Category: Interview

Samantha MacDonald: The Universe Provides

Posted on by James Hutchison
Samantha MacDonald Artistic Producer Lunchbox Theatre

“I guess the other thing that I love so much about our industry is the amazing people who have all, for better or for worse, made this decision to become a part of this crazy thing that we do. And they give their hearts, and their souls, and their blood, and their sweat, and their tears, and we all have our crazy stories about the crazy hours and the hard work and all of the things that go into making theatre, but at the end of the day we get each other, and we come together in this almost spiritual way and support each other and make something beautiful – and then it’s gone. It’s like poof, and it’s gone, and I just love that – I love the temporary nature of what we do. And sometimes it’s heartbreaking, but it’s a big part of what I love about theatre.”

Samantha MacDonald, Artistic Producer – Lunchbox Theatre

Samantha MacDonald has been a part of the Canadian theatre scene for thirty years and has spent a substantial part of that time as both a director and theatre administrator. She was the Co-Founder and Co-Artistic Producer of Project X Theatre Productions in Kamloops BC from 2004 to 2010 and was the Artistic Producer of Theatre North West in Prince George BC from 2010 to 2014, and for the last five years she’s been a vital part of the Lunchbox Theatre team. MacDonald joined Lunchbox in 2014 as the Production and Operations Manager and then became the Associate Artistic Producer from 2015 to 2017 and for the last two years she’s been leading the company as the Artistic Producer.

In addition to her administrative and arts leadership work, she’s an accomplished director having directed several Shakespeare plays including, Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Tempest, and Hamlet for Project X and more recently As You Like It for Shakespeare by the Bow. She’s also directed several contemporary plays including To Dream Again for Storybook Theatre and several productions for Lunchbox Theatre including the very touching and poignant Flight Risk by Meg Braem, the smart and complex In On It by Daniel MacIvor and the very funny and successful Guttenberg! The Musical! which was the final play in the 2018/19 Lunchbox Theatre season.  

I sat down with Samantha to talk with her about her love of theatre, Lunchbox, and her plans for the future.

JAMES HUTCHISON

So, I’ve listened to and read other interviews with you and sometimes you’ll say, “Oh dear, I’ve gotten on my soapbox about theatre.” But I want to hear you on your soapbox. I want to hear what it is you love about theatre. What is it?

SAMANTHA MACDONALD

Oh God, how long do you have? (Laughs) There are a number of things, but I think the first thing I fell in love with about this medium and what we do is just telling a great story. It’s the opportunity to put a bunch of people together in a room and touch them emotionally and to allow them all to feel something and to connect to something in a way you can not do in any other medium. Live theatre is the one place where we all share something so visceral and engaging in one space and we all experience it together at the same time, and part of that experience is how we respond together in a dark space to whatever we’re watching. And I love that.

David Balser, Desiree Maher-Schley, Danielle Dunn-Morris, and Ryan Egan in the 2006 Project X Production of Elizabeth Rex. Directed by Samantha MacDonald

SAMANTHA

Two weekends ago I had the great pleasure of adjudicating the Provincial High School Drama Festival in Red Deer, and my partner in crime was designer Anton de Groot, and one of the things he talked a lot about in his adjudications was exactly that and how on stage you are able to do things that you can’t do on film in terms of engaging an audience. So, you can take a piece of fabric that was once a parachute and turn it into waves or into a mountain or whatever, and the audience goes with you on that journey, and I love how you can tell a story in such an incredible way that maybe you would never have imagined.

And I guess the other thing that I love so much about our industry is the amazing people who have all, for better or for worse, made this decision to become a part of this crazy thing that we do. And they give their hearts, and their souls, and their blood, and their sweat, and their tears, and we all have our crazy stories about the crazy hours and the hard work and all of the things that go into making theatre, but at the end of the day we get each other, and we come together in this almost spiritual way and support each other and make something beautiful – and then it’s gone. It’s like poof, and it’s gone, and I just love that – I love the temporary nature of what we do. And sometimes it’s heartbreaking, but it’s a big part of what I love about theatre.

Creator and performer Michelle Thrush in Inner Elder, co-presented with One Yellow Rabbit as a part of the High Performance Rodeo. Photo Credit: Benjamin Laird

JAMES

When did you decide to go into this profession?

SAMANTHA

When I was in elementary school I was an actor, and I’m not an actor now, and I never ever will be, but I was an actor in elementary school and I loved it. I loved being on stage. I was Sir Joseph Porter in H.M.S. Pinafore. I was Tiny Tim in Christmas Carol. I did all these things and as I got a little older I used to see shows whether it was my sister in a high school production or whatever, and when I would watch theatre there was always this hole in my chest that I could never explain and that I never understood, but I would watch theatre, and I would just have this kind of pain.

After high school I decided I was going to be a corporate lawyer and work for Coca Cola, and because I’d worked on a couple of theatre productions in high school I took a technical theatre class my first year of college, and the second day of this class we went to the Sagebrush Theatre, which is where we would do most of our learning in Kamloops, and I walked into the theatre, and I stood on the stage, and that hole I had been feeling went fwump. And I went, “I’m never going to be a corporate lawyer.” (Laughs) And that was it. The joy of this medium just filled that empty space in me and I was in love. And you know, here we are thirty years later and I still love it. I still absolutely love it. And whatever that hole in me was it never reopened. It went away that day and it’s never come back.

First day of full costume for the 2010 Project X production of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Director Samantha MacDonald and her assistant director dress up to show solidarity and support for the cast.

JAMES

Let’s talk a little bit about the unique story of Lunchbox because lunch-time theatre was a big thing in the seventies. I was doing a little research about it and I was reading that in London you could see great actors like Bob Hoskins on stage, and interestingly enough there does seem to be a bit of a resurgence of lunchtime theatre going on now, but a lot of the original theatres have disappeared. So, what do you think it is about Lunchbox – because Lunchbox has had good times and tough times and it’s still here – what do you think it is about this theatre company that has made it possible to last for forty-five years?

SAMANTHA

I think there are a few things. I think the organization has always been very good at listening to its audience, and I think we’ve done very well over that large span of time of making sure that we are growing and changing with what our audience needs and wants. And our audience as a result of that has trusted us, and so even when we offer them something that’s maybe a little more challenging or a little different than they’re used to they will go on that journey with us because they trust us and what we’re giving them.

Devon Dubnyk and Arielle Rombough in the 2018 Lunchbox Theatre production of It’s a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play, adapted by Joe Landry. Photo credit: Benjamin Laird

SAMANTHA

And I think there’s something really lovely in terms of being able to come for an hour and eat your lunch and watch great entertainment and then go away again. You know it’s a great story, but it’s not a huge commitment, and I think that’s something – particularly in our day and age – that a bite-sized bit of theatre is a great way for people to connect. It’s also, if you’re new to theatre, a really nice way to check it out without a huge commitment.

JAMES

Looking at this last season what have been some of the highlights for you at Lunchbox?

SAMANTHA

One of the big highlights for us was the opportunity to premiere a brand-new musical which we commissioned from a young local playwright. Emily Dallas is incredibly talented and a lovely young woman and so to have an opportunity to say to her, “I want you to write a piece of theatre and these are the parameters I need you to write within,” and then for her to come back with a piece like Brave Girl, which was our Remembrance show was really exciting, and our hope is she’ll be able to take it and expand it beyond a one act.

Elinor Holt, Jessica Eckstadt, and Tara Jackson in the 2018 production of Brave Girl by Emily Dallas. Photo credit: Benjamin Laird

JAMES

How did you two connect?

SAMANTHA

I directed Emily in As You Like It for Shakespeare by the Bow a couple of summers ago, and for one of her audition pieces she sat down at the piano in the Theatre Calgary rehearsal hall and played this beautiful song she’d written about a young person’s struggle in high school and about being your own hero. And by the end of the song, both Susan McNair Reid and I were in tears and then having worked with her all summer long I had a strong sense of both her ideals as a theatre creator and also her talents as an artist. I mean, I would say I took a risk, but it wasn’t really a risk, because I knew she would come up with the goods.

JAMES

Brave Girl is, as you mentioned, a one-act play and Lunchbox does one-act plays. What is it you’re looking for when you select a one-act play for your season? What jumps out at you?

SAMANTHA

It has to have heart. The content and story arch can be about anything, but at the end of the day what we know is that our audiences really connect with and are engaged with stories that have heart. And by that I mean it has to be a piece that connects to our audience in a positive emotional way so whether it’s something that affirms their beliefs, or something that reminds them that there is good in the world, or something that takes them on a journey – at the end of their sixty minutes with us – even if it’s a dark piece – even if it’s a piece that takes them to a place that’s more challenging – it still, at the end of the day, leaves them feeling better off than they did when they arrived.

So, for example, I directed In on It by Daniel MacIvor which was a challenging piece for our audience because it was nonlinear, and it was darker, and there was a character who died in it, and it was about dealing with grief and death, but I think our audience really liked being engaged in those ways. And in Brave Girl there’s the story of these two sisters and their struggles and how it tears them apart, and then of course at the end it puts them back together again, and it’s also the story of the mother who loses her spouse, and then she watches this rift develop between her two children, and it’s her journey as well, and so Brave Girl has lots and lots of heart in it.

Mark Bellamy and Stafford Perry in the 2016 Lunchbox Theatre production of In On It by Daniel MacIvor. Photo Credit: Benjamin Laird

JAMES

Let’s talk a little bit about the season coming up. I’m curious, as an artistic producer, how do you balance your artistic vision with the business realities of running a theatre?

SAMANTHA

Well I mean obviously, as you know, financially it’s always a huge challenge, so when I was programming the 18/19 season, which is just wrapping up, part of what I was really aware of was that we needed to try and find a way to balance things financially in order for us to survive. So part of that was bringing in some shows because they tend to cost a little less, but I was really adamant that moving forward we were going to find a way to get back to producing more local work and hiring more local artists for our 45th season.

And in terms of programming, I always listen to the kinds of things my audience is saying, and I’m always looking at the things that do well for us and what people are talking about. And I suspect over the years we’ve lessened the number of actors over the course of our season so for us a big show is six. It’s a Wonderful Life was a six-person show and that was massive for us, but we also knew that show would sell really well so at the end of the day it wasn’t a risk. People really love the Remembrance show and the Christmas show, and so it is a bit of a challenge in terms of continuing to find new works that fit into both of those two categories.

Selina Wong in the 2016 Lunchbox Theatre Production Lest We Forget, created by JP Thibodeau and Joe Slabe. Photo credit: Benjamin Laird

JAMES

You’re doing Last Christmas by Neil Fleming next year and I was wondering how you arrived at that play as the right choice for next season?

SAMANTHA

I was looking for a Christmas show, and I went back over our history, and we had decided as a team that for our 45th season we wanted to look back in order to look forward a little bit. So with the Remembrance show and the Christmas show we said, “Okay, let’s look back at some of the stuff we’ve done in the past.” And Last Christmas had gone through our Stage One Festival, and it had an original production that had done very well for us, and now here we are ten years later and I think it’s a relevant family story with heart.

JAMES

And it’s funny. Even though it deals with some very serious issues like cancer it’s actually very humourous.

SAMANTHA

It is yeah. And it has that family connection between grandkids and grandparents which I think is relevant, and that’s a connection we don’t see a lot on stage. So, it’s nice to have that multi-generational story. And then similarly we picked Flanders Fields for this year’s Remembrance show because it was our very first Remembrance show that we did and it did really well for us. It also came through Stage One and it has a very clear affiliation with us as an organization, and it’s another moment of looking back to look forward.

Miles Ringsred Riley and Karen Johnson-Diamond in the 2011 Lunchbox Theatre production of Last Christmas by Neil Flemming. Photo credit: Tim Nguyen

JAMES

You’ve also got a world premiere coming up called Old Man the Napi Project can you tell me a little bit about that?

SAMANTHA

Yes, and that won’t be the real title that’s just the working title. So, Justin Many Fingers and I connected about this time last year, and we started to talk about what we can do and one of the things we’re going to do is have an artist in residence program. So, the intention is to take an Indigenous artist and offer them the opportunity to devise a brand-new show under Justin’s mentorship under the auspices of Justin’s company and Making Treaty 7 with Lunchbox as the production side of things. And Justin has now chosen that artist and it’s going to be Zachary Running Coyote, and he will create a show. And the intention is to take the trickster character Napi from the Blackfoot and to look at the trickster character from a variety of different nations perspectives and legends. I’m super excited that it’s going to be Zach because he is a super talented young guy and just a lovely – lovely human and a great storyteller.

JAMES

You’re ending your season with Nashville Hurricane with Chase Padgett who came here a couple of years ago to do his Six Guitars show. And for anybody who hasn’t seen him, he is the most amazing talented performer you’re ever going to see. I even went up to the Fringe in Edmonton last summer just to see Six Guitars, so I’m thrilled to see him coming back to Lunchbox.

SAMANTHA

Our season catchphrase is Together. The whole season is really about togetherness and acceptance and it’s about being all in this together and from the first show to the last show in the season that’s the message. And so in that last moment in Nashville Hurricane where he talks about his epiphany and realizing that we’re all here together and we’re all a miracle – that was for me – a beautiful way to wrap up this season which is really an encapsulation of who we are as Lunchbox Theatre and who we want to be in our community so yeah, it was the perfect show.

JAMES

So, after five years at Lunchbox you’ve made a decision to say goodbye and when it was announced that you were leaving I had this little moment of, “Oh, no not again.” Because you’ve brought Lunchbox to such a good point, and it’s healthy, and the seasons are good and they’re entertaining, and I was like who are they going to get?

SAMANTHA

When I announced to my team that Shari Wattling was my replacement and they cheered I went, “Yeah, okay we’re good. I can leave you guys and you’re in good hands and you’re happy so that’s what matters to me.” And Shari is such a smart lady, and she has really great ideas about where Lunchbox is going, and she has a significant history with the company. Her first professional gig was here. She’s directed for us. She’s dramaturged for us. She’s acted on our stages a number of times, and she was in the office for a period of time, so she has a really good love and understanding of the organization, and I think that’s super important.

Shari Wattling – Incoming Artistic Producer Lunchbox Theatre – Photo credit: Trudie Lee

JAMES

So then, what brought you to this point in your life? Why did you make the decision to leave?

SAMANTHA

There are a couple of things. I should be super clear that I am not leaving Lunchbox. It has nothing to do with this organization. I love this company, and I love the work that we’re doing, and my team is amazing, and if it were ten years ago and I still had the energy and the space in my life that I had then – then I would stay.

But I have been running companies solo essentially for about seventeen years without a break, and I just turned forty-seven, and what I became very aware of in the last couple of years is – that as much as I love the work that we do and as much as I love this industry – my own well has begun to run dry, and I needed to take steps to do a little self-care to refill that well before I started getting bitter and before I started getting angry. Before I stop loving what I do.

And another part that plays into that is when I was twenty-two my mom died of cancer at forty-eight and as I approach that milestone I am aware that in her forty-eight years she lived a vast life, and she raised five children, and she volunteered and studied and had a very rich life. She was an exceptional human. And as I look at my own life in my forty-seven years I’m aware that there’s something a bit lacking for me, because all I’ve done is work and that’s meant the end of a marriage of fifteen years and a lot of stress. So, I made a commitment to myself that I’m going to do something different and see if I can figure out how to live a little bit of life for the next little while. So it’s not about leaving Lunchbox, or even necessarily leaving theatre, it’s about finding a way and a space for me to have a life with a capital L and to re-evaluate things and then move forward from there, and I don’t know what that will look like but that’s the plan. And I’ve been saying for years, “I’m going to get a life one of these days,”  and I finally just went, “No I actually have to do something in order to make that happen. No one’s going to hand it to you.” And I always say the Universe provides, and it always has in my thirty years in this industry. I’ve never been without a job, and there are lots of opportunities sort of floating around out there, and I’m just waiting to see what the next thing is that the Universe offers.

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You can check out the entire 2019/20 Lunchbox Theatre season below. Individual tickets to Lunchbox shows are just $25.00 or save some money and purchase a play pass which gives you seven flexible admissions for the price of six. Complete season details and ticket information can be found at LunchboxTheatre.com. 

Lunchbox Theatre 2019/20 Theatre Season

The Pink Unicorn
By Elise Forier Edie
September 14 to October 5

Some battles only a mother can fight. When Trisha Lee’s daughter announces that she is genderqueer, the small-town Texas widow’s world is upended. Suddenly at odds with her faith and her family, Trisha must struggle to understand and accept her daughter’s truth. Hilarious and heartfelt, The Pink Unicorn explores a mother’s boundless love for her child.

In Flanders Fields
By Rober Gontier & Nicky Phillips
October 19 to November 9

This stunning work was our inaugural Remembrance play in 2010, when it received a Betty Mitchell Award nomination for Outstanding Production of a Musical. Based on the extraordinary life of Lt.-Col John McCrae, In Flanders Fields sweeps from rural Ontario to the mud of the French trenches, revealing the brotherhood, love, and true humanity of one of Canada’s most famous poets.

Last Christmas
By Neil Flemming
November 23rd to December 21st

Last Christmas, Jake’s wife Marge was still alive and every ritual was observed. This year, between two feuding daughters and a delinquent grandson, Jake’s holidays will be anything but traditional. This heartwarming comedy offers a contemporary look at the joys and challenges of the season, and reminds us that family just might be the greatest gift of all.

Good Morning Viet Mom
Created and Performed by Franco Nguyen
January 11 to January 25

Filmmaker Franco Nguyen travels to Vietnam seeking inspiration for his first feature film and finds an unexpected subject – his mother. Good Morning, Viet Mom is a comedic and bittersweet gem from a first-generation Canadian raised by his single immigrant mother. Nguyen shares stories about childhood; his relationship with his mother; and their emotional trip to Vietnam.

Old Man: The NAPI PROJECT
A Partnership with Making Treaty 7 Cultural Society

The culmination of a co-operative Artist in Residence program with Making Treaty 7 Cultural Society, this project will explore the tradition of Trickster, and stories that examine our morals and the choices we face. The project will be an exploration of what this cultural character evokes and inspires in an Indigenous artist.

A Tender Thing
By Ben Power
March 21 to April 11

What if Romeo and Juliet had lived? This is the question Ben Power poses in this delicate and profound “remix” of the greatest love story ever told. The premise is simple – rather than taking their own lives, the young lovers have grown old together, their dazzling love undimmed, to endure a more commonplace tragedy. Shakespeare’s timeless poetry creates a new, deeply romantic and powerful play, and a strikingly different love story.

Nashville Hurricane
Written by Chase Padgett & Jay Hopkins
April 18 to May 09

Forty years ago a mysterious guitarist appeared from nowhere, conquered the music industry, and then vanished without a trace… until now.

Hot on the heels of his smash hit 6 Guitars, virtuoso actor and musician Chase Padgett becomes a manager, a mother, a mentor, and the guitar prodigy himself as each one tells their side of the rise, demise, and resurrection of the best damn guitar player you’ve never heard of: the Nashville Hurricane.

509
By Justin Many Fingers
October 3 to October 12
Season add on in Partnership with Making Treaty 7

Still in creation, 509 is an examination of a young man’s connection to his Blackfoot ancestors, a connection he only discovers as he lays dying. The show will be a dance theatre piece, mostly in the Blackfoot tongue. This piece is part of a triptych created by Justin Many Fingers, supported by Making Treaty 7 Cultural Society and Lunchbox Theatre. This show is an add on to the 2019/2020 season, presented at The GRAND Theatre.

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LUNCHBOX THEATRE: Lunchbox Theatre is one of the most successful noon hour theatre companies in the world. It aims to provide patrons with a unique theatre experience by producing one-act plays that engage and entertain audiences. Lunchbox Theatre produces six plays per season, as well as the Stage One Festival of New Canadian Work and the RBC Emerging Director’s Program. It is one of Calgary’s longest-running professional theatre companies and is located in the heart of downtown at the base of the Calgary Tower.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Christopher Scott and JC Charlton: Come Home

Posted on by James Hutchison

“Everything I do is to survive. What’s going on out there, and what’s going on in here. You think I’m not counting down the days? I can feel my mind unravelling at the seams. Waking up in the night, cold sweats, my heart pounding so hard I think my ribs are gunna’ crack. I can’t tell what’s fucken’ real anymore there’s this banging and drilling on the walls like someone’s hammering away – is it real? I don’t know.”  

CONNER from the Play Come Home by JC Charlton

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Living in Australia and working on the oil rigs far from home Connor Evans a young Calgary man finds himself falling deeper and deeper into a life of drug abuse and criminal activity. Come Home is a raw and honest play about addiction, the importance of friendship, and second chances.

Christopher Scott working the Rigs in Australia

The play is based on the real-life experience of Christopher Scott who along with his friend JC Charlton presented the play at the 2017 Calgary One Act Play Festival and the 2017 Alberta Provincial One Act Play Festival where it won several awards including Best Overall Performance and Best Original Script.

Now two years later the play has been workshopped and expanded and is being presented by Urban Stories Theatre from May 1st to 11th in the Motel Theatre at the Arts Commons. Tickets are $20.00 for adults and $15.00 for students, seniors, and artists and are available online at www.urbanstoriestheatre.org

Sally Cacic and JC Charlton in the Urban Stories Theatre Production of Come Home by JC Charlton. Directed by Nova Lea Thorne.

I sat down with JC and Chris, while they were in rehearsals, to talk with them about how the play came about and what message they want audiences to remember.

Christopher Scott musical artist and sound designer.

JAMES HUTCHISON

Come Home is inspired by your real-life experience of becoming involved in the drug trafficking world in Australia when you were there and eventually being given a second chance. Why did you want to tell your story?

CHRIS SCOTT

For the longest time, it was like a dark spot on the soul. I still held it deeply internally and it just started to eat away at me. I didn’t talk about it to anyone but when this opportunity arose to tell this story as part of the Calgary Regional One Act Play Festival I thought what better way to make something creative and positive come out of something dark and negative.

JAMES

How much of the play is based on real life and how much is poetic license?

JC CHARLTON

We’re saying it’s inspired by a true story. We’re not saying it is a true story. For example, we combined two different people from Chris’s life into one character that became our antagonist. The events we show were events that happened to Chris but at different times and with different people and we just lumped them together so we changed the timeline, so we could tell a story that had a solid beginning, middle and end.

JAMES

I know it’s a personal story but was there some sort of moral message you wanted to convey in the telling of the story?

CHRIS

Yes, you always have to stay positive because there’s always a light at the end of the tunnel it’s just sometimes you have to tough it out to get there. Looking back one thing kind of led to another and I’m surprised by how deep and dark it went. You just have to hold onto your friendships and stay away from nefarious people.

JC Charlton actor and theatre creation artist.

JC

You often watch a movie about drug addiction or drug trafficking or crime and it’s going to have a depressing ending. It’s solely a cautionary tale where you see the characters suffer and lose it all, and in this story – yes there’s suffering – yes there’s loss – but in the end – it’s the belief in this person by his friends and family that pulls him out of it, and I think that’s what separates our story from other stories.

CHRIS

The bonds that we have for each other can save us.

JAMES

The play has a whole soundscape that accompanies it. What was the process like for creating the music and sound for the production?

CHRIS

It was a lot of trial and error. We’d try to capture the feeling of what section we were working on and then we would tweak the soundscape and the music to try and enhance that feeling or that mood.

JC

There’s one section where the main character is having a panic attack envisioning all the terrible things that are going to happen to him, and the only thing that pulls him out of it is his girlfriend and, we’ve got this lovely piano melody that comes in there that’s very separate from anything else we’ve heard in the play up until that point. And then that melody keeps coming through the remaining pieces until we lead to the climax of the play.

JAMES

So, how different is the production that you’re presenting at the Motel compared to the one you did a couple of years ago at the One Act Festival?

JC

The script was in its infancy at the one-act festival. Since then we got in touch with Helen Young from Urban Stories, and I was blown away the first time I talked with Helen, because we wanted to get it into their play festival, and she told me couldn’t because the play was more than twenty minutes, but straight off the bat she said, “From the sounds of it we might want to do this for a mainstage show.” So, we sent her the script and went for a coffee with her, and the next thing we knew it was all in the works. We had them producing it. We’re going to be at Motel. We had a dramaturg come in, and we were fortunate enough to be given enough time to work on the script and develop it further.

Christopher Scott and JC Charlton (foreground) in the Urban Stories Theatre production of Come Home by JC Charlton. Directed by Nova Lea Thorne.

JC

We workshopped the script with Caroline Russell-King, who is a very talented dramaturg, and we completely changed the vehicle for the narrative. Before it was in the form of somebody telling their story to a friend, and now it’s all happening in the moment. And we’ve changed what the play is really about. Before it was focused on a single friendship and this friendship progressed the narrative, but now we’re focusing more on the individuals that Chris knew in Australia. The ones that kept him going when he was completely isolated. We get to know more about them and that changes the outcome of the play so now we have a new emotional climax – which I’m not going to spoil – but the main difference is that we’re including so many more characters and people responsible for bringing Chris home.

Sally Cacic, JC Carlton and Justin Many Fingers in rehearsal for the Urban Stories Theatre production of Come Home

JAMES

So, why should people come see it?

JC

It’s a unique show that combines theatre, electronic music, text and it’s inspired by a true story that happened to a local Calgarian here. Helen’s given us a lot of freedom to develop the play and to assemble a pretty talented production team. Our director is Nova Lea Thorne, and our lighting designer is Neil Fleming. Alexandria Inkster is designing the set, and Justin Many Fingers has come in and been a guest choreographer for us on a couple of occasions.

CHRIS

It’s an excellent tool for healing and also a way for us to express and showcase ourselves theatrically and artistically.

Sally Cacic and JC Charlton in the Urban Stories Theatre Production of Come Home By JC Charlton. Directed by Nova Lea Thorne

JC

When we did the show two years ago we were lucky enough to have a police officer come and see it, and what he said to me after the show was, “You know in my job it’s real easy to get jaded doing what I do, but after seeing this I’m going to remember that the next time I’m arresting a crack head or a drug dealer is that everyone has a story.” And I was surprised by how many people came up to me after the show with tears in their eyes and said that they had a family member that’s gone through the exact same thing. And that’s really what we’re trying to accomplish here. We’re trying to give an entertaining performance, but we’re also trying to do something that’s going to change the way people see people who are going through a hard time.

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Urban Stories Theatre presents Coming Home by CJ Charlton May 1st to 11 in the Motel Theatre at the Arts Commons. Tickets are $20.00 for adults and $15.00 for students, seniors, and artists and are available online at www.urbanstoriestheatre.org

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Come Home
By JC Charlton

CAST
JC Charlton
Christopher Scott
Sally Cacic

Directed by Nova Lea Thorne
Set Designer by Alexandria Inkster
Sound Design by Christopher Scott
Lighting Design by Neil Fleming
Guest Choreographer – Justin Many Fingers

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JC Charlton

JC is an actor and theatre creation artist based in Calgary, Alberta. JC is a University of Lethbridge alumni with degrees in education and fine arts. He has dedicated his career to acting and the development of new Canadian works. He has trained in advanced direction under his mentor Gail Hanrahan. Selected theatre credits include; (Kaahsinnoniks, dir. Justin Many Fingers), (Moon, Moon, No Moon, dir. Blake Brooker), (Come Home, dir. JC Charlton), (Okotoks, dir. Justin Many Fingers), (The Bear, dir. JC Charlton), (509, dir. Justin Many Fingers). 2016 Calgary + Provincial One Act Best Male Actor.

Christopher Scott

Christopher is a musical artist based in Calgary, Alberta. With a passion for melodic and bass heavy electronica he aims to create unique soundscapes and exciting experiences in a combination of theatre and sound design. He is a part of the new electronic duo, Mannequin. Chris has worked in a variety of fields from the drilling rigs in Canada and Australia to landscaping and construction here in Calgary, he has completed his training and holds certificates in the Fundamentals of Firefighting and Hazardous materials/ WMD incidents.

Sally Cacic

Sally Cacic is a West Australian actor. She is a graduate of Company of Rogues Actors’ Studio Master Class Program and StageMilk Drama School, and an ongoing member of StageMilk Drama Club in Sydney, Australia. She apprenticed in the Meisner Technique under her mentor Stacie Harrison, which she applies across her work in both theatre and film & television. Select theatre credits include Laughter (Urban Stories Theatre), How To Almost Be An Adult (Urban Stories Theatre), Late Night At The Plaza (Late Night Productions), and Australian productions A Chorus Line (The Old Mill Theatre), and Beauty & The Beast (The Ballet Company). Select film credits including Bright Hill Road (Nevermine Films), The Little Things (Shotlist Films), Joy To The World (SAIT Film Productions) 2017 AMPIA Rosie Award Finalist, and The Hundy (SAIT Film Productions) 2017 AMPIA Rosie Award Winner.

Nova Lea Thorne

Nova Lea is excited to be working on her first show with Urban Stories Theatre. She is grateful for the opportunity to direct this exceptional piece created by JC Charlton. Although much of her career, of late, has been in the area of stage management, she began her career as a performer, with Theatre New Brunswick, and has been involved in performance training and directing artist in residence programs, in Alberta, since the late 1990’s. She has instructed young performers with Quest Theatre, Theatre Calgary, Triangle Theatre School, as well as Theatre Works School of the Arts, a musical theatre school that she co-owned for twelve years. Nova Lea is the proud recipient of the Duval Lang Theatre for Young Audiences Award, a Betty Mitchell Juried Award.

Alexandria Inkster

Alexandria is a Calgary-based artist comes to performance through visual arts. She obtained her BFA in Sculpture in 2014 from the Alberta College of Art + Design (now the Alberta University of the Arts), and her MFA in 2016 from the University of Calgary. In her creative|research practice, Alexandria investigates the activation of agency and collective mobilization by enacting experiences of ambivalence, intimacy, freedom, and magical ideation. These investigations most often take the form of live performance and/or sculptural installation, where somehow her body always seems to become enmeshed in the work. Come Home is Alexandria’s first stint as a “set designer,” and she is absolutely thrilled to have the opportunity to work with its amazing cast and crew.

Neil Fleming

Neil is delighted to be part of the Come Home artistic team helping Chris and Jeff bring this story to life. Primarily a playwright, Neil sometimes likes to stretch his theatrical design muscles. Some past design credits include: Okotoks (Niitsitapi Dance, MT7), Gruesome Playground Injuries (Ground Zero, Hit & Myth), A Mid-Summer Night’s Dream (CYPT), The Vajayjay Monologues (Urban Curves), Shopaholic Husband Hunt (Lunchbox Theatre), Almost Perfect Thing, Kitchen Witches, In A World Created By A Drunken God, The Attic, the Pearls, & Three Fine Girls (New West Theatre), And So It Goes, Goodness, Bone Cage, Arm’s Length Embrace (Downstage).

URBAN STORIES THEATRE

Urban Stories Theatre supports local playwrights writing about social justice and humanity issues by nurturing their ideas from first draft to finished production. The company is made up of a core group of local artists who will oversee all productions and workshops. Budding actors, directors, stage managers and designers will be encouraged to share their ideas by becoming part of the team on a show by show basis.

Vision: To give local artists a voice in creating theatre that tells stories about real life.

Interview with Actor Christopher Hunt: Waiting for Godot

Posted on by James Hutchison

“It’s a play that changed the theatre landscape in the world, and makes you entertained in the moment, and lets you reflect on your own situation and the world that you’re in. And that’s the other kind of marker for this play is that existential, you know, absurdist world view of ‘There’s no God, there’s no religion, there’s nothing to believe in so why are we here? What’s the point of life? What’s the point of continuing on?’ This play swims in those waters too. All those kind of questions that sometimes wake us up in the middle of the night, or strike us at our most insecure moment.”

Christopher Hunt

On World Theatre Day I journeyed to The GRAND to meet up with Christopher Hunt, one of the founders of Black Radish Theatre, to talk with him about his acting career, Black Radish Theatre, and the ageless appeal of Waiting for Godot.
Andy Curtis as Vladimir, Duval Lang as Pozzo, Christopher Hunt as Estragon, and Tyrell Crews as Lucky, in the Black Radish Theatre Production of Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett.

Although we’re a long way in both time and distance from January 5, 1953 when Waiting for Godot premiered in Paris – and opened up new possibilities of expression for the stage – the play still resonates with a modern audience. ‘Before Beckett there was a naturalistic tradition. After him, scores of playwrights were encouraged to experiment with the underlying meaning of their work as well as with an absurdist style. As the Beckett scholar Ruby Cohn wrote: “After Godot, plots could be minimal; exposition, expendable; characters, contradictory; settings, unlocalized, and dialogue, unpredictable. Blatant farce could jostle tragedy.”

At it’s simplest, the play is about two longtime friends waiting on the side of a road near a tree to meet with Godot, but on a deeper level, Godot explores the existential nature of existence and the underlying perseverance of humanity. It’s also a play rich in comedy, and a thought-provoking piece of theatre. So, it seemed rather appropriate that on World Theatre Day I journeyed to The GRAND to meet up with Christopher Hunt, one of the founders of Black Radish Theatre, to talk with him about his acting career, Black Radish Theatre, and the ageless appeal of Waiting for Godot.

Christopher Hunt in Waiting for Godot
Christopher Hunt is Estragon in the Black Radish Theatre Production of Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett. Photo by Andy Curtis.

JAMES HUTCHISON

In a previous interview you talked about having inspirational teachers at the start of your career when you were getting interested in drama and acting. Who were some of those teachers and how were they inspiring for you?

CHRISTOPHER HUNT

The first play I ever did was Tom Sawyer in grade four, and Mrs. Allen was my teacher. I remember she had auditions and I thought Sam Crystal was going to be Tom Sawyer because he was so outgoing, and I was really surprised when I got the part of Tom. And we did the play – you know – whitewashing the fence and Aunt Polly and all that stuff, and I just have such vivid memories of the fun that that performance gave me.

And then a few years later in Junior High I had a teacher named Mrs. Palmer who taught drama as an option, and again she played these theatre games that I’d never experienced before, and it allowed this shy little farm boy to open up and try different things and be funny.

And then in High School, I had a teacher named Marlene Hansen – she directed us in one-act plays for festivals, and one year when I was in grade eleven a grade twelve student won a scholarship to the Drumheller Drama School, and this guy didn’t want to go by himself, so Mrs. Hansen scraped together some money so I could tag along too, because I was a young keener. And once I found the Drumheller Drama School, that was like finding my tribe. These were theatre nerds like me – I didn’t know there were so many! And that lead me to take the Drumheller Drama School the next year and the year after that, when I was out of high school.

Jan Alexandra Smith and Christopher Hunt in the Theatre Calgary production of An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde. Photo by Trudie Lee.

JAMES

After that, you ended up going to the U of C, and I was interested to learn that you originally went into Education, and I was wondering why you chose Education and what made you switch to Drama?

CHRISTOPHER

I think it was because of those influential teachers that inspired me, and I thought that teaching would be great because I had so much fun with them when I was a student. I remember going to matinees as a student to Theatre Calgary in the old QR Centre and seeing The Importance of Being Earnest with Stephen Hair and Maureen Thomas, and I just thought that was amazing, but I never thought I could do that. I just loved the theatre and the fact that I was doing plays in high school was enough for me so I thought teaching drama would be a great thing to do. But when I got into university and I took some Drama courses and some Education courses – the Education courses were a bad fit, but the Drama courses were a good fit. So I talked it over with my parents who were helping me pay for university, and I said, “I think I’m going to switch.” My dad was a farmer all his life, and he was worried about me going into an industry that was even less reliable than farming. He wanted something a little more stable for the only one of his kids who went on to a university education. My brothers went to Olds College for agricultural studies, and my sister took some college courses. But then my parents did some plays in the amateur High River theatre group – Windmill Theatre Players – and once they saw what it was like, they could understand why I was so enamoured with it, and it became a little easier to get their support.

Christopher Hunt and Cast in the Caravan Farm Theatre production of Our Town by Thornton Wilder. Photo by Tim Matheson

JAMES

As an actor you’ve said you’re open to using all sorts of different tools and techniques for creating a performance and I’m just curious how being able to draw on different techniques such as improvisation or method acting has been helpful in terms of hitting the stage, rehearsing plays, and developing characters.

CHRISTOPHER

I think as actors and as theatre people we get a chance to go into a whole bunch of different worlds and different stories and different kinds of telling stories and different buildings in which to tell those stories and different audiences to tell those stories to. And I’ve seen and worked with people who have a specific way of approaching the work. They always prepare this way. They always warm up this way. They always present themselves a certain way, and to me I admire that, but I think it can be limiting when you have all these variables in terms of types of stories, types of venues, types of characters, and because there’s so much variety, I think it’s better to embrace the variety than protecting a particular way of working. You have to be open, otherwise I think you’re limited in terms of the opportunities that might potentially come your way.

Andy Curtis, Christopher Hunt and John Ullyatt in the Vertigo Theatre Production of The 39 Steps by Patrick Barlow and John Buchan.

JAMES

Now, just before Christmas, you were at Vertigo Theatre in Dracula: The Bloody Truth. You were Van Helsing and that’s a play with multiple characters in it and you’ve done The 39 Steps which also has a lot of different characters and there seems to be a lot of that type of theatre happening now. Do you enjoy performing in that kind of show?

CHRISTOPHER

I do. It’s big bold choices – not subtle choices. But if I was just doing roles where I played a bunch of different characters in funny hats and voices and stuff like that I think it would get pretty tiring. That’s what I love about what I do. I can do that, and then I can do The Scarlet Letter or I can do Rosencrantz and Guildenstern – all these different challenges.

Philip Riccio and Christopher Hunt in 1979 by Michael Healey
Philip Riccio and Christopher Hunt in the ATP production of 1979 by Michael Healey. Photo by Benjamin Laird.

JAMES

Last year you were the recipient of the 2018 Harry & Martha Cohen Award which is given to individuals who have made a significant and sustained contribution to theatre in Calgary. You were nominated for the award by Grant Reddick and Marilyn Potts and they said, “Season after season, Chris has given performances that are significant, technically assured, innovative, subtle, engaging, amusing and often deeply moving. He is a master of comedy, his energy and timing in farce are delightful, and he tackles serious drama with ease.”

CHRISTOPHER

That was very nice of them to say all those things.

Christopher Hunt and Kristen Padayas in Flight Risk by Meg Braem.
Christopher Hunt and Kristen Padayas in the Lunchbox Theatre production of Flight Risk by Meg Braem. Photo by Benjamin Laird.

JAMES

So, what was it like to win that award which has been given to some really talented people? That’s quite an honour.

CHRISTOPHER

Huge honour. Huge. And yeah, just the other night Denise Clarke was given that same honour for this year. It’s a beautiful club to be a part of and I don’t take it lightly. It’s nice to be recognized for the work we do, and for the longevity, and for the decision to stay in one place and to be a part of one community. People say, “Why didn’t you go to Toronto/Vancouver/L.A./New York?” or whatever, but you know, I can have a family here and a home here and a career here, and I get to work with people from all over. And sometimes I get to go all over, so it’s a pretty sweet gig. I’m certainly not in it for the money but I feel pretty fulfilled and rewarded for the work I do.

Founding Members of Black Radish Theatre – Tyrell Crews, Christopher Hunt, Duval Lang, and Andy Curtis. Photo by Hugh Short.

JAMES

So, you’ve assembled a group of people and you’re starting a new theatre company called Black Radish. Why this group of people? Who are they? What brought you guys together?

