Have You Been HIT Up?

You may have recently gotten something in your inbox, perhaps a little guy like this:

Or maybe one of your friends recently called you up and was like, "Hey, what's happening, how's the farm and are you in need of a good theatre mixer?"  

Either way, we at Highly Impractical Theatre thinks you're awesome. We want you to think we're awesome, too, which is why we invited you to come hang with us. 

You've Just Been HITup!

In case your HIT friend didn't get to the details because you had a lot of updates about the farm, here are the basics: The HITup! theatre mixer will be taking place on Saturday, August 6 from 1-3 p.m.  We wanted to introduce you to the newest site-specific theatre company in town (us!).  So, come enjoy snacks and wine (complimentary, of course), mingle with the members of HIT, see what us theatre ruffians have been up to the past year, experience a live performance of a scene from our latest play, and make some art of your own. The details:

HITup!

Saturday, August 6

1:00 p.m. - 3:00 p.m.

Starr King School of Ministry

2441 Le Conte Ave.

Berkeley, CA

If you're curious and want even more info, feel free to email highlyimpracticaltheatre@gmail.com with any questions, comments, concerns, love letters or mind-blowing ideas you come up with.  Also check out our schnazzy Facebook event page here. We also accept shameless flattery, so feel free to send that our way as well.

In conclusion:  Come.  Be merry.  Eat food and drink.  Have fun with theatre kids who will do good by you and want to talk to other theatre kids.  Enjoy what HIT as to offer.  Or at the very least, enjoy the free food.  If you hadn't noticed from our company meetings photos, we love food.  

Sincerely,

Highly Impractical Theatre

Houston, Our Poster Has Landed: The Harvest Trilogy

Thanks to our amazing graphic designer, Nora Merecicky, we have our very own first official show art piece:

For more information on The Harvest Trilogy, click here.

Highly Impractical Theatre is a non-profit performing arts group dedicated to new theatre that moves.
http://highlyimpracticaltheatre.org
http://twitter.com/HITtheatre
http://youtube.com/HITAreWe

Meet the Writers: The Harvest Trilogy, Milton-Freewater and HIT

Highly Impractical Theatre's latest production, The Harvest Trilogy, is composed of three plays:  Fruits of Paradise, Under the Earth and New Era/Nueva Era, all set in a different era within Milton-Freewater's tumultuous history.  As the following interview alludes, this unassuming, small Oregonian town is cram-packed with more historical drama than an HBO special.

So, in the midst of production meeting madness, design presentations and production rehearsals, I was lucky enough to snag a moment with the head writers, Elana McKernan and Ben Colohan, and talk over the goals of the The Harvest Trilogy and Highly Impractical Theatre as its first fully-fledged production gets underway.

Ben Colohan & Elana McKernan

So why Milton-Freewater?

B:  The shorter answer is that I’m from Milton-Freewater but I think M-F is interesting for a couple reasons.  First, it’s name Milton "hyphen" Freewater immediately implies there’s a story there.  At one point these were two cities and then they became one…Freewater started as basically a dissenting faction from Milton so you have the story of one city splitting and then rejoining.

But Also...?

E: [Laughs] They hired us.

B: [Laughs] We got a grant. We were hired by the Umatilla County Cultural Coalition to write stories about the town. 

What is HIT trying to achieve with this production?

E:  We want to push forward, push the boundaries of what traditional theatre or theatre in general is perceived as by taking it outside of the theatrical space.  So, in a very obvious way we’re doing that with this project, which will be performed in an old barn...in a beautiful farmstead house, in an old cabin from the 1850s, outside...  

What's the process like writing three different plays all to do with *one* town's history?

B:  The support of the community in M-F is...it’s very special in that it’s a town that has a strong group of people who love to do theatre [and] who love to keep track of the town’s stories and past and preserve that.

E:  We interviewed like 30-some people from Milton-Freewater...as cheesy as this sounds it’s been like a gift to us…the community has had this amazing out-pouring of support for the project...and not only cooperation but eagerness to participate and it’s really truly been a communal effort…we did go there and interview people, people gave up their time...they went out of their way to send us books, and photocopy things for us, and give us DVDs about the history of the town…they’re definitely a community that really cares about its history and they’ve been really welcoming in sharing that history with us and being open to our interpretation of that history…

Is there any particular story audiences should particularly keep an eye out for?

B:  [Laughs] You gotta see all three! 

