I’m thrilled to be part of the Chapel Theatre Winter Play Festival again this year! It’s such a cool concept, in a charming venue in an old church. Local playwrights submit short 10-minute plays, directors apply to direct, and actors submit online auditions. So…none of us have any idea what play we’ll be in or who we might be working with ahead of time. And, we only have a couple weeks of rehearsal time before opening night.
This year is my directorial debut! I’m directing DANNY AND ROSE, written by Michael Kurt.
How does a new director prepare to direct their first show? For me, so far, like this. I read through the script two or three times and saw the play in my mind’s eye first, seeing the stage it will be on. Then I spoke with the writer. I interviewed other directors I admire, each of whom generously shared their time and expertise. Scheduled a first read-through with the writer and cast of two.
Directing a first show is a massive learning curve, just as is acting in a first show, or taking a first acting class. Blocking. Character development. Relationships and emotional transitions. I’ll be sharing more as the process progresses, but for now I want to introduce you to Cecelia Shroyer, who plays Rose.
Cecelia Shroyer is thrilled to make her Chapel Theatre festival debut after being just an audience member last year. She has been a longtime lover of the arts starting with acting classes in college. After an unplanned 13 year break from theatre, she got cast in 36 Conversations at HART Theatre in Hillsboro. She also played several roles in Sleepy Hollow at Beaverton Civic Theatre. The pandemic definitely put a hold on live theatre, but she participated in a few Zoom productions. Last year she participated in a staged reading called The Ransom of Granny Red Jeans at Stomping Grounds Arthouse. Cecelia is currently a graduate student in counseling at George Fox University. She also loves singing and playing the piano in addition to acting. The arts are so important and she is so grateful to Chapel Theatre and Laura for this opportunity.
For the inner vocalist or pianist in you or your loved ones, I have gift certificates! I’m also giving away one free hour of training for anyone who purchases a five-pack of lessons between now and the end of January. https://laurahandke.com/product/voice-lesson-gift-cards/ You can use the six hours for yourself, or for a musical family member or friend.
This gem of an eBook takes you on an emotional journey with Abella, whose dream comes true the morning of her 9th birthday. Her best birthday present ever is a real, live horse! Yet, before the end of the year, Abella is an orphan who loses the ability to speak her truth and express herself. This eBook includes videos for vocal training. Fiction readers will love meeting Abella, and the friends and animals who help her regain her voice and uncover her strength and purpose. Speakers and singers looking to improve their vocal quality and longevity will love the vocal training videos! Abella’s lessons apply to all of us who at one time or another want to make our voices heard. Is it a fantasy fable? Or is it a book on vocal training? Lucky for us, How Abella Found Her Voice is both. Find it here: https://laurahandke.com/product/how-abella-found-her-voice-e-book/
I remember one year, in my first marriage, my ex and I hosted Thanksgiving dinner, serving turkey and all the trimmings. Between my extended family and my ex’s extended family and all our friends, I mailed out well over 200 Christmas cards complete with letter and photo collage. We decorated a Christmas tree and the house, and he put up lights outside. My stepsons were still fairly young and their father dressed up as Santa Claus. We bought presents for each other, the boys, and plenty of our family and friends, mailing several packages out of state. I probably made toffee and cookies, too. I don’t remember if we went to Christmas Eve service, though, which is interesting. I do remember my sister-in-law hosted Christmas dinner and all I had to bring was crab cakes.
No offense to Chevy Chase’s Clark Griswold, but looking back…it was all a bit…much.
I grew up in the Presbyterian church in Raymond, South Dakota. I’ve always loved Christmas. So many relatives came to our farm house for Christmas dinner, it was always a magical day I never wanted to end.
After I graduated from college and moved away from South Dakota, I kept those old traditions alive – in my own way – for years…until I started realizing some of them weren’t so much fun anymore.
I slowly started asking friends if they wanted to stop exchanging Christmas gifts. With one notable exception, they all responded with a resounding yes. I started scaling back on the holiday letter list, although I still send them every year with gratitude, looking forward to hearing back from family and friends – some from high school I only correspond with this time of year. Not everyone is active on social media.
I haven’t cooked a turkey in years. I don’t dislike turkey; I’d just rather have something else. (And we still have plenty of leftovers, for those who make the turkey because they like the leftovers.) I’d rather roast a chicken or make a lasagna.
