Monster Opening

The Opening was a big success. And tonight promises to be even more fun. Some seats are still available if you would like to spend your Halloween with us. Call 1-800-494-TIXS. BOO!

PWYC Start Tonight

Rorschach's MONSTER comes to life this weekend, with three Pay-What-You-Can Previews on Friday, Saturday and Sunday night at 8pm.

What better way to celebrate the Halloween Weekend than experiencing Neal Bell's adaptation of Frankenstein?

For the truly fearless we offer our special Halloween Night Performance. Join the friends of Rorschach as we celebrate All-Hallows Eve with one of the scariest stories in the world. Tickets are selling fast!

Want a Sneak Peak at MONSTER?? View our theatrical "trailer" by following this link. This video, created by Artistic Partner Grady Weatherford, gives you a taste of the thrills and chills awaiting you at Rorschach Theatre.

If you can't join us for any of these shows remember that MONSTER runs until November 26th and tickets are available at 1-800-494-TIXS or by visiting the web site.

MONSTER has been hailed as one of the most inventive and frightening adaptations of Frankenstein ever to be put on stage. Drawing parallels between our modern science and morals and those of Shelley's characters, playwright Neal Bell has created a unique and chilling telling of this Gothic Classic. Take away the Hollywood lens, and the story of Victor Frankenstein and his creation becomes a lean, terrifying tale of morality and immortality.

Directed by Randy Baker

Cast: Lily Balsen, Nicola Daval, Jeremy Goren, Jason Basinger Linkins, Tiernan Madorno, Paul McLane, Ryan Nealy, Robert Rector, Jon Reynolds

Design and Production: Debra Kim Sivigny (Set), David C. Ghatan (Lights), Erin Nugent (Costumes), William Burns (Sound), Megan Reichelt (Stage Manager), Jillian Levine-Sisson (Asst. Stage Manager), Jessie Gallogly (Asst. Director), Andrew F. Griffin (Asst. Lighting Design), Grady Weatherford (Fight Choreography)

Running Time: 90 Minutes

“Starting from Shelley’s original, but with a sharp eye for cogency and a sharp ear for the turn of a phrase, [Neal Bell] has managed to locate the philosophical germ inside each of the horror myth’s iconic scenes. The scare is still there, but now has other functions than merely frightening your inner child – with fantasies of impotence, rape and castration on a dark and stormy night. If you really want to frighten yourself, there’s always today’s paper; if you want a dramatic story that makes you think-- you should probably go see MONSTER.”-- Michael Finegold, Village Voice

Setting

Add some lights and some mood music and you know what do you got but scary scary stuff my friends. Watched the run last night folks and I can honestly say there were some moments that had me on the edge of my seat and made my skin crawl a little bit. Your first chance to see it is tomorrow night. What better way to start Halloween Weekend then with MONSTER at Rorschach. Pay-What-You-Can Previews are Friday, Saturday and Sunday at 8pm.

Boo!

It Waits . . .

Here is your first peek at Rorschach Theatre's production of Neal Bell's Monster. This adaptation of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein will haunt your dreams. Thanks to Grady Weatherford for putting the trailer together.

Pay-What-You-Can Previews start this Friday night. With shows on Saturday and Sunday night. Tickets are also available for our Special Halloween Show. Spend All-Hallows Eve with Dr. Frankenstein and his Creature. Why should Halloween just be for kids and surly teens? Tickets are available at 1-800-494-TIXS or visit the web site.

Rorschach Retrospective

Some of you saw a different version of this before I took it down on Friday. Grady Weatherford created this teaser trailer for Season 7. Many of you are probably featured in this retrospective of Rorschach's past, others will remember some of their favorite Rorschach shows and yet others will say what the hell is this. Enjoy!

Monster starts previews this Friday, so start making your plans to spend Halloween weekend with us.

Postcard of Death

Rorschach Theatre: The Movie

This is just an experiment please be patient.

Enjoy!

Quashing

There have been some rumors flying around this week which I need to quash. It has long been a priority at The Rorschach Theatre Blog to prevent the spreading of unfounded rumors and to prevent the petty bickering that has broken-up numerous start-up theater companies and at least two British rock bands. So here and now I am going on the record.

Rorschach has not adopted any orphans.

