Opening Night Sold Out

It's only Tuesday and Opening Night is already sold out!

Doing a play is funny thing. You go to rehearsals, place some ads, and send out some emails. But you never really know what the buzz is going to be like. Sure all of your friends know about the show, but what about everyone else? Do people know? Do people care? Will they come?

Well, that question has been answered! Thank you to everyone for purchasing your tickets early. As we're putting in long hours in our final week of rehearsals, it's such an energy boost to the whole cast and crew to know that we're going to have a full night on opening night!

For those of you still without tickets, don't worry. You can still come to the Social for the Premiere Party on Friday night and there are still tickets available for the other shows. But please get them soon. No telling how long they will last.

See you at the show!

Not a Morning Person

I'm not what you would call a morning person. I usually like to stay up late into the night writing or working on something. The night is a quite, private time. But today, it's eight in the morning, and I'm ready to go. Today is our first day at Diverse Works. The week before any show is known as tech week or even hell week. You basically get one week, to move the play into the theatre; get your sets, props, and costumes set; reblock the play for the larger space; practice sounds cues; and design the lights for the show. It's usually a mad dash of a week. But this time, we have eight plays not just one! It's going to be absolute chaos. Most importantly, we have to make the transitions between the plays absolutely smooth and fast. The goal is to take the energy from each play right into the next. A production like this will absolutely live or die in the transitions. We have just five rehearsals to make it all work. Five rehearsals with eight directors, eight plays, and over 30 actors to orchestrate. It's going to be chaos indeed. I can't wait!

Stages Announces 2006-2007 Season

And Shunya is part of it!

Stages Repertory Theatre, one of Houston's premiere theatres, has announced their 2006-2007 theatre season. One of the highlights of the season is a special coproduction with Shunya. Stages will produce "An American Brat" by Houston's own Bapsi Sidhwa. In conjunction, Shunya will produce the Indian classic "Naga Mandala" by Girish Karnad. The goal is to give Houston audiences something old and something new from South Asian culture side-by-side.

Stages artistic director, Rob Bundy, is keen to reach out to new communities and bring them together around theatre. He was extremely supportive when we produced "Bricks and Lyrics" at Stages, and this is the next big step in our continued partnership. This is a tremendous opportunity for Shunya, and we thank Stages for the invitation to work so closely with them.

http://www.stagestheatre.com/cms_about__stages/newsandevents.html

Opening Night Party

As always, Generasian Radio will be hosting our opening night party on August 18th at the Social! Check out the flier on our website: www.shunyatheatre.org.

Leadership Workshop for High School and College Students

Last week, Roopal Shah of Indify and Indicorps fame contacted me to help her put on a leadership workshop for high school and college kids. She only had a couple of weeks before leaving for India to continue her work with Indicorps. So we put our heads together and came up with a two evening workshop that will focus on the speaking and presentation skills of leadership.

Here are the details:
http://www.shunyatheatre.org/images/workshop.jpg

The first day's program will focus on breaking down stage fright and helping the participants feel comfortable with each other and on stage. We will go through a number of different theatre-type improvisation activities. The only way to lose your fear of making a fool of yourself is to just go up and do it. So that's what we'll do.

The second day's program will go more into the actual skills involved in being an effective speaker. We will try to put these into practice and identify our own strengths and weaknesses as a group.

Ultimately, the goal is to prep the next generation of leaders. We want to encourage these kids to identify their own passions and arm them with the skills to act upon those passions. Public speaking is just one of the skills that they will need as they do that.

So if you know any high school or college kids that are home for summer and would like to participate, please let them know about the workshop.

Thanks!

Talk Tickets Now on Sale

Visit tickets2events.com to reserve tickets for Shunya's next production: The TALK.

http://www.tickets2events.com/thetalkplay.asp

The Evolution of Acting

For everyone interested in acting, check out this article:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4510430