The curtain closes on Cloud 9 (photo: Cylla von Tiedemann)

While it’s hard to believe that we’ll never again hear David Jansen demanding “I WANT MY BEADS!!” in young Cathy’s suddenly husky baritone, CLOUD 9 has come to a close, with the Panasonic soon becoming home to a certain lesbian Jewish Wiccan wedding.

Meanwhile, the CLOUD 9 cast is already busy with new projects. Megan Follows has just begun a workshop of Necessary Angel’s Andromache with Scottish director Graham McLaren. Ben Carlson is off to Stratford where he’ll be appearing as Leontes in The Winter’s Tale and as Touchstone in As You Like It. Yanna McIntosh will be joining Ben in The Winter’s Tale as Hermione, as will be appearing in Dangerous Liaisons as well. And Evan Buliung is the third CLOUD 9 cast member setting up camp in Stratford for the summer; he’ll be portraying Mac in George F. Walker’s King of Thieves.

Director Alisa Palmer, on the other hand, will be spending her time down the road in Niagara-on-the-Lake. She’ll be directing The Women at the Shaw Festival.

Blair Williams is spending the next few months further west – he’s already in rehearsal for Theatre Calgary’s production of Harold Pinter’s Betrayal. And Ann-Marie MacDonald is busy at the CBC. Not only is she returning as host of Doc Zone, starting March 8^th her novel Fall on Your Knees will go mano-a-mano with four other Canadian classics as part of CBC Radio’s Canada Reads.

As for David Jansen’s Cathy… well she’s looking forward to starting Grade 1.

For those of you out there who’ve been clamouring and even pleading to hear the lovely “Cloud 9″ song from the production -- well, we have some good news. We grabbed a couple of cameras, headed down to the Panasonic, and recorded the song guerilla-style -- just for you. It’s a little rough, but the compellingly catchy music by Paul Sportelli, John Gzowski and Ben Carlson shines through, as does Ben’s wistful lead vocal.

This embrace will ring a bell for our contest winners – and other fans of Cloud 9

A few weeks ago we asked everyone – our cast, folks on the street and eager theatre fans hoping to win tickets to Cloud 9 – to complete the sentence “I’m on Cloud 9 when….”

This past Tuesday the winners of our lucky draw enjoyed a dinner out, tickets to Cloud 9 and a backstage tour courtesy director Alisa Palmer. One of our winners, Steve Rudman, reported “I wasn’t sure what to expect, but it was as if I was in Paris at a theatre. I was greeted at the door by a person that took me and my guest directly to our seats. The whole evening was spectacular.” Michelle Threndye, another winner, wrote “This is a very witty, charming and sexy play. The cast is outstanding. And it was such a pleasure to meet Alisa – she’s such an insightful director. Thank you for the wonderful night out!”

We’re excited to report that we have another surprise contest winner. So many of the entries were heartfelt, sweet, even funny – we decided to ask cast member and celebrated author Ann-Marie MacDonald to read the more than 700 entries and choose her own personal favourite.

It was Sally Thomas’s submission that caught Ann-Marie’s attention: “I’m on Cloud 9 when I see my tattered life reflected back to me in all its glory!” In acknowledgement of her thoughtful entry, Sally receives a signed copy of Ann-Marie’s acclaimed second novel “The Way the Crow Flies”. As many of you know, Ann-Marie’s first novel “Fall on Your Knees” is currently in contention as part of CBC’s annual Canada Reads competition.

Thanks to everyone for participating.

Director Alisa Palmer

Now that CLOUD 9 is up and running, director extraordinaire Alisa Palmer is finally able to sit back and take a breath. So we took the opportunity to ask her a few questions about some of the more unconventional aspects of CLOUD 9 and her fondness for Caryl Churchill’s work.

A hundred years pass between Act 1 and Act 2, but the characters age only 25 years. Why do you think (playwright) Caryl Churchill wrote it that way?

In an essay about the play Churchill says that while creating the play, she and the actors turned to their own lives for inspiration and discovered that many of them were raised with social and sexual values that were so out of date they might have come from another century. Churchill shows how antiquated the values are that shape us, and she makes an old-fashioned Victorian comedy from the family dynamics in the play.

Why do the actors play different roles in each act?  For example, in Act 1 Betty is played by Evan Buliung. In Act 2, Betty is played by Ann-Marie MacDonald – who played Edward in Act 1. It’s fun, but it’s confusing too.

