboard I can donate
Markers	I have markers I can donate
Chalk Paint	$15
Chalk (2 boxes)	$8
Cornhole Boards	Easy to Make - $25 for 4 boards (2 teams)
Cornhole Bags	Easy to Make- $25 for 16 bags (2 teams)
Paying a Band Member	$250 (Includes rehearsals and performances)
Basketballs	Found- Members from cast find/donate
Soccer Ball	Found- Members from cast find/donate
Baseball	Found- Members from cast find/donate
Baseball Bat	Found- Members from cast find/donate
Baseball Glove	Found- Members from cast find/donate
Football	Found- Members from cast find/donate
Jerseys for Cast (7)	$200
Cheerleader Uniforms (3?)	$90 (for 3 people- top and skirt)
Poms (3 sets)	Found- Members from cast find/donate
Programs	(If had pictures/ created like sports by cast so only had to pay for printing) $200
Show Posters	Created by cast/ Only pay for printing $200
Chalkboard	Borrow from Theater
Newspapers	Found- Members from cast find/donate
Mascot Uniform	$40 (with prop- skull)
Referee Uniform	$20
Foam Fingers	$100 for 99 fingers
T shirt boomerang	Can be made easily $20 for 2
T shirts to give to audience members	$150 for 50 shirts plus printing logo
	Total: $1343

Final Thoughts

The audience for our read-through was smaller than I would have liked, but I’m glad we had the opportunity to get at least a little feedback. I think it did all of us some real good in the sense that it reminded us that we’re going to be creating something that people are going to watch and we really want them to enjoy. For me, that strong reminder that I was creating for an audience caused me to take a step back from my own contributions and find the strength to cut my own excesses. For example, I had included a speech in the “Support” realm that was a transcription of my own conversation with Jake Hassler. It was an idea that I had gotten “married” to, but wasn’t serving the script as a whole, and I finally found it in me to “divorce” myself from that idea.

I can’t wait to see how this project will continue to grow. I think our biggest challenge will be refining the script, and once we’ve gotten it to a happy place, our collective creativity will bring it to life in an exciting way. One thing in particular I want us to focus on is the “craft” element, as Dr. Vandenbroucke would term it. I would like to see the pace of the show become much faster and quite exciting, like plays in a sporting event, so that when we do slow it down with a longer speech, it’s really attention-grabbing, and is better able to drive a point home than, to paraphrase one of our audience members at the read-through, beating an idea over the audience’s head.

I had a playwriting professor once who, with every assignment, would ask the writer, “What’s your favourite line?” and them make them cut that line out. It was a harsh, but effective way of teaching us to step back from our own work and remain objective rather than loosing ourselves in what we perceived as the beauty of our own language and falling short of something we could be proud of in the long run. I’m not suggesting we do that with the script for the sports project, but it’s something I’d like us all to keep in mind as we enter this next step of the process - revising and refining. I hope we are all objective enough to ask ourselves, “Does this serve to accomplish the goal we as a group are striving to achieve, or am I indulging my own whims?”

I hope this is going to be something we can all be proud of. I think it will. Fingers crossed!

-Lauren

Interviews

The process of collecting interviews was a neat challenge, and admittedly, a little scary. The very first interview I collected was actually completely unplanned, and that may have been the best thing that could have possibly happened to get me over my interview jitters. I was out to dinner with my parents, when suddenly the topic turned to the sports they both played in high school. I whipped out my little voice recorder, and just let them talk. Every now and then, I’d probe for a little more information when I felt they weren’t quite dishing all the details, but for the most part, all I had to do was let them talk.         

As for my on-camera interviews, all but two of them were my students. For some reason, the two that were not my students, Jeremy Dugan and Jake Hassler, were the best of the lot, or so I consider them. Perhaps this is because Jeremy and Jake are familiars of mine, rather than my students, and so were more comfortable and open with me. Perhaps it’s as simple a thing as they’re more comfortable on camera. Whatever the reason, I feel like these two interviews have been especially valuable, at least from the ones I collected. However, that’s not to say my student interviews were useless. Each of them offered a perspective I hadn’t considered - for example, Clarence Jackson provided some serious insight into what it’s like to be a student athlete on scholarship, and Andrea Araujo taught me a little somethin’ somethin’ about soccer, a sport I know absolutely nothing about.

The interview process has proven itself as a really valuable form of research, and I’m so glad we have so much interview material at our disposal!

