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

Blog Post from Algeria

Ok, not quite. More like Blog post from NC, but close, right?

So our NC production of Michael Walker's Letter from Algeria ended on Sunday, and I think we are all (undergrads, post-undergrads, Ground UP peeps, etc.) enjoying a few deeps breaths post-show week. And what a fantastic week it was, to be able to (super-quickly) pick up where we left off after our epic trip to NYC and get the show into a theater, ourselves into costume, and an audience into the seats. The week began with a stumble-through of the show, where we ran it (with only minimal stopping for things like, I don't know, making up a door where there wasn't one...my bad) on stage, off-book, for our UNC designers. After the terror of that adventure gave way to sheer adrenaline, the rest of the week became a whirlwind of quick changes, sound cues, silhouetted entrances...you know, super glamorous stuff :)

Opening night was, in a word, insane. In a good way, of course, and for a lot of different reasons. As with any show, you expect there to be new places for laughs and the like once an audience gets into the mix...but with Algeria, you also have to add in places for gasps, "oh no!s" and breath holding, leaning-forward-in-your-seat silences. Add in a dash of "oh dear god I have to change this dress in .00001 seconds" and "was that my line...oh god, I hope that was my line but we have only been off book for 4 days ack!" on the part of us actors (ok, well, on the part of moi) and the whole show went by in a high-adrenaline, beautifully-lit and scored rush.

After each show, we joined Kate onstage for a mini talkback, answering questions about the UnderGround program, the show, what have you. It is exciting to be part of a show that leaves people guessing, and every night without fail someone (usually more than one person) would ask for the "right answers" to secrets in the show...needless to say, we all worked hard to keep them guessing, giving indirect and shady answers...after all, no one likes a spoiler, right?

Overall, the week was exhilarating, exhausting, and everything in between, and I am so thankful to have played a part (pardon the pun) in it. I have learned so much from Ground Up, and I was proud to be able to share such a cool show with the UNC and NC community.

For realz.

sarah