Last Person: Creating Moments

Hi everyone,

As one show closes, another opens. This is the closing weekend for Sense & Sensibility, which has been incredibly fun to work on, and I can already feel attention starting to shift to the One-Act Festival opening in just a couple of weeks. I can feel my anticipation growing as I continue to schedule rehearsals, find/make props, work on sound decisions, and work to make the show the best it can be.

This week was an especially exciting week. It started with us working on couple of sections that still we unfinished, then Tuesday was dedicated to Section 9. I touched on this section a little bit in my last blog post but want to fully elaborate on it now. I find that this script emphasizes what it means to be alive, key components to being alive, and what it means to lose life. I highlight these through my staging, blocking, costume, acting style, and lighting choices, while the base dialogue carries us all through the story. The script has a moment where there is a pivotal choice and a large passage of time, and this moment led to me making a choice as well.

I decided to try to slow down and speed up time in this moment. I wanted to see Cassie’s plant’s growing and making their way into her “greenhouse,” which is really just the outside world that we all know and love. I wanted to see the sacrifice she had to make by only being able to have video calls with the people she cared about for the rest of her life. I wanted to see her happy, sad, and working together with Robotta to save the world. So I decided to show all of this in about 3 minutes with a beautiful song underscoring it all.

This is the moment we have all spent the most time on, and it is also the weakest in a lot of ways. It requires a lot of listening, perfect timing, and planned movement – and yet, everyone is working together to make it as strong as possible. After seeing it come together on Tuesday, then working on it more during our run-throughs Wednesday, I can see that it still needs a bit of work, but it is in a good place and I look forward to seeing it come together to help tell the story.

As we finish up with Sense & Sensibility, I can feel my energies being more and more dedicated to The Last Person on Earth. I look forward to having it be my only focus for the next couple weeks so I can take in every moment – and help every moment be as strong as it can be.

Stay tuned,

- Lindsey Esch