Heist Play

WHAT IS “HEIST PLAY”? You all know the story. One badass team of rogue experts teams up to make the heist of a lifetime, with some sick montages and witty banter along the way. But what happens after the credits roll and the team separates once again? HEIST PLAY examines the lives, loves, and heartbreaks of creative people inside the wild world of heist films, and how their identities are inextricably tied to what they create. BUT, LIKE, WHAT IS THIS? This is a blog where we follow the process of creating this play from nothing to full production! Follow along!

[heistplaying]

[heistplaying]

Time takes its crazy toll And how does your mirror grow You better watch yourself when you jump into it 'cause the mirror's gonna steal your soul I wonder how it came to be my friend That someone just like you has come again You'll never, never know how close you came Until you fall in love with the diamond rain

Thanks guys.

-Aaron

[heistplaying]

congrats, guys. 

-Emma

[heistplaying]

SET DRESSING

Dear Heisty people, I love you all so much that I make you cheesy refrigerator magnet poetry.  You're going to rock all the socks, laugh, cry, and eat a lot of really awful pre-cooked food in these three hours traffic across the stage (and like do all the awesome tech-whatever that you're doing--that too).  You are all so beautiful and made of magic.

Much love,

Miranda Friel

The Set Designer

*musical sting* duhhhhh nuhhhhhhhhh

[heistplaying]

I Need to Make a High School Musical-Level Leap into Air

We're finishing up Wet Tech before tonight's run of the show, in what counts as our first dress rehearsal of three. Apparently we're opening on Thursday? (No, Tumblr. Do not let people answer this.)

My thoughts are jumbled in metaphor:

I want to do so much justice to this show, and the people involved in creating it, that I'm reaching dangerous levels of superhero jokes. ('Justice League,' etc.)

The myth of Icarus has cropped up in several of my courses over the past few weeks. Coincidence?

There is a song in the show called "Fly." That is most definitely not a coincidence.

Off to go leap from the stage with the wisdom of Troy booming in my ears,

Sarah C. (Cat)

[heistplaying]

Also I can't raise my left eyebrow anymore.

[heistplaying]

Wigging out a little. Feels like we've got to make a leap, but our footing isn't secure. But I've got faith in Cassidy.

I don't know how S&B can afford it but I can't wait til we get that $30 million Skylar promised us after the show.

[heistplaying]

you are all going to pee when you see the fitness video. I cannot believe. god bless aaron whitman

-Emma

[heistplaying]

Cat in a comic book: judgmental; tired; terrified.

Skylar has reworked the majority of the small moments that I was taking as casual, so there is now a ballet-like specificity to our movements, and I'd be lying if I said I was completely calm about these changes, because my mind is still scrambling to add them up into a complete whole even as we charge forward to Thanksgiving Break.

The run tonight will be a great way to synthesize the intensive work we've been doing in the past two rehearsals, and I'm hopeful that I can remember what we've done and add it to make Cat an actual living thing, as opposed to the somewhat empty space-consumer I've made her.

Maybe she's like Blair Waldorf minus the minions. I don't know. We'll see what happens.

Photo Booth is good for low self-esteem,

Sarah C. (Cat)

[heistplaying]

What's rad

Why is it that these tumblr posts always coincide with procrastination

Hoping tumbling will help me get out of screenwriter's block

Meticulous work moment to moment on Acts 1-2 these past few days -- making Heist Play even more kickass (and clearer to audiences). Realized that I'm gonna have to fit these new, augmented moments into the Leo personality that I have been playing up until now...but this can only help him be richer....or at least show a different side of him.

We show in 2 weeks! 

!!!!! After 2 months of work !!!!!!

