We are just about TWO WEEKS away from opening day of A Lord Of A Ring In A Suitcase: A Two-Part Trilogy (The Extendish Edition)!
We are currently in the middle of our rehearsal period for our summer show. Costumes are being made, songs are being arranged, and props are being built — it is VERY exciting!
Make sure to check out our TOUR SCHEDULE page and mark your calendars!
One year ago we started inching towards Middle Earth…
Throughout 2020 and 2021, Marlene (Princess Gwen) started adapting The Two Towers and The Return of the King. With the help of friends near and far (and the power of ZOOM!), we hosted a private online reading of this version (Version 2) of the script. This reading was incredibly helpful, showing us where big thorns were, and where moments of delight happened. Without the help of our friends, we wouldn’t be where we are today: hosting auditions for our production, under-going another major rewrite (Version 4!), and standing on the precipice of actual rehearsals!
Just like Fellowship supporting Frodo and Sam from Rohan, Gondor, and fields beyond, the support of your friends near and far is one of the best feelings you can feel. Is there something you can do to support a friend today?
The Peripatetic Players would like to personally thank Kristen Matia, Holly Kenney, Phill Correa, Julie Douglas, and Radek Antzak!
The Peripatetic Players are seeking 1-2 additional performers to join us for our summer performance & tour, A Lord of a Ring in a Suitcase: The Two-Part Trilogy (The Extend-ish Edition), an original adaptation of JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. This is in part a remount of our 2019 production (Part 1), and an original production (Part 2).
We are looking for actors who love working in collaboration with an ensemble and who are comfortable with physical/devised theatre, movement, and music. We are looking to diversify our current ensemble, so we especially encourage femme- and woman-identified performers of color to audition.
Our production features imaginative leaps, incredible assertions, feats of theatricality, and a whole lot of mystical beings, far away places, and rings. Performers will embody characters and help create the ensemble-driven music, atmospheres and settings of the play.
For more information and to read the full audition announcement, please visit this link!
Greetings, Friends of Idiot String and The Peripatetic Players,
The Peripatetic Players are back at it again, and we need YOUR help!
In 2019, we created an original work based on The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. Our goal was to re-mount this production and adapt the other books in the trilogy into two plays.
This year we begin our quest again!
The Peripatetic Players are raising funds to re-start their quest across Middle Earth! This summer, we will be performing A Lord of a Ring in Suitcase: The Two-Part Trilogy (The Extendish Edition) across Bay Area parks and public spaces.
We’ll be at a different park each weekend, offering several performances at each location. So you can see one show, two shows in two days, or both shows in one day! All performances are offered FREE to the public, and your donations help keep this possible.
Even the smallest donations can change the course of this play! Here are some examples of what your contributions can do:
$5 – Gives us Warm Fuzzies
$10 – Ensures our First Aid Kit is well-stocked
$25 – Transports the Players to (approximately) one performance
$50 – Creates a set of mini-costumes for the audience to wear
$100 – Subsidizes the average park permit fees for one performance
$250 – Provides us with printed materials, such as scripts, postcards, and posters
$500 – Buys paint and supplies to make our scenery merry and bright
The lighting of the beacons (aka the start of the fundraiser) will begin on March 13 and concluding on April 3 with a celebratory feast (picnic) at The Golden Hall in Rohan (Cedar Rose Park in Berkeley). Whether you pledge your support with a donation or a social media share, we hope you can join us!
To make a donation, please visit our Go Fund me page!
THANK YOU!
The Peripatetic Players:
Sam Bertken, Joan Howard, Rebecca Longworth, Casey Robbins, Soren Santos, Kenny Scott & Marlene Yarosh
Notice
Idiot String (and thus The Peripatetic Players) is fiscally sponsored by Independent Arts & Media, a 501(c)3 organization. Donations are tax deductible through IAM. Independent Arts & Media (“IAM,” a tax-exempt public charity under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code) offers fiscal sponsorship to projects and producers which advance IAM’s charitable purpose: to raise the educational and social levels of the residents of the San Francisco Bay Area and surrounding regional and national communities, through the development of noncommercial, educational and cultural media, news and arts projects for the benefit of the general public.
