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!

Week Three begins...

The weekend was mostly spent organizing things for the week ahead: taking our postcard design to the printer, working on the rehearsal schedule, trimming the script, talking to some of the actors about the trimming, working briefly with our Assistant Director, Andrew McNaughton, to get our wee video done, chat with Designer Brandon Kleiman, seeing a play, beginning to organize our company mail outs, blogging...starting to get ready for the next play (which starts soon!)-

And a bit of relaxation.

And now- ready to leap into action and looking forward to the next layer in the process!

Onwards and Upwards.

Fail not for sorrow, falter not for sin,
But onward, upward, till the goal ye win.
- Francis Anne Kemble (1809-1893)

Here we go...

and we'll keep on moving!

Booking a Tantie- End of Week Two

Time and Money...Time and money- we'll just have to make it work with the Time that we have...

This is what was going through my head a lot yesterday- while we were doing our first stagger-through of the play. The actors were doing really well in the scenes that we've rehearsed, it's just that we need more time together as a full company- especially for the Choral sections...and yesterday our stagger-through had the full company for about 20 mins of the piece.

We did have a very productive afternoon- including an excellent conversation about the Qualities Shared by Innovative thinkers. I shared a BBC new article on the subject with the company. Here's the link:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-10653786

We also did as much on the ensemble sections of the play as we could- and we made good progress... And please, let me clear that there were lots of very good things going on in the stagger-through and I'm sure we'll have a wonderful production in the end... it's just that I'm a wee bit frustrated by this process.

There's part of me that would like to have a tantrum, throw my toys out of the pram (is the UK expression) and I knooooow (as a grown-up) that there's really no point and and I know that to "get the play done" that I need to stay solution-oriented and I knowwwwww that "it's only a play" and that I need to trust the rehearsal process and it will all come together... But oooohhhh, couldn't I just have oooooonne little tantrum, sometime, please?

There's a theatre expression in the UK called "Booking a Tantie". A Tantie is the cute form of tantrum. As some of us may know, frustration may sometimes appear during the rehearsal process and when it does arrive it can be for lots of different reasons. It may be that there's a difference between what the actor/director feels is needed for the scene, compared to how it's currently working in rehearsal. So, often, humor diffuses this tension. I've often heard/seen the humor come from other actors in the room... "oooo, she's going to need to book a Tantie!" or "Have you booked your Tantie this afternoon?"(both expressed with generosity, rather than dripping sarcastic mockery) Or someone may ask, "would you like to book your Tantie now?" It's a UK way of acknowledging, allowing and diffusing the frustration- and it can work- as long as there's generally been acknowledging, allowing, compassion and humor in the rehearsal process.

Yesterday I didn't have a Tantie... I did share my desire to have one, but only after rehearsals were done. I just wanted to get on with the work in the time that we had together- and we did have a very good afternoon- to which I say, "Hurrah!"

And this weekend, I'm going to think about how I can rehearse differently- and maintain my ensemble approach to the play.

And although at the moment our potential Full Company time feels like this-



and I'd like to do this...



I'm going to turn that wee perspective around- keep positive and keep going.

And I may just give myself a bit of Time off today...

July 15th- marching and cardboard

I mentioned last week that two of the challenges of making a piece of theatre in the current rehearsal process are our old chums/enemies time and money... Well, for the first time in almost two weeks of rehearsal we had everyone in the room at the same time- and I am compelled to write that it was delightful, truly delightful! and we enjoyed nearly an hour together.

We started the day by sharing our 'unison experiences': singing in choirs, martial arts practice, dancing in musicals, playing in bands, doing Greek choral work (mostly in theatre training) and from Richard Stewart, marching. It was one of those excellent moments in a rehearsal room when the assembled group acknowledges the expertise of its members. So, (Richard leading) the actors learned how the differences between standing at attention, at ease, easy, turning and marching. And then, briefly, in groups of three, people marched, as Richard kept everyone 'in time'. I watched, delighted as everyone dove into this simple-yet-different experience- people wrinkled noses, shuddered at they're own abilities, delighted in moments that worked and we all had a good laugh. It was the fastest company bonding I've experienced in some time.

