All Eyes on Me

Took a look at the script for Vivat Regina, Mrs. Hawking part 2, today. I’m still kind of emotionally (and otherwise) recovering from the cancellation of our Gentlemen Never Tell performance, but it’s my nature to look ahead, to try and keep up momentum. So I can’t help but start to imagine what’s next from here. Though we are likely to be able to reschedule GNT for a filming weekend if nothing else, I also know that we’ll be eventually moving on to part 2 of the main Mrs. Hawking series.

I hadn’t looked at the VR script in quite a long time, so I was a bit apprehensive. The part 1 script was VERY much below the quality of what we’re currently capable of doing, and required a fairly serious reworking in order to make it up to snuff. But I was pleasantly surprised to find that VR mostly holds up. Of course, its initial drafting was not quite as early in our development as MH was— I can’t exactly remember the gap, but there was at least a couple years. I found it wasn’t quite as bloated with unnecessary verbiage the way MH was, nor quite as obvious and surface-level with all its ideas. While I will definitely want to re-edit it before trying to film the permanent version, I was happy to see I didn’t cringe nearly as much as I was afraid I would.

Still, I will admit, it does strike me as less sophisticated than our later installments. Vivat still mostly only focuses on one plotline, with only a few other, closely related threads woven into it, as opposed to our more current stories that are significantly more layered. That also extends to the presence of ideas and themes, which the second trilogy does a more deft job with them, exploring them in a more complex way, and imbuing them into the interactions without necessarily being obvious about it. The really clever tricks we include later— the subtle groundwork of part 4 setting up Malaika Shah and Elizabeth Frost, the complex web of interrelated narrative threads in part 5, the deceptive Chekov’s gun for the climax and the multi-leveled conversations of part 5 —really are not equaled in parts 1 and 2. I haven’t looked at part 3 in a while either, though in my memory 3 is where we really grow the beard.

I think that’s okay, that the stories start simpler and grow more complex as the audience’s investment builds and they get to know the characters better. I’m happy that I don’t feel like VR has to be rebuilt from the ground up. But I definitely do want to polish it up, so that it feels like a proper lead-up to the later stories, a true step in the path to the really special work we do later. And of course it needs to be compelling for its own sake. At least it should be easier than it was with part 1.

New gallery of show images on Mrshawking.com!

"Vivat Regina at WCSF '17 - Act I"

Photography by John Benfield
Costume design by Jennifer Giorno
Set design by Bernie Gabin
Production design by Phoebe Roberts
 


Featuring Cari Keebaugh as Mrs. Hawking, Circe Rowan as Mary, Christian Krenek as Nathaniel, Remony Perlman as Mrs. Braun, and Jackie Freyman as Clara.

Check out the images from Vivat Regina, Act I here!

We are officially on the schedule at Arisia 2017!



The MRS HAWKING shows
By Phoebe Roberts

VIVAT REGINA
Friday, January 13th at 7:30PM

and

BASE INSTRUMENTS
Saturday, January 14th at 4PM
Sunday, January 15th at 12PM

In Grand Ballroom B

At the Westin Boston Waterfront
425 Summer Street, Boston, MA 02210

Please come join as at Arisia 2017 this January and come see our shows, including the debut performance of Base Instruments!

Vivat Regina and Base Instruments by Phoebe Roberts will be performed January 13th-15th at the Boston Westin Waterfront Hotel as part of Arisia 2017.

Vivat Regina at Arisia 2016 Act II image gallery posted!

Photography by John Benfield
Costume design by Jennifer Giorno
Makeup design by Jessicalee Skary
Set design by Bernie Gabin
Production design by Phoebe Roberts






Check out the gallery here!

New post on Mrshawking.com!

"The color of Vivat Regina"

I’ve always loved the potential for storytelling in the choices one makes in costume design. In Mrs. Hawking, we used a series of oppositional color pairings to make statements about the characters and their circumstances. In Vivat Regina at Arisia 2016, with the help of costume designer Jennifer Giorno, we devised a new palette to support the new story.







Read the rest of the entry on Mrshawking.com!

Mrs. Hawking and Vivat Regina will be performed on May 7th as part of the Watch City Steampunk Festival 2016 in Waltham, MA.

In my hero's boast, I laid out everything that I have to do from now until the end of the year.

This past weekend, I completed probably the most personally significant part of my boast. The theatrical performances at Arisia 2016 were the culmination of my producing part one and part two of the Mrs. Hawking series, TWO SHOWS, SIMULTANEOUSLY.



It was an enormous amount of work. The biggest theatrical challenge I have taken on to date. But it went great. I was so proud. We got a wonderful audience of hundreds of people and all responses were very positive. We did good.

I may even have made some of connections and momentum I need in order to move forward. We'll have to see how that goes, but I have hope. And hope will push me onward.

WITNESS ME.

New post on Mrshawking.com!