All these choices are quite provocative and I think they’re meant to make you aware of your own assumptions. A man plays Betty in Act 1 as a way to put her ultra-patriarchal behaviour in relief. It also trades on the tradition of men playing women in British theatre. In Act 2 Betty is played by a woman, because now the character is more in touch with herself and her own gender. A woman plays a boy in Act 1 to highlight his effeminacy – and how behavior that is so appropriate in one body is not at all acceptable in another.

Talk a bit about your cast and how you chose them. These are challenging roles and some of these actors are playing parts unlike anything they’ve done before.

I chose these actors quite simply because I love their work and their talents. I’ve worked with almost all of them before, and those I haven’t worked with I’ve admired and had on my list to cast as soon as I had a project to put them in.

When I cast them, I was very aware of putting them in roles that would really stretch them, in roles they may never have another opportunity to play.

You’ve directed quite a few Caryl Churchill plays. What do you find so appealing about her work?

I like her insights into how people communicate. People in her plays always say what they mean, but they rarely know that what they mean isn’t always clear in their words. There’s always a deep hidden river of emotions running beneath what seems at first to be pedestrian language. And I love the way she jettisons the viewer into very intense moments of people’s lives with little warning.

She also cares about how power and abuse are passed from one person to another and she is perceptive about what the chain or power is in society. She is one of the only writers of theatre who sees how women and children are caught in a society that is working against them, but she never sees them as powerless.

And she seems to love theatre as passionately as I do. I could go on….

Why, in your opinion, is the play is called CLOUD 9?

Cloud 9 refers to a state of utopia, a kind of nirvana or heavenly feeling. And everyone in the play is looking for that feeling. But clouds are quite elusive and illusory… just like happiness.

Complete the sentence “I’m on Cloud 9 when…”

I’m on Cloud 9 when I’m watching the show with an audience. I’m on Cloud 9 when I’m eating supper with my children. And I also do like a nice full-bodied red. That can put me on Cloud 9 too.

David Jansen as 5-year-old Cathy (photo by Cylla von Tiedemann)

The reviews – from old school critics, new school bloggers and from people who go see theatre to, well, go see theatre – are in. And they’re outstanding.

The Globe’s R. Kelly Nestruk says CLOUD 9 is “a parade of pleasurable performances.” The Sun’s John Colbourn describes it as a “brilliant and witty commentary on the enduring nature of human passion and compassion.” On CBC Radio One, resident theatre critic Lynn Slotkin raves that CLOUD 9 is “directed with style by Alisa Palmer” and “there are seven actors at the top of their game, and the result is a production that will have theatre-goers on cloud nine when they see it.”

In the blogosphere, mooneyontheatre is “fascinated by how well Ann-Marie MacDonald and David Jansen captured the mannerisms of their child characters”, while blogTO calls it a “raucous mash-up of age and gender, race and sexuality.”

But the most rewarding feedback is coming in from our audience: the people who are buying the tickets, braving the cold, and filling the Panasonic night after night. Sandy (a self-described late 40’s feminist engineer), writes on her blog that a “great script, excellent actors and fabulous costumes make for a fun night out.” Perry T. calls CLOUD 9 a “fantastic, daring show.” Patti S. “loved Churchill’s flip on gender, age and race.” And Barrie W. tells us: “I saw it in about 1982 or so, and don’t remember it being this funny.… The deliberate mixing up of genders is a brilliant theatrical conceit and takes the play out of the ordinary – now no less than 30 years ago. The cast is uniformly splendid.”

If you’ve seen CLOUD 9, tell us what you think – enter our “Was It Good For You?” contest here. And if you haven’t… well you should believe everything you read (just this once!) and come experience CLOUD 9 yourself.

Evan Buliung and Yanna McIntosh in Act 2 (Photo: Cylla von Tiedemann)

CLOUD 9 opened last night and it was fantastic! The show’s grown so much over the past week of previews, it’s really found its rhythm and now it really flies.

It’s obvious that the actors are really enjoying themselves and taking their audience on a wild ride along with them. The house was packed, and they were loving it. Lots of laughter, a few gasps – everyone seemed to be having a great time. Afterwards we all got to celebrate at a great party across the street at Zelda’s. The cast was finally able to kick back, relax and have a much-deserved drink or two.

It’s been a great process working on CLOUD 9, now we get to share it with the public and allow them to enjoy this amazing world that we’ve all worked so hard to create.