We then carried on with our game 'who moves what, where and when?' (scene changes), and finished that game on the rest of the play.

The rest of the morning zoomed by with a rehearsal of the beginning of the play. We've discovered the 'company action' for the beginning of the piece- it's 'Intervention'. I'll come back to this development another time-

The afternoon was spent working on drug hallucinations and choral work- lots of progress- and we finished the day recapping scenes with Emily and Marilla.

After that we had a production meeting; the production manager, set/costume designer, stage manager and I sat down and talked through all aspects of the production. That took about 90 minutes, lots to talk about...

We then went and picked up some of the cardboard for our set; Thursday is recycling day in Parkdale and there's excellent free cardboard available. Thank goodness we're taking a 'poor theatre approach' with this play and that it matches the socio-economic realities of the world represented in the play! Ah, money... our other friend/enemy.


(this isn't where we went shopping- but it's an example of the cardboard 'riches' available...)

I've said it once and I'll say it again- it's wonderful that the style of theatre we're exploring matches up with the 'world of the play' and philosophy on recycling!

Thanks for reading... it's been quite a day...

July 14th- Choral work a go-go

We worked a lot today on choral sections of the play- But we'll be dressing the actors in The Sad and Cautionary Tale of Smackheaded Peter in contemporary clothes, rather than traditional Greek costumes.



During the morning I remind myself a few times that conforming to choral work or 'speaking with one voice' can be challenging for many actors. I also remember that I had years of dance training and choir practices when we all moved or sang in unison- and that those hours built up my trust in the cumulative power of many people working in unison... It's the opposite of much of our contemporary actor training, mine included. And to many actors I'm sure that it doesn't even 'feel like acting'- it's not realism or naturalism- and their initial discomfort is completely understandable.

So, with this in my mind, we began the day with a super vocal warm-up (Richard Stewart leading), then set off to work and had a good morning exploring choral scenes. Over the course of the morning it (the choral speaking) began to get easier and tiny tendrils of group listening, trust and enjoyment began to emerge- and I began to get excited about the choral work in the play! It needs virtuoso team-play to make it dynamic and I love it...

In preparation for our first stagger-through, we spent a portion of the afternoon working on the game 'who moves what, where and when?' (scene changes, but it's more fun if it's a game) then we did a bit of scene work and that was the day!

Heroin and baby steps

Day One, Week 2

Slowly slowly, baby steps-

That's what I kept telling myself as we were working on the first two of three heroin hallucinations today.

It's a challenge to bring the experience of this drug



coursing through someone's veins into a theatre experience...

One of the fascinating things about this play is that a couple of the drug sections shift from an external perspective to an internal one- and while the person is hallucinating, there are plot points that happen, moving the character's emotion journey forward in the play.

Today we spent time exploring how to make the shift from the external perspective to the internal, how to show/share the sensations that Peter, (the heroin user) is experiencing and how to balance the interplay between his physical experience with his emotional progress during the hallucination.

Through the patient, slow exploration we arrived at what I would call 'a sketch' or an outline of the different components that will make up the first hallucination scene. Next time we'll explore each component more fully and then put the pieces together. It really is over an hour of rehearsal for each minute of stage time... Slowly, slowly, baby steps and trusting that the layers of investigation will accumulate into a rich, dynamic interpretation of the scene.

That was one portion of the morning. To finish the day, Bryan and I spent more time on another drug section.

This hallucination begins with a monologue that has a number of plot points, it also has a different feeling than the first hallucination and Peter narrates a large part of the 'trip', after shooting up on stage. However, what he's actually doing is recalling a hallucination, not experiencing for the first time; he is telling us about the experience and showing it to us at the same time.

