Joe Perry in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde. Photo Fifth Wall Media
The Vertigo Theatre production of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde promises love – betrayal – and murder – and it delivers all three in a highly theatrical production all brought to life by a terrific cast under the artful direction of Javier Vilalta.
Joe Perry takes on the role of the tortured genius in a physically demanding and nightmare-filled performance. Daniel Fong is the voice of reason as Dr. Jekyll’s friend Hastings Lanyon. Grant Tilly plays Gabriel Utterson whose investigations eventually reveal the true relationship between Hyde and Jekyll. And Allison Lynch plays Eleanor Lanyon a smart complex woman who finds herself being drawn towards darkness and obsession.
This is a story of mystery and horror and the lighting, costumes, live music performed by the actors, the towering brick walls, and intermittent fog all add to the growing sense of dread and doom. Nick Lane’s script is faithful to the original story while providing some new and exciting elements. The play works best when there are big bold moments as we follow Jekyll – a man whose desire to provide the world with scientific knowledge – is thwarted by the monstrous pleasure-driven animalistic side of his own humanity.
I contacted Joe Perry to talk with him about the production and the process of bringing this classic tale to the Vertigo stage.
JAMES HUTCHISON
What does Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde say about the light and the darkness that dwells in all of us?
JOE PERRY
It’s really looking at that duality and what happens when desperation and unintended consequences put you in a situation where you have to reconcile your own morals. Dr. Jekyll starts out doing his research looking to leave his mark on humanity but there is this unintended consequence. He feels released physically. Because as Dr. Jekyll he’s trapped in this physically ill body and when he becomes Hyde he’s free. But that freedom has consequences. And now he has to make a choice. Does he move towards that freedom that he gets with Hyde, or does he continue his work with the integrity that he originally intended?
And I also think part of the exploration is that we all have thoughts that are not something we’re proud of or something that we would say out loud, but the repression of that – of its very existence – is not going to make them go away. It’s just going to bottle them up and then they’ll explode out in an animalistic way. I think possibly that’s a bit of what people are afraid of in themselves. And being Hyde gives him this freedom and this release but at a cost to everyone around him and at the cost of his own sanity and at the cost of people’s lives and safety. And yet he can’t not do it because that freedom is so tantalizing.
Daniel Fong, Grant Tilly, and Allison Lynch in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde. Photo Fifth Wall Media
JAMES
Besides yourself, this production features three other well-known actors to Calgary audiences. There’s Daniel Fong, Allison Lynch, and Grant Tilly. They’re all playing multiple characters in this version of the story. What was the rehearsal process like? What sort of discussions amongst yourselves did you have about Jekyll and Hyde as you brought the story to life?
JOE
Well, our director Javier really challenged us, and we had some conversations about those moral questions that the play was bringing up. And it was a really free and interesting room to be in. I’ve never been in a rehearsal hall like this because Javier works so visually. He has these beautiful stage pictures in his head that he’s putting together. And he sees all these design elements and the four of us are kind of like in this playground made of that but we’re not necessarily seeing all of the elements as he’s seeing them. So, we were able to play and extend in a way that you don’t get to do in a lot of plays.
And I think you see that in a lot of the characters. I think Grant, Allison, and Daniel have transformations as actors on stage as profound as the Jekyll and Hyde transformations. And their characters are just so wonderfully crafted by each of them that it’s really an honour to share the stage with them. They’re people that I have worked with before or I have watched on stage and I have nothing but the utmost respect for them. So, I am just sitting here in full gratitude every day to be able to share the stage with them.
Joe Perry and Daniel Fong in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde. Photo Fifth Wall Media
Grant Tilly and Joe Perry in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde. Photo Fifth Wall Media
Grant Tilly, Allison Lynch, Joe Perry and Daniel Fong The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde. Photo Fifth Wall Media
Daniel Fong and Joe Perry in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde. Photo Fifth Wall Media
Joe Perry in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde. Photo Fifth Wall Media
Allison Lynch and Joe Perry in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde. Photo Fifth Wall Media
Joe Perry and Daniel Fong in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde. Photo Fifth Wall Media
JAMES
You mentioned that Javier uses a lot of physicality. And the play contains theatrical moments – moments that stick with you – and it’s exciting to see a production embrace that. How did some of those key moments evolve?
