Spoons

The first week of rehearsal for This Stays in the Room has come and gone, and as each rehearsal is a process of discovering what the actual process is, we’ve come up with a fun and simple ritual to start and end each day at Progress Lab 1422.

The SPOON ritual consists of each person having their own small wooden spoon with their name on it. Each person takes their spoon from the ‘OUT’ jar in the morning, then gathers in the circle, where the group  taps their spoons together. The spoons are then placed in the ‘IN’ jar, and the work begins.

At the end of the day we all tap spoons in the circle once again, and place all our spoons in the “OUT” jar.

We also have a ‘guest’ spoon for when someone joins us.

SPOONING is a great way to acknowledge each other and the work we’ll be doing for the day, and then to check out after the days work is done.

We ‘spooned’ in a couple of guests this week. Barbara Clayden came in on Wednesday to go over costumes. The cast brought in some of their own personal wardrobe pieces (from head to toe), and Barbara helped put together a great combination of outfits. Each person wearing their own clothes connects to them telling their own person stories.

And speaking of own personal stories, storyteller-extraordinaire Deborah Williams came in on Friday and worked with the cast one on one, listening to each of the cast’s personal stories (the basis of our script), with production dramaturg Heidi Taylor sitting in to transcribe.

What’s really cool about having guests come by, is that there ends up being a point during their visit that an impromptu storytelling session happens, with them included.