I'm aware that there are traps to avoid; both the language and the physicality can quickly become redundant: we want the body and text to be communicating different parts of the story at the same time. Another trap to avoid is known as 'telling, not showing': if he stands there and narrates, that may not feel very interesting. On the other hand I don't want us to do us some bad physical impression of a heroin overdose... So, we explore the practicalities of shooting up, the sensations of a heroin high, we try physical work in silence, we try just letting the text do the work...It becomes a 'pat your head and rub your tummy at the same time' kind-of game and then, after about an hour, we arrive at 'a physical sketch' for this section. We'll come back to it again soon.

There's lots more to do on these parts of the play.

Sunday, July 11th- coiling the spring

We had a very good first week- hanging out in the world of Thamesmead and Smackheaded Peter.

Here's the welcome sign to Thamesmead in south-east London, England.



Almost through the play for the first time- and lots of excellent investigation of the scenes, characters going on. I've had a super time working with everyone- and am looking forward to rehearsal this week.

I want to catch up a bit on 'the differences' on this process...

One way that this is different is that I'm 'producing' and directing. This is the fourth time that I've created a theatre piece outside of an existing infrastructure- and then found/borrowed the money to start the process.

I'm learning lots about producing, but I've put the word in quotation marks because I'm not sure that I'm ready to say that I'm good at it. I'm hacking my way through the undergrowth and learning along the way... Some of it's an excellent experience, other times I'd really just like to think about what's going on in the rehearsal room. And sometimes I have to try and divide myself in half to 'think appropriately' depending on the meeting that I'm in. This mostly happens when I look at the budget and think about the number of tickets that we need to sell so that I can give the actors some money at the end of this process... and then (as the 'producer') I want to scale back the production even though (as the 'producer') I know that's counter-intuitive to the director's (my) vision and that she (me!) is doing everything possible to keep costs a minimal as possible... It's a little odd- and it really makes me appreciate the 'two-headed' structure of many theatre companies: and Artistic Director and a General Manager/Executive Director/(person who thinks mostly about money).

On the other hand... I also love the challenges of this process. I'm not sure I'd like to make theatre like this all the time, but it's a good change- and it's allowing me to create a play that I've wanted to direct for a long time, that is unlikely to be programmed in a theatre that has a subscription-based audience. A play with a premise involving A class drugs, even if it is a sad and cautionary tale, might be hard to justify to a board that has challenges with strong language/sexuality.

For me, some other challenges of making theatre this way include...

-making sure that people in the company/all those contributing to the process feel valued and respected, even though they're not being paid

- scheduling rehearsals for an ensemble play, (with most people on stage, most of the time), while people are also working at other jobs

-making sure that there is enough of an infrastructure to the company (without being able to pay them) that I can focus as much as possible on directing

-making sure that I have enough time to do the producing/organising and try to enjoy it!

Yee Ha!

So, today- a bit of admin. and then I'm sitting down with the play and thinking about week two. We have a stagger-through at the end of the week and good chunks of time together as a full company of nine actors. We're going to be getting the drug hallucinations 'on their feet' and practicing choral work... and I've one or two 'producing' things to do- this is a week when lots of money gets spent!

we'll be posting our one-minute video on YouTube on July 18th

And here's a draft of our poster...

Day 3- Drugs, themes and possibilities

We start the day with the two drug sections that Andrew and I investigated yesterday. Just a small group of people, me, Richard Stewart and Bryan Demore. Lauren Williams, our stage manager is there as well.

We hop in the pool and swim around with the conversation that happens between Peter, (when he's experiencing heroin for the first time) and a character that called "The Voice" in the script. I've asked Richard to be the lead speaker for this character- and I also believe that we're going to involve more of the company to create this scene.

We have lots of imagining and debate about what and who the character of The Voice is...and we arrive at a fascinating option: The Voice is The Voice of Invisible Possibilities, Wisdom and Forces that exist in the universe, unseen. It seems quite a grand idea to arrive at while still sipping on coffee, but it also seems to make sense. And Peter, (who is 14 year-old boy at that point in the play), is too frightened to grab onto the 'tail of opportunity', so it leaves. Until a couple of days ago I'd always thought The Voice was just the voice of Heroin... but this new interpretation makes more sense, considering the themes of freeing the poor and social revolution that are in the play... For a social revolution to take place, we need to believe that change is possible. And sometimes, in struggling with poverty, change just doesn't feel possible.