With only two days left to enter our “I’m on Cloud 9” contest, we hit the streets to find out what puts Torontonians on Cloud 9.

It turns out most of us haven’t moved very high up Maslow’s hierarchy when it comes to spontaneously articulating our most bliss-inducing states. Delicious taco anyone?

A look at our cast/character list reveals there’s something strange going on in Cloud 9. Some characters from Act 1 recur in Act 2, but they’re not played by the same actors. And in the colonial Africa of Act 1, Evan Buliung plays a woman, Ann-Marie MacDonald plays a young boy, and Ben Carlson plays a black African. In Act 2 (London circa 1980), David Jansen plays a five-year-old girl.

This isn’t some kind of half-baked experiment or the whim of director Alisa Palmer. In fact playwright Caryl Churchill dictates this casting very specifically – and our cast has a few insights why.

“I think Churchill’s working with the idea that gender and race and class are often constructs, they’re often behaviours we create, stories we tell ourselves about who we should be,” says Ann-Marie. “And they’re political structures too, part of how we organize ourselves in society. Sometimes those structures are politically expedient. They’re a really good shorthand way of saying ‘you’re a woman, you have no power.’”

“Churchill uses the casting as a device to ask us to look at something with a different set of eyes,” says Megan Follows. “She’s playing with our preconceived notions of people, and that goes for sexuality too. The casting turns homosexuality into heterosexuality, heterosexuality into homosexuality, there’s bisexuality too. Preconceptions go out the window.”

Ann-Marie suggests an additional layer. “I think the casting also tells us something about what’s happened to the British Empire. In Act 2, five-year-old Cathy is played by the man who plays the patriarch in the first act. The patriarch is gone, and instead there’s an angry, joyful, hungry little girl who doesn’t know how to direct her energies, who runs around in a pink dress, toting a gun.” Adds David, who gets to wear the pants and then the dress: “Cathy, like any young child, dominates a room. In a way, she’s like a little emotional imperialist – an imperialist with a skipping rope.”

(Photo: Cylla von Tiedemann)

Here are David’s feelings about being on Cloud 9. To hear from the rest of the cast, and to win tickets, dinner and a backstage tour, just head to our contest page.

Blair Williams and Megan Follows in Act 1 (Photo: Cylla von Tiedemann)

Last night was our first preview! So great to have an audience, it really took the show to the next level. The cast did a fantastic job (of course). The audience was right there with them the whole way, with lots of laughs in all the right places. Today we are back in rehearsal to tinker with a few things: adjusting a couple of technical elements, working on some scene changes, and doing a little scene work. And then getting ready for preview #2 tonight.

For those of you who don’t yet have Cloud 9 tickets (and for those of you who do, but know you’ll want to go again), you now have a chance to win a pair of tickets to the show, dinner for two, and a backstage tour. Basically a perfect night out! So pencil Tuesday February 2nd into your calendar and enter by completing the phrase “I’m on Cloud 9 when….”

For inspiration, check out Evan’s take on what Cloud 9 means to him. Then head to our contest page to watch all the videos.

From the wings, before the cast got into costume

Last night was our Tech Dress (aka Technical Dress Rehearsal), the cast’s first run in full costume! They look truly amazing, Judith has done an incredible job. Today we’re working out some technical details on stage and then tonight is our final dress rehearsal before we get our first audience on Tuesday. It’s been a long week for everyone but spirits are high. I think all will much appreciate a day off to rest.

Evan makes a truly gorgeous woman and Ann-Marie is stunning as a blonde! The show is a real treat; it’s funny, touching and wonderfully bizarre.

This morning started with a costume quick change rehearsal. Megan’s got some really fast changes in the first act – her costumes are truly incredible and she looks fantastic.

We’ve been in the theatre for three days now. The first day was just working through the show for spacing, with everyone getting used to their new home. Yesterday and today have been spent doing a Q2Q (that’s “cue to cue” in layman’s terms).

The days are long but everyone is in good spirits and the show is looking just wonderful. Tomorrow we’ll do our first run in the theatre, something we’re all really looking forward to.

Live from rehearsal, here’s a glimpse of what’s in store for audiences starting January 19. It gives you an idea why ads for the show have come with the following disclaimer: “Sexual content, strong language, gunshots, smoking (non-tobacco), brilliant dialogue, intense comedy, compelling drama, unforgettable characters – in short, a contemporary masterpiece!”

To view all of Cloud 9 videos, visit our YouTube channel.

