GVPTA: Greater Vancouver Professional Theatre Alliance

~ 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.

~ Carmel Amit

How do you get the audience closer to the world of the play? Simple. Seat them right in the midst of the action and let the players play around them. In Electric Company Theatre’s All The Way Home they did just that and the outcome was illuminating.

I enter the theatre from the stage door and walk directly onto the stage. The set is arranged in the middle and I am directed to take a seat anywhere I’d like where a program is placed. I make my way towards the parents’ bedroom and perch myself beside the babies bassinet. I am tempted to try out their bed and peek through their belongings. I don’t. I give the bassinet a little push and watch it rock to and fro. Beautiful!

The play begins and I immediately fall into the story and the characters. The performances are superb.

I am so near the action that I become shy at looking so closely. They young boy changing in the privacy of his bedroom forces me look away. I can see the mother’s soft feet peeking under her nightgown. She is seated on her bed and arranging her hair for sleep. It is all very intimate.

All The Way Home was written by Ted Mosel and won him a Pulitzer Prize in 1961. It is a touching story adapted from James Agee’s autobiographical novel A Death in the Family. It tells the story of the spiritual transformation and growth of one family in dealing with the accidental death of the father.

Near the end of the play when spiritual transformation is taking hold and catharsis is setting in, the curtain begins to rise. Slowly it creeps up to reveal the 2929 velvety red seats of the Queen Elizabeth Theatre. They are empty and it is dark. My focus is shattered and I realize how much a part of this play I have become in the last two and a half hours.

By placing me inside the playing area, director Kim Collier has placed me inside the play itself. I wonder about the other audience members and feel a connection to them greater than I have experienced in the past. They are part of the play, intertwined with in the scenes and the action. I can see their reactions and feel their emotional involvement throughout.

I am a fly on the wall peering in at a family’s most private moments and everything becomes real. Then later with the curtain rises to reveal the empty seats things become surreal.

There was no one in the audience so to speak, yet the play went on behind the curtain. An eerie feeling swept over me.

In Electric Company fashion, conventions of theatre have been challenged while a strong sense of story has been preserved if not magnified.

~ Robyn Williams-Dann

1. I began this evening by going to a sushi restaurant in Gastown I had never been to before.
2. While at the restaurant I broke out in the 2nd worse case of hives I have ever experienced.
3. I’m vegan (which means I don’t eat fish).

I’m guessing your perception of events was jolted slightly when you read fact #3….and that, it seems (jolted perception) was the theme for this evening.

The TCP Show is the subject for my first blog post as a new resident blogger for the GVPTA and as I entered the theater I was super excited. And nervous! Nervous not just because this will be my first attempt at semi-professional writing, and excited not just because it was being staged in one of my favorite theaters in the city (The Firehall, which is not just one of my favorite theaters because of how great the outside bar is, in summer..alas) but because it was dance. As much as I am intrigued by dance and never miss an episode of So You Think You Can Dance (US, not Canada, sorry!) I just never make an effort really to see dance and always choose plays or galleries as my participation in the arts. So, I was excited that I would get to see something I likely would not have chosen to see, and nervous because the reason I never go see dance? I usually just don’t get it, and I feel like I should.

One of the reasons I watch SYTYCD is the choreographer tells you what he or she was going for but in real life, as the performers start to swirl or stomp around the stage I start to feel like I’m an artistic dolt and everyone else but me is in on the story and getting something from the movement and the sound, really getting something. Ya dig? Well, the TCP Show was no exception, I felt like I didn’t get it, BUT, I had a breakthrough moment and I’ll likely see much more dance in the future.

The show opened with “Las Tres Marias” and while, I in no way got close to understanding what the heck was happening on stage, I was at the edge of my seat, absorbed by every moment. Between wild movement that verged on breakdance, spoken word (mostly in Spanish), spontaneous outbursts of Yiddish, Gospel worship, and show tunes (no wait, not just any show tune, A Whole New World from the Aladdin Soundtrack) I didn’t have time to sit in the dark and bemoan my ineptitude for this form of the arts, I was simply amused. It was the David Lynch of dance and it was FUN! And really funny!

Several times throughout the 18 minute performance the 3 dancers had the audience cracking up at jokes that seemed to have no beginning and no end, just a silly middle that you had to laugh at. When the lights went off my exclamation was “Whoa” while my boyfriend Jason’s was “What the hell?” but both of us had silly grins on our faces.

During the intermission Jason asked Heather Lindsay (a friend, as well as a performer, producer, creative developer for Monster Theater and the narrator for the 2nd piece in The TCP Show) if she, as a dancer and performer understood what Las Tres Marias was about. She said she had, and that she had loved it, and she seemed pretty relaxed about the whole thing. Hmmm.

After intermission we took our seats for the 2nd piece, “Adhere” and this time I decided to channel Heather’s vibe and just let it happen. What I participated in was a mashup of memories and movement, spoken word and plastic boxes. The same three ladies as in the previous piece took over the stage and through sound (music, monologue, and prerecorded narration/poetry) and dance (both inside and outside one of three plastic human sized boxes) shared with us their memories and their feelings of isolation. Or at least that’s what I’m taking away.

I’ll probably never know exactly what the choreographer (or writer as she is credited with in the program, Samantha Mehra) was thinking when she wrote this piece or what she was feeling as she asked each dancer to move this way or that. I’ll probably never know what the dancers felt or conjured as they took the music and the words and the direction and made them real on stage. What I do know is how I felt as I watched this show and it was real emotion, real sadness, at how alone, isolated and separate people can feel, even when surrounded by others or experiencing the same events others are.

As the lights came up Jason expressed again, that he didn’t really get what the message was. I shared with him my new sense that that was ok, that the point of any piece of art is to tell a story but to let the audience interpret. Sometimes the story is clear and you either agree or disagree with points made. Sometimes there are three incredibly talented women on stage, showcasing their skills and talent, expressing a feeling more than anything else….and then it’s up to you to tell the story.

————-

Robyn Williams Dann is a Fringe volunteer, a theater groupie, an avid supporter of the arts, and a devoted audience member. She loves seeing all kinds of theatre, from the big splashy productions to the smaller independent works. Robyn uses her time spent with arts community to take her away from the day in and day out, and into another world. Her second love is writing and so she is thrilled to work with the GVPTA as a member of the resident blogger team. Robyn isn’t a reviewer, but she does like to delve into the shows she sees and discuss them with others. She invites you to comment on her posts, to keep the dialog active, after the curtain falls.