The Rehearsal, The Performance

We had one rehearsal for the live performance of "Voices of the Homeless."  It happened one week before the event.  This is when I saw that the storytellers were going to have trouble on a microphone.  Most of them did not know how to speak on one.  And how would they know?  Their focus was on finding shelter, not presenting themselves to an audience.  I have no idea how that piece of reality escaped me but it did.  I wondered where I had put my brain and if the audience was going to be able to understand any of the words they said.

But we had made it through other setbacks.  One of the biggest set backs since believing I had lost my venue was that my partner Todd lost his job.  About two months before the event Project Understanding had a changing of the guard.  The old executive director went out and a new guy came in.  With the new guy came a new agenda and out went Todd's position and Todd's job.  It is not that Project Understanding did not appreciate this event, but in the real sense of partnership, I did not get it from the organization.  I got it from Todd.  Yet with incredible grace and style, while he was worried sick about his own income, he continued to help me put the event together.  I will never forget him for that.

And then came the big day.  August 21, 2010 at 2:00 p.m. in the outside performance space in front of the Theater Gallery.  I think everybody was very excited.  I know I was.  We had some hits and we had some misses but I was incredibly proud of every single storyteller.  And I was so grateful for the musicians and how they played.

But I won't talk about the performance.  Here is the link to my website where, at the bottom of the page, are all the YouTube videos of that day.  You can decide how we did for yourself.

http://tonijannotta.com/grant2010.html

Now to put it all together into a meaningful documentary . . .