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!

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!

planning a go-go

Friday was an excellent day!

We had a four-hour session of meeting and greeting actors, chatting, measuring actors for costumes, catching up on design conversations, updating production schedules- all very exciting.

In terms of set design, it looks as though we're going to pursue 'the cardboard way'- which I think is great. Also, some super ideas emerged, in conversation with the actors, about costume possibilities... one intriguing offer was the idea of having one character in a wheel-chair. I love it- the collective creative brain at work!

At the moment I'm making sure that we have as much technical information together as we can: the SummerWorks Festival need our technical requirements by June 28th at 5:00. Just combing through all the information so far to give the festival as full a picture as possible of how the play will look/feel etc, so that they get a sense of it before the technical rehearsals. I'm very slow at admin. and planning in this area- so I'm glad to have a couple of quiet days to sift through it all- and I'm getting the information from the design teams, it's just that I'm putting it all into the form- (yum!).

SummerWorks has a similar technical process to a number of festivals- you have a four hour slot to get your play into the space, do all of your lighting and sound cues, run the play (if you decide to do that) and get out. It's a great exercise in having an organized team. And there's little time for indecision, which I like... Also, as a director it's challenging because up until that point you've only been able to imagine the play in the performance space- and you really never know of you're ideas are really going to work until you see it all coming together in the theatre space. For the actors the challenge is understanding how the space works, how it affects the play- it's a swift learning curve for all the production/cast peeps.

However, I do like the impact that this condensed technical time can have on the design and organization of the play. For example, projection. The play we're doing is set in London, UK and we're performing in Toronto- so I'd like to be able to bring the 'character of London' into the production. This can be done through costume, set design, the actor's bodies, the physical/spatial relationships- and through (perhaps) including projection of some kind. However, projection takes a lot of work, it's another design element that needs careful attention and it can get fantastically complicated in a technical rehearsal... So, we may or may not go down this route... The designer and I are still in discussion about it...

A few weeks ago I was in London so I took a lot of photos on slide film- and one option that we're talking about it using an old carousel slide projector... I think that the production is going to have a 'poor theatre' approach overall- so it might make sense to incorporate a 'retro technical approach'... and if we go that route then we can use it in rehearsal and the transition into the technical rehearsals will be 'easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy', as they say. It might also be a fun, slightly subversive expression of projection, (it's old, it's clunky, there's an ugly-beauty to it), which makes sense for the world of the play. A lot of the play is set on the Thamesmead Estate- (which is all 1970's Brutalist architecture).

Okay- I'd better get back to thinking about music and sound cues...

I will write more about the play very soon- promise!



And I did say that it's set on the Thamesmead Estate in the UK...

Here are a couple of photos that you may recognize of the Thamesmead Estate... from the film A Clockwork Orange