CHRISTOPHER

Well, we’re all Calgary-based actors. There’s four of us. And what brought us all together was this bucket list show of Waiting For Godot. I met Andy Curtis back in our university days. He was a Loose Moose improviser and a very funny and talented guy, and then we worked together years later at Quest Theatre and at Ghost River Theatre and One Yellow Rabbit, and we’ve been actors-for-hire and have crossed paths several times over the years. And at some point, maybe ten years ago, we talked about Waiting for Godot. And it was a play we both loved and wanted to do. And then maybe about five years ago – maybe even longer – we said, “Let’s get together and just read it for fun.” And I can’t even remember who the other people were who helped us out that first time, but over the years people came and went, and once or twice a year we would read it and talk about how great it would be to do this play. We’d say, “We should talk to the artistic directors and pitch it and see if anyone would want to do it!” And no one did but, we kept on talking about doing it. And Duval Lang was the next person to come on board, and he would have us over to his place to have coffee and read the play and talk about it. And then Tyrell Crews is the fourth member of Black Radish. He had worked at the Stratford Festival a few years ago and saw an awesome production there and he said, “Man, we could do a play like that easily in Calgary, with the talent here.” And for some reason he thought of me and Andy as the main two guys and we said, “It’s funny you should say that, because we’ve been reading this play for years!” And he went, “Seriously?” So he said, “I’m going to apply for the rights – let’s do it.”

Tyrell Crews is Lucky in The Black Radish Theatre Production of Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett. Photo by Andy Curtis.

JAMES

What is it about the play that you find so compelling?

CHRISTOPHER

When I read it in high school I didn’t get it, but I liked the simpleness of it but also the complexity of it. And then the summer before I started at U of C, I saw a production of Waiting for Godot at the Pumphouse that Loose Moose did. Keith Johnstone directed it. John Gilchrist the restaurant reviewer was Pozzo. Dennis Cahill and Mel Tonkin were the main two guys. Frank Totino was Lucky and I believe Keith Johnstone’s wife at the time, Ingrid, played The Boy. And that production blew my head off, and I just went, “This is astounding.” It was so simple. It was so funny. It was so moving. It was a perfect little jewel of a production. And a lot of people loved that production. And I’ve since found out that Keith Johnstone had a huge history with Samuel Beckett. He saw the original English language production in 1955 and loved it. And changed his career to become a theatre guy. And a year later he was the playwright in residence at the Royal Court Theatre, and Samuel Beckett came to London with his next play. And Keith Johnstone met him and they became friends. Keith was one of the first people he allowed in to watch his rehearsals. And Keith’s directed the play maybe eight times since then, including the one that I saw. So Tyrell and I went and chatted with Keith last month and got some of his thoughts on the play and Beckett and that world, How many guys are there in the world who knew Samuel Beckett that are still around? And he’s here in Calgary!

JAMES

Let’s talk a little bit about Godot and that world. How are you approaching it? What do you think of it? I’m curious – what are your thoughts?

CHRISTOPHER

Well, to me, it’s a good play because it’s open to interpretation both for the artists doing it and for the audience watching it. I think what I love about it is its open-endedness, and its ability to speak to whomever. That was one of the nuggets that Keith said. He said, “When I was twenty and I watched this play I went, ‘This play is about me.’ Now, when I read it, this play is about me now as an old man as opposed to a young artist.” And it’s been famously done in Sarajevo and South Africa and prisons, and so it speaks to people everywhere, especially if it’s a good production. And it spoke to me when I saw it and it speaks to me now. It’s deliciously vague and malleable and thought-provoking and funny. And it’s easy I think to veer off and to make it too sombre, or to make it too silly and funny. It’s a tricky balancing act. And that’s what I loved about that Keith Johnstone Loose Moose production because it was moving, funny, and thought-provoking. It was all those things good theatre should be.

Duval Lang is Pozzo in the Black Radish Theatre Production of Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett. Photo by Andy Curtis.

JAMES

How would you describe Vladimir and Estragon’s relationship in the play? You’re playing Estragon and Andy Curtis is playing Vladimir, correct?

CHRISTOPHER

Yeah. You know, it took me a long time to start to see any real difference between the two. They’re two kind of clown-like tramp-like figures that are down on their luck and have health concerns and personal concerns and frustrations with each other, but also a long history with each other. And I think as I read more about them and read what other people thought of them I started to figure out that Vladimir is more of the thinker. He’s more looking to the sky, and he’s more thoughtful and intellectual and in his head. And Estragon is more rooted to the ground and hungry and tired and forgetful. And so he’s more earthbound and Vladimir is more outward bound. And they know how to push each other’s buttons, and they know how to support each other. And then there are moments of, “I honestly can’t go on. I don’t think I can do this anymore.” Or, “I think it would be better if we parted,” and those kind of moments hit you like a ton of bricks, because who hasn’t thought about that?

Andy Curtis is Vladimir in the Black Radish Theatre production of Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett. Photo by Andy Curtis.

JAMES

What are you hoping to discover in the rehearsal process for the play?

CHRISTOPHER

Well, we’re all really excited to be working with Denise Clarke as our director and our design team because they’re all super talented and have a lot of intellectual rigour and theatrical knowledge to help bring this story alive. Denise has talked about wanting to honour the text and the history of the play, but also to give people something unexpected. We want to shake things up a bit. And Denise, with her work as a choreographer and a writer and a performer, has a lot of ideas around how to be in a space, especially in the Grand which is a beautiful space to be in.

Andy Curtis as Vladimir and Tyrell Crews as Lucky in the Black Radish Theatre production of Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett.

JAMES

You know what’s really interesting to me about the text is that it doesn’t really give you much of a clue about the world outside of this tree and rock and road. We don’t know the truth of the world outside although we do know there’s the Eiffel Tower, but this bleak landscape might be more normal than the exception.

CHRISTOPHER

Yup, that’s true and it’s a field day for designers too, because how do you include those elements? How do you make those elements? What kind of a tree is it? What kind of a rock is it? Some people ignore that, and put it inside of a concrete bunker, and some people ignore the stage directions and have them dress totally different. So it’s what you pick and choose, and what you focus on and what you share that makes your version come alive or not.

Christopher Hunt and Andy Curtis in Waiting for Godot.
Andy Curtis as Vladimir and Christopher Hunt as Estragon in the Black Radish Theatre Production of Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett.

JAMES

And your designer is Terry Gunvordahl.

CHRISTOPHER

Yes. Set and lighting designer.

JAMES

The last thing I saw on stage that was Beckett was about eight years ago when he did Krapp’s Last Tape. He was acting in it and Anton deGroot was at Lunchbox at that time doing the RBC Emerging Director’s program and that was the play he had chosen to present. And I went to see it and it was a really good production and Terry was really good in it.

CHRISTOPHER

I’m sorry I missed that. Terry is a big Beckett fan and he’s done this play before – an amazingly well-remembered production in Kamloops years ago with some great actors in it including Jonathan Young from The Electric Company and Betroffenheit which was a big hit all across the world actually. So, Terry knows this play well and he’s really pumped to do it again here at the Grand especially because he used to design shows here when Theatre Junction was more active producing their own work.

Anton Matsigura is The Boy in the Black Radish Theatre production of Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett. Photo by Andy Curtis.

JAMES

So, why should people come and see the show?

CHRISTOPHER

It’s a new company to support, and it’s in a space that’s revitalized and welcoming again. It’s a play that changed the theatre landscape in the world, and makes you entertained in the moment, and lets you reflect on your own situation and the world that you’re in. And that’s the other kind of marker for this play is that existential, you know, absurdist world view of “There’s no God, there’s no religion, there’s nothing to believe in so why are we here? What’s the point of life? What’s the point of continuing on?” This play swims in those waters too. All those kind of questions that sometimes wake us up in the middle of the night or strike us at our most insecure moment.

Waiting for Godot
a tragicomedy in two acts
By Samuel Beckett

Cast

Estragon: Christopher Hunt
Vladimir: Andy Curtis
Pozzo: Duval Lang
Lucky: Tyrell Crews
The Boy: Anton Matsigura

Production

Director: Denise Clarke – Assistant Director: Sarah Wheeldon – Set & Lighting Designer: Terry Gunvordahl – Costume Designer: Ralamy Kneeshaw – Sound Design & Composition: Peter Moller – Stage Manager: Meredith Johnson – Photography and Graphic Design: Hugh Short – Web Site: Keith Watson

BLACK RADISH THEATRE is a new Calgary-based theatre company, founded by Duval Lang, Andy Curtis, Tyrell Crews and Christopher Hunt, and is committed to revisiting relevant theatre classics. Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett is their first bucket list show and is being performed at The GRAND – Calgary’s theatre since 1912.

Black Radish Theatre presents Waiting for Godot – a tragicomedy in two acts – by Samuel Beckett. April 25th to May 12th at The GRAND. Evening performances Tuesday through Saturday at 7:30 pm with Saturday and Sunday matinees at 2:00 pm. Tickets are just $46.00 for adults and $30.00 for Students and Seniors. Tickets are available online at www.blackradishtheatre.ca

Interview with writer, composer, and musical director Joe Slabe: Crossing Swords

Posted on by James Hutchison
Writer, composer, musical director and founding artistic director of Forte Musical Theatre Guild: Joe Slabe

“Music is able to tap right into a visceral emotional reaction that doesn’t require words or which can layer on top of words so there’s a whole other way of communicating that comes into play, because yes there are usually lyrics but the music can lift and elevate those lyrics and actually create a short cut to your emotional core and make you feel things. And when movement and dance get involved that’s a whole other level of expression. It’s really all the arts because theatre involves architecture and colour theory and costume and literature and music and dance and so musical theatre is sort of all the arts in the pursuit of a single vision or message.”

When the boys from St. Mark’s join the girls from St Anne’s to present Cyrano de Bergerac, three friends get more of an education that they bargained for. Love blossoms, jealousies flare, and secrets are revealed that may end their youthful innocence forever as life imitates art in this funny and poignant coming of age story. Winner of five awards for excellence at the New York Musical Festival, Crossing Swords is a backstage musical that shows that sometimes being yourself is the most heroic act of all.

I dropped into the Beddington Theatre Arts Centre, a couple of weeks ago where rehearsals were underway for Crossing Swords, in order to talk with Joe Slabe about musical theatre and the journey his play has taken to reach the stage.

JAMES HUTCHISON

You’re in musical theatre. You’re a composer. Sometimes you’re on stage.

JOE SLABE

Yup.

JAMES

So, I was wondering what kind of music does Joe Slabe listen to when he’s home alone just chillin’?

JOE

I listen to a lot of musicals obviously, because I’m passionate about those, but I like jazz, and I still like classical. I was trained as a classical pianist. So, it depends on my mood. I also still like the pop music of my youth – the pop music of the eighties – and so. if I’m having people over sometimes I’ll just put on that channel on Stingray.

JAMES

Any particular artists? Any particular songs?

JOE

I would say the big popular musical influences on me were the piano-based artists like Billy Joel and Elton John, because you could feel cool as a piano player because they made the piano rock – which was great. And I think every generation discovers the Beatles, and I discovered the Beatles when I was in my teens, and they were a huge influence on me.

JAMES

So, what was the vision behind the creation of the Forte Musical Theatre Guild?

JOE

I was writing these little musicals and I was really interested in the idea of new musical theatre in Calgary because everyone was doing new plays, but no one was doing new musicals. And I was pitching them, and no one would touch them. They said, “No they’re too expensive. You can’t do that.” And then I went well, “Be the change you want to see.” And so, I started the company, and what’s interesting is that within two or three years suddenly everyone was doing new musicals. But that’s okay, we were the first.

Sometimes racy, sometimes sweet, Naughty but Nice! takes a hilarious and slightly risqué look at everyone’s favourite holiday season and promises to leave you with a song in your head and hope in your heart! – Forte Musical Theatre Guild

JAMES

Having your own company gives you more control over the process.

JOE

Yes, you’re not waiting around forever for people to workshop your stuff or whatever. The thing is, I’ve really been trying to work with younger writers too, and that’s why the review shows that we do are so great, because you don’t have to write a whole musical. You can write a song and get a chance to see how it plays in front of an audience. So, in a show like Naughty but Nice or Touch Me – Songs for a (dis)connected Age those were shows structured around a theme where a young writer has a chance to write material for a show, but they didn’t have to write an entire show.

JAMES

I read in an interview you sent me that during your first year of high school you were playing the music for a production of West Side Story.

JOE

Yes.

JAMES

And that really sparked your love for musical theatre, but I’m wondering now, many years later, what do you retain from that young kid who first thought that theatre was special and magical?

JOE

It’s the sense of finding my tribe, I think, this group of people who care about the same things I do. And I feel like musical theatre is a force for good in the world. If you look at the history of musical theatre its always been, sort of, on the leading edge of social justice like, Showboat, which came out in the 1920s and tackled racism head-on or West Side Story where they don’t demonize either group of kids – they just recognize that juvenile delinquency arose out of big social problems, and I think theatre has always been ahead of movies and television in addressing social or hot button issues.

JAMES

Do you think theatre has the ability to respond quicker and to get that work out there?

JOE

And there are fewer filters on the writer and the artists, because in theatre the playwright is the final word. You can’t change a single word without the playwright’s permission. Whereas, in movies the author is the studio, and so they can hire and fire the writer and still own the show, and they can bring someone in to change it. In theatre you can do it faster and there are fewer filters that you have to pass through.

Touch Me – Songs for a (dis)connected Age – Equal parts hilarious and heart wrenching, this modern musical revue impresses with its soaring vocals and refreshingly true depictions of our most private technological transgressions. Winner of three Calgary Critics’ Awards, Touch Me is bound to get you thinking about the connections in your life. Forte Musical Theatre Guild

JAMES

So, what do you think are the unique opportunities for musicals to tell stories?

JOE

It communicates directly with your gut. Music is able to tap right into a visceral emotional reaction that doesn’t require words or which can layer on top of words, so there’s a whole other way of communicating that comes into play, because yes, there are usually lyrics, but the music can lift and elevate those lyrics and actually create a short cut to your emotional core and make you feel things. And when movement and dance get involved that’s a whole other level of expression. It’s really all the arts because theatre involves architecture and colour theory and costume and literature and music and dance and so musical theatre is sort of all the arts in the pursuit of a single vision or message.

Austentatious is a hilarious play within a play musical that follows the Riverdale Amateur Players as they unwittingly butcher Jane Austen’s beloved classic as they present a new adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. Terrible theatre at its absolute comedic best. By Joe Slabe, Matt Board, Kate Galvin, Jane Caplow, and Luisa Hinchliff. Forte Musical Theatre Guild.

JAMES

Well, let’s talk a little bit about Cyrano de Bergerac, because that is your inspiration for your play Crossing Swords, and I’m wondering what is it about the original story – the original play – that appeals to you?

JOE

I’m in awe of it because if it’s done right, and I’ve seen it done well and I’ve seen it done really badly, but if it’s done right, it’s really funny. It’s lushly romantic. There’s sword fighting, and it’s tragic, and it’s heartbreaking, and I can’t think of another play that balances those elements so well. And so, my challenge was to try and write a show that was funny and was romantic and was sad. And when I started writing it-it was going to be a tragedy, but I backed off the tragic element of the show when the Dan Savage, “It Gets Better” campaign happened, and I kind of went, “You know the world doesn’t need another gay coming of age tragedy. The world needs a gay coming of age hero.” But the ending is bittersweet because of the love triangle. No one gets what they want, and they all emerge a little bit bruised but wiser, and the kids are alright in the end.

Katie McMillan as Nicky, Troy Goldthorp as Jeremy, and Adam Forward as David in the Storybook Theatre Forte Musical Guild Production of Crossing Swords by Joe Slabe.

JAMES

So, how did the idea for Crossing Swords actually begin?

JOE

I was doing my masters in musical composition in London and up until then I was writing mostly comic stuff, and my sense of humour was a little bit dirty and kind of smart-alecky, so a lot of the songs in my book were these smart witty things, and my instructor on the course said, “You know talking to you-you seem like the kind of guy that cries at long distance commercials. You know, I feel like you are a very sentimental person, and yet I don’t see any of that in what you write.” And he challenged me to write something that was from my heart instead of from my head. And I sort of took that on board, and I went well, “I think that’s true,” and I remembered when I was a teacher at St Francis, we had done a production of Cyrano and how much I had loved it. And I’d say Crossing Swords is kind of a summation of all my teaching experience, because I taught stage combat, so there’s stage combat in the show, and I taught with amazing colleagues, and so – the teachers in the play are kind of composites of a bunch of people I worked with that I thought were really fantastic, and the kids are composites of the thousands of kids that I taught and how cool they were, and so – I found myself drawing on all that and the affection that I felt for the characters arose out of the affection for this program I taught and working with these colleagues and with these students, and I think that comes through in the show, because there’s no villain. Like not even the uptight math teacher even. I think we learn a lot about him and grow to like him. I love all of the characters in the show, but there are conflicts that arise.

Cast from the 2012 production of Jeremy de Bergerac now retitled Crossing Swords by Joe Slabe. Nominated for five Betty Mitchell Awards and three Calgary Critics’ Awards. Cast: Adam Schlinker, Tory Doctor, Selina Wong, Roberta Mauer Phillips, Eric Wigston. Forte Musical Theatre Guild

JAMES

Did having such a personal attachment to the material make it an easier show to write or a more difficult show to write?

JOE

It’s one of the few times where I’ve been writing and it really was like taking dictation. A lot of writer’s talk about this experience of suddenly the characters just start talking to them, but it had never happened to me before, and what was really weird was – as I’m typing they were saying things that were surprising me. It’s a freaky experience, because I’d go like, “Oh, really? Are we going there? Holly Crow! Oh my God!” And that’s my inner monologue as I’m typing what the characters are saying. So, that was certainly easy. The other thing was a lot of times when you’re writing comedy you’re never really sure if it’s good until it’s in front of an audience, but as I was writing this show I was pretty sure that it was good, and moreover I actually didn’t care what people thought of it, because I believed that it was good. So, that was a very unique experience for me.

JAMES

So you wrote the first act while you were taking your masters in London in 2005. And then it kind of percolated for about six years while you went off and did a bunch of other stuff, and then you wrote the second act and finished the play for the New York Musical Festival.

JOE

No, I wrote it for here first. And it was called Jeremy de Bergerac, and we did it in the Joyce Dolittle at the Pumphouse Theatre. It was one of those things where I was going to produce a show with Forte and the rights for that show fell through, and then I needed a show, and I kind of went, “Oh, maybe this is the universe saying you should finish this show?” So, I did.

JAMES

So, you produced it in Calgary in 2012 and then at the New York Musical Festival in 2013, and then you had a production in 2016 with The American Theatre Group in New Jersey, and now you have the production here. So, you’ve had multiple directors and performers and several different people all contributing to the development of the musical over a period of many years, and I’m wondering what do you get from all these different collaborators?

JOE

Well, the great thing is when you have actors inhabiting the role they’re really focused on their individual character. When you’re the playwright you’re looking at the big picture, and even as a director you’re looking at the big picture. But an actor is really interested in their character. So you get great notes from actors, and I trust – if an actor is having trouble with a line and if they’re a good actor – chances are there’s a problem with that line. And seeing different actors in a role is really interesting because they make different choices, and it shows you that there’s always more than one way to do things that can be equally effective.

American Theatre Guild Production of Crossing Swords by Joe Slabe

JAMES

How do you determine which notes are the ones I’m going to take and seriously have a look at, and how do you determine which ones might not be something you need?

JOE

Trusting the source is number one. If you’re working with a director that you respect then their instincts are probably going to be good. I did have an experience when I was in New York at the music festival and the director Igor Golden leaned over to me in rehearsal and he just said, “The scene ends here.” And I said, “Oh yeah, but there’s this really great thing coming up.” And he said, “Yeah, but I think the scenes over.” So I said, “Okay I’m going to take it away and I just want to see – because I’ve got some really great stuff here – and so I’m just going to see if I can move that earlier in the scene and then I’ll bring it in.” And he said, “Okay, we can try it.” So, we tried it the next day, and I went, “Yeah, that sucks.” (Laughs) “You’re right. The scene ends here.”

JAMES

And it did very well at the New York Festival. It won five awards.

JOE

It did. It won for best book of a musical. So, it won for the script, and it also won something called the Theatre for the American Musical Prize which is the show that best exemplifies the American Musical Theatre Tradition of balancing book and song. I thought that was funny because I’m a Canadian.

2013 New York Musical Festival production of Crossing Swords by Joe Slabe. Crossing Swords won five awards at the festival including the Awards for Excellence in Writing (Book), Direction, Musical Direction, Individual Performance and the Theatre for the American Musical Prize! Cast: Linda Balgord as Miss Daignault, Steve Hauck as Sir, Lyle Colby Mackston as Jeremy, Ali Gordon as Nicky, Marrick Smith as David.

JAMES

So, let’s talk a little bit about your current creative team in this new production coming up. Who have you assembled to bring us the show in 2019 here in Calgary?

JOE

Well, I have Val Pearson directing, and sitting in rehearsal with her is like a master class in acting. She directed the very first version, and she is amazing with young actors, and we have some very young actors on the show. And JP Thibedeau who is, of course, the Artistic Director at Storybook is doing sets and lights for us, and we’re in the Vertigo Studio so that’s great. He’s very familiar with the space.

JAMES

So, you have more options than you had when you presented it at the Pumphouse in 2012.

JOE

Yeah a few more options, although we’re keeping it pretty simple. The nice thing about the show is it doesn’t require a lot of huge production elements because your imagination does a lot of the work, because it’s a memory play and we’re remembering these events that happened, because we get to see the kids as older characters and then they’re remembering this pivotal experience that changed their lives. So, because it’s a memory play we don’t need the entire cast of Cyrano, we just need the three principal characters, because that’s who we remember and these were the important events.

Adam Forward as David, Katie McMillan as Nicky, and Troy Goldthorp as Jeremy in the Storybook Theatre Forte Musical Theatre Guild production of Crossing Swords by Joe Slabe.

JOE

And I’m really excited about the cast. Katie McMilliam who played young Mary in Mary and Max at Theatre Calgary is in it. She also played Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz at Storybook, so it’s great to have her. Adam Forward who won the Broadway World Award for his performance in The Outsiders here at Storybook is in it, and he’s seventeen, and Katie is eighteen, and the characters are supposed to be seventeen. Adam’s still in high school, so it’s fantastic to have these actors. who are the right age, playing these parts. And then Troy Goldthrop is playing Jeremy, and he actually grew up here, and he has a little more experience. He’s been out in Ontario. He was in the Charlotte Town Festival, and he’s come back home, and he’s playing the lead in our show. And then we have Troy Doctor playing Sir who’s a musical theatre veteran here in Calgary, and Shari Wattling is playing Miss. I’ve worked with her a number of times on musicals, and she hasn’t been performing as much lately, because she was working at Theatre Calgary as their literary manager and then as their associate artistic director and then as their acting artistic director.

JAMES

Her plate was full.

JOE

Her plate was a little full, but it’s been great to get her back on the stage.

Shari Wattling as Miss and Tory Doctor as Sir in the Storybook Theatre Forte Musical Theatre Guild Production of Crossing Swords by Joe Slabe.

JAMES

So, why should Calgary audiences come out and see the show?

JOE

Well, they sing while fencing. They actually have stage choreography that they act out that’s timed to beats in the musical numbers, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen that before, so I think that’s pretty cool. And also, because it started here, and the level of talent from these Calgary artists is amazing, and because it’s a really timely story. You know, you always think that the battle for understanding for LGBT kids is done. You think, “oh that’s done – surely that’s accomplished” and yet we’re still talking about things that you thought were long settled and weren’t an issue, and they just come back, and so maybe we need an empathy lesson. And that’s what theatre does great. It puts you in the shoes of someone whose experience is different from yours and creates empathy. And that’s not just the gay coming of age story. The play puts you in the shoes of a math teacher who’s very uptight and has very strong opinions about the way the world should be that are quite diametrically opposed to the French drama teacher, and she has her very strong ideas about the way the world should be, and it’s not that they’re wrong – it’s just that they have different opinions, and the strength of this show is that it allows you to understand and sympathize with the other point of view. Which is something sorely lacking right now in our political and social discourse. People are so locked into their silos that they’re not willing to entertain other people’s point of views, and this show is about Jeremy and his best friend having to come to terms with – “You’re not the person I thought you were, and how do I wrap my head around this, and how do I make peace with that when I don’t agree or understand where you’re coming from.” And it’s just we’re human, and our job as humans is to learn how to understand each other.

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Storybook Theatre presents Crossing Swords by Joe Slabe in partnership with Forte Musical Theatre Guild from April 19th to May 4th at the Vertigo Studio Theatre. Evening shows run Tuesday to Saturday at 7:00 pm with Saturday and Sunday matinees at 2:00 pm. There will be a relaxed performance on Friday, April 26th at 7:00 pm. Tickets are just $30.45 for adults and $25.20 for students and are available online at www.storybooktheatre.org

Troy Goldthorp as Jeremy in the Storybook Theatre Forte Musical Guild Production of Crossing Swords by Joe Slabe.

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Crossing Swords by Joe Slabe

CAST

Troy Goldthorp as Jeremy
Katie McMillan as Nicky
Adam Forward as David
Tory Doctor as Sir
Shari Wattling as Miss

PRODUCTION TEAM

Valerie Ann Pearson: Director
Christ Thompson: Assistant Director
Joe Slabe: Musical Director
Jocelyn Hoover Liever: Choreography
Karl Sine: Fight Director
Darcie Howe: Costume Design
Cat Bentley: Hair Design
Allie Higgins Pompu: Make-Up Design
JP Thibodeau: Set/Lighting Design
Emma Know: Props
Jennifer Merio: Marketing
Jody Low: Production Supervisor

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Joe Slabe is a Calgary-based writer, composer and musical director who obtained his Masters Degree in musical theatre composition from Goldsmiths College at the University of London. In 2013, Joe presented his play Crossing Swords at the New York Musical Theatre Festival where it won five NYMF awards including Excellence in Book Writing and the Theatre for the American Musical Prize. Joe also co-wrote the 2007 NYMF hit, Austentatious, which was recently published by Playscripts Inc. and has played London, New York, Philadelphia and Calgary. Other musicals Joe has written include, Maria Rasputin Presents (produced by Forte Musical Theatre Guild and nominated for three 2013 Betty Mitchell Awards including Outstanding New Play) If I Weren’t With You, (presented by Lunchbox Theatre and nominated for a 2013 Calgary Critics’ Award for Outstanding Production of a Musical), Jeremy de Bergerac (re-titled Crossing Swords and nominated for five 2012 Betty Mitchell Awards including Outstanding New Play, Outstanding Composition and Outstanding Production of a Musical) and Twisted (nominated for three 2011 Betty Mitchell Awards including Outstanding Production of a Musical). Joe is also an award-winning musical director having musically directed fourteen shows in Western Canada over the past four years. In that time, he has been recognized with three Betty Mitchell Awards for his work. Joe is the founding artistic director of Forte Musical Theatre Guild and received the 2004 Greg Bond Award for outstanding contributions to musical theatre in Calgary.

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This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Last updated April 19, 2019.

Hamlet: A Ghost Story – Actor Ahad Raza Mir

Posted on by James Hutchison

“I believe that no matter what part we’re playing we have a part of ourselves in that character so you need to find that part of you that fits best with the character. It’s just you at a new address. It’s you exploring yourself in a different place and I think that’s the only way for me to make it honest. In school and in rehearsals, they always go, “Be honest. Be honest. Be honest.” And when I read the script – the first time I read it as me. I’m not reading it as a character. I’m reading it as I would read it. And I think the only way to bring out an honest performance is for you to bring it out from inside. I don’t think it makes sense to put something on because then that becomes acting.” – Ahad Raza Mir

Ahad Mir as Hamlet in the Vertigo Theatre, Shakespeare Company, Hit+Myth Production of Hamlet: A Ghost Story. Adapted by Anna Cummer. Directed by Craig Hall. Set & Costume Designer Hanne Loosen. Lighting Designer David Fraser. Citrus Photo

Last September, I interviewed Haysam Kadri the artistic director of the Shakespeare Company about their season of Hamlet which included, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead with ATP, Hammered Hamlet at the High Performance Rodeo in January, and now Hamlet: A Ghost Story in partnership with Vertigo Theatre. The Shakespeare Company and Vertigo had previously collaborated on a highly successful production of Macbeth and were looking to repeat that success.

Now, Calgary audiences will have a chance to see a thrilling new adaptation of Shakespeare’s most famous play as the tormented prince of Denmark seeks vengeance for the murder of his father at the hands of his Uncle Claudius. The tale is a ghost story, a detective story, and a revenge story all packed into one unforgettable night of theatre. This is a Hamlet for the modern age as The Shakespeare Company, Hit+Myth Productions, and Vertigo Theatre team up for a ghostly re-imagining of one of the Bard’s greatest works.

This is part two of a two-part series about Hamlet: A Ghost Story. In part one, I interviewed Director Craig Hall and Playwright Anna Cummer, who penned the adaptation, about their unique take on one of Shakespeare’s most famous and most produced play. In part two I sit down with actor Ahad Raza Mir who has returned to Calgary from his native Pakistan to play the title role and to talk with him about his approach to acting and his thoughts about playing Hamlet.

JAMES HUTCHISON

Ahad, you’ve achieved a lot of fame in your native Pakistan, but you’re returning to the Shakespeare Company here in Canada for an opportunity to play Hamlet. So, what is so compelling about the character that brought you back to the stage here in Calgary?

AHAD RAZA MIR

In high school and university, you always hear the name Hamlet. You always hear “To be or not to be” and you kind of go, “What’s the big deal? And then you read it, and you go, “Wow, this is a beautiful piece of literature.” And I think as you mature as an actor and the more work you do you realize that Hamlet is a kind of rite of passage that you have to cross. And for me as an actor, I’ve been doing a lot of film and TV and I think this was the perfect opportunity for me to come back and explore how I’ve matured and how I’ve developed as an actor.

And I also have some very selfish reasons to come back to a place where I originated. The Shakespeare Company and Calgary is what has shaped me to be the actor that I am – not even just the actor but the person that I am. You know I think this place is what groomed me. Canada groomed me. Being at the University of Calgary. Living in Canada.

Ahad Mir as Hamlet in the Vertigo Theatre, Shakespeare Company, Hit+Myth Production of Hamlet: A Ghost Story. Adapted by Anna Cummer. Directed by Craig Hall. Set & Costume Designer Hanne Loosen. Lighting Designer David Fraser. Citrus Photo

JAMES

Your father, Asif Raza Mir, is also a well-known actor and has had a high degree of fame. Did he have any words of advice to you that have helped you balance the work with the fame?

AHAD

He has advised me about how to handle people. How to handle crowds. But he’s tried to make it a point for me to figure it all out on my own, and that’s because he thinks I tend to be easily influenced, and he thinks that the realities I see about showbiz I need to realize on my own, or they won’t truly make sense to me.

And he comes from a different time. A time when there was just one television channel in Pakistan, so if your show was a hit then the whole nation went crazy about you. There was a show my dad did back in the eighties and the streets would literally be empty because everyone was home watching that show. Now the time is very different. There are multiple channels. There are digital platforms. But the exposure is just as high now because of social media. Sometimes I feel there’s this constant need to inform your fans about what you’re doing on social media whereas my argument is if you’re watching me in a show where I’m in the 1940s and the next second you’re seeing me at the beach with a coffee in my hand it throws your audience off.

JAMES

Breaks the illusion of what you’re trying to create as an actor.

AHAD

I want people to appreciate the performances and appreciate the stories.

JAMES

Focus on the stories and not necessarily on what you’re having for lunch.

AHAD

Exactly.

Ahad Mir as Hamlet in the Vertigo Theatre, Shakespeare Company, Hit+Myth Production of Hamlet: A Ghost Story. Adapted by Anna Cummer. Directed by Craig Hall. Set & Costume Designer Hanne Loosen. Lighting Designer David Fraser. Citrus Photo

JAMES

You know Hamlet spends a lot of time contemplating life and thinking about existence and looking up into the stars and examining motivations and what’s going on. Is that a characteristic you have yourself? Do you find yourself contemplating all those big questions?

AHAD

I have. I’m someone who struggles to decide between shampoos and what to eat, so I hope Hamlet can teach me something. Although, if you read the play he doesn’t really figure it out in the end, but I think, as Craig our director has mentioned, he’s a man of the new age. And that means you have to give up certain values and certain customs of a time before and then kind of adapt to new things. So, that’s the struggle for him in the play. I know how I should act but there must be some other way for me to approach this. And that option is what confuses him. That thought is what confuses him. And similarly for me, when I have too many options about deciding what do I do with my life that’s a struggle. Being at the University of Calgary I remember I was in business. I was a business student, and I was still doing shows with the drama department there. And I was going, “I want to do business, but I love theatre.” And then one day I went, “I need to decide.” And that decision was so difficult to make but when I finally made it – when I switched to drama – my life changed.

Meg Farhall as Rosencrantz, Ahad Mir as Hamlet and Behrad Mashtagh as Guildenstern in the Vertigo Theatre, Shakespeare Company, Hit+Myth Production of Hamlet: A Ghost Story. Adapted by Anna Cummer. Directed by Craig Hall. Set & Costume Designer Hanne Loosen. Lighting Designer David Fraser. Citrus Photo

JAMES

Do you think that’s one of the appeals then of Hamlet? The fact that he struggles with questions that we in our lives also struggle with and as an audience as we’re watching him struggle we somehow relate to that?

AHAD

Yes, because that’s what being human is all about. It’s about making choices. Making mistakes. Making the right decisions. It’s all about the right person to get married to. The right choice for post-secondary. It could be anything, and I think that’s relatability. He’s struggling to make one choice – being that’s it’s to murder somebody or not.

JAMES

It’s a big choice.

AHAD

It’s a big decision, and I think we all struggle with that on a daily basis.

Curt McKinstry as Claudius and Ahad Mir as Hamlet in the Vertigo Theatre, Shakespeare Company, Hit+Myth Production of Hamlet: A Ghost Story. Adapted by Anna Cummer. Directed by Craig Hall. Set & Costume Designer Hanne Loosen. Lighting Designer David Fraser. Citrus Photo

JAMES

What are you hoping to bring to your Hamlet?

AHAD

I’m hoping that I can bring something relatable to the new age of viewers. To make him feel contemporary so that the eighteen-year-old coming to see the show from first-year university can get it and feel what Hamlet’s feeling. Plus, I’m just trying to make him human.

Ahad Mir as Hamlet in the Vertigo Theatre, Shakespeare Company, Hit+Myth Production of Hamlet: A Ghost Story. Adapted by Anna Cummer. Directed by Craig Hall. Set & Costume Designer Hanne Loosen. Lighting Designer David Fraser. Citrus Photo

JAMES

I’m curious when you’re playing a character like Hamlet how much of your performance do you know going in and how much is developed through the rehearsal process?

AHAD

I think I had a very clear idea of what I wanted to do with Hamlet. I wanted him to be, for lack of a better word, a bro.

JAMES

Hey bro.

AHAD

Hey bro, what’s up? You know somebody you want to hang out with. And as soon as we sat down and started doing the table work, I found out the text supports that he is this kind of melancholy, brooding, depressed soul. And I think he’s almost like a child who is feeling certain emotions for the first time.

Daniela Vlaskalic as Gertrude, Ahad Mir as Hamlet in the Vertigo Theatre, Shakespeare Company, Hit+Myth Production of Hamlet: A Ghost Story. Adapted by Anna Cummer. Directed by Craig Hall. Set & Costume Designer Hanne Loosen. Lighting Designer David Fraser. Citrus Photo

JAMES

Because he’s lived this charmed life.

AHAD

A perfect life.

JAMES

For thirty years he’s been the son, he’s been the prince, and he’s been allowed to study and then suddenly his dad is murdered.

AHAD

And it’s not just one thing. It’s mom’s married your uncle. Your uncle’s killed your father. You’ve seen the ghost of your dad. And then there’s Ophelia and all these things are happening and he’s feeling these emotions for the first time. I actually think he’s feeling anger and grief all together at once. And feeling it for the first time again like a child that’s getting upset and all they can do is scream because they don’t know what to say and they don’t know what to do so that’s kind of what he’s going through.

Behrad Mashtagh as Laertes, Natasha Strickey as Ophelia, Karen Hines as Polonia, Curt McKinstry as Claudius, Daniela Vlaskalic as Gertrude, Ahad Mir as Hamlet, Allison Lynch as Horatia in the Vertigo Theatre, Shakespeare Company, Hit+Myth Production of Hamlet: A Ghost Story. Adapted by Anna Cummer. Directed by Craig Hall. Set & Costume Designer Hanne Loosen. Lighting Designer David Fraser. Citrus Photo

JAMES

So, the new production at Vertigo is a ghost story.

AHAD

Yeah.

JAMES

And I’m wondering if you yourself believe in the supernatural and have you ever had any encounters with spirits or ghost?

AHAD

I have. I have. I didn’t really believe in them in the beginning, but I remember one time I visited my grandmother’s grave and I hadn’t seen it before and I went on my own. And I couldn’t find it, and so I went to the guy who knows whose grave is whose and I said, “I’m looking for this lady.” And he goes, “Okay let me go look.” And he goes back to his little office and he’s looking at his books, and I felt this kind of pull. And I’ve never been here. I felt this pull towards this one grave, and I just went up, and I approached it, and I didn’t think anything of it at the time. And I was looking at it and there were some rocks on it and stuff and some little painted flowers, and the guy comes up and he goes, “Okay, here’s the number.” And I’m like, “Okay, where is it?” And he goes, “It’s right here. You found it.” And I just said, “Okay.” I said my prayers and went back to the car and I just started crying because that feeling…was terrifying to be honest…it was just scary. Out of hundreds of graves I just started walking one way and there it was.

JAMES

You feel that she reached out to you?

AHAD

Yeah, I am a hundred percent sure, but it was freaky.

JAMES

She must be happy for your success.

AHAD

I hope so, yeah.

JAMES

So, how do you stay grounded and focused now that you’re dealing with the fame and you’re dealing with trying to focus on the work?

AHAD

I think my father is a big part of that because his father was a cinematographer and a director so fame has been part of the family for a long time. So, any time I let it go to my head my Dad goes, “Big deal.” And my Dad, for example, is the same guy in the house that he is outside when he’s working and when he’s interacting with fans. Whereas I’ve seen people one way outside of work and when they’re at work they’re something else. So, I think seeing that has made me realize that at the end of the day it’s all about the work and being true to yourself and being honest.

Ahad Mir as Hamlet and Natasha Strickey as Ophelia in the Vertigo Theatre, Shakespeare Company, Hit+Myth Production of Hamlet: A Ghost Story. Adapted by Anna Cummer. Directed by Craig Hall. Set & Costume Designer Hanne Loosen. Lighting Designer David Fraser. Citrus Photo

JAMES

So, how do you approach the work?

AHAD

I believe that no matter what part we’re playing we have a part of ourselves in that character so you need to find that part of you that fits best with the character. It’s just you at a new address. It’s you exploring yourself in a different place and I think that’s the only way for me to make it honest. In school and in rehearsals they always go, “Be honest. Be honest. Be honest.” And when I read the script – the first time I read it as me. I’m not reading it as a character. I’m reading it as I would read it. And I think the only way to bring out an honest performance is for you to bring it out from inside. I don’t think it makes sense to put something on because then that becomes acting.

JAMES

Tell me about the actors you’re working with here – what are you excited about in terms of working with these folks?

AHAD

There’s a connection that is sometimes lacking in film and TV. Not to put film and TV down. I mean, it’s because of film and TV that I am where I am. But I think the connection you create – I won’t even say with another actor – I’ll say with another individual – another human being during rehearsal and during a scene, there’s a kind of magic behind it. There’s no retake. The moment is the moment. And I’m working with actors I remember seeing in productions when I was in University, and when I was starting out professionally, and now I’m getting a chance to work with them and that’s exciting.

