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!

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.