Lonely Leela

Dear friend Rehana Mirza's multimedia play Lonely Leela is getting a showcase through New Georges next week and we had our first rehearsal today.  It's an adaptation of Alice in Wonderland/Alice Through the Looking Glass and it's mostly set within the fantastical world of the internet wherein the inhabitants are all puppets designed by Spica Webb.  Today was mostly getting to know what you can do with her puppets and how to best facilitate a wide range of expression.  There are finger puppets, hand puppets, sock puppets and rod puppets, each with different demands on the actor.  They mainly have gigantic eyes and hilarious tufts of hair.  The script is wild and deals with a ton of unexpected actions from the characters and I kid you not, every spare moment I had I was trying to get one of them to look like they were riding a segway as called for in the text.

I think challenge-based productions are a ton of fun and necessitate new ideas, bringing out the best creativity juices.  Very excited.