Lately I’ve had a great deal of difficulty with motivation.. with drive. I have loads of projects – production projects and art projects, around the house projects and holiday projects and I like the idea of every single one of them. When I can’t work on them because I’m not in the apartment or because I have to do the day job, I’m anxious to roll up my sleeves and dive in but then, when I do have the time, and I’m looking at a day free of responsibilities except those where I answer to myself alone, a strange thing happens – I just can’t motivate myself to pick up a paintbrush and paint or load up the editing project and just work on it…even reading a new book (as opposed to the comfort books that I’ve read a gazillion times) is something I have to consciously force myself – truly drive myself to do…

I don’t feel depressed, or even particularly sad (though I am willing to admit that maybe I am depressed and this is how depression manifests itself in me – kind of the way I don’t feel “stress” I just get a headache or my stomach goes wonky. It’s visceral – literally in my viscera – not emotional so maybe my depression (if depression it be) manifests itself as physical inaction… I don’t know.) What I do know is that it’s been a problem for awhile. Since before I left New York in fact, (though it was, of course, exacerbated by dad’s illness and then his death. That definitely broke a part of me that I have come to understand will just always be broken – scabbed over and not as tender as it was at first, but honestly? Never healed…) But that’s actually not what this is about. This is about something else. This is about a realization I had lying here at 4:38 am after not being able to sleep and embracing my old friend insomnia…

Here it is (and it’s ironic (or perhaps just obvious) coming in the midst of my insomnia) but I realized that: I’m. So. Tired. I spent twenty years in the grind of New York City and for pretty much all of those years I pushed and drove myself towards the career I’ve always wanted – directing. Every job I had, every choice I made was about trying to build that career. Trying to get to the place where I would be paid to do what I love and what I’m good at.

First I just hustled and tried to find gigs as a director. Unpaid? No problem! You’re going to let me direct? I’m in. And after all of that work, I didn’t level up in my career and I still wasn’t getting paid. So, after many long years of production work and unpaid directing gigs (and the ever present day jobs, don’t forget the day jobs), I started a production company. I found scripts and I found money and I made show after show after show. No script? No problem – here’s a book I like, I’ll somehow get the rights. I’ll adapt it for the stage. I remember having a conversation with a new friend (well new at the time) and we were sitting in Republic Noodles in Union Square and I’ll never forget it – we were talking about my choice to make Dreamers of the Day, about the fact that I had the rights and was starting the stage adaptation and my friend said to me,

- Wait, you’re going to adapt the book?

- Yes

- Have you ever done that before?

- No

- I mean do you even know how?

-No

- Cause that seems really hard. I don’t know if you can just decide to do that.

But, you know what? I totally did it. I just waded in and created a really beautiful show. I had tons of help, and a super talented cast and crew that made that show happen but I was the driving force. That show happened because of me. Its existence on stage happened because I pushed and I drove myself through version after version.

When the asshats broke into our apartment  in Brooklyn and took my computer with the most up-to-date version of the script on it (side note: always back up your work in three different places, my lovelies) I spent my sacred vacation week on the Cape – not kayaking, or hanging with the family, or eating fried seafood, but hunkered down recreating the lost pages and improving the script and bringing that project to life. And it really was a wonderful show. A show that I truly believe, had the “right people” seen it, could have launched my career. It didn’t. I guess the “right people” (the career launching ones) didn’t see it.

It was ephemeral and lasted for too short a time and I moved on. To show after show after show. Pushing and driving and though I was doing it for the love of the work, and though the work itself was exhausting but truly rewarding, there was always a part of me that hoped, “this time will be different. Even if I don’t suddenly find myself making a full-time living at this directing thing, with each show, I’ll hone my craft and my work will get a bit more recognized with each project. Even if the shows don’t sell out, I’ll start getting some reviews, I’ll start getting some traction and I’ll build my career. Slowly and steadily, brick by ridiculously heavy brick, I will build.”

And so I pushed. I drove. I forced myself to believe and hope each time that I’d get better and stronger and my career would start to be a career. Through Full Disclosure and Skin Flesh Bone and Persuasion and In the Ebb at an amazing venue at Fringe – surely Fringe will make a difference! The work is good. The work is solid. The work can’t help but be noticed. People will see it. My career will grow. Through Bella’s Dream and Within Arm’s Reach – through all of these great shows full of creative original work from a collection of super-talented people. “Something’s gotta break my way,” I told myself again and again and again and again.

And then Farm Story – a TV show – an independent television show with a ridiculously talented group of people. It felt like everything just came together on that project. I drove and I pushed and I forced and it happened. And I thought surely, this is it. Everything else has been building to this. Everything has brought me to here. This can’t help but be a success. Even if it doesn’t go as a show, clearly this is a calling card that will get all of these people work that will launch us all – it’s too good. How could it not? HOW COULD IT NOT?

Spoiler alert. It didn’t. And I think that’s when it started to happen. This inaction started to settle in. In fits and starts, just a little bit at first, but it just started to pull me down. I’m just so damn tired. It’s really hard to push and drive and force and believe. It’s really hard to know you have something to say and a creative voice to say it with and to struggle to find money, to make it happen again and again and again and to still not get anywhere. To be almost 50 with this thing, this not-really-a-career-BUT-surely-more-than-a-hobby-please-god-tell-me-it’s-more-than-a-hobby thing. To have spent 20 years – more really since you’ve been driving towards it since college, since high school, since 6^th grade. More than half your life pushing towards this thing and time and time and time and again…you look up, you emerge from a fog of work and ambition and drive and self-whip-cracking, you pull your head out from under the most recent project and look up to see…

…that nothing’s changed. No that’s not right, lots of thing have changed – you’ve changed. You’ve got more experience and you’ve learned new things – techniques and insights and new things to say. You’ve made new friends – created these little pockets of new family. You’ve gained people and you’ve lost some. Oh, and you’ve aged. Of course, you’ve aged. The inexorable march of time, well that hasn’t stopped. So yeah, you’ve changed but your career? Your trajectory? That’s just been on the same plateau for years. Forever.

“You’re fooling yourself,” you think, but no, you just have to keep going. You start a podcast “this will be the thing or if not the thing at least a thing that will help. That will get those creative juices flowing and who knows maybe this will be the thing.” And then a film. You’ll make a short film because who knows, maybe this will be the thing. Because, that’s the trick, you see – you always think, you must always think “but this time will be different. Maybe THIS. WILL. BE. THE. THING.”

But already the inaction is settling in. And the tired is settling in. You’ve been driving and pushing for 20 years…of course you’re tired. “I know,” you think, a move, a new place, with new projects. This will be the thing” but that inertia has you. It might be too late. And you watch your friends moving up, moving on – so excited for them, so proud of them, but also sad for yourself, because know you’ve been left behind but “that’s ok because you’re not left behind, you’re just on a different track and your track will lead to a station – a good station – you just have to keep going”…except you’re just so tired. 20 years – more – of self-making is tiring. And when it gets you nowhere even more so. You can’t give up because who would you be if not this but how? How how how do you keep driving? No, seriously, I’m asking… How? Because holy good lord, I sure don’t know…

…and then you think, “I don’tknow,” but maybe…maybe, maybe, maybe it starts with saying it all. With writing it out and putting it out into the world. Maybe it starts with using a sleepless night and a semi-coherent 4am scribble as a pause, a refreshing I-don’t-know-what-but-maybe-something and you get up from your sleepless-rest and feel, “Is it? Could it be? Maybe, hopefully, a little bit of drive?”

