GVPTA: Greater Vancouver Professional Theatre Alliance

~ Eleanor Stacey

It was mid-November, in my second week with the GVPTA, that I picked up PATA Board Member Sam Hull from the airport.  Sam and Sue Porter had been in touch about the possibility of Vancouver hosting a unified general audition process like the one that Portland Area Theatre Alliance (PATA) has held so successfully.  And in the last six years PATA had taken the process to an online format, having actors and casting directors enter all their information into an online system that is designed to create one-page profiles of actors all in the same format, making it easy for directors to find the information they want quickly and focus on the audition of that actor.

Sam and I stopped for sushi and a chat about the UGA process.  I was so pleased to listen to him – his confidence in PATA’s auditioning process, coupled with his experience coaching and working with actors had me quickly thinking in depth about what the Unified General Audition process could possibly do for our theatre community.

Sam related how it used to take 600 hours to get ready for the auditions when everything was on paper, but now with the online system, it’s accurate and efficient, and so the focus can be on making the audition days run smoothly and on ensuring that both the actors and directors get what they need from the process.  And it serves both groups so fairly: actors must pass a qualifying audition to ensure that they are ready to be a part of the general audition, so directors know that the actors they will be seeing will be people who are ready to work for them; and actors will receive feedback from a panel of casting professionals in the qualifying auditions so that they know what they need to work on to make their auditions stronger.  Sam offered examples of instances in which actors were using auditions pieces that were a bad fit, or in one case, a woman who insisted upon being accompanied by an accordion (and in fact, when the accordion was replaced by a pianist, she got callbacks).  The qualifying process ensures that actors are putting their best foot forward and casting directors are seeing what they are interested in seeing. Win win for everyone.

That afternoon, Sam presented an introduction to the Unified General Audition process to a number of representatives of Metro Vancouver theatre companies, as well as individual artists.  Eyes widened in the room as everyone started to realize how much promise there could be in implementing this sort of process here in Vancouver.  It has the potential to cut hours of administrative time for theatres, as well and offer a real savings to actors in transportation costs, time commitment, and in some cases, even lost wages from other jobs during auditioning days.  It also offers an exciting opportunity to grow community among actors and casting professionals, and nurture the intrinsic symbiotic relationship between them.

So, we’re doing it.  In fact, our qualifying auditions are now scheduled for February 16 & 17 (and if they fill up, we may schedule a second set of dates), and sign up will be open very soon.  We will also soon announce a workshop with Sam Hull to help actors make their auditions the best they can be.

The Unified General Auditions will be held in April, but you need to qualify to be a part of them.  Check out our page on the UGA on our website for more information, and watch our Member Updates on Monday for directions on how to sign up!

~ Celeste Insell (check out Celeste’s blog http://www.blazingstarchronicles.com)

I was racing towards having breakfast with the director of the show “Amarillo”– Jorge
Vargas. I was a bit late as the conversation between Kendra Fanconi (“The Only
Animal” theatre company – Vancouver) and Jorge Vargas (“Teatro Linea de Sombra”
theatre company – Mexico City) was in progress. I sat back to listen and I took notes
from time to time.
Jorge Vargas was asked about how the play “Amarillo” came together. He said he
started doing political theatre in the 1970′s, when he was at the Universidad de
Mexico. He was also moved by what had happened in Chile, with the collapse of the
Salvador Allende Gossens’ government in 1973. One of the first shows he did, entitled
“Histories in Jail” was the story of a writer whose book gets banned; and little by little
he loses his freedom in order to protect his book.

Somewhere, Jorge Vargas said he got “lost”. He stopped doing that kind of political
theatre. He lived in France for a while and he studied with Jerzy Grotowski (Polish
director and theatrical innovator); which led him down a path that was completely
wrong in terms of what he wanted to express in his work. It took him thirty years to get
back to where he started — back to a work like “Amarillo”.

The company’s method of working is to “create actions – not stories”. Vargas states:
“An actor who constructs, does not interpret- the actor is not trying to be dramatic”. In
other words, the work comes out of physical actions and how the actors interact with
the objects they bring into the process as they create the piece.

He used the example of how one of the actors took articles of clothing and with that
clothing he constructed bodies. In turn, this physical construction helped to create an
image of the dead. Jorge Vargas also does not like the term “improvise” because he
thinks that leads to “acting” rather than “discovering” things through construction.

