Jenny's Response to "Elephant's Graveyard."

OBSERVATIONS
1. It's interesting to me that the cuts, with the goal of "letting the air in," actually serve as a kind of COMPRESSION, tightening, making things move faster. I think it's a sign of how well you both did the compression that even though I've heard the script a few times, I didn't feel like I MISSED things from the old version, so much as I felt like the train was moving faster.
2. The play really started to BREATHE for me when we were doing the soundscape on Thursday. I think I have been having a hard time really feeling the theatricality you've been envisioning (even as I've been reading stage directions that would indicate it)...but creating that soundscape allowed me to get it into my bones a bit, and I think gave me a crisper vision of the whole piece. YAY.
3. I really felt the presence of more women in the script. In terms of "I like it when there are roles for women," I have an opinion. In terms of "how it does or doesn't serve the piece," I don't know that I have an opinion at this time, but I definitely was aware of a shift in...god, I'm so touchy-feely today...in air pressure? In I don't know what. But the change is felt.
4. I really tracked colors, I really tracked mud, I was paying a lot of attention to "where is the source of danger" at any given moment.

QUESTIONS
1. To what degree IS this an allegory for race? Is Peanut Man our key to the thing?
2. What is the purpose of the clowns when they are silent and doing things in the play?
3. Is there any more to know about the Young Townsperson, through a word, a line, or an action?
4. How much danger is there to the non-elephant members of the circus that night in the tent? And not to the members of the circus but to the "Circus" itself? I found myself wondering what would have happened if the Ringmaster hadn't sacrificed Mary...and I guess I didn't have a full sense of what those stakes would look like, if it matters. The ultimate "Hey Rube" incident? A mass lynching? The death of circus as we know it?

OPINIONS
1. There were a few lines that I did miss in this cutting. In Ballet Girl's first monologue, I missed "then AND ONLY then." I missed some of the clown's argument for circus justice.
2. I missed a little of the Preacher's Soul argument. I didn't miss ALL of that, and I feel like some of the things that you added for the preacher filled that gap, but I think that the preacher might still need a little bit of fleshing out IF you want to have him be one of our major characters/tentpoles. Before this version, he felt a little more choral to me, but in this last he stepped forward as more of a major player.
3. I am separating the characters into "camps" in my head. I think I have four. One is the Circus, one is the Railroad, one is the Town, and one is the Church. Maybe this is an observation. Maybe my opinion is that this seems okay, seems to be working.
4. I like the race speech at the end, where it was on Thursday. I think belongs late, not early, but not dead last either.
5. I want to track how peanuts work, and how props work, next time we go through.