So, you cross your fingers and you do what you’ve done forever…

You pick yourself up.
You splash some water on your face.
You sit down at your computer and open your project and you push yourself…
You push yourself hopefully to greatness but at least…
at the very least…
to action…

My alma mater. Go Camels!

Many years ago I participated in an outward bound-type of outdoor orientation program before starting college — a sort of pre-orientation orientation (sponsored by the school) to my freshman year. You know the kind of trip – take a bunch of about-to-be college students, take away their watches (so they’re on “nature’s time”), pile them into a bus, drive them up to the woods (hmmm, this is actually starting to sound like the beginning of a horror movie, but it wasn’t like that, I swear), hike them into some remote location, teach them to build lean-tos (no tents for these overprivileged teenagers), and have them participate in a randomized selection of outdoor activities that are meant to foster self-confidence and bonding – activities like caving, and white-water canoeing, and rock-climbing. I LOVED IT. No kidding, the trip was amazing! I remember being excited and exhilarated, and, yes scared, but that fear manifested more as excitement and exhilaration than as fear. The thing is that with the rock climbing and the caving I definitely had those moments of “oh shit, I’m totally gonna die” and that was super scary but the feeling was very recognizable as fear. I could look at it and say, “Nope! That ain’t going to stop me! I am DOING THIS!” and, you know, I did it. I climbed the rock. I paddled the canoe. I plunged into (and emerged from) the cave.

(SIDEBAR – I should mention, if you’re anything like me, these particular caves were not the kind of caves you picture when you think “cave.”

Less “ooh look at this spacious cave we’re ‘exploring’…”

And more “Holy Crap, these are two enormous slabs of rock that have been here with this tiny space between them for, like, since the dawn of time, what if they choose right this exact second to shift?”

You know those wide open spaces where you stand around with a group and say, “ooh look – stalactites, stalagmites.” No, siree, Bob! This was more of a wedge-yourself-into-very-tight-spaces-between-two-enormous-prehistoric-slabs-of-rock-hope-you’re-not-claustrophobic-and-if-you-weren’t-going-in-you-will-be-coming-out-oh-and-by-the-way-it’s-freezing-wet-and-super-muddy-caving-with-a-capital-C-CAVING kinda thing.)

Yup, this…

But, I digress. In the end, whether caving or rock climbing, the fear was clearly, you know, FEAR, and so, it was (well, not exactly easy to disperse but) at least identifiable as fear and therefore face-able. But then came the high elements course and the fear I experienced during it was a whole different animal. It was invisible. It wasn’t identifiable as fear. It was more easily named indifference.

“What’s a high elements course,” you ask? Well it’s a sort of obstacle/ropes course, about 50 feet in the air, suspended from trees.

An example of a High Elements Course

This is that wire walk thing I was trying to describe.

Nowadays you’ve seen things like it on American Gladiators, and other shows of that ilk, but at the time I’d never even heard of such a thing, let alone been expected to participate in one. These courses can be constructed in different ways, but basically, it’s a series of challenges comprised of logs, ropes, and wires suspended in the air. This particular one had an incline log, a balance beam log, a wire walk thing (two horizontal wires – one about 5 feet above the other – suspended between two trees) where you walk on the bottom wire and hold the top wire for balance, a series of ropes hanging from a wire between two trees where you had to cross from one tree to the other by transferring to each rope (Tarzan style), and, lastly, a platform with a trapeze (which, spoiler alert was too far away to reach even if you really jumped for it).

Staples in the trees between each challenge…and a sense of how high up the course is.

For the whole course you’re belayed (harness and safety ropes) and you traverse the course with your teammates yelling encouragement from the ground. Sounds great, right? What could be scary about that, right? I mean, how could it be scarier than rock climbing or rappelling or white water canoeing, right? Even 50 feet in the air, in the rain with all the surfaces slippery as all get out, right?

Wrong.

See, here’s the thing. I didn’t think I was afraid at all. I just had zero interest in doing the course. What it boils down to is that all of the other challenges – the rock climbing, the caving, the canoeing, hell, even the zip lining, I had heard about before. I was ready for them. I was expecting them. They were “things people did.” Even if it was just to face the challenges of nature, or just to get an adrenaline rush, all of these things were things that made some sort of sense to me. Yes, they were man’s attempt at conquering nature but in a practical way – “I need to get from here to there but there’s a cave, or a river, or a mountain in the way so I’ll crawl through that cave, or canoe down that river, or climb that mountain.” I mean that makes sense to me. But this? This arbitrary man-made construct suspended 50 feet in the air? Uh yeah, that made exactly zero sense at all. Especially in the rain.

So, when it came my turn to do the course, the guide was all, “Jessica, you’re up.” And I remember just thinking, “nope. I’ll pass.” I think I even said, “nope. I’ll pass.” When he insisted, I explained (very rationally, I’m sure) that I just didn’t have any interest in doing the course. He said, “there’s no reason to be afraid,” and I was shocked (SHOCKED, I tell you) that he would even consider it. “I’m not scared,” I said. “I just don’t see the point.” I was, no kidding, 100% certain that I was not afraid at all. I told myself I was indifferent. I told myself it was pointless. I told myself it was an arbitrary man-made construct and there was absolutely no reason I needed to participate in it. I was pretty self-righteous about it too, to be honest.

I told myself that if I was scared, I would feel, you know, scared. So, I resolved not to do the course. In the end, I was, in fact, the last person in my group to do it. And the only reason – the ONLY reason – I even stepped foot on that first log was because my guide (whose name I can’t remember but who I do remember was ridiculously cute in a Teva-wearing, “no outdoor challenge is too much for me” kinda way) asked me to just try the first challenge as a “personal favor” to him. So I did (because I never could resist doing a personal favor for a cute guy) and by the time I was up the log I realized that there were only two ways off the course – either freak right the fuck out and have to be lowered down to the ground like a goat in a sling (sorry, Jurassic Park reference), or just finish the damn course. And, not wanting to be the goat I just finished the damn course.

And here’s what I discovered at the end when I was leaping off the platform to grab the too-far-away trapeze. Number 1: I was absolutely sure that I was going to catch it. Number 2: harnesses hurt your crotch like a son of a bitch when they catch all of your weight. And, Number 3: there are all kinds of fear.

Sometimes you see your fear coming. Sometimes, you grab your fear by the throat and wrestle it to the ground. Sometimes, you outsmart your fear by consciously pretending it’s not there. And sometimes, it really feels like it’s not there. It masks itself as indifference and with that indifference it’s really easy to just ignore it and move on to the next thing. BUT, here’s the danger with that, and, by the way, here’s the point of this entire blog post (way to bury the lede, right?): If you think you’re indifferent to it and you ignore it and move on to the next thing?  Yeah, in the end I’m sure it will be fine. That next thing will be great and you’ll move along a little less brave and none the wiser BUT, you’ll miss it. I will say that again because it’s important – You. Will. Miss. It.