When he and the cast were working on “Amarillo” they spent three months reading
and having conversations. They talked about the “kits” that migrants carry with them to
help them survive their journey: A back pack , running shoes, tuna, lemons, pain
killers, water and a loaf of bread. Men walk up to 80 kilometers a day carrying these
kits.

Jorge Vargas decided to use film in this performance piece in several different ways.
He used the “top shot” when filming some rehearsals to create a three-dimensional
world when it is projected on the screen; giving you the feeling of looking down on the
scene. This camera angle also creates the feeling that the actors are being watched
by “surveillance cameras” as the camera simultaneously records the live action on
stage. The scenes of trains and migrant workers riding on top of the cars, draws you
into the canvass on stage making you feel like you are part of the action. Images of old
1930′s movies during the depression flashed through my mind.

Later, the actors were told to bring in inexpensive objects to work with and that is when
the candles, water bottles and the sand became part of the rehearsal process. At first,
Vargas did not want to have the sand become part of the piece because he thought
the image was “too obvious”. However, the actors kept wanting to work with the sand
in many different ways, so eventually it had to stay in the piece. To me, the drawing of
the circles in the sand on stage, represented traveling in circles in the dessert, and
always returning back to the same place. To Jorge Vargas and the cast it also
represented the transient – the impermanence of life itself. In the end, we return to
sand and are blown away disappearing in the wind.

Another important part of the play was the vocal sound scape that was provided by
Jesus Cuevas. Jorge Vargas just happened to meet him in a small town when he was
auditioning some other actors. Jesus Cuevas, is an opera singer and the sound
scape he created, Vargas explained, was much like the songs of the black workers in
the Southern United States picking cotton. It is more like chanting. For me, listening to
this sound scape was like listening to the voices being carried in the wind.

I was also struck by the actions of the women (Alicia Laguna, Maria Luna and
Antigona Gonzales) — dancing, sitting in an intimate setting near the warm light of a
candle and meeting with a man (their lover, brother, a friend?). One woman plays
with the fire assuming dangerous positions — risking getting burnt– while knowing that
the man will leave her to scale the wall and cross that border, soon.

In the middle of the play the action was stopped to deliver “A Letter to the Audience.”
This letter was about the exploitation of land that was taking place on the sacred land
of “Burnt Hill”. Jorge Vargas goes on to explain that this location is where the
Canadian mining company “Silver Majestic Company” is conducting “open air
mining”; This mining is polluting the land and destroying the habitat of the White
Eagle, which is an endangered species.

The final sentence in the letter is ” it is not my problem” which the actor (Raul
Mendoza) delivers in english to the audience. Based on what Jorge Vargas said in
his conversation with Kendra Fanconi, I believe this sentence means that like in so
many countries, multi-national corporate greed and corruption helps to create a
situation where it is necessary to leave your native land and try to make a living
elsewhere.

The finale of the play leaves it up to us to decide what we must do to change this
situation. Jorge Vargas tells us that the work presents us with questions. We must find
the answers.

Thank you Jorge A. Vargas, Raul Mendoza, Alicia Laguna, Maria Luna, Antigona
Gonzales and Jesus Cuevas for bringing this amazing work to the PUSH Festival.

~ Damon Jang

I had a lot of different expectations when I went to the opening night of The Idiot at UBC.  The Dostoevsky novel on which the show is based is about 500 pages long. The show itself runs 3.5 hours and upon reading that I was worried that though it was a musical adaptation it was going to be a very dry script. But as with any good adaptation the adaptor has to take the best, most significant points of the overall story to best represent and stay true to the original author’s/playrites intent.  Right from the get go I was captivated by the work of the actors. What a unique blend of artists from Vancouver Moving Theatre, Neworld Theatre and intermediate UBC BFA actors.

What I loved was how dark and hauntingly beautiful the music and the timbre of the voices of the ensemble was, but I was pleasantly surprised at the humorous phrasing of wordplay and witting lyrics within the songs.

Another element that I loved was the amount of witty and modern comedy built into the adaptation. Some was work of the actors creating fresh interesting takes on these characters and some was the work of adaptor and director Jimmy Tait. Most of it was a symbiotic blend of the two. This is the second adapted show I have seen by Jimmy, The first being A Christmas Carol at the Playhouse a few years back) and again what captures me is the beauty of a simplistic set, having musicians act as functional characters in the story, and a lighting design that really put me into the mind of central character.

