From Fragments to a Wonderful Whole

Welcome to Day One of Recap Week.

Over the last six weeks, I was blessed to participate three different wonderful events: “Fragments of Time," an original WriteOn Joliet radio theater production, held April 19 and April 20 at the Billie Limacher Bicentennial Park Theatre in Joliet, the Local Author Fair on April 27 at the Joliet Public Library, and Ye Olde May Fest, May 18 and 19, also at Bicentennial Park.

A link to the radio show's synopsis and details here. 

There are two ways to recap these events and measure their successes. The typical way is share the crowds they drew and the sales those crowds produced. The second typical way is do play down the fact that crowds and sales were small but a "good time was had by all."

But for all three events, the success runs much deeper than that. Still, I'll share the familiar first.

Approximately thirty people attended WriteOn's radio play the first night and thirty-five the second night, which is up by fifteen total attendees than last year - and attracted more general audience than the first year. So that felt very successful to us.

We also gave away forty-six WriteOn Joliet anthologies to attendees.

However, to stop at these facts really doesn't describe the entire experience of how a number of non-related "fragments" became a seamless show.

Nine members of WriteOn Joliet provided the fragments: Denise M. Baran-Unland, Maureen Blevins, Edward Calkins, Holly Coop, Steve Cordin, Diana Estell, Cean Magosky, Jennifer Russ, and Duanne Walton. 

Our fragments included:

1. Different personalities.

2. Different work and "life" obligations, which had to be factored into rehearsal schedules.

3. Different skills and talents.

4. The individual writings that we submitted for the show, all of which were not connected in any way to the other pieces. 

5. Varying distances people traveled to rehearse and present (up to one hour for some).

6. Most of us had little to no stage experience before last year.

From all these pieces, our director is Rachel Veres found the commonalities: a subtle, underlying theme of time. From there, Rachel devised a script, and created a cohesive show from the above six fragments.

Rachel also guided us in how dress (so our very clothes reflected our individualities and the show) where to stand, how to stand, when to enter and exit, and how to speak so our voices carried the show.

She worked with the Bicentennial Park tech crew to mic us, change the cyc wall, and in the use and implementation of sound effects (from everyday materials and sound clips), which Holly Coop masterfully oversaw and executed.

Rachel and Cean also worked closely together on the producing the emcee script. Last year, Cean wrote that script, and he did so again this year. But as the play evolved, so did that script, which underwent numerous rewritings by Cean as the show's concept became clearer to Rachel.

In other words, Rachel wove together the fragments to create one seamless show.

Other significant parts of the whole included Jan Staley and The Book Market in Crest Hill (Jan kept her store open after hours for rehearsal and provided checkout services on show days) and Bicentennial Park for giving us the opportunity.

As a cast, we also created and helped distribute our own marketing materials. And Rebekah Baran served as production assistant and helped wherever we needed help.

Now, this is not the usual way a performance comes together. For one, such a show usually starts with a script. The script isn't "imagined" along the way. Individual original pieces had to be edited for stage. For another, actors usually act, and writers write. In this case, the writer wrote and acted.

As you probably discerned, we had plenty of conflict, disagreements, short tempers, and clashing of schedules and interests.

And, somehow, we navigated all these storms by keeping our eye on the goal: show that entertained and inspired sixty-five people. 

How do we know people were inspired and entertained?

Because we saw people smiling in the lobby with their anthologies in hand. 

Because some people already put the show on their calendar for next year.

Because some people approached us and shared WHY they enjoyed it so much.

Bicentennial Park already has WriteOn Joliet's radio play on its calendar for THREE shows next year (April 25 and April 26, with a matinee and evening performance on Saturday).

A few photos follow, fragments of our complete show.

Enjoy!