Drama at Wake Forest

The sun shines, warblers are pumping their hearts in birdsong, and the Virtual Theatre Project's giving their all to a staged reading of my play Feeding the Roses. what a fine Saturday this is.

They're taking a brave attitude to the process ... scripts are in hand, but the performance really is to be staged rather than just read. It's so encouraging having your characters embodied, given voice, discover their own movements around the stage ... and to have intelligent professionals inhabit the characters so much that they speak from inside them. Fine to know that the structure of the play actually works in practice too. It's also fun to be welcomed into the rehearsal process, and to have my own thoughts and insights make a difference.

The actors were finding the laughs today ... perhaps helped that the audience consisted of me, and I was laughing. Any North Carolina readers out there, please do come on down to Winston Salem for the performance on Tuesday night.

Pictures of Wake forest campus, with its February TPing tradition ... all the trees of the main quad festooned with toilet paper. I got caught in another local tradition this morning, waylaid by a gang of bobbing, banner-waving miniature girl scouts insisting I take on home a box of girl scout peanut butter cookies at eight o'clock in the morning. Yum.