The PuSh Festival once again has not failed to push me to the limit of my own artistic mind.

~Trilby Jeeves

Last Saturday evening I went to witness the current VanArts (formerly the William Davis Centre) acting students’ presentation of their “rehearsal project” taught by Dave Mott and Daniel Martin. Since I had also taught this group, I wanted to support their first public appearance. The 10 students were guided through the play “The Hologram Theory” by Jessica Goldberg. The goal of this class is to teach the students how to rehearse effectively.

Effectively – just what is that?

After having been trained en Français in Quebec City, I emerged into the world of theatre en Anglais with some assumptions about how to put on a play, and explore characters. I was ill prepared for the uncomfortable methods I was obliged to do. Sound radical and extreme, and even exciting?

Nope.

“Here’s your script. Now let’s get up on our feet and start blocking.”

“What?” I was shocked. Get up on our feet before we had explored the script thoroughly? It didn’t make any sense to me, and I tried to express how I normally worked. My thoughts were quickly shunned and I begrudgingly joined the others to block the piece, script in hand. “Table work” seemed to be a luxury that they didn’t have time or, even the desire to do.
I learned that this was the more common way companies quickly got plays up and running given their time constraints.
Then I started directing. And, despite these time constraints, I knew that investing in a couple of days of table work (French companies will do a week!) would speed up my blocking process, and also deepen the character work for the actors. Each time I offer this opportunity, I am met with some relief, and some resistance. But, each time, the blocking occurs more naturally because objectives have been identified during the table work, and the actors’ bodies know where and when to move.

I believe if actors are blocked with script in hand, prior to collectively probing the story, chances are they will default to clichés and not make riskier or more authentic choices in their performances.

Chatting with Dave about their directing methods for these young students, I felt a wave of relief come over me as he described the physical exploration they do of each character (emblem work) to get the actors out of their heads, and the two days of table work before blocking. Their table work consists of breaking down the story into “beats” (mood changes), “objectives” (what a scene or character wants), and what the story is truly about.

“Table work….”

Magical words. Thank you Dave and Daniel, for embracing a method I seem to know solely en Francais. And, also, hats off to the students for embracing this difficult, dark, but compelling story, and breaking the ice of performing before a live audience.

Check Dave and Daniel’s theatre company Up In The Air Theatre, from which many festivals have grown.

~Frances Kitson

You know when you can tell that actors are having fun? It makes magic. The performers are having fun, the audience is having fun, and both know the other is having fun, which then adds to the whole thing by everyone relishing their knowledge of everyone else’s fun.

So it was with Gunmetal Blues at the Playhouse. Meghan Gardiner, Andrew Wheeler, and Tom Arntzen were clearly having a ball as they sent up the film noir genre with all its world-weariness, Chicago accents, and lines like “I heard the unmistakable sound of expensive shoes on cheap linoleum.”

I had a ball too, and it got me thinking about the reasons we do theatre. I’ve read a lot of dramatic theory in my time, and I know that many practitioners and academics over the years have given a lot of thought to why and how we create and present our work. This is good, and necessary. If we’re going to ask audiences to give us their time and money, we should be asking ourselves how we can best offer them something of merit.

But it’s a double-edged sword, because you can drive yourself crazy asking yourself too often. Is the work going deep enough? Is it challenging enough? Will people leave reliving the highlights, or will they be discussing where to go for drinks? Arrrrrgh – why can’t I just have fun?!

Now, having worked with children, I know that we are hard-wired for stories. We always want to know what happens next. Why this is, I don’t know. Maybe one of homo sapiens’ evolutionary advantages was the community-building that arose from gathering around the fire to listen to the tribe’s storyteller. Stories seem to be our way of making sense of the world, of teaching values, of passing on cultural norms.

They’re also the oldest form of entertainment. And so this is what I want to ask: what purpose do we serve when we just do theatre for fun? We have a need for entertainment, and I firmly believe in the need to laugh and enjoy ourselves. But what’s the difference between entertainment and mindless theatre? Can you have entertainment that is mindful? (Stephen Colbert would probably say yes.) What should be the audience’s response to each, and can you engineer that?