We were looking, but found nothing we liked. Perhaps in a couple years we will be in a better place in our lives and we can handle the responsibility of a child, but for right now we are all very busy concentrating on our careers and Monster.

Rorschach did not test a small nuclear device in the basement of Casa del Peublo.

While we are constantly trying to find ways to raise money and awareness, we have not engaged in any testing or development of nuclear devices. We are not playing God here, like Dr. Victor Frankenstein in our upcoming production of Monster that starts Pay-What-You-Can Previews on October 27th at 8 p.m.

Rorschach did not have pictures taken in the buff when it was in college for which we are being blackmailed to prevent them from appearing in the Tabloids.

Now that one is just plain stupid. Where do you people get this crap? Aren't there better ways to spend your time? How about coming to see Monster? Tickets are available by either calling 1-800-494-TIXS or visiting Box Office Tickets.

I hope this ends the speculation and that you people will let us live our lives in peace.

See Monster!

Caption Constest Mach II

This Picture from Friday Night Needs a caption. Best caption wins a drink of some sort! Oh and Ghillian I still owe you a beer from the last Caption Contest.

Enjoy!

Mary Shelley and Frankenstein Part II

Mary Shelley incorporated a number of different sources into her work, not the least of which was the Promethean myth from Ovid. The influence of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and John Milton's Paradise Lost, the book the creature finds in the cabin, are also clearly evident within the novel.

After Percy Shelley’s drowning in 1822, Mary was tireless in promoting her late husband's work, including editing and annotating unpublished material. Despite their troubled later life together, she revered her late husband's memory and helped build his reputation as one of the major poets of the English Romantic period. But she also found occasions to write a few more novels, including Valperga: The Life and Adventures of Castruccio and Falkner. The Last Man, a pioneering science fiction novel of the human apocalypse in the distant future, is, however, sometimes considered her best work, as is Mathilda, a novella published posthumously.

Mary Shelley died of brain cancer on February 1, 1851, aged 53, in London and was interred at St. Peter's Churchyard in Bournemouth, in the English county of Dorset. At the time of her death, she was a recognized novelist. Her son, Sir Percy Shelley, arranged for her parents to be exhumed and re-buried next to her; he and his wife are also buried there.

Mary Shelley and Frankenstein Part I

The story of how Frankenstein was written is nearly as famous as the novel itself. A nineteen year old girl is issued a challenge by her host to write a ghost story. The girl was Mary Shelley the then fiancée of the poet Percy Shelley and her host was Lord Byron.

Mary Shelley was born Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin in London, England, the second daughter of famed feminist, educator and writer Mary Wollstonecraft and the equally famous anarchist philosopher, journalist and atheist dissenter, William Godwin. She met Percy Bysshe Shelley, a political radical and free-thinker like her father, when Percy and his first wife Harriet visited Godwin's home and bookshop in London. Percy, unhappy in his marriage, began to visit Godwin more frequently (and alone). In the summer of 1814 he and Mary (then only 16) fell in love. They eloped, (though Percy was still married to Harriet at the time) to France in July.

During the snowy summer of 1816, the "Year Without A Summer," the world was locked in a long cold volcanic winter caused by the eruption of Tambora in 1815. In this terrible year, Mary visited Lord Byron at the Villa Diodati by Lake Geneva in Switzerland. The weather was consistently too cold and dreary that summer to enjoy the outdoor vacation activities they had planned, so after reading an anthology of German ghost stories, Byron challenged the Shelleys and his personal physician John William Polidori to each compose a story of their own, the contest being won by whoever wrote the scariest tale.

Mary conceived an idea after she fell into a waking dream or nightmare during which she saw "the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together." This was the germ of Frankenstein. Byron managed to write just a fragment based on the vampire legends he heard while traveling the Balkans, and from this Polidori created The Vampyre (1819), the progenitor of the romantic vampire literary genre. Thus, Lord Byron’s challenge created both the Gothic themes of Frankenstein and the modern vampire.

Come back tomorrow for Part II.