More information about Independent Arts and Media: IAM is a San Francisco-based fiscal sponsor with a mission to support independent, non-commercial art and media projects and producers for the purpose of building community and civic participation and facilitating cultural engagement and free expression. IAM currently supports over 60 affiliates dedicated to non-commercial work in media and the arts, including publishing, theater, dance, music, visual art, film and video, journalism, history, and public-events production.
It’s been some time since you’ve heard from the Peripatetic Players, and we wanted to tell you – WE’VE MISSED YOU!
The past year (and then some) has been EXTREME in all the ways it could be. Ensemble members have begun and completed grad school, started new jobs and kept old ones, performed in and produced online performances, and some are even in the process of buying a home! Amidst all of that, we continue to learn and educate ourselves on how to defy white supremacy culture, in all its forms, and work towards consensus-based decision making.
It’s *a lot* and we are so happy to be doing it!
Our ensemble has been fortunate to safely gather a handful of times this late spring and summer, we look forward to continuing to come together as an ensemble and create art not only for ourselves, but for you!
You know how Shakespeare wrote all of those plays during the plague? Well, earlier this year, Marlene (Princess Gwen) finished writing the first draft of an adaptation of The Lord of the Rings. She started adapting The Two Towers in 2020, and finished The Return of the King in 2021. She hosted an online (private) reading, with friends near and far.
Rebecca (Madame D.) spent quarantine in graduate school at UC Berkeley, working toward a Masters in Education. This August she begins teaching 9th and 12th grade English at Albany High School.
Our next moves, so to speak, are to shake off the dust from our costumes, stretch our muscles, pull out our notebooks, and really start to train together as a theatrical ensemble. For those of you who might be unfamiliar with that means (and what we keep referring too), here’s an idea of what an afternoon (~4 hours) might look like when we participate in ensemble development:
One thing from these longer ensemble days is that we also look towards what we might want our next production to be. Part of this is us as a group learning how to reclaim/restructure/reinvent stories in a way that feels safe, appropriate, inclusive, exciting, and worth telling.
We hope to use the above work to develop an informal, invitation-only performance of A Lord of a Ring In A Suitcase for the winter, where we will formally introduce and welcome Crash and Inspector Quimbley. Check them out here & here!
Our utmost goal is to back in parks and public spaces by Summer 2022 for our annual summer performances! We’ve missed you all so much, and we hope you are finding ways to thrive in your homes & communities, and raising up those around you.
So much has happened since my last blog post in March. We of the Samuel Peaches Peripatetic Players have been busy behind the screens meeting virtually, generating material, and exploring current events to create artistic performance. The most important question, however, is:
How are you?
Can you believe that we are only halfway through 2020? What are some moments that you’d like to remember or let go of? These seven months have brought a myriad of life experiences to the forefront of our lives, and I invite you to reflect on what has happened in your life as I reflect what’s been happening for us.
The COVID-19 pandemic quickly thrust our theater company into an online forum, something that we chose to embrace whole-heartedly as a creative challenge. Our #POOOC2020 was such a fun experience, and what brought me the most joy was trying to come up with Obstacles for folks to do at home, and find something delightful inside. All of the Obstacles we created were designed to be done at home with common objects. We had “Gear Up to Get Down”, a dancing competition, and a DIY At-Home Obstacle course. We celebrated live on Zoom and Facebook on April 5th with our “Celebration of Obstacles Overcome” and had a great time.
We had been working towards producing our “main-stage marquee” show, a sequel to our last show, A Lord of a Ring In A Suitcase from Summer 2019. On Wednesday nights you would have found us virtually developing a script, making each other laugh, and participating in creative development exercises with our newest ensemble members, Kenny Scott and Leigh Rondon-Davis (check out our ensemble bio page for updates!).
With health restrictions changing so frequently, we decided to change course and started thinking of ways we could present a “To-Go” show to smaller audiences.
And then, in July, our community and our country were shocked into action by the death of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and too many other names to count. We reached out to our community, as did many other groups we admire, to provide resources to start discussions about examining racism and systematic violence against Black people, and how we can work to end racism within ourselves, our ensemble, and our society. While the work has been vital for us, the true intent is to build up our capabilities as an ensemble, and as individuals, to defy white supremacist culture, in all its forms; forms that we had unwittingly implemented into our regular way of making art. This kind of behavior, this kind of structure, has been learned and normalized and we are actively trying to unlearn and unnormalize it within our organization.