Curt McKinstry as Claudius, Ahad Mir as Hamlet, Behrad Mashtagh as Laertes, Allison Lynch as Horatia in the Vertigo Theatre, Shakespeare Company, Hit+Myth Production of Hamlet: A Ghost Story. Adapted by Anna Cummer. Directed by Craig Hall. Set & Costume Designer Hanne Loosen. Lighting Designer David Fraser. Citrus Photo

JAMES

Why should we come to see the show?

AHAD

I think at the end of the day Shakespeare is always relatable. But the reason you should come watch our show is because we’re going to give it not just a modern contemporary spin but then there’s the whole ghost element, and the supernatural, and the thriller vibe that comes in with Vertigo. We’re doing it in a way that I don’t think has been seen before, and I think it will be interesting because you’ve got somebody who is coming from a very different background performing Hamlet. And I can’t believe I forgot to tell you this, but one of the other reasons I’m back is that you know in Canada we’re really focused on diversity and diversity on the stage. You know our cast should reflect our society and even though we’re good at it I don’t think we push that enough. I remember being in University and there were a bunch of white people and me, and I know so many Pakistanis and Indians and whatever it might be that live in Canada and want to explore music, dance, art and all these things and sometimes it’s sad to say their parents don’t let them explore those avenues even though being in Canada is one of the best places to do it because outside those options aren’t there. So, I want to set an example for the young minorities and say, “Hey if I can do it you can do it.” You know maybe I’ll inspire somebody to go, “I don’t want to do biomechanics. I want to learn how to play the guitar and do music.”

JAMES

And I don’t think the arts and theatre are going to survive unless we diversify the audience and in order to diversify the audience one of the things we have to show is people of different backgrounds performing these roles.

AHAD

And I think Canada is still doing a good job about that, but the issue is even before all that. It starts at the home. It starts with allowing that child to explore what he wants to explore. And maybe some young Pakistani guy goes, “Hey, he did it, why can’t I do it?” And hopefully, he goes and argues with his parents and hopefully his parents will be supportive.

JAMES

But first he’ll take business and then he’ll realize he’s in the wrong thing.

AHAD

Yeah, but if I didn’t do that, I wouldn’t have realized it. So, maybe that’s what it takes.

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CAST
Ahad Mir as Hamlet
Joel Cochrane as Ghost, Player King, Priest
Meg Farhall as Marcella, Rosencrantz, Player Queen
Karen Hines as Polonia
Allison Lynch as Horatia
Curt McKinstry as Claudius
Behrad Moshtagh as Laertes, Guildenstern
Graham Percy as Barnardo, First Player, Grave Digger
Natasha Strickey as Ophelia
Daniela Vlaskalic as Gertrude

CREATIVE TEAM 
Craig Hall, Director
Anna Cummer, Playwright
Hanne Loosen, Set & Costume Designer
David Fraser, Lighting Designer
Peter Moller, Sound Design
Karl Sine, Fight Director
Jane MacFarlane, Text & Vocal Coach
Claire Bolton, Stage Manager
Chandler Ontkean, Assistant Stage Manager
Derek Paulich, Production Manager
Rebecca Fauser, Assistant Director

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Vertigo Theatre has entertained audiences for 42 years with high-quality programming, evolving into a truly unique organization. We are Canada’s only fully professional theatre company dedicated to producing plays based in the mystery genre. Vertigo is located at the base of the Calgary Tower in the heart of downtown Calgary and is home to the organization its two performance venues and the BD&P Mystery Theatre Series. Our artistic mandate allows exposure to a broad demographic and our diverse audience includes all walks of life. We build strong partnerships through our various student and professional outreach initiatives that are designed specifically to help meet our community investment objectives. Vertigo Theatre is a member of the Professional Association of Canadian Theatres (P.A.C.T.) and engages artists who are members of the Canadian Actors’ Equity Association.

The Shakespeare Company is Calgary’s lean and mean classical theatre company, highlighting the best of the Bard in all his comedy, tragedy, and bawdiness. Founded in 1995, by Richard Kenyon and LuAnne Morrow, TSC has brought the Bard alive for Calgarians through both Shakespeare and Shakespeare inspired plays. We are committed to making Shakespeare accessible through innovative performances and inspired directing.

Hit & Myth Productions is a professional independent theatre company based in Calgary, Alberta. Hit & Myth was established in 2006, and since that time has produced over 30 professional shows, engaging numerous local actors, directors and designers. Hit & Myth has produced musicals, comedies and cutting edge dramas, a genre that we lovingly call “commercial alternativism.” From musicals like Urinetown and Evil Dead, to hard-hitting dramas like Martin Mcdonagh’s The Pillowman and David Mamet’s Race, to dark comedies like Neil Labute’s reasons to be pretty; to vibrant adaptations of both Shakespeare (Titus Andronicus and All’s Well That Ends Well) as well as Shakespeare inspired (William Shakespeare’s Land of the Dead and Equivocation) works. Hit & Myth seeks to entertain, while always packing a serious theatrical punch. Hit & Myth collaborates with small to mid-sized sized theatre companies and independent artists to co-produce theatre that is provocative, modern, sensational, and above all else, entertaining. Our productions strive to reflect the dynamic and diverse theatrical community of Calgary and Calgary audiences.

Hamlet: A Ghost Story – An Interview with Director Craig Hall & Playwright Anna Cummer

Posted on by James Hutchison

“And in Shakespeare the stakes are massive, but I think we all have injustices and little revenges that we want to take on a daily basis. That’s why Hamlet is such a frustrating character in so many ways because the ghost of his father comes and says your uncle killed me. You need to take revenge and do your duty as a son. And then he proceeds to find every excuse to not do it because he’s a man of the modern age where complexity and morality have become so much more real and palpable. Like, duty to the state is of a kind of time and I don’t think Hamlet’s a man of the court in that same way. It’s not just all black and white. He lives in a world of grey morality and philosophy.” Craig Hall, Director – Hamlet: A Ghost Story

Ahad Mir as Hamlet in the Vertigo Theatre, Shakespeare Company, Hit+Myth Production of Hamlet: A Ghost Story. Adapted by Anna Cummer. Directed by Craig Hall. Set & Costume Designer Hanne Loosen. Lighting Designer David Fraser. Citrus Photo

This is part one of a two-part series about Hamlet: A Ghost Story. In part one I’ll be talking with Director Craig Hall and playwright Anna Cummer and in part two I’ll be talking with Ahad Raza Mir who has returned to Calgary from his native Pakistan to play the title role.

Back in September, I interviewed Haysam Kadri the Artistic Producer of the Shakespeare Company about their season of Hamlet which included, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead with ATP, Hammered Hamlet at the High Performance Rodeo in January and now Hamlet: A Ghost Story in partnership with Vertigo Theatre. The Shakespeare Company and Vertigo had previously produced a highly successful re-imagining of Macbeth and were looking to repeat that success.

Now Calgary audiences will have a chance to see a thrilling new adaptation of Shakespeare’s most famous play as the tormented prince of Denmark seeks vengeance for the murder of his father at the hands of his Uncle Claudius. The tale is a ghost story, a detective story and a revenge story all packed into one unforgettable night of theatre. This is a Hamlet for the modern age as The Shakespeare Company, Hit+Myth Productions and Vertigo Theatre team up for a ghostly re-imagining of one of the Bard’s greatest works.

I sat down with the director of Hamlet and Artistic Director of Vertigo Theatre Craig Hall and playwright Anna Cummer, who penned the adaptation, to discuss their unique take on Shakespeare’s most famous and most produced play.

JAMES HUTCHISON

You’re calling this new adaptation Hamlet: A Ghost Story.

ANNA CUMMER

We are.

JAMES

So, do you believe in the supernatural and have you had any ghostly encounters yourself?

ANNA & CRAIG

They laugh.

ANNA

Yes, I am a firm believer. The thing is I never see them. I feel them. I have a sense that something is there. I have encountered two ghosts for sure. One was in the South of France and the other one was in Vancouver when our upstairs neighbour died in the middle of the night and I had a flash of him in my mind as we were going to bed and he was laughing and having a really good time. And I said to Craig, “That’s really weird but Jack from upstairs just flashed into my head.” And the very next day his caregiver said, “Just so you guys know, Jack passed away last night.” And it was right around the time he visited us.

And actually, I had another one in Ottawa where a very dear friend of ours had died a couple of days earlier and his wife had called. My mother was with me. I was doing Pride and Prejudice at the NAC. It was a co-pro with Theatre Calgary. So, we found out that Donovan had died, and it was really, really, sad and it wasn’t expected at all and I had misplaced my wedding ring. I went, “Well where’s my wedding ring? This is terrible.” And I didn’t want to tell Craig because I was always losing it and it turned out that my daughter, who was all of two at the time, had picked it up off the counter and had put it on the switch of a lamp and never in a million years would I have found it. But that night Donovan, the man who had died, came to me in my dreams and said, “Your ring is on the lamp switch. You’ll find it there in the morning.” And lo and behold I found it there in the morning.

JAMES

Craig what about yourself? Anything?

CRAIG HALL

Little inklings here and there. I don’t want to go too far into this, but my father passed away last summer and I was with him when he passed. So, he passed and there was sort of mourning with my mom and sister and then I just needed a bit of space and I walked out into the hallway and as I was walking down the corridor in the hospital, I sort of felt a presence. And I sort of saw something in the periphery and I looked, and he wasn’t there but I knew it was my dad.

JAMES

You sensed him.

CRAIG

I sensed him. I think to me the supernatural is all about some sort of barriers between different sorts of realities and existence. I don’t have any religion in my family or in my history, so I don’t think of it in a religious sense but certainly in some sort of energy sense. I believe that the energy that is in us doesn’t go away. It doesn’t stop. So, it’s released into the world and I feel that sometimes that energy can get captured in a place or it can remain in a place for a reason, but I’ve never really thought too deeply about it. It’s kind of like Anna said, it’s not like you see something. There’s a presence. A coldness in a place that has no reason to be cold.

JAMES

Sounds though, like these have been positive encounters.

CRAIG

Yeah, but they’re still affecting and hair raising.

Meg Farhall, Behrad Mashtagh, Joel Cochrane, Curt McKinstry, and Daniela Vlaskalic in the Vertigo Theatre, Shakespeare Company, Hit+Myth Production of Hamlet: A Ghost Story. Adapted by Anna Cummer. Directed by Craig Hall. Set & Costume Designer Hanne Loosen. Lighting Designer David Fraser. Citrus Photo

JAMES

So, what kind of discussions did you have then in developing the script while you were in the process of adapting it?

ANNA

Well, interestingly enough Hamlet was one of the potential productions that Craig submitted when he was applying for the Artistic Director job at Vertigo.

CRAIG

Eight years ago.

JAMES

So, this has been on your mind for a long time.

CRAIG

Not in a deep way but certainly when I was contemplating that sort of mystery genre…

ANNA

…and pushing the mandate…

CRAIG

…and looking at the genre and going, “If I did this job then what’s in it for me? How limiting is it?” And realizing that there’s a whole lot of work outside of the obvious genre that can be embraced as genre work like the Macbeths and the Hamlets. And I don’t think we’re making Hamlet a ghost story – it is a ghost story. We’re turning up the dial but that’s what it is. It’s a revenge thriller. It’s a ghost story

ANNA

It’s a detective story as he tries to figure out whether the ghost has told him the truth or if he’s being led down the garden path.

CRAIG

And before he can act, he has to convince himself that there’s no chance that his uncle is innocent. So, he does this very intricate detective work and he sets up stings and so when you look at the work through that lens that was exciting for me because it meant the range of work that Vertigo could potentially have access to is far greater than some sort of antiquated drawing room murder mystery. So, in a way that seed was the thing that made me want to take the job at Vertigo and that’s been percolating ever since.

Curt McKinstry as Claudius and Ahad Mir as Hamlet in the Vertigo Theatre, Shakespeare Company, Hit+Myth Production of Hamlet: A Ghost Story. Adapted by Anna Cummer. Directed by Craig Hall. Set & Costume Designer Hanne Loosen. Lighting Designer David Fraser. Citrus Photo

ANNA

And with Hamlet one of the major issues about the play in production is the madness and how does one as an actor or how does one as a director or an adaptor approach the madness? Is it feigned all the time? Are there moments where he cracks? How can you convey to an audience a heightened sense of anxiety? And we went, well what if he’s being haunted? What if he is hearing these voices more preveniently than in the original script? Then we, as a modern audience, can buy into the other characters in the play going, “Oh yes, he’s mad.” Because he’s talking to himself and his behaviour is frenetic and for the other characters those are hallmarks for insanity, but of course our audience will be in on it. They’ll be able to hear those voices as well. They’ll be able to see the ghost when the ghost is not present in the original but might be present in our version.

The Ghost in the Vertigo Theatre, Shakespeare Company, Hit+Myth Production of Hamlet: A Ghost Story. Adapted by Anna Cummer. Directed by Craig Hall. Set & Costume Designer Hanne Loosen. Lighting Designer David Fraser. Citrus Photo

JAMES

So, what are some of the main themes you wanted to explore in the script and then once you have those in the script how do you put those into practice in the production?

Anna Cummer – Playwright

ANNA

I had very concrete ideas heading into this but now that we’re in rehearsal and we now have other voices than the ones in my head who are lending their interpretations and lending their ideas to the whole scenario I think things have changed a little bit. But to me, the real thesis statement of the play is, “To thine own self be true.” And that ultimately everybody has difficulty when they’re not being true to themselves or when they are being forced to be something that they are not. So, I started there because Claudius is pretending to be the best King on earth even though he got his crown by very dubious and treacherous means. Gertrude is also putting on a brave face and doing it for the state and trying to keep her son happy and comfortable and placate the new husband. There’s a lot of stuff happening. Same with Polonia – in our version, Polonius is played by a woman.

CRAIG

So, it’s a mother rather than a father. And that does change it. And we’re really making sure that change of gender trickles down so the way that Polonius talks to his daughter and his son has a completely different feeling than the way Polonia talks to her daughter and son. And it’s automatic. Polonia is a thoughtful mother, not just a bumbling fool. She’s a thoughtful mother who actually cares about her family and cares about her place in the court but generally for the sake of the family.

ANNA

So that way Laureates, Ophelia and Polonia can stand as the healthy example of family and familial interaction in comparison to the incredibly dysfunctional family that we now have in Claudius, Gertrude and Hamlet.

And with regard to Hamlet and, “To thine own self be true,” he’s been asked by his father – who was warlike, and action based – to do something that is completely out of character for him. He’s a thinker. He’s a philosopher. He’s a student. He’s wrestling with who he is as an individual and recognizing that he can not avenge his father the way that his father would want it to be done.

CRAIG

Hamlet is a man of the age. He’s not a man of the court. For all intense and purposes, he allows the coronation of his uncle. He doesn’t state his case. He doesn’t bring a petition to the council. It all kind of happens and he’s in mourning and he’s trying to reconcile things but there’s no sense to me that he’s eagerly anticipating stepping into his father’s shoes. He’s got a different kind of morality. He can’t do the actions because, I think, he’s an existential kind of thinker. He’s got a new way of thinking and a new morality and he just can’t be a man of action the way that’s required.

Ahad Mir as Hamlet in the Vertigo Theatre, Shakespeare Company, Hit+Myth Production of Hamlet: A Ghost Story. Adapted by Anna Cummer. Directed by Craig Hall. Set & Costume Designer Hanne Loosen. Lighting Designer David Fraser. Citrus Photo

JAMES

I’m wondering what you make of how he treats Ophelia and what’s his end game and thought process for doing that because the end result is she kills herself.

ANNA

Craig and I kind of cracked it. Or, I feel like we cracked it. We were asking the same question. There’s this loving relationship and he just instantly turns on her and why is that? Is she a pawn in his ultimate game? Is she something to be used in his attempt to find out whether or not Claudius killed his father or not? And we were going through it – and this is just Craig and I literally on the couch and I went, “What if they’ve gone all the way?” And so, they’ve had this loving relationship that has been consummated and so Ophelia in all her scenes with her mother is trying very very hard not to let her know that. Her brother we think has more of an inkling because of his frank conversation with her as he leaves. “Do, not lose your chastity to this guy.” And she’s, “Oh yeah, don’t worry about it. I got it. No worries. Oh no, I already have. Oh dear.” And mom comes in and then says the same sort of thing, “Keep your distance for my benefit and my honour.” And so, we’re toying with the idea that they’ve had a very – very close relationship and that she is his island of solace. She is the touchstone to which he returns time and time again and in his time of mourning, she has been a rock for him. None of this is in the original so we have to seed it for our audience.

Natasha Strickey as Ophelia and Daniela Vlaskalic as Gertrude in the Vertigo Theatre, Shakespeare Company, Hit+Myth Production of Hamlet: A Ghost Story. Adapted by Anna Cummer. Directed by Craig Hall. Set & Costume Designer Hanne Loosen. Lighting Designer David Fraser. Citrus Photo

CRAIG

Because in the action of the play as it’s written you have no real inkling of their relationship before he starts treating her terribly. But if there was a deeper relationship that existed then that’s why when he comes to her funeral he explodes and rails there. It’s actually based on something.

And if her participation in Claudius and Polonia’s plot is a real betrayal of Hamlet and he realizes that they’re being watched when Ophelia comes back to him and says here’s all your letters and remembrances of yours and in that moment he realizes that she’s turned on him and that she’s become…

ANNA

…a confederate of the others…

CRAIG

…a tool of the Uncle. Then it’s not just arrogance and pettiness and meanness that makes him act the way he does – he’s been betrayed.

Ahad Mir as Hamlet and Natasha Strickey as Ophelia in the Vertigo Theatre, Shakespeare Company, Hit+Myth Production of Hamlet: A Ghost Story. Adapted by Anna Cummer. Directed by Craig Hall. Set & Costume Designer Hanne Loosen. Lighting Designer David Fraser. Citrus Photo

JAMES

Earlier you mentioned that Hamlet is a revenge story. Why do you think we have this fascination with revenge stories?

Craig Hall, Director – Hamlet: A Ghost Story

CRAIG

I think justice is a huge thing. I think going back to the mystery genre or the who done it people watch those things because they want to see somebody get their just desserts or take revenge. And there’s a weird celebration that comes along with you wanting to see the hero win the day and see the bad guy pay.

And in Shakespeare the stakes are massive, but I think we all have injustices and little revenges that we want to take on a daily basis. That’s why Hamlet is such a frustrating character in so many ways because the ghost of his father comes and says your uncle killed me. You need to take revenge and do your duty as a son. And then he proceeds to find every excuse to not do it because he’s a man of the modern age where complexity and morality have become so much more real and palpable. Like, duty to the state is of a kind of time and I don’t think Hamlet’s a man of the court in that same way. It’s not just all black and white. He lives in a world of grey morality and philosophy.

JAMES

Tell me about the cast you’ve assembled for this production.

CRAIG

I think this is probably one of the most eclectic group of actors that I’ve ever worked with. You know we’ve got Calgary stalwarts like Curt McKinstry playing Claudius, Daniella Vlaskalic who works everywhere has returned to play Gertrude. Then we’ve got Karen Hines who’s known more as a writer and a solo performer playing Polonia.

Behrad Mashtagh as Laertes, Natasha Strickey as Ophelia, Karen Hines as Polonia, Curt McKinstry as Claudius, Daniela Vlaskalic as Gertrude, Ahad Mir as Hamlet, Allison Lynch as Horatia in the Vertigo Theatre, Shakespeare Company, Hit+Myth Production of Hamlet: A Ghost Story. Adapted by Anna Cummer. Directed by Craig Hall. Set & Costume Designer Hanne Loosen. Lighting Designer David Fraser. Citrus Photo

ANNA

Who’s never done Shakespeare before in her life but she’s killing it already. And we’ve got a lot of people with great comedic chops in it. So, Meg Farhall is playing one of the servants and Rosencrantz. And then Graham Percy who is just killer at Shakespeare gets to be the gravedigger and the prologue the player.

CRAIG

Joel Cochrane from Hit and Myth is playing our ghost dad and is one of the players.

ANNA

And then Behrad Moshtagh a UofC grad – he and Ahad went to school together – he’s playing Laertes.

CRAIG

And we’ve got Allison Lynch playing Horatia and then, of course, Ahad Mir as Hamlet. We decided very early on that we wanted a younger Hamlet and we also wanted some diversity in the piece.

ANNA

And Ahad was involved in our production of Macbeth and he actually understudied Haysam as Mackers and he has a certain facility with the text and also a really lovely innate ability to make it modern and conversational.

Meg Farhall as Rosencrantz, Ahad Mir as Hamlet and Behrad Mashtagh as Guildenstern in the Vertigo Theatre, Shakespeare Company, Hit+Myth Production of Hamlet: A Ghost Story. Adapted by Anna Cummer. Directed by Craig Hall. Set & Costume Designer Hanne Loosen. Lighting Designer David Fraser. Citrus Photo

CRAIG

Ahad has had such an interesting journey as a young UofC grad coming up in the city and then suddenly he disappears to Pakistan and gets a whole other kind of training as an actor and gets all these new tools he can use because he’s been doing film and television over there. And we did Mackers in that deep thrust in the studio and we felt one of the things that made that really really successful was the intimacy of the performance space. You know you don’t have to suddenly play Shakespeare to hit the back of a proscenium house.

ANNA

A twelve hundred seat theatre.

CRAIG

The relationship with the audience can actually be much more vital and connected. And frankly, Calgary is bleeding its young diverse artists. They’re going to Toronto. They’re going to Vancouver. They’re going to Pakistan for opportunities that they’re not necessarily finding here. These young diverse actors are going to other cities and becoming super successful and we need to figure out some way to keep them here.

ANNA

So, if we can get them to come back it’s always a joy.

Curt McKinstry as Claudius, Ahad Mir as Hamlet, Behrad Mashtagh as Laertes, Allison Lynch as Horatia in the Vertigo Theatre, Shakespeare Company, Hit+Myth Production of Hamlet: A Ghost Story. Adapted by Anna Cummer. Directed by Craig Hall. Set & Costume Designer Hanne Loosen. Lighting Designer David Fraser. Citrus Photo

JAMES

So, why come see the show?

ANNA

It’s lean and mean the way that the Shakespeare company always is so it’s going to come in at about two hours and fifteen minutes including intermission. And we’ve done away with all the political and historical stuff and we’ve distilled it down to a family drama that just happens to have murder and ghosts in it. It’s Downton Abbey with death and ghosts.

CRAIG

And we’re amping up the suspense and I think everybody wants to see something entertaining and dark and I think that’s what we’re really doing.

ANNA

Sex, death and revenge.

JAMES

The big three.

ANNA

It’s biblical. It’s epic.

***

Vertigo Theatre presents the Shakespeare Company and Hit and Myth’s Production of Hamlet: A Ghost Story which runs from March 20th to April 13th in the Studio at Vertigo Theatre. Performance times are evenings at 7:00 pm, no performance on Monday, 2:30 pm matinees on March 23, 24, 30 and April 6,7, and 13th. Tickets are $35.00 and are available by calling the Vertigo Theatre box office at 403.221.3708 or online at www.vertigotheatre.com

***

CAST:  Ahad Mir as Hamlet – Joel Cochrane as Ghost, Player King, Priest – Meg Farhall as Marcella, Rosencrantz, Player Queen – Karen Hines as Polonia – Allison Lynch as Horatia – Curt McKinstry as Claudius – Behrad Moshtagh as Laertes, Guildenstern – Graham Percy as Barnardo, First Player, Grave Digger – Natasha Strickey as Ophelia – Daniela Vlaskalic as Gertrude

CREATIVE TEAM:  Craig Hall, Director – Anna Cummer, Playwright – Hanne Loosen, Set & Costume Designer – David Fraser, Lighting Designer – Peter Moller, Sound Design – Karl Sine, Fight Director – Jane MacFarlane, Text & Vocal Coach – Claire Bolton, Stage Manager – Chandler Ontkean, Assistant Stage Manager – Derek Paulich, Production Manager – Rebecca Fauser, Assistant Director

***

Vertigo Theatre has entertained audiences for 42 years with high-quality programming, evolving into a truly unique organization. We are Canada’s only fully professional theatre company dedicated to producing plays based in the mystery genre. Vertigo is located at the base of the Calgary Tower in the heart of downtown Calgary and is home to the organization its two performance venues and the BD&P Mystery Theatre Series. Our artistic mandate allows exposure to a broad demographic and our diverse audience includes all walks of life. We build strong partnerships through our various student and professional outreach initiatives that are designed specifically to help meet our community investment objectives. Vertigo Theatre is a member of the Professional Association of Canadian Theatres (P.A.C.T.) and engages artists who are members of the Canadian Actors’ Equity Association.

The Shakespeare Company is Calgary’s lean and mean classical theatre company, highlighting the best of the Bard in all his comedy, tragedy, and bawdiness. Founded in 1995, by Richard Kenyon and LuAnne Morrow, TSC has brought the Bard alive for Calgarians through both Shakespeare and Shakespeare inspired plays. We are committed to making Shakespeare accessible through innovative performances and inspired directing.

Hit & Myth Productions is a professional independent theatre company based in Calgary, Alberta. Hit & Myth was established in 2006, and since that time has produced over 30 professional shows, engaging numerous local actors, directors and designers. Hit & Myth has produced musicals, comedies and cutting edge dramas, a genre that we lovingly call “commercial alternativism.” From musicals like Urinetown and Evil Dead, to hard-hitting dramas like Martin Mcdonagh’s The Pillowman and David Mamet’s Race, to dark comedies like Neil Labute’s reasons to be pretty; to vibrant adaptations of both Shakespeare (Titus Andronicus and All’s Well That Ends Well) as well as Shakespeare inspired (William Shakespeare’s Land of the Dead and Equivocation) works. Hit & Myth seeks to entertain, while always packing a serious theatrical punch. Hit & Myth collaborates with small to mid-sized sized theatre companies and independent artists to co-produce theatre that is provocative, modern, sensational, and above all else, entertaining. Our productions strive to reflect the dynamic and diverse theatrical community of Calgary and Calgary audiences. 

If you enjoyed this interview with Craig Hall and Anna Cummer you might also enjoy:

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Last updated May 07, 2022.

Interview Natascha Girgis – A Foray into Silly

Posted on by James Hutchison

“I like farce. I like the challenge of farce. I like the pace of farce. The fast thinking. I like the door slam timing. The mechanics of it. I like the hard math of a good farce. I love Shakespeare. Your mouth feels good just saying those incredible words and negotiating those fantastic ideas and the colourful language and the use of metaphor from such a rich writer.”

Stage West is serving up a healthy dose of farce with a talented cast in their current production Drinking Habits 2 Caught in the Act. This is a sequel to the hugely popular Drinking Habits that Stage West produced a couple of years ago and features most of the original cast from that production.

In the first play the Sisters of Perpetual Sewing were trying to save their convent this time around they’re trying to raise $5,000 to save an orphanage and according to Sister Augusta, played by Natascha Girgis, and Sister Philamena, played by Esther Purvis-Smith, the best way to do that is to secretly produce a batch of their much in demand wine. In addition, to the wine, Mother Superior played by Elinor Holt and Father Chenille played by Robert Klein decide to raise the necessary funds by putting on a play which of course doesn’t go smoothly. And as a farce there are plenty of other plots in the works and secrets to be revealed as the Sisters of Perpetual Sewing try to do God’s Holy work.

I sat down with Natascha Girgis to chat with her about the production and her approach to comedy.

Esther Purves-Smith as Sister Philamena & Natascha Girgis as Sister Augusta in the Stage West Production of Drinking Habits 2 Caught in the Act by Tom Smith. Directed by J. Sean Elliott

JAMES HUTCHISON

Natascha, is there a different approach you take when performing comedy as opposed to drama?

NATASCHA GIRGIS

I don’t think so. How I prepare depends on the piece. If there’s a historical precedent or if it’s an individual who has existed in the past then there’s research to be done. If it’s The Bard then obviously there’s a lot of book work. For comedies I find the work happens in the room. If it’s a prop-heavy show or a prop-heavy role where I need to manipulate a lot then the sooner I can get off book and have my hands available and be an active listener the better. That lets me react in the moment in the room to the other actor or to the circumstances without thinking, “Oh, what’s my next line?”

JAMES

Are there any famous comic actors that you admire that you kind of pattern yourself after? Or have been a great influence.

NATASCHA

My body is tattooed with Buster Keaton.

JAMES

When did you discover Buster Keaton?

NATASCHA

I might have been eighteen or something like that and it was purely by accident. I was working at the Plaza Theatre in Kensington and we had access to whatever movies we wanted to go see. I meant to see a Danish film, but it didn’t come in because of shipping so they put their Buster Keaton festival on early and I thought, “A silent film, really?” So, I stayed and saw Pale Face which was one of his shorts and my head exploded and I thought who are you? And I went every day after that to every one of the festival dates and have followed up ever since.

Buster Keaton – American actor, comedian, film director, producer, screenwriter, and stunt performer.

JAMES

What is it about Keaton’s performance that you find so mesmerizing?

NATASCHA

He lives, eats, breathes his medium. His work was everything. It defined who he was. He’d been working since he was an infant on vaudeville with his parents. He never went to school. His training was in the theatre. It was on the boards. It was a very rough knockabout physical act. His physical facility is incomparable, and he dates well because in his films – he’s man against the machine – he’s man against the world. His stuff is still funny and the risks that he took were astonishing. I own virtually every film and virtually every book that’s ever been written on him and I’m a member of both the British Society and the American Society of Keaton fans.

JAMES

So, what plays do you like? What makes you laugh?

NATASCHA

I like farce. I like the challenge of farce. I like the pace of farce. The fast thinking. I like the door slam timing. The mechanics of it. I like the hard math of a good farce. I love Shakespeare. Your mouth feels good just saying those incredible words and negotiating those fantastic ideas and the colourful language and the use of metaphor from such a rich writer.

Natascha Girgis as Sister Augusta in the Stage West Production of Drinking Habits 2 Caught in the Act by Tom Smith. Directed by J. Sean Elliott.

JAMES

I’m interested in how you approach physical comedy yourself and use that aspect in your performance.

NATASCHA

Very technically. I’ll throw an idea out there. I’ll think about the gag and how to physically orchestrate it and how to tell the story with your body and if there’s a fall or some sort of mechanical element required. And then I just clean it and clean it and clean it and try to make it very specific and very precise. And a Keatonism that I try to apply is think slow act fast. So, let the audience catch up with you but not get ahead of you and then surprise them if you can. And my approach is to give one hundred percent. Don’t mark it. If you mark it your body learns nothing. You have to give one hundred percent the entire time you’re in rehearsal.

JAMES

What do you mean by mark it?

NATASCHA

It’s often applied to dancers – sometimes they’ll go full out and sometimes they’ll just mark it – where they’re not doing it full out. I find you train your body if you do it full out every single time. It helps train your body for what is necessary in that moment.

JAMES

Let’s talk a little bit about the show you’re in now. What’s the play about?

NATASCHA

It’s about the sisters of perpetual sewing trying to raise some money to help save an orphanage. And everybody’s doing their best to assist with that because the most important thing is saving the orphanage, but everybody has a different idea about how to do that and so there’s a little bit more subterfuge involved in getting all that done.

Natascha Girgis as Sister Augusta, Luc Trottier as George & Esther Purves-Smith as Sister Philamena in the Stage West Production of Drinking Habits 2 Caught in the Act. Directed by J. Sean Elliott.

JAMES

You’re working with a lot of the same cast from the first play what’s that like?

NATASCHA

Many of which are my really good friends in life, and they approach the work the same way I do. There’s always another laugh to be mined, or if something is starting to go a little awry and you’re not getting the same laugh you used to you can talk about it. They never stop working because every show means something. Every show is important because you have a paying audience who deserve the same performance that you gave at the beginning of the run. And hopefully, it’s more informed. Hopefully, there’s more gags. You always keep working. And they approach it the same way I do which is why I like working with them.

Esther Purves-Smith as Sister Philamena & Natascha Girgis as Sister Augusta in the Stage West Production of Drinking Habits 2 Caught in the Act by Tom Smith. Directed by J. Sean Elliott.

JAMES

It’s interesting to me to hear you say the comedy continues to develop and mature. How does new material work its way in over the course of a run?

NATASCHA

You still need to be consistent but if there’s room for it and you’ve been given license by the director that within a certain set of parameters you can add something there might be a gag that can be mined. You’ll try something and it’s small and you’ll hear some laughter about it, but you watch to make sure that you’re not stepping on someone else’s moment. The more experience you have hopefully the more aware you are of everything that’s going on and when you can add something and when you shouldn’t because you don’t want the focus to suddenly shift to you when it shouldn’t be on you, to begin with. That’s just being responsible. That’s being considerate.

Esther Purves-Smith as Sister Philamena, Kate Madden as Kate, Elinor Holt as Mother Superior & Natascha Girgis as Sister Augusta in the Stage West Production of Drinking Habits 2 Caught in the Act. Directed by J. Sean Elliott.

JAMES

The nice thing about this play is that there are several roles for women and so I’m just wondering with the length of time you’ve been in the theatre performing different things are you starting to see a move towards better parts and more parts for women?

NATASCHA

There seems to be a growing awareness from producing bodies to include more female writers and to mentor more female writers not that women are the only ones writing parts for women but there seems to be a better inclusion of women where possible. Elinor Holt said it very succinctly the other day that sometimes in a play it’s just an occupation, but we always presume it has to be played by a man. Like you’ll have a judge, or you’ll have a police officer and for our now day sensibility our audience would buy it if you say – okay here we have the judo master and the judo master is a woman.

Natascha Girgis as Sister Augusta, Jeremy LaPalme as Paul and Esther Purves-Smith as Sister Philamena in the Stage West Production of Drinking Habits 2 Caught in the Act by Tom Smith. Directed by J. Sean Elliott.

JAMES

So, why should somebody come and see your show? What would be your sales pitch?

NATASCHA

Don’t be afraid of the sequel if you haven’t seen the first one. You’re going to get a fast-paced broad comedy with a lot of experienced performers who enjoy working with one another and hopefully that makes the comedy infectious. It’s a great night out. It’s not Strindberg on Ice. It’s not a long piece of theatre. It’s a short little foray into silly.

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Drinking Habits 2 Caught in the Act by Tom Smith and directed by J. Sean Elliott runs until April 14th. The show stars Natascha Girgis, Charlie Gould, Elinor Holt, Robert Klein, Jeremy LaPalme, Kate Madden, Esther Purves-Smith and Luc Trottier. Tickets are available by calling the box office at 403.243.6642 or online at www.stagewestcalgary.com

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Additional Media

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Deathtrap at Vertigo Theatre: An Interview with director Jamie Dunsdon and actors Mark Bellamy and Tyrell Crews

Posted on by James Hutchison
Tyrell Crews and Mark Bellamy in the Vertigo Theatre Production of Deathtrap by Ira Levin. Directed by Jamie Dunsdon, costumes by Hanne Loosen, set by David Fraser, Photo by Diane + Mike Photography

Mark Bellamy, former artistic director of Vertigo Theatre, returns to the stage to take on the role of Sidney Bruhl in Ira Levin’s intensely entertaining thriller Deathtrap. Joining him on stage is Tyrell Crews as aspiring playwright Clifford Anderson, Barbara Gates Wilson as Bruhl’s wife Myra Bruhl, Karen Johnson-Diamond as psychic Helga Ten Dorp, and Kevin Corey as attorney Porter Milgram. The production is being directed by Jamie Dunsdon.

Deathtrap is one of the longest running mystery thrillers to ever hit Broadway and even though the play premiered more than forty years ago it’s as fresh and funny and thrilling today as it was the day it opened. The only problem is that because the play is filled with so many twists and turns and surprises you have to talk about the play without talking about the play. The only thing I can tell you, without revealing any spoilers, is how the play begins.

Sidney Bruhl, once a successful Broadway murder mystery playwright, has fallen on hard times after numerous flops, so when he receives a brilliant murder mystery play in the mail from a former student, Sidney begins to contemplate murderous thoughts about how he might steal the play for himself. I sat down with director Jamie Dunsdon and actors Mark Bellamy and Tyrell Crews to talk about weapons of choice and Vertigo Theatre’s production of Deathtrap.

Barbara Gates Wilson as Myra Bruhl and Mark Bellamy as Sidney Bruhl in the Vertigo Theatre Production of Deathtrap by Ira Levin. Directed by Jamie Dunsdon, costumes by Hanna Loosen, set by David Fraser, Photo by Citrus Photo.

JAMES HUTCHISON

I’m going to start off with a hypothetical question. If you had to commit a murder – not saying that you would – what would be your weapon of choice?

MARK BELLAMY (Without hesitation)

Poison.

JAMES

Poison?

MARK

I have mine all planned out.

JAMES

Who’s the victim?

MARK

Oh, I can’t tell you that.

TYRELL CREWS

You’re looking at him.

JAMIE DUNSDON

It’s been a rough week. (Everyone laughs)

MARK

After running this company for ten years, you just amass so much knowledge that I actually figured out how I would do it. There’s a plant. I’m not going to say what the plant is, but you can grow it. It’s very common and there are different varieties of it. You can grow it in your garden and if you take the root and you soak it in vodka it makes it a tasteless, odourless, and almost untraceable poison that mimics a heart attack.

JAMES

It’s kind of disturbing that you’ve given this so much thought.

MARK

There’s even more. I figured out how I was going to use that poison.

TYRELL

I’m suddenly second-guessing our post-show martinis.

MARK

No, no, no – just never accept a cup of coffee from me – that’s the deal!

JAMES

Tyrell?

TYRELL

You know I haven’t given it as much thought as Mark.

MARK

Who has a detailed plan.

TYRELL

Well, like you said you lived in this building. I don’t know how I’d do it but what I will tell you is that last night I dreamt that I actually killed somebody with my bare hands – strangling – which was not even the major part of the dream. The major part of the dream was covering it up. There was a cell phone involved and I had to destroy the cell phone and the sim card itself and make sure the sim card was absolutely disintegrated because that’s the only thing that would have traced that individual to me.

MARK

This is exactly our characters.

JAMES

Good casting.

TYRELL

The violent one.

MARK

And the plotty one.

JAMES

Jamie, do you have a weapon of choice?

JAMIE

I do, but it’s for a very specific person. I would use peanuts.

MARK – TYRELL – JAMES

Ahhhh.

JAMIE

Yeah, I’d take them for a walk out in the mountains. Somewhere far away from their EpiPen and then I’d throw some trail mix their way. I would make it really pedestrian. Very every day.

Mark Bellamy as Sidney Bruhl, Barbara Gates Wilson as Myra Bruhl, and Tyrell Crews as Clifford Anderson in the Vertigo Theatre Production of Deathtrap by Ira Levin. Directed by Jamie Dunsdon, costumes by Hanne Loosen, set by David Fraser, Photo by Citrus Photo

JAMES

So, then let’s talk about the play. Deathtrap is one part thriller, one part comedy, and one part mystery and I’m wondering how do you balance all those elements so that we’re laughing where we’re supposed to and we’re screaming where we’re supposed to?

JAMIE

I think the script does most of it for us. The script is very well constructed, and it’s tried and tested. The playwright doesn’t drop in laughs except to break the tension and I think we just follow that lead for the most part. As far as the mystery and the thriller aspects go that’s more of a balancing act and we’re still working on that in rehearsal. It’s all about who knows what and when and then when do we want the audience to know what and when? So that’s the work – the final stage of rehearsal – we know what we’re doing but now we’re shaping the experience for the audience.

JAMES

And making sure you don’t telegraph to the audience at the wrong time what’s going on.

MARK

That’s the hardest part, I think.

TYRELL

Yeah, I think, it’s about playing these moments honestly and what’s on the page in that specific situation. I think Jamie’s done an amazing job in knowing when those secrets or the scheming are supposed to bubble up to the surface and peak through.

