Tales from the LTYM Rehearsal

On Sunday, March 11th, waaaaay too early in the morning (especially considering Daylight Savings Time had JUST sprung us forward an hour!) we gathered the tribe and held our first rehearsal in a small theater on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.

While Amy, Holly and I had met and spoken with each member of the cast, for everyone else it was their first time laying eyeballs on each other, a first date, as it were. And in spite of it being rather much of a blind date for most, it couldn’t possibly have gone better.

Except for the part about standing in front of the building, waiting in the cold for the theater owner to realize it WAS Daylight Savings Time and he had to be there to let us in an hour earlier than he’d THOUGHT he had to.

However, it seems that shivering together helped to create an instant connection (the bonding powers of shared adversity?) as when we repaired to a local coffee joint to wait in relative comfort, a cohesive unit was already forming.

After taking care of introductions and practical business at the coffee shop, we were able to enter the theater and begin to read our works aloud. And then, there was magic.

Even though we were our own audience, reading just to each other, the power of our words shone through.

We were all different, our stories were all unique, our own. And yet in the telling and the listening I could see, could feel the glistening thread bonding and binding each to the other. The quilt of our show was being stitched together, each story a square of specific beauty, creating a wondrous whole that is much more than the sum of the parts.

I’m not going to tell you what our stories were. That’s the wonderful surprise, folks. You’ll hear them on May 6th, if you can come in person, or soon thereafter on the ‘net.

But I can share this: we laughed, we cried, we were moved in all the ways storytellers can move us. And when it was over we left so impressed by the company we were keeping, by the power of our words, and the brave people who are willing to share them.

I was beyond proud to be a member of this troupe, and I know for certain that everyone else in that room felt the same way.

<^>^<^>

And if you want to hear specifically how others felt about the first rehearsal?
Read our director Amy’s blog post: how do you stop the whole world?
Read Kir’s blog post: Just Be Enough: The Circle

(And yes, this is the SAME post here and on the LTYM-NYC site. Call it being efficient, not lazy, please.)


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