Odin’s Horse ~ Year in Review

I first wrote about Infamous Commonwealth and Odin’s Horse last July in an entry titled, Theater and Culture, After the Degree. I like that they call Odin’s Horse an EcoDrama on their website. That’s a new genre of theater I hadn’t considered before.

And excerpt of what I wrote is below…..

After stage managing for a year now I have the luxury to chose which projects I want to take. I have turned down four amazing theaters that pay far more than others to work with smaller companies on some interesting pieces.

This fall I will work with Infamous Commonwealth on Odin’s Horse.

My specialty in theater is socio political theater. Classes that interest me are theater and culture, church and theater, theater and war, rhetoric and theater.

Infamous Commonwealth Theater surprised me, to say the least. After cleaning out files, I discovered years ago I had actually seen one of their productions, “savage in limbo” in which the artistic director played a significant role.

I didn’t know what to expect when the script of Odin’s Horse was emailed to me. It turned out to be a refreshing pleasure to read the script. This year their theme is nature.

Green is the new black. We all know granola isn’t a term for just snacks. And even dogs can be eco-friendly and live a life that sustains the earth. Despite the trend, this play has a different take on it all. And it ties in many themes and ideas and the words are engaging. And its intelligent. And the playwright will be in the room… Something I enjoy despite the hard moments, and I cannot wait to see the director’s artistic vision.

This will be one of my first time working with a woman director. Part of me approaches the idea with trepidation. Will she come to rehearsal in a bad bloated mood one day because she’s menstruating? Will she cry? Will she talk about chocolate and how fat she thinks her hips are?
These are evil realistic stereotypes, I think about. But I’ve worked with men who had mood swings, body issues, coffee and burger cravings and ridiculous breakdowns too.

So I need not worry. Working with women will give me an even wider perspective on theater, it will display yet another directorial style and there will probably be task and moments that are much easier.

Just realized, odin’s horse is a cultural socio-political play.

It is possible to live the realities of your dreams. It takes a little work, some research and the ability to make choices.

Wesley, despite working a Monday through Friday corporate job, I believe I’m more of an artist than some of our friends who seek validation in a classroom. So it is possible to do artistic engaging work, even after that final senior service day in workout. Just saying.

The pictures of the production below are done by Anna C. Bahow except for four of the pictures of my “office”. The following pictures are beautiful moments captured by Anna.

This was my “office” during this production. I staged managed for the show which means different things for different theaters. For this theater it meant…

Repatching dimmers between sound, light, mic, and projection cues. Best way to describe that to the non-theater audience is, imagine that these a sockets and plugs/cords to lights. In an ideal world for every light plug/cord you’d have a socket. In a small theater with lots of lights. There are not enough sockets. So in between different cues…there were a lot..I’d have to come repatch dimmers. Sometimes I did not put them in the right place. Ooops. But can’t you see how “organized” it was?

The board I used for the mics and the laptop I used to run the sound.

The light board.

There was no assistant stage manager for this show. Props. Hazer. Furniture placement. Sweeping. All those things were on my list of duties as well. Washing Dishes. Cooking the Food for one of the scenes. Yup. In addition to running sound, light, projector, mic and repatching dimmers. I learned just how much I could do for one show. I also learned that at a certain point…a second person and the assistance of actors is needed!

I looked up a bit about Odin, since he was a god. And occassionally I write about the various gods. I found this bit on Wikipedia…

Norse paganism is a term used to describe the religious traditions which were common amongst the Germanic tribes living in Nordic countries prior to and during the Christianization of Northern Europe. Norse paganism is therefore a subset of Germanic paganism, which was practiced in the lands inhabited by the Germanic tribes across most of Northern and Central Europe in the Viking Age. Knowledge of Norse paganism is mostly drawn from the results of archaeological field work, etymology and early written materials.

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