At The Old Red Lion!

This isn't how I'm feeling at the moment- it's a production photo of the character Alex, from Suicide Brunette, by award-winning playwright, Gary Mitchell. We've opened Suicide Brunette, by Gary Mitchell and The Native, by Christopher Hanvey at The Old Red Lion and the run continues until Oct. 30th. Please join us if you're in the UK- they're exceptional pieces-

So, it's been an amazing month- and a wee bit busy!

Anything Goes finished fantastically well. Audiences enjoyed out production, I was delighted with how the cast did and we raised almost $2000.00 for the Red Cross as part of our pre-show improvisations.

I had to leave before the end of the run and the cast treated me to song, with special lyrics written by our Musical Director, David Hall, followed by a group hug (by 43 people!). I was a bit teary and very proud- and then dashed out the door to get on a plane to the UK.

Arriving on the Monday morning- I had the day to get into gear and meet the designer for the plays that we began rehearsing on Tues. Sept 27th. Gary Mitchell flew over from Northern Ireland- and we dove into both pieces.

Here's a photo of Christopher Hanvey playing Marshall, the young man pressured into killing a young, pregnant Sioux woman- with an unexpected outcome...


I've lots more to write about, but just wanted to get blogging after a busy few weeks... more very soon!

Tech Week on Anything Goes

Teching Anything Goes this week. It's been an excellent week so far...

We've had our Lighting sessions. We've had our sound session. We've had our mic checks and last night we finished our spacing rehearsals. I decided to use one of our Q to Q sessions to continue spacing work because...

Our set has four levels on it and a lot of stairs, so we've used two tech sessions (7.5 hours) to move from the flat rehearsal room floor to our cast of 43 dashing up and down and dancing on all the levels. We're also changing many of the entrances and exits, now that we have the depth and width of the Main stage. It's a joy to get on stage! And the height means that I can create some super images and see the students- I can also do some fun 'ambient work', creating the world of the boat-

Our set is looking super. It still has echoes of my original idea and also is a good set for a comedy that often verges on farce. My original idea I'll save for another time- it was a more conceptual approach... and the Directorial Decision to take a Conceptual Approach to a Classic American Musical Theatre piece is probably a whole other conversation!

Today is our Q to Q. We start at one p.m. and will finish at 11:30 p.m. Normally, in this type of tech, it would be three sessions, but as I said, I devoted a session to spacing, above and beyond our 3.5 hours for spacing...I'm going to get into work early to pick up other tasks to make the Q to Q go as smoothly as possible- and to connect with other projects that I'm working on later this season.

This technical process is the biggest that I've directed in Canada and it's always interesting to notice the differences as I move from one country to another...

Technical rehearsals vary depending on the country and genre of theatre that's being produced. In the UK I'm used to getting the actors in costumes from the beginning of the technical rehearsals so that all elements are dealt with at once. I look at the actors in their costumes, under the lights that have been plotted and we go through all technical elements together. In Canada it's often a more layered process: for the Q to Q today, the actors are in their own clothes, wearing mics and show shoes and we have show lighting conditions. I see the actors in costume, under lights on Sat. at the dress rehearsal. And then our invited dress rehearsal is on Sunday. One of the impacts of this difference is that the actors have less time to get used to their costumes on stage...For 'period work' and for unusual costumes, this can be a challenge. In the US, they often structure technical rehearsals in a different way... What I notice everywhere is that people tend to be used to what they know- and that's fascinating to observe as I go from place to place. What I've learned is that as a director, I need to be flexible and knowledgeable about the various approaches because quite often, it's the genre and the company that choose the way the technical rehearsals progress, not the director. The scheduling is done months in advance and the director generally joins the process later.

There are a many factors that go into creating the Tech Schedule. For example, there are several unions that converge in a large performance space and this has an impact on scheduling. Creating a Tech Schedule that meets everyone's needs can be formidable challenge, so I've learned that I just need to be organized, manage my time well, communicate with all the teams and Technical Director/Production Manager all the time, exercise my imagination when looking at the emerging production, keep looking at what's coming up next and always stay solution-oriented.

I'm really looking forward to our Q to Q. I'm not very good at saying that "I'm excited!" I tend to get excited when I've got through the work and it's all worked out! But I'm really looking forward to it working through all of the elements and getting our production in front of an audience. It's fantastic to see all of the work of so many creative and technical people coming together on stage. And the student actors are doing extremely well- (growing in confidence and skill every day!) and the lighting and set are looking lovely, so I'm sure that I will get excited- after the Q to Q and the tech. dress and the two dress rehearsals!

more soon...