JAMIE

That’s right, it’s entirely volume control because we know this play so well now that – once you’re inside it – it’s hard to get back outside.

MARK

It’s super hard from the inside.

JAMES

Because you know everything.

MARK

I know everything and I think the previews will be really neat because I’m sure there’s going to be one night where we go way too far one way and then way too far the other. It’s about finding where the sweet spot is. And it’s really finite, isn’t it? It’s really particular.

JAMIE

There’s a narrow band that we need to live within and so that’s the work we’ve been doing the last couple of days and it’s a little bit subjective, right? It’s a little bit here’s how much I think we need to turn it up but I’m kind of the audience surrogate so I do my best to gage that but we could have audience members who are smarter than me and pick up on things earlier.

Karen Johnson-Diamond as Helga Ten Dorp in the Vertigo Theatre Production of Deathtrap by Ira Levin. Directed by Jamie Dunsdon, costumes by Hanne Loosen, set by David Fraser, Photo by Citrus Photo.

JAMES

And you’ve got a great cast you’re working with on this show.

JAMIE

We have a room that already understands the mystery genre because everybody in this show has worked with Vertigo multiple times which is fantastic. I’m leaning on their expertise as well, so for example, Mark caught something in rehearsal the other day that was very forensic. So, we have a room full of experts and fantastic people at the top of their craft and they’re also funny which is nice.

TYRELL

I think any hall that I have found success in is one where there’s the willingness to collaborate. It’s knowing that we’re all on the same playing field. Of course, Jamie has the final say but it’s the willingness to play and experiment which is supremely helpful for this type of play – auditioning every choice and volume level that we can.

JAMES

Now, Mark, you directed Deathtrap previously, haven’t you?

MARK

A long time ago. Sixteen or seventeen years ago. It was in 2002, I think.

JAMES

So, I’m kind of curious – you were the director and now you get to be the actor in it. Does having directed a show and now having had the chance to have aged into a part give you any additional insights?

MARK (Laughs)

It certainly gave me a familiarity with it. And when I directed it Stephen Hair was in it and Stephen was the former Artistic Director of the Pleiades.

JAMIE

And he had also directed it.

MARK

He had directed it! So there’s this weird little legacy.

JAMES

So, Jamie does that mean you’re going to be doing a female version of Deathtrap at some point?

JAMIE (Laughs)

Yes, I’m the next Sidney Bruhl.

JAMES

Mark, when you were directing it did you imagine that’s a part I want to play in twenty years?

MARK

I probably did. I fell in love with this play when I was in University. I saw the movie first and I’ve always been a fan of Deathtrap, but I don’t think back then my twenty-year-old self imagined my fifty-five-year-old self being Sidney Bruhl. I think I probably saw myself as a Clifford at some point when I was young, but that never happened.

JAMES

Tyrell, are there any particular parts that you want to play one day?

TYRELL

Hamlet is one of them. I’m a big Shakespeare guy so playing Benedict in Much Ado About Nothing with the Shakespeare Company last year was another one.

Tyrell Crews as Clifford Anderson and Mark Bellamy as Sidney Bruhl in the Vertigo Theatre Production of Deathtrap by Ira Levin. Directed by Jamie Dunsdon, costumes by Hanna Loosen, set by David Fraser, Photo by Citrus Photo.

JAMES

Is Sidney in your future?

TYRELL

Ahhh, I love this play. I love this part, but it will be a very very long time before I get Mark Bellamy out of my head.

MARK

Oh dear. Oh dear. I’ve affected you.

TYRELL

In a good way.

MARK

Well, there are two moments in the show where I channel Stephen Hair. I’m not going to say where they are. I don’t channel. I homage. I homage – like I remember what Stephen did. There’s only two though.

Mark Bellamy as Sidney Bruhl and Kevin Corey as attorney Porter Milgram in the Vertigo Theatre Production of Deathtrap by Ira Levin. Directed by Jamie Dunsdon, costumes by Hanne Loosen, set by David Fraser, Photo by Citrus Photo.

JAMES

So, murder mysteries look at the darker side of humanity and there’s always an element of desperation to the characters contemplating murder – why do you think audiences enjoy watching desperate characters making morally questionable decisions?

JAMIE

Probably because we do it in real life. We don’t go as far down that path so, it’s delightful to see someone have that impulse and actually follow it through. There’s something a little bit cathartic in that.

TYRELL

And they’re relatable. You like these people and you’re invited into their home and you meet them and they’re very charming and you kind of fall in love with them.

MARK

And they’re funny.

TYRELL

And I think the way the plays mapped out you can see the decision making that goes into the escalation and so you can understand that decision making.

JAMIE

It’s a character-driven thriller – which you can probably speak to that more Mark because I’m not sure how common those are. This is a thriller that’s plot-heavy and it’s plot driven but the characters are all grounded.

MARK

What characterizes a thriller as opposed to a who done it is the thriller is more about the people and what they’re going to do and how they’re going to do it and not what they’ve done. A who done it is for us to figure out. A thriller is more like what are they going to do now?

Mark Bellamy as Sidney Bruhl and Karen Johnson Diamond as Helga Ten Dorp in the Vertigo Theatre Production of Deathtrap by Ira Levin. Directed by Jamie Dunsdon, costumes by Hanna Loosen, set by David Fraser, Photo by Citrus Photo.

JAMES

So, we’re telling people about this wonderful play and if somebody were to ask you what you’re in and you say you’re in Deathtrap – and they say well why should come I see that? What would your sales pitch be?

MARK

Directed by Jamie Dunsdon

JAMES

That’s a good reason.

JAMIE

Stars Mark Bellamy.

MARK (Laughs)

I would say that it is probably the epitome of the American thriller. Deathtrap, to me, is the American thriller version of what the Mouse Trap is to the who done it. And it’s fun. It’s funny. It will scare you. You’ll jump out of your seat and if you can stay ahead of these characters then you’re a genius.

JAMIE

I always tell people the same thing I have written in my director’s notes for the show. I was working for Craig, the artistic director of Vertigo Theatre, a couple of years ago and he had me look through something like fifty plays from the genre in a matter of months and there was some great stuff there but there was also some not so great stuff and when I read Deathtrap in the first hour of reading it I was already gasping and doing little ahahs with my cats and so if you can get that out of a read then think how good it would be on stage.

JAMES

And because you are directing this Jamie, I was wondering how significant and important do you feel getting a chance to stage Deathtrap at Vertigo is in terms of your career development?

Tyrell Crews & Mark Bellamy in the Vertigo Theatre Production of Deathtrap by Ira Levin. Directed by Jamie Dunsdon, costumes by Hanne Loosen, set by David Fraser, Photo by Diane + Mike Photography

JAMIE

It’s huge for me, but that’s half my battle right now is to not get too worried about that. I just have to applaud Craig because there’s not a lot of artistic directors who give young female directors a chance and he did and so I’m so grateful for that opportunity and really grateful for him as a mentor in my life and I’m just now trying to focus on the work and not on the monumental career step in it for me.

JAMES

Well speaking of next steps what have you got coming up?

JAMIE

Nothing I can talk about. I’m in workshops for things that are coming up at Verb and I’m in the early stages of some stuff…like early design phase of some things that haven’t been announced yet so I can’t talk about them.

JAMES

Tyrell, you’re part of a new theatre company called Black Radish and I see you’ve got a production of Waiting for Godot coming up in April. Tell me a little bit about the creation of the company and the production.

TYRELL

It’s a passion project. A huge passion project for us all. Myself, Duval Lang, Chris Hunt and Andy Curtis have been meeting and reading and discussing the play for the last three maybe four years. We shopped it around a little bit but it wasn’t a good fit with any existing company in the city so we decided to bite the bullet and give it a crack ourselves and now Denise Clarke is directing it so we have a chance to work in the Flanagan Theatre at The Grand and they want to open their doors and invite the community in and have a fresh start and that’s a big push for me as an artist and an individual with our little company.

JAMES

Mark, you’ve got a show coming up later in the year at Stage West?

MARK

I’m directing A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder. It’s a Broadway musical that won the Tony Award in 2014. It’s very funny and it’s based on the film Kind Hearts and Coronets with Alec Guinness and it’s about a guy who thinks he is very poor but he discovers that he is actually the ninth in line to become Earl of Highhurst so he goes about murdering all of his relatives who are ahead of him and the great conceit in the show is that all of his family – all of the eight relatives – are played by one actor. It’s superbly funny and has really great music.

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Deathtrap by Ira Levin and directed by Jamie Dunsdon and starring Mark Bellamy, Tyrell Crews, Barabara Gates Wilson, Karen Johnson-Diamond and Kevin Corey runs at the Vertigo Mystery Theatre from January 26th to February 24th. Tickets start at just $29.00 and are available online at Vertigo Theatre or from the box office by calling (403) 221-3708.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Last edited on August 29, 2019.

Interview with playwright, screenwriter, blogger, and novelist: Maryanne Pope

Posted on by James Hutchison
Photograph of Author Maryanne Pope Playwright, Screenwriter, Blogger, and Novelist
Maryanne Pope – Playwright, Screenwriter, Blogger & Novelist

Maryanne Pope is a playwright, screenwriter, blogger and novelist. She is the author of A Widow’s Awakening and the founder of Pink Gazelle Productions where she blogs and works to create literary, theatrical, and cinematic works that challenge, enrich and inspire both artist and audience.

“It’s about the power of dreams. And I’m a huge person on believing in dreams. I mean that’s what I live for is to achieve my dream. I just think dreams are hugely important and I just – I don’t know – I just decided a long time ago – for many reasons – the big one being John’s death – that I don’t want to die having lived an unfulfilled life.”

Maryanne is also the Chair of the John Petropoulos Memorial Fund a charity committed to raising public awareness about why and how to ensure workplaces are safe for everyone, including emergency responders. The charity was started after the death of Maryanne’s husband, John Petropoulos, who was a member of the Calgary Police Service. John died in the line of duty on September 29, 2000 while investigating a break and enter complaint when he stepped through a false ceiling, because there was no safety railing to warn him of the danger, and he fell nine feet into the lunchroom below and succumbed to brain injuries.

I sat down with Maryanne to discuss the John Petropoulos Memorial Fund and her life as a writer.

JAMES HUTCHISON

You’ve wanted to be a writer for a long time?

MARYANNE POPE

Oh yeah, I’ve wanted to be a writer since I was seven. I think that was probably when I first thought of it. But I never really got the concept that you actually have to sit down and write. It was always something in the distance that I wanted to do.

JAMES

As far as your writing career goes your husband’s death seems to be a marker. There was a life before that and a life after that.

MARYANNE

After I graduated from the University of Calgary when I was twenty-five and up until John’s death when I was thirty-two I wanted to try and write a novel. I had no interest in playwriting or screenwriting or anything like that. So, I started to work on a novel but I didn’t really know what I was doing and I was just creating a female protagonist who’s unhappy with her life and wanted to change the world and become a writer. And I wasn’t unhappy with my life, but I was unhappy with the fact that I wasn’t finding the time to write because by this time John and I were married. We’d bought a house. The financial pressure was on. The family pressure was on – are you going to have kids? You’ve got the mortgage now. John’s working full time. I was working full time, and so I was writing less and less and I was very anxious.

John & Maryanne on the beach in White Rock

MARYANNE

I knew I was on the right path with the right guy, but I wasn’t doing the work that I knew I had to do, and I was stressed right up until the point before the night John died when we had this big discussion and I said to him, “I am so scared that I am going to wake up twenty years from now and still not have become a writer.” And we had just had a big fight. We’d come back from a holiday and we had a big fight and we didn’t speak to each other for two days and he turned to me and he said, “Maryanne you know that is exactly what is going to happen in twenty years. You are not going to become a writer until you make your writing a priority – until you believe in yourself you will not become a writer.” And he died that night. He went to work and died at 4:00 o’clock the next morning.

And within two weeks after his death I sat down at my computer and I started to write what would become in eight years A Widow’s Awakening and of course because he died in the line of duty that meant that I was financially okay. My house was paid off. I got his income for twenty-one years and then I switch over to his pension, so I got exactly what Virginia Woolf had said – in a room of one’s own women need a secure – or any writer really – needs a secure income and a place of their own to be able to truly write. So, I got what I wanted, but I lost that which I loved the most.

JAMES

The interesting thing to me is how much of your writing has been focused on that tragedy and dealing with it. You have your novel A Widow’s Awakening and you have a one-act play called The Widows.

MARYANNE

Yes, it touches on that.

JAMES

And then you also have Saviour which is a full-length play.

MARYANNE

And that is hugely about John’s death, but it’s also about what I imagine his perspective to be on his death. And so he’s in the process of dying – that’s very much an imagined perspective on that but then I’m in the play as well.

Maryanne Pope at a workshop for her play Saviour with the Alberta Playwrights Network – January 2019

JAMES

Can you encapsulate Saviour, so people understand what it’s about?

MARYANNE

Saviour explores the concept of whether or not another person can save a person or whether the true meaning of a saviour is to help a person save themselves – to empower someone. So, this play looks at the example between John and me because his death gave me the financial freedom to pursue my dream. I just don’t get him and he doesn’t get to pursue his dream so it’s a real double-edged sword. And then it also goes into the bigger concept of a saviour from our Christian paradigm and whether or not we are, in some level of our consciousness in the West, expecting a saviour to come back and fix our problems.

L to R: Col Cseke, Kathryn Kerbes & Trevor Rueger in an APN workshop for Saviour by Maryanne Pope – January 2019

JAMES

Death is, of course, a big part of all our lives and I’m wondering in what ways you think our desire to write and tell stories is an attempt for us to navigate our feelings about death and our own mortality?

MARYANNE

Oh, I think it has everything to do with it because I have found that writing about death and loss and grief – my experience with it – helps me sort out and make sense of what happened. Helps me express my feelings and helps me move forward emotionally and psychologically whether it’s a blog or a story. And then to polish it a little bit and share it with other people is a gift and based on the feedback I get people do resonate with it because you’re right – death is a part of all our lives – we’re all going to go through that you know – losing people we love – or pets we love – or whatever. And when I write about death I like to be super honest about the good, the bad, and the ugly of what I was really thinking and experiencing.

JAMES

In a sense, John’s death fuels or has fueled a large part of your writing how do you feel about that?

MARYANNE

My mom was a psychiatric nurse at one point and she was very concerned about me working on A Widow’s Awakening for so long. And I think there is validity in that because if you constantly write about a tragedy it’s very difficult to move on because you sort of stay stuck in the past.

However, from a creative perspective, it’s an incredible story. And I know from the feedback I get from the book plus when I go out and deliver presentations that it’s a very powerful story and it’s very emotionally impactful. There are many many life lessons in there so I can pull different things for different projects whether it’s presentations, whether it’s a blog, whether it’s a book, whether it’s a screenplay, whether it’s a play. It was horrific to experience John’s death, but in a way the universe not only delivered me the financial means to become a writer the universe delivered me one hell of a story to tell.

JAMES

One of the things you established after John’s death was the John Petropoulos Memorial Fund which is an organization that strives to eliminate preventable workplace fatalities and injuries to first responders by educating the public about its role in helping to keep these workers safe on the job. What initiatives are you the proudest of and have been the most successful in your promotion of that safety message?

MARYANNE

We’ve done eight public service announcements and one ten-minute safety video. The picnic PSA, for example, is about traffic safety and reminds drivers to slow down when they see emergency vehicles – police, firefighters, paramedics, and the tow truck drivers along the side of the road. Then there’s the three put yourself in our boots videos. One tells the story of a police officer in exactly the same situation that John died under, and then there’s one where firefighters get trapped in a burning building because someone left clutter at the emergency exit and they couldn’t get out, and then in the emergency services one the paramedics are impacted because of a distracted driver.

Often, we get the most powerful feedback from people after they’ve seen one of our safety presentations. As part of our safety presentation, we physically go into a business or a school and we’ll talk about John’s death, show our public service announcements and the safety video. And when I’m the one doing the presentation and they hear the story they see it in my face because I’m this widow and then they see the videos and you see the light turn on. And I’ve heard from people in person after the presentation and in lots of e-mails and the number one comment is, “I never thought about safety in our workplace from the perspective of a first responder going in who wouldn’t be familiar with our building. Your story and your public service announcements and your video helped me change my perspective.” And that’s our goal. And I see that shift when I’m the one doing the presentation.

Maryanne and Sadie on the road

JAMES

Speaking of a shift, back in 2017 you decided to sell your house – put all your belongings into storage – and hit the road with your golden retriever Sadie. Your journey began on January 12, 2018. You left Victoria and headed down into the states for three months of travel and writing staying for short periods in various places and working on different projects and maybe living a bit of a Bohemian life.

MARYANNE

Very Bohemian.

JAMES

What motivated you to take that trip, and what did you learn about yourself as a writer?

Maryanne’s Henna Octopus Tattoo

MARYANNE

That trip was something I had been wanting to do for a long time. I just needed to have the financial freedom of the house behind me and my stuff in storage so I’m not trying to run a household, and the motivation was just to travel and be on the road, and to write, and to eat road trip food. That’s what motivated me. What I learned though – and this is what I’m still baffled about – is that I love that Bohemian lifestyle! I love life on the road!

Like right now I’m staying in one place for three months and I get a lot of work done, but I’m already getting antsy. And I never, never, would have guessed that about myself even though I’ve been a traveller all my life. And I to love travel but I am also a huge homebody but what I’ve discovered about myself is that home for me doesn’t necessarily have to entail being surrounded by my own things in my own home. Home for me is being with my laptop, my writing, my vehicle, my dog and so wherever I am becomes home. I would have never imagined that about myself. I always thought I’d feel like I was on the road but now I find home is wherever I am. It’s a shift in my thinking.

JAMES

So, now you’re able to write anywhere?

MARYANNE

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely anywhere. And my office is all over the place. And I’ve no problem with the discipline. What I have a problem with is the opposite. Turning it off and taking those breaks and saying, “No, it’s Sunday I’m not going to write today.” But I’ve learned that the breaks even if it’s only one or two days a week that I take off – those payoff in spades when I’m back working because that break away makes my writing that much stronger whereas when I work right through, even if it’s only a few extra hours a day, then I burn out.

On the Road Bohemian Writing Space

JAMES

What were some of the best places you went to on your trip for your writing?

MARYANNE

Sedona is magic. Sedona is one of the best places on the earth that I’ve found to write. So, I’ve gone there twice now. Once on my trip and then I went back at the end of September. I went for a week and did some intensive writing. There’s something there, right? There’s the energy and the vortexes and all that sort of stuff. I tap into it. It’s amazing and I’d just go write in the mornings, and then I’d go for a hike in the afternoon, and then I’d just listen to music in the evening. It’s incredible. I got most of a script written there so that was really good. I would go, for sure, to Sedona again.

Bell Rock Sedona, Arizona

MARYANNE

Another place that was extremely magical was Zion National Park and Bryce Canyon. And these are all interior like Utah and Arizona which is shocking because I’m a total beach person – a total water person. I live to be by the ocean. And I absolutely loved the Oregon and California coast but these other places were new and just incredible. Yeah, that trip was just life-changing. I had a sense of freedom on that trip that I don’t remember ever experiencing in my life. I loved it. I loved every moment. And Sadie and I had a ball and I got lots of writing done and I just loved it. I loved the whole scene.

Sunrise at Bryce Canyon, Utah

JAMES

You also do a lot of blogging so I’m kind of wondering how did the blogging evolve?

MARYANNE

Sable and Maryanne

I started blogging in 2010 when I sold my home in Calgary, and I was leaving to go and live on Vancouver Island, and I was working with a marketing person who had suggested writing blogs, and I thought, “Oh God I don’t have time to write blogs on top of everything else, I’m stressed. I’m getting out of this house.” Well, wouldn’t you know it my doggie Sable goes blind. So, here I am in this huge house and normally I’d be out visiting a thousand people because I was leaving Calgary, but I couldn’t because my dog was blind and I live in a house full of stairs. So, I physically had to be with her so I’m in this house that’s all packed up and I took her advice and I started to write a blog about this experience of what it’s like to pack up a house with a blind dog starting on a new journey with so much sadness knowing that this dog isn’t going to be around for very long. And then when I got to Vancouver Island I kept blogging regularly, and I liked the feeling of satisfaction you get from completing a short piece after working on longer pieces that are taking so long to finish like my screenplay, God’s Country, which is about Nell Shipman the silent screen star.

On the Road

JAMES

I’ve noticed on your blogs that you’ve posted a couple of quotes from The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho.

MARYANNE

Yes. Yes. Yes.

JAMES

Is that a favourite book?

MARYANNE

Oh, yeah. I’ve read it so many times now.

JAMES

What does it provide you with?

MARYANNE

Oh, it provides me with the reminder that – it’s the quote – that the universe conspires to help us achieve our dreams. The universe is there. It’s got our back. It will do everything it can to help us along and what seems like a setback is not a setback. It is just an opportunity for us to learn the lessons so that we can move forward in our dream. It’s about the power of dreams. And I’m a huge person on believing in dreams. I mean that’s what I live for is to achieve my dream. I just think dreams are hugely important and I just – I don’t know – I just decided a long time ago – for many reasons – the big one being John’s death – that I don’t want to die having lived an unfulfilled life.

Maryanne & Sadie on the road in Utah

JAMES

So, you were on the road when you celebrated your 50th birthday on February 23rd 2018 with friends in Oceanside California. How did you feel about reaching that landmark and did you gain any new insights about yourself or life now that you’ve lived half a century?

MARYANNE

Well, I was just so flipping excited and I still am. I feel way better than I ever thought I would at fifty. At twenty I thought fifty was old, and I had better have achieved everything I wanted to achieve by then because I’d pretty much have just rolled over and died by then. And now that I’m at fifty I feel great. The only thing is I have lots of energy during the day and during my creative time and stuff but I’m pretty much useless after seven pm. And it used to be a joke and funny and now it is what it is and because of the writing and intellectual work that I do all day I need a lot of sleep, and I just shut down at seven o’clock at night and then I just get up early and go for it. You know the bodies not the same. There are wrinkles and stuff but that stuff doesn’t bother me. I just think it’s like Coco Channel said, “You get the face after fifty that you’ve lived.” It shows. And Gloria Steinem said, “After fifty all the bullshit is gone.” And that I’m noticing. Oh my God, my tolerance for people that are pissing me off – that are toxic – that are bringing me down – that are bugging me – whatever – I don’t have the time for it. I don’t have time for all the extra shit that I don’t want to do anymore. And it has just become so much easier to just say no to that.

Heather, Maryanne and Ella, Heather’s daughter, celebrating Maryanne’s 50th Birthday

JAMES

Well, lets talk a little bit about your screenplay God’s Country which as you mentioned is about Nell Shipman the Canadian born silent film actress, screenwriter and director. You’ve been working on that project for a long time so I’m just curious where you’re at with that.

MARYANNE

Ah, yes well that went through a big rewrite in the summer and then I sent it to the director and the producer here in Calgary that I want to work with. And I had a big meeting with the director and he still isn’t happy enough to take it on but we brainstormed ways that I might change it so that he will because I really want to work with these guys they’re so good.

But I had changed the story to be a biopic. So it was cradle to grave and his suggestion was we just need to give it a bit more oomph a bit more magic and you know it’s so funny because this book I’m reading about marketing and stuff which is all about story and about clarifying the message is exactly what this director told me is the flaw in God’s Country at present. Now we have Nell being born – now she’s on vaudeville – now she’s getting married – all this sort of stuff that tells a beautiful story about someone’s life but what is the meat and potatoes of this story.

Canadian actress, author, screenwriter, producer, director, and animal trainer: Nell Shipman

JAMES

Are you talking about her inner motivation?

MARYANNE

Yeah, what does she want? And you know I know her so well now because I’ve lived with this character for fifteen years – I know her family so well now because I’ve become very close with her family – her descendants. And it feels like I’m battling with her instead of working with her. I’m telling the story that she wants me to tell because I’ve read this autobiography and I’ve seen her movies and I want to be true to her but I also want to tell a contemporary story.

I’m just frustrated with myself as a writer because for some odd reason I haven’t always been able to grasp the basics of what a good story is. I’m more of a writer who just wants to tell what I want to tell, and I really don’t care what the textbooks have said about you have to have your inciting incident – you have to have your characters wants – you have to have to have stakes. I know all that but I don’t think I’ve really internalized it and I’m frustrated with myself because those scripts are not getting made.

So now I’m being forced to become a better writer and a better storyteller and that’s not easy, right James? It’s not. It’s growing. It’s exhausting. It’s hard work. I’m tired of being rejected but this is the path I chose and most of the time I love it.

JAMES

John with Sable at Emerald Lake

So, as you mentioned before, your husband John said to you the night before he died, “Maryanne you know that’s exactly what’s going to happen in twenty years. You are not going to become a writer until you make writing a priority until you believe in yourself you will not become a writer.” So now almost twenty years after his death what do you think John would say to you about what you’re doing and what you’ve accomplished with your writing?

MARYANNE

I think he’d be super proud of what I’ve accomplished and where I’m at, but I think he’d be kind of puzzled, as I am puzzled, as to why some projects are taking so long to complete even though I’m doing my job, and I’m showing up every day and doing the work, and I’m finishing a project and then it goes out into the world and then the world sends it back, and I think he’d be interested – I think we’d be having some good conversations about that.

JAMES

So, then looking ahead what is your vision of life as a writer?

MARYANNE

I would say the life of a writer is learning to embrace the process and learn to love the process of writing. Like the day in and day outness of it. So, for me being able to get up in the morning and be super excited where I’m at – no matter where I’m at in the cycle of a project – no matter if it’s going well or not going well. If it’s not going well to embrace the challenge and if it’s going well to go, “Yes, I’m almost done and it’s going to be great.”

Maryanne Pope on the road. “Embracing the process.”

Interviews have been edited for length and clarity. This particular post is a combination of two interviews with Maryanne Pope. One conducted on April 8, 2016, and one conducted on December 8, 2018. 
DOWNLOAD – James Hutchison Interviews Maryanne Pope

Interview with Playwright Wendy Froberg: Queen of the Ring – The Story of Johnnie Mae Young

Posted on by James Hutchison
Playwright Wendy Froberg
Playwright Wendy Froberg

Queen of the Ring by playwright Wendy Froberg is the story of Johnnie Mae Young who spent over seven decades of her life slamming, punching and clawing her way to the top of the women’s professional wrestling world. Despite her pin-up good looks, she was a trash-talking bad girl the crowds loved to hate. From the carnival sideshows of the dirty thirties to the glitz and drama of the WWE, Mae Young rose to fame as the toughest, most dangerous female and one of the top attractions in the rough and tumble, disreputable world of old-school pro wrestling.

JAMES HUTCHISON

So, Wendy, how did you stumble upon the story of Johnnie Mae Young?

WENDY FROBERG

I was reading my Facebook newsfeed in early 2014 and a story came up about her because she had just died at the age of 90. And even though I’m a native Calgarian and I grew up with Stu Hart’s Stampede Wrestling I’d never heard of Johnnie Mae Young. The photo of this blonde bombshell throwing another woman around a wrestling ring captivated me and I just had to click on the link and once I started, I couldn’t stop. Everything I read led me to the conclusion that this was one of those, truth is stranger than fiction, stories that needed to be told.

JAMES

Well, why did you feel this need to tell her story and write a play?

WENDY

This woman wrestled from the dirty thirties of the depression era right up to the post-millennium WWE. Seven decades. Can you imagine stepping into the wrestling ring and getting tossed around when you’re in your eighties?

Johnnie Mae and other female wrestlers like her had to overcome incredible odds to make their mark in a world dominated by men. A lot of them escaped brutal childhoods where they were neglected or abused, and they were exploited physically, sexually and financially by the male wrestling promoters who they depended on to make a living.

These women lived in a time when women were supposed to be demure ladies in heels and make-up, and not down-and-dirty, ass-kicking fighters. They broke the rules about how women were supposed to behave sometimes at a great cost to themselves. These women were feminists before we had a name for it. They were trailblazers who proved that despite the theatricality and fakery involved in wrestling it’s a true sport and they were bona fide athletes.

And as someone who writes for the theatre, you can’t find anything more theatrical than professional wrestling! So, audiences coming to the show should be prepared for a lot of physicality, some sweating, and slamming, and maybe even being made to feel a little uncomfortable by the rawness of Mae’s life. But don’t be afraid to get involved in the moment because we all know it’s always a lot more fun when you pretend it’s real!

JAMES

What sort of message do you think Mae’s story has for the people of today?

WENDY

There has always been a history of people in power, often white men, taking advantage of those with less power, often women and people of colour, and so I think Mae’s story is very timely considering the greater awareness and growing power of the #metoo and #timesup movements. Mae and her colleagues fought back against their exploitation and rose to create lives of truthfulness and empowerment. She knew she had skills, talent, ambition, and drive and didn’t let anyone stand in her way which sometimes led to real fights outside of the ring as well as in. But it’s also true that she used her sexuality as a source of power and this brings up another question we grapple with today and that’s if a woman chooses to use her sexuality to get ahead, is she still being exploited because it’s largely men who want what she has? That’s something I’ll let the audience decide for themselves.

JAMES

Any time you tell a story there’s a certain amount of poetic license involved. How did you balance the real story of Mae’s life with the needs of creating a compelling story for the stage?

WENDY

I wanted to honour this woman by telling her story accurately, but you can’t fit everything in because there just isn’t enough time in a stage play. Sometimes you have to condense characters or change the order or timing of events. But I’ll say this: the characters in the show are real people and the events really did happen and the spirit of her story, the amazing contributions she made to the sport of wrestling, is one hundred percent truthful.

JAMES

Tell me about the creative team behind the production. Who is the cast and who is the director and what’s it been like to work with that team?

WENDY

I’ve been so impressed with the professionalism of Attollo Productions. They’re a new company and they’ve worked hard and employed all their creative skills to figure out a way to tell Mae’s story in a compelling, exciting and engaging way. They’ve respected my script and my role as the playwright and they’ve honoured the actors time, skills and process. The production is being directed by Chelsea Friesen who is also a fight choreographer, so she’ll be ensuring the safety of our actors while working with all the performers to make the wrestling moves believable. Brett Waring is producing the play and she’s also the dialect coach and assistant fight director on the production. Chelsea and Brett and several of the other cast members had previously worked on developing Queen of the Ring so I’m grateful we’ve been able to keep many of the original cast and I’m really honoured they’ve chosen my play for their inaugural production.

JAMES

So, who should come and see the show?

WENDY

Everyone—assuming you’re eighteen or over. The producers decided that since the show is raw and deals with sensitive subject matter such as sexual abuse, it would be best to limit the audience to adults. If you love a good, rollicking story, if you’re interested in the history of an unusual, sometimes wild and wacky sport, if you love stories about real-life, flawed people who nevertheless inspire us as we see them overcome obstacles and live their truth—then this play is for you.

JAMES

If Mae were alive today and could come to see the show you’ve created what do you think she’d say – or what do you hope she’d say?

WENDY

Well, I’d be scared shitless if I got it wrong and she didn’t like it, because that woman – literally – wouldn’t pull any punches about letting me know what she thought. I do think—or hope—she’d see that we’ve recognized the depth of her skill and tenacity, the obstacles that she and her fellow female wrestlers had to overcome to survive and thrive in a tough, unfair world, and the fact that she didn’t care about being nice or liked, as so many women do. We didn’t sugar-coat anything or cover up any ugly realities about her less-than-perfect behavior. We captured her strength, resilience, and love of the sport as both an athlete and an entertainer. Mae Young truly did it her way and I think she’d agree that we showed that.

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CAST: Jade Benoit, Hailey Carr, Chris Gibson, Kathryn Kozody, Fred Krysko, Jesselle Lauren, Shaylea Pangle

CREATIVE TEAM: Playwright Wendy Froberg, Director & Fight Director/Choreographer: Chelsea Friesen, Stage Manager: Danelle White, Producer & Dialect Coach & Assistant Fight Choreographer: Brett Waring, Intimacy Director: Anastasia St. Amand, Costume Design: Christie Johnson, Props Manager/Costume Intern: Kaylee Pratt, Dramaturg: Caroline Russell-King Produced by Attollo Productions.

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WENDY FROBERG:  Wendy’s solo shows Interruptions and A Woman of a Certain Age® were each awarded “Outstanding Original Script” at the 2011 and 2013 Calgary One-Act Play Festivals, with AWOAC going on to win “Best of Fest” at the Calgary International Fringe Festival. Her plays, Riches and Best Interests, were produced in 2013 and 2014 by Urban Stories Theatre. She wrote the libretto for the 2015 Cowtown Opera Company production Annie Davidson. Wendy is also an actor who has appeared on stage with Theatre BSMT, Morpheus, Urban Curvz, Fire Exit and Scorpio theatres in a wide range of roles. In addition to working in theatre, Wendy is a registered clinical psychologist. She hopes you, like her, are inspired by the story of Mae Young and her fellow tough broads of wrestling!

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Link Graphic to It's a Wonderful Life at Lunchbox Theatre - Review by James Hutchison

Matt Dy: Director of Script Competitions Austin Film Festival

Posted on by James Hutchison

If you have ambitions of pursuing a career as a screenwriter or television showrunner then I’d highly recommend you attend the Austin Film Festival. I attended the 2018 Austin Film Festival Writer’s Conference and found it to be a very rewarding and exciting opportunity to connect with industry professionals as well as up-and-coming writers. This interview with Matt Dy, the Director of Competitions about the Austin Film Festival will give you a comprehensive overview of what the festival is about and why you should enter the competition.

Executive Director and Co-Founder of the Austin Film Festival Barbara Morgan talks with the 2017 AFF Awardees: Walter Hill, Keenen Ivory Wayans, and Kenneth Lonergan.

We all have favourite stories – favourite films – favourite television shows and books and plays – because these stories somehow reach us. They make us laugh, or cry, or reflect more deeply about life, or simply give us a momentary escape from our troubles.

That’s why I’m really excited to announce that my play Masquerade is a finalist in the stage play competition at this years Austin Film Festival – which is a festival that’s dedicated to story. Masquerade is about an empty nest couple, Sarah and Glenn, that have drifted apart. They were talking divorce and selling the house until they discovered a book called: A Good Marriage is Just a Fantasy by Dr. Ravi Shasta. Basically, it’s a book about exploring your sexual fantasies with your partner. Unfortunately, sometimes what is real and what is fantasy can become blurred and what was intended to bring a couple closer together can sometimes drive them apart. 

The Austin Film Festival is a celebration of film and television that focuses on story and the people who write the screenplays and teleplays. The festival features industry professionals as well as up and coming writers. I’ll be flying down to Austin to participate in the festival as well the staged reading of my play. I gave Matt Dy, the Director of Competitions for The Austin Film Festival, a call to talk to him about how the festival began and what participants can expect.

Gabbi Lindgren, Script Competitions Coordinator & Matt Dy, Director of Script Competitions – Austin Film Festival

JAMES HUTCHISON

The Austin Film Festival was founded in 1993 by Barbara Morgan, who still serves as Festival Director, for the purpose of furthering the art and craft and business of screenwriting and filmmaking. So, I’m curious over the last twenty-five-year history of the festival how have those founding goals been developed?

MATT DY

The Festival was also co-founded by Marsha Milam who is still involved in a limited capacity, but Barbara Morgan is sole Executive Director for the Festival now. The two of them started the festival because they felt there was a need for a community like this. There really wasn’t a writer’s festival let alone very many screenplay competitions at the time. There were maybe a handful and now there are hundreds of them in existence, but we’re one of the original ones which is a really nice thing to be able to say.

The thing that still remains intact over the twenty-five-year history of the festival is our goal and mission to champion the screenwriter. We’re now open to playwrights and eventually we may become more of a hub for all forms of story because we’re also expanding into fiction podcasting and we have a digital series component as well – content for the web – so there’s a lot of different formats that we’ve embraced over the years but the mission to champion the writer is still the same.

First Day of the Austin Film Festival in 2017 – a room full of storytellers.

JAMES

You know when I think of successful screenwriters they might have different success stories but I’m wondering if there might be a couple of qualities that sets the successful screenwriter apart and I’m thinking one of those qualities is having a dedication to the craft. In what way do you think a dedication to the craft benefits a writer’s career and development?

MATT

That is absolutely essential and it’s easier said than done. I’m a writer as well and I tend not to take my own advice – to write every day you know – you hear of people who have nine to five jobs and they’re married, and they have kids, and maybe they have a second job, and they still make time to write. So my thing is to not make excuses anymore and just do it. It is about dedication. It is about finding time to write because, as a writer, you want to treat the writing as if it’s going to be your job. You need to set deadlines and goals and that’s why competitions are a great thing for writers because you work towards a deadline to get your script in for the competition.

It’s also teaching you about persistence. You’re a finalist in our Stage Play Competition. You’re in the top three out of 655 plays that were submitted but a lot of people that didn’t make it as far as you have may actually have a really good play and we may have overlooked it because – it’s a little bit of the luck of the draw – trying to find a good match for the reader that might respond to it. It’s a human process, and it’s incredibly subjective, so you’re going to get different results from different competitions, and so it’s also about being persistent and moving on and entering the next competition 

JAMES

Enter other ones or give it a rewrite and enter again.

MATT

Yeah, and you’ll find that exists in every creative field. And if you pick any popular film or stage play that has gotten produced – if you talk to those writers they will tell you consistently that they had so many doors closed on them – so many people told them this would never get produced or shouldn’t be produced and yet they still got it produced.  And so the writer’s process is to write every day and stay persistent, stay focused, and write the story you want to tell.

Writer, director, actor Dennis Hopper at the Austin Film Festival in 1997.

JAMES

You said you’re a writer yourself so I’m just wondering from your own perspective – because you’re surrounded by writers – what does keep someone going? I mean those rejection letters are piling up and you work for years for little money…what is that keeps writers going? Why do they keep writing stories?

MATT

Passion. Love. A lot of playwrights are incredibly passionate – they love their work – they do it for the love of the art – and I think a lot of screenwriters feel the same way. It’s a dream and if you don’t have a dream it’s hard to find the motivation to get up each day and work on that passion project

JAMES

I wonder if part of it might be realizing that when you sit down at your desk to begin the research, the writing, the outlining or just diving into writing your script you might be starting a ten or fifteen or twenty-year journey in order to realize that project.

MATT

Absolutely. Everybody has their own process. There are some writers who end up having one project that they spend their entire lives working on, but there are other writers who work on many different projects all at the same time because they know their one pet project may not be the one that gets them discovered.

JAMES

The festival has a number of writing competitions. You’ve got the feature-length drama. You’ve got the comedy feature. Horror. Sci-fi. So you’ve got lots of different categories, but I’m wondering, regardless of the genre, do you notice anything that the winning scripts seem to possess? Something in them that makes this writing stand out.

MATT

I think if I had to pin it on one thing it would be stories that have that unique voice – that unique perspective. Those stories end up winning or advancing in the competition. It’s always their unique spin on a familiar story. A different perspective so that when you’re reading it you go, “Oh that’s brilliant. I wasn’t expecting that.”

Each writer is going to have their own perspective on the world and so their version of a story is going to be different than someone else’s version of the story, and you can tell when they’re writing something for themselves for the passion and for the love of their story rather than when they’re trying to write something for the masses that they think would sell.

Writer/Director Robert Altman – M.A.S.H., McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Nashville, and The Player talks with screenwriter and actor Buck Henry – The Graduate, Get Smart, and Catch 22 at the Austin Film Festival.

JAMES

You bring up an interesting point because I just watched Get Out which was a huge hit last year and so I’m wondering when you have a hit like that – a film that, you know, is well made, does well at the box office, gets awards – does the success of that film, in the marketplace, influence the types of scripts you see being entered into the festival?

