GrooveLily

We’ve settled into the vibrant South Side of Pittsburgh, where we are living and working all month until our opening night on October 29. We’re right in the heart of this extremely lively neighborhood; from the lovely new City Theatre loft apartments where we and our actors are staying, we can hear Steelers fans cheering on Monday nights at the bar outside our windows. Good yoga classes and good coffee are steps away, as are playgrounds and the Monongahela River. The weather is glorious and the leaves are starting to turn; it’s a beautiful time to be in western Pennsylvania.

And for what seems like the first time ever while working on a show, I’m actually getting to see something other than the inside of a theater. As a writer and not a performer on this one, I’ve done most of my hardest work already. I check in on rehearsals every day, and do rewrites as needed with Brendan, but it’s a relatively civilized schedule, and I’m finding myself surprisingly un-frazzled. (This will definitely change when we get into tech next week.)

It’s a gratifying but also slightly unsettling feeling to realize that people we have never met have been working on our show for months. In addition to our wonderful director Tracy Brigden, who has been with us from the beginning, there are newer members of the team whose work is just now being introduced to us. It’s like receiving gift after amazing gift: “Welcome to LONG STORY SHORT. Look what we have for you!”

The set in progress

Neil Patel, whom we’ll meet next week, is the set designer, and his concept is gorgeous: a diagonal room with floating ceiling, with pools of light on the stage outside the room for the four musicians. The room, with a bed in its center, never changes—all the action takes place there—but it’s spare enough that bringing little items in and out can suggest the passage of time and even different locations. The musicians bracket the room, simultaneously separated from and closely involved with, the action. I think it’s an elegant, intimate design that will work beautifully.

We also got to see a “timeline” of the costume sketches. C.T. Steele, our costume designer, has quite a task here: as we leap forward through over 50 years of Hope and Charles’s relationship in our show, there are very few opportunities for either of them to leave the stage long enough to change clothes…so he must create a strategy of artful layering for both actors, where their costumes not only work for however old the characters are at any given moment, but also suggest aging without being overly blatant. (For example, Hope can wear a scarf around her neck when she’s 30, and then wrap it over her shoulders as a shawl when she’s 75.) There won’t be any wrinkly makeup, or greying powder in the hair, or anything like that in our show—so the costumes must progress subtly and convincingly through the evening, conveying a lot without drawing much attention to themselves. It’s also never clear exactly what year it is in LONG STORY SHORT…so we don’t want an audience member thinking “she’s wearing giant shoulder pads! It must be 1982!” I don’t envy C.T. his job, but I do greatly admire what he’s done. He’s clearly put a lot of artistry and expertise into his designs, and I think they’ll be terrific.

C.T.'s costume timeline

Speaking of terrific, we could not be more excited about our two actors, Pearl Sun and Ben Evans. (I’ll tell you more about them in my next entry.) Meanwhile, we had our first band rehearsal last night! Music director/pianist Doug Levine has been with us since we did our initial reading at the Momentum Festival last June, but we had not met our violinist, cellist or percussionist before. (Actually we’ve still not met some of them, since there are subs for each chair; the only musician scheduled to play all the Pittsburgh shows is Doug.)

Doug

How did Pittsburgh get to be such a hotbed of talent?? I was stunned and amazed last night to hear these local players sightread their way brilliantly through the (not-quite-finished) score. As just one example of the quality of the LONG STORY SHORT world-premiere band, here is a video clip of our outstanding violinist Eunice Keem playing a Paganini caprice. I’m so inspired, I’m going to go practice some scales.

Eunice plays Paganini Capriccio #17

Eunice and Barney

Barney, RJ and Doug

The costume shop

One of Hope's costume pieces