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In terms of what it produces, Setting the Blocking (Step 5 in organic rehearsals) may look more like traditional forms of directing than the previous steps (Reading Rehearsal, Communion Rehearsal, Walk & Talk Rehearsal, and Scene Combing). What’s different is that it comes quite a bit later in the rehearsal process and so it needs a different approach; one that is more collaborative and promises a deeper connection for both actors and audience.

I’m celebrating this week with a heart that is full of hope, especially after the Braver Angels Convention in Philadelphia that I attended last week. It was an experience like I’ve never had before. I gathered with approximately 800 others who believe that our differences are not as important as our belonging to each other and that our very future depends on our learning to embrace each other and problem-solve together.

“Anger” is the song that I think best conveys the musical’s disarming, tongue-in-cheek approach to a topic that has many of us wringing our hands. “Biased” is important in a different way. It opens our weCourse on navigating the news toward truth and it features a song battle between the editors of two rival newspapers, each of which is blind to their own bias but quick to point out the bias of the other.

I’ve taken my song “Anger” on a journey from something I threw together with AI, to a fully produced song with human collaborators. It’s been amazing. It’s enriched my life and convinced me both that AI has a very valuable role in the creative process, and that skillful human collaborators can take a song to a level that AI simply cannot touch.

​ ​ Today I heard a story that broke my heart. It was told by Maury Giles, the new CEO of Braver Angels, an organization devoted to depolarizing our politics. But his story wasn’t about the organization. It was deeply personal. ​ Maury and his wife Jody (the widow of his best friend), have ten children between them, all adults now. They stay in touch by way of a family chat, called “The Vibe” that unexpectedly blew up last September, after Charlie Kirk was assassinated just 2

Ira Spornova is a villain on a mission This week, Summit Stages is launching its first contest! When we officially launch our Eyes Wide Open we-course (a hybrid learning model where you take an e-course together, as a group), we want to have some swag – starting with a T-shirt and some decals.. The we-course is important in and of itself, and we want to build buzz around Eyes Wide Open, The Musical. Our plan is to bring the musical to some school and community stages in the f

Meet Samuel Carter, 25, the newly hired history professor at Hallelujah College. It’s 1950, and Hallelujah is expanding to meet the demands of educating young WWII veterans. Samuel, a Quaker, served as a medic. His heroic record, impressive academic credentials, clean-cut appearance, and quiet charisma all make him a no-brainer choice for filling out the faculty. But that’s because nobody bothered to read his master's thesis.

According to music historian Ted Gioia, society leans toward its own self-destruction by dividing into enemy factions. But music is a mighty tool that can help us reconnect. It's not just theory. I saw it in practice this week in my tiny town's elementary school gymnasium.

Kurt Bestor is an accomplished musician and composer who has scored films, written for the Olympics, and popularized instrumental Christmas music. But "Prayer of the Children" is his most famous piece of music, and he didn't write it to share. It was an outpouring from his heart that he threw into a concert last minute. And it has been touching hearts ever since.

Meet the Eyes Wide Open musical (plus media course), and protagonist: Ruby Ravenswood. She is a villain in training. And her "I Want" song explains why she responded to a newspaper ad about revenge and joined master villain Ira Spornova's army of malcontents.

Scene Combing is a strategy for working through trouble spots like you would comb through stubborn knots in your hair. It isn’t usually applied to the entire play, but to scenes that aren’t quite landing, or becoming mechanical, or maybe just not living up to their potential. Done well, scene combing can enliven performance, create authentic emotion that arises out of the action, and foster dynamic performances that are responsive rather than planned and mechanical.

Fred Rogers was one of the outstanding courageous citizens of his day. He taught three generations of Americans what a beloved community looked like and why you would want to live there. The model community he offered us was Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.

For good and for ill, the news cycle this week has been compelling, starting April 1st, when the Artemis II moon mission launched into space, on its first try. On board the Orion was a team of four astronauts, three from the US and one from Canada. They brought together a wealth of differing experiences and a profound respect for what each other had to offer.

Between the Lines, is a delightfully funny and charming musical, with surprising relevance to an emerging issue. What issue? The risk of young people entering into deeply emotional and real-seeming relationships with fictional characters created by chatbots that groom them into abusive relationships with catastrophic consequences.

Mary and Terry O'Neill Today, I’m excited to introduce you to Terry O’Neill, not just because he has been with Summit Stages since its second month of publication, but also because it is largely to his credit that Summit Stages exists and is readable. Terry was my mentor who taught me how to be a journalist in 1990. It was from him that I learned how to craft a story, how to confidently interview people with way more credentials than mine, and how to tackle controversial subj

Peacebuilding should be fun. Warfare is serious business, whether it’s military or metaphorical; it’s characterized by anger, fear, and a cold sense of profound superiority. Peacebuilding can often be affected by those energies. But what if we treated it like play?

Walk and Talk rehearsals allow movement to emerge naturally from emotion, intention, and interaction. Movement must be discovered, not imposed.

The workshop is on navigating modern media, because media has long been one of the forces that’s contributed to the polarization of our society. Lately, as we’ve retreated into information silos, it’s gotten worse. This is broadly understood. And it is also generally believed that it’s our neighbour’s media, not our own, that’s the problem. But what if that’s not an accurate reflection of reality? What if our media is also less than trustworthy? How would we know?

It was supposed to be a Pinterest-perfect party, where we were all dressed like Seuss characters, sipping herbal tea and conversing in rhymes, with an awe-inspiring cake in the center of a well-set table in a pristine dining room. It was not. Instead, it was something truly Seussian. And we did still speak in rhymes. In the words of Julia Cameron, “Serious art is born from serious play.”

This week, we’re returning to a Save the Cat analysis of Newsies, with a little bit of Jack Viertel’s framework for a musical thrown in. Last week’s post took us through the 9 beats of Act I, closing with Jack Kelly, disillusioned, broken and alone, on the rooftop he called home. He’d just seen the strike he organized devolve into disaster, the buddies who trusted him get beaten up by Pulitzer’s goons and the police, and his best friend, Crutchy, brutalized and taken into cus