Poster

For those far away, this production will be performed at Mary Baldwin College in Staunton, VA. Hope you can come!

On Publicity Photos and Plowing Ahead

At this point, we are quite in the thick of things. Clara is making paper hats and paper swords and pop-ups and paper paper paper. I am sewing endlessly, running rehearsals, and working to make sure everything comes together. It is a busy time three weeks before opening.

This morning, Amanda--our Helena--and I had a photo shoot so we would have a few shots to send out with publicity. So we traipsed about Staunton with pop-up books and paper stars. I thought I would share some of my favorites with you as a teaser for what's to come.

Some news coverage

Today people across America wore white to support women's rights, particularly women's healthcare and the current legislative issues concerning the government's control or coverage of that care. In Staunton, many of us joined the cause, myself and Linden included, and even our little Staunton made a bit of a splash. Although I, like many women on campus, was not able to make the "walk about town" this evening, you can see pictures here on the website for this movement.

Although work with white paper and costuming gender in All's Well is an entirely separately conceived set of ideas, the political movement and the production we are working to produce have a lot in common.  Both projects are seeking to question standard ideas of who holds power. Both are concerned with the roles of women in taking action and having freedom over their stories and their choices. Both are using the color white as a signifier for women and women's bodies.

When a news reporter came to lunch to interview people wearing white he latched onto our project, and focused the news report of the Wear White project on All's Well instead. You can see the report here. While grateful for the airtime for our ideas, we hadn't meant to usurp the press coverage, and our project isn't about fighting for women's rights exactly, but the Wear White project certainly is. I hope the men and women who wore white today have raised awareness for the legislative issues at stake in our country today, and I hope that a little over a month, our production can raise some questions for our audiences to ponder and mull over for years to come.

If you're new to this blog you can check out this opening essay to find out what the All's Well production and the paper design is all about.

For more information about Wear White, visit their tumblr.