You’ll miss that big, beautiful, juicy, amazing, life-altering, wonderful feeling. Because, even though I didn’t catch that trapeze (and even though that harness hurt!) for that millisecond, when I jumped, I was SURE I was going to catch it. I was absolutely POSITIVE it was in my grasp. I knew it was impossible AND I knew I was going to do it. I believed wholeheartedly in that – in the possibility of the impossible. And even though, in the end, I didn’t actually catch the trapeze (because, big surprise, physics always works) that feeling never went away. From that moment on, that feeling turned out to be a new truth for me: The impossible isn’t just possible it will happen. If you push, and you try, and you believe, and you face your fear – IT. WILL. HAPPEN. And, I would have missed it. I would have missed that lesson, that understanding. And I never would have realized that fear is insidious. Fear can stop you not just cold, but also kinda lukewarm. You need to guard against it and you need to be vigilant because that thing you’re calling indifference? Yeah, most of the time, it’s just fear in indifference’s clothing. Don’t let it stall you. Don’t let it stop you. Don’t let it rule you.

So what does all this have to do with production? I mean this is a blog post on a production company’s website, after all. Well here’s the deal…this job is hard. This industry is hard. We work and we struggle and we face our fears in the hopes of success and wealth, yes, but also because we are compelled to tell stories. We’re compelled to reach people. If we could do anything else in the universe with as much joy as we do this, we absolutely would. Hands down! No one – NO ONE – would choose this if any of us had a choice. I mean there’s no two ways about it. This struggling thing? It sucks. But it’s also who we are. And when something comes up professionally, you think, “Oh, big scary thing. I’m knocking that puppy down.” I think we all do that. But, what I’m saying here is, sadly, that’s not enough. Because sometimes the big scary thing isn’t big and scary at all. Sometimes we look at it and think, “yeah, I’m just not interested in that right now. I’m going to go watch reruns of West Wing instead.” And that’s the danger. We get lulled into that place of, “but I’m tired. I’ve been doing this for years with varying degrees of success, and I just want to binge-watch Netflix right now.” I hear you. Believe me. And you want to watch West Wing for a day, a weekend, hell even a whole week? Go for it, you deserve it. BUT, after that day, that weekend, that whole week, I am telling you – Put on that harness, hook up your safety ropes, do the favor for the cute guy, and just Get. On. The. FUCKING. Course. Here and now, I promise you it will be worth it. I promise you that you will be rewarded for it. In fact, I promise you – I PROMISE YOU – that if you climb up that first log and you get onto that damn course, in the end you will jump for that trapeze with all that you are and you will float down from the trees KNOWING for a fact that the impossible is yours for the taking.

And so, for now, I leave you with two of my favorite motivational memes:

You CAN do the thing…so just go do it.

-Jessica

Last week I had the opportunity to see the opening night performance of Tongue in Cheek Theater’s production of Whale Song or: Learning to Live with Mobyphobia by Claire Kiechel. Now, anyone who reads my blog, (and anyone who knows me personally) knows that I consider Tongue In Cheek a kind of unofficial sister company to GTTP. And, I absolutely love TIC Artistic Director, Jake Lipman, as both a director/actor and as a friend. I first met her, through former GTTP Ensemble Member, Kiwi Callahan (thanks, Kiwi), who said, “I just auditioned for this company and the artistic director is someone you should totally meet. You guys will get along so well.” Turns out she was right. You see, not only is Jake extraordinarily talented, what she does with TIC often serves as a blueprint for what Molly and I want for Tahiti. In fact, on Whale Song, GTTP took the opportunity to embed Molly Ballerstein into TIC for the production as she acted as Assistant Director/Stage Manager for Whale Song and Jake got the opportunity to see all those amazing qualities of Molly that made me drag her into the Co-Executive Director position here at GTTP. Yup, we’re all one big family in theater.

One thing, Jake, we need it to be clear that Molly is on loan to TIC. You can’t haver her permanently.

Matt Sydney as Shep and Shelley Little as Maya.
Photo by Maeghan Donohue

Anywho, where was I? Oh, yes, TIC productions – I make it my business to see everything I can that the company produces and I am never disappointed. And so, it will I’m sure come as no surprise that Whale Song was no different.

A quirky, funny, little show, Whale Song follows pre-school teacher Maya (TIC regular, Shelley Little) on a quest for answers following the death of her father (Brady Adair) in a whale tank at Sea World. When a humpback whale begins circling the island of Manhattan, Maya refuses to believe it’s all a coincidence.

As usual with TIC shows, the production is incredibly enjoyable. I always look forward to Jake’s inventive staging and her ability, as a director, to play with tone so that the audience is laughing one minute and crying the next (more on that in a minute). The set is simple but elegant, and the sound design gives the show a life that helps carry you out of a small blackbox theater in Manhattan and into the mind of the character Maya, whether she’s in her pre-school classroom, or her apartment living room getting absorbed in the constant news reports about the humpback whale circling Manhattan.

As expected Whale Songwas very funny and (what should also have been expected) extremely poignant (when will I learn -

Tracy Willet as Sue the Soothsayer & Jake Lipman as Calista Grey.
Photo by Maeghan Donohue

always, always, always bring tissues to a TIC show, because though the company’s mission is to provide thought-provoking comedies, and though they accomplish that mission really well, (and I’m always going to have more than one good ol’ fashioned guffaw), for me it seems “thought-provoking” = “Jessica will, in fact, be crying her eyes out before the show is over,” so yeah, tissues would have been a good idea.

The six actors in Whale Song were natural and delightful throughout the show. Jake, playing local TV news reporter, Calista Grey, nailed that “perky on air news personality” at the same time she gave the character the edge that was needed to needle and spar with Ms. Little’s Maya Swan. Tracy Willet (as Sarah Swan), Matt Sydney (as Shep the motherf*cking drummer), Jared Shirkey (as Mark), and Brady Adair (as James Swan) all did a lovely job with multiple characters, creating a vibrant world peopled by interesting folks who intersect unexpectedly throughout the show.

Jared Shipkey as Mark and Shelley Little as Maya.
Photo by Maeghan Donohue

But, while talking about performances, I must call out one particularly extraordinary moment in a play filled with really lovely ones, and here it is: if you have not seen Jared Shirkey, play drunk, you have not heard Mozart as it was meant to be played. In other words Mr. Shirkey plays a brilliant drunk. I honestly thought the dude had downed a bottle of Jack Daniels before the drunk scene and only afterhe appeared in the next scene – stone cold sober – did I realize the extent of his genius. I’ve seen good performances of drunk characters…I’ve even seen good drunk performances (yup as in drunk actor performing) but I’ve never, on stage, seen such a realistic and spot-on portrayal of a drunk character. Even if there was nothing else to recommend this show, I would tell you not to miss that scene, but, as I believe I made clear above, there’s a lot to sing about (yeah, I know. I totally went there)

Brady Adair as James Swan.
Photo by Maeghan Donohue

with Whale Song. Catch it while you can.

Whale Song plays through November 8th at The Bridge Theater at Shetler Studios. More details go to www.tongueincheektheater.com.