JOE
There’s a fight in the play that Javier had seen in his head and we kind of choreographed that together. He knew when he wanted it to go in slow motion and when he wanted it to be an extended, brutal, very theatrical sort of fight sequence. So that was sort of starting from the design first and then putting the movements into what he wanted to do.
But then with something like the first transformation from Jekyll to Hyde, he gave me a framework of where the lights would be and then he let me sort of free flow into it and he’d say, “More. You can go more.”
My favourite bit as an actor and something that I haven’t had the opportunity to do since theatre school is the final shattering of Hyde where it gets really expressionistic in the physicality. That was another bit where Javier told me to, “Just surrender to the physicality. This is not a moment of realism. This is a moment of extension. This is a shattering of the psyche and just surrender to it.”
And being able to do that as an actor is cathartic because you get to extend beyond what you would see in a naturalistic play, or what you would be able to experience in a naturalistic play. So that catharsis was really fun. And Javi had real specific ideas of what these characters would look like and then when he put them over into our hands he was really open to seeing where we were going with them and there was a real give and take and support.
JAMES
How is it to be back on stage and in particular the Vertigo Stage?
JOE
Honestly, it’s just an absolute joy. I was lucky enough to do The Extractionist by Michaela Jeffery here last year. That was the first play I’d done in four years. I mean, it’s my lifeblood. I missed it. I’ve missed it through the pandemic. Stepping away from the stage for that long was never the intention. And the Vertigo audiences are generous and committed. And it’s just a pleasure being able to play these characters on stage. I can’t even really begin to express my gratitude.
JAMES
Jekyll and Hyde are pretty iconic characters in the Western Cannon. They’re pretty well known and played by all sorts of actors in all sorts of adaptions including Spencer Tracey and Lon Chaney during the silent movie era.
JOE
That was one of the first ones I watched.
JAMES
What did you think?
JOE
It was great. Interesting and totally different themes.
JAMES
Yeah, totally. And that’s the neat thing. Do you think maybe part of what makes something a classic is its ability to be flexible in its interpretation?
JOE
Yes. The short answer is yes. The long answer is that this narrative is in almost everything that we watch. It’s Fight Club. It’s The Hulk. Jekyll and Hyde is in almost every movie. It’s in almost every play. Everybody knows Jekyll and Hyde on the macro scale. They know – take a potion and become someone else. It’s The Nutty Professor. And you can explore so many different themes. Nick Lane’s adaptation explores some very specific experiences in his life. Javier’s interpretation of Nick’s adaptation is Javier exploring his own things. And then my acting of Jekyll and Hyde is exploring my own thing. It’s just such a wonderful and rich conduit to explore the human condition because essentially, it’s about the duality of man, which I think is a pretty age-old question in philosophy and art.
Allison Lynch in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde. Photo Fifth Wall Media
JAMES
There’s a female character Eleanor Lanyon who is new to the story in this adaptation and she seems to have a dual nature in many ways too.
JOE
Yeah, she’s a rich and complex character as well. And the way that Allison portrays Eleanor is super rich and complex. She’s dealing with more than just the potion and the science. She’s dealing with the constraints of a marriage that isn’t fulfilling. She’s dealing with the constraints of the time in society. And this is totally just my own look at that character. But I think she is really struggling with so many different constraints that the men in the play aren’t. We’re doing things for our hubris and honour. She’s doing things for her freedom and her autonomy.
JAMES
So, you got to play Jekyll and Hyde and there are other iconic characters like Hamlet, Poirot, and Sherlock Holmes in the Western canon. Are there other characters – well-known or not – that hold a particular fascination for you that you would like to play?
JOE
I mean, Hamlet is an easy answer. But if we’re going with Shakespeare Prince Hal has had a special part in my heart for a long time. Just an interesting character to me. And I’ve always wanted to do Sam Shepard’s True West with my brother Stafford. But to be honest my passion lies in playing new characters. I love new work. I love working on new plays. I love incepting new characters.
JAMES
What is it that fascinates you about the creation of new work?
JOE
It’s alive. Reprising old work is alive too. You can always look at something through a new lens. But having the ability to take new interesting voices from our communities that are speaking about current contexts and being able to explore that in a way where it’s not going up against an existing benchmark that’s already there or trying to contextualize something from another time into this time I find really exciting. I think there are so many unique interesting Canadian – Calgarian – Albertan voices. And every time I see these new works at any festival or on the larger stages I find it thrilling. Workshopping or acting in a new play in any sort of capacity or a new movie is my passion for sure.