Highly Impractical Theatre's The Harvest Trilogy, to be performed in and for the town of Milton-Freewater, is underway!  Click here for a link to the trilogy's website page.  Click here for more information about the grant HIT was awarded through the 2010-2011 Oregon Cultural Trust Participation Grant Program, and you can also click here for more information on HIT's previous visits to Milton-Freewater.

  

Website Building: Paper and Tape

As HIT is gearing up for it's two upcoming productions, we're working on how to present ourselves to the public, which of course dips into the first big project of any upstart company:

Our Website.

We are fortunate enough to have a fantastic designer, Nora Merecicky, as our web guru.  While she is able to create a bonanza of beauty, it became clear that the marketing group had to pull our weight and decide what we wanted on the website in the first place.

So yesterday Sarah, Ben, Elana & I got together to discuss the logistics of placement, drop-down menus verses single-link clickables, the home page location, icons verses textual buttons, etc.

Ben had a brilliant idea of literally looking at websites we liked, which evolved into a discussion on theatre websites we liked.  We loved the homepage for The Actors Theatre of Louisville, but got overwhelmed by the amount of information within all secondary menus.  Moth Theatre (not to be mistaken for The Moth theatre) had a website that was beautiful but we were discouraged by the menus-within-menus that took extra time to load.

By the end of the meeting it became clear that it was no easy feat to have a clear, concise, aesthetically pleasing, hip and easy-to-navigate-website.  All websites we looked at had their pros and cons--there was no "one perfect website" out there, especially in theatre.

So, we did what any group of twenty-somethings do when under pressure:

Arts and Crafts!

Sarah and Elana's hand during our impromptu website assembly line

Excitement doesn't begin to describe mapping out websites with paper and marker

I was really excited to Get Involved.

We basically pulled an afternoon brainstorm of the main menus we like and the submenus we have to have ready for viewership, come our debut into the world wide web.

The first draft of our website's layout:

All that's left now is...well...everything else.  But, it was an exciting start.  More soon!

-Beryl

Getting To Know You: HIT Visits Oregon

So, tonight we had another production meeting.  I think what I like most about our meetings now is how often we are laughing about whatever it is we're doing--even if it's discussing the latest Harry Potter film.

Kat (Production Manager), Nora (Web Designer) and Elana (Artistic Director)

Tonight we found ourselves happily munching away whilst learning all about the region of our Summer production to be performed this June in Milton-Freewater, Oregon.  And just so you know...

I wasn't lying about the food spreads HIT provides at meetings.  

Delicious brie and pita chips aside, tonight's meeting was primarily dedicated to Ben & Elana updating us about their most recent trip up to Milton-Freewater.  They interviewed locals about this city's ripe history and thus, had a lot to relay back to us.  There's much more on that to follow, but in general it was fascinating to be introduced to the socio-economic history behind this city through the (second-hand) voices of its citizens, some dating back to the 1860s.

I think my favorite part was when Ben actually got out a handy-dandy map of Oregon and pointed to us non-oregonites where the landmarks we hear about routinely actually are.

Ben (Marketing Director) with Oregon

They also brought us materials to look at (like pictures from the 1800s of founding families from the two original towns that make up Milton-Freewater, a rundown of the Frazier historical landmarks where we'll be performing, and our sponsors, the Milton-Freewater Area Historical Society).  And then Elana gave us a photographic tour of the location of the historical sites:

Elana and Sarah (Managing Director)

All in all, it was a good night.  I personally felt that much more educated on the needs and interests of the community--plus, my brain was already running wild with ideas of sound design cues.  Mostly, I couldn't shake the image of miles and miles of wheat fields Ben described up there...I wonder where I can find a sound cue of that?  Hm.

HIT is set to revisit Milton-Freewater again this coming March for further research and a follow up with the citizens to review the script(s) that are now in the process of being written.  It's a slow process, but it's already getting off to a wonderful start; if you can't tell, those of us at HIT are absolutely excited about Milton-Freewater.

Sarah and Crystal (Set Design/Props)

I believe that's basically it for now.  More soon to come, as always.  

-Beryl (Social Media/Sound Design)

p.s. You might have noticed we're one short from tonight; our esteemed scenic artist, Alex, is still on the other side of the country in NYC.  We missed you, Alex!

First HIT Victory: Being Granted Our First Grant

This evening is an exciting one.

We just got a grant.

"From whom?"  You might ask, perhaps with an impractically high-class British Accent.