Editing begins…

The SHOW is not yet done, not nearly done. Yes we have 99% of the show shot. BUT, number one – 99% is not 100% (we still have a couple of inserts and establishing shots left to film in NY), and number two ”principal photography is done” does NOT mean “the show is done.” There’s still all the post-production work to be done – color correcting, scoring, title sequence, ADR, music…oh, and, you know – THE EDITING! And THEN, after it is finished, after it is put together, and the production work and the post production work are done – for real and for true – Terri and I still have to find a network or production company that wants to fork over the money to make the next five episodes (or better yet – the next five years of episodes) and then, when that happens, we need to start the whole production process all over again for episode two. BUT!!! We’ve come this far, and Peeps? This is a pretty far way to come. So here and now, I will attempt to relate this experience – shooting my first TV show…

Some of the ferns of which I speak…

A quick disclaimer before I go into more specifics: I have a terrible memory. I remember things in snippets and moments but not as whole experiences (for all I know this is how everyone remembers things but it always seems slightly disconcerting to me that I can remember the smell of the ferns in the grove on my wedding day in the exact moment I said “I do,” but can’t remember what I did last Thursday night – like, the entire night is a blank to me, and I wasn’t even drinking, wait was I?) This is why I take so many pictures and why the invention of the smartphone camera was a blessing for me and a frustration for my husband – “put the phone away and experience the moment,” he says. “But I want to be sure I can remember the moment!” I say. Anywho, that memory thing coupled with the fact that I’m a born storyteller – always editing and embellishing the actual experiences of my life so they make a better story – means you’re not going to get accurate reporting from me BUT, you’ll hopefully get a good story. So! Here’s the story (or at least some of the story) of the Farm Story shoot:

There were so many unreal and amazing parts of this experience, so many moments where I couldn’t process at all the immensity of what we were doing. Don’t worry, I know we are just making a television show, not curing cancer or anything, BUT! we are making a television show! I mean, not a little home movie on a camcorder, a real honest-to-god TV show. With a cast of 14 and a crew of 20 and a bunch of locations and a production van and a picture car and 2 kids and a dog and a cat and a rooster named Leroy. And that is huge (not the rooster). In fact, it is so surreal to me that while we were filming I had a moment where it hit me and I  stopped, dumbfounded, in the middle of a residential street in Staunton, Virginia. I actually stopped dead as it hit and said out loud, “holy good lord. We’re making a TV show.” (To which cast and crew around me were like, “uh, yeah, where have you been for the past week?”)

North Market Street, the location of the gut punch…

But, you see, for the eight months leading up to the shoot, I had been in producer/director mode. For all of Pre-Production, I was in head-down, producer “triage-the-problem” mode. You know, just getting it done. And for the last two weeks of pre-production, and the first week of filming, I was in head-down, “figure out what I want artistically, explain it to the cast and crew, and figure out how to get that filmed” mode. Basically, from January to September, I never had a chance to stop and realize that this was a big deal in my life and so, on that Saturday afternoon, on North Market Street, in the middle of Staunton, Virginia, the realization took hold and physically forced me to stop and observe what was happening – even if it was just for a second. In fact, it was such a strong feeling that I was briefly unable to function (it felt like what I imagine it feels like to be gut punched, but without the pain) as everyone around me did their thing – set up the lights, put the picture cars in place, touched up makeup and hair, held reflectors, prepped microphones, wrangled the kids, and just generally got ready to film the scene. And I looked around and saw all these people and I thought to myself, “holy shit! These people are here because of Terri and me and NO ONE else! WE did this.” And it was overwhelming.

I mean, LOOK at this! This is a PRODUCTION! Of course it hit me here…

Don’t get me wrong, the moment passed pretty quickly – within 30 seconds I came back to myself and we got on with the business of making the show but seriously, Guys, it’s been surreal. Well actually surreal and not at all surreal. And here’s the thing, you know how you have those moments where you have two contrasting experiences at the exact same time and you’re not really sure how both can exist at once but they do and you go with it? Well, that was what it felt like to make Farm Story. It was simultaneously new, and exciting, and unbelievable while also being normal, and comfortable, right, and even…kind of mundane (in the most exciting sense of the word.) While we were in it, in the day to day-ness of it, it was just sort of ordinary. It just felt right and comfortable to crawl out of bed at the buttcrack of dawn, stroll downstairs, meet up with Alex (Director of Photography) and Tom (Sound Mixer) and go over the plan for the day. To find Julia, or Logan, or Eric (my lead actors) in hair/makeup and chat about the scene we were about to film. To swing by craft services and grab myself a banana. To basically just move through the set, and the day, as the director. It felt natural, and comfortable, and completely, totally, utterly right.

Shootin’ on the subway…

So, let me set the scene – If you like Farm Story on Facebook or if you follow our blog (which, if you don’t, what’s stopping you? Get on that, People!) you know that the entire shooting process started off with a day of shooting in New York City. In addition to our skeleton crew – Alex, Tom, Kelli, (Script Supervisor), Jen, (temp 1st AD), Molly (Production Coordinator), Noah, Lucy, and Will, (our three New York PA’s who, sadly, weren’t all able to make the trip. Only Noah was able to go to Virginia for the main shooting), a few friends acting as extras, and four principal actors. The shoot was an exciting and crazy day, but, in the world of filmmaking, kind of a short one.

Ok, so we’re not in motion here, so much less impressive than when we were moving, but still – the walk and talk.

Short or not, though, there is something ridiculously exciting, indescribable even, about shooting on the streets of NYC. The last time I was actually shooting on a main street in Manhattan was way back in my production assistant days on NYPD Blue and Godzilla and US Marshalls (yes, mom, everyone has heard the story about Tommy Lee Jones scolding me) and back in those PA days I promised myself that I would not set foot on another Manhattan movie set unless and until I was either in it or the director. I kept that promise to myself. On Farm Story, we filmed a scene on the subway, yup, the NYC subway system! We filmed a scene in front of Terri’s and my old apartment – a scene with two picture cars, no less! And the most exciting – we actually filmed a walk and talk scene, with two actors crossing 5th Avenue, at 40th Street, on a Saturday afternoon – we were a little clump (two actors and six crew-some walking backwards) crossing a ridiculously busy NY city street – don’t worry, Mom, we crossed with the light. But seriously, I still can’t believe we got the shot!

And then the next day, most of those folks who were on the NY shoot, piled into a 15 passenger van and a 12-year-old Subaru and drove for 7 and a half hours to arrive at our, as-yet-unseen destination – a beautiful 18th century brick farmhouse on 27 acres of land. We arrived, we had some dinner, we went to bed, and the next morning we were up with the sun to do some work.

The Staunton bookstore…

What followed from there is a blur of filming the likes of which I had never experienced before. 12 hour days at locations all around Staunton, sometimes as easy to get to as the yard of the farm house (because we were, you know, filming in the yard of the farmhouse) and sometimes requiring us to pile back into that trusty 15 pass and head the 20 miles to hit the locations in Staunton proper. Speaking of Staunton proper, while there we filmed in: a diner, and a motel, a bookstore, an office, a beautiful house (see the North Market Street gut-punch above), a downtown apartment, and an impromptu traffic jam. On the farm we filmed in three different bedrooms, two kitchens, a dining room, a library, a living room, a screened in porch, two hallways, a patio, a lawn, and backdoor steps. We filmed in the sunshine and in the rain, on a dusty dirt road and in a dried up corn field. In vehicles and out, at all hours of the day and night. And, although we averaged only 12 hours a day we managed to stay on time and on budget, and I still don’t know how we did it. Our lunches each day were delicious – good, fresh, well prepared food – but our dinners? Our dinners were sublime…

My folks’ motel room (which they were booted from while we filmed)…

And now I come to the thing. The thing that I talk about ad nauseum, the one thing that everyone who knows me knows about. The point I’m trying to make, the feeling I can’t fully describe, the thing that this blog post is really about: Family is important to me. It’s like the Most Important Thing. It’s what it’s all about. Not only the family you’re born into, but also the one you choose and, if you’re lucky, the one you create. On every project I do, I try, as much as possible, to bring family members I’m actually related to along for the ride but whether the blood family is able to join in or not, I always always always look to build a family on each show. It’s one of the reasons I use the same people over and over. It is, in fact, the reason I do this crazy theater/film thing. It’s why I started a company — so that I could have this whole little family whenever I work on a project. It’s what it’s all about. AND, when Te and I first talked about Farm Story, we talked about building a family that would create this show. A group of people—a cast and crew—who would work together and live together and eat and drink together. We wanted our meals to be family meals – to the extent that Terri and I both wanted the dinners to be prepared by our parents and local “friends of the production”. We wanted home cooked meals. Yes, we wanted it to be, as Tom said, “a professional thing we’re doing here,” but we also wanted the group to bond as family.