MATT

Oh yeah, not just the marketplace but also the climate – and what’s happening politically and what’s been happening in the industry with movements for diversity. All these different ancillary things that are happening in the world obviously effect what people are writing and submitting to the competition. You can definitely feel that when you’re reading scripts, and you’ll find that there are many people who are commenting on the current President and many of the other things that are happening in the Zeitgeist because we write to talk about and make sense of the world we live in.

Of course, there are going to be people who are going to try and anticipate what is marketable and usually if they try to emulate what’s popular right now they’re too late because those projects were long in gestation and they’re striking a cord now. As a writer, you should just continue to write what you’re passionate about and then something might happen to make your script a timely subject. There was a playwright here from last year in the playwriting competition who happened to write a play about immigration on a border town in Texas. It was a play she had written a long time ago that never got produced but she pulled that back out of her drawer because she knew this is the time for it.

JAMES

Well, let’s talk a little bit about the festival. There are two components. There’s the film festival and there’s the conference and the conference is filled with industry professionals and established as well as up and coming writers. What’s the conference part of the festival about?

MATT

I like to call it summer camp for screenwriters except it’s only four days. It sort of has that Kumbaya feel when you first arrive. It’s palatable – at least for me. You know you can stereotype writers and say they’re all an isolated bunch who are very introverted who don’t like to converse or be communal, but I find that even the most introverted screenwriter, deep down, really wants to connect, and I think when they realize that wow, I’m not the only one who feels that way, and they come to a conference where it’s a bunch of introverts and a lot of thinkers and creative types who are just like them then the walls start to come down. And we try to make it easy for them to get to know each other and just converse and make friends. Usually without fail that’s what happens.

Samuel Weller, Allison Norlian, Sean Collins-Smith, and Emily McGregor at one of the many mix and mingle functions at the 2017 Austin Film Festival

MATT

I also think a lot of people come to the conference with the goal of getting their script sold and produced or getting an agent or manager but that rarely ever happens at the festival. I like to think of the festival as an incubator where things just take time to develop. Like you’re planting the seeds. You’re making connections with people you wouldn’t normally be able to meet. If you place in the competition you’re going through a special track of panels with people who are just like you – quality writers, talented people with great ideas, so you’re in a very talented room with people that you’re going to several events with and you never know you might find your next collaborator or somebody who would love to read your work and would introduce you to somebody that they know in the industry and so usually those are where most of the success stories come from.

JAMES

As a participant in the conference there are panels there are readings what kind of things are happening?

MATT

Everything that happens at the conference is about the creative and business sides of story, so if you want to learn about other people’s writing process and how you can apply that to your own writing you can do that, or if you’re really wanting to understand how it works in the TV writers room we usually have that covered. We have pitching opportunities, we have script reading workshops, we have an indie filmmaker track as well if you’re a filmmaker and want to learn more about microbudget filmmaking. We have a playwriting track. We have a panel that covers writing for webisodes. We have a script to screen series where writers will show a few clips from their film or show and show the process of what they wrote and how that translated to the screen. We have a conversation series with people who just talk about their career in general and usually, those are the bigger people and in particular our awardees like Tony Gilroy

Barbara Morgan co-founder and Executive Director of The Austin Film Festival hosts In Conversation with Kenneth Lonergan the writer/director of Manchester by the Sea.

JAMES

Why don’t we talk a little bit about that since you brought it up? As part of the festival, you honour screenwriters and filmmakers, and the very first person that was honoured at the festival was Horton Foote who wrote Tender Mercies and adapted To Kill a Mockingbird for the screen, and then last year you had Kenneth Lonergan at the festival who wrote and directed Manchester by the Sea. Who are you honouring this year and why?

MATT

I mentioned Tony Gilroy who is a screenwriter and filmmaker. He’s somebody that we’ve tried to get for a very long time. We try and find people that have a rich history of contributing to storytelling and also have an ability to be accessible to our audience because that’s something we also pride ourselves in is that you have an opportunity to meet Tony Gilroy and talk with him or meet somebody like Vince Gilligan the creator and showrunner for Breaking Bad who took the time to meet everybody when he was here for the festival.

Tony Gilroy is the writer/director of the Oscar Nominated thriller Michael Clayton starring George Clooney. He also wrote the first three Bourne films and co-wrote and directed the fourth film in the franchise. More recently he is the co-writer of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and the writer/producer of the political thriller Beirut starring Jon Hamm and Rosamund Pike.

MATT

Another awardee we have this year is Daniel Petrie, Jr. who we’re giving our Heart of Film Award and we invited him because he’s been involved with the festival for such a long time and he really loves our festival and he’s very giving and he comes almost every year and we even gave his production company a category the Enderby Entertainment award because his company produced a finalist script from I think 2008 or 9 from our competition and it premiered here at the festival, and they’ve worked with many writers that they’ve met here at the festival. And so usually we try to find in an awardee who has left a mark on the industry and is somebody who can share words of wisdom for the next generation of creators. 

Daniel Petrie, Jr. will receive the Heart of Film Award for his many contributions to the film and television industry and his service to the screenwriting community. Dan’s screenwriting credits include the Oscar-nominated Beverly Hills Cop as well as The Big Easy, Shoot to Kill, and Turner and Hooch. Dan is also a two-term past president of the Writers Guild of America West and a long time panelist and supporter of the Austin Film Festival.

JAMES

And you’re also honouring Roger Corman. How many careers has he helped launch?

MATT

Yes, I know that’s another reason it was very clear why we chose him because when you find out all the careers he’s started you wonder why he hasn’t received more credit. It was clear for us that he needed to be an awardee.

Roger Corman has been credited with discovering such talent as Jack Nicholson, Francis Ford Coppola, Diane Ladd, Peter Bogdanovich, Martin Scorsese, and James Cameron. He is the director of over 500 films including Little Shop of Horrors, Death Race 2000, and The Pit and the Pendulum. Corman’s company New World Pictures was also a distributor of foreign cinema including the work of Francois Truffaut, Akira Kurosawa, and Federico Fellini.

JAMES

And then you’ve got Larry Wilmore.

MATT

Yes, and he’s somebody else who has been so great as well. Somebody who has been great talking with our attendees and very giving and very accessible as well. 

Emmy Award winning Larry Wilmore has been a television producer, actor, comedian and writer for more than 25 years. Wilmore created the Bernie Mac Show which ran for five seasons on FOX and recently helped launch ABC’s Black-ish. On camera, Wilmore was the “Senior Black Correspondent” on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and was the host of his own show The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore for two years on Comedy Central.

JAMES

So, my play Masquerade is a finalist in this year’s Stage Play Competition and I’m really excited to be attending the festival, but I was curious about why you decided to add a stage play category to the film festival?

MATT

It was our Executive Director who had the idea to do it because we work with many playwrights, and we find that many screenwriters and tv writers aren’t just screenwriters and tv writers they also have plays and a lot of these people have been asking us to start a playwriting competition. A lot of playwrights living in New York City, for example, find it hard to make any money as a playwright so a lot of them make their money in TV. The Americans, House of Cards, Orange is the New Black those writer’s rooms took place in New York and a lot of them consisted of playwrights. We started the screenplay competition in 1994 because there was a need for something like that and so we thought this would be a great way for playwrights who want to make that transition into film and television to utilize the resources that we already have in place. And also to give recognition to your own play because the placement and the exposure your play gets from the festival could help get it produced because every playwright still wants to have their play produced.   

JAMES

Let’s talk about the other aspect of the festival – so you’ve got the conference part but it’s also a film festival and the film festival runs for an additional four or five days after the conference ends. What are some of the highlights coming up this year as far as films go?

Closing Night Film at the 2018 Austin Film Festival is The Front Runner starring Hugh Jackman. Based on the real-life story of politician Gary Hart whose 1988 run for the Democratic Presidential Nomination was sidelined by reports of an extramarital affair with Donna Rice.

MATT

What I love about our film festival is that our mission to honour the writer still exists. All the awards that are handed out for the different categories in the film competition are handed out to the writers of the film. Not the director or the producer. You know when you watch award shows or you’re at a film festival and they announce the best picture they usually hand out the awards to the director and the producing team.  Unless it’s a writer/director but usually the writer isn’t involved with directing or producing they just wrote the script. But at our festival, the writer is the one who actually receives the award. We put a stronger emphasis on the quality of the writing than the marketability or the production values of the films that are chosen to be in the festival. So story really is the thing that we look for the most.

Greta Gerwig the writer and director of the Oscar-nominated film Lady Bird attends the 2017 Austin Film Festival screening of her film.

MATT

The thing that’s nice about our festival is that we’re after Toronto after Venice – after all the bigger film festivals that have those Oscar contenders – and so we have a lot of those big films that end up getting nominated for Oscars. Last year, I think, we might have had nine or ten of them. We had Lady Bird, Three Billboards, I Tonya, Mudbound, and Call Me By Your Name.

JAMES

That was quite the lineup.

MATT

And while a lot of people are going to be gravitating towards the bigger marquee films that we have this year like The Favourite or Boy Erased or Widows you don’t want to miss out on all the other films that are playing within the film festival competition because those are films that you might not be able to see anywhere else anytime soon.

JAMES

So, as I mentioned this is my first time going to the conference. What basic tips or advice can you tell me about coming to the festival that I should know and would help prep me or anybody else who is going?

MATT

Well, get familiar with our list of panelists that are attending the festival and the conference. Find out if your screenwriting heroes are going to be here because they’re going to be out during the festival. They’re going to be at the Driskill bar and they’re going to be at the partner parties and their badge is just going to say their name. It won’t tell you any of their credits or if they’re a panelist. So you never know who you’re going to be standing next to and if you recognize them you can respectfully introduce yourself like, “Hi I’m a finalist in the playwriting competition.” And there aren’t very many finalists. There’s about fifty of you and that’s a huge difference from the ten thousand five hundred scripts that were submitted this year. And your badge will say finalist and you should wear that badge proudly and introduce yourself, “I’m James, I’m a finalist in the playwriting competition.”  And that is something that will hopefully open doors. “Oh, you’re a finalist. Okay, tell me about your play.” And of course what’s also going to happen next is, “Well what else are you working on?” And so be prepared to talk about other work that you’ve written and of course be ready to talk about your play.

2017 Panelists Amy Berg, Eric Heisserer, Megan Amram, and Raamla Mohamed attend the Writers Guild of America West Welcome Party

MATT

You’d be surprised how many writers come here and they have a fantastic piece of work but they don’t know how to talk about it to people. So, just be prepared for that elevator pitch but I wouldn’t necessarily call it pitching at the festival because nobody really likes to be pitched to. A lot of these agents and managers and producers who are here are here to have a good time and to meet writers and contribute to the festival. They don’t want to be treated as if the only reason you’re talking to them is so you can send them your script – there’s so many people that are after them that they just want to be treated like a human being.

JAMES

Well, treat them like you would want to be treated if you were in their position.

MATT

Yeah, exactly and as a manager, it’s all about the relationship and so if that’s how you’re going into it they’re probably going to think I’m not sure I want a relationship with this person. And don’t forget about your fellow writers that are sitting right next to you because you know everybody comes here wanting to try and meet the panelist or agents and managers but it’s a chance for you to meet other writers like yourself and develop your network and friendships and your professional relationships.

JAMES

I was thinking about the legacy of the festival. And I have to say I really like what you guys are doing with the Austin Film Festival – On Story. Tell me a little bit about how that started and what you guys are doing with that part of the festival.

MATT

So, Barb our Executive Director had always envisioned that we would have a TV show and so she had the foresight to record all of our panels during the festival and to keep a record of it so that we could utilize it in some way one day. And we also had a lot of people who attended our festival asking if we had any recordings so there was a demand for it. And so we went through our archives and created a quality product that PBS loved and picked up and our marketing team has gotten us in almost all the markets for PBS and now On Story has expanded into a book and a radio show on PRI and we have a podcast as well. So On Story has really become its own brand and people really love it. 

JAMES

I watched a couple of them on YouTube and shared them through Facebook, and Twitter and Instagram. I watched Carl Reiner talking about the early days of working on the Dick Van Dyck Show and it was really interesting, and I watched Kenneth Lonergan who you had here last year and I thought it’s nice to have those things available.

Vince Gilligan creator of Breaking Bad & Better Call Saul at the 2013 Austin Film Festival

MATT

And we’re proud to say we’re an Emmy award winner as well. We won an Emmy for our episode featuring Vince Gilligan whom I had mentioned earlier and actually, we’re nominated this year for an Emmy for our episode featuring Eric Heisserer the writer for Arrival. 

JAMES

I’ll have to hunt those down and watch them. Are there any legendary stories from the festival that you can share?

MATT

Oh God. Legendary stories. Well from the first year the winning script in our competition actually got optioned and produced rather quickly. It was called Excess Baggage and it was written by Max D. Adams. It had Alicia Silverstone and Benicio Del Toro in it.

I believe the first screenwriters’ conference for AFF happened at Willie Nelson’s old opera house, but it was run down, and it was rainy but somehow it brought people together, and you know we said magic happened there. I wasn’t around for it but this is what our director Barbara Morgan has said repeatedly over and over again – that magic happened there despite all the chaos because everybody was there because they believed in story and telling their stories. And a lot of big influential people from Columbia Pictures were there as well and they felt the magic too, and I think that helped encourage them to become more involved with us and to see us as a legitimate resource for writers, and they optioned that first script and produced it and that’s really what put us on the map.

Austin Film Festival 2017 Awards Lunch (L to R) Walter Hill, Extraordinary Contribution to Film, Keenen Ivory Wayans – Extraordinary Contribution to Television, Kenneth Lonergan, Distinguished Screenwriter

MATT

And you know what feels legendary for me each year is the Awards Luncheon and hopefully you’ll see that and feel that too when you’re here because the awards luncheon is where we celebrate the winners in the competition and win or lose it’s still a really great event because on that stage we are awarding up and coming writers from our competition and we’re also honouring the established writers like the Tony Gilroys, the Larry Wilmores, Roger Corman, Dan Petrie and so they’re all on the same stage together. And what’s so beautiful is that one of those awardees, almost without fail, will comment on what they’ve seen from the up and coming writers. They’re deeply moved by the time they get up on stage because they’re also not sure what to expect at our festival.  So, when they see we’re really championing the writer and they’re hearing all the winner’s stories and we even have a young filmmakers award so they end up seeing young kids going up there and accepting awards too it makes an impact.  And these kids are in awe of what they are seeing – you know these teenagers are seeing people from different backgrounds and ages winning our script competition and our film competition and then they’re seeing highly established people as well and so that’s really inspiring for the next generation of young people who are going to continue to create and write and tell stories. And for me, that feels legendary because everybody always comes away feeling so invigorated and inspired.

***

The Austin Film Festival and Writers Conference runs from October 25th to November 1st. You can check out all the details regarding the Festival at their website online.

***

AFF is pleased to announce the 2018 Script Competition Finalists and Winners. 51 scripts were chosen for the Final Round with one winner to be determined in each of the 13 categories. The winners were announced during this year’s Conference at the Awards Luncheon held on Saturday, October 27 at the Austin Club. (Winners in Bold.)

COMEDY FEATURE SCREENPLAY
Presented by Sony Pictures Animation

Sex APPeal by Tate Elizabeth Hanyok
Darryn the Bold and the Sword of Boldness by Justin Best
Meet Cute by Noga Pnueli
My Date Is Kate by Carlin Adelson
Orientation by Eve Symington

 ***

 DRAMA FEATURE SCREENPLAY
Presented by Writers Guild of America, East

Horsehead Girls by Wenonah Wilms
The Death of Colm Canter by Revati Dhomse & Hector Lowe
Dig Two Graves by Jared Schincariol
The Huntress by Abdullah Alhendyani
The Innocent and the Vicious by Dominique Genest & Nick Kreiss

 ***

SCI-FI FEATURE SCREENPLAY
Open to science fiction, fantasy, horror, surrealism, myth/legend and fantastical storytelling.

Our Own Devices by Paul Vance
Darryn the Bold and the Sword of Boldness by Justin Best
No Man’s Land by Jeffrey R. Field & Michelle Davidson

 ***

HORROR FEATURE SCREENPLAY
Open to thrillers, dark suspense, sci-fi, and macabre themes.

The Patience of Vultures by Greg Sisco
Blood of Israel by Davey Morrison
Shaky Shivers by Andrew McAllister & Aaron Strongoni

***

ENDERBY ENTERTAINMENT AWARD
For feature scripts in all genres with an original concept and distinctive voice that can be produced for under $10 million. The production company was founded by Rick Dugdale and Daniel Petrie, Jr.

Project Horizon by Charles Morris
Grit N’ Glitter by Seth Michael Donsky
 The Patience of Vultures by Greg Sisco
Put Your Hands In by Warner James Wood
 Surfmen by Christopher Rhoads

***

AMC DRAMA TELEPLAY PILOT
All Semifinalists will be reviewed exclusively by AMC who will determine the Finalists and eventual Winner.

Worth by Stuti Malhotra
Double Time Dames by Davia Carter
Liberty Falls by Robert Attenweiler
Lifers Anonymous by Sean Collins-Smith
Mindset by Ethan Solli & Ziba Sadeghinejad
Ticker by Connie O’Donahue & Jeremy Nielsen

 ***

COMEDY TELEPLAY PILOT

What Will Jessie Do? by Kevin Luperchio
Band of Mothers by Sabrina Brennan
Bastards by Erin Muroski
The Last Abortion Clinic in Kansas by Tammy Caplan
Rice, Fish, and La Croix by Naomi Iwamoto

***

DRAMA TELEPLAY SPEC

The Handmaid’s Tale: Rebels by Angela Jorgensen
Billions: Trust by Amanda Parham
The Handmaid’s Tale: The Abduction by Todd Goodlett

***

COMEDY TELEPLAY SPEC

 Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: Kimmy Volunteers! by Maggie Gottlieb
Better Things: Goy Vey by Robert Axelrod
 Master of None: Headspace by Honora Talbott

 ***

SHORT SCREENPLAY

Ruby Throat by Sarah Polhaus
Seat 23B by Eliott Behar
 A War on Terror by Peter Haig

***

SCRIPTED DIGITAL SERIES
Presented by Stage 13

Epizootic by Daniel Young
Halcyon by Jonathan Marx
hello, world\ by Michelle Sarkany

***

STAGE PLAY

Particular Disposition by Benjamin Fulk
 Masquerade by James Hutchison
Disposable Necessities by Neil McGowan

***

FICTION PODCAST

The Rest Stop at the End of the Universe by Samuel Suksiri
Alethea by Katrina Day & Phillip R. Polefrone
Forces by Len Sousa
Welles D-11 by Simon Nicholas

***

JOSEPHSON ENTERTAINMENT SCREENWRITING FELLOWSHIP FINALISTS
In addition to this year’s Script Competition Finalists, we are proud to announce the Finalists for the inaugural Josephson Entertainment Screenwriting Fellowship. This new opportunity will provide a one-on-one mentorship with producer Barry Josephson and his team in Los Angeles for the writers of one feature screenplay and one teleplay pilot. 

***

Feature Screenplays

The Death of Colm Canter by Revati Dhomse & Hector Lowe
Darryn the Bold and the Sword of Boldness by Justin Best
Meet Cute by Noga Pnueli
The Patience of Vultures by Greg Sisco
Sex APPeal by Tate Elizabeth Hanyok

***

Teleplay Pilots

Lifers Anonymous by Sean Collins-Smith
Band of Mothers by Sabrina Brennan
Mindset by Ethan Solli & Ziba Sadeghinejad
Ticker by Connie O’Donahue & Jeremy Nielsen
Worth by Stuti Malhotra

***

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Revised on November 26, 2018.

Interview with Barb Mitchell – Do What You Love

Posted on by James Hutchison

You might know Barb Mitchell as the cohost of Calgary’s first morning show for Global back in the early nineties. Or you might remember her as Miss Calgary back in the early eighties. Or more recently you might have seen her on television as a judgmental church lady in the gritty Depression-era drama Damnation. I sat down with Barb, just after this year’s Calgary Stampede, to talk with her about her experiences as a broadcaster and her career as a stage and television actor.

JAMES HUTCHISON

So, your first experience on stage was playing Piglet from Winnie the Pooh in Junior High – certainly one of the more complex characters in the hundred-acre wood.

BARB MITCHELL

Yes, I did a deep dive into Piglet.

JAMES

Was there anything from that performance that ignited your love for the stage?

BARB

Well, I loved my drama teacher, Miss Main. She was incredible and fun, and we got to escape and experiment and I loved it – so when they didn’t have enough kids turn out for the play and she asked me to be in it I jumped in and did it.

Barb takes a “deep dive into Piglet” from the Hundred Acre Wood

JAMES

It’s nice to be in demand.

BARB

Yeah.

Continue reading “Interview with Barb Mitchell – Do What You Love”

Interview with Haysam Kadri: Artistic Director The Shakespeare Company

Posted on by James Hutchison
Haysam Kadri Artistic Director of the Shakespeare Company

Haysam Kadri Artistic Director of the Shakespeare Company talks about Hamlet, theatre, and just how the Shakespeare Company’s Madness in Great Ones season came about. Hamlet will be haunting several Calgary stages over the coming year as The Shakespeare Company along with Hit & Myth Productions have partnered with Vertigo Theatre, The High Performance Rodeo, and Alberta Theatre Projects, to bring Calgary audiences four different tellings of the melancholy Dane’s tragic tale. It’s a full season of Hamlet!

JAMES HUTCHISON

I was wondering as the Shakespeare Company what are some of the challenges you face mounting a large cast show with a really short rehearsal period?

HAYSAM KADRI ARTISTIC DIRECTOR OF THE SHAKESPEARE COMPANY

We have the best mandate and the worst mandate at the same time because we always have to populate the stage with ten to fifteen people which always has its challenges. Anytime anybody does Shakespeare you never have enough time, but what the Shakespeare Company has found out is that brevity is the soul of wit. When you trim some of the fat that Shakespeare gives you we find it makes the plays more accessible to an audience and we find that it’s better for the process technically of rehearsing and putting up a play. Because it’s not a kitchen sink drama. There are a lot of things going on. There are supernatural elements. There’s war. There’s fight scenes. There’s these extraordinary characters in extraordinary circumstances.

JAMES

These are big stories.

HAYSAM

They are big stories. It’s never easy to put them up in three and a half weeks let alone five weeks or six weeks. When it comes down to it it’s about money and ultimately you have to be lean and mean which is our company motto and as efficient as possible.

JAMES

When you’re mounting a play you’ve done before and you’re familiar with it as an actor or director does getting a second or third chance at it make it easier to mount?

HAYSAM

The first time we remounted a play was when we put on The Scottish Play with Vertigo Theatre. The Vertigo patrons just loved it and so what happened was they snatched up a lot of the tickets and then our patrons came on board and the run was already sold out. So, it was incumbent upon the Shakespeare Company and myself to reprogram it for the following season. Number one because there were a lot of our patrons that didn’t get a chance to see it and number two as a company for efficiency. The sets were already built. The production is in hand. The rehearsal process is shortened. And so it was a no-brainer and you know it’s been the most successful show in the history of the company.

Anna Cummer as Lady Macbeth and Haysam Kadri as Macbeth in the Vertigo Theatre Production of Macbeth. Directed by Craig Hall. A Coproduction of Vertigo Theatre, The Shakespeare Company and Hit & Myth Productions. Photograph Benjamin Laird

JAMES

You took over the company in 2012. How have the last six years gone in terms of what you wanted to do with the Shakespeare Company and where you’re at now?

HAYSAM

You know when I took over the company in 2012 I had never run a company before, so I had a clean slate and I was able to start building the culture that I wanted. I really wanted to build and increase the skill set of the performers and the performances. So, I felt it was really important to start developing a strong core of equity actors to comprise half the company. That’s a very expensive initiative but I felt it was really important.

The other important thing was to make Shakespeare much more accessible to a larger audience. All our Shakespeare plays are two hours with a fifteen-minute intermission and since I took over we’ve increased our audience by four-hundred and fifty percent and we’ve extended all our runs to three weeks and we hire on average six equity actors per show and we’ve developed and built a core audience.

We really wanted to key in on those young students in high school that get a bad taste in their mouth for Shakespeare because they think it’s three hours long and it’s boring and it’s in a foreign language and so we’ve done everything we can to make it really accessible. And you know that’s one of the benefits of being in the studio theatre. You see the blood on the Scottish King’s face and it’s visceral and it’s present and it’s intimate and so we benefit from a small space even though we’d love to expand to a bigger space which we will be doing for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

And as our high school contingent has grown into young professionals or gone on to university they’ve been coming on their own. They’re not coming in school groups anymore they’re single ticket buyers and they’ve become part of the fabric of our patronage. So, our 18 to 25 demographics are unreal and amazing and has been our biggest success.

Cast members in Alberta Theatre Projects’ presentation of Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard. A Shakespeare Company and Hit & Myth Production. Photo: Benjamin Laird. (Set: Scott Reid. Lights: David Fraser. Costumes: Hanne Loosen)

JAMES

So, let’s talk about the new season since you mentioned Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead and that’s the first play of your season focused on Hamlet. Where did the idea for Madness in Great Ones originate?

HAYSAM

I’ll confess, I didn’t think I was going to do an all Hamlet season, it wasn’t an epiphany that I had. What happened was I was in talks with Craig Hall the Artistic Director at Vertigo Theatre and we wanted to collaborate again because Mackers was such a big success and we would be totally remise if we did not entertain another partnership. And Craig and I had always wanted to do Hamlet because Hamlet is a ghost story and Vertigo Theatre is a mystery theatre and so we started with Hamlet and Vertigo.

HAYSAM

And then I talked to David Fraser the production manager over at ATP and I said, “Hey, what would it take for us to be in your space?” And David and I just started talking and then he talked to the artistic team and the artistic team came back to me and they said give us a couple of proposals for plays. And I’ve always wanted to do Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead and I thought well we could always have Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead and Hamlet in the same season so I pitched Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead to the artistic team at ATP and they thought it was great programming for Alberta Theatre Projects.

JAMES

A good fit.

HAYSAM

Yeah, and for us.

JAMES

Let’s talk a little bit about that one because it’s coming up right away here and interestingly enough it’s being directed by the same director you worked with on The Virgin Trial and The Last Wife.

HAYSAM

Yes, Glynis Leyshon.

JAMES

So that’s exciting and you’ve got quite the cast lined up.

HAYSAM

It’s pretty stellar.

Myla Southward, Christopher Hunt, and Julie Orton in Alberta Theatre Projects’ presentation of Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard. A Shakespeare Company and Hit & Myth Production. Photo: Benjamin Laird. (Set: Scott Reid. Lights: David Fraser. Costumes: Hanne Loosen)

JAMES

You’ve got Julie Orton and Myla Southward and I see Mark Bellamy in there as well…

HAYSAM

…Christopher Hunt…

JAMES

…and Tenaj Williams is going to be Hamlet.

HAYSAM

Julie and Myla are a dynamic duo together on stage and they’re a perfect fit for the characters. And Glyniss Lyshom is a big Tom Stoppard fan and a great mentor of mine and a great director and someone that I trust implicitly with everything especially with text and the classical works and I had her in mind before we knew it was going to be an ATP coproduction. I really wanted to bring her on board and it just worked out perfectly. It’s a really exciting cast and I just think this play is ridiculously brilliant and funny.

JAMES

So, now you’ve got these two plays in place – then what happened?

HAYSAM

Well, then I was talking to the High Performance Rodeo because I wanted to partner with the Rodeo and I’ve always wanted to do Drunk Shakespeare. Negotiating Shakespeare sober is a challenge in itself but adding another element to it, I think, is really exciting. So, we’re going to create Hammered Hamlet and if I do Hammered Hamlet I can’t just stop there I have to go full throttle on this and so I thought of creating a season based on Hamlet where you see four different interpretations of a story.

HAYSAM KADRI Artistic Director of the Shakespeare Company

Then I got this idea to do a movement piece and I phoned Denise Clarke who is a genius and a Canadian legend and truly a gem in our city and I just pitched the idea. I said Denise, I love your Radioheaded series they’re fresh and innovative and I want to see if you can transplant that into Shakespeare’s Hamlet. And her eyes and ears and everything just lit up and we went back and forth on it and we decided we wanted to do Hamlet Frequency which is an ensemble piece and a reimagining of Shakespeare’s story choreographed and staged by one of Canada’s greatest choreographers.

So, it’s a bold season and I think it’s exciting and I’m really curious to see how it’s going to unfold and I think a lot of people are really excited about the idea of doing four different interpretations of the same play.

JAMES

What are some of the things the Shakespeare Company has done marketing wise to sell tickets?

HAYSAM

Well, we’re constantly trying to find more ways to be creative with social media and to get people in the door. The other thing – partnerships – partnerships are the way of the future because if you cross-pollinate your audience you maximize your resources because you’re collaborating – there are many benefits to being partners with other organizations.

JAMES

One of the companies that you partner with is Hit and Myth productions how did that partnership evolve?

HAYSAM

Joel Cochrane who is the Artistic Director of Hit and Myth productions is passionate about theatre and particularly Shakespeare and so he’s been an amazing partner and supporter of our company and he’s been a huge part of the success of our organization. Joel has a strong business background and so you know as an Artistic Producer you have to balance the left and the right brain. You’re not just worrying about the art you’re worrying about how you make the art happen and so a guy like Joel who has a strong – business acumen I value because I’ve learned so much from him and many other companies.

JAMES

And he’s a pretty good actor too.

HAYSAM

Yeah, he’s a great actor. He’s really cut his teeth over the last ten years – now he’s a force on stage, and I really like watching him and working with him.

Joel Cochrane as Don Pedro in The Shakespeare Company with Hit & Myth Productions Production of Much Ado About Nothing – Photo by Tim Nguyen

JAMES

So, is Hamlet mad or is he playing mad? What is your own personal take on the madness of Hamlet?

HAYSAM

I think Hamlet is thrown into an extraordinary situation. Just imagine yourself in a situation where you find out that your dad was poisoned by your uncle and now your uncle is married to your mom and you’re a prince and you live in a castle and the tabloids are all around. So, to me, I can’t help but not think that there is a touch of madness that permeates his being because he’s faced with the task of taking action and revenging his father’s death. And to me, Hamlet’s a bookworm. He’s doing his Ph.D. over at Wittenberg University and he’s a head case – literally, he’s in his head. He’s cerebral and then he’s asked to use his body, his heart, and his soul.

JAMES

He’s asked to put down the pen, and pick up the sword.

HAYSAM

Put down the pen and pick up the sword and therein lies the great conflict and the exciting dramatic action where he takes all his time to get the courage to do something that other people would have done the second they heard.

JAMES

One of the brilliant things about Shakespeare is when you look at different forms of storytelling – the novels great strength is that it can go into the mind of its character right – often we say a play is dialogue driven but by using monologues Shakespeare is able to let the audience in on the mind of the character. He uses the device of novels in stage plays.

HAYSAM

I think that’s why when the Richard the thirds and the Iagos of this world turn to the audience and they go, “I’m a complete asshole now watch me do this.” audience members walk away going, “Oh my God, I loved Richard the third!” But how could I love a guy who is hell-bent to kill and murder, but it’s because you’re complicit – because he invites you in – because he shares his plot with you – and so you become a part of that story as you watch it unfold. That’s why you connect with these characters because of this device. And it’s exciting to explore those types of characters. Characters who explore the darker sides of their humanity. Those are fun characters to play.

Glenn Davis as Othello and Haysam Kadri as Iago in the Shakespeare Company production of Othello by William Shakespeare. Directed by Ron Jenkins. Photograph Benjamin Laird.

JAMES

Well, look at Walter White in Breaking Bad.

HAYSAM

Walter White is the perfect parallel.

JAMES

It’s not his good side that we’re fascinated by it’s that evil bit that nasty bit. Or Dexter

HAYSAM

The serial killer who kills serial killers.

JAMES

These are interesting guys.

HAYSAM

And that’s the Richard the third that we were talking about. You watch this underdog character navigate his way through the world in a very unconventional way. Those are interesting people to me.

Haysam Kadri Artistic Director of the Shakespeare Company’s Madness in Great One’s Season of Plays

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead By Tom Stoppard – October 9 – 21, 2018

Up first and in partnership with Alberta Theatre Projects is the Tony Award Winning comedy Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard. It’s the story of Hamlet as seen through the eyes of Hamlet’s ill-fated university friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.  The show is running in the Martha Cohen Theatre and ATP has a pay what you can preview plus that $10.00 ticket thing for students. Regular tickets start at just $30.00 and can be purchased online at the ATP website or by calling the box office at 403.294.7402.

Julie Orton and Myla Southward in Alberta Theatre Projects’ presentation of Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard. A Shakespeare Company and Hit & Myth Production. Photo: Benjamin Laird. (Set: Scott Reid. Lights: David Fraser. Costumes: Hanne Loosen)

CAST:  Julie Orton as Guildenstern, Myla Southward as Rosencrantz, Mark Bellamy as Polonius/Ensemble, Daniel Fong as Alfred/Ensemble, Natascha Girgis as Gertrude/Ensemble, Braden Griffiths as Horatio/Ensemble, Christopher Hunt as The Player, Robert Klein as Claudius/Ensemble, Natasha Strickey as Ophelia/Ensemble, and Tenaj Williams as Hamlet

CREATIVE TEAM: Glynis Leyshon – Director, Scott Reid – Set & Properties Designer, David Fraser – Lighting Designer, Hanne Loosen – Costume Designer, Allison Lynch – Musical Director, Composer & Sound Designer, Haysam Kadri – Fight Director, Jane MacFarlane – Text & Vocal Coach, Ailsa Birne – Stage Manager, Ian Lane – Assistant Stage Manager, Derek Paulich – Production Manager

Hammered Hamlet January 23 – 26, 2019

Then the fun continues at this year’s High Performance Rodeo with Hammered Hamlet – in the tradition of the John Barrymore school of acting actors will try to navigate the tricky plot and intricate text of Shakespeare while consuming enough shots to trip up even the most well-trained tongue. Tickets will go on sale in November.

Hamlet: A Ghost Story Adapted by Anna Cummer – March 20 – April 13, 2019

Then Vertigo Theatre and the Shakespeare Company reimagine one of the Bard’s greatest works by presenting Hamlet as a ghost story, a detective story and a revenge story all rolled into one classic plot.  Agatha Christie would be proud. Brought to you by the same creative team that created the chilling and supernatural Macbeth.  Hamlet: A Ghost Story is a macabre reimagining of one of the Bard’s greatest works. Tickets are just $35.00 and available online at the Vertigo Theatre website or by calling the box office at 403.221.3708.

The Hamlet Frequency Directed and Choreographed by Denise Clarke – May 16 – 25, 2019

For the final show of the season you’ll meet Hamlet and the rest of the murderous and murdered ghosts of Elsinore as they wander and haunt the halls of the theatres that play them and stagger to their feet on an electromagnetic wave, ready to start all over again only this time they will grieve, plot and rage through the music of their minds in this reimagining of Shakespeare’s story, choreographed and staged by Denise Clarke with One Yellow Rabbit’s education troupe beautifulyoungartists. Tickets are just $35.00 for adults and $25.00 for students and are available through the Shakespeare Company website.

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The Shakespeare Company is Calgary’s lean and mean classical theatre company, highlighting the best of the Bard in all his comedy, tragedy, and bawdiness. Since 1995, we have brought the Bard alive for Calgarians through both Shakespeare and Shakespeare inspired plays. We are committed to making Shakespeare accessible through innovative performances and inspired directing. Alongside our mainstage productions, we have two community initiatives: Page to Stage Outreach Program and DiVerseCity.

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Haysam Kadri Artistic Director has been with The Shakespeare Company since 2012 and has worked to elevate its main stage productions and outreach programs in Calgary. A graduate of the Birmingham Conservatory for classical training at the Stratford Festival, Haysam spent six seasons as a company member with the Stratford Shakespeare Festival of Canada. He has worked extensively as a Theatre Arts instructor with Red Deer College, Mount Royal University, and the University of Calgary. Haysam is an Actor, Director, Fight Choreographer, and Teacher. Since 2012, The Shakespeare Company has enjoyed countless nominations and rewards under his leadership.

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Hit and Myth Productions is a professional independent theatre company based in Calgary, Alberta. Hit & Myth was established in 2006, and since that time has produced over 30 professional shows, engaging numerous local actors, directors and designers.  Hit & Myth collaborates with small to mid-sized sized theatre companies and independent artists to co-produce theatre that is provocative, modern, sensational, and above all else, entertaining. Our productions strive to reflect the dynamic and diverse theatrical community of Calgary and Calgary audiences.

This interview with Haysam Kadri Artistic Director of the Shakespeare Company has been edited for length and clarity. Last revised August 20, 2022.

Interview with Artistic Director of Verb Theatre Jamie Dunsdon: The Wolves

Posted on by James Hutchison
Verb Theatre Jamie Dunsdon
Jamie Dunsdon – Artistic Director and Founder of Verb Theatre

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“I work really hard to pick plays that I feel are important or valuable or ground-breaking in some big way, at least to me, and there is an immense satisfaction in sharing that kind of experience with others. I’ve been transformed by theatre, and I want to offer that gift to others. And although I don’t think theatre is the most efficient tool for social change, I do think it’s a high-impact tool for inquisitive thinking. We need more complex thinking and feeling in this universe, and I truly believe that if you can open an audience member’s heart or mind just enough, it will stay open after the show.”

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David Rooney from the Hollywood Reporter describes The Wolves by Sarah Delappe as “A dizzying whirl of attitude,  anxiety and adolescent hormonal volatility…” He goes on to say that DeLappe’s “…dialogue has the unwritten sound of real conversation, much of it inconsequential, even banal or endearingly silly. But out of that jumble of words comes an imperceptibly shaped snapshot of the tricky gulf separating girlhood from maturity, a portrait spilling over with humor, insight and, in the closing stretch, searing pathos — all of it undiluted by the distorting filters of the male gaze.” 

That sounds like a good evening of theatre to me and Calgary audiences are rather fortunate because The Wolves is being produced and directed by Jamie Dunsdon the Artistic Director and founder of Verb Theatre. The show runs from October 4th to 13th at the West Village Theatre and tickets are a steal at just $20.00 for adults and $15.00 for students and are available online at the Verb Theatre and Calgary Young People’s Theatre websites.

I sat down with Jamie to talk about The Wolves, her experiences running a local theatre company and her approach to directing.

JAMES HUTCHISON

Jamie, as the Artistic Director of a small Theatre Company what do you find to be some of your biggest challenges and how have you been able to address them?

JAMIE DUNSDON

The boring answer is money, but you’ll hear that from every producer.

When we’re in the thick of it, and we’re opening a show, I always wish we had more resources to get more people out to our shows. Marketing is expensive, but at a small company like Verb where our work is so carefully chosen for strong impact, I care way more about audience response than about getting audience money. I can’t tell you how many people I’ve let into Verb shows for free because they showed up 30 minutes late to whatever is happening in the big theatre down the hall, and I don’t want them to leave the building without having their heart touched.

We struggle with that sometimes, especially when doing small-cast shows, because we don’t have the financial resources for large ad buys or massive outreach campaigns or the time to do it ourselves. I’m often directing our shows as well, which means the week before show is artistically intense, but also not full of loads of free time to think about last-minute outreach strategies. It’s why we value audience members who share their experiences with others. Word of mouth is big.

JAMES

So, what is it about theatre and running your own company that keeps you going because it’s a lot of work…it’s a lot of time and energy…what’s the big payoff?

