Original corridos, photos from Steinbeck Project road trips and workshop, and much more to come...

The Steinbeck Project is all kinds of active again. Last week, Cal Shakes Artistic Director Jonathan Moscone, Word for Word Co-Artistic Directors Susan Harloe and JoAnne Winter, Cal Shakes Associate Artistic Director (and New Works/New Communities honcho), and myself drove down to Salinas for a trio of Community Conversations. You can see a few pictures of those--at Hartnell College, Breadbox Recreation Center, and the Steinbeck Center--on our Flickr page, and there will be video, blog entries, and more to come on the subject.

Same goes for the third Steinbeck Project/Pastures of Heaven workshop, which took place this Saturday through today with members of both companies, here in the Cal Shakes rehearsal hall. So far, playwright Octavio Solis has adapted four of the novel's stories: one about a cursed farm (featuring my favorite line from the book); another about the stoic widow of a huntsman and her increasingly unhinged young daughter; the heartbreaking tale of the phony-baloney capitalist Shark Wicks; and the novel's epilogue, wherein a busload of tourists view the Pastures of Heaven some two decades after the book's main stories have unfolded.

I shot video of three thirty-minute sections of the workshop rehearsal and performance (including a surprise performance of one of the other stores as a corrido, sung by Solis himself) and will be editing that video in the coming weeks. And there will be blog accounts to come! But in the interim, here are a few pictures from yesterday, shot by Jay Yamada.















Pictured at top: In rehearsal (left to right), Ron Campbell, Patricia Silver Stephanie Hunt, Joan Mankin, Julie Eccles, Daniel Duque-Estrada, JoAnne Winter, and Sarah Nealis.
In rehearsal (left to right), Joan Mankin, Julie Eccles, Ron Campbell, Daniel Duque-Estrada, Catherine Castellanos, Sarah Nealis, Susan Harloe, JoAnne Winter, Amy Kossow, and Jonathan Moscone.

Middle photo: Playwright Octavio Solis talks to Cal Shakes Associate Artist Joan Mankin.

Bottom photo: In rehearsal (left to right), Ron Campbell, Patricia Silver Stephanie Hunt, Joan Mankin, Julie Eccles, Daniel Duque-Estrada, JoAnne Winter, and Sarah Nealis.