Shooting on the farm…

And you know what? It totally worked. All of it. The filming, the living, the eating and drinking together. The parents making a few dinners and the local friends making the rest. The late night storytelling, the early morning coffee dash. The massive breakfast prepared by cast, crew, mom, and dad on the day we didn’t start until 2pm, the scary-clown-movie nights that found everyone watching, shouting at the screen, the birthday party on set at 1AM. And the meals – while we were in Virginia, at the end of every shooting day, we gathered on the screened-in porch of the main house and we ate together. We got to know each other, we processed the day, we played cards, we razzed on the PA’s. We laughed, we cried, we worked, and we even got a chance to play a little, but most of all, we became a family.

Hopefully that family will continue. Like I said above, now comes the hard work of editing and getting the show out there so you can all see what we did. Now comes the hard work of selling the show so that we can do this all again with these wonderful people (most of whom I. Did. Not. Know. A year ago!) Now comes the hard work of making a living at day jobs because Terri and I both put that whole “I need money to live” thing aside while we did Farm Story (thank you John and Rob for that).

So the next step is to get it out there and the first step towards that is Austin. Again, as you may have seen on Facebook, the Farm Story script got accepted to the second round at The Austin Film Festival, entitling Terri and me to participate in special panels and workshops. And we’ve put together a trailer on the off chance that the acquisitions person from AMC or Netflix says, “oh, I LOVED your script. Do you have a trailer of what you’ve made?” So, tomorrow afternoon Terri and I are off to Austin. We’ll attend our first film festival. We’ll network and shmooze. We’ll hopefully set up some meetings and hopefully move the project forward. But whether something major happens there or not, we will now focus all of our energy on finding a way to get cameras rolling on episode two. And, until the day comes when cameras do roll again, I will hold in my memory twelve glorious days and nights in the Shenandoah Mountains and…

The hot cramped rooms, particularly the Brooklyn bake

The screened in porch…site of many a meal AND many of the pivotal scenes from the show.

Hearing walkie talkie “chatter” on my set thanks to the Zello app

Bonding with my tribe

Homemade biscuits and gravy

A chinese fire drill

A soy field at dawn

Red elfin ears

Giant G-men

An unplugged phone ringing

Wagon Wheel on the radio

A downright freaky doll

Mountain mist in the morning

Dinners on the porch

A broken down Subaru 2 hours from our destination

A misty morning on the farm…

Tiny rooms with too many people

Fuckin’ Sandwich

“Terri, you gotta hold my movie”

Star-filled nights with too much wine

and long busy days with not enough sleep

And I will forever be humbled by and never fully able to express what it means to me that friends and family far and wide (and a few strangers) ponied up forty-five thousand dollars so we could make this show; that local crew jumped on board for very little money and absolutely no glamour; that actors, both local and not, found their way to Staunton (by car and train) to sleep on a rented bed and do their work, sometimes for as little as a few hours; that Terri’s parents and my parents each traveled more than 500 miles to stay respectively in a guest room and a two star hotel room (that they got kicked out of for a day of filming), AND to cook a few dinners for 30 people; that sisters and nieces and nephews gamely participated in this insanity; and, last but not least, that Tom, Alex, Molly, Noah, Julia, Logan, Eric, and Sulekha all got in the motherfucking van not for the promise of riches or luxury or fame; they got in the van with virtual strangers, for a 7 hour drive because they trusted this script and they trusted my ability to get this done; because they trusted me, a person they didn’t know well (and in some cases didn’t know at all). They all enthusiastically just said, “yup, I’m in!” They became a family and they forever changed my life in the process. Thanks, guys. You’re the best!

Some of the cast and crew and Farm Story Family  in the “Warden’s Office” set on our last day of filming.

Ok, so this is a long post. Like, a really long post. Sorry about that. But it turns out, when you’re talking about your passion, it’s kinda hard to keep it short. Feel free to jump to the links and/or skip to the end (that’s where the really important stuff is, anyway.) -Jess

As many of you know I have been a television fanatic my entire life. In fact, my life is defined by the shows I watch now, was watching then, will be watching tomorrow.

There are the shows of my childhood that I watched religiously with my sisters – Quincy, Eight is Enough, 240-Robert, Simon & Simon, St. Elsewhere, Remington Steele, Riptide – the list goes on and on and on.

Then there are the shows I watched on my own as I got older. In junior high it was Miami Vice – I still remember the conversations Colleen and I had at our lockers about Crockett and Tubbs.

There are the days in high school and early college where I was obsessed with Twin Peaks and Northern Exposure. (And yes, I’m well aware of the Northen Exposure episode that did an homage to Twin Peaks.)

The night during freshman year college spring break, when I had come home from a bad date in an awful mood and my dad had known the only thing that would pick me up – a Star Trek The Next Generation marathon where we watched a full videotape of 6 episodes, long into the night.

The ER fanaticism (particularly in those early seasons) when my aunt called with a family crisis during the ER season finale and I not only didn’t pick up the phone until the commercial break but when I did pick up, the first words out of my mouth were, “Aunt Irene, you know it’s the season finale, why are you calling NOW?” (yup, that story is legend in my family – most of the time I’m a very good niece, I swear.)

After college I had moved on to The X-Files and there was the taping mishap when, during Jen and Kelley’s rehearsal dinner, thinking I was safely recording the season finale, I left the television unattended, went to the dinner under the tent in the backyard and discovered (days later) that halfway through the episode someone, (who shall remain nameless), had changed the channel to a Red Sox game! Not even the Yankees! Not even the post-season! As you can imagine, in the days before dvrs that was a rough one!