JAMIE

I believe in the work! I work really hard to pick plays that I feel are important or valuable or ground-breaking in some big way, at least to me, and there is an immense satisfaction in sharing that kind of experience with others. I’ve been transformed by theatre, and I want to offer that gift to others. And although I don’t think theatre is the most efficient tool for social change, I do think it’s a high-impact tool for inquisitive thinking. We need more complex thinking and feeling in this universe, and I truly believe that if you can open an audience member’s heart or mind just enough, it will stay open after the show.

But I’ll be honest with you. There are days where it’s hard to see the payoff, as you put it. Those days are rough. They happen often.

The other thing about running my own company is that I get a lot more control over what kind of ideas are being put into the universe, and how they are being delivered. I get to pick the stories that are valuable to me. If I went freelance, I probably wouldn’t have as much agency in that, and I’d probably get restless and end up self-producing my own work as well anyway.

JAMES

This year you’ll be directing The Wolves by Sarah Delappe – this play was a winner of the 2015 Relentless Award for Playwriting which was established to honour Philip Seymour Hoffman and it was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2017. Those are both extraordinary honours and the play has received wide praise and positive reviews. What was it that attracted you to this particular play?

JAMIE

I found it very funny. I found it very real and resonant. This play is surgical in its exploration of female relationships. No detail is too small. One of the characters is described as “wearing eyeliner” as defining character trait, and I don’t know if you can appreciate the significance of that, but it’s huge and it’s different than describing a girl as “beautiful in that next-door-neighbour kind of way” as we often see in casting calls. A girl who wears eyeliner on the soccer field is a very particular kind of person, and the playwright allows for her to be that and be rich and three dimensional. And this play asks questions about what breaks girls apart and what brings them together in ways that I’ve never heard vocalized before.

But I also just needed a play like this.

I took the loss of Hillary Clinton in 2016 pretty hard. I have a ton of empathy for her as a woman in leadership, a woman who has been misunderstood, as a woman whose passion is often obfuscated by fear and misogyny in those around her. I was finding certain roadblocks in the theatre world that resembled in some small ways the roadblocks she stumbled on. Plus, I kind of look like her. Anyway, I read The Wolves shortly after Donald Trump began his presidency. It was like I was feeling solid ground under my feet after treading water for a year. These were real teen girls speaking the way real teen girls speak and I work at Calgary Young People’s Theatre as well, so I know a thing or two about how teen girls speak. And this script allowed them to be real. They were allowed to be smart and stupid, insightful and oblivious, moral and immoral. And I think I needed that. After 2016, I needed to see girls being allowed to be themselves. I’d grown weary of watching girls have to fit into someone else’s mold.

Jamie Dunsdon - The Wolves director at West Village Theatre in Calgary 2018. (Photo by Rob Galbraith/Little Guy Media)
Mya Welsh, Nadia Kolesnikova, Dana Prather, Tess Larson, Sarah Shepherd, Haley Mowatt, Thea Libin, and Vicky Pablo in the Verb Theatre and The Young People’s Theatre production of The Wolves by Sarah Delappe. Direct by Jamie Dunsdon. (Photo by Rob Galbraith/Little Guy Media)

JAMES

The play is about a girl’s soccer team and the action of the play takes place as the girls warm up and practice throughout the season. There’s a certain attraction to having characters perform real activities but I’m wondering what sort of challenges does that pose for the actors as they try to do both the physical actions required and also tell a dramatic story.

JAMIE

Um. We have to keep eyes on soccer balls, because an errant ball can disrupt the flow of dialogue. Luckily this cast gets that and understands how to adapt.

I think the activity really helps ground the performances. When you’re kicking a soccer ball or stretching or doing some kind of exercise, that takes up the same brain space that would otherwise kick in and start over-thinking about things like what do I do with my hands? So the task allows them to just exist in the world.

It’s been a bit different for me, though, because most of the tools in my directorial kit have to do with how characters move as a response to their objectives in the scene. But when characters are moving because they have to as part of a stretch or exercise, it changes the way physicality functions onstage. Fascinating and thrilling to navigate that.

JAMES

Do you have a consistent approach as a director when you’re doing a play or do you adjust your style of directing depending on whether or not you’re doing a comedy like The Importance of Being Earnest which you directed a few years ago or a drama like Blackbird which you directed last year or The Wolves which you’re directing this year?

JAMIE

No, I don’t have a directorial method, if that’s what you’re asking. Or if I do, it’s simply to learn what each play needs and learn to direct all over again based on those requirements. But every play is so different, as is every artist, so I’m constantly adjusting my process.

I carry around a director’s tool kit in my head, and the more experience I get, the more tools I have, which make me a better director. I collect them. Steal them. Some tools are for shaping, some are for cutting away. Some are for actors, others are for designers, others are for me. But the trick is to know which tool to use when, and to recognize when you don’t actually possess the tool yet… and to know where to look to find it.

JAMES

Theatre and television and movies have focused on male stories for a long time but now we’re starting to see more stories about women and their struggles and challenges in life. Do you think The Wolves might be the start of a movement towards more female stories and if so have you seen other playwrights and theatre companies that are working to give those stories a platform?

JAMIE

I’m seeing it more in film and TV, with all-female treatments of certain stories or with female-dominated worlds like Orange is the New Black or GLOW, which both have some pretty amazing female perspectives in them. But there’s also a lot of sexual objectification in those worlds as well. The pilot episode of GLOW has Alison Brie take off her shirt for absolutely no reason.

In theatre, we’re certainly seeing a push toward gender equity and ethnic diversity, which is encouraging, but I don’t know if there’s a movement toward more complex female characters just yet. I think a lot of female actors have been culturally trained not to think that way, so it might take some time.

JAMES

Last year I saw your production of Blackbird and can easily say it was one of the best productions I saw over the course of the year. It’s a powerful play and you had two extraordinary actors Curt McKinstry and Camille Pavlenko in the lead roles. It was a raw and emotional theatrical experience. But that was mostly with a cast of two so you can really focus the energy and the emotion. But with The Wolves, you’ve got a cast of ten. How do you build and control the dramatic energy of a play when you’ve got such a large cast and so many storylines?

JAMIE

The Wolves and Blackbird have a lot in common – both are written in that hyper-naturalistic style that tries to capture the way real humans speak. Both explore nuanced grey zones of human experience. Both have Rachel Mah in them. Rachel is an amazing young actor who appeared as the “girl” in Blackbird and who plays our goalie in The Wolves.

But The Wolves is written to be experienced differently than Blackbird. Blackbird is strung up by a thread, so you follow a very intricate and specific story the full way. The Wolves, however, has many threads, and it’s impossible to just focus on one… which means the audience will get a bit more of a collage effect. The girls talk over each other a lot, so there are entire chunks of the play where you simply CAN’T hear any one conversation. Instead, hopefully, you absorb the effect. The big picture. If Blackbird is a taut thread, The Wolves is a taut tapestry. There are some who would argue it’s a bit more of a feminist structure in that regard, but I’ll leave that to the scholars.

Jamie Dunsdon The Wolves The Calgary Young People's Theatre Company present The Wolves by Sarah Delappe at the West Village Theatre. (Photo by Rob Galbraith/Little Guy Media)
Back Row left to right: Rachel Mah, Sarah Shepherd, Haley Mowatt, Thea Libin. Front Row left to right: Tess Larson, Mya Welsh, Dana Prather, Nadia Kolesnikova. The Wolves by Sarah Delappe. Produced by Verb Theatre and The Calgary Young People’s Theatre Company. Directed by Jamie Dunsdon. (Photo by Rob Galbraith/Little Guy Media)

JAMES

Why should someone come to see the show, and when they do what are you hoping audiences will get out of seeing The Wolves?

JAMIE

Everybody should see this show because it might make them feel something. And we live in a time that is very unfeeling. Everybody should see this show because it might make them question something. And we live in a time that is very uncurious. Everybody should see this show because it stars a cast of 9 outstanding young female actors from diverse backgrounds, and they are our future and they will make you feel better about our future. Everybody should see this show because Anna Cummer makes a cameo in it that is worth the ticket price alone! Everybody with a teenager should see this show. Everybody who was a teenager should see this show.

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The Wolves a Co-production between Verb Theatre and Calgary Young People’s Theatre opens Thursday, October 4th and runs until Saturday, October 13th at the West Village Theatre. Evening performances begin at 7:00 pm and there is a 2:00 pm matinee on Saturday and Sunday. Tickets are just $20.00 for adults and $15.00 for students and are available through the Verb Theatre and the Calgary Young People’s Theatre Websites.

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Plus, mark your calendars, Jamie will be directing Death Trap by Ira Levin which runs at Vertigo Theatre from January 26th to February 24th, 2019. Death Trap is a fun and twisted tale of murder and intrigue and stars an outstanding cast including Mark Bellamy, Barbara Gates Wilson, Tyrell Crews, Karen Johnson-Diamond, and Kevin Corey. I’ll be talking to Jaimie more in the new year about her experiences running a theatre company and her approach to directing Death Trap.

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The Wolves by Sarah Delappe

Cast: #00 – Rachel Mah, #02 – Haley Mowatt, #07 – Nadia Kolesnikova, #08 – Thea Libin, #11 – Tess Larson, #13 – Mya Welsh, #14 – Dana Prather, #25 – Sarah Shepherd, #46 – Vicky Pablo, Soccer Mom: Anna Cummer

Creative Team: Director: Jamie Dunsdon, Stage Manager: Sara German, Costume Coordinator: Rebecca Toon, Sound Design: Kristin Eveleigh, Lighting Design: Ajay Badoni, Assistant Director: Shea Heatherington

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Jamie Dunsdon is the Artistic Director of Calgary’s Verb Theatre, Artistic Producer of Calgary Young People’s Theatre, and a sessional instructor for the University of Lethbridge Calgary Campus. She is also an active director and creator, and occasional designer. In 2013/14, Jamie was the Artistic Associate at The Grand Theatre in London. Directing Credits (Selected): Blackbird, Easter Island, Sextet, Lungs, The Dandelion Project, NOISE, Marg Szkaluba: Pissy’s Wife, Jim Forgetting, John and Beatrice, The Shape of a Girl (Verb Theatre); The Importance of Being Earnest, Playwrights Cabaret (The Grand Theatre); Unity 1918, Macbeth, Village of Idiots, Richard III, The Lost Prince, A Little Princess (Calgary Young People’s Theatre); Bridge to Terabithia (Storybook Theatre). Upcoming: In 2018/19, Jamie will be directing The Wolves for Verb and CYPT, and Deathtrap for Vertigo Theatre.

VERB Theatre:  TOMORROW’S THEATRE, TODAY Here at Verb, our mission is to provide for our audiences theatrical experiences that explore cutting-edge ideas in cutting-edge ways. We look to explore conversations and theatrical forms that will be important to our audiences tomorrow with our surprising, important, and innovative performance. And as for you? We simply invite you to expect the unexpected.

Calgary Young People’s Theatre: OUR MISSION STATEMENT: We aim to inspire and encourage the next generation of the theatre community by providing a safe, creative space where young people can freely express themselves and their ideas. Through this we hope to foster in them a strong sense of community, passion and appreciation for the arts.

Revised September 8th, 2020

Red Rock Diner is Summertime fun at Stage West Calgary – Interview with Red Robinson & Ben Cookson

Posted on by James Hutchison

This summer if you want a great show, a fantastic meal, and a night out that will leave you feeling optimistic and happy in these strange and uncertain times head on down to Stage West Calgary and catch Red Rock Diner. Director and choreographer David Connolly has assembled an energetic, youthful, fun, and talented cast for this tribute to the early music of rock ‘n’ roll.

Lee-Anne Galloway, Ben Chiasson, Scott Beaudin, Ben Cookson, Carter Easler, and Sarah Higgins singing Johnny B Goode in the Stage West Production of Red Rock Diner by Dean Regan – John Watson Photography

Red Rock Diner by Dean Regan is a rockabilly jukebox musical that celebrates the music of the fifties and features plenty of classic hits like Johnny B. Good, Who Wrote the Book of Love and Great Balls of Fire! The play is loosely based on the early career of Canada’s champion of rock ‘n’ roll music DJ Red Robinson who started spinning rock ‘n’ roll records on Vancouver’s CJOR while he was still in high school in 1954.

1954 was also the year the transistor radio – that marvel of modern technology – made it’s debut and made music portable. The first transistor radios were manufactured by Texas Instruments and sold for $49.95. That’s about four hundred and fifty bucks in today’s dollars, and even though the price was steep, Texas Instruments sold 150,000 units. Soon other companies jumped into the market and started manufacturing and selling their own radios and the price dropped and the radios sold, and the music spread. It spread because of DJ’s like Red Robinson who made it their mission to give the teens the music they wanted.

Red Robinson & Ben Cookson who plays Red in the Stage West Production of Red Rock Diner

I spoke with both the original Red Robinson and Ben Cookson who plays Red in the show. Red, who is 81, still has a youthful energy and infectious enthusiasm for rock ‘n’ roll more than 70 years after he first heard and helped spread the music of Roy Orbison, Chuck Berry, The Big Bopper and Elvis. I asked Red where the idea for the play Red Rock Diner came from.

RED ROBINSON

Well, it started in the brain of Dean Regan who had written things like A Closer Walk with Patsy Kline and other things like that. And he came to me one day and said, “I’m doing a play, a musical, about you.” And I said, “Why the hell would you do that?” “Red,” he said, “when I saw you getting into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame I said, I went to school with that guy and I’ve got to write something.” And he did. And that’s how it was born.

JAMES HUTCHISON

So, you guys know each other from high school. Isn’t that cool. I didn’t know that connection. You know when I look at the show there’s a lot of great songs in it. But, I’m wondering – did he consult you about the music?

RED

Oh yeah, for sure.

JAMES

How did you decide what music to put in the show?

RED

Well, when he has the script for what’s going to be said then you can place the music. You know it’s like photography. Years ago, when I had an ad agency the girls would come to me and say look, “We’ll write this up and then get a picture to go with it.” And I said, “You’re doing it backwards. You get the picture and then you write it up.” That’s the way plays work too, musicals, you have the script and then you place the music and I think it was incredible his brain remembered the music from that period and he made it all match.

Sarah Higgins, Lee-Anne Galloway, Carter Easler, Scott Beaudin, and Ben Chiasson in The Stage West Production of Red Rock Diner by Dean Regan – John Watson Photography

JAMES

There’s a lot of great songs in the show like Rock Around the Clock, Stand By Me, and Tequila. What are some of your favourites

RED

Oh, there are so many, I like Roy Orbison of course, he was a good friend for twenty-three years and he really was a gentleman. And I like Rebel Rouser, which was my theme, and it was really how I was. (Chuckles) A rebel without a cause.

JAMES

Well, you had a cause though, didn’t you?

RED

Oh, I did. It was to make rock ‘n’ roll acceptable to the public. People forget it was not welcomed by anyone except the youth – the teenagers.

Carter Easler, Lee-Anne Galloway, Ben Chiasson, Ben Cookson, Scott Beaudin, and Sarah Higgins in the Stage West Production of Red Rock Diner by Dean Regan – John Watson Photography

JAMES

What do you think it is about rock ‘n’ roll that was so appealing to the kids?

RED

You could get up and dance to it. And that’s one of the ways you met girls. It was incredible. Jan and Dean told me they started Jan and Dean because they just wanted to go out and meet girls.

JAMES

There’s a lot of musicians who learned music and picked up a guitar so they could meet some girls.

RED (Laughs)

No question are you kidding?

Lee-Anne Galloway in the Stage West Production of Red Rock Diner by Dean Regan – John Watson Photography

JAMES

You know you bring up an interesting thing because there’s a lot of male acts from that day but what about the girls? What about the females?

RED

We wanted more but we had a limited edition. There was a rockabilly singer by the name of Wanda Jackson – she was terrific. Elvis dated her for a while but then who didn’t he date? Brenda Lee was one. When she started singing my God it was amazing. This little girl who was not even five feet not really – belts out music like she was born to it. Well, she was, no question. Connie Francis another. I loved those ladies they were great, but it was very limited.

When I joined CKWX in Vancouver they had a playlist on the wall in the control room. Male, female, and this comes up in the play, male, female instrumental and group. And the program director called me in and said, “Hey you’re not following our format.” And I said, “How can I?” “What do you mean?” he said. And I said, “We got two maybe three female singers and that was it.”

JAMES

That’s certainly changed when you look at how many big stars are females today.

RED

Oh, it’s the opposite. It’s the opposite. Totally changed. And for the better.

JAMES

I do have an acting question. Ben Cookson is playing you in Red Rock Diner. What acting advice would you give Ben for portraying Red Robinson?

RED (Laughs)

That’s an odd feeling watching somebody play you. I think my advice to him would be to have fun and to just to act naturally – you know just like the song says by Ringo Starr. Get up there and have fun, act naturally but have compassion for the music and the people – the audience.

JAMES

So, you were there at the beginning of rock ‘n’ roll. Did the stars align for you or were you pushing in some way to get into that position? How did you end up being the person introducing rock ‘n’ roll to Canada?

RED

Nobody else would take a gamble, and they didn’t know what they were doing, and I’m not being rude. I was a kid. I was seventeen, and I knew what the kids in high school wanted. You know the teachers would throw a dance and play Glenn Miller, but in truth we all went down to a little restaurant called The Oakway at the corner of Oak and Broadway – it’s not there anymore. And the guy had a jukebox and he played rhythm and blues and we were all getting up and dancing to it and that’s where the idea of Red Rock Diner came from you know the title of the play. We just had fun.

Scott Beaudin in the Stage West Production of Red Rock Diner by Dean Regan – John Watson Photography

JAMES

How did you discover the music to put on the air?

RED

Well, I’d go down to the music stores in those days and you’d ask for it and they’d reach under the counter and put it in a brown paper bag and give it to you like it was pornography. It was unbelievable. And I think it was because they were black artists – that was the problem – and you know that all changed – thank God.

So, I’d buy my own records and when I couldn’t get them fast enough I would go to a little record store in Billingham Washington just across the border, and I made a deal with a company called Stark Music and every new record that came in I took them. And I’d drive down – it’s about sixty miles – I’d drive down – get them and come back home and play em on the radio. By the time they were pressed in Canada and mailed out it would be another week to ten days.

JAMES

So, you were offering something that was fresh and on the cutting edge.

RED

That’s right.

JAMES

Where did the confidence come from? How did a seventeen-year-old guy have so much confidence and such a clear picture about what to do?

RED

Well, you know the story on teenagers. You think you can never die, and so what if you fail. I mean it meant nothing to me to fail. And I didn’t. I had a dream. I had a vision and I went ahead and I pursued it. And I think any young person who has a passion for anything whether it’s computers or whatever – they’ll make it so long as they’re dedicated to it internally.

JAMES

No fear of failure is powerful at that age.

RED

Oh absolutely.

Red Robinson spinning Rock ‘n’ Roll Tunes

JAMES

I went to your website Red Robinson – Home of the Legends and I listened to one of the programs you have on your website through Soundcloud about a concert in Vancouver on October 23rd, 1957. That’s the concert where you were introducing all the acts – it’s called – I think The Biggest Show of Stars.

RED

Oh, yes, yes, yes.

JAMES

Oh my God, what a lineup. Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry, Paul Anka.

RED

I’ve got a poster from that year and it is unbelievable.

JAMES

Did you get it autographed?

RED

Ha, ha, no I didn’t.

JAMES

Damn.

Red Robinson and Buddy Holly

RED

I’ve got Buddy Holly’s autograph. And that was where I got my first interview with Paul Anka and he was fifteen at the time and was full of self-confidence and all the same things I was. I played it for Paul in later years and he said, “Oh my God I’m a kid.” And there was Fats Domino, Jimmy Bowen, Buddy Knox, Buddy Holly and the Crickets and so many acts it was just unbelievable. The story is Irvin Feld who owned Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey saw rock ‘n’ roll as I guess a circus and he decided to take it on the road.

JAMES

You had all these amazing acts and they’re coming out and only doing a couple songs.

RED

Well Buddy Knox said, “We come out” – and well they only had a couple of hits at that time – “and we do the two hits and then we’d do one more and if we had enough applause or whatever we had an encore and you had to come out and do another song. That was it.” But I mean how can you have more than that with all the acts they had.

JAMES

What are some of your special memories because we’re talking about this show from 1957 and then there’s your radio days and the Expo in Vancouver in 86 where you presented The Legends of Rock ‘n’ Roll – you mentioned Roy Orbison was a friend for twenty-three years, for example.

RED

Oh, yeah, he was a good friend. As a matter of fact, we were going to buy a radio station at one point. He always liked to invest in the arts. During the Expo in Vancouver in 86 we got the whole list of everybody we wanted and we wanted Roy but he was on the comeback trail with the Travelling Wilburys and he was a little reluctant but he said, “You know Red, you and your partner in the promotions department by the name of Les Vogt were the only guys who ever bonused me.”  We gave him a couple extra grand because he made us a lot of money and that bought a house for me and one for Les – in a sense because we were both able to put down the down payment. That’s the kind of relationship we had in those days. The disc jockeys and the recording artists.

JAMES

You know I love the Traveling Wilburys that was a wonderful album. So, sad he passed away right then. What a voice.

RED

What a voice and what a gentleman.

JAMES

You know I think even though Red Rock Diner is a play that appeals to the memory of people who grew up with that music this music appeals to everybody today.

RED

No question. I’ve had – my grandkids say to me – I wish we grew up in your era – your music was fun. I think that people were just trying to get the thoughts of the wars and everything on the back turntable if you know what I mean. Then the message songs came along during the Vietnam War years but for me, I think music is like movies they should be an escape. That’s what it is to me. But then, I’m not the authority on all this stuff, I just think that to play music that’s fun and uplifting is the right thing to do.

Ben Chiasson, Sarah Higgins, Scott Beaudin, Sarah Higgins and Carter Easler in the Stage West Production of Red Rock Diner by Dean Regan – John Watson Photography

JAMES

I understand that Michael Bublé was in the original cast

RED

He was. I saw him yesterday by the way.

JAMES

How’s he doing?

RED

Oh fine. He’s back from the road and he’s waiting for the third baby to be born. So, he’s home for that. He’s just a wonderful rooted guy. He’s never let the ego take over his life. And he’s got a grandfather who inspired him to listen to music other than rock ‘n’ roll and he listened to Sinatra and Dean Martin and Elvis. Everybody says he’s Frank Sinatra but no he’s not. He likes Bobby Darin and Elvis Presley. That’s the truth. He’s a wonderfully talented kid. You’ve got to go to his show. This guy’s got a built-in sense of humour you can’t believe. And he’s down to earth.

JAMES

Did he play you in the play?

RED

He played the Elvis part. Here’s a quick story. Bruce Allen manages him and I’m on the phone on a long-distance call with David Foster and Paul Anka and they said, “Red would you talk to Bruce and tell him to sign Michael Bublé?” I said, “Is he reluctant?” And they said, “Oh yeah.” And so I said to Bruce, “You saw Red Rock Diner but you didn’t see what was going on behind the scenes. After the show every night the girls would swamp – you know I’ve got David Foster and Paul Anka listening – they would swamp the backstage trying to get an autograph from Michael. And he wasn’t even established yet and Paul Anka says on the phone, “Oh that brings back some memories.” (Red laughs) Bruce signed him after that. I don’t know if I was responsible, but I think I gave him a new light – a new look at him.

JAMES

Well you know musicians need their champions, right? I think that’s a good way to think about you. You were a champion for that music and for those artists.

RED

I really was, and I believed in it. And I’ll tell you one thing I never told anybody. I traveled by airplane all around this province doing sock hops, taking my own music with me, taking giveaways, and you know only because I believed in it and I wanted the music to spread and so if anyone hates rock ‘n’ roll you got to hate me.

Red Robinson & Elvis

***

Bringing the character of Red Robinson to life on stage is Ben Cookson. Ben bears an uncanny likeness to the young Red Robinson and has the same infectious positive attitude and smile.

Scott Beaudin, Sarah Higgins, Carter Easler, Lee-Anne Galloway, Scott Beaudin and Ben Cookson in the Stage West Production of Red Rock Diner by Dean Regan – John Watson Photography

JAMES HUTCHISON

So, when thinking about Red Rock Diner are there any particular numbers that really stand out for you? Because there’s a lot of great stuff in it.

BEN COOKSON

I get to rock out to every single tune on stage while it’s being played and performed and it’s hard to choose a favourite, but I really like Sh-Boom and one of my other favourites is Cry that Carter gets to sing in the second act.

Carter Easler in the Stage West Production of Red Rock Diner by Dean Regan – John Watson Photography

JAMES

You know one of my favourites is the one you do.

BEN

Oh Boy?

JAMES

Yeah, Oh Boy. I saw the show on Friday and you were absolutely fantastic. Loved the song. Loved the feel of that. It was a beautiful moment.

BEN

Thank you so much. It opens up the second act. It’s a difficult voice to imitate because Buddy Holly was so unique and distinct in his sound and quality.

JAMES

Why do you think this music still resonates today?

BEN

This music still resonates today because the eighty-year-olds are still playing it for their kids and grandkids. I think rock ‘n’ roll introduced a heartbeat into music. I think it’s a heartbeat that appears in all genres today. Rock ‘n’ roll creates this internal feeling that you can’t help but move to.

JAMES

Is it a little something primal maybe?

BEN

Yeah, exactly. You get hooked on it right away. And I think that’s why that music is still being played.

Sarah Higgins, Carter Easler, Scott Beaudin, Ben Chiasson, Ben Cookson, and Lee Ann Galloway in the Stage West Production of Red Rock Diner by Dean Regan – John Watson Photography

JAMES

What’s it like for you to perform in a show that’s running for a couple of months?

BEN

A show like Red Rock Diner – especially for the other five guys – is a heavy breathing show. They’re working their butts off. And it definitely becomes easier over time and that allows us to sink into the text of the songs and the actual beats of it and the reaction of the audience a little more, but it’s all for the audience because it’s their first time seeing the show even though it may be our sixtieth time doing the show. We owe it to them to give it our best every time.

JAMES

What type of research did you do?

BEN

I definitely looked into reel to reel tape and how that was used in radio production because at the time they were doing some pretty intense physical editing and changing records and Red would do all that himself. He’d be in the DJ booth changing records – changing 45s – and then going reel to reel in order to play the next commercial and he was constantly doing things. And I definitely listened to a lot of music. That’s not a bad assignment for homework. I listened to a lot of music a lot of the fifties stuff.

Ben Cookson as Red Robinson in the Stage West Production of Red Rock Diner by Dean Regan – John Watson Photography

JAMES

Did you listen to a lot of music growing up?

BEN

Well, my parents are both singers themselves they’re not professional but it’s a hobby they certainly love doing. So, music was a part of my childhood. My parents listen to all kinds of music. Elvis Presley was in the mix – the musical Jesus Christ Superstar was played every Easter, a lot of Celtic stuff, East Coast, Great Big Sea was a huge one growing up.

I did a lot of performing growing up in choirs and then I did the Grand Theatre’s High School Project in London Ontario where you get a chance to work with real professionals in the industry and see what it’s actually like to put on a full-scale musical. I did it two years in a row. I did Footloose and then I did My Fair Lady and I played Willard in Footloose and Professor Higgins in My Fair Lady, and then I went to Sheridan College for their Honours Bachelor Musical Theatre Performance Program. That program was intense. It was everything I needed. It was the training I needed and it helped me make the connections that I needed

JAMES

Are there particular musicals that you want to do in the future?

BEN

I have soft spot for golden age musicals, but I definitely would love to do Les Mis. Les Mis is probably one of my favourite shows. I’d love to play Jean Valjean later in life or just one of the guys in the ABC Café…it’s a show where I could play any role and enjoy it.

JAMES

So, here’s a question for you. Did you like the movie?

BEN (Laughs)

I did. I’m one of the few who actually really enjoyed it in my friends’ circle. I enjoyed the rawness of it. I enjoyed the power and it was all about the music for me.

JAMES

I loved it. However, my sister completely disagrees with me and thinks I’m an idiot.

BEN

Yeah, a lot of people disagree with me as well.

JAMES

I think it’s competing against the love of the stage play.

BEN

It is. I enjoy the stage play more than the movie, but I can’t say I didn’t enjoy the movie. I really enjoyed the movie, but I love the stage production of it. I love it so much it makes me weep it makes me cry. It makes me laugh. It’s everything to me.

JAMES

So, tell me about working with this group of talented folks you share the stage with every night on Red Rock Diner.

Scott Beaudin, Ben Chiasson, Carter Easler, Ben Cookson, Sarah Higgins, and Lee-Anne Galloway in the Stage West Production of Red Rock Diner by Dean Regan – John Watson Photography

BEN

Well, to start it’s nice to work with a small cast. There’s only six of us in the show and we became a family within the first week. I mean you kind of go through trials and tribulations together when you’re rehearsing a show but all of us get along so well it’s so much fun to work with Carter and Lee-Anne and Sarah and we do trips to the mountains on our days off. It’s a blast and I went to school with Ben Chiasson. He was in my graduating year. And I’d met Scott the year before and Carter also went to Sheridon. We’re just a happy little family which I just really enjoy and I look forward to spending the rest of the summer with them.

JAMES

What’s your impression of Stage West as a company and Stage West as a performance space?

BEN

I think the large reason our cast has become such a family is because the production team and the family here at Stage West is so strong. Everyone cares so much about the production. Everyone cares so much about each other. It’s hard not to love what you’re doing and who you’re working with.

Stage West as an experience is very cool because you get a great buffet before the show and then you get your dessert at intermission and it’s a comfortable setting where you’re not cramped next to another person. And Red Rock Diner is a show that you can’t come to and not have a good time – you can’t not have fun at the Red Rock Diner.

***

Red Rock Diner runs until August 30th at Stage West Calgary. Tickets are available online or by calling the box office at 403-243-6642. Red Rock Diner is a fun show filled with great music presented by a young and talented cast and gets a full five out of five great balls of fire for being a Rockin’ Robin good time.

***

Red Rock Diner – Vancouver Canada June 1957 

The Cast – Red Rock Diner: Scott Beaudin as Val, Ben Chiasson as Richard, Ben Cookson as Red Robinson, Carter Easler as Johnny, Lee-Anne Galloway as Connie/Dance Captain, Sarah Higgins as Venus

Creative Team – Red Rock Diner: David Connolly – Director/Choreographer, Dean Regan – Playwright, Konrad Pluta – Musical Director, Executive Producer – Howard Pechet, Production Manager/Artistic Associate – Kira Campbell, Technical Director/Set Designer – Sean D. Ellis, Costumer & Wig Designer – Norman Galenza-MacDonald, Lighting Designer – David Smith, Sound Designer/Head of Audio – Michael Gesy, Scenic Artist – Shane Ellis, Stage Manager – Laurel Oneil, Assistant Stage Manager – Darcy Foggo, Dresser – Brianne Hughes, Replacement Stage Manager – Ashley Rees, Apprentice Stage Manager – Jennifer Yeung, Followspot Operator – Chris Cooper

The Band – Red Rock Diner: Musical Director/Keyboards – Konrad Pluta, Sub Musical Director/Keyboards – Jon Day, Drums – Jeff Fafard, Saxophone – Keith O’Rourke, Guitar – Brad Steckel, Bass – Rob Vause

***

Additional Media about Stage West’s Red Rock Diner

Rock & Roll Links

***

Interview with Actor Braden Griffiths: 21st Annual Betty Mitchell Awards

Posted on by James Hutchison

“We’re also a night where everybody in the theatre community comes together to celebrate the work which we’ve done throughout the year. And whether they’re nominated for a Betty or not – whether they win a Betty or not – we are all there to celebrate the outstanding work that has been done throughout the theatre season, because it’s a hard thing to create theatre. It’s a hard thing to create art. They are a celebration that we have a community and that we are a group of four hundred to five hundred people who have come together and decided that this is our life’s work – hence the professional thing – this is our life’s work, this is what I chose to do for a life and the gift of my art is something that has value.” – Braden Griffiths

Actor Braden Griffiths in Vertigo Production
Kathryn Kerbes as Mrs. Hudson, Braden Griffiths as Sherlock Holmes and Curt McKinstry as Dr. Watson in the Vertigo Theatre Production of Sherlock Holmes and the American Problem by R. Hamilton Wright. Photo by Tim Nguyen

On Monday, June 25th the Calgary Theatre community came together to celebrate the Twenty-first annual Betty Mitchell Awards.  I sat down with actor, playwright, and current President of the Betty Mitchell Board Braden Griffiths, who was just finishing his run as Sherlock Holmes in the Vertigo Theatre production of Sherlock Holmes and the American Problem, to talk about the awards and theatre in Calgary.

JAMES HUTCHISON

What is the purpose of the Bettys?

BRADEN GRIFFITHS

The awards were started by Grant Linneberg , Johanne Deleeuw, Mark Bellamy, Donna Belleville and Doug McKeag those five, and Diane Goodman might have been there as well. One of them joined in the second year. They started it as a way to recognize the excellence that they saw happening in this community and as a way to earmark that excellence in a more official way so that the Calgary theatre community could be a bigger player in Canadian Theatre either by exporting that excellence or by becoming a destination for excellence to be imported into Calgary.

Kate Dion-Richard as Helen Schmuck, Gili Roskies as Marm (Margaret) Schmuck, Katie Ryerson as Hilda Ranscombe, and Morgan Yamada as Nellie Ranscombe in the Alberta Theatre Projects in Association with Western Canada Theatre production of GLORY by Tracey Power. Photo by Barbara Zimonick

JAMES

There’s a lot of recognition across the various companies in this year’s nominations.

BRADEN GRIFFITHS

We’ve considered splitting the second-tier and the first-tier theatres into separate categories, but there is something beautiful about having smaller theatre companies like Handsome Alice nominated or Verb Theatre recognized in the best production category this year alongside the artistic output from larger theatre companies like Theatre Calgary and ATP because I think when we boil all this down, all we’re trying to do in theatre is illuminate something about this messy existence we lead as human beings. We’re trying to illuminate something about what it means to be human and that can happen anywhere and you can be affected just as profoundly in the Motel Theatre as you can in any of the big theatres in Calgary. And so, I love how the Bettys safeguard this idea that we are a community of artists, and we all have the same goals regardless of whether we are working at TC or whether we are working at Handsome Alice or Sage or one of the smaller companies in town. We all have this same goal to tell a story and hopefully illuminate something about what it means to be human.

Camille Pavlenko as Una and Curt McKinstry as Ray in Verb Theatre’s production of Blackbird by David Harrower. Photo by Rob Galbraith/Little Guy Media.

JAMES

What do you think the awards mean to the local theatre community?

BRADEN GRIFFITHS

The value of a Betty, at this point I think, is a thumbs up that you’re creating something that did affect somebody in some way. And then beyond that we hope that a Betty Mitchell award matters on a grant proposal let’s say, or we hope that a Betty Mitchell award nomination might help somebody get into an audition room that maybe they weren’t able to get into before, or maybe it helps a playwright to get a commission. It gives that one little extra push to get that commission that maybe they wouldn’t have been considered for before.

And I don’t think the Bettys are the only benchmark we have for excellence in theatre in this community, because there are a lot of people who aren’t on that list who did outstanding work this year, but I think every artist wants to be recognized in some way for what they do as an artist, and this is a nice official way that you can do that and put it down on a ledger and say, I was nominated for a Betty.

Joel Cochrane as Don Pedro in The Shakespeare Company with Hit & Myth Productions Production of Much Ado About Nothing – Photo by Tim Nguyen

JAMES

And it means something now because we’re twenty-one years in. So, there is a history and a legacy to the Bettys that didn’t exist that first year. And the nice thing is, it does offer a certain record to the performance history of Calgary.

BRADEN GRIFFITHS

Without a doubt. I was going through all the past nominations and there were productions in 1998 when I would have been in grade ten, I believe, and I can remember going to at least two productions that were nominated for Bettys on that list. And it was a bit of a time capsule for me, so the Bettys end up being a marking of our history. It’s saying, we were here. And there are people who are nominated whose names I don’t recognize, which is shocking to me, because we are a fairly small community, so I do wonder what happened to them, but that person was an important part of our theatre community at some point. And they made a difference

JAMES

They’re remembered, in a way. Their work is acknowledged. And that’s not insignificant.

BRADEN GRIFFITHS

It’s not.  There’s a tradition in masonry of masons – when they build a big building or whatever out of stone – they’ll leave a little card with their name on it and the year that the building was built, and that card may never be found but its a little statement of I was here. And if theatre is about building a bridge between the artist and the audience then these artists who were nominated for their work but might not be here anymore are still an important stone in the bridge that the Calgary theatre community has been building to the audience of Calgary.

The cast of Sage Theatre’s production of Legislating Love: The Everett Klippert Story by Natalie Meisner. Matt McKinney as Everett Klippert, Jenn Forgie as Tonya, Kathy Zaborsky as Maxine, and Mark Bellamy as Handsome. Photo by Jason Mehmel

JAMES

When the awards started in ninety-eight the world population was 5.9 billion. Jean Chrétien was Prime Minister. Bill Clinton was President. The Tony Award for best musical was The Lion King. And on September 4th, 1998 Google was founded. Here are the type of plays that Calgary was producing at the time. A Delicate Balance, Glengarry Glen Ross, Assassins, Fiddler on the Roof, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged)…

BRADEN GRIFFITHS

…which I’ve done four times…

JAMES

…and A Christmas Carol.

BRADEN GRIFFITHS

There you go.

JAMES

Let’s jump twenty-one years. The world population is now 7.6 billion. Almost two billion more in twenty-one years.

BRADEN GRIFFITHS

Holy moly.

JAMES

Justin Trudeau is Prime Minister. Donald Trump is President.

BRADEN GRIFFITHS

Oh, man.

JAMES

The Tony Award for best musical – just decided – The Bands Visit. Google’s Brand value is 120.9 billion. They’re behind Apple and Amazon. And so here are the plays we’re seeing this year. We saw The Humans, The Last Wife, Inner Elder, Much Ado About Nothing, Blackbird, The 39 Steps, and A Christmas Carol.

BRADEN (Laughs)

Christmas Carol, our one big constant.

Stephen Hair as Ebenezer Scrooge, Jamie Konchak as Mrs. Cratchit, Tia Rose Woodruff as Tiny Tim, Eleanor Braitenbach as Belinda Cratchit, Graham Percy as the Spirit of Christmas Present, Karl H. Sine as Bob Cratchit and Evan Andersen Sterns as Peter Cratchit in the Theatre Calgary Production of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. Adapted for the Stage by Dennis Garnhum. Photo by Trudie Lee

JAMES

So, how do you think the plays we’re producing at a particular time reflect the times we live in?

BRADEN GRIFFITHS

I’m always mystified by how Christmas Carol just sells out every year, but at its core, Christmas Carol, is a simple message about man’s ability to change and so there is still a desire for that simple hope. So, Christmas Carol or shows of that ilk and ilk sounds like a negative word but it’s not, I love Christmas Carol. I adore it. I wouldn’t have done it for seven years if I didn’t. But there is still a desire, and I think there always will be a desire, for that simple human message of hope. And yet theatre is starting to change. We are starting to be a more interactive society because of platforms like YouTube and Twitter where you can send a Tweet to Brad Pitt and he might respond to that Tweet.

Ron Pederson as Man 2, Tyrell Crews as Richard Hannay, Andy Curtis as Man 1, and Anna Cummer as Annabella/Margaret/Pamela in the Veritgo Theatre Production of The 39 Steps adapted by Patrick Barlow from the novel by John Buchan from the movie by Alfred Hitchcock. Photo by Tim Nguyen

BRADEN GRIFFITHS

And so, there’s a desire for more interactivity in the art or the media that we indulge in. I think to a certain degree, the magic of a play like The 39 Steps is that we’re all in on the joke. That this is just two ladders and a bunch of crates on a stage and yet those things will become a plane chasing someone through a field, or the crates will become the boxcars in a train or whatever it is, and so we’re all in on the joke and so there’s a greater sense of interactivity. Which is why I think 39 Steps, even though it’s an old play now, has great relevance because the audience is involved in creating that joke.

