Coming Soon: Your Participation.

Beginning two weeks from today, the Cal Shakes New Works/New Communities program will be asking for your help in our development of John Steinbeck's The Pastures of Heaven.

This play—which we've been developing in collaboration with award-winning playwright Octavio Solis and San Francisco's renowned Word for Word Performing Arts Company over the past two years as part of our Steinbeck Project—is now slotted to have its debut on the Cal Shakes Main Stage, kicking off our 2010 season.

But the script is not quite finished yet, and we have one more development workshop coming up in November. To further inform the development process, we'll be posting a series of three prompts on this blog, one every Monday starting October 19. The prompts will be crafted by playwright Solis, Pastures director (and Cal Shakes Artistic Director) Jonathan Moscone, Cal Shakes Director of Artistic Learning Trish Tillman, and Word for Word Co-Artistic Director JoAnne Winter. With each prompt, we'll be asking for your input, via prose, poetry, video, audio, and whatever else you'd like to leave in the "comments" section.

Curious? Check back in with us next Monday for a sneak preview of themes and topics. We can't wait to see what you'll bring to The Pastures of Heaven.

Pictured above: A rock formation in the Corral de Tierra area of Salinas; photo by Derek Smith.