CLOUD 9 isn’t the first Caryl Churchill project that director Alisa Palmer and actor Ann-Marie MacDonald have collaborated on. In 2008, Alisa won a Dora Mavor Moore Award for Direction of Soulpepper’s much-lauded production of Churchill’s Top Girls – a production that featured not just Ann-Marie but Megan Follows as well.

There’s more about Ann-Marie and Alisa’s past collaborations, Alisa’s passion for Churchill’s work, and how she and Mirvish Productions are working together to create “a commercial theatre culture that can support both tour-bus blockbusters and high art” in this article in the Globe and Mail.

Ben's new haircut (Evan seems to like it)

Early Saturday morning started with Ben getting a new look: he’s had a radical new haircut for the show. Meanwhile the rest of the cast ran lines, or as Evan put it, “It’s too early to remember things.” Next up we reviewed songs (by composer Paul Sportelli) and the musical staging.

Tomorrow is our last day in the rehearsal hall, and Tuesday is our first day on stage! We jump right into tech. Moving on stage is always exciting and scary – it will be great to be in the space and adding all the design and technical elements of the show. Judith and the rest of her design crew have been in the theatre all week getting everything ready.

We’ll be doing two more runs of the show from start to finish this afternoon and tomorrow morning, before a well-deserved day off.

We started the day today with notes. Typically, this would involve the director giving us the notes from the preceding run – things that were good, things that didn’t work: a kind of tuning, tweaking session that would be adopted and put into the next run. Notes can sometimes be horrible experiences, with the director raging and insulting, and the cast cowering with guilt and shame.  I didn’t expect this notes session to be terrible; I thought yesterday’s run had gone fairly well, with some great new discoveries by everyone… but we didn’t get notes. Instead, we talked about those moments in the play that are fulcrums for our characters – actions that irrevocably change their world.

It was a very funny discussion. I’d meant to write down some of the pithier comments, because it’s a very smart cast (some of us being positively sesquipedalian), and the conversation moved from suicide to masturbation to the phallic construct of the first act to the fact that characters don’t “enter”, they “come”. There were observations about sexuality, and politics; the quality of love and the fact that we must evolve or die. We spoke about the enormous responsibility of the theatre itself – and that a bad film is merely a waste of two hours, but a bad play – or a bad production of a good play – is the breaking of a covenant. We resolved to be very good.

The more we work on this play, the more moving I find it. Act I is so dysfunctional – the characters are bound by societal expectation, the rule of convention and the fear of discovery. In Act II, we see that the old world has been laid bare – the centre of the patriarchal system cannot hold, and has broken. There is a kind of “queering” of the world: a recognition of unconventional love, and a diversity of family. This doesn’t make the world any easier to live in, but it makes it a somehow more valid place.

The trick is that not only does the style of writing change, from Act I to Act II, but so does the style of acting. Finding that balance is difficult, but will be rewarding. In the end, we have a character embracing her younger self, in an act of forgiveness, understanding and acceptance. Isn’t that something we’d all like to do?

The cast gives us a glimpse at the impetuous, yearning characters of Cloud 9 – characters who exist in colonial Africa circa 1885 and then again in late 70’s London. They switch genders, colours and proclivities. They age only 25 years. And through it all they’re longing and searching… for identity, for family, for love. For Cloud 9.

Cloud 9 costume design

Before the holidays I had a chance to talk to Dora Award-winning costume designer Judith Bowden. Cloud 9 is a challenging piece to mount and the whip smart Bowden is definitely up to the task.

How did you get into costume design?
I did an undergrad in Clothing and Textile Design and one of my teachers said that my work was inappropriate for manufacture. I took that as a sign and did a masters in Set, Costume and Lighting Design.

What keeps you going?
I’ve been really lucky. I graduated in 1992 and have been working full time as a designer ever since.

What keeps me going is that there is an element that is collaborative. My design ideas are augmented by the people I work with: the directors, actors, set designers.

What inspires you?
In theatre design, you are trying to tell a story. It’s a plastic medium. Like all design it comes from a human base — in this case, the characters. You make style choices and conceptual choices, but the costume you create is in constant movement. Ultimately the design is driven by the actors.

What were the challenges of designing for Cloud 9?
Cloud 9 is highly theatrical for sure. It has a kind of Brechtian feel. The challenge was how to have the costumes in Act 1 [which is set in Victorian times and has a Magic Realism to it] relate to Act 2 [which is set in a grittier 1979]. How do you make it seem like they are in the same play?