Well the answer is yes, but then it ceases to be theatre and becomes propaganda. That’s the problem. If you aren’t going to patronize or dictate to your audience, you’re going to have to take the very big risk of allowing them to come up with their own interpretation of what they’ve seen.

We need fun. Human beings actually need fun. Oh, you can live a long life without it, and we have an amazing capacity for survival that gets us through a lot. But fun reenergizes you, reinvigorates you, and refreshes you. One has renewed capacity for work after having fun. Without fun, you burn out, mentally and physically. You cease to be useful – a dreadful irony in a culture where striving for productivity results in things like working through lunch hour.

So I can probably relax a little. It’s okay to do theatre for fun, but here’s the crucial part: whether or not the audience has fun has to be more important than whether or not you have fun. (Unless you’re under the age of ten and are mounting a performance in the living room or your back yard, in which case the audience probably consists of your parents, who either think you’re marvelous and who have fun just by watching you have fun, or who really need to be cooking dinner right now but are carefully reminding themselves that these kinds of inconveniences are what they signed up for when they brought you into the world.) If you’re having fun at the expense of the audience’s interest, and they wind up bored or disinterested as you milk your death scene for all it’s worth, that’s when you’ve let them down. Doesn’t matter whether you’re being paid or not, whether you’re self-producing or hired by someone else – the audience comes first.

Because of course when the audience comes first, you actually get more bang for your buck. Why give up the chance to ride that amazing wave of energy that comes from a crowd of people watching you and following your every move with rapt attention? It’s why we do what we do!

And if you really, really need to get that over-the-top death scene out of your system? There’s always the mirror.

~ Frances Kitson

This past Tuesday night, I attended my very first ever theatrical gala: the PuSh Festival opening gala. I confess that as evening drew on, I didn’t really want to go, it being dark and cold and whatnot outside. The cosiness of my room was awfully appealing on that January night, but I knew that I’d enjoy myself once I was there, and so I ignored my whining, ruthlessly bundled myself into longjohns and a ski jacket, and tramped off into the night, tea-filled travel mug in hand.

I am glad I went, and I did have a good time – and I will get to the actual gala in a moment – but it brought up a topic for me: going out in the cold.

Now, I know that this is not the most exciting of topics. Dressing for the cold is not difficult. Even I, a Vancouverite, can do it. (I have, to my credit, survived four winters and one in Montreal, and so know what it is to have wind-induced tears freeze on my eyelashes and to feel as though my nasal cavities have frozen over in two seconds flat.) Canadians are meant to know how to do dress for winter, what with being residents of the Great White North’n’all. (We’ll carefully sidestep the fact that 90% of us live well below the 60^th parallel.) Longjohns, fleece, wool socks, toques (bobbles optional), mittens, felt-lined boots, snow pants, merino long underwear, glove liners, four metre long scarves – the equipment is there.

The problem arises when you want to go out into the cold and remain somehow stylish. Parkas are awesome temperature-wise, but they don’t do much for the figure. So what do you do? Do you dress for the inside of wherever you’re going, such as the club, and just suffer the wind whipping up inside your skirt and freezing your poor little exposed toes? (Gender-specific there, I realise.) Do you, as I have done, bundle yourself up warmly then take along your dancing outfit – including shoes – in a shoulder bag and mutter to yourself indignantly when the coat check forces you to fork over another three dollars for your coat, fleece vest, and sweater? Or do you – ha – wear sensible clothes to the club?

Discard that last one on the grounds of nonsensicalness.

If you’re going somewhere that doesn’t require physical exertion, it’s not that onerous. One can easily dress well and warmly for a fancy dinner out. But there is a crucial dilemma when you’re going out to a social event in which you will likely – hopefully – work up a sweat, because you don’t want to freeze on the way there, and you don’t want to faint on the dance floor.

Some of us, of course, have cars. That helps – you don’t have to spend quite so much time outside. But what of those of us on public transit? I have seen women clearly bound for the club on buses and SkyTrains, and some of them are exposing an awful lot of skin to the elements. Are they naturally warm-blooded? Are they relying on alcohol as a circulatory aid? Or is the cold worth it in the name of feeling hot?