But that’s me.
And you’re you.
We’re all allowed to pick and choose which traditions sing to us and which don’t. To create our own, to choose and make our own music. And that’s fun!
If you’re feeling stressed during the holiday season, try alternate nostril breathing. Here’s a video for your support. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/0xA0lTjTYao Breathe in through the left nostril, hold for a beat, out through the right nostril. Breathe in through the right nostril, hold for a beat, out through the left nostril. Repeat 5-10 times. This is one of the most calming and grounding breath practices I know.
For the inner vocalist or pianist in you or your loved ones, gift certificates are available. I’m also giving away one free hour of training for anyone who purchases a five-pack of lessons between now and the end of January. You can use the six hours for yourself, or for a musical family member or friend.
Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas if you celebrate, and a splendid New Year’s celebration to you and yours! I’m sending you warm wishes for creativity, inspiration and joy in 2024.
This gem of an eBook takes you on an emotional journey with Abella, whose dream comes true the morning of her 9th birthday. Her best birthday present ever is a real, live horse! Yet, before the end of the year, Abella is an orphan who loses the ability to speak her truth and express herself. This eBook includes videos for vocal training. Fiction readers will love meeting Abella, and the friends and animals who help her regain her voice and uncover her strength and purpose. Speakers and singers looking to improve their vocal quality and longevity will love the vocal training videos! Abella’s lessons apply to all of us who at one time or another want to make our voices heard. Is it a fantasy fable? Or is it a book on vocal training? Lucky for us, How Abella Found Her Voice is both. Find it here: https://laurahandke.com/product/how-abella-found-her-voice-e-book/
One synchronicity after another guided them to each other – and after 50 years – Lakewood Theatre in Lake Oswego, Oregon, helped them celebrate.
In November of 1973, the Sioux Falls Community Playhouse held auditions for Arsenic and Old Lace, Joseph Kesselring’s ingenious dark comedy about two sweet little old sisters on a charitable mission.
Abby and Martha Brewster’s charity recipients are lonely, old men. Their mission? To put them out of their misery. How? By offering them a generous glass of elderberry wine. Wine laced with a special family recipe comprised of arsenic, cyanide and strychnine.
Fortunately for the Brewster sisters, nephew Teddy, who believes he is Theodore Roosevelt – and has the uniform and bugle to prove it – is an eager grave digger. The cellar isn’t really a cellar – it’s Panama, and he’s down there digging locks for the Panama Canal. No problem!
Rod was already assigned to the show as technical director and to design and construct the set. The director asked him to also audition for a role. When Rod arrived at the audition, the room was nearly full. There was only one seat left. The one right next to Kathie.
Kathie says, “We started talking and never stopped.”
Kathie was cast as Elaine and Rod as Jonathan.
Rod had been a student and then teacher at Sioux Falls College.Dr. P. W. Patterson, who headed the theatre department, had talked about Rod Van Loh so much throughout Kathie’s college years, she almost felt like she knew him when Rod introduced himself at the audition. She was thrilled!
There were so many times they should have met but didn’t.
When Kathie was in high school, she was active in Young People’s Theatre at the Sioux Falls Community Playhouse. She was cast in the show Alladin while Rod, who was in college, was working on the set for that show. And they didn’t meet.
Rod’s brother and his date double-dated with Kathie and her date (later first husband) at the senior prom. But Rod and Kathie didn’t meet.
The day Kathie married her first husband, her maid of honor and his best man met with Rod after the ceremony. Rod knew they had been to a wedding, knew Kathie’s ex-husband, but didn’t know Kathie’s name.
At one point, Rod was in Kathie’s apartment while she was living with her then husband and infant son. Rod had gone over because a friend he’d grown up with was very good friends with Kathie’s then husband. But Rod was in one room and she was in another. Again, they didn’t meet.
But then, at the audition, they finally did!
Kathie and Rod bonded during rehearsals and got to know each other well. Rod was fresh out of the navy and living with his parents. Kathie was a single mom with a young son.
One late evening, towards the end of rehearsals, Kathie decided to bring two bottles of Boones Farm wine to the theatre, where she knew Rod was still working on the set. She also often helped with the set. They drank wine, talked, bonded more, and by the time Kathie was driving Rod home, it was nearly 4:00 am.
Kathie said to Rod, “If it wasn’t so late, I’d invite you in for coffee.”