A Message from the Artistic Director not Directing MONSTER

From : Jenny McConnell Frederick
Sent : Wednesday, October 11, 2006 12:38 PM
To : Scott McCormick
Subject : Blog

So last night I infiltrated the secret society that is MONSTER rehearsals and got my first real look at the show. Last night was the first chance the cast has had to run the entire show start to finish. With that in mind, it was a really great first run. Their energy and dedication to this play is enormous. This is always such a fascinating time in the rehearsal process--when the cast is still in jeans and tennis shoes, scripts are still in hand--but you can see the wheels turning. You can see the ideas begin to flow from the mind to the body and soul as they go from understanding their characters to becoming them. One of the most fantastic things about this script is how it turns on a dime from being sharp and witty to being bone-chilling and creepy. And as much as that kind of psychological dexterity is great for a playwright, it's not always easy for a cast to get a handle on. These guys are doing a great job of striking just the right balance.

As much as I love directing, it's also great to be the producer--to go away from the rehearsal process for days at a time and then to come back in and see how much it's grown and changed. The impact of that cumulative growth is so much more apparent after a week's worth of rehearsal has gone by than it is when you're the director and you're right there each night in the thick of it.

I'm looking forward to where things will be by the time we get to the second designer run this weekend...and all of you should be looking forward to when MONSTER opens on Halloween.

-JMF

Monster Shoot

Hi Jenny!

Here is the rough shot – it looks really great in B&W as well. How about if you pass it on and if the graphic designer decides the text should on the top I can add more wall in photoshop – capeche? Let me know what you think.


I had a great time with you guys the other day – thanks so much for the opp!

Marigan

9 Lines About 300 Blogs

A Poem by dcepticon

Rahaleh buys Scott.
Old Fashioned Barn Raising.
Radical New Ideas in Casting.
Speaking of Jilly.
Catching Deb by Surprise.
Harassment from the Right.
A Hundred Entries Ago.
Connections in the Theater.
Heading into Season 7.

Thanks for coming with us on the ride.

Free Night of Theater and Back Stage Column

Free Night of Theater is a National Event that gives away free tickets to theater, to raise awareness of theater. This year Rorschach is participating and I can prooudly say that we have our first fully booked performance of Monster on November 2nd. Apparently the League of Washington theaters gave away 2100 free theater tickets within less than half an hour, including the 65 seats to Monster. Now I know what you are thinking, big deal you gave away tickets and people are coming to see a free show. For me the best thing about it is that there are now 65 people who may have never been to a Rorschach show in their lives coming to our theater.

Also check out Jane's article today in the Back Stage Column of the Post about our upcoming season. Tomorrow is our 300th Blog Entry so I think I will have a poem to post. Enjoy the weather everyone!

Up On Our Feet

If you had stepped into the Sanctuary Theatre last night, your olfactory senses would have immediately began tingling. What was that odor? That, my friends, was the stench of professionalism.

It was the first rehearsal after completing two days of "table work"--a term given to that period of time when everyone gathers around (usually around some sort of "table"), reads the script, and talks about it. It's a really good way to give the actors a chance to get all the fluffy, unplayable dross out of their system so that they can settle in to a month long period of Randy and Megan telling them what to do, and do shut up already.

Our stated goal was to stage scenes one, two, and three. And what can one say? Swish! Count it! Paul McLane and I began the evening at seven and, using the sort of onstage chemistry that comes from being first tested in the Fields of Gogol, and, later, on Rorschach's stage, in the Fields of Rahaleh. After an hour, we had that scene done. Bam. Next scene! Next scene!

Joined moments later by Jeremy Goren, to be soon followed by Lily Balsen and Nicky Daval, we kept up our torrid pace, just cold-rockin' it. Deb's expressionistic set? Negotiated. The complicated blurry blended scene changes? HANDLED. By the time we got toward the end of the evening, we would be coming out of scene three and Paul and Jeremy would get started into scene four, a few lines deep everytime. Scene Four? NOT EVEN ON THE SCHEDULE, BABY! That's called TAKING INITIATIVE.

And so, we got the news today from Megan that we all have tonight off rehearsal! Because something needed to be done to contain the scorching effects of our white-hot expertise!

Monster rehearsals continue on Friday. Maybe we'll have this shizz all finished up by the end of the weekend! I mean, after all, what are the odds that this play gets more complicated after the now-completely-staged opening five minutes?

Dracula vs. Frankenstein

Doesn't it seem like there were more thunderstorms when you were a kid?

When I was growing up my father told me that I should only read Frankenstein or Dracula during a thunderstorm. Mood was everything and the way books like those could leave their eternal marks on your psyche it was best to read them either by candle light in an old spooky house with plenty of creaks or during a storm with all of the electricity and beating of God's big bass drum in the sky that you could muster. Dad told me to wait, so I waited.

