Episode 34: Once Upon a Midnight Dreary In this episode Lindsay talks with high school actors as they prepare to present her adaptation of Poe stories and poems. Based on this production, Lindsay is changing the title of the play and removing a character. And yes, those are good things. Show Notes

Shuddersome: Tales of Poe

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Episode Transcript

Welcome to TFP, The Theatrefolk Podcast. I am Lindsay Price, resident playwright for Theatrefolk. Hello! I hope you're well. Thanks for listening.

Today, we're going to hear a cast talk about their rehearsal journey and how their work that they did had a direct influence on mine. But first, let's do some THEATREFOLK News.

Okay. So, since we're going to be talking about Poe and my adaptation of Poe which is now called Shuddersome: Tales of Poe, which I feel like I've been talking about on and off for, oh, two years now, but now, now, finally! It! Is! Time! My adaptation of a selection of Edgar Allen Poe's stories and poems, Shuddersome: Tales of Poe, is going to be published! It's going in the catalogue! The publishing proof is being worked on as I speak. Hooray! Finally! Hooray!

After multiple, multiple, multiple workshops, two productions and the killing of many, many trees, we're ready to go. And, frankly, though I sometimes felt like chucking the whole thing off the tallest building after another teacher stopped talking to me about the play, you know what? I think it really did need this time.

Taking a piece of literature from one medium and transforming it into another is not easy. I think, if you're doing it right, it shouldn't be easy because, at the heart of it, the key word is transform. You can't just take a story and dump it into a play format. Well, you can, and I have seen it done. I’ve seen it done a couple of times with Poe and it just doesn’t work fully. A full transformation into a play – a piece of theatre, that’s key, too, right? So, I'm so thankful for St. Roch for tackling this piece in the fall which really gave me the confidence I needed to say, “Yes! This is a play!” And then, I’m so thankful for Listowel Secondary who had to face a lot of adversity getting their production on its feet and they gave me the confidence with their performance to say, “Yes, this is a good play. This is a piece of theatre.” Okay, I'm going to go on but let's get the rest of this intro out of the way so I can continue to babble.

All right. So, lastly, where, oh, where can you find this podcast? We post new episodes every Wednesday at theatrefolk.com and on our Facebook page and Twitter. You can find us on the Stitcher app, AND you can subscribe to TFP on iTunes. All you have to do is search on the word “Theatrefolk.”

Episode Thirty-Four: Once Upon a Midnight Dreary....

....as I pondered weak and weary. So, the bulk of this podcast is going to be a talk that I had with Listowel Secondary School students last week. They were performing my Poe play, Shuddersome: Tales of Poe, as part of the Sears Drama Festival and I caught them after their tech and before their performance.

What really, really stuck me about this cast is how calm they seemed and how much of a community they seemed. They knew they had worked hard together. Due to some issues, the cast worked mostly with a student director for their rehearsal period and they just really gave the impression that they were ready to go, they were ready to perform. It was a very difficult piece but they had put in the time and they were confident in a positive way. And, to me, that is the embodiment of ensemble. You work together and reach a final goal. You work hard on it even if you are totally unsure of what you’re working on and, as you’ll hear, there were times when they did not know if what they were doing was going to work and yet they kept at it. I love that. So, let’s get to it. Lindsay: So,