Waffles Anyone?

Last November, Michael I. Walker's play LETTER FROM ALGERIA was the breakout hit of our From the Ground UP reading series. Less than 12 months later, we are set to open a production of the play with a fabulous cast -- Rufus Collins, Amanda Jane Cooper, Patrick Murney & JD Taylor -- and creative team (director Adam Fitzgerald, set and lighting designer Travis McHale and costume designer Amanda Jenks).

We are thrilled to share this exciting new play with you, but why all this discussion of waffles when the play is called LETTER FROM ALGERIA? Well, the play begins in a dorm room in Brussels, Belgium. Three ex-pat American students meet and the rest is history.

In keeping with the Belgian theme, we're offering a few surround events -- fun activities, food and drink -- to round out the theater-going experience. On Halloween, Sunday, October 31st, we're offering Belgian brunch items at intermission. On November 2nd and 10th, our friends at 36 West Bar and Grill, right next door to our theatre, is offering pre-show and post-show, respectively, deals on Belgian beers. Look for the coupon in the program.

Join us as we transport you to Belgium, a country known for its waffles, fries and fantastic female tennis players (Justine Henin and Kim Clijsters).

We look forward to sharing LETTER FROM ALGERIA with you over the next few weeks.

And our Fabulous Cast for ALGERIA!!

Rehearsal is in full swing at 2 Fifth!

We went to SIX FLAGS! Again. Yes. Absolutely.

Team Ground UP tried to make "GUP" on a roller coaster to show company support!
We did it!
(Although we had to go on it once before to practice our mid-air acrobatics.)
PS, Flash Passes ROCK.

A bit from the world of costumes...

Hi all,

This is my first blog post (EVER, not just with Ground UP), so here it goes. To introduce myself a little, I'm Amanda, the resident costume gal and Letter from Algeria's costume designer. I'm a relatively new addition to the Ground UP family. I first got involved after doing a show (TACT's The Late Christopher Bean) with Kate last year. It has been really lovely being a part of everything and I'm so happy to be involved.

It has been a really exciting process so far. We had something incredibly generous happen to Ground UP as far as costumes are concerned. We were granted access (read: FREE!!) to an amazing warehouse of costumes located in Pennsylvania to pull from for this show by a wonderful film designer. We're talking 5 buildings filled with clothing. An entire house that had been purchased because the warehouse building was full and they needed more room. Rows and rows of clothing for the taking. I can not say thank you enough! And of course a huge thank you to Michael Walker, our talented playwright, for making this happen.

This show is a lot of fun because I get to play with fashion. This isn't much of a jeans-and-tees kind of show. Particularly, the female character, Ali, has been enormous fun to design. She's the kind of person that is always playing a character. Each outfit has its own style, its own theme, but always fabulous and statement-making. And always fantastic heels! I love working with a character that can take so many risks and have such freedom. Maybe I'll post some sneak peak pictures later.

Until then, it's time for me to get ready for our first fittings tomorrow. Wish me luck! I hope it all fits!

-Amanda

Ground UP Productions Needs YOU!

My name is Adam Gerdts, and I am new to the Ground UP Board. However, I am not new to Ground UP.

Kate approached me in 2005 to direct THE HOUSE OF YES and then PROOF; two fine productions which anchored our inaugural season. Shortly thereafter, life saw fit to return me to Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Around the same time, Kate began educational out reach to dramatic art students at UNC-Chapel Hill, and our collaboration continued. Over the next few years, I grew my relationship with Ground UP not only as a director, holding workshops for undergraduates, but as a fundraiser.

While building a diverse directing resume in basements and dives, in downtown avant garde strongholds and midtown bastions of mainstream, I also fell into a development career. I found within myself a knack for encouraging generous people to give to causes about which they are passionate. Now, please allow me to employ that trait with you.

Private support is crucial to the continued expansion and growth of Ground UP. Gifts from individual donors currently make up an astonishing 75% of our operating budget. We truly could not survive without our generous and loyal donor base. Please consider investing in Ground UP, in our commitment to helping undergraduates transition into theatre careers, and in our passion for staging new work and new classics.

Please visit our website to support this important work with any amount of gift, or please e-mail me at adam@groundupproductions.org.

Thank you.

Desiging my face off...

Hi from Travis -
We are quickly building the set for LETTER FROM ALGERIA. This is our biggest effort ever, and it's so exciting. Check back, I'll post some teasers as we make progress.
Here's a little selfless promotion... I designed the lighting for THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK at the fabulous Westport Country Playhouse. It's a stunning production of the new adaption and it's running for about 3 more weeks. So if you are going to Connecticut or love this story, check it out. After all, "Travis McHale's lighting is often subdued, rightly turning strident in the most urgent or confrontational moments."

We got a nice notice in the times too http://theater.nytimes.com/2010/10/10/nyregion/10theaterct.html?ref=anita_gates

Playing with New Plays

Hi Everyone -

I'm Michael, the playwright behind Letter From Algeria. We're back from an amazing trip to UNC, where we got to see the play up on its feet in a great workshop production driven and performed by students. It is a rare and exciting opportunity for a writer to get to test a script out on such a big scale. No one in New York gets to see his or her work put up, staged, and in front of a live audience before going into rehearsals for a NYC production - it was a pure Ground UP treat. The entire creative team and I learned SOOO much from the UNC process.

But now that we're back north, we've hit the ground running again. We have gathered a fantastic cast for NY (really, they're gonna blow you away), and this past week, we started rehearsing, exploring every line and dissecting each moment. It's an exciting time for the author of a new play - great actors always bring something new and unexpected to your words. So yet again, I feel like I am learning a ton about how to communicate LoA's story. And the great thing about rehearsal is, we get to play with the play. Together, the actors, director, and I try out scenes, turn ideas on their heads, and try things again. It's an invigorating, terrifying, and awesome process.

People often ask me why I write plays. Creating theater is, unlike any other medium, a truly collective experience. No play is created in a vacuum. Putting a show up on stage is, by definition, a collaboration. And an audience's experience hopefully reflects that communal approach. A community came together to tell this story. Another community is created as people watch and absorb the story at the same time. In its greatest moments, that feeling of commonality is palpable both under the stage lights and out into the dark seats. We all go through something together for two hours, and we all come out differently at the end. Why do I write for the theater? Because when it works, when everyone watching a show senses that synergy, it is the greatest, most transformative artistic experience I know.

Letter From Algeria is about many things, but at its roots, it's about four people searching for community and struggling (and failing) to find common ground. Here's to hoping that we all do a bit better together, artists and audience, as we play with this new play.

Can't wait to see you at the theater!

- Michael