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!

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

Smack Set/Costume Day

An exciting morning ahead-

Meeting costume/set designer Brandon Kleiman to see costume and set sketches. We were talking about our set being created out of card board- so it'll be interesting to see if that's the direction we go.

I love working with set materials that can be recycled. Last year on the production of Twelfth Night (in Oxford, UK), that I directed our set was 10 tons of sand and found items from beach combing near Bristol, UK- and nearly all the costumes were reconfigured clothes from charity shops- So, it would be super to be able to carry on this exploration of found items and recyclable materials... (and to be honest- we need the budget to stay as petite as possible, so it's great when you're philosophical exploration supports your budget reality-).

And then we meet the actors for measuring- It'll be great to see how Brandon combines his vision with ideas that emerge from meeting the actors.

I love this part of the process, particularly on a new play like Smack: there's room for lots of dialogue between director/designers and the actors' Imagination can be layered into the process as well... and this play is firing off a lot of images and ideas in all our imaginations...

more on The Sad and Cautionary Tale of Smackheaded Peter a little later.

Contrasts galore

Well, the last few months have sped by-

I've been working at The Grand Theatre, in London, Ontario, as the Apprentice Artistic Director. More on that later... It's been a super experience and I've been mentored by the wonderful and thoughtful Susan Ferley, the Artistic Director. I've learned an immense amount about running a large theatre company and have also directed Macbeth (with 19 high school students!), The Little Prince, (with a wonderful cast) and a number of short Canadian plays, (at The Playwrights' Cabaret, co-directed with Susan Ferley and Jeff Culbert).

The next few months are full of contrast, which is why I decided to reconnect with the ol' blog.

First on the list is a new British play that I'm directing at SummerWorks Theatre Festival in Toronto. It's called The Sad and Cautionary Tale of Smackheaded Peter, by Simon Glass. It's a tongue-in-cheek fable about Peter, born on the impoverished Thamesmead Estate in south-east London (UK). His quest is to free the poor and bring peace on earth with low-cost heroin. Oddly, it doesn't all go well... It's a subversive, hysterical combination of high and low art- if you're nearby Toronto during this excellent summer festival please come along.

Next, it's back to The Grand! I'm directing the Grand's High School Project on the Main stage this summer- the 1930's musical, Anything Goes. We'll have about 45 teens in the production- and all the people in the production, on-stage and back-stage are mentored by the theatre professionals at the theatre. It's a unique and inspiring production experience. I caught the tail-end of the rehearsals for Grease last year and it was very exciting. I'm looking forward to working with all departments and tapping along with Cole Porter's wonderful melodies...

After that eight-week rehearsal process I'll be zooming back to the UK to direct two new solo plays at The Old Red Lion, Suicide Brunette by Gary Mitchell and The Native, by Christopher Hanvey. More on these solo pieces a little later- I will say though, that they're going to be virtuoso acting pieces-

So, I hope to share some experiences from these three entirely different rehearsal/production processes. It's a season of contrasts... I'm delighted to be working on such a range of material, in wonderful circumstances, with excellent peeps! And a little terrified about it all as well...

More soon...

The Sad and Cautionary Tale of Smackheaded Peter is going to be a blast!