My friends at the PAC dominate this play like the Seahawks dominated the Broncos. From start to finish, Dan Hodge brought the stakes, and the cast drove the arguments home from start to finish. A play with little to no set, staged in the round, and delivered with such precision, such power in the language is such a beautiful thing to watch. Each actor on stage commanded attention and gave each word, each moment its full potential. It was great to watch an ensemble of players work their way through this powerful story. It was doubly great to see someone who has helped me in my career, Krista Apple-Hodge bring this script to life with her amazing performance as Queen ELizabeth. To see the lessons Dan and Krista shared with me in their workshop about classical text in practice by the teachers was like taking a good deep breath after a cannonball. Equally chilling, was that in just a few months I will be working with many of these great actors such as Brian McCann and John Loepes in Hedgerow Theatre's production of Hamlet directed by Dan Hodge. Excited much? Not too much, a much too much. 

So while the day to day activities of Hedgerow life keep me in Rose Valley and Media, Pa, I have begun to use my free time wisely and embark on adventures...so to speak. This time the mark was New York, and the purpose was something I have been dying to see for years: Punchdrunk's Sleep No More. Oh. My. God. Sleep No More is everything great and powerful about theatre. The environment seduces you almost immediately. The audience is swallowed by the show. The actors pull you into their story, and you have no idea where its heading. Yes, we know it's Macbeth, but every moment, every detail is riddled with mysteries. You are the camera. You can follow any storyline you wish, and you can shift at will. Sleep No More allows us to lose ourselves in a nightmare. From the bar to the banquet scene, this show ignites in me everything I love about live performance. The story was incredible (after all it is Shakespeare), the actors were intense, the moments were dripping with stakes.  It is shows like this that refill the tank and remind me of why I am in love with live performances.