The Grant itself is through the 2010-2011 Oregon Cultural Trust Participation Grant Program.  And the grant we just received from the program is given by the Umatilla County Cultural Coalition.

(That last name has some wicked alliteration in it.)

To top it off, under this same approval for the grant we were hired by the Milton-Freewater Area Historical Society in Oregon to help the communities of Milton-Freewater to tell their stories, using our resources and theatrical know-how.  Reciprocally, of course, this will allow us to have visibility and a chance to show off our artistic ingenuity and ability to tell stories in unique found spaces.  The completed production that would result from all of this, by the way, will go down (or go up, if we're using theatrical phrasing) next Summer in 2011.  And come this Winter Break, Ben & Elana are headed up North to Oregon to begin research.

For those of you who are curious, though, I wanted to write up a sneak peak into how the application process went.

First off, Ben found out about the Grant and told us about it.  Even though he's down here in the Bay Area, slogging away as a graduate student, he's also a native to Milton-Freewater and heard about the exciting opportunity through his peeps up there.  So, Ben wrote up a grant application for HIT.

But, aside from Ben writing out our artistic intentions, we also had to map out our budgetary needs--that's where Sarah & Elana, and our amazing design team, came together in a beautiful mash-up of financial love.

Elana, as you may or may not know, is our Artistic Director/Founder.*  And Sarah, btws, is our Managing Director.**

The two of these big wigs went to work on mapping out how much money was needed at the bare minimum for each department (sets, lights, props, etc.) to work a fully fledged production in Oregon.   The kind of brain effort that must have taken is not comfortable for me.  So, I'm going to stop trying to think about that, and just tell you how they pulled it off:

Before they set out to write any numbers down, they first went to us, their designers and asked us what bare minimum supplies we need to do our jobs.  They took our requests, the time limit, the amount of driving it takes to cross state borders and likelihood of reusing any resources possible into account and viola!  A budget was born.

One other thing, which I just found interesting, is that Sarah also asked us designers for our Dream List.  Not just any list, no.  A Dream List.  A list that is filled with not only the things you want to buy but can't right now, but the things you would buy if the company had $1,000,000.00. 

Naturally, I asked for a jacuzzi.  I'm still waiting on that, Sarah.  I think it'll be the first thing that the grant is used for--right?  Right?

Guys?

I'll have to check in on that with them.

for now, cheers and HIT, HIT Hurray!

-Beryl

*Artistic Director = Person who has supreme artistic voice in the vision and mission statement of a theatre company, including all productions done within the season and any outside commissioned pieces.

** Managing Director = Person who works round the clock to be in the know on how to keep us financed, legal, and thus, happy.

HIT Production Meetings: Our Impractical Practice

The best part about our monthly production meetings, I would have to say, is that at the beginning of each meeting we talk about whatever shows/theatrical performances we have seen most recently.

Well, that and the amazing food that was supplied:  cheese, bread, pizza, dulces, and addicting garlic pita chips.  And really, food, as we all know, is possibly the one thing that will distract one away from the Impractical (see below).

That could be anything from those free nose-bleed tickets you got on random to the SF Opera, or perhaps the latest show a company you over-hire at is working on (which is what a lot of us end up seeing), all the way down to the buskers who perform outside of Downtown Berkeley Bart station.

I forgot to mention this at the meeting, but I will say my favorite busker I've seen so far is the dude who brings his own UPRIGHT PIANO and plops down in front of the BART entrance to play old ragtime melodies, bowler hat and all.   I mean, that's just impractical and wonderful at the same time.

Did someone say impractical?

Why, yes.  Yes, they did.   And that's where we, The Impracticals (our new name, coined by Alex) come in.

The main things we covered in the last meeting were the whens, wheres and whats of Fiscal Sponsorship as well as Grants to help us get on our legs to perform.   More to come on those fronts, but suffice to say we're waiting to hear back from a possible gig further up north AND looking at Fractured Atlas as a place for us to snuggle up to with our non-existent tax identity as of yet.

But, what's to come is our latest theatre-workshop we hashed out--a day filled with some of the most ridiculous (and fun!) theatre I've ever experienced--with Puppets!

For now, stay impractical.  We'll be back with bigger and better (and photographed) news shortly!

-Beryl

Impractical Post Picture:  

Food really does take you away from the Impractical.  Here it is captured in the wild.

Honestly, nature.  You crazy.