Opening Night for Blackbird is a GO!!!

It's here! It's here!

Opening night for Blackbird is finally here. We have put a lot of work into this production. A LOT. And we are very excited to share it with you.

Some important information:

1) WILL THE SHOW HAPPEN?

YES! I know every weatherperson in the triangle area is thrilled to be leading the news cast, but every forecast I've checked says that it will remain above freezing until well after midnight. The safety of our cast, crew, and audience is very important to us, and we wouldn't hesitate to cancel if we thought it would be unsafe for our guests, but things really look fine tonight.

2) WHAT ABOUT  THE REST OF THE WEEKEND?

If you have tickets to Saturday's show we will make a final determination by 3:30 PM. We will make a decision before then if we can, but expect an update on this website no later than 3:30.

For Sunday's performance, we will make a decision no later than 12:00 noon.

3) DIRECTIONS

Please get there early. PLEASE GET THERE EARLY! Leave extra time for parking. There is plenty of parking available if the main lot is full. Please see THIS HANDY WEBSITE with the theatre location and a parking map.

I think that's it. See you at the show!!

Our Backers

Our Kickstarter campaign was successful. Huge thank you to the following people who helped make it happen!

Thanks:
Glynis Budd

Supporter:
Karen Ferguson
David Klionsky
Sam Thompson

Patron:
Benji Taylor Jones
Jennifer Sanderson

VIP:
Kristie and Kevin Clarke
Matt Fields
Christopher and Diana North
Jeanne Sellers

Happy New Year!

It's January 1. So you know what that means: the next show from South Stream must be right around the corner.

We spent the 31st the way most people spend their last day of the year - loading in a set. (That is how most people spend New Year's Eve day right?)  It's starting to come together.

Your typical office break room in the most depressing job ever.

It's not done yet, but it's getting close. We had a great group of people. Of course our cast and crew - Todd our TD supervised, Alyssa our ASM ran cables and set lights, and the rest of us - John, Andy, Katie, Jennifer, Chris, Spittler, and Steve: we did what we were told.

As traumatic as 2016 has been in some respects, it was great to have something real and productive to do on the last day. Building something good. And the show will be good (dark maybe, but GOOD). Sometimes it's nice to have a task that you can start and see coming to completion.

The one thing we can do as artists is produce art. We're hoping to start this year off right. Starting now. We hope you share this with us.

Get tickets here!

Onward to the New Year!

Recognition

It's nice to be recognized. We put a lot of work into what we do on stage. We care about making a show that is real, a show that is filled with the truth that comes from us. In my opinion, we do a damn good job of it. I think we put on stage some of the best shows in the triangle.

So it's nice that Byron Woods in the INDY named Time Stands Still one of the ten best shows of 2016. It's especially gratifying because our show comes so early in the year. It's a testament that the show was not only the best show of the year in January, but that it stuck with at least some people, to be remembered as one of the best at the end of the year too.

It is nice to be recognized by critics (and all of our shows have). But the real recognition we want is from you, our audience. We want to bring you stories that you remember. That speak to you. That you speak to your friends about for days, weeks, even a year later.

We think Blackbird is going to be one of those plays too. So come out and see what our next play has to offer you. Share our food for thought. It will be the best play you've seen in 2017. And who knows, maybe that will be true in December too. :-)

GET TICKETS HERE

Meet the Cast - John Honeycutt

John Honeycutt - Ray

John Honeycutt is the managing director of South Stream Productions and a prolific local actor. We had him answer a few questions about his work and participation in this play.

What drew you to Blackbird?

I bought the script based on the blurb on the Dramatists web site because I was looking for a two-hander with characters of about these ages. The first thing I noticed when I started reading was the incredible quality of the writing. The style of writing is chopped up, with one thought running rapidly into another, fully expressing the turmoil in the characters’ minds.

The stakes are incredibly high for both characters, right from the first. They have to fight hard for what they want from line to line. My character, Ray (or maybe Peter), is totally unprepared for meeting Una, and he is frantic to figure out what to do or say to ward off the threat that Una could ruin his life in every way imaginable. What can he say to justify himself? Does he lie, deceive, threaten, bully?

I love the way the story emerges. The events leading up to the present encounter happened years before, and Ray and Una haven’t seen each other since. Both think they know what happened, but both only know part of the story. Ray desperately needs to find out why Una is there and what she plans to do. Deception and concealment make the way this meeting unfolds very, very interesting to me.

The appeal of the play can’t be separated from the shocking subject matter, but Harrower rises above that to tell a very human story about the ways very human people can do horrible things without realizing it or meaning to, and how they struggle with the consequences of their actions.

What kind of theatre do you like? What speaks to you?

I’m mostly engaged by small, contemporary plays that deal with relatively ordinary people in stressful situations that might occur in real life. Most of us have some connection with the problems people face, such as grief, loneliness, illness, addiction, cruelty, poverty, racism, and sexism. There are many clever, amusing, and moving ways playwrights have found to tell these stories.

