Man, what a full year it’s been so far, my friends. So much Riverona and building my relationship with people and growing my career and reading not nearly enough books. And now suddenly it’s been 6 months since I wrote here and I have the most intense imposter syndrome known to man. I wrote that really fun post about my 50 favorite things and then bounced, you know? I feel like I don’t even know where to start and that’s part of why I haven’t been writing at all. The less you start, the less you start, you know? 

So I’m just starting!

What I thought might be cool on Theatre Thursdays this year is to write about all the different things that I’m doing in theatre, week-by-week. Of course, I’ll still write about shows that I see when the mood strikes me, but a documentation of the actual things I’m doing in close to real time feels good to me. 

Why the Change?

Good question, self! (And by extension, you, gentle reader. I’m sure.) A few reasons for the change.

1. Recently I’ve been looking for blogs and vlogs and podcasts about the day-to-day reality of making theatre and art. I’ve stumbled backwards into a few blogs that have documented the process of creating a production and I think that’s really cool. I love hearing about other artists’ thought and decision-making processes. So I should create the thing I want to find in the world!
2. Full Circle Theatre is actually producing a full season for 2024-2025. (Well, a full season for us. We’re a little indie company.) That means that I’ll have a lot of organic inspiration for things to write about, rather than just trying to pull post ideas out of the ether. 
3. I always enjoy blogging more when I’m a little bit more personal while I write. A little bit more real, as it were. Not a diary or anything like that, I’ll still be professional, but I like to throw myself in there.

So all in all, this seems like a solid plan to navigate through the Sunday scaries when it comes back to writing. Maybe a way to make my blog a bit more of a priority, perhaps?

Excellent sweeping declaration. Now what are you going to write about first?

Ha! Did you really think I wouldn’t have a plan coming back into this? I feed on plans, my friend. This blog is called A Flimsy Plan, after all. (I just don’t always follow through on them. Or they’re flimsy. Don’t worry about it.) I even revealed what I was going to write about up above…

Full Circle Theatre has announced our new season!

Like, we literally dropped the reel on Instagram yesterday. This is hot news!

Actually, we did give a sneak peek announcement of the upcoming season during our first week of Riverona and I’ve not been good at keeping it quiet, so some people knew, but still. It was a big moment! The reel is performing pretty well, which is all you can really ask for, as we try to grow our audience on social media, and people seem excited about the season. Which, for those of you who haven’t seen it, it is:

May-Apr 2025: Porcelain Dolls (a FCT classic, first developed in 2016-17, which we will be rewriting for this year)

Jun 2025: Much Ado About Nothing (a Shakespeare classic, one of his most popular)

Why did you pick these shows for your first new season?

Great question! 

Like everything FCT does, we decided by committee. Claire and I always make the final decisions, but we take in a lot of input from our collaborators, current cast members, audience, board, and friends. Our philosophy is that one of the reasons we tell stories is to entertain, so we should consider telling stories that people want to hear. 

Our mandate has always been to do brand-new works (aka shows created under the FCT umbrella) paired with classical works (aka public domain, foundational plays). When we came back after Riverona, we had no interest in changing that. But we had a few logistical things to consider.

1. We are burnt out after Riverona. We needed to take the summer to relax, have fun, and pursue other passions. So it likely wasn’t practical to create a new play completely from scratch in the second half of 2024. Our brains needed some time to reset.
2. One of our top shows that we wanted to do was Twelfth Night. We actually have the perfect Sebastian/Viola twin actors in our sphere. But in April, The Shakespeare Company announced that they would be doing Twelfth Night this fall, and to do the same show as a professional company in the same season is just inviting comparisons. So if we could avoid doing that, we would. Back to the drawing board!

There was very little drawing on the board. 

Porcelain Dolls was our biggest hit to date the year that we originally produced it and it still has a lot of components that still work. (Home tacos, anyone?) It counts as a FCT original creation and, most importantly, it would give our core team a bit of a break after two years of writing without breaks. In the future, we plan to write a new work in the fall of each season, but not this year. 

Much Ado was another show on our short list and is a Shakespearean banger. It’s like bringing Bugles to a party – everyone is going to want to be your friend. Since we are still newly re-emerged, still rebuilding our audience and performer base, we wanted to do a show that will bring people in. If you want to attract a good director, designer, actors, and audience, you do a show they love. I mean, you have to pair it with a good production, buuuut… Local theatre company, Untold Stories, has figured this formula out all too well and has truly exploded onto the scene over the past three seasons. (They also mastered the art of co-pros early on, which we haven’t yet, but that’s a conversation for a different day.)

Anyway. That’s our new season and how we announced it and why we picked it.

And I wrote a post. What a good day.

What do you think about our new season?