Dear Fellow Company Members,

There. That was easy. Say it and it’s so. Now we’re a company. I propose we meet and talk about how best to bestow our gifts on the Newnan-Coweta theatre scene.

The only really insanely ambitious part of this would be the first meeting since it would be best for all interested parties to attend and there is no such thing as a perfect time.

Here’s my suggestion about how this first meeting might work. The how is easier to think about than the when:

At this first meeting, all of us should be prepared to talk about the kind of work we would be interested in doing. How you do this is up to you, but everybody should put in his or her two cents: do you have a play in mind? a playwright? an interest in a company developed piece? a theatrical adaptation of a novel or film or some other piece of writing? a kind of theatre style? use of music? a interest in an acting workshop? We all pick an interest or two and make a case. We let enthusiasm and curiosity be our guides, not so-called “questions of taste” or the state of the market (don’t pre-judge your proposals–it’s all good). Then we, as a group, choose a first focus (something which would involve a large number of members and continue the process of creating an ensemble feeling), with the thought that we don’t always have to all be doing only one project at a time, but that convergence makes a better start than dispersal (Dale may want to debate this point–but hang on, below is an attempt at a rapprochement). We choose by voting on the proposals, and whatever gets the most votes, wins

This first focus of ours would guide our creative calendar for the upcoming months. In what way? Once a first focus is chosen, perhaps then things could loosen up. What if we began to meet in smaller groups with particular interests but with all groups using our first focus as a guide for selecting material with which to work? Different company members will have acting approaches they might want to introduce to fellow members, or a group could meet with a common curiosity about ways of staging scenes, approaches to characterization, using physicality and voice, etc. We set up a schedule of meetings and topics and interests, and members can choose to come meetings they find interesting and at times which are convenient. That way we are not binding ourselves right away to a “rehearsal schedule” and we have time to play and explore. My hope is that the various gatherings of company members will start to “cross pollinate” in interesting ways as we share our time and our gifts. And at some point a direction for a formal production will start to emerge. And perhaps by the time it emerges, we will have made some decisions about how to manage ourselves, finance ourselves, house ourselves, etc.

Some of you may find my “administrative” proposal exasperating. “Why not just pick a play and see who’s interested?” We can talk about that option at our meeting (or via e-mail). I’m just throwing out a suggestion which reflects part of my own temperament. But another part of me would have a good time just diving into a play and fiddling with a fun role.

Dale and I had talked specifically, prior to the Auntie Mame adventure, about starting an unapologetically experimental performance group, a creative collective which would use in part techniques I use with the theatre teens at Governor’s Honors but at an “adult” level of subtlety and complexity and without quite so much circus tumbling. And yes, there is a certain restlessness on our part to dive into the deep end. “But not everyone may want to play sharks and minnows,” I found myself saying. Marco Polo in the four feet end can be fun, too. In my largest utopian vision, we all get to a point where we enjoy the whole pool whenever and however we feel like it. Yes, my immediate preference is for probing mysteries through the “blooded thought” of performance, but I also can be happy sitting in a drawing room in waistcoat and breeches, fopping away and trading barbs and innuendoes with all the wonderful actors I’ve been watching for the last three months. So let’s get to talking. Yours, Marc