JAMES
That’s where your heart lies, does it?
JOE
Part of it. But it’s always fun to go and see iconic characters. Everybody knows Jekyll and Hyde or Hamlet and the question is how can I authentically bring myself to this role? How can I make it something that’s current and something that’s interesting and something that says something that nobody else could have because so many people have said their own thing with it already? So that’s been a lovely challenge and something I always welcome. And I’m really proud of the work, and I’m really proud of the room, and I’m really proud of all of the people that are involved in this production.
***
VERTIGO THEATRE presents
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde By Robert Louis Stevenson. Adapted by Nick Lane Four actors bring Robert Louis Stevenson’s gothic horror to life.
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde features Joe Perry as Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde, Daniel Fong as Hastings Lanyon, Allison Lynch as Eleanor Lanyon, and Grant Tilly as Gabriel Utterson with Bernardo Pacheco and Tiffany Thomas as Understudies.
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is written by Robert Louis Stevenson and adapted by Nick Lane. Directed by Javier Vilalta, Set Design by Lauren Acheson, Costume Design by Ralamy Kneeshaw, Lighting Design by John Webber, Sound Design, Composition and Musical Direction by Kristin Eveleigh, Dialect Coaching by Laurann Brown, Fight & Intimacy Direction by Brianna Johnston, Stage Management by Laurel Oneil, Ashley Rees and Caaryn Sadoway.
Nathan Schmidt as W.O. Mitchell in the Rosebud Theatre production of Magic Lies: An Evening with W.O. Mitchell.
Magic Lies: An Evening with W.O. Mitchell is a joyful, fun, and feel-good night at the theatre all brought to life on the Rosebud Theatre’s Opera House stage in a brilliant performance by Nathan Schmidt.
Based on the works of W.O. Mitchell and penned by his son and daughter-in-law, Orm Mitchell and his wife Barbara, the play weaves together an entertaining and insightful script that travels between Mitchell’s fiction and the story of his life.
Mitchell was a writer, performer, and teacher who is best known for his 1947 novel Who Has Seen the Wind. The novel beautifully captures small-town life and the world as seen through the eyes of a young Brian O’Connal growing up on the Saskatchewan prairie. Mitchell is also known for his Jake and the Kid stories which were popular radio plays during the 1950s. No stranger to the stage himself W.O. Mitchell was a storyteller who performed his one-man shows across Canada and penned several plays for the stage including The Kite, The Devil’s Instrument, and The Black Bonspiel of Wullie MacCrimmon.
I contacted Nathan Schmidt to talk with him about the production and the challenges of performing a one-man show. You can read that interview by following the link above. I also spoke with Orm Mitchell to talk with him about his father’s work and the journey Magic Lies: An Evening with W.O. Mitchell took to reach the stage.
JAMES HUTCHISON
Orm, every literary work takes a journey from idea to finished work. Tell me a little bit about the journey that Magic Lies: An Evening with W.O. Mitchell took to reach the stage.
ORM MITCHELL
Well, it’s a journey that took close to twenty-six years. My father had prostate cancer so his last three or four years were not pleasant. He was in a hospital bed in the family room on the first floor of the house in Calgary and he was withdrawing more and more. And Barb and I wanted to keep him engaged. So, we suggested, why don’t you do a collection of your performance pieces that you’ve done over the years in your one-man shows? And he loved the idea. So that came together in a book called An Evening with W. O. Mitchell.
And as soon as that came out, two people came to us who wanted to use that book and turn some of the pieces into a one-man stage show, but Eric Peterson who they wanted to do the piece said he felt uneasy about doing this while a living author is still around and especially an author who has really put his distinctive stamp on the pieces.
There were other people who came to us over the years, and we were always in the role of acting as script consultants. And it never really got off the ground. So about 2008, Barb and I decided we’re going to write this ourselves. We did a really thorough rewrite and we sent it out to Theater Calgary and a few other places, but no one bit. So, we put it in a drawer and forgot about it.