What does that all mean?
Personally, I’ve been reading great books, including Invisible: The Forgotten Story of the Black Woman Lawyer Who Took Down America’s Most Powerful Mobster by Stephen L. Carter, and How To Be An Antiracist Ibram X. Kendi. I’ve also been attending virtual meetings through SURJ Bay Area.
Administratively, we’ve been examining the “power structures” within the ensemble and learning more (and working towards) consensus-based decision making. We are taking turns being the agenda maker, facilitator, note taker, and time keeper in our meetings and rehearsals. (For a recent agenda I created, I brushed off some old improv games from college – there! Using my degree!)
And yet, still, with all of these things going on, there is one thing most on my mind:
You, dear audience.
How are you? I hope you are safe, and healthy. I hope you are finding ways to thrive in your home and in your community, and raising up those around you.
We can’t wait to see you in person, and until that time, remember –
“In the end it’s only a passing thing, this shadow; even darkness must pass.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings
Hi Everybody!
I hope you all are enjoying our #POOOC2020 Obstacles as much as we are, and if you aren’t sure what I’m talking about, here’s the inside scoop!
The Particularly Obstinate ONLINE Obstacle Course, #POOOC2020, is an entirely at-home, online version of our annual obstacle course FUNdraiser. Now even more people can participate, with adventures designed to help you fill your days at home with creative fun!
Our #POOOC2020 officially kicked off on March 23rd, with much fanfare, and the first obstacle on the list is….
Like past obstacles, I like Princess Gwen’s challenges to include a bit of costuming and crafting fun:
Can you spot Jay Robinson?
Since we our #POOC has become a #POOOC, I had to pull out my trusty costume box (see above).
And, since the point of GEAR UP and GET DOWN is to gear up as many costumes as you can, and boogie as hard as you can, I then had to choose the perfect music. This is where Carly Rae Jepsen, the 21st Century’s Queen Of A Million Kingdoms, comes in!
(If you are in desperate need of a jam right now, take a listen, and I guarantee you’ll want to dance!)
I really hope you all are having a good time engaging with our Obstacles — who doesn’t need a bit of fun right now?
Love, Always,
Marlene
AKA
Princess Gwen!
Howdy Friends!
No, I’m not referring to Christmas, I’m referring to the Peripatetic Season!
I’d like to start off this over-due post by talking about how amazing performing in A Lord of A Ring In A Suitcase was. Performing with the Peripatetic Players is always a delight. Being able to create fantastic stories, create meaningful relationships, and create joy FOR YOU is one of the things I’m most proud of.
Dimond Park, Oakland, 2019
A particular moment in A Lord of a Ring that brought me joy was actually towards the end of the show. [SPOILER ALERT?!] At the end of The Fellowship of the Ring, Frodo decides that it is better for him to journey to Mordor alone. His best friend, Samwise Gamgee notices Frodo is leaving alone and follows him:
FRODO picks up an oar and starts rowing. SAMWISE sees him and calls out.
SAMWISE: Mister Frodo, no! Not without me!
FRODO: Sam, you can’t swim! Not across the river of the audience!
SAMWISE: It doesn’t matter — you’re my friend, and that’s all that matters!
“Not alone, Mister Frodo!”
The line, “You’re my friend, and that’s all that matters!” always struck me in my heart, and I was constantly reminded how special it was to be performing in this play, with this group of performers, and for the audience that took time out of their day to see this show.
Thank you!
And now, we are getting ready to do it all over again!
We’ve started developing our 2020 summer tour, and while we waiting just a bit longer to make our official announcement, I can tell you that you will have an Extended Amount of Fun (perhaps TWO TIMES?!) this summer!
Cookin’ stuff up for our #summertour !
On Sunday, April 5th we will be hosting our annual Particularly Obstinate Obstacle Course FUNdraiser! Last year was tons of fun — please check out the link above and stay tuned for more details!
Sending you all lots of love,
Marlene
AKA
Princess Gwen
and also, AKA
Frodo Baggins, Arwen, and Galadriel
Ahoy there, readers!
We’ve been busy these past few weeks brewing up a fantastic show for you all, and we can’t wait to share it with you!
Here are some exclusive behind-the-scenes pictures of Shiver We Timbers!
We look forward to seein’ ye on the high seas soon!
The Peripatetic Players 