-Lauren

Design Proposal Part 2

Design Proposal - Part 2.

In my earlier design post, I focused on the costume design for Big Sweetie and Little Sweetie. Now that we’ve worked out some more detail with the script, I’d like to focus a little on the costume design for the seven of us in the class - the seven “scouts” in the show.

 (This might be a note for another time, but there are seven of us, we’ve created seven realms, we’ve talked about the seventh-inning, stretch - is there more we can do with the number 7? It seems like it should be important.)

With the design for Big and Little Sweetie in mind (that nostalgic, wholesome flavor which may or may not be masking the root of all kinds of evil....

Oh. Em. Gee. It just hit me that Big Sweety and Little Sweety shouldn’t be in pink... they should be in dollar-bill greens and coppers and nickels and golds. Money is what Big Sweety is all about, and maybe that would be a too-obvious costume choice... but I rather like it. Their buttons could be silver dollars, the piping on their pockets or Big Sweety’s elbow patches could be gold...)

Sorry. Back on track now. So, keeping with the nostalgic themes for the Sweeties, I’d like to see the seven of us in pieces of vintage sportswear, and each of us representing a different sport. I’m not sure it matters who represents which sport, though if I were to make the executive decision, I’d put everyone in the costume that made the least sense/made them look the most ridiculous.

 For example, what if Jake were dressed in a turn-of-the-century style bathing costume - the funny, multi-colored striped ones shaped like pajamas?

Perhaps, just for silliness’ sake, one of us is dressed as a jockey?

One of us could be in a Three-Stooges-esque golfing outfit, with the puffy pants and silly page-boy hat.

Someone could be in a 1960s bowling shirt and shoes.

I really want one of us to be in the short-shorts, knee-socks, and tank tops of the basketball uniforms of old. This person MUST wear sweatbands around his wrists and head.

Someone could be in the 40s-style leather football helmet and jersey, sans pads.

Someone, probably one of the girls, could be in a flapper-era tennis costume, with the pleated skirt and the cloche hat.

Someone could be in the striped, button-front style basbeball uniform circa Joe DiMaggio. (I would like this someone to be me, simply because I love baseball, but I’d be willing to trade if someone else were really passionate about it.)

As far as the color scheme, though our pieces may not match, I feel that color-wise, we should all be in the same palette. I want us to look like a Norman Rockwell painting when we’re onstage as a collective unit.  I envision us as sandlot kids - baseball field browns, whites, sky blues, sunshine yellows, dingy greys like play clothes that have been washed too many times, grass stains on knees, butts, and elbows, messy hair, scrapes on arms, legs, and faces - the idea behind the look being that we’re a rag tag, rowdy bunch of neighborhood kids - innocent, maybe a little naive, but tough and able to take on the bad guy.. Maybe one of us should have a black eye?

 -Lauren

Magic

In the draft of the script that currently stands (and will be read publically on Monday night, December 5, 2011, at 8pm in the Thrust Theatre for those who are interested!) there’s a quote that I have found particularly meaningful, and I think my cohorts have become rather attached to it, as well. It’s from a blog called “A Fan for All Seasons,” posted October 22, 2010. We’re using a cutting of it in the script, but for your reading pleasure, here’s the whole thing:

"To commit to a side is to be a fan; to be a fan is noble. Sports are an escape for us but also an anchor. We live through our athletes, we share their pain and their gain. Professional and Olympic sports are grown men or women getting paid (or getting sponsorships) to do what they love in

format where they are constantly tested against others who grew up being ‘The Best’. To witness someone struggle and fall, only to lift themselves back up and attain the sweet reward, that is why we watch, that is why it is compelling. It is real. It’s not a movie. It is us. That’s someone’s son, someone’s dad, someone’s brother. For the sports fan an image can stay with us like a loved one, like a memory of something beautiful that can never fully be replicated. In that moment you feel you’ve almost become that person’s family and you grieve and you hope and you celebrate as if nothing else mattered. Sport satisfies our need to hope, to feel there is something pure, like the image of arms hoisting the trophy, the winner kissing their sweetheart, the loser screaming into the grass, the goat weeping into two hands, or the veteran waving to the crowd as he exists his last game. In an era of text messages and pop-up ads, it’s good to FEEL something. In the end, we're all kids. It's not just about being in a packed stadium rocking the foundation with sound. It's about looking at an empty stadium and feeling hope."