(I’m actually not convinced that they do feel hot – a whole bunch of these gals with short hemlines and plunging necklines display an awkward body language which signals discomfort, making me really mad about the hypocritical mixed messages floating around that tell girls to flaunt it but to keep their legs together. But I think that’s another post.)

Plus I also suspect that there’s a whole male side to this that I don’t know about: gentlemen, do any of you feel social pressure to suffer through the cold? I know that there’s a derogatory term in German for non-alpha-male guys that means either “warm-bather” or “warm-showerer”, implying that real men wash in cold water and it’s unmanly to require comfort. I know I’ve seen guys going out without coats, and thinking to myself that they couldn’t possibly be warm.

Anyhow – what do y’all out there think?  What do you do? If anyone out there hates being uncomfortable as much as I do and yet manages to not feel like a dowd at social events, do let me know your strategy.

Now! On to the actual gala. (At which, I confess, I felt mildly dowdy, but it was worth it to be able to feel my toes.) It was super lovely. I was delighted to discover that even though I went alone, there were many folks I knew, giving me the feeling of being at a rather large house party. The music wasn’t too loud – and managed to be good and charming and hilarious, with Fang singing about hipsters playing sports and how children of divorce are better-looking.

My Official Favourite Moment of the evening was during e.s.l.’s set. They were doing a song whose name I completely forget, but may have been as simple as “The Princess and the Dragon”, which was a near-instrumental piece that was introduced as being performance art and based on a Polish legend. I think.

Anyhow, the music slowed down during the dramatically tense climax of the piece, and lo and behold, if there weren’t folks out on the dance floor – including my buds Lauren Kresowaty and Emily Kedar – who enacted the princess/dragon fight with their respective dance partners.

Theatre people. They’re nuts. I love ‘em. Go PuSh!

In her posting about The T.C.P. Show, Robin Williams-Dann cited Samantha Mehra was the choreographer.  Samantha wrote the text that was heard in the music of the piece and the choreographers were Vanessa Goodman and Jane Osborne of the Contingency Plan.

~ Robin Williams-Dann

The race was on!  Would Jason and I make it in time to see Dead Man’s Cell Phone, written by Sarah Ruhl and staged by The UFV Theater?  Yes, UFV as in University of the Fraser Valley.  For some of you the campus may be a quick hop, skip, and a jump, but for us West Enders, it was a road trip!  We barely made it, and I’m glad we did. 

Dead Man’s Cell Phone follows the quirky, twisty fate of Jean (Renee Reeve), a sweet and somewhat naive young woman who answers a dead man’s phone in a deserted café.  The play asks the age-old question: if you continue to answer the phones of the dead, are they ever really gone?  As it turns out, they’re not, and they kiss with their hair…but I don’t want to give too much away.  After the first time, Jean can’t let it go, she’s hooked on helping and as she continues to answer the phone she is thrown face first into Gordon’s (the deceased, played winningly by J.D Dueckman) crazy previous life.  Comforting the living and dodging the bullets of his former colleagues and lovers.  Did I mention he was a self absorbed, adultering, organ smuggler?

If you read my last blog post, The TCP Show, you know dance is not typically my thing.  Dark comedies however, are.  I am definitely a fan of the weird and surreal.  In fact when it comes to theater, sometimes I have to make a point to see Hello Dolly or Macbeth, but I never seem to have trouble finding my way into The Pillowman or Ride The Cyclone.  So, with an open mind, I was pretty sure I’d like this show for the writing (which I did), I was hoping I’d like the show for the performances (which I did) but I didn’t think twice about the sets, the set changes, or the costumes.

The first plot twist of the afternoon was just how much thought and what stellar execution went into the design!  I was expecting a run of the mill dark comedy and I got a lesson in art.  As we took our seats the first thing we noticed was the set design.  A giant diamond in the middle of the floor, painted in homage to artist Piet Mondrian, stood as the stage.  Two more Mondrian-esque diamonds hung over each front entrance.

If you don’t know what Mondrian-esque would look like (and you didn’t click the handy hyperlink in his name above) he’s the one who paints geometric squares, mainly in black and white, with some of the squares filled in with primary colors.  Can you picture it?  No?  Please click the link above. In every day life I have not appreciated Mondrians work, as they haven’t really conveyed any sort of a message to me, however, as set design it really worked.

