Ojai days 2 and 3

Its wednesday already. Tomorrow we have our "tech" rehearsal - in quotes because it's challenging to tech a reading when the play isn't finished.

The play is about steven dale green, a private who has been charged with raping, murdering and burning a 14 year old iraqi girl and killing her family. He was honorably discharged despite the army knowing he had a personality disorder.

The play, NINE CIRCLES, watches Reeves (nee green) descend into hell. Its been fascinating working with bill. He's so passionate about his play and his characters. There is a sense of belief in communion in the room.

What we've been doing in the room the past two days is slowly but surely reading it, and dissecting the scenes to make them actable. That it's unfinished is actually pretty darn exciting and liberating. Our agenda isn't to make it perfect, but to make it more of a play (it began as five discrete scenes).

In the draft read during the pre-conference, bill called for audience participation of a kind. I am not sure where that will end up. I do know that one thing that is desired is bill implicating himself in the proceedings. So it'll be really cool to see where this concludes here at ojai.

What's great about this process is that it is so very clearly a process: the actors josh, amy and patrick are smart and giving and have really helped us figure out how the play operates, how the scenes flow into each other and who these people are. (Reeves and his interlocutors)

We've worked through the first 6 circles (minus the fifth). There are only two scenes with amy thus far (scene 7 will likely include her as well.) She needs to zip back to los angeles so we will likely spend the afternoon hitting scene five and reviewing.

I've gotten into a nice rhythm of 7 hour days this summer. And so off to another session.