First I read Dracula and it filled my teen dreams with images of women in frilly night gowns and Eastern Eurpean Nobility with a distate for sun light and red wine. It thrilled me with its overt sense of sexuality and its need to tell the story that there was in fact an ultimate evil in the world and it had to be hunted down and destroyed. But that evil came from without, it was not the natural but the supernatural that we must fear. As a kid who read comic books that was a message I could understand.

Then I read Frankenstein and things became a little murkier. Who was evil in this book? Victor wanted to re-animate the dead. The Monster wanted to have explination of why he was brought back to suffer. Victor's creation is the very thing that destorys all that he loves and all the Creature wants is someone to love him and to keep him company. There is no black and white in Frankenstein, just deeper and darker shades of not quite white. Who is right and who is wrong? It is Victor's experiments that bring the Monster to life not the supernatural forces at work in Dracula. It is science itself that creates the problems in this book. The same science that has cured disease and has also created disease.

I think at one point or another growing up every child imagines himself fighting vampires. Slowly opening the door to your grandparents basement or crawl space and carefully taking each creaking step down into the darkness, almost as a test of whether you were brave enough to battle all the evil that exists in the world. But how many of us I wonder ever imagines ourselves as great scientists faced with the moral question of just because we can do something does that mean we should?

So sitting somewhere on my book shelves at home are two oft read copies of the greatest horror stories ever written. Waiting for the first hint of lightening to see which of them I will take off the shelf. One tells of the strength of man to slay his demons and the other tells of man's ability to create them.

Model Behavior

So much work goes into developing a show. Even when you work on a limited budget like we do at Rorschach designers and directors still find a way to not only realize a vision but also find a way to embrace the limitations and use them to their advantage.

It hase long been a tradition among our set designers to use the architecture of the space to their advatage. Going back to our very first show at Casa, Lord of the Flies, set designers like Matt Soule and David Ghatan have used the contours of the space to create memorable and sets in which to enact our plays.

Picking up the gauntlet this time is our oft times costume designer and company member Deb Sivigny. As you will see in the model above Deb has taken inspiration from both the story of Frankenstein and his Monster as well as from the environment at Casa. Using one of the stain glass windows as a focal point of the set, she has created a plunging raked deck of a ship locked in the ice, as Victor Frankenstein tells his tale of science gone mad to the Captain of a doomed ship trapped in the Arctic.

Construction is already under way and we are all looking forward to seeing this monster of a set come to life.

Here We Go Again

Sunday at 5pm was the first read for Monster and I for one could not have been happier with what I was hearing.

I have to do a comparison of all of the pictures I have taken of first reads at some point. Every first read seems to look alike only the faces have changed. I know these photos very rarely capture the excitement of a first read, but I think these pictures serve as a reminder that while sitting around a table on the first day may look the same every time we do it, the final results are always different.

If you look closely you will see that part of the set is already under construction. Look to the upper right hand corner above Lily's shoulder and you will see the beginnings of Deb Sivingy's set. Designer presentations give the actors and company a taste of what the show will be when it is fully realized. Once again to show you what we are doing I will try and get as much out there to you as possible. I for one think that this show will definetly take advantage once again of the space in Casa, to create a unique and beautiful stage for this haunting and scary show.

Aerial Photography and First Reads

Here is a satellite picture of our home at the Casa del Pueblo Methodist Church, located at 1459 Columbia Road, NW. As you can see it is a rather old photo because it does not include any of the massive construction projects that are currently being carried out in the Columbia Heights Neighborhood. See that parking lot in the upper right hand corner of the photo, well right now it is a giant pit. Soon it will be another block of condos on 14th Street.

It used to be easy to show up on Columbia Road aroudn 6:30 and find a parking space, but these days it is becoming a "God I hope I get a spot" situation. Things in Columbia Heights are on the move and Rorschach is right in the center of it all. So as we embark on our 7th Season and they start to build the Target up the block from us, remember us when coming to Columbia Heights used to be an adventure.

Speaking of adventures, First Read for Monster is Sunday night. We are all very excited by this cast and this show and we will be making some special announcements very soon, as well as featuring photos of our cast and crew on Monday, so get ready to be afraid. Be very, very afraid!