Then during COVID, we realized that theatres were going through a very rough time. They couldn’t have an audience. There was no money coming in. And we’ve been really fond of Rosebud Theatre because they’ve produced W.O. Mitchell’s plays. They did Jake and the Kid, and they did The Kite twice, and we’d heard how wonderful Nathan Schmidt was playing Daddy Sherry in The Kite.
And so, I wrote to Morris Ertman the artistic director of Rosebud and said, “Look, Barb and I were thinking of making a donation to you guys because we know all theatres are struggling and we came up with what might be a better idea. Why don’t you do this one-man show and use Nathan Schmidt because we hear he’s been wonderful. And it’s inexpensive. It’s one person. You can stream it. And you might be able to get some income from streaming it during the COVID years.”
And I never heard back from Morris until about a year ago, July. And he said, “Orm, could you send me that script? I seem to have lost it.” And so, I sent it to him, and we saw him last November and he said, “I have decided to do this show and to use Nathan Schmidt.” It was close to twenty-six years from when the idea first came up to finally getting it on the stage.
Nathan Schmidt as W.O. Mitchell in the Rosebud Theatre production of Magic Lies: An Evening with W.O. Mitchell.
Nathan Schmidt as W.O. Mitchell in the Rosebud Theatre production of Magic Lies: An Evening with W.O. Mitchell.
Nathan Schmidt as W.O. Mitchell in the Rosebud Theatre production of Magic Lies: An Evening with W.O. Mitchell.
Nathan Schmidt as W.O. Mitchell in the Rosebud Theatre production of Magic Lies: An Evening with W.O. Mitchell.
Nathan Schmidt as W.O. Mitchell in the Rosebud Theatre production of Magic Lies: An Evening with W.O. Mitchell.
JAMES
You call the play Magic Lies: An Evening with W.O. Mitchell and I’m curious about the choice of title. Why did you choose Magic Lies? What’s the significance behind that?
ORM
That’s one of his favourite phrases. And he always used to say when people asked him about his creative process and his stories that every bit is the truth. What he meant by that was that he was a very observant watcher of the world, and he would pick up bits and pieces of people or details of landscape.
And I remember he used to tell his writers in his writing groups that you have to draw on your own autobiographical experience and find images, bits and pieces of sensuous detail, and you have to appeal to your reader’s sense of smell, taste, and touch. You’ve got to make them see something that you are describing. You’ve got to make your reader smell what it is that you are describing. All of those sensuous details that he collects and puts together to form and create that illusion of reality draw the reader into the story. So, every bit is the truth, but the whole thing is a lie. A magic lie. It’s a magic lie because it’s the catalyst that helps a reader explore consciously and unconsciously various universal human truths.
Morris Ertman and Orm Mitchell Opening Weekend Talk Back of Magic Lies: An Evening with W.O. Mitchell
W.O. Mitchell with Orm Mitchell at Trent University – Honorary Degree – 1985
W.O. Mitchell and Merna at Mabel Lake Cottage 1984
Mitchell Family Vacation
W.O. Mitchell reading at Trent University
Orm and Barb Mitchell celebrating the publication of their W.O. biography with his mother’s favourite champagne, Piper Heidsieck’s.
Orm and Barb Mitchell at Chapters Book Signing
Orm Mitchell fishing the Highwood River in 2018
Barbara and Orm Mitchell
Barbara and Orm Mitchell
W.O. Mitchell
JAMES
What do you think your father’s reactions and musings would be if he was able to see himself portrayed on stage?
ORM
My father was a master at timing, and he really admired an actor who had that sense of timing. You know someone who pauses in the right places and lets the audience into the story with those pauses. He was once told by someone when he was doing an acting role, “Bill, you’re overdoing it. It’s like an orange. Don’t squeeze all the juice out of the orange. Leave some there for the audience.” It’s a lovely metaphor for an actor who knows not to overdo it. And Nathan was just so good at that, and my father would have admired that.
JAMES
It takes a lot of discipline to put in the pause.
ORM
It’s a wonderful storytelling technique. And Nathan did this beautifully. In the story in which the boys blow up Melvin’s Grandpa in the back house when the dynamite goes off Nathan as W. O. stops and looks at the audience and takes out his snuffbox and he takes a piece of snuff and the audience is hanging there. Okay, the dynamite has gone off. The old man is in the back house. What happens next? And it is a lovely long pause, and then Nathan as W.O. looks at the audience and says, “Let me tell you something about dynamite.” And the audience just loved it.