Rod said, “It’s not too late.”
He came in for coffee and never left. (Somehow no coffee ever appeared.)
The Van Loh’s were married the following June in a simple ceremony in the side yard of a rented farmhouse near Trent, South Dakota. No invitations were sent, but they let people know they were getting married and 50, 60 people showed up, many of them friends from the Playhouse and Sioux Falls College. Kathie’s son stood up with them at the ceremony.
Rod went on to get his Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Iowa and continued as designer/technical director. He was involved in 90 productions over a 35-year span. Kathie went on to teach and became the director of Young People’s Theatre where she had at one time been a student. They collaborated when Kathie directed, and Rod designed and tech directed Androcles and the Lion for Young People’s Theatre. In addition, Kathie directed high school theatre, and acted and directed in community theatre.
The Van Loh’s moved to Oregon’s coastal mountain range in 1996. Three kids and five grandchildren later, the still happy couple will celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary next summer. But Lakewood Theatre, at Lakewood Center for the Arts in downtown Lake Oswego, helped them celebrate early during their production of Arsenic and Old Lace.
When Kathie called to book tickets for 12 (family members and this writer and her husband included) she mentioned their personal history of this play to the woman on the other end of the phone. That woman suggested letting Steve Knox, the theatre Executive Producer, in on the story. Kathie did.
The evening of October 7, 2023, we all went out for a delicious dinner at Lake Oswego’s Szechuan Kitchen, then to see the show!
Kathie and Rod were in for a pleasant surprise. Not only did the cast change one line of the play for this one performance (I hope Kesselring would approve) to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, from whatever city was actually in the script…the entire cast came out on stage after the show for a photo shoot with the celebrating couple. Producer Steve Knox couldn’t have been more kind and generous – we were all wowed and emotionally touched.
Besides, it was a great show.
Like the one in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, in 1974.
This gem of an eBook takes you on an emotional journey with Abella, whose dream comes true the morning of her 9th birthday. Her best birthday present ever is a real, live horse! Yet, before the end of the year, Abella is an orphan who loses the ability to speak her truth and express herself. This eBook includes videos for vocal training. Fiction readers will love meeting Abella, and the friends and animals who help her regain her voice and uncover her strength and purpose. Speakers and singers looking to improve their vocal quality and longevity will love the vocal training videos! Abella’s lessons apply to all of us who at one time or another want to make our voices heard. Is it a fantasy fable? Or is it a book on vocal training? Lucky for us, How Abella Found Her Voice is both. Find it here: https://laurahandke.com/product/how-abella-found-her-voice-e-book/
Some of my favorite books were Laura Ingalls Wilder’s “Little House” series. The author and I share a name, and I, like her, was a brunette country girl who loved spending time outside in nature, and with animals. Every few years I pull the books out and re-read the entire series – most recently shortly before my husband and I took our annual trip to my home state of South Dakota the third week of August.
As a voice teacher and performer who knows the importance of being in the moment, it’s almost embarrassing to admit how much I have come to dislike traveling. I simply don’t enjoy the journey like I used to; I just want to be off the plane, out of the airport, leave the rental car in the driveway, and sit down at the kitchen table with my cousin Kat. Who will offer me a Cabernet or chilled Pinot Gris. Kat is one of my closest friends. We’ve known each other her entire life because I was the first-born LaBay granddaughter and Kathryn is the second eldest.
She’s also a skilled communicator. As a project manager and mother of two adult daughters and two grandchildren, I suppose she has to be. I’ve noticed Kat tends to be the voice of reason when others are wigging out.
I have been that voice of reason myself in the past, but I can’t say I was on this trip. The Friday morning of my birthday, I completely lost it when I needed to be left alone and wasn’t. It wasn’t the finest of moments for me or for my husband.
I teach vocal and piano technique, but the voice is about so much more than how your body produces sound. It’s about confidence. Awareness of what impacts your voice – physically, mentally and emotionally. Knowing who you are inside and what you want to say. Or sing. Communication with others.
During this both super fun and complicated trip, I found myself going back to the communication of the Ingalls family during The Long Winter.
Here’s the back cover description: On the empty winter prairie, gray clouds to the northwest meant only one thing: a blizzard was seconds away. The first blizzard came in October. It snowed almost without stopping until April. The temperature dropped to forty below. Snow reached the rooftops. And no trains could get through with food and coal. The townspeople began to starve. The Ingalls family barely lived through that winter. And Almanzo Wilder knew he would have to risk his life to save the town.