SummerWorks and beyond

The past three weeks have sped by.

SummerWorks ended very well. We had a super audiences for our three performances- and I was extremely pleased with how the play gelled over the run. It was an immense pleasure to work with the company on this beast of a play! We were listed in the Best Ensemble Category of Now Magazine's 'wrap up' of the festival- a testament to the company's work. Thank you again to all the peeps who worked on, helped, supported, encouraged and attended our production- it meant and means an huge amount! (The picture above is of the Smackheaded Company in full-flight, photo by Scott Gorman. And here's Bryan and Emily in an earlier scene from the play- I'll be posting more production photos very soon...)



The last couple of weeks have been a swift change of pace from our re-investigation into poor theatre....

It's been 'a systems go' with Anything Goes. The day after our last performance of The Sad and Cautionary Tale of Smackheaded Peter I began the the 19 hours that I had allotted myself to do the blocking (or staging) of the piece. This would just be the 'first pass', but the only week when I had priority (the two weeks prior to that were focusing on music, the two weeks after 'my week' gave priority to choreography and tap dancing). Well, we did it! Normally I allow myself about 15- 20 mins/page on a 'first pass' blocking rehearsal. To get the work done in my 19 hours I worked at 8.5 mins/ page... and had 43 peeps in the room, most of the time. It was a wee bit intense...and I'm not sure that I'll ever do that again... (Thankfully I've arranged lots of small, 'non-priority' rehearsals that run concurrently with choreography rehearsals, so I've had a more traditional 15- 20 mins a page since then!)

We also had one, 'full Equity week' with the teens. This was a six-day week of rehearsing 10-6. On our last afternoon that week we had two treats: a pizza party and a stagger-through of the musical. (The staggering was not caused by the pizza- it was just that we were putting it all together for the first time- that's generally called a stagger-through...)

Now we're on a five day break so that the cast/production students can focus on getting back to school. When we start back I begin to move into production mode on Anything Goes. I'm very excited about getting onto the Main stage at The Grand!

Today though it's R and R. Reading and relaxing... Reading The Native and Suicide Brunette (the two plays I'm directing at the Old Red Lion in the UK in Oct. by excellent Northern Irish writers Gary Mitchell and Christopher Hanvey) and relaxing...I'm immensely grateful for a wee break- it's been a busy and brilliant ten weeks.

Two Different Beasts

It's getting late- and it's been quite a week.

Again, it's a wonderful problem- lots on my plate at present...

Two very different approaches for two very different productions.

The Sad and Cautionary Tale of Smackheaded Peter, very organic and it's evolving reaaallly well!

Anything Goes- In between listening to music calls and doing table work on the smaller scenes, I'm sat with drawings of the set and charts of the scene breakdown, cast, character lists, scenic elements and mapping out the entire show before I've started blocking it. I'll have less than 24 hours to do my 'first pass' on all the scenes... so I better have all my 'seagulls in a row'. There's a lot more infrastructure around Anything Goes- and that means a lot more paper!



Also, we had a couple of workshops to confirm our company acting vocabulary- The acting company on Anything Goes are delightful- young, keen and bright.

The Acting Company on our SummerWorks play are working very hard to be present in rehearsal- many of them are weary from rehearsing and working...

However! the light is visible at the end of the tunnel. We tech Smackheaded Peter this coming Tuesday! Yeeeee Haaaaa! I'm looking forward to that! and our first performance is on Friday evening at 10:30! Yeeeee Haaa! There are moments in rehearsal that are very exciting! and it's getting more beautiful and wolf-like every day...

okay- sleep needs to happen.

more later...

Tapping Teens- Day Two

That's the banner poster for Anything Goes at The Grand Theatre in London, Ontario.

Today was Day Two of rehearsals. We have 42 in the cast.

The Grand has a great tradition of mentoring, so twice a year they create productions with high school students from London and the surrounding area. In the spring it's a play, (this year I directed Macbeth, while I was here as Apprentice Artistic Director) and in the autumn it's musical on the Main Stage. This is it's the 1930's Cole Porter classic, Anything Goes.

There are students working on every area of the production, mentored by professionals at The Grand. This year we also have a student assistant director and assistant choreographer. The rehearsal process is about 3.5 weeks of rehearsal hours, spread out over 8 weeks. The students have a rigorous audition/interview process and then sign contracts to commit to the production.

I'm 'returning to my roots' on this one... I was, (believe it or not) a tapping teenager... Yes, that's right- I tapped. I was working professionally in musical theatre at tender age of 17. However, although I worked in musical theatre for a number of years, I have not directed a musical. When I started directing I focused on my passion for language and classical theatre.