The other thing my father would have admired was Nathan the actor has to make the role his own. He can’t just mimic my father. He uses bits and pieces of W.O. but at the same time the storytelling if it’s going to be effective – if it’s really going to zing with the audience – Nathan has to make it his own. By opening night he had made it his own and as the show goes on that role will more and more become his, and I think my father would have recognized that and would have admired that very much.
75th Anniversary Edition of Who Has Seen the Wind by W.O. Mitchell. Illustrated by William Kurelek. Available from Freehand Books.
JAMES
Let’s talk a little bit about Who Has Seen the Wind your father’s best-known work. It was published in 1947 and was an immediate success. And at the time the Montreal Gazette said, “When a star is born in any field of Canadian fiction it is an exciting event…Here in this deeply moving story of a Western Canadian boy, his folk and his country, emerges a writer whose insight, humanity and technical skill have given the simple elements of birth and death, of the inconspicuous lives of common man etched against the bleak western landscape, the imprint of significance and value.” Why do you think this book and this story resonate so deeply with its readers?
ORM
Here you have a book that is set in the prairies during the dirty thirties. It’s very specific. One of the things that critics in Canada used to say was, “Who cares about Canada? Who cares about a story where Bill and Molly meet in Winnipeg and fall in love?” W.O. was one of the first, if not the first writer, to put the Saskatchewan Prairie and the Alberta foothills on the literary map.
But then the corollary to that is you want people whether they are in London England, or Australia, or China or wherever they are to read that story, and you want that story to come alive for them. It’s what Alistair MacLeod used to say, “When you write your stories about a specific place and characters you want to make them travel.” I love that line. You want to make them travel. Who Has Seen the Wind sure as hell travelled. It has been translated into Chinese. And it has been translated into South Korean. It has sold over a million copies in Canada, and I think it will continue to travel.
One of the reasons why I think it travelled is that my father was wonderful in understanding the child’s world. He was really good with kids, and he managed in Who Has Seen the Wind to get inside the head of a kid in a way that has rarely been done. He manages to dramatize how Brian a four – five – six – seven – up to eleven-year-old looks at the world – and that’s universal. He managed to create characters and in particular Brian looking at the world in a way that resonates with readers all over the world.
Saint Sammy and Brian: Saint Sammy calling down the wrath of the Lord to smite Bent Candy’s new red barn. Illustration by William Kurelek from the 75th Anniversary Edition of Who Has Seen the Wind. Available from Freehand Books.
JAMES
So, I got the 75th-anniversary edition of Who Has Seen the Wind out of the Calgary library and it’s a very beautiful book. It came out last year. Has beautiful illustrations. The typeset. The cover. The paper that you use. It’s really just a work of art. And I came across a passage early in the book where he’s describing Brian lying in his bed trying to fall asleep.
“For a long time he had lain listening to the night noises that stole out of the dark to him. Distant he had heard the sound of grown up voices casual in the silence, welling up to almost spilling over, then subsiding. The cuckoo clock had poked the stillness nine times; the house cracked its knuckles, the night wind stirring through the leaves of the poplar just outside his room on the third floor strengthening in its intensity until it was wild at his screen.”
And that’s just beautiful and that reminded me of my own childhood and being in bed listening to the sounds of the house before falling asleep, and I know this is probably an impossible task, but do you have a favourite passage? Is there a passage you could select from your father’s writing that is for you perfect?
ORM
There are so many. I was thinking about Who Has Seen the Wind and the last three pages of Who Has Seen the Wind – is a wonderful prose poem. And in fact, when he was writing that he had his Bible open at Ecclesiastes and he was trying to catch the rhythms and pauses and repetitions of Ecclesiastics. It’s a very significant passage for me because I can remember standing in the High River Cemetery when we buried my father and that was the passage that I read from as part of our family ceremony.