The first show OF MY LIFE (and hopefully the first of many more to come)

Thanksgiving Break's definitely gonna be jam-packed with independent work so that I'm ready to go for Wet Tech when we get back. Need to keep Leo on his feet and hecka fraiche

My brother and sister are coming to watch -- so excited. I don't know if they'll take me seriously as an actor

Peace y'all

- Love Leo

[heistplaying]

[heistplaying]

Sunday rehearsal's theme song

[heistplaying]

Courtesy of your roving correspondent comes this Informal Library Photo Booth photo essay charting her response to last night's first stumble-through run of the entire show that Skylar Fox wrote in less than two months.

As Kim Kardashian once said, "Maybe I'll just be a good aunt."

[heistplaying]

After tonight's run.

[heistplaying]

Fitness.

-Aaron

[heistplaying]

People are the Best Kind of People

Act Three is an emotional endurance test: we're onstage for the entirety of the act, literally confined to the graveyard, and it is horribly fitting that we are so trapped -- we're the remainders, left in a framework that no longer has its center.

Yeats' 'The Second Coming' pops to mind. The first stanza:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.

That question of 'passionate intensity' has also been on my mind today as I walk across campus, my bags stuffed to the brim with the items that give me meaningful identities: folders and notebooks for my courses (student); copies of annotated scripts (actor); lunchbox (human who eats). During our check-in yesterday, Skylar acknowledged that he's asking a lot of everybody involved in the production, because everybody is juggling the various identities that give them meaning; and yet, the fact that we're all doing things that, in some way, make us feel meaningful is a core tenet of Heist Play -- which, of course, makes the challenge of Act Three all the more intimidating. The stakes are so high, we are all so tired, and nobody wants to give anything less than that 'passionate intensity.'

I guess it's a sign of how desperately I want to be good -- not to be right or to get it 'perfect,' but to be good, honest, to who Cat is -- that I am arguing with Yeats on Tumblr -- because it's not such a bad thing, being full of passionate intensity. Yes, it might make us sentimental and fallible and transparent in our desire to make meaning, but I'm finding that those things are actually quite beautiful, and the people who feel that way are rare and wonderful creatures.

(Even if they do make dick jokes during every single rehearsal break.)

I'm feeling better about the process now that I have a sense of where Cat's fight lies. Maybe that will change with rehearsal tonight, but for now, there is nowhere I would rather be than here.

Listening to Frank Sinatra's Christmas album makes me disgustingly sappy,

Sarah C. (Cat)

[heistplaying]

rehearsin n such

Act Three is very tough. Plain and simple. Doing it justice is going to take homework. Plain and simple. Skylar was not lying when he said we'd get to the bottom of ourselves and have to go deeper to make this happen. I realized today that the mere format of Act 3 requires more focus than some shows demand in their entirety. Today was a little frustrating in that I knew that I wasn't fully there in terms of believing in what I was fighting for or even being 'in it' all the time, but I feel reassured by a brief post-rehearsal conversation with Sarah C. (quite the gal; aware of the snapback's connotations) about what rehearsal means, how none of us are supposed to turn out a performance-worthy product in the first blocking rehearsal. Then again, we only have a couple weeks of rehearsal left, so the time to explore feels a bit limited. Thus we have to explore and try fully in rehearsal to see what really works; we don't have time to get comfortable with certain choices anymore.

Today was maybe the first time I looked at our rehearsal process and thought about how much different it is from other plays I've worked on. Rehearsals for this show are intense and focused. They are enjoyable and never wasteful and always exhausting. Gone are the days of relaxing in the house with friends while you wait to work.

I think the team's willingness to always work at such a high rate is a testament to the importance of this project to each of us. I can't imagine trying to work through a day of Heist Play if any of us didn't believe in the project. This is perhaps the first theatre work I've participated in where everyone is committed all the time, where nobody jadedly shrugs off the work as stupid or boring, ever. Nobody has come in after a bad day and checked out. It's really crazy and quite strange. Despite the long hours of energy expenditure, I definitely prefer it this way. I think this is probably how plays are supposed to work.

From Champlin with Love,

James / Lucas