Hey denizens of the Windy City!
Perhaps you want to catch Zombie Thoughts but you need it to be in a city famous for pizza. We’ve got you.
You can catch a reading of the play on Friday October 12th at 8 PM.
See more at the Facebook event or the website.
Super excited to share that St. Andrew’s Priory School in Honolulu, Hawaii will be performing Zombie Thoughts as their fall play this year. They’re starting with the three person version, Sam, Pig, and the Machine, and ADDING actors, so that each time the machine changes form/shape a different person plays that! So far this is the first production I know of that might have actual zombies!
While we’d love nothing more than an excuse to go to Hawaii, sadly we won’t get to see it. We’re hoping they share a video though!
So I don’t have an official link yet, but I know we have an official cast!
Zombie Thoughts will be touring Annapolis/DC/Va next year with Building Better People Productions.
We cannot wait to hear all about it. Working with Lynne and her company has been a dream come true so far.
Voting for Sam to use her XP to get the Stuffed Hedgehog Named Henry.
On Wednesday, we were invited by Good Company Theatre, the theatre company of our brilliant actor Alicia Washington to present a reading of Zombie Thoughts to the Boys and Girls Club in Ogden. Half of the Plan-B folks road tripped up to us, half of us were thrilled to be in Ogden for a minute.
This was our first performance with a full audience of age appropriate folks (we love our adults, but this really wasn’t made for them!). It was so fun to watch the kids excited to get to participate and make choices. I didn’t anticipate that they would cheer when their selection was chosen by the group to be performed.
After the reading, a boy around ten came up to the actors and told them that he gets scared a lot and he deals with anxiety and it was good to talk about it. It was a most excellent day.
Ollie waiting for our ride to Lehi for the Arts Express Conference.
We had the best time presenting Zombie Thoughts at the Arts Express conference in Lehi yesterday. Our actors, Katie and Brenda, did a wonderful job of reading the play for the 20 or so teachers present (and Sharah helped them out with the stage directions). After the reading, Oliver, Jerry Rapier (the artistic director of Plan-B), and I talked to the teachers about the process of creating the piece, of writing with kids, and about anxiety. Oliver was understandably nervous about presenting to a room full of adults (and teachers!). He always worries that they will think I wrote the whole play and he didn’t carry his weight. It’s the opposite of my worries, in some ways, that people will dismiss the play as a real piece of writing because it’s a collaboration with a kid. But they were an excellent and admirable audience and he was thoughtful and articulate in addressing how the play came to be and how anxiety has made school a challenge for him. Two great things happened after the reading. One, a teacher came up and asked Ollie how he could make his classroom a safer and better space for students with anxiety disorders. And two, Ollie said to me that the experience was a huge self esteem boost. While the largest goal for us was always to write an excellent play that is funny, true, and causes empathy, it’s not a terrible side effect at all that this has had such a positive impact on Ollie. I created a handout for teachers on best practices for writing plays with kids that I am happy to share if you contact me. We’ll be doing a more hands on version of this workshop in October for teachers at Weber State.
Zombie Thoughts will have its world premiere tour this fall with Plan-B Theatre. They’ve created an excellent teacher’s guide to the play aligned to Utah Core Standards. You can check that out here, as well as see the dates for public performances in Salt Lake City and Ogden, Utah this fall.
Rehearsals started today for Zombie Thoughts’s appearance at the Arts Express Conference in Lehi, Utah on Tuesday. The play will be read by Katie Jones and Brenda Hattingh (standing in for an injured Alicia Washington). After the reading, Plan-B, Oliver, and I will lead a teacher workshop about writing plays with kids with a message. We’re looking forward to getting the play in front of an audience of educators and talking about our process!
Zombie Thoughts appeared as a student workshop production on May 10-11th, 2018 at State Fair Community College in Sedalia, MO. It was directed by Tyler Singer, Odessa and featured Connor Marshall, Odessa; Maryanne Henley, California, and Heather Bryson, Sedalia.