This past weekend

Lots of rehearsal, lots of time together as a team

We worked for months on this project in chicago, briefly in Hartford, CT
and now here

People lately have asked me-
"so, you created a script in chicago, and then you've been developing it further in order to produce it in Portland?"

Nope.
Not that, no.

We made a piece in Chicago.
To explore the content and forms that this project wants to explore and utilize. And then, we shed that event, like a skin.

Some of it has stayed with us. Some of it was learning, and we go on.

In Colorado at a conference last weekend, talking about this form of development, one way of saying it that seemed to make sense in the room at the time, was that in Chicago, we began to swim in the shallow end of the pool. And because we spent some time in that first set of issues, swimming around, we were ready in hartford to move to the 6-8 foot deep section. And now here in Portland, we're trying to swim in the deep end. Which doesn't mean we're smarter- it means that the more time we spend, the more our first impulses give way to more complicated, and substantial impulses. I hope.

An example from the last week, and even this past weekend- our interviews last week with documentary filmmakers, a city planner and a real estate broker offered us stories about culture in a different light. Coupled with a NYTimes article about section 8 housing residents moving, with the aid of vouchers, to suburbs in California, suddenly culture, and difference, and living as neighbors next to people with very different life experiences, became more complicated than Chicago's scenes about neighbors in tension. This is a really good thing. Not because the Chicago material was unsatisfying, but as our understanding of our content shifts and grows, our show will hopefully become a more multi-layered experience.

We have begun exploring the geography of our Portland site in some fun ways. Balconies. Models. Tightropes. We continue to look for spectacle amidst an event that wants to be informal, participatory and yet poetic.

Some really interesting Public events coming the next two Saturdays. Watch here for details.