A favorite play, that I’ve seen three times, is Rabbit Hole in which a family navigates their grief at the death of a child. But this doesn’t mean that I only like realism on stage. Another favorite show is a musical adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit. It is a fanciful story in which five very different men band together to buy an elegant suit for a night on the town to find excitement and love. It was full of color, dance, pathos, and a happy ending.

In live theatre, well done, I can see the story unfold in front of me with an intimacy I just don’t get in movies or TV.

Can you share a favorite theatre memory or story?

This is hard—I’ve done theatre for nearly 50 years and have lots of memories of people and events over the years. In Hamlet, a page missed her entrance, leaving me on stage with nothing to say but to improvise in iambic pentameter, first while waiting for her to remember her entrance and again when she ran off to get the prop letter I was supposed to read. Improvising in iambic pentameter isn’t as hard as I always thought it was!

Another stage horror was when I jumped from the middle of Act I to the middle of Act II of Cold Storage on opening night, and how we struggled to get back where we were supposed to be.

One of my fondest recent memories is how close the cast of Time Stands Still (South Stream's production from January 2016) became, so much so that we arranged a weekly meeting that we’ve mostly stuck to for the past year. It’s like an ongoing cast party. Most of us are involved with the current production of Blackbird.

Happy Thanksgiving

John and Katie - they're not always serious

It's time to be thankful.

We've begun rehearsals on Blackbird. We've done some table work (that's actor for "sitting around talking about it) and a bit of actually getting on it's feet. The rehearsals have gone very well so far, and we're excited  -- we're happy.

And today is a time to be happy. Not to wish for what we do not have but to reflect on what we do. And that's a great reminder for us. Blackbird is a serious and dark drama. It's a story we are a part of. We try and connect to it as fully as possible - in the rehearsal room. But we also must always remind ourselves that the play is not US.  Part of caring for each other is what you do in the room, making sure people feel safe physically and emotionally is very important with this kind of material. But another part is making sure we end each of our rehearsals with smiles and hugs, and a reminder to leave the characters in the rehearsal room. We must do this with joy.

I have so much to be thankful for. Thankful for John and Katie. Thankful for Andy, our stage manager, who helps guide us. Thankful to Jennifer for images like the one up there (nice pics right?). Thankful for rehearsal space. Thankful for collaborators like Todd Houseknecht who is our technical director. Thankful for Sonorous Road and Michelle and Josh. Thankful for a theatre community that supports companies like mine by letting us borrow flats and props and helping hands (I'm going to be asking for more help on this soon...). And thankful for you. our audience. Our supporters. Our friends.

This show doesn't come together without you. This is YOUR show as much as it is ours. If you want to get involved, you can help produce the play through the Kickstarter.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Poster Photoshoot

Taking pictures of Katie for the poster. (L to R Jenn, Katie, John, Brook). Photo by Kimber Graham.

Theatre is about art! Theatre is about character and empathy and humanity!

... Which is great and all, but part of putting on a production is getting people to actually show up and see the thing. Because theatre doesn't happen without you. "Interactive" has taken on a different meaning in the digital age, so when you say theatre is "interactive" people look at you funny. With the exception of some divised theatre productions (like Beertown recently at RLT) most people don't think of theatre as "interactive." But it is. There's a magic, an alcemey, an energy that an audience brings that breathes life into a performance. It's not just the audience reaction, the laughs and gasps and claps, but the sharing of space and time and story. After all, there's a word for a theatrical performance without an audience - rehearsal.

So, we have to get YOU to show up. To that end, we shot the poster for Blackbird today. Jennifer is our graphic designer. She designed the image you see at the top of this page, the show logo, and soon the poster. Having a great graphic designer is so key. We are indebted to Daniel McCord for our first few shows, and now Jennifer Sanderson (Hughie and now Blackbird).

I think, for theatre artists, the business side can often feel cheap and tawdry. I think there is an impulse to feel like "we're artists, we do this for the sake of art, not for money." And trust me, to some extent that's true (I'd be surprised if this play broke even). There's an element of self-promotion to marketing that feels alien to actors. It feels some how improperly self-aggrandizing. But marketing IS important. And truthfully, it is incredibly creative as well. Seeing Jennifer work has been a real pleasure. There is a real skill in understanding the play, the mood and the characters, and turning that into an image and a font. It sounds weird, but that's literally her job. You want the images and the feel of the marketing to match the show. You don't want your audience to come in expecting a comedy and then hit them with something totally different:

And you want it to be compelling. You want the people who respond to the image to understand what they are getting in a general sense, and to be the right audience. I think that is what we will get.

But I suppose that's ultimately for you to judge.

Want to get involved and support this show? Join the Kickstarter here!