Kat Byrd and Whitney Shay- Cute Cast members of "San Diego, I Love You"
The performance of “San Diego, I Love You” is almost only 1 week away and we’re thrilled. Final rehearsals are underway, we have been revealing our fun remake romantic movie posters with all of the cast each week, and the time spots for each performance are filling up quickly! (Hopefully you know what that means! Hint, hint.) We love this piece. The story is light-hearted, super sweet but still a little racy- we are Circle Circle dot dot after all.
However, when we describe the piece to our friends and families, some of them aren’t too familiar with ‘site-specific’ performances and are a little curious as to why we made this choice for our second show of our second season. So we’ll clear things up for you with a few simple reasons:
1. Location, location, location!
You know what’s hard about being a nomadic theatre company? Finding affordable places to perform. We have been having a swell time at the 10th Ave. Theater and will continue to produce shows there, but we needed the opportunity to present elsewhere, and the 10th Ave is filling up time spots like crazy. We knew we wanted to present a February show because last year’s ‘Love Roulette’ was such a success for us. The idea of presenting something site-specific came organically in a meeting, it was something like this:
“Hey, we need to do a February show like Love Roulette, but not Love Roulette, and maybe with more of one through storyline since Street. Art. Prophets. was a couple of short stories, and maybe we should do it somewhere site-specific like at our favorite wine bar ever ‘Jake’s on 6th ‘ or maybe we could make it travel to different places. Ok. That’s what we’re going to do.”
And, that’s what we’re doing. We are inspired by the site-specific work that’s happening around town- the La Jolla Playhouse is presenting a festival, and of course we love San Diego Dance Theater’s Trolley Dances. It’s a crazy idea- but it’s not a new one. Site-specific work is EVERYWHERE. Festivals, street performers, dance- it’s an incredible part of performance history. We’re so happy to delve into this great tradition.
2. We love an adventure!
It’s so important for us to try new things. We don’t believe there is one way to make a play, especially when you’re dealing with so many different subject matters. Every community we work with is different and the plays we make should reflect that. Site-Specific work is exciting, and a little dangerous, and very unpredictable. But it’s also so organic to be in the real world performing real stories! It just makes sense. And while we can’t predict how each show will play out in the environment we’re working in, we can train our actors to be ready for whatever comes their way and take on these challenges as part of the performance. This is what’s fun- the element of surprise. This is the stuff that thrills us as performing artists! We think it will be exciting to our audiences as well.
3. San Diego is incredible.
Duh. Why not site-specific? We live in this beautiful city with these beautiful businesses and we’re telling stories of its residents. It just makes a lot of sense! We’re community-based for crying out loud, why wouldn’t we make a play that takes place right dab-smack in the middle of a community?
Our hope is that this play is wildly successful and it becomes a staple in our season. Not the same play over and over, but a new piece that tells different stories each year in different San Diego locations. Hillcrest was the right place for us this year because we have a lot of history in that wonderful neighborhood, and for this particular version of the play we wanted to be in the part of town that celebrates diversity, just like we do.
So don’t be scared friends, join us on this new journey. Take the plunge, buy your ticket, arrive at Jake’s on 6th at least 10 minutes early (give yourself plenty of time to find parking!) And fall in love with us in this very love-filled month. It’ll feel reeeaaal nice. We promise.
xoxo