We would like to thank everybody for coming out and seeing the show. It’s been a great two weeks of performances, and every night had been a very unique and fun experience thanks to our diverse applicants who helped in building Lush Valley.
The photos of our Lush Valley applicants taken during the show can be found here.

A big thank you also to all our contributors who helped shape the show over the entire process through workshops, think tanks, readings, etc. It was a pleasure to be part of this great community.

Anonymous, Alexandra Beller, Jamie L. Bennett , Richard Brundage, Nicole Burman, David Cote, Rima Fand, Gia Forakis, Vanessa Gilbert, Sally & Fred Harris, Rachel Jendrzejewski, David Koren, Dominik Landowne, Leeda Marting, Donna Roseman, Lake Simons, Carl Skutsch, Kathleen Turco-Lyon.

We are getting excited to build Lush Valley with you, our audience members, and the production dates near.  Get your tickets now!

We have continued working on fine tuning scene work this week, as well as making sure each transition is as smooth and specific as possible.  On Thursday, we focused on the think tank section of the show, where each officer helps their group create part of the new Lush Valley Oath of Allegiance.  We are trying to get each officer to engage their think tank group as productively as possible, so that we end up with an Oath that represents every one of our new Lush Valley citizens.

On Saturday, we had the pleasure of having about 15 audience members visit our rehearsal space for a run through.  These rehearsals are always the most enlightening, because we need our Lush Valley applicants in order to figure out the traffic patterns and timing of the show.  We found a lot of things that were working really well with audience in the room, and some that needed tightening up.  The dances in the show can be a bit tricky for the Lush Valley officers to navigate with audience members in the room, so it was great to see those sections as they would be in performance so that we can adjust accordingly.  We also were able to see how the various paper materials in the show – from intake forms to checklists to voting ballots – were fitting in to the entire piece, and how we need to tailor those to fit the needs of our audience members.

We are excited to get deeper into rehearsal next week, as we speed towards tech and the beginning of previews on September 7th!  Stay tuned for more updates!

Don’t forget to vote for the LUSH VALLEY national bird, flower, food, colors, motto and slogan on our online survey, Identity Politics!  Identity Politics, which began as part of the Figment Festival, is a project that we started to help form a national identity for LUSH VALLEY. Cast your vote online, and see the results of the vote incorporated into our production, which premieres on September 11th.  Voting officially ends on September 6th, so don’t wait!

Click here to get started!

We’ve been continuing with our work on each scene, trying to find every bit of meat and potatoes there is within each. But more importantly, we’ve become completely enamored with the idea of YOU, the audience! From intakes, to think tanks, evem to rewriting our Lush Valley Oath of Allegiance, we’ve been searching through those parts where your voice gets to be heard and how we can best utilize it in our new nation! Taking each tenet of Lush Valley and dividing them amongst our officers, we’re excited to listen to what you think about them and their association within the Oath of Allegiance. What’s good? What’s bad? Or maybe even a different word choice? It’s important that you get to take ownership of what you’re about to pledge as a new citizen! We also worked a lot with the camera’s eye monologues within the intake section of the show, figuring what would happen if our audience members preferred to start a conversation than just listen to what the actor has to say.

It’s not often when you get to interrupt an actor in a show and tell them how to do their job. Well, now’s your chance! What would you say to your immigration officer if you had the chance?

A very productive couple of days! After working through a lot of transition moments we had a complete run thru on Thursday followed by some feedback that’s really propelling the show in a new, yet more defining direction. It’s amazing what a little feedback can do to a show! There are some major structural changes that, although created a very jam packed rehearsal on Saturday, are definitely giving the piece a new life that was missing from before. We have more of a chance to visit with Georgie and Jason to learn about their relationship, a little more time to see the competition between Miguel and Kim, and some great moments of clarity in general for the audience.

I’m super excited to have had all the videos filmed on Friday and especially the TED Talk videos! All the actors with a TED Talk were placed in front of a green screen and Tal Yarden will later put in diagrams, pictures, video to really spruce them up and make them even more compelling than the text already make them.

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