Location, location, location

Erin again. Rehearsing at Berkeley's glorious John Hinkel Park this weekend. This is where I saw my first Shakespeare (well, the first Shakespeare I remember), where I studied Shakespeare as a wee teen in the then Berkeley Shakespeare Festival's "Summer with Shakespeare" program. My first year there, Annette Bening was Juliet, and Tony Taccone was one of my teachers.

But it was the park that made it magic. We students were encouraged to see each show more than once, and I walked up to that park for at least 4 shows a week all summer long—watching performances that many times taught me more than I ever could have learned in my admittedly excellent classes, and sitting under that canopy of trees was pure heaven. When I started the company, that was the first place I booked to perform, and I look forward to it every year. It's still the best place we perform (followed closely by Mountain View's Rengstorff House), and the first time we rehearse there, I always see the actors come alive a bit.

We rehearse out in our performance park sites on weekends because the actors need the time to adjust their voices and gestures to the hugeness needed to compete with frisbees, dogs, and the other distactions we see in our parks. But John Hinkel is quiet, with great acoustics, even a bbq pit so we can cook for our first performances. And I don't know if it's all the history there or just some inherent blessedness of that place, but everything feels possible when we are there.

Today we "blocked" several scenes—tried out and set the characters' movements in parts of the play—while a couple of young men ate their lunch and a little boy rode his bike, stopping to watch whenever the actors were speaking their lines. Jon Tracy, who I hadn't seen in ages, dropped by to measure the space for his August production of "The Farm" with Shotgun Players. A very comfortable, collegial place to be. Rehearsal is my favorite part of theater work—it is really very hard work, but it feels like playing, and my actors are all so game to try anything I throw their way. Our enthusiasm bounces off each other, and off the peace of the park, and all seems right in the world.