There was Highlander and Gilmore Girls and Due South and Farscape; Thirtysomething, and I’ll Fly Away, and Party of Five, and Chicago Hope. In recent years it’s been The Wire, and West Wing, and Friday Night Lights, and Doctor Who, and Breaking Bad, and Mad Men, and Orphan Black, and Justified, and ANYTHING from Joss Whedon. There have been shows that barely lasted a season and there’s been that old stalwart, Law & Order that lasted for 20 and of which I never missed an episode. There are dramas and scifi, and action adventure, but there’s comedy too: Newhart and Cheers, and Friends, and Sports Night and Scrubs, How I Met Your Mother and Modern Family, and Happy Endings. There’s even an animated show here and there - Aqua Team Hunger Force and Family Guy, I’m looking at you (though admittedly, I’m not nearly as obsessive over animation.) The shows  go on and on too numerous to name them all, but the one uniting factor for all of them has been my obsession and family, and friends are all used to me starting out conversations with “That reminds me of this one scene in…”

When I get hooked on a show – I watch it all, in order – I do not miss an episode. Yes, there are the shows I have a casual relationship with – I’ll drop in, enjoy an episode every once in awhile, but those are rare. There are even the shows I hatewatch (again dropping in and out of them), BUT if I’m committed, I’m committed and I can’t let them go. My love for my shows defines moments of my life and Holy Good Lord, the things I’ve seen on TV! It is true that I place my defining career moment – that moment when I knew I wanted to be a director – as my first viewing of a film (Star Wars, to be exact – yes, when I was like 6). But if that was the moment I new I wanted to be a director, the moments that honed that realization, and cemented that decision; the moments where I began to really understand what a director is, and what kind of storyteller I wanted to become, those moments are too numerous to keep track of and stretch through decades of capital M Moments of television where a TV show blew me away, made me excited, made me think, made me laugh out loud, made me cry, made me who I am (warning, spoilers abound in the bullet points below):

• when the camera goes slo-mo in that one episode from Highlander when Richie realizes what he is now;
• when Carter comes into his own and takes charge of the ER in a crisis;
• when Bob Newhart wakes up next to Suzanne Pleshette at the end of Newhart;
• when Buffy whispers her guidance to Dawn before she takes that leap;
• when Picard joins the poker game;
• when Lorelai realizes her feelings for Luke;
• when CJ gets the goldfish from Danny;
• when Niles’ ironing his pants turns into a 10 minute, absolutely brilliant bit of farce;
• the kaddish for Uncle Manny in Northern Exposure;
• the Galactica falling through the atmosphere of New Caprica; 
• the lawnmower in Mad Men;
• the goat fight in How I Met Your Mother;
• Jayne’s hat in Firefly;
• the locket in Farscape;
• the chair flip in Alias;
• the bullet in Fringe;
• Doctor Donna

Moments on top of Moments on top of moments that have moved me and stuck with me but more than that made me stop and think “wow, I want to be a part of that! I want to be responsible for these moments for other people.” Honestly, it’s why I’m a director – for the moments.

So, why am I telling you this? Why now? Why wax rhapsodic about my TV obsession on a theater blog? Well here’s the thing you may not know: this company was never intended to only be about theater. If you watch the music video I made a few years ago, you’ll see I titled it a “Going to Tahiti Production”. You see, I LOVE theater (obviously), but from the beginning, I never intended for GTTP to only do theater. Always always always I have been finagling, to make a film or, better yet, a TV show. So finally we come to the point… finally, the television obsession and the directing thing are starting to collide. Finally I’m making a TV show. To say that it’s a dream come true doesn’t begin to cover it…and honestly, it’s also not accurate, you see, the dream can’t come true – I can’t make the show – until the money is in place, and, though we’re going strong we still have a looooooooooong way to go with that. BUT, I’m closer now than I’ve ever been.

“But it’s a web series, Jess. Didn’t you just film a webseries that’s in editing now and is supposed to be released in the fall?,” you say. Well, yes, I did and it is, and it will be. And yes, technically Farm Story is a web series in that it will first air on the web. And it being a web series allows us to afford to make it. BUT, Terri and I have big plans for this little series. You see we’re not making it like people normally do a web series, we’re making it like a regular ol’ tv show. What we’re doing is filming our very own tv pilot – an hour long drama for a six episode first season. Yes yes yes, it will be distributed online first. But after that, who knows? We have the first 3 episodes written. We know the arc for the remaining 3 episodes. If all goes according to plan, this won’t be a little project. This will be the first season of a multi-season story. If all goes according to plan, this is the next 3-7 years of our lives. Don’t get me wrong, GTTP is not abandoning theater, not even close. In fact, Molly will be doing a workshop production of a new “beyond words” theater piece this summer. And GTTP will have a full production slate through the 2014-15 season (in fact, stay tuned for announcements about that) BUT, GTTP is growing and branching and every day getting closer to the production company I envisioned when I first started out.

The reason I’m making such a big deal about Farm Story, (and you can read all about the development of the project and all the latest happenings on our Farm Story blog) is that this show is our biggest endeavor yet. Our biggest budget by far (50K). A completely new medium for us. Farm Story is a completely crowd-funded, donation-based show (that’s right every dime for this show is coming from donations from y’all). This is locally-grown TV. No big Hollywood studio yet. No big Hollywood money yet. Everyone on this project is either working for peanuts or volunteering, Terri and my folks are cooking some of the meals – are you beginning to see the picture here? We literally can not make this show without the support of all of you. So, I know I’ve asked before but now I’m going to ask for more. This is one of the most important (and terrifying) things I’ve ever done. So, whaddya say? Wanna help us make a television show?

So, with that in mind, if you’d like to make a tax-deductible donation to Farm Story and be a part of this revolutionary, locally-grown TV thing we’ve got going on here, go to the donate page of goingtotahitiproductions.com for instructions; OR, if you want to donate through our crowd funding site, RocketHub, and get rewards for your donation, go here. Truly truly truly, EVERY little bit helps. And, if you can’t donate right now, please spread the word. I also highly recommend checking out the video on the Rockethub page, where you can learn even more about me (as if you need to after this blog post), Terri, and the project; not just because I made the video and I think it’s a damn fine l’il movie, but because I think it conveys the spirit of what we’re doing.

So, yeah, basically – Theater is cool. Going  to Tahiti Productions‘ new theatrical season will be announced in July/August. TV is cool. GTTP is making a show. We need money and support to do it. Jessica is a crazy television junkie. Thanks for reading.

Going to Tahiti Productions is a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization. Contributions for charitable purposes of Going to Tahiti Productions must be made payable to Fractured Atlas only and are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law.

And every year, as the weather starts to warm and we have those first real days of recognizing that the winter is truly over (though this year, I don’t entirely believe it) and the allergies start acting up for real, I can’t help  but think of a particular commencement speech. It was not actually the speech delivered at my graduation. To be honest, I don’t even remember who spoke at my graduation, let alone what he or she said. No, this particular speech was over ten years before my time and was one that, until the wonders of being able to look up just about anything on the internet, I had only ever heard about second hand from my mom:

In 1980, another dad got to play a special role in his daughter’s graduation. I don’t know if he actually handed his daughter her diploma, but that graduation, Alan Alda delivered the Connecticut College commencement address. His daughter was in attendance, graduating from the school and he not only delivered a beautiful speech that could have applied to each of the graduates present, he also managed to make it a personal bit of advice from a dad to his daughter. The whole speech is beautiful and powerful (why else would my mom still talk about it almost 25 years later) and can be read here. But there’s a particular passage that I feel applies today. Towards the end of the speech Mr. Alda gave his daughter, and all of her fellow graduates, the following advice:

I can’t even with this. No, I’m serious. Did you read that? I know it’s a long passage, but this isn’t just an excuse for me to avoid coming up with a long blog post of my own. It’s important. It’s powerful advice from a successful man about a crazy, competitive, unpredictable business. But it’s more than that – it’s poetry, man. It’s frakking poetry. I feel like I want to claim this as a manifesto for myself and for GTTP.

