PearlDamour

moving on to… MILTON

admin — Sun, 17 Mar 2013 17:12:23 +0000

After a really satisfying stay at the Granoff Center at Brown where we presented a 2-day run of FOREST, we’re jumping back into MILTON. At the end of March we’ll be taking our second visit to Milton, LA and our 3rd to Milton, MA! In Milton, MA we’ll be doing story circles with students from Milton High and Pierce Middle School as well as re-connecting with our conversation partners from previous visits. In Milton LA we’ll be visiting with some sugarcane farmers, some town elders, some town youngins, and attending a big ole cajun birthday party on Easter Sunday. Check our facebook page for photos and updates, more news soon…. upcoming: get ready to start getting to know Milton, NC with us in April!

What does the phrase “I am an American” mean to you?

admin — Wed, 02 Jan 2013 06:14:11 +0000

We’re asking lots of folks who live in Miltons this question– we want to know what YOU think.

Resolutions!

admin — Wed, 02 Jan 2013 06:12:32 +0000

2012 was a really good year– a full year– and a year that made us realize how much we’ve grown (and grown up) since we started working together. PearlDamour did our first project together in 1996, which makes the relationship we’ve had with each other longer than most others in our lives– including husbands/partners! So, as we embark on our (whoa) 17th year of collaboration, here are some resolutions: 1) get FOREST back to New Orleans! We almost had our NOLA premiere this past June at the Ogden Museum, but were temporarily foiled by the historic nature of the museum’s beautiful library space and some late-breaking technical challenges. One of our clearest signs we’ve gotten older? Rather than pushing through to an opening that would be frantic, exhausting, and a bit half-assed, we decided to take a step back, assess our needs, and return to the project when there was time to really do the job right. It was a hard decision but it was the right one. 2) “MAKE” MORE! Those of you have theater companies know this– it’s easy to spend too much energy on admin and business stuff and t0o little energy in a room having fun making stuff. Which is the reason we’re doing this in the first place! Duh. 3)Raise money for MILTON. After FOREST, we fully intended to make a small scale project. Instead, we’ve ended up with what is turning into our biggest budget and most complex technical piece yet (how did that happen??). We have such a great team in place, and plan to spend big chunks of 2013 moving this MILTON mountain forward. We’re especially looking forward to the trips to all our Miltons, and to the day that Jim Findlay starts filming the skies above them. 4) Get back to facebook. We love being in touch with you, and you love it when we are… so we resolve to DO THAT MORE OFTEN. And also we resolve to figure out this twitter thing. I mean, it’s not hard. 5) Percolate a new project… we think we’re starting that TOMORROW, when we sit down to dinner with our old favorite friend and musical genius Sxip. SO… all in all, we think it’s a pretty great set of resolutions. Thanks for sharing 2012 with us… we look forward to keeping you posted in 2013.

Rolling into November

admin — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 02:39:18 +0000

Well, we have successfully crated, shipped, unpacked, installed, performed, re-packed and shipped out our FOREST to and from the Page Auditorium at Duke University. At Duke, the Forest had more than 800 visitors and we had an amazing time! Now, the Forest is nestled in its wooden crate in a letter press warehouse in Providence, RI, awaiting its re-birth at the Granoff Center at Brown University in February. In the mean time, we will continue our work and research on MILTON — next stop, Milton, LA. And, in December, we’ll be be the acting students at ACT Theater in San Francisco, working out some of our early performance ideas. Looking forward to it all!

Have you ever lived in a Milton?

admin — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 14:25:51 +0000

We want to know! If you have ever lived or if you know someone who has a lived in Milton, tell us. Where was it? How would you describe it? Do you go back?

Milton, Massachusetts!

admin — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 14:24:35 +0000

We just returned from our very first visit to our very first Milton– we had a fantastic time, met some great folks, and learned a TON– both about the town, and also about how (and how not!) to talk to people and what (and what not!) to talk about. Thanks to the folks at Winter Valley who invited us to their coffee social, friendly members of the Milton Library staff, Don up at Blue Hill Weather Observatory who brought us up to the roof just as the sun was setting, the women at Snow Goose Yarn shop, and some lovely people at First Parish Unitarian Church who first talked with us for an hour, then treated us to fried clams, onion rings, and a town tour. We’re looking forward to our future visits– and because it’s only an hour from where Katie is living now, those visits can happen soon. Next Milton on our list… Milton, FL!

Getting back to tree time…

admin — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 02:26:59 +0000

While hard at work getting ready to build the FOREST in the beautiful and historic library annex of the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, we ran into some into some technical complications installing the supporting grid into the historic building. Thanks to our friend the wonderful, brilliant sculptor/ set designer Jeff Becker, we now have an elegant solution. Implementing that solution now would have meant rushing the work while also significantly shortening the run of the show this April, so we and the Ogden decided to step back into tree time and present FOREST sometime early next summer. In the meantime, we will be growing the FOREST at Duke in October, and perhaps bring it to another university in the spring. We love these university residencies, because it gives us the chance to be a catalyst for really meaningful exchange between departments of art, theater, and environmental studies– starting conversations like these is a major goal for the piece.

Even though FOREST is temporarily slowing down, other things are speeding up! We are continuing our work with Mimi Lien in developing a new piece for People’s Light and Longwood Gardens outside Philadelphia, and we were just awarded a MAP grant (our 4th!) for our new piece, called MILTON. Click over and answer our Lisa & Katie Want to Know question, which for the next several months will be helping us research MILTON. Thanks!

What do you wish would last forever?

admin — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 01:53:51 +0000

We’re collecting questions for our new project MILTON– and this might be one of them. What do you wish would last forever? We want to know!

pearldamour past present future!

admin — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 18:21:33 +0000

L ooking for your next chance to catch PearlDamour? Come visit us in New Orleans in April when we will present How to Build a Forest at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art. These days PearlDamour is also percolating and incubating (pick your metaphor!)– we recently spent an extremely satisfying weekend at an extremely weird hot springs /Inn in the wilds of Eastern Oregon. As the peacocks picked and poked by the windows, the staff floated through the halls with blank smiles, and other Inn guests wandered to the hot tubs in bright red robes, we hunkered down with writing pads and sticky notes to take a look at where PearlDamour’s been and where we’re headed. It was our first ever official retreat, and we left it with a clarified sense of the company, the role it plays in our lives, and the roles we play in it. We came out of it thinking about 2 new projects: a site-specific collaboration with designer Mimi Lien being developed for multi-acre meadow at the Longwood Gardens outside Philadelphia (one of 6 projects being considered for full production), and a piece we’re currently calling MILTON, USA that will explore American identity through our varying relationships to the sky. Speaking of that, please answer our LISA AND KATIE WANT TO KNOW question, which is helping us get to know the times YOU notice the sky!

Forest Follow Up

admin — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 23:31:49 +0000

The forest went up and down 6 times: hundreds of people came to watch it and spend time inside of it as it grew and disappeared. It was especially cool how people of all ages found their way into it– our oldest audience member looked to be in his 80′s, and our many visitors in the below 6 range were just as captivated as their parents! Many people stayed for hours and hours, and several hardy folks put in the entire 8 hours with us. It was an incredibly special event for everyone, and we’re super grateful to the Kitchen, to all our supporters, donors, and funders, and to our cast of rangers, builders and flash mobbers for making this all happen. Now we are resting and scheming up our next project (click on our Lisa & Katie Want to Know question if you want to help jumpstart our thoughts on it!). Check back here at the end of the summer for more news!