Every time I re-read these books, I remember again how much Ma hated “Indians”, the Native American cultures already there when they arrived. Bigotry saddens my heart. The long winter happened in DeSmet, South Dakota, just 35 miles from where Clark, where I graduated from high school. I have deep respect and gratitude for the Oglala Sioux tribes who wandered those plains and highly recommend the book Black Elk Speaks. I first read it in college at SDSU in an Indians of North America class. That book changed the way I think.
The long winter was foretold.
First Pa found the muskrat house.
Laura put her hand on the wall of their house…she liked to think of them sleeping there. Pa was shaking his head. “We’re going to have a hard winter”, he said, not liking the prospect. “Why, how do you know?” Laura asked in surprise. “The colder the winter will be, the thicker the muskrats build the walls of their houses,” Pa told her. I never saw a heavier-built muskrats’ house than that one.”
Then came the Indian Warning.
He was a very old Indian. His brown face was carved in deep wrinkles and shriveled on the bones, but he stood tall and straight…His eyes were bright and sharp. Behind him the sun was shining on the dusty street and an Indian pony stood there waiting. “Heap big snow come,” this Indian said…”How long?” Pa asked him. “Many moons,” the Indian said. He held up four fingers, then three fingers. Seven fingers, seven months, blizzards for seven months.
That’s a long time to be stuck in a small house together. But the Ingalls daughters were raised to speak kindly to each other.
What kind of language did you see the last time you scrolled through social media?
“Well, the tunnel’s going fast,” Pa said, when he came into breakfast. His eyebrows were frozen white with snow again and his wraps were stiff with it. Cold was pressing the warmth back again to the stove. “I did hope my tunnel would last through one of these onslaughts, anyway. Gosh dang this blizzard! It only lets go long enough to spit on its hands.” “Don’t swear, Charles!” Ma snapped at him. She clapped her hand to her mouth in horror. “Oh, Charles, I’m sorry,” she apologized. “I didn’t mean to snap at you. But this wind, blowing and blowing…” Her voice died away and she stood listening.
And, in a later chapter…
Pa rose with a deep breath. “Well, here it is again.” Then suddenly he shook his clenched fist at the Northwest. “Howl!, blast you! howl!” he shouted. “We’re all here safe! You can’t get at us! You’ve tried all winter but we’ll beat you yet! We’ll be right here when spring comes!”
During the long winter survival was the only priority, including of the animals in the barn. Twice a day, Pa made it out there using the clothesline to guide him back and forth in the blinding snow. Pa and Ma had decided – at one point – that they would kill and eat the milk cow and her heifer calf if they needed to. Fortunately, they didn’t need to.
Our lives are so very different now.
We have electric lights instead of kerosene lamps. Clean water comes out of faucets in several rooms in our homes. We buy meat from animals that have been killed by someone else, packaged by another, shipped, and sold by yet others, the meat in plastic wrapped containers in an air-conditioned store. People in certain states can have caracals as pets in their homes and get tons of YouTube video likes. CNN, constantly negative news, blares everywhere.
Yet I believe we can still have respect and common courtesy in the language we use with each other, including in our own households. I’d venture to guess it’s more important now than it ever has been.
I’m making a personal commitment to it. If you’d like to join me, make a comment on the blog and we’ll start our own little Respectful Communication Club. No long hard winters required!
Exciting news! I’ve partnered with AuthorsXP for a fantasy book promotion and August 15-21 three lucky winners will receive a free copy of my eBook, How Abella Found Her Voice. (The story is now being made into a screenplay for a full length feature film.)
This gem of an eBook takes you on an emotional journey with Abella, whose dream comes true the morning of her 9th birthday. Her best birthday present ever is a real, live horse! Yet, before the end of the day, Abella is an orphan who loses the ability to speak her truth and express herself. This eBook includes videos for vocal training. Fiction readers will love meeting Abella, and the friends and animals who help her regain her voice and uncover her strength and purpose. Speakers and singers looking to improve their vocal quality and longevity will love the vocal training videos! Abella’s lessons apply to all of us who at one time or another want to make our voices heard. Is it a fantasy fable? Or is it a book on vocal training? Lucky for us, How Abella Found Her Voice is both.