Because, here’s a little secret, Gentle Readers – it’s all true. You need to be bold. You need to not doubt. You need to let the strength of your desire give force and moment to your every step. You need to move with all of yourself. You need to NOT LEAVE ANY OF YOURSELF SAFELY ON SHORE. It’s about the leap. It’s about being brave. It’s about embracing the unknown. It’s about having the nerve, having the chutzpah. It’s about leaving the city of your comfort and going into the wilderness of your intuition. It’s about hard work and risk and NOT QUITE KNOWING WHAT YOU’RE DOING. It’s the only way you’ll find greatness. It’s the only way you’ll find yourself. And, it’s what we’re doing here at Tahiti. To be honest it’s what we’ve been doing all along, but now, we’re about to do it in a bigger and scarier way then we ever have before. Not only are we about to make a television show – yup, an honest-to-god tv show, but we’re also about to exist in two mediums simultaneously. Next week, I will head down to Virginia for a pre-production meeting with my UPM (that’s Unit Production Manager to the non-film folks), my Associate Producers and my Writer/Co-producer, as well as our first big fundraising event, and our first official location scout with our Locations Manager. And, while I’m off gallivanting in Virginia and prepping Farm Story, Molly will take the reins here and start prepping her next project – a theater-beyond-words piece derived from the music of Camilla Ammirati and text of Alexis Roblan.

And, yup, that means I’m about to give up a bit of control (yes it is actually that hard for me to even conceive of such a thing, despite the fact that I couldn’t have chosen better hands to leave GtTTheater in than Molly’s). GTTP is about to have its first theatrical show that I will have very little involvement in. Although I’ll be around and consulting and I’ll still be blogging about and talking about it, it really won’t be mine at all. It’s time to let the GtTTheater fly without me for a bit – don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I’m done with theater, not by a long shot – in fact, come October, I’ll be back in the rehearsal room with Molly for our Fall show – but for the next few months, I will be taking a bit of break to focus on television and as Farm Story moves forward, and Molly takes the reigns of our newest theatrical adventure, we will try to follow Mr. Alda’s advice. We will be bold. We will be brave. We will have chutzpah!

Disclaimer – despite what this may look like from the first paragraph, this is a review for Tongue In Cheek’s production of their original play, Buffalo Heights, and, spoiler alert — I totally loved it…

After/Since Within Arm’s Reach ended, I’ve been thinking a lot — and I mean A LOT — about what we, as GTTP, do and where we fit in the off-off-Broadway landscape. I believe I have mentioned here before that it’s always tricky to get an audience, to get butts in the seats — not just because we’re a small company who can’t afford to hire a big PR firm to get the buzz going but also because we focus on original work. And though we do great stuff, it’s unknown stuff so we don’t have the built in audience of a production of Guys and Dolls, or West Side Story…or, if we’re talking plays, The Glass Menagerie or Our Town. You see, I didn’t start GTTP just for the fun of it, and Molly (now that there’s a Molly) and I aren’t doing it just for the heck of it. Partially we’re doing it because we have no choice — we’re directors. And if we don’t have a project we have trouble functioning in the world but also, we do this because we want this little theater thing we do to become, if not a profitable enterprise, at least a break even enterprise. And, as Annie Savoy says in the film Bull Durham, “baseball may be a religion full of magic, cosmic truth, and the fundamental ontological riddles of our time, but it’s also a job.” And I feel that way about theater and GTTP — theater may be a passion, a necessity, a religion to us practitioners, but it’s also a job. We want it to pay our bills not just our souls. So, when I think about all of this and I think about the complexities of finding an audience and reaching out to the universe (especially the NYC theater-going universe) I inevitably think about competition. I think about other theater companies that are like us, who do similar things to what we do and it’s very easy to tip into jealousy and envy and it can sometimes be hard to enjoy watching what others do (even when it impresses me) if I see them as competition. Then again, as self-centered as it sounds, I always know how impressed I am with a production if my appreciation busts through that mask of jealousy and envy and I walk away from it just loving what I’ve seen…

Jake Lipman and Shelley Little in BUFFALO HEIGHTS. Photo credit: Maeghan Donohue

Which brings me to Tongue In Cheek. As I have mentioned before, Tongue In Cheek Productions is a theater company that I love. In the past few years I’ve seen 3 shows from TIC – Our Town, The Mistakes Madeleine Made, and How I Learned to Drive, and I’ve been impressed by all of them. In many ways, I think of TIC as a sister company to GTTP. TIC is a small company that’s been around for more than a couple years but fewer than ten. TIC was created by and is run by a woman, Jake Lipman. They use a core ensemble of players but also uses outside actors on a by production basis, they also won a Puffin Grant, and, a lot of their set pieces are from Ikea. I also think of Jake as a friend. I love her directing and her acting and I’m always excited to see what she does. However, with all those similarities and more, up until recently the company differed from GTTP in one key way — TIC focused on revivals. That changed with their most recent production, the original piece, commissioned and developed by Tongue in Cheek Theater Productions, Buffalo Heights. 

Buffalo Heights is a new comedy which follows new teacher, Fran, on her first semester teaching French at Buffalo Heights High. When controversy erupts at the school, Fran (Jake Lipman) encounters unexpected adversaries and allies.

Nina Leese and Allison Lemel in BUFFALO HEIGHTS. Photo credit: Maeghan Donohue

To be honest, although I always enjoy TIC’s work, I was wary about seeing Buffalo Heights  for a couple of reasons — #1) You know, this isn’t what TIC normally does, what if it wasn’t any good and I had to find something to tell Jake after the show — “uh, that was interesting” — without saying, “yeah, stick to what you know.” or more likely #2) What if it’s amazing and it’s better than what GTTP does and it’s incredible and brilliant, and now TIC decides to abandon revivals all together and only do original works and become direct competition for GTTP and what if they do it better than us and what if nobody wants to see GTTP anymore because TIC is doing the same thing but they’re doing it better and what if my jealousy ruins my friendship with Jake and I, and they, and we, and, and, and, after all this is our little pond, what if there isn’t room enough for both of us and, and, and… (as you can see, I can spiral out of control pretty easily).

BUT guess what happened? I saw the show and it was awesome. It was witty and fun and thought provoking and surprising. First off, the show was wonderfully performed (as I’ve come to expect from TIC shows). Jake (as Fran), was terrific as the outsider character entering an unjust community and finding herself in the middle of a fight she hadn’t expected. Shelley Little was hilarious balancing the officiousness of an ambitious school principal with a desire to still be a friend to Fran. Joe Mullen, as the hapless security guard, effortlessly crossed the line between sweet and innocent and totally skeevy (I mean that in the best possible way), and then back again. Nina Leese was fun as the local congresswoman so focused on the politics of her career that she is blind to the behavior of her own daughter. Allison Lemel found a perfect level of obnoxious, self centered teenager when portraying the “running for Class President” Piper. And Matthew Whitfield was fantastic, rebellious and lovable, as the reformed stoner student who dares to enter into competition with Piper. But, of course none of this is a surprise. You see Jake is one of those directors who knows the best way to make her job easier is to cast well — and she always delivers.

