Is this a prologue or the posey of a ring?

Welcome, gentles all, to Kill Will - the Blog! Here you may read progress updates as we write, choreograph, rehearse and perform our world premiere play. As this is only the first post, there is not much to report yet, but allow me to give you some background, in case you're not already sick of hearing us talk about this project.

As you probably know, Kelly and I have been teaching, choreographing and performing stage combat in the Cleveland/Northeastern Ohio region for several years. Shakespeare is one of our great loves and we have directed the fights for many of the Bard's plays. (Including, at last count, something like 4 R&Js, 3 MacBeths, 3 Midsummers and 2 Hamlets.) A couple of years ago we came up with the idea to do a fight show based around all the death and violence in Shakespeare's plays. We called it "Kill Will" - for those of you who are not fans of Quentin Tarantino, it's an homage to his film "Kill Bill", which has some crazy fight scenes in it.

But who has time to write, choreograph and produce a new show? We talked about it and threw out crazy ideas, but never really worked to get it off the ground. But it lurked there, in the back of our minds like Puck, invisible but pulling strings nevertheless. When the applications for CPT's Big [Box] program were announced last spring, I decided to jump into the breach and apply. Cry havoc and let loose the dogs of war! (For you non-Clevelanders, Big [Box] is Cleveland Public Theater's annual new works program. Each show accepted into the program gets the theater for a week to rehearse, and then a weekend to perform, plus a small production budget. It's a wonderful thing for local artists.)

Of course, I waited until the last minute to do the application, and to be quite honest, I didn't think it was very good. Kelly and I brainstormed some ideas, I wrote up a basic outline and some blather about why we should be accepted, and threw together five pages of a rough script. I turned it in the next day, right on deadline. That was in June.

Fast forward to August. People from CPT are probaby getting tired of me asking when the Big [Box] decisions will be made. Then one day, I get an email from Raymond, the artistic director. They've accepted Kill Will! Not only that, but we've got the opening weekend! That's aweso... oh.

Oh dear.

Guess I'd better get writing.