So- back to the teens.

We started on Sunday with a meet and greet- then I dove into an acting workshop to introduce some vocabulary that we'll be using in rehearsal. That was followed by a session on vocal health and a vocal warm-up with Rick Kish, (our singing coach) and two hours of full company music rehearsals with our Musical Director, David Hall. The seven-hour day sped by!

This week rehearsal is mostly spent learning music, while I introduce text work on the scenes to the actors- we'll be doing basic 'table work', objectives/units/actions and I'm encouraging them to do this work at home, so that we then have a place to start the exploration in rehearsal. I'll have about 5 days to 'get the play on its feet'; it'll be speedy...

On Friday and Saturday I'm back in Toronto on The Sad and Cautionary Tale of Smackheaded Peter. I'm working on this in the evenings this week- producing, organizing, supporting. There's lots to do-

I'd still like to divide myself in half and it's still a lovely problem to have!

Here's the stage that the teens will be performing on- It's a beautiful theatre.

Cross-over days

We had a full day with the full company of The Sad and Cautionary Tale of Smackheaded Peter yesterday. I was looking forward to the day with extreme excitement.

We did worked on some transitions, did a run-through, had a production meeting, changed the beginning of the play, worked more transitions and then had a sound design meeting. That's the order of what happened...

One of our old frenemies, time, tried to sabotage the atmosphere in the rehearsal room at the start of the day. People were a little nervous/tense about running through the play, getting off book, some uncertainty about some physical sections of the play, thinking about transitions- there are still sections of the play that we've not been able to rehearse with everyone present, it's been a tricky process...and the challenges of working several nights in a row at restaurants/shows etc were also affecting energy levels in the room. However a little company TLC began to change the atmosphere and we had an excellent first run-through!

It's not pretty yet- but we're definitely get there and frankly, if it was too pretty at this point in the process I'd be worried about us 'peaking too soon'!

So, now, in our unique rehearsal process, I move on to Anything Goes for a week and the acting company on Smackheaded Peter brew/mull/digest the work/embed lines today in a rehearsal lead by our wonderful Stage Manager, Lauren Williams and our very capable Assistant Director, Andrew McNaughton.

I'm torn about today. If I could split myself in half, (and not frighten people), I'd do it. Half of me would love to be at The Grand, meeting stage management, the props department, the costume designer, our vocal coach, (Rick Kish), seeing Susan Ferley (my boss) and production manager in preparation for Anything Goes and the other half would be incredibly happy to be with the Smackheaded Peter company to build on the work we did yesterday. I'm frustrated to say the least- and also, what a wonderful problem to have- I can't be two places at once.

If my brain were hair (which thankfully it's not!) it would look a little like the drawings of Shockheaded Peter, the German character Struwwelpeter, or Shockheaded Peter. I hope though, that that is where any similarities would end... Struwwelpeter was a boy who had poor personal hygiene. According to the Wikepdias (the source of all extensive research!), "Literally translated, Struwwel-Peter means Shaggy-Peter. According to Ellen Handler Spitz, the book was intended as a highly exaggerated send-up of the pietistic children's books of the day in which good little children came to good ends, and the badly behaved did not."

Shockheaded Peter is definitely an influence on our play, The Sad and Cautionary Tale of Smackheaded Peter... but it's not about the hair or the hygiene! Promise...

A Crackin' Day! Tues. July 20th

A big day- we went through most of the choral sections of the play, making leaps and bounds forward in our exploration and there were some very exciting moments.

Here's the company rehearsing a scene from the play- when the people of Thamesmead learn about Smackheaded Peter's vision of bringing peace on earth with low-cost heroin... (A little disturbing to rehearse this section in a church?)



This is a big, beefy beast of a play and it's challenging us all: creating physicality for the drug sections, playing large Choral scenes, taking heroin on stage... I'm also taking a conceptual approach to the play which, on a new play, is unusual for me...More about that later. The main experience from yesterday is that the "we're beginning to get there" feeling was emerging ... Yee Ha!

We had the full company together for most of the afternoon and it was delight to have the energy, focus and expertise of everyone in the room. Great strides, great strides forward.

We've moved into the church sanctuary this week: an accidental double-booking at the church. Although it's got it's challenges, (water dripping through some light fixtures and sometimes-smelly AC) it's also lovely to have the light from the stain-glassed windows in the room. It's a little odd to be rehearsing a play with a messiah-like figure in it, inside a church, but it may be helping...

Here's the Holy Family from Parkdale United Church



Lots of producing things to work on in the evening-

A cracking day!