Rehearsal Live…Later: Cherokee Workshop #2

Playwright Lisa D’Amour’s Cherokee is currently in development at Steppenwolf.

Eric Zeigenhagen, director, musician, and theatre blogger, sat in on our first workshop for Cherokee. He made a live record of the goings on in the workshop room.

July 7, 2011.

At the start of the first day of rehearsal, the tables in the room were set up in a U configuration. Before the first read-through, stage management reconfigured them into a T shape—the playwright, dramaturg, and director at one end, and the actors on either side of the longer tables. For a script that requires both camaraderie and conflict from the actors, the layout allows them both an intimacy and across-the-table opposition.

Rehearsal Live…Later: Cherokee Workshop #1

Playwright Lisa D’Amour’s Cherokee is currently in development at Steppenwolf.

Eric Zeigenhagen, director, musician, and theatre blogger, sat in on our first workshop for Cherokee. He made a live record of the goings on in the workshop room.

July 5, 2011

“I’ve never heard all of this together.”

That’s playwright Lisa D’Amour, minutes into the first of four workshop days for Cherokee, her in-progress, unfinished, follow-up to Detroit, which opened Steppenwolf’s 2010–2011 season and is set to re-open on Broadway this fall. We’re in Steppenwolf’s main rehearsal room, in what feels like a combination assembly hall and bank lobby: a room with the height of two stories, with a gallery around its perimeter, and simple stage lights aimed at the rehearsal tables in the center of the room; vertical blinds block out the hot summer day.