Oohrah: Videos with director Brad Akin

A question for Oohrah! director Brad Akin

Do you have any images, videos, or songs that have been used through the rehearsal process?

Bekah [Brunstetter, playwright] actually has a really fun blog that was a great window into how she thinks, her sense of humor, and what she cares about – all of which helped me unlock this play, I think. Everyone in the rehearsal room has been really eager to share videos with one another.

Our dramaturg, Kendra Miller, even started posting some of them on a blog for us. Some of them are instructional:  a video of the video game a character is playing, for instance.

Some of them help us with tone: there are some really beautiful recruiting commercials for the military that make it really easy to see why some of these characters want so badly to serve.

And then there’s some really silly ones that give us a shared vocabulary of humor – immensely helpful in a play like this!

A lot of them are useful on many levels

Early on, Bekah told us to check out the movies Junebug and All The Real Girls.

(Editorial Note: Not sure what’s up with the German subtitles)

They were a great introduction to North Carolina dialects as well as to Bekah’s attitude toward the people she grew up with.