"Arisia membership raffle"

Want to catch our shows at Arisia 2016, but the cost of membership is a little too high for you? Well, here’s your chance to win one for free in Mrs. Hawking’s Arisia membership raffle!



We are raffling off one full weekend pass to the Arisia 2016 convention! This will give you complete access to all hours and events of the con in the Westin Waterfront Boston hotel January 15th through 18th.

To enter:

- Share the show information page on social media— Facebook, Twitter, G+
- Tag the post with the hashtag #mrshawkingatarisia
- Each share across the platforms counts as one entry
- Share across as many platforms as you like for additional entries

Entries will close on Monday, December 21st at 12AM. A winner will be drawn at random and announced at 12PM on the 21st. The selected person will provide us with their contact information so that we can transfer the Arisia membership into their name. We shall be pleased to have that person as our guest at our performances!

Happy sharing!

Mrs. Hawking by Phoebe Roberts will be performed January 15th at 8PM and January 16th at 4PM and Vivat Regina by Phoebe Roberts January 17th at 1PM at the Westin Waterfront Hotel as part of Arisia 2016.

"The mistake in Vivat Regina"



When I was in graduate school studying playwriting and screenwriting, one of my mentors, the great Boston theater artist Kate Snodgrass, said that everything that in the text of a play is intentional. Whatever writing choices made it into the final draft have to be treated by us, readers and critics, as specifically included on purpose by that writer. It’s all part of the world of the story, and nothing can be chalked up to as accidental, or a mistake.

With all due respect to Kate, I don’t always agree with that. As a writer, I find that the process isn’t always one smooth delivery of brainchild onto the page. I do tend to be a very intentional writer. It’s just my style to do a lot of advance planning, and I always have a motivation for why I made the choice that I made. Doesn’t mean it’s a good choice, of course, but I did it on purpose for a reason!

But even I end up with stuff in my finished projects that weren’t part of my grand design. Sometimes I have a really good part A and a really good part C, so I end up hacking together a part B because it gets me from one to the other. Or sometimes I include something that struck me on a whim at the moment, when if I’d considered it a little more deeply, I might not find it consistent with the overall vision.

One such small moment exists in Vivat Regina.

Read the rest of the entry on Mrshawking.com!

Mrs. Hawking and Vivat Regina by Phoebe Roberts will be performed January 15th-18th at the Westin Waterfront Hotel as part of Arisia 2016.

"Greater scope of character development across two plays"

The most exciting thing about doing serial theater at Arisia 2016 is the ability to show the characters grow and change over the course of multiple stories. This development is one of the most engaging things to present for an audience. When we develop an interest in and an affection for characters, we love to track the progress of their personal journeys. Narrative demands growth and change, which of course we’re familiar with seeing over the course of a single play, but with our attempt at serial theater, we’ve got the chance to give the audience a greater scope of character growth then they’ve ever seen onstage before.

This presents an interesting, and in many cases unique, challenge for our actors. With the lion’s share of their experience being in theater, they have not had the chance to play the same character in more than one story. When they reprise Mrs. Hawking, the first play, they recreate the characters’ original journeys that they are already familiar with. However, at the same time, they must start Vivat Regina’s rehearsal process from the place their character ended in Mrs. Hawking.


Early rehearsal for Vivat Regina, with Jeremiah O'Sullivan as Nathaniel and Isabel Dollar as Frau Gerhard.

Read the rest of the entry on Mrshawking.com!

Mrs. Hawking and Vivat Regina by Phoebe Roberts will be performed January 15th-18th at the Westin Waterfront Hotel as part of Arisia 2016.

We are officially announcing it! The first two shows in our series, MRS. HAWKING and VIVAT REGINA, will be performed in the course of events at Arisia 2016!



Mrs. Hawking is returning to the event where she saw her performance debut, but this time, she's going even further. This marks the beginning of an exciting experiment in actually producing serialized theater. One rarely sees live performances that build upon what happened in the course of a previous story. But the Mrs. Hawking series, with its ongoing plot and characters, is breaking down that barrier.

We will be putting together and rehearsing the two shows in tandem with each other, creating a consistent through line of narrative and character development for the audience to enjoy. We have assembled two excellent casts, with some new and some returning actors, to populate the world, including the recurrence of our three leads, Mrs. Hawking, Mary, and Nathaniel. This will afford the audience the rare chance to see live storytelling with greater scope of character development than just a single plot can allow.

It’s going to present some new and interesting challenges, and will involve some figuring things out as we go. But the chance to show a continuing theatrical story, where characters grow, develop, and change based on events that happen before the audience’s very eyes, is too exciting to pass up.

Come join us for this unprecedented event in live storytelling, and see where our heroes journey will take them on the next step!

Mrs. Hawking and Vivat Regina by Phoebe Roberts will be performed January 15th-18th at the Westin Waterfront Hotel as part of Arisia 2016.