As Chad Miller very diplomatically reminded me recently, I should write a bit more often than I have recently (a relative term). Chad has always been good at getting me to discipline myself to write things down, and he hasn’t lost his touch. I don’t really mind, because in this case I do want to communicate.

Anyway, Chad asked for something to explain the last few months of my life. This is slightly humorous since I actually saw Chad back in April, so he knows about half of what I’m about to relate. I’ve edited things down ‘cuz these were a couple of packed months.

March

Picking up from February (yes it’s been that long), I move right into March. I don’t really remember much of March at this point. Let me check my calendar, one moment…

Ok, it appears the highlights of March were our performance at Roberts Weslyan College. Roberts is kind of a homecoming show for PUSH. The weekend after we performed a group of Roberts guys actually parodied us at a talent show – after weeks of practice and rehearsals – as ‘PULL Physical Theatre’. They’re even on YouTube:

Yes, they stole our logo, too.

April

My calendar tells me that April was when Chad saw me. April was also the month of residencies. PUSH was teaching multiple classes at a local high school the entire month, slowly retiring one project after another as the month drew to a close. Darren and I also taught a bullying residency during this month, which was awesome. We had a group of 3rd and 4th grade boys who were either ‘bullies’ themselves or were being pushed to a breaking point as a result of being bullied. With all of the out-of-studio work, we had a really wacky schedule. We ended up rehearsing mainly in between classes at the high school since they had a dance studio available for us.

To make scheduling even more difficult, I took a week off to travel down to Mississippi, where I saw Chad. My main reason for this trip was to participate in an even for my mentor, Dr. Lou (not to see Chad, unfortunately). Dr. Lou asked me to be present at a book signing and literacy event he organized for the re-publication of his novel Wind of Destiny. This was a great reunion of old friends and generally a pretty fun excuse to get warm for a few days (Spring is a rather confused season in upstate NY). I also put on mime make-up for the first time in 2 years at that event. I managed to remember enough to not embarrass myself.

May

I was glad to get to May because it meant a return to a more regular schedule… sorta.

Our company got back into our regular studio routine, but we were in earnest rehearsals for our Geva run which started at the end of the month. Adding to the stress were the displacement of one of the company from her apartment via basement fire and smoke damage and the end of the year crunch of school performances. Johanna (the fire displace-ee) was also working on costumes for our Dracula trailer, so she lost a lot of time by being evicted from her own space.

Our end of the year crunch is interesting enough to bear mention as well. It turns out that PUSH is essentially in league of its (our?) own when it comes to arts in education around Rochester. This has prompted a curious circumstance at the end of this particular year. You don’t need me to tell you schools have lost a lot of arts funding this year; but this has actually benefited PUSH (weird, right?). What happens is this: schools waited until then end of the year to find out how much of their budget was left over for arts education. Then, because they didn’t have a whole lot, the schools decided to spend what they had on a proven quality program. We’ve actually ended up with the same or even more work than we had last year!

GEVA

So this is the big event that ended May and began June. Honestly, I’m still not really sure how it got to be so far into June… Or am I surprised it’s still June? I can’t remember.

Basically, this was a two-weekend run with a week of tech before hand. It was fun to be back since we had such a good experience last year. We premiered two new works and performed a trailer for a third during this run. The new pieces were “Time” and “Flight 1549″. “Time” is an exploration of the shifting perspective of time during track and field events and set to voices of professional athletes describing their personal experiences. “Flight 1549″ is based on the successful emergency landing in the Hudson river in January of this year. The piece is set to the cockpit tapes of the pilot and ground control calmly discussing the emergency until radar contact is lost. We become alternately the birds that caused the accident, the plane itself and the passengers inside.

The trailer we debuted was for “Dracula: The Shape of Evil”, which is a one-act length work we are working on for this Halloween. I’ve put a couple pictures of the trailer up here, so if you were wondering, that’s what they’re from.

On a personal note, on top of the tech rehearsals and run of the show, I had 12 consecutive days of family in town and then two days of friends from out of town later on. I loved seeing everyone, but I was most definitively exhausted by the end of the run – which was this past Sunday.

There! I have now bridged a four month gab in internet gabbiness. As a further note to appease the Chad-like folks out there. I do think about writing things a good b