And then you have things like Inner Elder by Michelle Thrush which talks about what it means to be a first nations member of the Canadian Zeitgeist. What it means socially to be a first nations member. And to actually hear that story told by the person who should be telling that story. The first nation’s experience is not my lived experience. Their lived experience informs my lived experience, and it may not shine the most desirable light on my lived experience, but I need to know as a person who’s a six-foot-tall white male, and I live with such great privilege that it’s insane, but that is my lived experience, and sometimes I can’t see it. And so, if theatre is holding a mirror up to nature then by watching Inner Elder I learn something about what it means to be Braden by watching and hearing the story of someone who is living with much, much, much, less privilege than I. And then hopefully, if I’m open to that…if my ears are open to that…and if the theatre companies are providing a platform for those stories to be told then I will become a more complete human, and a I will become a better community member, and by community, I mean the community of the world by understanding the stories of those who are around me and understanding something greater about myself.

Inner Elder created and performed by Michelle Thrush and presented by Lunchbox Theatre and One Yellow Rabbit as part of The High Performance Rodeo. Photo by Benjamin Laird.

JAMES

Well that’s what art does, doesn’t it? It makes us look in the mirror. It reflects who we are as a people, culture and society and it looks at both the good and the bad.

BRADEN GRIFFITHS

Hopefully. I was doing, Alls Well That Ends Well, with Peter Hinton at The Shakespeare Company two years ago, and this isn’t a name drop, I just want to give credit where credit is due. He said, at some point in that rehearsal process, “There’s not a lot of plays out there where two people sit on a bench both enjoying their own sandwiches, and then they go home. There’s a lot of plays out there where two people are sitting on a bench where one person has a sandwich and the other person is starving. There aren’t a lot of plays out there where we see mankind at peace. We’re always meeting these people in these stories at a time of crisis. At a life-defining moment.”

Elinor Holt as Deirdre Blake, Shekhar Paleja as Richard Saad, Lili Beadoin as Brigid Blake, Ric Reid as Erik Blake, and Ayla Stephen as Aimee Blake in the Theatre Calgary Production of The Humans by Stephen Karam. Photo by Trudie Lee

BRADEN GRIFFITHS

And I feel that’s a really apt quote because, speaking personally, I’ve always much preferred playing the very flawed individual, because we spend so much time in our lives hiding those flaws that we have from the rest of society because that’s the social agreement that we make. We all have our own shit and everybody’s life is complicated, but if you and I are not best friends we’re not going to throw our complications at the other person or that’s the hope of the social agreement we make every day.

And so, the flaws are where the real meat of storytelling and theatre happens. Sherlock Holmes, for example, who is a superhero in terms of his mental acuity is also a morphine addict and a cocaine addict. That I think is where theatre becomes accessible – it’s in the flaws. So, if theatre is holding a mirror up then we can see something of those things we are struggling with in these people on stage. Braden Griffiths as Sherlock Holmes is not dealing with the same things that Sherlock Holmes is, but I become a conduit to talk about those flaws, and I think that’s why theatre is valuable, because it provides a safe space for us to look at the worst and then to ruminate on the worst and know that at the end of the night we’re all going to get in our car and we’ll all safely drive home.

JAMES

What are your ambitions for the Bettys?

BRADEN GRIFFITHS

The board is always trying to safeguard the most unbiased process possible. That’s really what the guidelines are there for. So that we can award these 18 to 20 statues and it is representative of the twelve voices on the jury as opposed to one single voice. It’s a big thing to try and create a list of twelve that has a range of ages, that has a range of sexuality, and has a range of artistic niche. We try to have actors, directors, playwrights, educators, technicians and designers. We want that twelve ideally to be representative of the whole community so that it can be the most unbiased it possibly can be. That’s always going to be, for the board, at the top of the list.

Eric Wigston, Tenaj Williams, Madeleine Suddaby, and Selina Wong in Touch Me: Songs for a (Dis)connected Age by Forte Musical Theatre. Presented by Theatre Calgary. Photo by Trudie Lee

BRADEN GRIFFITHS

There’s also a responsibility for the Bettys to be as inclusive as possible as production models change and as the equity guidelines change to include different types of theatre being created. There are different contracting forms now that weren’t available seven or eight years ago where theatre companies can gather an ensemble of seven and create a show and be protected by equity and be considered a professional show. And so, there is a responsibility for the Bettys to foster a growth in the community by being as inclusive as possible so that those smaller companies that are trying to make their name in the theatre community are included within the professional theatre community. The more inclusive we can be, I think, the greater array of theatre production we’re going to see in this town.

A Chitenge Story created and performed by Makambe K. Simamba. A Handsome Alice Theatre Production. Photo by Tim Nguyen, Citrus Photography.

BRADEN GRIFFITHS

We’re also a night where everybody in the theatre community comes together to celebrate the work which we’ve done throughout the year. And to a certain degree that is sacred as well, because as we’ve seen unofficial community meeting places like the Auburn disappear building that sense of community has become more difficult in some ways, and so the Bettys are a night that’s guaranteed to happen every year where two hundred or so of our theatre community will come together. And whether they’re nominated for a Betty or not – whether they win a Betty or not – we are all there to celebrate the outstanding work that has been done throughout the theatre season, because it’s a hard thing to create theatre. It’s a hard thing to create art. They are a celebration that we have a community and that we are a group of four hundred to five hundred people who have come together and decided that this is our life’s work – hence the professional thing – this is our life’s work, this is what I chose to do for a life and the gift of my art is something that has value.

Back Left to Right: Lee-Anne Galloway, Rachel Delduca, Bracken Burns as Elle Woods, Kyla Musselman, Laura Tremblay, Victoria Whistance-Smith Front Left to Right: Amber Bissonnette & Sash Striga in the Stage West Theatre production of Legally Blonde The Musical, Music and Lyrics by Laurence O’Keefe & Nell Benjamin, Book By Heather Hach based on the novel by Amanda Brown and the MGM Motion Picture. Photo by John Watson Photography

JAMES

That’s what the Bettys are doing for the artist but what about the Bettys in terms of their ability to be an ambassador to the city for our arts community.

BRADEN GRIFFITHS

Well, I don’t know that the community at large knows what the Bettys are. And I think the work of the Bettys in the future is, how can we as the awarding body in town support those producing companies in town over the course of the season as opposed to just on that one night? That’s a conversation that needs to happen between us and the producing companies.

Gregory Dahl as Scarpia and Ambur Braid as Tosca in the Calgary Opera production of Tosca by Giacomo Puccini. Photo by Trudie Lee.

JAMES

So, one of the challenges is how do we get new audiences in there. How do we foster that? How do we reach these people?

BRADEN GRIFFITHS

I think people are more liable to go see themselves, and so I think part of the reason we see a lot of white middle-class, upper-middle-class human beings in theatres is partially because it requires a certain amount of disposable income to go to theatre and partially because those are the stories that for a very – very long time were being told. And so, when we talk about Inner Elder I think it’s more likely that someone of first nations decent might go and see Inner Elder because they see something very specifically that is their story being told in a theatre. And once somebody has seen something in a theatre that has affected them profoundly it’s far more likely that they’re going to go to the next show that may not tell a story that specifically speaks to their lived existence, but like I said earlier, me seeing Inner Elder speaks to my existence whether it speaks to it specifically or not. I think we need to do a better job of telling a wider array of stories in the theatre and if we’re producing Shakespeare we need to start casting artists that come from different lived experiences. And I think the fact that we’re seeing Michelle Thrush direct Honor Beat by Tara Beagan as the first show of the season at Theatre Calgary means we’re moving in the right direction, but we need to continue to do the hard work of providing those opportunities so that we can create a theatre community that is representative of the greater community and the Bettys is a part of that, I think.

***

2018 Betty Mitchell Awards Nominees

Winners in Bold.

OUTSTANDING PERFORMANCE BY AN ENSEMBLE

  • Glory – Alberta Theatre Projects, in association with Western Canada Theatre
  • The Humans – Theatre Calgary
  • inVISIBLE – Handsome Alice Theatre
  • Touch Me: Songs for a (Dis)connected Age – Forte Musical Theatre Guild, presented by Theatre Calgary
  • Undercover – Vertigo Theatre & Tarragon Theatre

OUTSTANDING PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE

  • Kathryn Kerbes – Sherlock Holmes & the American Problem – Vertigo Theatre
  • Helen Knight – The Last Wife – Alberta Theatre Projects
  • Chantelle Han – Ai Yah! Sweet & Sour Secrets – Lunchbox Theatre
  • Esther Purves- Smith – Baskerville: A Sherlock Holmes Mystery – Stage West

OUTSTANDING LIGHTING DESIGN (Tie)

  • T. Erin Gruber – Easter Island – Verb Theatre
  • Jessie Paynter – Extremophiles – Downstage
  • Anton de Groot – Nine Dragons – Vertigo Theatre, Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre & Gateway Theatre
  • Narda McCarroll – To the Light – Alberta Theatre Projects
  • Bonnie Beecher – The Secret Garden – Theatre Calgary

OUTSTANDING SET DESIGN

  • The Old Trout Puppet Workshop – Twelfth Night – Theatre Calgary
  • David Fraser – Sherlock Holmes & the American Problem – Vertigo Theatre
  • Scott Reid – Nine Dragons – Vertigo Theatre, Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre & Gateway Theatre
  • David Fraser – Constellations – Alberta Theatre Projects
  • Caitlind r.c. Brown and Wayne Garrett – Extremophiles – Downstage

OUTSTANDING PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE

  • Trevor Rueger – Much Ado About Nothing – The Shakespeare Company with Hit & Myth Productions
  • Mark Bellamy – Legislating Love: The Everett Klippert Story – Sage Theatre
  • Stafford Perry – The Lonely Diner – Vertigo Theatre
  • Kevin Rothery – Sherlock Holmes & The American Problem – Vertigo Theatre
  • Nathan Schmidt – Sherlock Holmes & The American Problem – Vertigo Theatre

OUTSTANDING PROJECTION OR VIDEO DESIGN

  • Jamie Nesbitt – Nine Dragons – Vertigo Theatre, Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre & Gateway Theatre
  • Remy Siu – Empire of the Son – Alberta Theatre Projects, part of the 32nd Annual High Performance Rodeo, a Vancouver Asian Canadian Theatre Production
  • T. Erin Gruber – Easter Island – Verb Theatre
  • Corwin Ferguson – Julius Caesar – The Shakespeare Company, Ground Zero Theatre, and Hit & Myth Productions
  • Amelia Scott – To the Light – Alberta Theatre Projects

OUTSTANDING COSTUME DESIGN

  • The Old Trout Puppet Workshop – Twelfth Night – Theatre Calgary
  • Heather Moore – The Last Wife – Alberta Theatre Projects
  • Cory Sincennes – The Secret Garden – Theatre Calgary
  • Cindy Wiebe – Glory – Alberta Theatre Projects, in association with Western Canada Theatre
  • Mérédith Caron – Sisters: The Belles Soeurs Musical – A Copa de Oro Production Ltd. And Segal Centre for Performing Arts production, presented by Theatre Calgary

OUTSTANDING SOUND DESIGN OR COMPOSITION

  • Steve Charles – Glory – Alberta Theatre Projects, in association with Western Canada Theatre
  • Peter Moller – The 39 Steps – Vertigo Theatre
  • Andrew Blizzard – Nine Dragons – Vertigo Theatre, Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre & Gateway Theatre
  • Andrew Blizzard – Sherlock Holmes & The American Problem – Vertigo Theatre
  • Bryce Kulak – To The Light – Alberta Theatre Projects

OUTSTANDING CHOREOGRAPHY OR FIGHT DIRECTION

  • Tracey Power – Glory – Alberta Theatre Projects, in association with Western Canada Theatre
  • Phil Nero – Legally Blonde: The Musical – Stage West
  • John Knight – Julius Caesar – The Shakespeare Company, Ground Zero Theatre, and Hit & Myth Productions
  • Laryssa Yanchuk – Sherlock Holmes & the American Problem – Vertigo Theatre
  • Linda Garneau – Sisters: The Belles Soeurs Musical – A Copa de Oro Production Ltd. And Segal Centre for Performing Arts production, presented by Theatre Calgary

OUTSTANDING MUSICAL DIRECTION

  • David Terriault – Sisters: The Belles Soeurs Musical – A Copa de Oro Production Ltd. And Segal Centre for Performing Arts production, presented by Theatre Calgary
  • Jacques Lacombe – Tosca – Calgary Opera
  • Konrad Pluta – Legally Blonde: The Musical – Stage West
  • Joe Slabe – Touch Me: songs for a (Dis)Connected Age – Forte Musical Theatre Guild, presented by Theatre Calgary
  • Don Horsburgh – The Secret Garden – Theatre Calgary

OUTSTANDING PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTRESS IN A COMEDY OR MUSICAL

  • Jamie Konchak – Miss Caledonia – Lunchbox Theatre
  • Myla Southward – Much Ado About Nothing – The Shakespeare Company with Hit & Myth Productions
  • Anna Cummer – Twelfth Night – Theatre Calgary
  • Anna Cummer – The 39 Steps – Vertigo Theatre
  • Bracken Burns – Legally Blonde: The Musical – Stage West

OUTSTANDING PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR IN A COMEDY OR MUSICAL

  • Tyrell Crews – The 39 Steps – Vertigo Theatre
  • Tyrell Crews – Much Ado About Nothing – The Shakespeare Company with Hit & Myth Productions
  • Devon Dubnyk – The Santaland Diaries – Lunchbox Theatre
  • Christopher Hunt – Twelfth Night – Theatre Calgary
  • Eric Wigston – The Secret Garden – Theatre Calgary

OUTSTANDING NEW PLAY

  • Glory – Tracey Power
  • Nine Dragons – Jovanni Sy
  • Flight Risk – Meg Braem
  • Inner Elder – Michelle Thrush
  • Legislating Love: The Everett Klippert Story – Natalie Meisner

OUTSTANDING PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTRESS IN A DRAMA

  • Michelle Thrush – Inner Elder – Lunchbox Theatre
  • Myla Southward – The Last Wife – Alberta Theatre Projects
  • Camille Pavlenko – Blackbird – Verb Theatre
  • Makambe K. Simamba – A Chitenge Story – Handsome Alice Theatre
  • Jamie Konchak – Constellations – Alberta Theatre Projects

OUTSTANDING PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR IN A DRAMA

  • Christopher Hunt – Flight Risk – Lunchbox Theatre
  • Stephen Hair – Blow Wind High Water – Theatre Calgary
  • Curt McKinstry – Blackbird – Verb Theatre
  • Braden Griffiths – Julius Caesar – The Shakespeare Company, Ground Zero Theatre, and Hit & Myth Productions
  • Michael Tan – Constellations – Alberta Theatre Projects

OUTSTANDING DIRECTION

  • Jillian Keiley – Twelfth Night – Theatre Calgary
  • Ron Jenkins – The 39 Steps – Vertigo Theatre
  • James MacDonald – Glory – Alberta Theatre Projects, in association with Western Canada Theatre
  • Glynis Leyshon – The Last Wife – Alberta Theatre Projects
  • Vanessa Porteous – The Humans –Theatre Calgary

OUTSTANDING PRODUCTION OF A MUSICAL

  • Sisters: The Belles Soeurs Musical – A Copa de Oro Production Ltd. And Segal Centre for Performing Arts production, presented by Theatre Calgary
  • Legally Blonde: The Musical – Stage West
  • Touch Me: Songs for a (Dis)connected Age – Forte Musical Theatre Guild, presented by Theatre Calgary
  • Tosca – Calgary Opera
  • Murder for Two – Stage West

OUTSTANDING PRODUCTION OF A PLAY

  • Glory – Alberta Theatre Projects, in association with Western Canada Theatre
  • Inner Elder – Lunchbox Theatre and One Yellow Rabbit
  • Twelfth Night – Theatre Calgary
  • The 39 Steps – Vertigo Theatre
  • Blackbird – Verb Theatre

***

  • Alberta Theatre Projects:  Contemporary, clever & cutting edge live theatre in the heart of Calgary.
  • Birnton Theatricals: Producing theatre that will entertain and show the world from a different view.
  • Calgary Opera: Our BOLD new 2018-19 season starts with Roméo & Juliette, followed by the Canadian premiere of Everest, and ends with Rigoletto.
  • Downstage:  Canadian theatre that creates meaningful conversation around social issues.
  • Forte Musical Theatre Guild: A Canadian not-for-profit company dedicated to the professional development and production of new musical theatre works.
  • Green Fools Theatre: Not-for-profit Theatre specializing in masks, puppets, stilts.
  • Handsome Alice Theatre Company: Devoted to unleashing the female voice through the development, creation, and production of inclusive, curious, and rebellious theatre works.
  • Lunchbox Theatre: One of the most successful noon hour theatre companies in the world.
  • One Yellow Rabbit: Performance artifacts for the seriously curious.
  • Quest Theatre:  An Award-winning Theatre for Young Audiences company based in Calgary.
  • Sage Theatre:  Creates bold, intimate, thoughtful plays exploring the human condition. We showcase talented Albertan artists.
  • The Shakespeare Company: Calgary’s lean and mean classical theatre company
  • Stage West Theatre Restaurants: We bring you the greatest entertainers from the stage, the screen and the music world along with our 120-item gourmet buffet! Play With Your Dinner!
  • Theatre Calgary: Our 2018-19 season includes Honour Beat, Mary and Max – A New Musical, A Christmas Carol, BOOM X, The Scarlet Letter and Billy Elliot The Musical
  • Verb Theatre: Tomorrow’s theatre, today.
  • Vertigo Theatre: The only professional theatre in Canada producing a series of plays based on the mystery genre.

***

BETTY MITCHELL:  After working for ten years in Calgary schools, the University of Alberta graduate moved to Western Canada High School in 1934. Drama was introduced into the curriculum in 1936 and the former biology teacher found herself Director of the Drama Department. Betty had discovered the great love of her life.

She received the Rockefeller Fellowship in 1942, an M.A. from the State University of Iowa in 1944, followed by a National Research Fellowship from the Cleveland Playhouse. That same year, Betty and her students founded their infamous Workshop 14 which would go on to win nine Dominion Drama Awards and become a training ground for future theatre professionals.

Throughout the fifties and sixties, Betty was a force behind MAC 14 (after a merger of Workshop 14 and the Musicians’ and Actors’ Club), which eventually became Theatre Calgary. As producer, director, and teacher, Betty helped to build a vibrant stage community in Calgary and became sought after as an adjudicator and speaker across Canada.

As achievements mounted, so too did awards, including a City of Calgary citation for her contribution to culture and art. She received an Honourary Doctor of Laws Degree from the University of Alberta in 1958 for her achievements in amateur theatre, the only such doctorate awarded in Canada. Anyone for whom theatre is a passion owes a huge debt of gratitude to Calgary’s first lady of theatre.

Actor Braden Griffiths as Sherlock Holmes
Braden Griffiths as Sherlock Holmes in the Vertigo Theatre Production of Sherlock Holmes and the American Problem by R. Hamilton Wright. Photo by Tim Nguyen

BRADEN GRIFFITHS: Braden Griffiths has been an actor and playwright in Calgary for 14 years. He has performed in over 60 professional productions predominantly in Calgary but also, on various stages in Western Canada and occasionally, when he’s very fortunate, in Asia and Australia. His play My Family and Other Endangered Species, written with Ellen Close, was published by Playwright’s Canada Press. He has multiple Betty Mitchell Award Nominations for both acting and playwriting, taking home the Betty in 2015 for his performance in The Last Voyage of Donald Crowhurst. This is his 11th year on the Betty Mitchell Awards Board.

THE BETTY MITCHELL AWARDS: The Betty’s were founded by Grant Linneberg, Mark Bellamy, Donna Belleville, Johanne Deleeuw and Dianne Goodman. Named after one of the great arts educators and a pivotal member of the community of artists that founded Theatre Calgary (just over 50 years ago) the Betty Mitchell Awards were started in order to celebrate the excellence of Calgary’s theatre community 21 years ago. Many aspects of the Betty Mitchell Awards have remained constant over the years: the Board (formerly called the Steering Committee) has always been peopled by volunteers from within the community; the Nominating Committee has always been comprised of a group of twelve individuals and that jury changes every year; the guidelines have remained remarkably intact from the first year of the Betty’s (the semantics have evolved but, their spirit remains the same) and (until this year) the Awards have always been disseminated in August. However, as the Calgary Theatre Community continues to change and grow so too have the Betty’s: multiple Awards have been added over the years (most recently Outstanding Projection Design and Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble); the Awards venue has recently moved away from it perennial home at Stage West and they are now presented in the Vertigo Playhouse; since the closing of the Auburn, the after party has officially become a part of the Betty’s Board planning and arrangements for the night. As much as the Bettys (the statues themselves) are a professional theatre Award, the Bettys (the evening of the awards) have become the one night a year where the community comes together to celebrate all that we have been, all that we are and all that we hope to become.

***

This interview with Braden Griffiths has been edited and condensed for clarity.

This article has been updated to include the winners in each category. The opening has been rewritten slightly to reflect that the awards happened. The initial article was written before the awards and linked to tickets for the event.

Interview with Lunchbox Theatre Director of Marketing & Communications Lauren Thompson

Posted on by James Hutchison
Lauren Thompson – Director of Marketing & Communications – Lunchbox Theatre

“Have fun and be creative. If you won’t find it interesting to read why is your audience going to find it interesting to read? If you don’t like the way it looks, chances are your audience won’t like the way it looks. So, trust you and do what you want to do. Marketing is the place where you can be creative and do your own things. Financial people have to follow a budget – have to follow numbers, but marketing is that world where you can have your creative juices flow, if you will.” – Lauren Thompson Director of Marketing & Communications

You know it’s not true. The whole idea that all you have to do is build it and they will come. That idea only works in metaphysical baseball stories. In the real world, if you build it – you have to tell them about it – and then they’ll come.

Maybe.

Marketing is the process of telling people your story and why they should buy your product or service, and in the theatre world that means finding ways of reaching people and telling them why they should come and see your show.

I sat down with Lauren Thompson, shortly before she left her position as the Director of Marketing & Communications for  Lunchbox Theatre, to talk with her about her approach to marketing and some of things she’s done during her time at Lunchbox.

JAMES HUTCHISON

So tell me what you noticed when you first started as the marketing manager for Lunchbox Theatre three years ago.

LAUREN THOMPSON

When I first started I noticed that although Lunchbox had moved into the Calgary Tower location in 2008 a lot of people still didn’t know we were there. The theatre people did. The theatre community people did. But our normal audience, of the downtown working crowd, either thought we’d shut our doors or knew that we’d moved, but they didn’t really know where we were, or they had stopped paying attention.

JAMES

Lunchbox Theatre in the heart of Calgary under the Tower

The move really hurt Lunchbox in terms of people going to it?

LAUREN THOMPSON

It wasn’t convenient for the typical audience that they were seeing. And convenient in the sense that before the move they were in Bow Valley Square. There were five other buildings, or whatever, connected through the plus 15s and it was right in the middle of a food court and there was a lot of foot traffic. There were a lot of positives going on over there. And there are so many positives that have come out of the move here, but the audience, and the traffic, and the regular patrons, and what defined Lunchbox was changing.

JAMES

Okay then, what is Lunchbox? And what does it mean to the community?

LAUREN THOMPSON

Well, I really think Lunchbox has changed. It’s not this convenient stop in for one hour, and you don’t really know what you’re going to get, but it’s here, and you’ll have your lunch. It’s now a destination. We have to program shows to make people want to put in that extra five-minute walk down Stephen Avenue to come see us.

And I think now we’re really focused on Lunchbox as an incubator of sorts. We workshop new plays, but we’re also a company for emerging artists, new designers, and new directors through our RBC emerging directors program and our Stage One Festival, and all these things give a place for these emerging artists to really grow, and then to move onto the Theatre Calgary stages, or the Vertigo stages, or the ATP stages.

JAMES

I was doing a little reading and it was talking about people needing to think about the theatre experience beyond the performance. It’s not just the show. It’s the whole atmosphere. It’s everything.

Ben Wong as Charlie, Jamie Matchullis as Jennifer, Kelsey Verzotti as Jade and Chantelle Han as Lilly in the Lunchbox Theatre production of Ai Yah! Sweet and Sour Secrets – Photograph by Benjamin Laird

Lauren Thompson – Having fun with Ai Yah! Sweet and Sour Secrets

LAUREN THOMPSON

It is everything. I had a lot of fun with Ai Yah! Sweet and Sour Secrets this year. That was Dale Lee Kwong’s play that went up over the Chinese New Year. I specifically remember that one because it was this culture that I didn’t know a lot about. And it was so specific to Chinese New Year and those traditions. Dale was super supportive and taught us everything, and she gave me this forty-page document about all the traditions that they do and what red and gold means and what these symbols mean and why they do these things. I really wanted people to enter the theatre and read these quotes and fun facts along the wall about Chinese New Year and just be immersed in this new culture and this new experience. And on Instagram I did little fortune cookies, so you had a little image of a fortune cookie and you had to slide the image and it would be a different fortune every day. It was just fun posts that aren’t directly promoting the show, but it’s creating awareness and fun and excitement.

JAMES

You have a ten-dollar Thursday night. What was the genesis of that?

LAUREN THOMPSON

The first Thursday night show of every run was our lowest-selling show. So, we were hey, what can we do to entice people to come see the show and see what works? We didn’t know if it was going to work the first year we did it, but it did, and it blew up, and now it’s consistently the first show that sells out.

JAMES

Why do you need a full audience in there?

LAUREN THOMPSON

In Calgary, people are waiting for word of mouth. So, we need full theatres that first week to help get the word out, and by the time the first week’s over and the word of mouth has gotten out our second and third weeks fill up.

JAMES

Of course, nowadays social media is one of the main ways to help spread the word. How do you incorporate social media into your marketing?

LAUREN THOMPSON

Social media is basically doing some of our word of mouth for us, but we can help facilitate that word of mouth a little bit. We can put out a photo, or we can put out a comment and people will share that comment or photo with their own tag and their own comment in it.

JAMES

So, what types of content are you creating? Because I notice, just for an example, The Shakespeare Company will do an interview with one of their actors and post it on their website and then promote it through their social media.

LAUREN THOMPSON

Well, this year I found that the traditional media calls were not always happening. We’ve had a media call planned and the media has had to cancel, last minute, because there was an accident, or something else came up, or whatever, right? So, this year I said to Samantha MacDonald, our Artistic Producer, that we need to do it ourselves. I can’t rely on the media to get the story of our show out there. So, I started the coffee chats that I post on Facebook and Instagram.

I would interview two people from the production. Typically, the playwright or director and then an actor from the show and ask them questions about the process, about the play, and about their characters – what would typically come out in a media call. And then I put it out in the world so we’re not relying on something we have no control over. And it’s worked in our favour. And we’ve had media coverage this year, but I think those coffee chats opened up a different side. A more casual side. A different conversation about the play that a poster or a typical social media post won’t do for you.

JAMES

You know what I’m seeing that I really like? I’m seeing you and Theatre Calgary, and ATP, and The Shakespeare Company, and Vertigo are all using your social media to help each other.

LAUREN THOMPSON

This past season a few of the marketing directors from the different companies Theatre Calgary, ATP, Lunchbox, Vertigo, and I think Stage West just got together to chat and see how things were going and what are the trends and we realized – the same thing is happening across the board – and that we weren’t alone. And then the conversation turned to how do we support each other and get the word out about your show even though our shows on. Our show has the same actor that is in your next show coming up, so how do we do something about that, and let’s talk about that, and it’s become so wonderful to have that community of people who want to see all of us succeed.

JAMES

When you’re making your marketing decisions how much of your decisions are based on instinct and how much on research?

LAUREN THOMPSON

I personally am a much more instinctive person. I go with my gut, a lot. We tagged this season as, “What are you hungry for?” You know, are you hungry for culture? Are you hungry for family stories? Are you hungry for Canadian stories? And along with that – I don’t even know where it came from – I heard about the importance of taking time to take a break and getting away from your desk and taking an hour to take in arts and culture. And I ran with that idea before the season started. Yes, Lunchbox is one hour, it’s not expensive, it’s great theatre, but really like what is it doing for your life? It is giving you one hour of culture. It is giving you a one-hour break from a screen. It is giving you an hour to be with people and to watch live theatre and that has so many positive effects on you as a person. And I did all this research on workplace mental health and taking breaks and the importance of that but then channeling that into easily fun digestible posts or ads. And one of the ads – we did a bunch of ads in surrounding corporate towers and literally my promo was Lunchbox is a five-minute walk and it’s 621 steps. Get your steps for the day. Come to Lunchbox for an hour. And get your steps on your way back to the office.

JAMES

One of the things we talked about before the interview was based on your experience do you have any tips or lessons learned that people could take away in regards to marketing?

LAUREN THOMPSON

I do, but there are a million others. I would say, be open to ideas is number one. Be open to exciting new technology that’s coming out to apps to trends. The trends that are coming out are trends for a reason. Try them and see if they work for your company and your audience. Everything moves quickly. So, react to it all. And take it on your own spin.

Tip number two would be to have fun and be creative. If you won’t find it interesting to read why is your audience going to find it interesting to read? If you don’t like the way it looks, chances are your audience won’t like the way it looks. So, trust yourself and do what you want to do. Marketing is the place where you can be creative and do your own things. Financial people have to follow a budget have to follow numbers, but marketing is that world where you can have your creative juices flow, if you will.

JAMES

It’s a bit of magic.

LAUREN THOMPSON

Totally. My third one is to have a consistent voice. Know your brand. Know your company and your voice regardless. It might have a different tone for your different mediums. Our Instagram has a different tone than our Facebook, but it’s still a consistent voice, and I still know what the brand is and you’re always pushing that. Whatever you do it has to fall under that umbrella.

JAMES

Alright, lets talk about the importance of a healthy box office. How much do you think having a healthy box office impacts the overall company specifically your ability to get donations and other funding?

LAUREN THOMPSON

I don’t think it’s a secret that arts in Calgary are suffering. And we’re very aware. Sam does a preshow chat to the audience before every single show, and in the later half of the year we started to add in – you know obviously we’re struggling like everyone else, and it was just an awareness of it, and if you want to ask more questions and you want to help please come find us after the show. It’s just being transparent about it, and then people come and see the shows and support the shows and leave the shows talking about how much they love it and how much they want it to be around. We had some people come to Girl Crush with Sharron Matthews which was the first Lunchbox show they had ever seen, and the next thing you know we’re getting cheques of money because they loved it so much.

Sharron Matthews in Girl Crush at Lunchbox Theatre Photograph by Benjamin Laird

JAMES

Now, Girl Crush, just because you mentioned it, was a really interesting show.

LAUREN THOMPSON

Yes.

JAMES

Because it turned Lunchbox into a cabaret.

LAUREN THOMPSON

It did.

JAMES

And it did very well.

LAUREN THOMPSON

It was a gamble and it paid off.

JAMES

It was an entertaining and successful show and it showed that you can do a lot in that space. It expands in the consumer’s mind your venue as an entertainment venue rather than just theatre. Are there plans to do more?

LAUREN THOMPSON

Yes, we have a cabaresque show starting the season called Mickey and Judy by Michael Hughes.

JAMES

Traditionally September is a tough sell. Is that one of the reasons you’re going with the cabaret to see how it does?

LAUREN THOMPSON

Yes. September is hard on every theatre. This year we had Book Club II. The sequel to Book Club by Meredith Taylor-Parry. And it did well, but it also struggled just with it being in the September slot – nothing to do with the show. Mickey and Judy is a show that we’re really excited about – it being a musical and having a different style to it – the Cabaret feel you know. It’s a different exciting start to things.

Arielle Rombough, Cheryl Hutton, Kira Bradley, Curt Mckinstry, Anna Cummer – in the Lunchbox Theatre Production of Book Club II: The Next Chapter by Meredith Taylor Parry. Photograph by Benjamin Laird

JAMES

Okay then, lets talk about next season. I really like the artwork.

LAUREN THOMPSON

I am obsessed with the artwork.

JAMES

Tell me the story behind this.

LAUREN THOMPSON

So, last season we found a new graphic designer. And she did all of the artwork for the 17/18 season. The two-tone kind of colours and the single image kind of graphic look and it was similar to what Lunchbox had been doing but just a little more mature a little more modern. And this year our programming is taking a new shift, and we’re doing different styles and kinds of shows, and this is Sam’s first programmed season as artistic producer, and so we sort of chatted with her and said we’re open to new ideas.

JAMES

So, you went to the graphic artist?

LAUREN THOMPSON

We went to the graphic artist. Her name is Kimberly Wieting, and she’s young, and she’s so good at what she does.

JAMES

She has her own company?

LAUREN THOMPSON

Yeah, she’s an individual contractor, and she’s incredible. Her company is Gritt Media. We sat down with her, and Sam and I chatted about the season. We gave her a brief synopsis of everything and said, “Tell us what you want to do.” And she pitched this concept of this image on image and black with a pop of colour and it was a lot of work, but it was so worth it. And it’s just a totally different look for Lunchbox.

And it’s like we’ve said, Lunchbox has been around forever. Everyone knows Lunchbox, but now you’re looking at it differently. And we want them to. Our shows are different. Our production quality is different. Our outlook on what we’re doing, the projects we’re taking on, the scripts we’re developing, everything is different, and we’re shifting, and we want the imagery of Lunchbox to shift with us, and we think it’s gone in the perfect direction.

JAMES

Sounds like such an exciting time to be a part of Lunchbox, so what’s going on with you?

LAUREN THOMPSON

And ahhh – I’m going to leave!

JAMES

So, tell me what’s the opportunity for you?

LAUREN THOMPSON

I’m moving to Amsterdam this summer. And I really just needed a change. I don’t know how else to explain it. It was this whim in February. I just sort of was like – I need to go do this. I looked into visas, and most visas in most countries are the working holiday visa, and they’re only valid until you’re thirty. So, I said, I don’t have a mortgage. I don’t have a partner. I don’t really have anything tying me down. I can come back to this wonderful community – that I know will take me back when I come back – and I just need to go. I need to do this.

JAMES

What are you going to do?

LAUREN THOMPSON

I have no idea. (Laughs) Step one is find a place to live. I just want to work when I’m over there. I want to travel. I just want to meet people.

JAMES

Well, good for you for doing this. Do you think this explains part of your success as a marketer? I mean just even in your own life the willingness to take a risk – to try something new – to see how it works?

LAUREN THOMPSON

Maybe. And I’m realizing more and more, I react on my gut a lot. I follow my gut, and looking back on things and the decisions I’ve made – even the gut decision to take the job at Lunchbox – I’ve always followed that, and it’s always led me in the right direction. And my gut is telling me to go to Amsterdam, and so I’m just going to do it. And we’ll see what happens.

***

Lunchbox Theatre is located at the base of the Calgary Tower. Regular season shows run Monday to Saturday at 12:00 pm with a 6:00 pm show on Thursday and Friday. Individual tickets are just $25.00. Group discounts, play passes and regular tickets can be purchased online at Lunchbox Theatre or by calling the box office at 403-265-4292 x 0.

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Lunchbox Theatre 2018/19 Season

Mickey & Judy – September 17 to October 6, 2018

Playwright Michael Hughes
Performer Michael Hughes

As a young boy, Michael Hughes was obsessed with musicals and liked to dress in women’s clothing. His parents, confused by his behaviour and determined to cure him, sent him to the Clark Institute in Toronto. Mickey & Judy offers a wildly funny and touching account of Michael’s real-life journey from the psychiatric ward to Off-Broadway. With a score that spans from Broadway classics to the best of the Judy Garland songbook, this inspiring cabaret show will have you laughing, crying, and singing along like no one is listening.

Brave Girl – October 22 to November 10, 2018

Playwright Emily Dallas
Directed by Valmai Goggin
Musical Direction by Joe Slabe

In 2002, Sam and Amy lose their father to the war in Afghanistan. Determined to follow his legacy and do their father proud, the sisters enlist and support each other through the joys and hardships of military training. As the two girls advance, their individual journeys take a very different course. Will their friendship survive? At what cost? Taking its inspiration from the life of Sandra Perron, Canada’s first female infantry officer, this beautiful new Remembrance musical examines the life of women in power and the sacrifices that must be made.

It’s a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play – November 26 to December 22, 2018

Playwright Joe Landry
Directed by Craig Hall

Back by popular demand! It’s Christmas Eve and the unimaginable has happened. George Bailey is on the edge of ruin; thousands of dollars are lost and with seemingly no way to save the old Bailey Savings & Loan, George wonders if the world would be better off had he never lived? With the help of a rookie angel and a cast of charming characters, It’s a Wonderful Life reminds us that we are each precious and important. Conceived as a live 1940s radio broadcast, this classic holiday story of love and redemption will be brought to life on stage by our Betty Mitchell Award-winning ensemble.

Sansei: the Storyteller – January 14 to 26, 2019

Playwright Mark Kunji Ikeda
Performer Mark Kunji Ikeda

On December 7, 1941, an attack on Pearl Harbour triggered events in Canada that may easily be described as among the darkest in our history – the internment and dispossession of tens of thousands of Japanese Canadians. Through an engaging blend of dance, spoken word and loads of humour, Mark Ikeda weaves a tale that is illuminating and profoundly personal. Sansei: The Storyteller offers Ikeda’s observations about the internment, his own discovery of where he came from, and how Japanese Canadians found peace.

Assassinating Thomson – February 11 to March 2, 2019

Playwright/Performer Bruce Horak
Directed by Ryan Gladstone

Bruce Horak is a critically acclaimed visual artist, actor and playwright who lives with just 9% of his vision. In this, his one-man tour-de-force, Horak delves into the mysterious death of famous Canadian painter Tom Thomson and the subsequent rise of the Group of 7. Art, politics, ambition, love and murder all take the stage in Horak’s compelling work. As he explores the facts and fictions around Thomson’s death, Horak shares his own story and the unique way in which he sees the world. And if that weren’t enough – while mesmerizing them with his words, Horak paints an original portrait of the audience at every show.

Gutenberg the Musical – April 1 to 20, 2019

Playwright Scott Brown & Anthony King
Directed by Samantha MacDonald

Bud and Deb are aspiring playwrights about to give the performance of their lives. It’s a backer’s audition, and in a desperate, bravely hopeful bid to fulfill their dreams of a Broadway production, Bud and Deb, with an overwhelming supply of enthusiasm will sing all the songs and play all the parts in their “big splashy” musical about Johann Gutenberg, inventor of the printing press. Will all their dreams come true? Gutenberg! The Musical! is a raucous spoof of all things musical and is guaranteed to mildly offend everyone equally.

***

Lunchbox Theatre was founded in Calgary, Alberta, Canada by Bartley and Margaret Bard and Betty Gibb in 1975. Lunchbox produces one-act plays that deliver a fun and unique theatre experience in an intimate and comfortable black box theatre space. Patrons are encouraged to eat their lunch while they enjoy the show. Lunchbox is one of the most successful and longest-running noon-hour theatre companies in the world.

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Lauren Thompson has a degree in Tourism Management and Marketing from the Haskayne School of Business at the University of Calgary. She grew up singing and performing with the Youth Singers of Calgary and is now a teacher for the Youth Singers as well as a choreographer and performer who has worked with numerous local companies including Storybook Theatre, Lunchbox Theatre, Forte Musical Theatre, The Shakespeare Company and Theatre Calgary. Lauren became the Director of Marketing and Communications for Lunchbox Theatre in 2015 which has allowed her to utilize her degree and educational background with her love for the arts.