But there’s one passage from How I Spent My Summer Holidays which is kind of a companion novel to Who Has Seen the Wind. You can imagine Brian, now grown up and going into adolescence. How I Spent My Summer Holidays at the human level is a much darker book than Who Has Seen the Wind. But there’s a scene right at the beginning where Hugh the narrator, who’s in his 70s, has gone back to his prairie town roots and he says,
“As I walked from Government Road toward the Little Souris, the wind and the grasshoppers and the very smell of the prairie itself – grass cured under the August Sun, with the subtle menthol of sage – worked nostalgic magic on me. These were the same bannering gophers suddenly stopping up into tent-pegs, the same stilting killdeer dragging her wing ahead of me to lure me away from her young; this was the same sun fierce on my vulnerable and mortal head. Now and as a child I walked out here to ultimate emptiness, and gazed to no sight destination at all. Here was the melodramatic part of the earth’s skin that had stained me during my litmus years, fixing my inner and outer perspective, dictating the terms of the fragile identity contract I would have with my self for the rest of my life.”
And I just love that prose that is so rich in detail. And my sense of the three most significant novels that he wrote are Who Has Seen the Wind his first novel, The Vanishing Point, and How I Spent My Summer Holidays. Those are books that will last, I think.
W.O. Mitchell
JAMES
I know it’s hard to sum up the life of a man in a short interview, after all, you and Barb have written a two-volume biography about your father. But how would you describe your father, the writer, the public person? And then how would you describe W.O. Mitchell, the man – your father?
ORM
The main thing he wanted to write was a story set in the real world and to create characters that interact in a very realistic way in order to explore larger human truths. But he wasn’t just a writer who typed stories that would appear in print. He also was an oral storyteller, and he gave his one-man shows – and he always used to call them one-man shows – because he didn’t give the usual literary readings where someone is introduced and then he reads a passage and takes questions from the audience. He gave one-man shows where he went on stage and he performed. And even something like his Jake and the Kid series on CBC – those are oral narratives. He really drew on the oral storytelling traditions of Western Canada.
Hugh, Willa, and Orm along with their mother Merna, Demi Tasse their minature poodle, and Beau their Chesapeake Bay Retriever listen to W.O. tell a story. High River 1956
And I suppose that’s one of the reasons why both Barb and I have this feeling – not an obligation – but this feeling that we want to continue that legacy of my father’s writing, but also both Barb and I were very moved on opening night because we felt we had achieved the goal of continuing his legacy as a storyteller on the stage as well.
As a private person, as a father, he really knew the child’s world. Not only did he know how to write about children, but he also knew how to react with them, and how to interact with them. And my brother Hugh and my sister Willa and I were blessed with a father who was sympathetic and who knew that child’s world, and he played with us, and he was really a wonderful parent to have and to grow up with.
Nathan Schmidt as W.O. Mitchell in the Rosebud Theatre production of Magic Lies: An Evening with W.O. Mitchell.
Magic Lies: An Evening with W.O. Mitchell is a joyful, fun, and feel-good night at the theatre all brought to life on the Rosebud Theatre’s Opera House stage in a brilliant performance by Nathan Schmidt.
Based on the works of W.O. Mitchell and penned by his son and daughter-in-law, Orm and Barbara Mitchell, the play weaves together an entertaining and insightful script that travels between Mitchell’s fiction and the story of his life.
Mitchell was a writer, performer, and teacher who is best known for his 1947 novel Who Has Seen the Wind. The novel beautifully captures small-town life and the world as seen through the eyes of a young Brian O’Connal growing up on the Saskatchewan prairie. Mitchell is also known for his Jake and the Kid stories which were popular radio plays during the 1950s. No stranger to the stage himself W.O. Mitchell was a storyteller who performed his one-man shows across Canada and penned several plays for the stage including The Kite, The Devil’s Instrument, and The Black Bonspiel of Wullie MacCrimmon.
I contacted Orm Mitchell to talk with him about his father’s work and the journey Magic Lies: An Evening with W.O. Mitchell took to reach the stage. You can read that interview by following the link above. I also spoke with Nathan Schmidt to talk with him about the production and the challenges of performing a one-man show.
JAMES HUTCHISON
What was your reaction when you first read the script and knew you were going to be playing W.O. Mitchell?
