On Monday night, while I celebrated the holiday with my coworkers, Megan had a bunch of folks over to the house. She pitched them the show over pizza, and now we have some faces to go with with the amorphous aesthetic ideas we’ve been trying on for size for the last few months.

This step is always amazing to me. It’s amazing even after a traditional audition for an established text, but when you are developing a show and this talent falls out of the sky and is simply the only possible, perfect choice for what you’ve been imagining… that’s magic.

This is where everything comes into focus. The nagging questions of this specific moment, or the look of that special piece will be answered by this person who  hadn’t even been involved two weeks ago. Their fresh eyes, and their own personal aesthetic will round the edges of this piece, completing it.

And actually, in this show, they are also often the canvas we are painting on. We’re lucky to have them. Hell, we’re ecstatic to have them. Soon. Soon I will introduce them to you. Hang onto your hats.

Tags: Meta, Production by Travis
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To every story there is a beginning.

If it is a well told story you will never be told the minutiae of the beginnings, so in my efforts to tell a story well, I’m going to skip the boring parts.

Cambiare Productions was born of three people who share enough theatrical vision to work well together, and disagree enough to create a broader range of performance and installations than they would separately.

For my money the only reason to begin a company is to create work that otherwise wouldn’t be done. And the only reason to bring people on board is if they augment your vision in some way. Or if you augment theirs.

Cambiare was created out of the realization that as a group we could create very good theatre that other groups weren’t interested in taking a chance on. In this case the idea that we could take the performance/installation hybrids that Megan was immersing herself in and making a night of theatre out of them.

And so Cambiare Production and our first production, Transformations were hatched in the same stroke. We are not a repertory company. We’re not going to produce seasons (not just yet anyway). We’re going to produce projects that excite us. Projects that are in our bones that other companies won’t do with us.

We will continue working with other groups, Will and I with Gobotrick Theatre Company, and Megan freelancing as a lighting designer. But we look forward to creating our own space in this community making theatre that moves us, and telling stories the way we would like them to be told to us. Which is, as near as I can parse it, the golden rule of theatre.

In this corner of the internet we hope to bring you interviews with the impressive group of people Megan has brought together to create Transformations, and some insights into the process that goes into creating this amalgamation of storytelling techniques.

Two months from today Cambiare Productions will be delivered into the Austin community, I do hope that you’ll join us during this gestation period and celebrate with us on February 1st when this child springs forth.

Tags: Meta by Travis
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