We've talked a fair bit in rehearsal about the physical experience of poverty- what does 'grinding poverty' feel like? I've had the experience of working with teens in under-privileged areas in the UK and it's awful when you meet young people who feel trapped by a lack of possibilities in their lives and trapped by a lack of money... This feeling of being trapped, being stuck in the 'sweet and sour misery' is one of the themes of the play... And freeing the poor from that dis-empowered misery is another.

So, we power through the second drug hallucination and it's all making sense now! We're ready to get this mamma of a scene on the dance floor and shimmy, (but that rehearsal is for another day).

The afternoon is more fun with Paul Tessier as Pollack the Lawyer- Pollack visits his client Smackheaded Peter in Wormwood Scrubs Prison. It's an old Victorian prison, in London, notorious in the UK for overcrowding... here's a picture from the Victorian era; the cells are still the same size, but have (at times) had four men in them, 23 hours a day.



After the scene work we have some excellent free play with Bryan's monologues (as Smackheaded Peter) and before we know it- it's time to go home.

A thought-provoking day...

Choral work, persuasion games and hallucinations

Day Two:

A company vocal warm-up to start. Richard Stewart and Marilla Wex are the ying and yang of voice work for our company. Richard is focusing on voice work and Marilla is our dialect 'go to person' for this process. Their skills are fantastically complimentary and we have a wonderful, freeing voice warm up that finishes with practicing the two dialects we're incorporating in the play, East London and RP. Lots of energy in the room and a good, upbeat atmosphere.

Now that the voices and bodies are warm, we move on to working on the choral sections of the text. We look at units, (where there is a 'change of subject' in the text) and I introduce a game. It goes like this- when a Chorus Person is listening to a person speaking they always have the option of moving towards the speaker (if they agree), staying still, (undecided) or moving away (disagree). It just encourages people to keep discovering how they feel about what's being said to them- and that they're individuals within a larger group. It sounds ridiculously simple... and it is... and it seems to be an effective game- that can even be played in performance.

So, we play the game with a portion of the text that its easy to apply it to.

After we take a break I want to explore the tactics that people use to persuade a group. Each company member has one minute to speak about a subject that they feel passionate about. Topics range from the G20 (visceral, high stakes), to riding along the lake (beautiful images inspiring our imaginations) to the power of theatre, tiny dogs, heavy metal music and cheese... The people that are listening play the same game that we played before the break,(moving forward, backward or staying in the same place) with each individual speaker and then, (when everyone has had a turn), we share some tactics that we feel worked as well as chuckling heartily at some moments when people really didn't agree with us. (I can share with you that most people in this company are not fans of soya cheese).

Then we applied the 'passionate speaking skills' to the scene work. I love it when a game helps us play a scene better... and it seems that this one really helped everyone play and listen actively and feel that they contributing as equal members of an ensemble. It was a playful and effective morning.

After lunch- we dive into more scene work, in a later section of the play. More text work, units, objectives... We have a highly focused afternoon with the dubious Lawyer character, Pollack, (that Paul Tessier is playing) and the version of Mother Cheapside that appears at the end of the play, (when she lives in a tiny apartment with twenty cats- and is physically threatened by Bryan's character, Smackheaded Peter). We find an exciting 'character arch' through the scene for Mother Cheapside- and then it's the end of the day. As always, Marilla considers her character's objectives and actions very deeply...



Andrew McNaughton, (our assistant director), and I, sit with two immensely dense parts of the script for over an hour. There are a number of drug hallucinations in the play- and connections with 'invisible forces' during the hallucinations- so we talked a lot about what the story beats are and the relationships of the characters in the scene. We're also looking for opportunities to trim the script, but it's tricky... tricky, tricky, tricky... With our brains full of rich, spectacular images, (dragons, angels, flying over London), we head home.