            Reading over this again, even having read it fifty times already, it gives me a strange sort of clean feeling, like the calm before the storm. It’s the same feeling I get before I walk onstage opening night, or before I enter the cemetery at a funeral. It’s a feeling of anticipation and readiness and a certain amount of confidence that I know I have the strength to do what has to be done. It’s funny to me that words from some strangers blog about sports could give me that feeling. I wonder if it does the same thing for other people?

            I also wonder if theatre can do this for people - if an image from a show can stay with a person “like a loved one.” When we, as spectators, look at an empty stage, what do we feel? Do we hold the actors onstage dear to our hearts? Do we rejoice in their triumph and despair in their downfall - or, are we smug in their defeat, complacent when they do well? Does an empty stage fill a modern audience with anxiety and dread?

            Certainly, it’s different for everyone. Speaking for myself, an empty stage is, and for my entire life has been, something magical. I remember walking onto the stage at the Grand Ole Opry a few years ago, the stage at the New Amsterdam in New York City, and Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C. I remember working my way through the mysterious underbelly of the Drury Lane theater in London. I remember the first time I set foot onto my high school’s stage, my elementary school’s oversized platform, my church’s altar... every time, everywhere, it’s been that same magical feeling - that sense of the calm before the storm. It’s like a sixth sense comes alive and reacts to an unseen current of energy in the air.

            Does everyone get to experience that feeling? Does everyone have that little touch of magic in their lives - that feeling that anything is possible? I hope so. I can’t imagine how dull my life would be without it.

-Lauren

A Little Psychology for Ya

Hello, there!

MUCH earlier in the semester, we all created research presentations on different aspects of the sports world - economics, social class, rivalries, etc. My presentation was on the psychology of the sports fan. We seem to be coming back to some of these topics fairly readily in the script, and so I thought it would be a good idea to explain a little more just what we’re talking about.

Let’s start with some science words. (Have you had your coffee yet? Good!)

There’s a certain aspect of neurology associated with fandom (not just of sports, but of anything, really) involving something called the mesolimbic system - which, basically, functions as a link between the opiodergic system and the dopaminergic systerm.

The opiodergic system controls our enjoyment of external stimuli. (Notice the root is similar to the word opiate, opium, etc?) When you really like something, it’s because these little things called opiods are finding lots of opiod receptors in your brain and latching on, creating a pleasant chemical reaction.

The dopaminergic system governs our want-to function. We receive a certain stimuli (like the smell of fresh cookies) which we’ve learned to associate with another stimuli ( the taste of fresh cookies) and, therefore, we are drawn toward that stimuli (or, pushed away, if the association was unpleasant.) This is the part of the brain that make Pavlovian conditioning (remember the dogs and the bell?) possible.

Combined, these two systems make up the mesolimbic system, which evolved to drive us toward things like food and sex, but other stuff sometimes gets caught up by it. When someone is a REALLY big fan of something, it’s because their opiodergic (liking) response is spilling over and causing a big reaction in their dopaminergic (wanting) center.

Another funny little brain function that contributes to fandom is something called a mirror neuron. A mirror neuron is partly responsible for our ability to sympathize with others, because it gives us the ability to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes. Have you ever read a book and imagined yourself as the main character? You can thank your mirror neurons for that. Have you ever caught yourself behaving like that character in real life (maybe pretending your pencil is a magic wand, or quoting a line of dialogue in the context of your everyday speech?) You can thank your mirror neurons for that. A sports fan’s mirror neurons allow that fan to put him/herself in the place of their favourite athlete, sometimes so much so that they feel wins, losses, and good and bad plays as keenly as if they were actually a part of the game!

            Finally, I’d like to talk a little about testosterone. You’re probably familiar with this as the “male” hormone, which contributes to things like aggression, sex drive, and the growth of body hair. You’d be correct, but don’t forget that, just like estrogen, testosterone is present in both sexes. It may seem like a no-brainer that people watching a sporting event experience elevated levels of testosterone... but it may surprise you that this surge follows the same pattern as male animals in the wild fighting over a potential mate. That’s right - watching sports makes you horny (IF you’re a fan.) The more you identify with a team, the hornier their success with make you. In fact, studies have shown that the level of arousal experienced by an avid fan watching their team win was comparable to that same fan being shown erotic images!

That’s all for now - catch you on the flip side.

-Lauren