“Wake up, Alice dear! Why, what a long sleep you’ve had.”
Our Substack is stirring from its slumber as “Beyond the Looking Glass,” a new monthly donor-exclusive blog that gives you all a deeper look into everything we are up to at Shaking the Tree. Expect to find artist interviews, dramaturgical notes, sneak peeks, community shoutouts, and whatever else we feel might be cool for you to know about. Through this project, we want to deepen the connection between our art and our audiences, and express our gratitude to you, our friends and fans, who help make all of it possible!
As we get closer to mainstage shows, we’ll be sharing behind-the-scenes secrets about our creation processes, from concepts to designs to rehearsals. (Like did you know Sammy wore two different shoes at rehearsals to alter her gait for The Glass Menagerie?) In the meantime, we’ll highlight some of the recent goings-on around here.
Earlier this month, we hosted Little Red’s Big & Bountiful Summer Bazaar, the latest in a series of seasonal markets we’ve been hosting as an extension of our in-house store, Little Red’s Curiosity Shop. You might be wondering why a theatre company is doing such a thing. Sam has said in the past that if she wasn’t in theatre, her dream job would be as a shopkeeper of her own boutique of oddities.
But this is more than a passion project! StT has always been interested in fostering interdisciplinary dialogue between the arts. The store and markets have been a way for us to uplift and connect with local makers, bakers, poets, painters, tattooers, apothecaries, tarot card readers, dogs, and generally interesting individuals in our extended creative community.
Speaking of interdisciplinary dialogue, we hosted two artists through our Open Space Residency this past month: Sophia Tweed Ahmad and Yumiko Noriyuki. Sophia created and performed an original piece, Of Feather & Bone, weaving together her interests in dance, martial arts, music, and costume design into a personal mythology, while Yumiko filled our gallery space with photographs and physical ephemera that tell a visual story of heritage and history. Here are some words of reflection from each of our residents:
Sophia Tweed Ahmad
✤ Did you learn anything new about yourself or your work through this residency?
“I learned that I want to learn Urdu, my father’s first language, which I’ve been trying to learn on and off. But it just reignited my desire to learn Urdu.”
✤ Five words that resonate with your work?
“Water, spirals, timebending, ancestry, offerings, rituals.”
✤ Anything you’d like to share about the history/future of this project? Is this one of several iterations, or a standalone piece?
“I think I would like to continue to develop the song from this piece. I also did physical theatre in this piece, which I haven’t done before, and wrote a narrative to it, which is also something new. So I’m excited to continue to use those tools in my work, whether it’s developing this more or in future works.”
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Yumiko Noriyuki
✤ Did you learn anything new about yourself or your work through this residency?
“I learned a lot! I knew that my family approved of me as an artist, however this residency helped me FEEL that approval and the encouragement to keep moving forward. I learned that I’m capable of putting together something like this and that this is just the first of many.”
✤ Five words that resonate with your work?
“Remembering, honoring, grief, community, passing it forward, sharing.”
✤ Anything you’d like to share about the history/future of this project? Is this one of several iterations, or a standalone piece?
“All of the furniture and clothes hung in the exhibit were mine, my ancestors’ or my friends’. The suitcase selling the books was the suitcase my grandmother took to internment. The baseball pants are from the camps. It’s all very collaborative and intentional!”
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Our residency program, which was originally conceived of pre-pandemic and reemerged in 2024, has been an opportunity for us to foster emerging local artists in both performing and visual arts across creative mediums. We believe that the future of keeping theatre innovative and alive involves dissolving the walls between art forms, expanding and reshaping conventions through the intermingling of practices, perspectives, and people. We are so grateful for the ways in which our community has grown and changed through these artists.
Now, a development that you may or may not have noticed, a subtle transformation that could have slipped under your nose: with the help of your donations and some generous grant funding, we have finally been able to touch up the paintjob of our warehouse, and thanks to our painter Harry, we got a matching door to our office and lobby. Take a closer look: that’s not “Blessed Blue,” that’s “Aquarium,” baby! (Sam would also like you all to know that the old black accent color was “Dark River,” and the new one is “Black of Night,” spoken in an ominous tone.)
Also, we are going to have new signs! Though we love our old logo so much, we decided it was finally time for something new. We ditched the classic comedy and tragedy masks for a sleeker, more modern look. The font on our new logo was created from scratch by our talented graphic designer, Em Craig, with feedback from Sophie Van Der Merwe, another accomplished graphic designer and Sam’s daughter. Here are some mockups of what the new signage will look like:
On the topic of graphic design, we’d like to give a shoutout to the artist who has been doing our show posters recently, Em. Check out her latest work, the poster for our next mainstage production, Caryl Churchill’s Glass. Kill. Bluebeard. Imp.:
We’ll be doing a deeper dive into Em’s work and Glass. Kill. Bluebeard. Imp. in our next blog post. Until then, thank you for your continued love and support!
Peace,
Kai
I am so happy to have a behind-the-tree look at what's shaking! I haven't dipped into your substack before so yay for the grand re-opening announcement. It's been a wild summer and I have missed your first visiting artists of the summer but I am one of your biggest fans so I'll be ambling in soon soon. xxoojojo
I remember “Escaped Alone,” how it was all conversation, the dialogue relentless and exacting. The women had to interact as if they were walking a tightrope. It was an amazing production. They all are.