And then there was the play itself — devised by the TIC Ensemble cast with playwright Adam Harrell, Buffalo Heights is really funny. Again, as expected from a TIC show, I found myself laughing out loud throughout the show. But, more importantly, as a person who has seen A LOT of theater and film and television, and so is not often surprised by where a plot goes, what I really enjoyed about Buffalo Heights was the fact that during the show there were several moments where I thought to myself, “oh, this is that plot line” or “oh, so if we’re coming from here, we’re going to end up there” and? I was wrong every time — which was awesome, surprising, and downright fun.

Matthew Whitfield and Jake Lipman in BUFFALO HEIGHTS. Photo Credit: Maeghan Donohue

So, here’s what it boils down to: #1) Go see Buffalo Heights. #2) Much to my surprise (yes, I’ll admit to my petty jealousies), I hope this is only the first of many original productions from TIC, because seriously, they know what they’re doing! (Again, this is not acutally a surprise, it’s just, wow! Good stuff all around! I love their revivals but it turns out I love their original work too. And, most importantly, #3) It looks like seeing Buffalo Heights set off a little paradigm shift in my mind when it comes to comparing myself and GTTP to other companies of our ilk, to seeing ourselves in competition with them and others, and here it is — you ready? So, not to get all hippy dippy or anything, but… THERE IS NO COMPETITION! I don’t mean that in the sense that one of us is so much better than the other that it blows the other one out of the water but I mean this as an actual, literal — there. Is. No. Competition! It’s so easy in this business to see everything as a competition — “but that’s our money”, “that’s our audience,” “you can’t be good too because then those same people will go see your shows and not mine”. But it doesn’t have to be that way. The sandbox is big enough for us all to play in — especially, when it’s Tongue In Cheek that we’re talking about — and, when it comes to TIC, I’ll even share my shovel and pail…look, Ma. I’m growing.

Some of you know of my Uncle Johnny, the artist who inspired me as an artist but also the inspiration for the name Going to Tahiti Productions (you can read that story here), and some of you actually knew him when he was still alive. He was a pretty cool guy — though not a talkative one (like me, he didn’t really enjoy talking on the phone, though, on occasion when we got to talking about a movie or book that we liked (or hated) the conversation would be animated and would go long into the night) — but letter writing was pretty much how we communicated. I would periodically send him a long letter about what I was up to and he would send me a card or a book or a note back to check in. But, whatever the letters or cards or notes or books contained, he always had some words of wisdom from an older artist to a younger. It didn’t matter that his medium was paint and mine was actors. It didn’t matter that he wasn’t making money with his art either, and that he knew that struggle wasn’t easy. It didn’t matter that he was 3000 miles away and we, East Coast Family, rarely got to see him. There were always encouraging words…we were always going to Tahiti.

So, while going through the memorabilia boxes, I came across this note card from Uncle Johnny. It doesn’t have a date and the envelope with a postmark is long since gone (even in my packrat ways, I did find a way to throw out envelopes from people who’s addresses I already had), but I think it’s from the mid-late 90′s. The note starts off, in response to a letter I sent him, “I…hope you are working 20 hrs/day and living off of adrenaline, intuition, and the euphoria that is show business/production.” And continues, “yes; bizarre, surreal, weird, monsters, religion, love: It must be Art.” Judging from that, I think I (and he in his response) was referring to the first movie I was a PA on in the city (ah, my days as a Production Assistant…another story all together). So that would put it in early ’96, after Atlanta but before I was officially living in the city. But, I digress…

I must have been philosophizing in my letter to him, because he goes on: “I also see that you have turned your predicament into philosophy (more Art, I’m so proud of you). Getting paid is the next evolution – no pay, some pay, now and then pay, low pay, little pay, more pay, steady pay…” The man knew of what he spoke. And then, this:

“Give the best you have, always keep learning, grow with each project, hang tough, Dream, reach beyond the reachable, be true to yourself – good things will happen.”

So, GTTP is following Uncle Johnny’s advice. After Molly’s current directing gig, I, Salome, she’ll be jumping in to Tahiti’s next show – a beyond words theater piece that is, right now, just beginning to take shape. And me? I’m jumping in full force to Farm Story, GTTP’s first foray into television. Regular updates are happening, well, regularly, here – primarily from writer and co-producer, Terri Viani (and occasionally from me), but basically, what you need to know is: our production calendar is set, crew interviews start tomorrow, fundraising is about to begin in earnest, auditions will start in late June, and, if all goes according to plan, cameras will roll on September 6th! It’s big…who am I kidding, it’s HUGE! It’s overwhelming. It’s scary. It’s new. It’s crazy. It’s television. It’s what I’ve been dreaming about. It’s utterly terrifying. BUT, I’m jumping off the cliff. I’m taking Uncle Johnny’s advice – I’m giving the best I have, learning and growing with each project, hanging tough, dreaming, reaching beyond the reachable, being true to myself…Get ready, folks, because here come the good things – Uncle Johnny said so.

How can you be stressed when “Huhhhh” our mascot is around?

Those of you that know me are probably wondering: “Why so stressed, Molly? You’ve been working in theatre with multiple titles for the same project for nearly ten years now.” Perhaps this is true, but this is the first time I’d attempted to have four titles for a show. Although, Jess and I had always talked about me coming on to her “baby” project of Within Arm’s Reach as co-adapter and co-producer,  by the time we had an audience I was also set and costume designer.   That being said, stress was abundant in my life for this production as there are not enough hours in the day.

The entire process start to finish was very quick. Jess and I really didn’t get our hands dirty with the adaption until January and we opened in mid-March. Did I mention I’ve never adapted a novel into a script before? What would I do without Jess? It’s a question I asked during this process qite a bit. Adapting was a process that I had a love/hate relationship with at the beginning. Currently, those of you who saw our last production The Sandman’s Coming know this, I’m in a place where my biggest theatrical interest is exploring story telling without an abundance of words (or what I’m starting to coin as Beyond Words Theatre). Within Arm’s Reach was words, a lot of beautiful words. It was daunting to say the least.  It was fascinating to learn the parts of the story that Jess was very drawn to verse what I was.

Who said producers aren’t busy during tech?

Fast-forward through casting and  I suddenly realized, “Oh, right. I’m designing. Maybe I should start that.” It’s been a bit since I’ve costume designed a piece that I wasn’t also directing (I originally went to university for  costume design), so I was thrilled to jump right back in with this. Jess and I have worked together in so many ways, however, I can’t say I wasn’t nervous for our first director/designer show. Made even worse by the fact that I was designing the set as well as costumes.  Part of what makes Jess and I a great team is how differently we work. The rest of our design team got this a lot during tech. What’s the verdict on Jess as director and me as designer?  I would happily design for any show that Jess directed!

Within Arm’s Reach brought out one of my initial reasons for getting involved in theatre. The community of artists that is formed during a show, however fleeting, is beautiful. From late night/early mornings painting  the theater with Jess, to character chats with the cast, to listening to Ien morph the sounds of children; we had a truly wonderful group for this one.

This is all to say that sometimes, stress and being in a slightly uncomfortable situation end up creating a product that, at the end of the day, you are thrilled with. Of course though, it’s not ALL about me. Within Arm’s Reach would not have been the same without the wonderful cast, crew, donors, and audience we had and I can’t say THANK YOU enough to everyone involved. But, really, can I sleep now?

Cat napping at the tech table.

Disclaimer: Any grammar/spelling mistakes were made to keep John on his toes!