In the program the director, Bruce Kirkley, noted that the scenes were to take place “somewhere around now, in a large metropolis, downtown and uptown”.  Each scene, be it Gordon’s mothers house, a church, an airport, or a void (Heaven? Hell?) were scarcely decorated and so these squares of color and lines, along with a brilliant use of light in patterns on the floor, really set the scene or at least the feeling of the scene, and lent to the vibe of a modern, isolated society.  It felt like I was watching paintings come to life.  Bruce Kirkley and the production team not only gave me a new appreciation of Mondrians work, they also took care with every element of the design and style of this show, the likes of which I have never really seen, and hugely appreciated.

The costumes, cleverly executed by Catrina Lewis, were not only inspired by the characters but according to the program meant to evoke the themes and color of film noir and Edward Hoppers painting “Early Sunday Morning”. Oh, and each set change, if only the removing of a chair and the placing of a table, was a choreographed piece of movement and in and of itself.  Wow.  You’d think that the show would have been over stylized, the design overshadowing the script, but it wasn’t and it didn’t. Instead it all gave the show a whole new layer that honestly, I didn’t expect from a University production and made me appreciate the experience much more than I would have.  In the future I may find myself walking into a modern art gallery as easily as I walk into a theater.

~  Eleanor Stacey

On September 22, 2011, my 26-year-old first cousin Nicole Stacey was one of two pilots killed when a Twin Otter float plane cartwheeled into a building in Yellowknife’s waterside neighbourhood of Old Town.  I remember that day returning to the office at around 3pm after a meeting, only to receive the following short email, sent to me and my three siblings, now nearly three hours old:

I just received a telephone call from your uncle Frank. Nicole was the co-pilot on a twin otter that crashed today in Yellowknife. It is pretty sure that she was killed, although the news is still just coming in now.  I will let you know as I hear more.  Dad

Shock.  Disbelief.  Fear.  And then I read it again.  “pretty sure” might mean that she’s ok.  She’s probably just fine.  We can hope that this first report is wrong.  It could be wrong.

Days later I was on a plane to Yellowknife for her funeral, but the time between that email and boarding the plane was a blur.  And it was a cycle of the same – more disbelief, sadness, fear, anger, contemplation, helplessness.  All big feelings, and while they were each acute as they rolled in, I couldn’t help but to also feel like they were also universally human, and that was somehow comforting.  I kept arriving at the same crossroads of not being able to think or plan a way out of this one; that the outcome was always the same.  Now almost four months later, I still think of Nicki every day – mostly in a moment of disbelief, usually after the involuntary thought of, “did that really happen?”  Full acceptance has not yet set in.  Perhaps it never will.  Over time the intensity of grief has settled a bit, but just the other day I happened to see the premiere of CBC’s new show, Arctic Air.  With the dedication to Trevor Jonasson and Nicole at the end of the episode, it all came back again.

Only once before have I experienced the intense feeling of wanting to leave in the middle of a play because of how it was making me feel, and it was The Pillowman – the horrors taking place on stage were too much for me, and I really had to work to come back after intermission.  During Electric Company’s All the Way Home it happened again, but this time because it came so close to home, even in the details: a split-moment death of a young person; a body virtually unscathed and the relative notion that it very nearly wouldn’t/shouldn’t have happened; losing a loved one as they were doing something they enjoyed, and the sense that somehow this fact should be a comfort now that they are gone.  I recognized the explicit questions surrounding how Jay (played by Jonathan Young) died, if he felt pain, if he had been at fault, and the surreal yet concrete answers that followed.  I could relate first-hand to the notion that he was still there somehow, and even the intensification of existing (and often dysfunctional) family relationships when everyone was brought together to grieve.  And the inevitable grief; the work ahead to realize the catharsis that only time can bring.

All The Way Home is such a tremendous example of how theatre meets life, and the theatrical nature of life itself.  I’ve thought about the show a lot since seeing it, and I keep coming back to the point of the human experience to be found in attending  and experiencing theatre.  I am struck by an interesting truth: as much as theatre makers and avid theatre-goers may try to put into words what they love about theatre, it just never really translates – it must be experienced first-hand, and so the onus falls on theatre makers to ensure that it happens when audiences experience live theatre, especially for the first time.  Of course, not every play is about tapping into deep emotional wells, but I wonder if any of the high school students in attendance when I experienced All the Way Home were seeing their first play.  I hope so.