Cloud 9 was first performed in 1979. Like many of the playwright’s early works, the play is an exploration of gender, class and sexuality. To keep the balance between the two acts, Bowden clothes for the first act are not totally period, but instead suggest the corsets, padding and stiffening of the Victorian era to illustrate the constraints of that age (see the drawings above). She also mixed in some 1970s-era pieces to “cross pollinate”.

As for Act Two, she scoured the second-hand shops for street clothing that was true to the ’70s, as opposed to shiny disco gear that has become shorthand for that decade.

Why did you choose real clothes for the second half?
By using street clothes, I’m trying to work against stereotypes. Not just in clothing but in behaviour. I didn’t want to be obvious so that the audience can react to or against the stereotypes that are explored n the play.

In Cloud 9, there is colour-blind casting as well as men playing the parts of women. How do you help the guys inhabit the clothes?
It’s funny, the guys are going to want to know how to walk in a long dress and high heels, but look around you. How many women walk around in a long dress and high heels? Yanna [McIntosh] wants to know how to sit in bustle too.

Another theme of Cloud 9 is Colonialism. Churchill originally linked Britain’s history of empire to sexual equality. The effects of Colonialism have been much parsed in the 30 years since the play débuted. What was raw and immediate in 1979 has itself become a period piece.

How did the creative team address this?
There’s no point in modernizing the play. The real question is: What is the point of the play? Sometimes [the passage of time] can add layers. For example, it’s interesting doing the play in Canada, itself a former colony. And sometimes the play is just supposed to wash over you.

Rhonda Riche is a Toronto-based writer, artist and gal-about-town. Her blog is Gracious, Good.

We proceeded to review Act 1. We’ve been working through the act in detail over the last few days, looking at what the engines of the characters are, and where their turning points occur. We now have very clearly drawn characters. Next we’ll be honing in on the central story lines and really clarifying the action for each character. We are getting clearer and clearer about what the relationships really are.

In the afternoon we concentrated on Act 2, and then capped it off with another invigorating session with John Stead, our fight director. What an exciting way to end 2009!

Happy New Year!

John Stead demonstrating fight moves

Yesterday most of the cast got to play rough with John Stead, fight director extraordinaire.  It started off with Ann-Marie (playing 9-year-old Edward) getting the brunt of it, tussling with Evan over a doll and then receiving convincing slaps from both Evan (as mother Betty – note the ever-present heels) and Megan. Then it was David’s turn to give Ann-Marie a nice smack across the head.

Ann-Marie MacDonald and Evan Buliung rehearsing

Ann-Marie MacDonald and David Jansen practicing

The best was saved for last, with Evan and Megan (as Mrs. Saunders) giving “cat fight” a whole new twist. Blair finally got into the action, trying to tear the two of them apart.

John Stead supervising Megan Follows and Evan Buliung's cat fight

Time to pull Evan and Megan apart

Ann-Marie MacDonald channeling nine-year-old Edward

On the Sunday rehearsal before the Christmas break, I dropped everything I had been doing with Betty, my second act character. I sensed that my vocal placement had become a mask, in a bad way – more of a barrier to who she is, than a portal. I also know – or think I know – where all the laughs are, and while that is very important ultimately, it had become a liability for me. I felt like I was doing funny-voice acting. All I needed was a funny hat to go with it.

So I dropped it all…and went denuded into a run of the second act. I felt awful. I wasn’t doing anything. I had nothing to hang on to. I sucked. After the run, Alisa, the director, congratulated me on my giant step forward. She said she had never seen me be so brave. “Brave,” I thought, “yeah, a euphemism for, ‘you sucked, but with dignity this time.’” I didn’t know how I’d get through the week’s festivities with the shadow of my total failure hanging over me. At the same time, I recognized that self-loathing conviction as a spasm of strategic self-preservation. But which “self” was it preserving? The skeptical one, the guarded one, the one that doesn’t want to make a fool of itself.

So here I am back in rehearsal after the break, unsure of who will emerge tomorrow when we return to Act 2. Part of what’s weird is that Betty is much closer to me in many ways than is Edward, my character in Act 1. Edward is a nine-year-old boy who is struggling with his identity and sexuality, and going through some formative – and deforming – experiences. He feels like a much shorter walk from me than Betty. And yet Betty is only two or three years older than I am. Plus, she’s a woman. And yet, I had felt the need of an almost Are You Being Served?/Hiacynthe Bucket/Thames-side/Ealing Studios/Brit-comedy take on her to get any traction.