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Interview with Playwright Neil Fleming: Spare Parts

Posted on by James Hutchison
Neil Fleming – Playwright, Designer, Television Writer/Producer

“There’s an artistic epiphany in my play John Doe Jack Rabbit. There’s a moment where the TV’s broken and they’re stuck in this cabin and they’re on the lam and this one guy Gordy is reading a book – it’s this trashy horrible romance novel called Ravaged at Rush Hour. But then he gets so sucked into this book – as if he’s never read a book before – and he has this moment where he’s like, the person who wrote this book wrote it down so I would know what it feels like to be Jessica in the cab or whatever it was, right? And that was one of those things. That’s what playwriting is about. What art is about. This is what it’s like to feel like I feel, and I put it into this painting for you to grasp that concept, or I put it in this play for you to go – wow that’s what’s going on in your head.” Neil Fleming

***

Neil Fleming is a multi-talented, award winning Calgary designer, playwright and television producer. In our hour and a half chat last Friday Neil and I talked about all kinds of things including playwriting, depression, Chuck Wendig, poltergeists and ADHD. The purpose of our getting together was to talk about Neil’s playwriting and specifically his current play, Spare Parts, which is being workshopped at the Stage One Festival of New Canadian Work at Lunchbox Theatre this week.

JAMES HUTCHISON

As a writer we spend long hours alone at the writing desk and sometimes we find ourselves facing internal or external resistance to a particular writing project or even our own writing career. Who in your life gives you the support and feedback you need that lets you continue on your journey?

NEIL FLEMING

Well my first sounding board has always been Jane, my wife. When I’m done a draft, I’ll be like, can you take a second to read this? And bless her, she’ll drop everything and go in the other room and I’ll sit there and listen to her while I’m trying to distract myself, but really I’m listening to her reading it and asking her what she’s laughing at if she’s laughing just to make sure she’s not laughing at an inside joke between the two of us that I intended for a larger group.

JAMES

Are you more nervous giving her the first draft to read, do you think, than when it’s ready for an audience?

NEIL

No, I don’t think so. I trust her. We have similar taste in story and content, but she likes things that are a bit darker than I do.

JAMES

And you’re pretty dark at times.

NEIL

I can be. But I think humour has always been a defense mechanism for me. It’s my way of not going to the dark place. More recently I’ve been trying to challenge myself to have something to say and not just be silly.

Karen Johnson-Diamond, Nicole Zylstra, Miles Ringsred, Tim Koetting in the Lunchbox Theatre Production of Last Christmas by Neil Fleming – Photograph by Benjamin Laird

JAMES

But when you did Last Christmas that was dealing with someone dying of cancer. It was a comedy and a Christmas show.

NEIL

Sure. Pam Halstead at Lunchbox had commissioned me to write that. She wanted it to be a dysfunctional family at Christmas made up of people’s Christmas horror stories. So, there’s some Pam Halstead in it. The inflatable husband. One of her siblings bought her an inflatable husband one Christmas, and she opened it in front of everyone, and it was horrible and awful and fun but real, right?

I tried to come up with a family that didn’t resemble my own and didn’t resemble my wife’s where I could use details from real people but no one was able to accuse me of writing about my brother-in-law or whatever. They were fictional characters, but then so many people came up to me after the show because those characters resonated so strongly, and they’d say, “Oh that’s like my sister-in-law, and I can’t believe she’s in your play.”

JAMES

So, it touched on some universal characteristics.

NEIL

For sure. What I like to do is find little bits of truth and craft around those. Last Christmas started because one of my wife’s best friends worked at a dispensary in Vancouver, and her job was to teach old people how to roll a joint because they’d been given medicinal marijuana with a prescription, and they’d never smoked a joint before. And that’s just such an awesome image. So, I wanted the pot smoking grandpa. I just thought what a great start.

JAMES

And then there’s a lovely part of that play where the grandson and the grandfather have a bonding experience. Where they’re sharing the marijuana.

Tim Koetting and Miles Ringsred in the Lunchbox Theatre Production of Last Christmas by Neil Fleming – Photography by Benjamin Laird

NEIL

I think that’s a favourite moment for the audience. It’s Christmas Eve, and the grandfather and the grandson are listening to Nat King Cole, and grandpa is experiencing being high for the first time. But they’re just having one of those philosophical conversations.

I love the absurdity of real things. One of my favourite things to do when I was looking for something fresh or new is I’d go to the news of the weird, and I have a play called Gnomes about garden gnomes and literally there was a news article about the Garden Gnome Liberation Front, I think, in Paris and they had broken into a garden show, and they stole all these antique gnomes, and then in the town square spelled out, Free the Gnomes with the gnomes.

And so, my concept for that play was there were three characters. Character one was a collector, and his parents had this massive collection of gnomes, and there was an incident where somebody came and smashed a bunch of them. And then here’s a woman from The Garden Gnome Liberation Society. I changed that. And then the last guy was from a group called DAMAGE which was defending all mankind against gnome evil, because he believed that gnomes were secretly evil, and that they come to life. And so, it became this argument between the three characters – were gnomes good, or evil, or ceramic?

JAMES

The new play you’re working on with Lunchbox Theatre is called Spare Parts and has three characters. There’s Martin a widower living alone in the haunted apartment his wife Sarah convinced him to buy, and on the anniversary of the accidental death of his wife and daughter Emily, Martin decides to take an overdose of anti-depressants.

Then there’s Eric, Martin’s upstairs neighbour, and a former human guinea pig for pharmaceutical companies, who is now developing and promoting a new Life Style System that focuses on exercise, recreation, and meditation through colouring as a pathway to an enjoyable life.

And finally, there’s Sarah, Martin’s dead wife. As Martin trips through his various symptoms, side-effects, and visions, we meet Sarah as a memory. In life, Sarah had a business taking people on tours of haunted buildings. She knew the story of Lester – who had been found dead in a heritage building – presumably payback for a romantic tryst. When she heard the apartment was coming on the market, she knew she had to convince Martin to buy it and move in. These three characters…

NEIL

Well, four if you count Lester.

JAMES

Four characters are caught up in a story about suicide, depression, guilt, religion, and the supernatural. First question, how much of that is based on personal experience?

NEIL

Well I didn’t know this at the time, but I did struggle with anxiety and depression. It was more anxiety, I think. Depression I didn’t know how to define. I didn’t know anything about mental health really. Depression to me was sadness, as a writer. As a clinical term it’s something else. What I was struggling with was my inability to focus and accomplish things and constantly feeling like I was getting lapped by younger writers or whatever. I was like why can’t I get anything done?

Recently I’ve been diagnosed with ADHD and it was such a relief to finally know what I’ve been struggling with my entire life really. But, before I was diagnosed I was buying a book by Peter Shankman called Crazy Publicity Stunts and Why Your Company Should Do Them because I was thinking of doing a street theatre project that was sort of a social media experiment. And beside that book, in the people who bought this book also bought section, was another book by Peter Shankman called, Faster Than Normal. How to hack your ADHD brain and unleash your super power. And I was like, I want to read that. I ordered both of them. And that book  explained my entire life, my entire history, and I was like Oh, my God. That’s my childhood. This is high school. University. All of those things, and I could see how things went sideways

And when you’re a writer and you sit down to write something it’s work. The first draft is always fun, but fixing it and fine tuning it that’s work, and if nobody’s breathing down your neck waiting for a draft then it’s easy to just let that one sit there and start something new. So, I have a lot of different projects that haven’t seen the light of day because I haven’t been able to focus. I started Spare Parts years ago, and it was part of my mental health journey.

The other thing with ADHD is that when I need to focus I can hyper focus. That’s the H part. As an adult it’s not hyper activity it’s impulse control. And so, yesterday I was writing solid for five to six hours on the play because I have to give them something to read by Monday so we can start to work on it.

JAMES

Who are you working with.

NEIL

Col Cseke is the director. Graham Percy is playing Martin. Matt McKinny is Eric, and Julie Orton is Sarah. And some things have changed already from your introduction. I’ve cut the daughter. They rent the place they don’t buy it. I know I’ve made that note before about Eric being a Guinee pig so he knows what the prescription is and what it does, because I need somebody in there to help detail what’s going on for the audience because your brain is a complex machine. That’s what fascinated me about this idea in the first place, because when I was struggling with those anxiety issues I talked to my doctor about it – this was years ago – and she gave me a trial prescription of Escitalopram which is a serotonin inhibitor in a way. And when I got the pills they came with warnings.

JAMES

The side effects?

NEIL

It was a crazy.

JAMES

Scary list?

NEIL

It’s supposed to help you, but like how could it maybe do that to you.

JAMES

Do the exact opposite.

NEIL

Well if you have suicidal tendencies it could amplify that.

JAMES

That’s frightening.

NEIL

Yeah, and I’m like, do I want to take this, and so you know I decided at the time I don’t think this is for me. But I kept the information and that’s what started it.

JAMES

That’s what started this play six or seven years ago?

NEIL

More than that – I think, 2007 is what my hard drive tells me was a first draft. So, I’ve learned a lot in the last eight or nine years. Mostly in the last year. What’s always interested me as a writer are the odd outlying people. Spare Parts is kind of about that. It’s about people just on the outskirts of regular society. Like the neighbor, Eric’s character. He’s trying to rediscover his purpose by starting this sort of life style system.

JAMES

It’s kind of a religion he’s working on?

NEIL

It’s open to all religions, because in his theory religion is part of the problem because of people bickering over the differences between theirs, and yours, and whatever.

JAMES

So, his philosophy could be placed over any faith?

NEIL

Yeah, his philosophy of life is to find the things that make you feel good because you’re only here for a finite amount of time.

JAMES

What are you hoping to accomplish in next week’s workshop?

NEIL

What I love about playwriting is it’s all about questions. Dramaturgy is all about questions, hopefully. And I don’t mind suggestions, but questions are great because I will write them all down, because a question from anyone – whether it’s from an actor, or a stage manager, or an audience member, represents a certain percentage of that population. There’s a lot more people who will have that same question. I lost you for two or three lines because you were hung up on something, so I always feel like you have to address those with what’s the simplest way for me to make that question go away. If it’s that kind of question.

I was just reading this book, Damn Fine Story, by Chuck Wendig who’s a novelist and a writing blogger. Terrible Minds is his blog. In his book, which is about story telling more than anything else, he uses Die Hard as an example. And at the root of it he says stories are about characters. Stories are rooted in character, and so a character has a problem, and then how they try to solve that problem is the story.

JAMES

And they either solve it, or they don’t.

NEIL

But what he pointed out – Bruce Willis’s character’s problem, John McClain – I only know that because he keeps referring to him in this book, but his problem is that his wife left him for this job in LA, and he’s a New York City cop, so he’s flown out at Christmas time to convince her to come home to get his family back together. And coincidentally all of this stuff goes down with Alan Rickman, and terrorists, and the tower, and him not having his shoes on – those are all coincidental pieces of the puzzle of I’m just trying to get back together here with my wife.

JAMES

And that’s what makes it work – the human element. You mentioned something in a previous interview when you were asked, “What do you think art is?”  You said, “I suppose art is an expression of human emotion.”  Why do you think we have this need to examine our emotional connection and reaction to other people, the world, and ourselves?  

NEIL

I think that there are so many unanswered questions that we have. You know I took first year philosophy when I was at University and it was all Plato’s Republic and you couldn’t make me read that book – it was like painful. If it had been a survey course of all the philosophers I think I would have really gotten into it with different perspectives and stuff.

JAMES

Maybe theatre is philosophy on stage?

NEIL

Yeah, kind of. It’s trying to explain what it means to be a person, because we don’t know what happens after we die. As artists I think we’re always trying to reflect back, and sometimes it’s a fun house mirror reflection, but you know it’s also a compulsion. And I think the ADD is part of it too. I just started doing collage work with my photography. A few years ago we were in Paris for my wife’s 50th birthday and I saw all these numbers every where, and I just started taking pictures of numbers – like address numbers and here and there, and I bought one of those big cheap print things for ten bucks form Homesense or whatever, and I pasted all of these photographs over top of it as a present for my wife, and here’s our entire Paris trip on one canvas, and you could see us in some of them, and some of the pictures were tiny, and I have no idea the compulsion that drove me to do that, but it felt like something I needed to do.

JAMES

It tells a story.

NEIL

Yeah, for sure and it’s something you can spend some time with it’s not just like, “Oh yeah, I’ve seen that.” You can really sort of dive in and look at all those little details

JAMES

Do you think that’s what your plays are like? Like in terms of your process it reflects what you’re doing with your photography, because you’ve got all these different ideas, all these little bits, and now you’re putting them together, and the play itself when the audience comes to it is the experience of all these little pieces.

NEIL

Yes, and the takeaway will be different for everyone, you know, I think. Especially with this. There’s so much crazy content in this play. There’s an artistic epiphany in my play John Doe Jack Rabbit. There’s a moment where the TV’s broken and they’re stuck in this cabin they’re on the lam and this one guy Gordy is reading a book – it’s this trashy horrible romance novel called Ravaged at Rush Hour. But then he gets so sucked into this book – as if he’s never read a book before – and he has this moment where he’s like, the person who wrote this book wrote it down so I would know what it feels like to be Jessica in the cab or whatever it was, right? And that was one of those things. That’s what playwriting is about. What art is about. This is what it’s like to feel like I feel, and I put it into this painting for you to grasp that concept, or I put it in this play for you to go – wow that’s what’s going on in your head.

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Spare Parts is one of eight new plays being developed through The Stage One Festival of New Canadian Work at Lunchbox Theatre from May 25th to June 9th.

2018 Stage One Festival of New Canadian Work Free Reading Schedule

Spare Parts by Neil Fleming – Friday, May 25, 12:00PM
The Happiness Equation by Peter Fenton & Scott White  – Friday, May 25, 6:00 PM
The Art of Kneading by Helen Knight – Saturday, May 26, 12:00 PM
Paul’s Grace by Anna Cummer – Friday, June 1, 12:00 PM
Candemic by Arun Lakra – Friday, June 1, 6:00 PM
Wo De Ming Shi Zhang Xin En by Kris Vanessa Teo – Saturday, June 2, 12:00 PM
Go for Gold, Audrey Pham by Camille Pavlenko – Friday, June 8, 12:00 PM
Reprise by Mike Czuba – Saturday, June 9, 12:00 PM

This interview has been edited for length and condensed for clarity.

Playwright Wendy Froberg: A Woman of a Certain Age

Posted on by James Hutchison
Wendy Froberg – Actor, Playwright, & Psychologist

Wendy Froberg, Playwright & Actor: “Is life a search for truth? I think ideally it is. I think people that go off into the light happily – however you want to say it – those are the people that have somehow discovered the more profound fundamental truths about life. I always tease people and say, “No one is lying on their deathbed saying they wished they’d worked at the office more or wished they’d partied more.” You know generally what gives people a sense of peace and meaning – again because we’re talking about aging meaningfully – is that they made those profound human connections. They struggled, but they overcame. They had loss, but they healed from that. They were transformed. And I think the happiest people are the ones who live most truthfully.”

Wendy Froberg is an actor, playwright and psychologist and this month Calgary audiences will have a chance to catch her award-winning play, A Woman of a Certain Age, from May 13th to 19th at Knox United Church. The play won “Best of Fest” at the 2015 Calgary International Fringe Festival and since then has received strong reviews and successful runs at the Edmonton, Lethbridge, Regina and Winnipeg Fringe Festivals.

“… a stellar performance… hits a nerve…what a show!”
Louis B. Hobson – Calgary Sun

“…honest, entertaining…a convincing portrayal…emotionally poignant”
Clare Clancy – Edmonton Journal

“…expertly done…astute…warm, funny…you will enjoy the hour”
Lisa Campbell – Winnipeg Jenny Revue

The play is an entertaining and insightful story about six women who are trying to cope with the demands of family and career as they struggle with the physical and emotional challenges of growing older in a culture obsessed with youth and beauty. I sat down with Wendy to talk with her about her play and how she got into playwriting.

Poster for A Woman of a Certain Age by Playwright Wendy Froberg

JAMES HUTCHISON

Tell me a little bit about how you got involved in playwriting?

WENDY FROBERG

I was an actor in high school, and I did a little bit of directing, but my parents weren’t thrilled about me becoming someone in the arts, so I put theatre away for many years and pursued a career in psychology. But as an adult, I got back into acting, and I started auditioning, and I realizing there were limited opportunities for women. And since I had lots of stories I wanted to tell, and I’d always liked writing, I decided to try writing plays

JAMES

Well psychology isn’t totally different than writing and acting, because you’re looking at motivation and characteristics. Where do you see the connections between psychology and playwriting and acting?

WENDY

Well that’s absolutely right, as a psychologist, or as an actor, or as a writer you’re looking at human beings and their motivations. And when we talk about a character’s dramatic arc, for example, the idea that a character changes from the beginning of a play or movie to the end of it that’s certainly similar to what we do in psychotherapy. We want somebody to change from the beginning of the process to the end of the process. I was actually out of psychology for a number of years while I was pursuing playwriting, acting, and directing, but I’ve always felt like I was doing psychology because I was doing it through my art. I was digging into a character or creating a character in my writing.

JAMES

Can you tell me about the genesis of your play, A Woman of a Certain Age?

WENDY

As you know, as a playwright, often whether we intend to or not, parts of ourselves end up being in the play. Whether they’re done literally or whether they’re done from our emotional experience. As I became older and passed out of the ability to play the ingénue roles and got married and had children I began to realize that I was beginning to have a different currency in the world. I wasn’t looked upon the way that I was when I was younger. There are a lot of issues about growing older that have to do with the physical aspects of aging. It’s when you go from being someone who can turn a head when you walk into a room, to being someone that becomes somewhat invisible. And that’s actually a tagline I use when I’m promoting my play and talking about it. The women that I’m portraying are struggling to age with meaning and grace in a culture that’s obsessed with youth and beauty and wants to make them invisible.

JAMES

You’ve done some talkbacks with the play. What sort of conversations have you had with people after they’ve seen the play? When it’s the actor playwright sitting there – what are some of the themes that get discussed?

WENDY

It’s different things for different people. There’s a character in the show who’s a widow as well as an aging mother and she’s suffering from dementia and living in a care home and I get a lot of women who say, “I’m going through exactly that with my mother.” And often, they’re tearful and they say, “That’s exactly how she behaves.” And they’re grateful for the fact that somebody recognizes how difficult it is to watch your parent go through that.

I also have a theme that runs through the show about physical appearance and women often say, “Yeah I’m struggling with the concept of whether or not I should get Botox or should I get a facelift or should I have the courage to let my hair go gray and be natural and embrace the concept of aging because that’s a difficult thing to do, because if you acknowledge that you’re older then people will make assumptions about you and think you’re ready to go out to pasture.” And in the play I’m never judgmental about whether someone wants to do that or not. I think a good play poses questions. You never want your play to be preachy. You never want your play to simply be about your point of view that you’re forcing on your audience.

JAMES

Do you find people take away hope from the play after seeing it?

WENDY

I think they do. I always say that it’s sometimes humorous, that it’s sometimes poignant, but it’s always truthful because that’s what I want to go see. A show that’s truthful and genuine.

JAMES

You mentioned truthful. That’s an interesting idea – because when we see acting that is truthful and sincere it has impact. But what about life itself and theatre’s reflection of life – do you think that life is a search for truth?

WENDY

Is life a search for truth? I think ideally it is. I think people that go off into the light happily – however you want to say it – those are the people that have somehow discovered the more profound fundamental truths about life. I always tease people and say, “No one is lying on their death bed saying they wished they’d worked at the office more or wished they’d partied more.” You know generally what gives people a sense of peace and meaning – again because we’re talking about aging meaningfully – is that they made those profound human connections. They struggled, but they overcame. They had loss, but they healed from that. They were transformed. And I think the happiest people are the ones who live most truthfully.

JAMES

You’ve done the play at a number of fringe festivals. Tell me a little bit about that fringe experience and travelling across Canada. What was that like?

WENDY

Well in 2012 I had been touring as an actor with a fringe show that had gone to Calgary, Regina, Winnipeg, and Edmonton. When I go to fringe festivals I work the lineups really hard. That’s how we get our shows promoted to a large extent. You work the lineups for other shows. And you hand out flyers and you tell people about your show and you get them to know a little bit about you as a performer and or as a writer. And I kept noticing the demographic. The demographic was me. They were middle-aged women. And there were a lot of the husbands and boyfriends with them but the women were the ones that typically decided which shows to see. And I had this play in my head because I recognized there’s an audience here so I think I’m going to write it. You know it’s like Field of Dreams. If you write it they will come – because we love to see ourselves portrayed truthfully and with a certain amount of dignity on stage.

JAMES

How much has the show changed from when it started?

WENDY

When I first presented the play it was at the Calgary One-Act Play Festival in 2013 where it won best script and I had a different director the first time around. My director wanted to try a lot of different things so we had projections and a lot of technical stuff and it ended up being quite cumbersome and crisis ensued with things not working the way they were supposed to.

JAMES

Projections didn’t go, the lighting cue was missed, the music lost.

WENDY

Yeah, things like that. When I ended up working with my next director Valerie Ann Pearson, who is a gem, I can’t speak highly enough about her…

JAMES

She was my junior high drama teacher.

WENDY

She is the loveliest person ever.

JAMES

And her husband, Pat, was my radio instructor at SAIT.

WENDY

I love Pat. He’s just a doll. I love them both. Anyway, I just approached her, out of the blue, because I didn’t really know her, but I’d seen her on stage – you always know those people on stage more than they know you. And she liked the story and I talked to her about what I felt – which was that the story got lost in all the bells and whistles – and she said absolutely. She said, “I think this needs to be told really really simply because it’s the story. If you have a strong story you don’t need all that other stuff.”

And since I was thinking of doing it for a fringe I was like absolutely, because another thing about the fringe is you get ten minutes to set up your show and five minutes to strike your show, because the next theatre group is coming in to perform. And so you better have a pretty lean mean machine working there, especially for a one-woman show where it’s just me or me and my son. So now when I write things, I always write things with that in mind. Would this work at a fringe festival? Could it be transportable and quick to set up?

And because the play is easy to set up I’ve also gone on to perform it privately. I’ve done it in people’s living rooms – I’ve done it in people’s guest houses – I’ve even done it in hotel ballrooms.

JAMES

Have play. Will travel.

WENDY

Have play. Will travel. That’s my name. I’m thinking next year, because I took this year off of fringing, I’d like to go beyond Winnipeg. This means I don’t think I’m going to drive, which means I’m probably going to have to rejig my show so it doesn’t even have a set – which happens a lot in fringe shows. Or, have something simple I can pick up locally.

JAMES

I like that for the title of something – Beyond Winnipeg.

WENDY

Beyond Winnipeg, I like that.

JAMES

Beyond Winnipeg, the life story of Wendy Froberg.

WENDY

Yeah, yeah I like that. Have Play. Will Travel. I like that one too.

This interview has been edited for length and condensed for clarity. Last updated August 29, 2019.

An Interview with Playwright Dale Lee Kwong: Ai Yah! Sweet and Sour Secrets

Posted on by James Hutchison

“It’s been my goal to have a play at Lunchbox Theatre since 1978. I was in grade twelve when the Stage One program first started, and I don’t even know how I ended up going to all the Stage One readings but I did, and I made a mental note to myself that someday I would like to have a play at Lunchbox.” – Dale Lee Kwong

Calgary Playwright Dale Lee Kwong
Calgary Playwright Dale Lee Kwong – Photo by: Tung Bui – illusionistproductions.com

One of the things I love about Lunchbox Theatre is that many of the productions you see on their stage feature local playwrights whose work was developed through the Stage One Festival of New Canadian Work. This season alone features several plays that were developed through the festival including Book Club II: The Next Chapter by Meredith Taylor-Parry, Flight Risk by Meg Braem, and the upcoming and very funny Ai Yah! Sweet and Sour Secrets written by Dale Lee Kwong.  

Dale not only writes plays but also writes poetry, essays, and creative non-fiction. Her essays have been published in Somebody’s Child: Stories of Adoption, A Family By Any Other Name: Exploring Queer Relationships, and the Malahat Review. Her poetry has appeared in Canadian Literature, Modern Morsels, and The Calgary Project: A City Map in Verse and Visual. Dale often performs at local literary events and sometimes speaks at inclusive churches and organizations like PechaKucha, TALES and The Coming Out Monologues.

I spoke to Dale about her dream of having a play performed at Lunchbox and the journey her play, Ai Yah! Sweet and Sour Secrets, took to go from page to stage.

Jamie Matchullis as Jennifer, Chantelle Han as Lilly, Ben Wong as Charlie, and Kelsey Verzotti as Jade in the Lunchbox Theatre production of Ai Yah! Sweet and Sour Secrets – Photograph by Benjamin Laird

JAMES HUTCHISON

When did you get into writing?

DALE LEE KWONG

I’ve always been a writer. I have poems framed in cardboard and typed on Manila paper from 1971 that I gave to my family at Christmas. I wrote a community column for about ten years when I lived in Crescent Heights that was told from the point of view of my dog, Magoo. And in my family I’m always the one that gets called upon to do the toast to the bride or the speech. But my real writing career started about fourteen years ago at the end of a relationship. I went to a writing workshop in Edmonton called Women Who Write and took some introductory writing classes. Classes which didn’t actually critique your material so much as just read it back to you and say what struck them.

JAMES

So, it’s a workshop to encourage the writing process?

DALE

Yes, it’s very much for emerging writers. And I realized I had things I wanted to say and so, the first year after my break up I started enrolling in creative writing courses at the University of Calgary. I took three poetry classes with Tom Wayman, and he’s an awesome professor. During that time I won the CBC Poetry Face Off in Calgary, and that got recorded and aired nationwide, and that got voted on by listeners, where it placed third.

JAMES

What a fabulous boost for the ego.

DALE

It was. At the same time Alberta Theatre Projects and the Alberta Playwrights’ Network ran a 24-hour playwriting competition. I entered, and my first play, which was really just a scene, was called – Is Normie Kwong Your Uncle? And it won a special merit award which gave me a free dramaturgical session with Ken Cameron at the Alberta Playwrights’ Network.

I wasn’t even sure what APN was, but after I met with Ken I sent a proposal for an as-of-yet unwritten play to Rona Waddington at Lunchbox Theatre and she commissioned the play in the fall of 2005. I wrote notes and outlines, but I didn’t actually write the play until February 2006 in another 24-hour playwriting competition, which is so well suited to me because I worked in television as a news editor. In television we don’t start cutting the news for the six o’clock show until around three in the afternoon. And then from three to six you hit the ground running, and it’s intense, and that’s the kind of scenario I love. So my writing is always last minute and rushed. I’ve tried to change that, but it’s just part of my process.

JAMES

So, was that the play that became the play being produced at Lunchbox this season?

Dale Lee Kwong Playwright, Steve Gin, Brenda Finley, Michelle Wong, Francine Wong, Pat Mac, Nicola Zylstra
Dale Lee Kwong, Steve Gin, Brenda Finley, Michelle Wong, Francine Wong, Pat Mac, Nicola Zylstra – at the Glenbow Museum for the Alberta Playwrights’ Network Discovery Prize workshop and reading, November 2006

DALE

Yes, this play has been in development since it was first commissioned in the fall of 2005 and written in February 2006. It’s taken twelve years to get to the stage. And some people think it’s autobiographical, but it’s actually not. There are elements of truth in it, and there are true stories in it.

JAMES

So, what you’ve done is taken personal experience as an inspiration and then created the play out of that. What are some of your thoughts about this twelve-year journey?

DALE

Well, when I started I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. I’d never written a play before. But one thing that worked to my benefit as a playwright was my day job as a news editor. A news editor takes the raw material that a reporter shoots with her photog (cameraman) and helps it become a better product. And one of the things that entails is taking interviews that are five to twenty minutes long and pulling out 20-second sound bites. So in a sense – I’ve been working with dialogue for twenty-six years.

I’d also taken a writing workshop at the Banff Centre from Fred Wah about a form of Japanese poetry called Utanikki. In Utanikki you take two pieces of text and chop them up and then you put them back together in some form, and just by taking two completely different subjects – for example, a recipe for making scrambled eggs and a piece about coming out to your family and mashing them together a relationship is created between these two topics that didn’t previously exist. Many of my writings employ this method. Two types of writing blended together. I have poems where there’s haiku blended with free form.

Jamie Matchullis as Jennifer and Kelsey Verzotti as Jade in the Lunchbox Theatre production of Ai Yah! Sweet and Sour Secrets By Dale Lee Kwong – Photograph by Benjamin Laird

In the play I had this story about a lesbian and her girlfriend, and eventually they decide to move to Vancouver to get away from her family. But in between those scenes I had another entire play. It was a reality game show like Survivor where the lesbian girlfriend was being forced to come out to her family through a competition. There was a character like Jeff Probst, and there was this ancient Chinese sage character named Connie-fucius who would spout out fortune cookie lines.

Over the years I worked with a lot of different directors and dramaturges who encouraged me to remove the Survivor scenes from the play, but it was honestly my favourite part. I loved it! And I loved the character of Connie-fucius.

Lunchbox Theatre – The Early Days – Bow Valley Square

Rona Waddington never scheduled it for a production, and after she left Lunchbox I resubmitted it to Pamela Halstead when she was artistic director, and she was really interested in it, but by then she had already submitted her own resignation. So she set up a meeting between me and Glenda Stirling who was the incoming artistic director. Glenda had already programmed her first season,  but she was interested in it for the following year, but then Glenda left. So I’d submitted the play to three different artistic directors and it had fallen through the cracks each time.

The other thing you need to know is that it’s been my goal to have a play at Lunchbox Theatre since 1978. I was in grade twelve when the Stage One program first started, and I don’t even know how I ended up going to all the Stage One readings but I did, and I made a mental note to myself that someday I would like to have a play at Lunchbox.

JAMES

But isn’t that fascinating – that there’s that connection from thirty years ago – no forty years ago.

DALE

78, 88, 98, 2008 – oh my God, forty years!

JAMES

Four decades.

DALE

That makes me tear up thinking about that. That’s why this play is so special to me. Lunchbox is my favourite theatre company, and I make no bones about saying that. I’ve been donating to them for years, and I’ve been volunteering there, and I think they’re one of the best treasures in Calgary.

Chantelle Han as Lilly and Ben Wong as Charlie in the Lunchbox Theatre production of Ai Yah! Sweet and Sour Secrets by Dale Lee Kwong – Photograph by Benjamin Laird

JAMES

So what happened next?

DALE

After Glenda left, in comes Mark Bellamy. I knew Mark vaguely from Vertigo Theatre – and you’d think I’d show him my script right away, but I was gun shy having experienced several disappointments. So, I got to know Mark better, and he got to know me better, and I finally said to Mark, “You know, I’ve got this script that was workshopped here, and it kind of fell through the cracks.” He asked me what it was about and after I told him he said, “Send it to me.” So then I had this opportunity to send it to him, and do you think I sent it to him? No, because by that time it had been workshopped so much I didn’t know where I was at, and I thought I should get him a clean version. So, it took me a year to revise it and send it to him and he got back to me within a month, and gave me a workshop.

At the workshop Mark gave me the choice of a couple of directors and I chose Trevor Reuger from APN whom I had prior dealings with. He had helped me with another script I had started. I told Trevor my creative process and how I’m late with everything and not to worry because I was a news editor, and I’m used to tight deadlines, but before we started the workshop, Trevor suggested, that for the sake of time, we leave the Survivor bits out for now and he said, “If you can show me how they advance the storyline then we’ll start putting them back in.” I was sort of reluctant to do that.

JAMES

Sounds like a clever strategy from your dramaturge.

DALE

Yeah, so the first day we missed two Survivor scenes, and they were funny, and I was like – how can I justify getting them in?

JAMES

So, for the whole workshop you were trying to push them back in?

DALE

Well by Thursday I knew Survivor wasn’t coming back. The play had changed. Everything was fluid. I was doing rewrites every day. But there was this fight scene between Jade and her mother which I’d always struggled with because I didn’t have that fight with my mother in real life when I came out.

Ben Wong as Charlie, Jamie Matchullis as Jennifer, Kelsey Verzotti as Jade and Chantelle Han as Lilly in the Lunchbox Theatre production of Ai Yah! Sweet and Sour Secrets – Photograph by Benjamin Laird

DALE

When I first came out it was in ’93, and I wrote the play twelve years later. I came out before Ellen Degeneres came out, and that was big news. She came out on the cover of TIME magazine. I came out to my family – all in one day – at my mom’s house. I told my cousins first, and at dinner I told everybody’s parents. The ones who had the most trouble with it were the cousins in the 50 to 70 year range, but everyone over 70 was fine with it. In my experience of coming out – senior citizens don’t care that much – you know – life’s too short – do what you want. I had one relative who was ecstatic to finally have a lesbian in the family – that was surprising too.

So, anyway, I had written the play forward to the fight scene and written the play backwards from the fight, but I couldn’t actually write the fight scene. There was just a blank page.

And we got to Friday, before the public reading, and we were reading the script, like we did every morning, and the actor basically went from the last line before the blank page to the first line after the blank page and I went, “No wait. There’s a fight scene there.” And they all went, “What?” And I said, “Well that’s what the blank space is.” And Trevor said, “Where are the words?”

And I said, “I was hoping we could workshop this and get something out.” And Trevor said, “Dale, there’s an audience coming in an hour and a half to see your play. You have to have some words there.” And I said, “Well yeah, but I’ve struggled all the way forward and all the way back – I just need some help.”

Finally Chantelle Han who was playing the mother said, “I think I would ask them to leave, but I need to say something first.” Then the actor playing Jennifer or Jade said, “Well maybe such and such could happen.” And that gave me a little bit. And I think we all worked it out together. I was scratching out lines and adding lines and telling them things. I have no idea what that page looked like on their scripts, and when they actually read it at the reading it wasn’t typed. It was just hand written notes. That script literally got written an hour before it was read.

JAMES

But the audience didn’t know that, and I saw that reading, and it was a lot of fun. There were a lot of laughs. People loved the play, and I remember mentioning to you how much clarity had come into the play from when I had read it probably a year and a half to two years before that if not more. So now that the play is being produced are you excited about going into the rehearsal process?

DALE

Even though I’m not as much of a green horn as I was twelve years ago I’m still a newbie. This is my first big production. So, there’s a bit of a learning curve, but I’m really lucky because one of my mentors in the theatre community is Sharon Pollock whom I’ve known since 2006, and over the last few years we’ve become really good friends because we walk our dogs together.

Rehearsal for Ai Yah! Sweet and Sour Secrets
Jamie Matchullis, Kelsey Verzotti, Ben Wong, and Chantelle Han rehearse a scene from Ai Yah! Sweet and Sour Secrets

Sharon is wonderful. Last year she had her own new play Blow Wind High Water at Theatre Calgary and she had a revision happening on another play at Stratford and I was going through stuff on my end and so I could ask her questions like, “Should I go to the rehearsals?” And Sharon was the first to say, “It’s your right to go to the rehearsal. Not all playwrights do. In fact, most directors would probably discourage it, but you’re emerging – you’re a rookie – you should go to them all.” She said, “Just take a book, and be there if they need you, and listen once in a while, and see what things they struggle with, and you’ll learn.”

You know I always say to emerging artists, particularly artists in their 20s, I say, “You have age on your side. You can plead complete ignorance. You can say, I don’t know. I’ve never been to a dress rehearsal? Can I come to your dress rehearsal? I’ve never been to a first read. Can I come to your first read?”

Ben Wong as Charlie, Jamie Matchullis as Jennifer, Kelsey Verzotti as Jade, and Chantelle Han as Lilly in the Lunchbox Theatre production of Ai Yah! Sweet and Sour Secrets – Photograph by Benjamin Laird

DALE

The other thing you can do if you’re an emerging writer or artist is volunteer. I have been ushering at Calgary theatres for more than ten years. Almost every theatre company in the city uses ushers, and if you usher you get to see the play for free, and you meet the people behind the scenes. So there are all these people that I’ve met along the way, and I’ve been supporting them for ten years, and I finally have something they can come to.

JAMES

Playwright Dale Lee Kwong at Lunchbox Theatre 2017/18 Season Launch
Dale Lee Kwong at the Lunchbox Theatre 2017/18 Season Announcement with former Lunchbox Artistic Producer Mark Bellamy Photograph by Carol F. Poon

And genuine friends are happy for you.

DALE

Yes, I get that. I feel the love. At the official season announcement last February I just burst into tears. My best friend got a picture of it, and it’s one of my favourite pictures. Like you say it was a forty year journey. I didn’t even do the math. I’m bad at math. I’m not a good Asian.

JAMES

You can say that joke, I can’t.

DALE

You can credit it to me.

***

Dale also wanted to take this opportunity to thank the many people who have contributed to the development of her play over the years. Here is a list of the actors, directors, and dramaturges who have offered their time, talent and support in the creation of Ai Yah! Sweet and Sour Secrets.

Lunchbox Theatre – Stage One workshop, May 2006

  • TV Host/Charlie Wong – Steve Gin
  • Lillian Wong/Connie-fucius – Jacey Ma
  • Jade Wong – Elyn Quan
  • Jennifer Smith – Karen Johnson Diamond
  • Dramaturg/Director – Ken Cameron

Alberta Playwrights’ Network – Writing in the Works excerpt, Oct 2006

  • TV Host – Grant Lunnenburg
  • Lillian Wong/Connie-fucius – Sharon Pollock
  • Jade Wong – Laura Parken
  • Jennifer Smith – Francine Wong
  • Director – Sharon Pollock

Alberta Playwrights’ Network – Discovery Prize workshop and reading, Nov 2006

  • TV Host/Charlie Wong – Steve Gin
  • Lillian Wong/Connie-fucius – Michelle Wong
  • Jade Wong – Francine Wong
  • Jennifer Smith – Nicole Zylstra
  • TV Host/Stage Manager – Patrick MacEachern
  • Dramaturg/Director – Brenda Finley

filling Station Magazine – flywheel reading for Chinese New Year, Feb 2008

  • Charlie Wong– Ben Tsui
  • Lillian Wong– Jasmin Poon
  • Jade Wong – Francine Wong
  • Jennifer Smith – Elan Pratt
  • Connie-fucius – Jade Cooper
  • TV Host – Emiko Muraki
  • Director – Dale Lee Kwong

Lunchbox Theatre – Stage One workshop, June 2016

  • Charlie Wong – Mike Tan
  • Lillian Wong – Chantelle Han
  • Jade Wong – Ali DeRegt
  • Jennifer Smith – Julie Orton
  • Dramaturg/Director – Trevor Rueger
Poster for Ai Yay! Sweet and Sour Secrets at Lunchbox Theatre

Dale Lee Kwong writes poetry, plays, and creative non-fiction. Third-generation Chinese-Canadian, her work explores Chinese-Canadian history, diversity & inclusion, adoption, and LGBTQ issues. Dale is passionate about the importance of Chinatowns across North America, and the fight to save them from gentrification. Dale plans to keep writing about the past and present, in hopes of shaping the future! 

Lunchbox Theatre is one of the most successful noon-hour theatre companies in the world and produces one-act plays that provide patrons with an engaging and entertaining theatre experience. Lunchbox produces seven plays per season, as well as the Stage One Festival of New Canadian Work where many of the plays produced by the company are developed. Lunchbox is one of Calgary’s longest-running professional theatre companies and is located in downtown Calgary at the base of the Calgary Tower.

Tung Bui is a Calgary photographer and videographer that is passionate about visual storytelling. He loves the challenge of trying to shoot outside the lines of the viewfinder. So if you’re looking to capture your memories in a unique way…let his imagination work for your vision.

This interview has been edited for length and condensed for clarity.

DOWNLOAD: James Hutchison Interviews Playwright Dale Lee Kwong – Ai Yah! Sweet and Sour Secrets