Welcome everyone to the first official blog post of the Pepperdine Scotland 2026 season!!! Tech week has now come and gone, and it for sure helped prepare us for the fast paced nature of this program! We began our work on Monday June 22nd building and creating the world of our play Lifelong which we will be taking to the fringe festival very soon! Written by the incredible Lynda Radley, Lifelong explores the dangers of trying to control life, especially when fear of illness, ageing, and death begins to shape every decision.
Going into this process, it started in a way that already felt completely different from anything we’ve ever previously experienced before. A smaller group of us arrived a full week early, jumping into tech before our full company was present. A usual tech week is a kind of final intense push at the end of rehearsals but instead this had a feel of building our team’s foundation and bringing life into the story before the rest of the show could even arrive. It was a bit of a strange feeling to get used to at first, definitely more quiet than we are used to, but overall an overwhelm of excitement to be part of something that felt so new and completely entrusting.
One key word that comes to mind in this experience has been collaboration. A personal connection of mine to this theme would be the work I’ve got to be a part of working as the assistant director alongside our wonderful director Hollace Starr. Since the very beginning of the script work back in our spring break workshop, Hollace has kept me by her side and allowed me to be a very close part of the directing process. I have always felt inspired by how open and inventive the spaces feel in our creative building of this play. I believe that it’s important to have this kind of environment to make it easier to take fun risks and dive deep into exploring the material rather than just trying to “get it right” immediately. It truly feels like everyone gets to build the script, show, characters, etc. together rather than just following a fixed plan.
Because of this feeling of collaboration, the week easily became more than just work. With a smaller group, we naturally spent a lot of time together, and those smaller in-between moments started to matter just as much as the technical progress we were making. Our homemade dinners at the pool house were a part of our daily routine and something we all looked forward to after our long work days. We’d sit together, eat, decompress, and somehow always end up talking about Love Island, pretend bees, or whatever random funny topic came up that night. It was the simplest thing, and it created this sense of comfort and community that flowed into the work we were doing. With so many moving parts, communication mattered most, and Hollace and Paul were incredible in guiding the process while helping encourage all the wonderful ideas of the week.
My favorite part of the week had to be when the rest of the company arrived. The volume increased, the space felt fuller, and the air was immediately more alive. One of the most memorable moments, that I’m sure I will carry with me, was the big group dinner—everyone finally together in one place. After spending a week in a routine, it felt really special to bring everyone into that sense of community we had already started building. Sitting there, eating together as one big group, it genuinely felt like our family coming back together before taking on our big journey. That night carried straight into the next big feat, loading the buses and preparing to leave. There was this mix of excitement and anticipation as we packed everything up, knowing that all the work, both the early tech week and the months leading up to it, was coming with us. It felt like the true beginning of our story!
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