Here’s the thing: I know I’m going to tunnel my way back to her voice, her hat, her teetering poise, and my hope is that when I finally recover these holy grails, they’ll be invested with soul. But it’ll be like digging myself out of Stalag 13 with a spoon. Truth and self-exposure are like that. Makes me want to run silently-screaming to the privacy of my lair and start writing something. And of course, that’s when the snake starts devouring its own tail: beginnings are easy, exciting. First paragraphs are always brilliant. Funny voices work a treat for the first week of rehearsal. Then comes the art part. And as always, I say to myself, I says, “Self? This is too hard.”

David Jansen as five-year-old Cathy

It’s early days of rehearsal, but David Jansen is getting right into character. In Act One he plays the patriarch of the family Clive, and in a brilliant bit of casting (suggested originally by playwright Caryl Churchill, and embraced by director Alisa Palmer) he plays five-year-old Cathy in Act Two. She’s a tyrant of another kind; David says his favourite line so far is “I want my beads!”

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Blair Williams rehearses his part with Yanna McIntosh at the piano

This morning started with a music rehearsal; our wonderful composer Paul Sportelli wasn’t in today, so Ben Carlson lead the cast through a vocal warm up. Then Yanna McIntosh took a seat at the piano and led everyone through their individual parts. Staging for the songs is the next challenge and we took a bit of time today reviewing some ideas we thought would work for specific characters.

So far in rehearsals we’ve touched on all the scenes at least once. So the rest of the morning we spent working through the play from the beginning.

It’s hard to believe that we’ve already been rehearsing for two weeks – it’s gone so quickly. It’ll be good to take a hiatus over Christmas; the time off will let everyone review the work we’ve done and try a few new things on our own.

I knew the play was fierce, with a kind of gritty, intentionally flat use of language that is mercilessly naturalistic with none of the embellishments of American naturalism – say the self-conscious cadences and cut-offs of Mamet, the lyricism of Tennesse Williams, the tragic earnestness of Arthur Miller. Then, just when I’ve decided the language is brutally spare, the play breaks into soliloquy. I look closer, and find the punctuation is…punctilious! The words are set as precisely as music, the punctuation an unerring clue to the pace and state of the speaker. I circle the “and’s” in my text. I circle the “very’s”. I count the number of lines until there’s finally a period and the stakes become clearer to me. I knew the play was funny when I heard us read it. Irreverent. Wicked. Packed with laughs of recognition and horror. And I’ve come to understand that the humour is both immanent in the situations, and deftly crafted in the lines themselves. I knew the play was the opposite of sentimental. Today I realized that it’s also terribly sad. I’ve gotten choked up at unexpected moments. Evan is the tallest and muscly-est person in the cast and he’s wearing high heels, and a gown with a corset (we’ve all made the inevitable jokes and continue to mine the endless possibilities for ridicule which will only deepen and get richer as we begin our backstage life together after opening) – he plays a woman whose ability to appear convincingly helpless is her bread and butter. When he/she stands on stage, alone, waiting, and watching, it’s heartbreaking.

On the second day of rehearsal the cast got a chance to get to know one another during the Cloud 9 photo shoot. Here’s a glimpse of them in action, and a glimpse of Blair trying to get some action. In character as Harry Bagley, that is.

Working through a play is a forensic process, and table work is the first step. The next step is getting up on our feet, which takes us deeper into it. And that’s how we’ve spent the last few days.

The first thing the actors did is just warm up the space a bit – trying to discover how to use it, and figuring out where everyone gravitates to naturally. Today they made nice, light passes through the scenes and let the relationships start to take shape. We’re all discovering what their characters want, what is energizing them, what their appetites are.

Cloud 9 is a wonderful challenge; its transgressions and its boundary-less quality, I think, is what will be the greatest provocation to an audience.

Cloud 9 is a comedy about family, it’s about people trying to connect with each other. It’s filled with people overwhelmed with desire, with longing, and usually completely estranged from themselves. And like any great story, it’s about identity: how will I fulfill who I am?

Cloud 9 is an adventure too – the play and the production. And Alisa has gathered a cast of fantastic actors to go along with her on the adventure. The room has been full of laughter and engaging conversation.

So far we’ve been working through the play at the table, tomorrow we get up on our feet. Will be exciting to see where that takes us next…