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!