Dear folks,
This is a request from Terry's partner, Donna, for you to let her know if you can help her with a documentary project she's working on -- "Rewired," a documentary about Terry with a focus on her life before and after her cochlear implants.
If you read her notes below, it's clear that she's looking for lots of different kinds of materials that could flesh out her project. (Her first note is to me about the mailing list, and I include it in case she mentions anything there that isn't mentioned in her longer note, also appended here.)
If you can help her, you need to drop her a note directly (rather than on the weeklong-l list or on the Winedale-l list) so that she can gather and use your individual email address -- for unnecessary-to-explain reasons she can't use this mailing list (or anyone's) to make this project work.
Please read this through to the end, and drop Donna a note if you can help. She's reachable at mickeefaustfilms@gmail.com or at dmnudd@gmail.com.
--Mike
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Donna Marie Nudd dmnudd@gmail.com Date: Wed, Jun 23, 2010 at 2:54 PM Subject: Rewired Documentary and Winedale Access Issues To: mnemonic@gmail.com
Mike,
We're making a documentary about Terry and are going to be interviewing Winedale folks the weekend of August 13-15. I want to be able to invite all the folks who are performing (i.e. the weeklong group) as well as invite all Winedale alumni who may be in attendance that weekend.
I know you are the god of the winedale list serves. The email I want to send is posted below. Because the documentary is a 1-2 year venture, we are setting up MailChimp for various groups so people can opt to be notified intermittently of the film's progress. Understandably, we want Winedale to be one of those groups.
In looking over MailChimp's rules, it notes we can't send emails to listserves. So I'm hoping you can help us by providing an updated email address list for both Weeklong Winedale as well Winedale Alums.
If you have any questions or concerns, please let me know.
Donna dmnudd@gmail.com
DRAFT
Dear Winedale Weeklong Folks,
Many of you know me, but for the few who don’t, I’m Terry’s life-long partner (actually “wife” since we got married in San Francisco two years ago.)
I have a favor to ask of the Winedale Weeklong folks. But first, I need to contextualize my request. For years, I've been wanting to work on a documentary about Terry but didn’t quite have the overall production concept. When she decided to have the cochlear implant, it seemed like such a life-altering event would be just the ticket. So late spring, we assembled a production team and started in earnest. The working title of the documentary is *Rewired*.
*Rewired* focuses on Terry's life before and after the cochlear implant. In particular, we want to look at the ways that Terry participated in, created, or recreated various performing communities-- Winedale, Esthers, and Actual Lives in Austin, as well as ones in NYC and Florida. For Terry, those communities became a kind of survival tactic --to create art, to reduce the loneliness of being deaf, to seem more independent (because isn’t *everyone* inter-dependent in theatre?)
We have probably 20 hours of high definition video already shot, including pre-cochlear and post-cochlear interviews with Terry, her pre-op and post-op appointments with the surgeons at Shands, an interview with Terry at hospital right after the left bundle branch block snafu, and the first turning on of the cochlear implant with the audiologists.
One of the filmmakers in Tallahassee that we are working with, Diane Wilkins, also has extensive video coverage of Terry's one person shows, our early Mickee Faust cabarets, Terry reading her memoir etc. So lots of "B roll" is already shot. Our Tallahassee-based filmmaking team has worked together for a decade and our comic video shorts have been shown in hundreds of queer-themed or disability-themed festivals. So once this feature length documentary is finished, we have a solid sense of where it can be showcased nationally and internationally.
I wrote to Jim Ayres about a month ago to apprize him of the documentary. Doc is on board with the request that follows.
I'm writing to this list serve today because we just can't have a documentary about Terry without the Winedale community in it, since *Shakespeare at Winedale* played such a pivotal part Terry's artistic development and sensibility.
To that end, I will be coming to Winedale with my film crew on August 13-15.
Since Doc has commissioned Trey to videotape the reunion rehearsals, production and interviews, our crew will do very little (if any) taping of Friday rehearsal and the Saturday show.
Instead, our primary operation will take place over the course of two days – in the hours after the show on Saturday, and Sunday morning prior to, during, and after the brunch. We will be setting up a small room at Winedale where we will interview all of you who want to be interviewed about Terry and *Shakespeare at Winedale*.
Right now, I just have three questions for folks on this list serve. And I’m asking you to respond to me privately, so as to not clog up the weeklong list serve.
1) Would you like to be interviewed at Winedale for possible inclusion in * Rewired*?
2) Do you have any archival material that you be willing to loan us? I’m thinking here of Winedale photos, posters, and/or videotape with Terry in them. Videotape can be in almost any format - Betacam, ¾-inch, Hi-8, VHS, DV. If you are willing to loan us archival materials we would duplicate them and return them safely to you within two weeks of receipt.
If you answer “yes” to any of the questions above, please contact me at mickeefaustfilms@gmail.com and I’ll be getting back to you personally with more information.
Thanks for your help! I’ve been in the audience of all of the past reunions and I can’t wait to be there yet again.
Donna mickeefaustfilms@gmail.com
Donna Marie Nudd Professor, School of Communication, Florida State University Executive Director, Mickee Faust Academy for the REALLY Dramatic Arts
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