Day 1- text to free play

Day one:

Meet and Greet

Sign letters of agreement

Read the script. It was an intense reading- the concentration in the room was considerable... Here's a photo of peeps around the table delving into this rich play.


Then a brief talk about the play- Any strong feelings, thoughts... What did you learn about it this time?

And then we start scene work with Bryan, Emily, Paul and Marilla

It's clear that two of the practical challenges for the production are our old friends time and money. We're doing this play at SummerWorks on an Equity co-op basis, (known affectionately in England as a 'profit-loss') so peeps are working to pay for lives while also rehearsing- it's always a fine balance. I'm in rehearsal and also organising things outside of rehearsal, (so no time for earning money at the moment); I'm immensely grateful for my next directing gig, Anything Goes, which is subsidizing my life during this rehearsal process.

We'll be spending some time cutting the script this week. Although it's 55 pages and we've got 75 mins. and that should, in theory, be enough time for the play to be played, we learned in the read-through that it's about 90 mins... gulp! So, out come the proverbial red pens. I'm sure as we get to grips with the text and accents (which are pretty super all ready-) that it'll get quicker- and I'll just make sure by doing cuts earlier in the process, rather than later.

We dive into the first couple of scenes of the play in the afternoon- simple text work, looking for 'changes of units' and giving the scenes a rough 'physical shape'. This is all pretty standard 'Stanislavsky approach' at the moment, however, it's a great way to begin to understand how the language of the play feels for the actors and get a basic structure that we can then play with next week.

Soon- the day has zoomed by!

Bryan, (who's playing Smackheaded Peter) and I finish the day with some work on monologues- we have a good time playing with language, it's clear that he's starting to have a good time with the sections that we're doing and then! it's time to head home.

An excellent first day: intense reading to text work to playing with great freedom!

Tomorrow- choral work...

play day, research?

Time is flying by and tomorrow we start rehearsals! Definitely looking forward to getting in the rehearsal room with this play and this most excellent group of people.

I really wanted us to have a little research time... or a play day... before we sat down to read the play, so on Friday we had just over three hours of time in a rehearsal room at the Tarragon Theatre rehearsal rooms. It was a wonderful opportunity to have some play time on two particularly challenging parts of the play.

The Sad and Cautionary Tale of Smackheaded Peter has choral sections and drug hallucinations- so I wanted us to start working together on choral and physical work, without having to be too result-oriented. In the choral section I was wondering if we would need to 'orchestrate the voices' to create dynamics- so I was surprised to discover that it (the text) didn't seem to need it. We'll play with this again another day- I wonder if we'll feel the same? I really thought that it would... In the drug hallucination that we played with we simply played with a large, stretchy piece of fabric that Brandon had brought in a played with the images that sprung from 'cocoon', 'safe', 'warm'. The most extraordinary moment was when the company wrapped one of the actors up from head-to-toe in the fabric, while he was upside-down. He really looked like he was a big human cocoon! He looked a little like this... (but with several people around him)


We also had some fun with contact improv and played with the 'cocoon', 'safe', 'warm' images without the fabric...lots of wonder physical images emerged. What really delighted me was the generosity and risks that the company were taking- It was a super atmosphere in the room.
The company really dove into all the games/exercises- It was an excellent morning and I came away with a much richer understanding of how to move forward- to realize this fantastically heightened and challenging play!

We also had a production meeting- The set will be recyclable- hurrah! and the viral video shoot is coming together, which will be fun.

All-in-all, it was an exciting day- and so... onwards and upwards into week 1 of rehearsal.

We're rehearsing in the heart of Parkdale, at the Parkdale United Church. They've been very welcoming and I'm very happy that it's our 'rehearsal home'. Much of the church is actually apartment housing for new Canadians and seniors. Here's a photo-




To finish... here's a link to an excellent article and short film about Thamesmead, the area where the play is set. Thamesmead was built as a 'new town' just over 40 years ago- It's recently been getting some much-needed renovation. Please watch the short film and experience a little of the community and humanity amongst the brutal architecture...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/apr/16/communities

Thanks for reading... more soon!