NATHAN SCHMIDT
I’ve done a couple of W.O. Mitchell shows. I’ve been in Jake and the Kid, and I’ve done The Kite twice, so lots about the script felt familiar, and I had experienced W.O.’s writing. So, I knew that he was funny, but the scarier thing was I thought, “Oh, man, I’ve got to play this real person who people know.” Whereas Daddy Sherry or Jake – those are characters. Those live in the imagination. It’s a different thing when somebody lives in the real world. And Morris Ertman our Artistic Director would say “When we open Magic Lies: An Evening with W.O. Mitchell all the family is going to come and watch the show.” And I was like, “Oh, my gosh. I’m going to have to play the father or the grandparent of these people in the audience.” So that was the most intimidating thing.
Morris Ertman and Orm Mitchell Opening Weekend Talk Back of Magic Lies: An Evening with W.O. Mitchell
Barbara and Orm Mitchell
Orm and Barbara Mitchell at Chapters Book Signing
75th Anniversary Edition of Who Has Seen the Wind by W.O. Mitchell. Illustrated by William Kurelek. Available from Freehand Books.
W.O. Mitchell
JAMES
Even a one-man show needs a director. For this show, it was Karen Johnson-Diamond. How did the two of you work on the play? What was that process like?
NATHAN
As an actor, Karen has done a number of W.O. Mitchell plays. I think she had been in Who Has Seen the Wind and Jake the Kid and she had a love of W.O. Mitchell as well. So, she came in with a lot of love for the stories and a lot of knowledge about W.O. Mitchell. But she’s also just a wonderfully comedic actor and performer, and so her sense of comedy and her sense of how this thing would play was really just spot on. And all of the direction that she offered to me was really helpful to clarify the joke and to clarify how the show moves forward.
What she really loved about the structure of the play is how it follows him through his life from like six to seven when he loses his father – to ten to eleven – to high school – all the way through to Daddy Sherry and misses a bit of the middle, because as W.O. Mitchell says in the story – he’s kind of focused on the first part of life and the end part of life. Those are the concentrated bits that it seemed his imagination was drawn to.
So, we would do a lot of work with linking. Linking how this story moved to this story and then to this story. And W.O Mitchell had a way of making it feel like it was all sort of off the cuff, but in the end, it was all very planned, and he was coming back to stuff he’d set up earlier and he had really worked out how the punchlines worked and how the ideas and stories came around. So, we did a lot of work like that to try and get into the head of the writer and the storyteller. It was a great process. She was wonderful.
The Kite – Rosebud Theatre – 2019
The Sunset Limited – Rosebud Theatre – 2016
Freud’s Last Session – Rosebud Theatre – 2014
Doubt, A Parable – Rosebud Theatre – 2014
Fiddler on the Roof – Rosebud Theatre – 2008
Man of La Mancha – Rosebud Theatre – 2009
The Spitfire Grill – Rosebud Theatre – 2017
A Christmas Carol – Rosebud Theatre – 2020 & 2021
The Diary of Adam & Eve – Rosebud Theatre – 2011
Oliver! – Rosebud Theatre – 2010
Damien – Rosebud Theatre – 2018
The Drawer Boy – Rosebud Theatre – 2006
May & Joe – Rosebud Theatre – 2011
The Secret Garden – Rosebud Theatre – 2010
Jake and the Kid: Prairie Seasons – Rosebud Theatre – 2011
Underneath the Lintel – Rosebud Theatre Production – 2013
The Kite – Rosebud Theatre – 2005
The Lion, The Witch And the Wardrobe – Rosebud Theatre – 2014
An Inspector Calls – Rosebud Theatre – 2016
Stones In His Pockets – Rosebud Theatre – 2022
The Trip to Bountiful – Rosebud Theatre – 2023
Cotton Patch Gospell – Rosebud Theatre – 2013
It’s a Wonderful Life: The Radio Play – Rosebud Theatre – 2013
Nathan Schmidt as W.O. Mitchell in the Rosebud Theatre production of Magic Lies: An Evening with W.O. Mitchell.
JAMES
This is your 50th performance on the Rosebud stage and so I’m wondering when you look back on all the parts you’ve played do some of those characters have a lasting influence on you in any way?
NATHAN
Yeah, there’s a couple that really stick – that I learned a lot about myself from and sometimes that’s uncomfortable. I was in Doubt by John Patrick Shanley and that was a really uncomfortable play for me to be in. It taught me a lot about who I am when I’m helpless and so those things kind of stick. The character teaches you something about who you really are because your instincts as a person are either in conflict with the character or line up with the character in ways that are surprising. That was a big one. I did a Cormac McCarthy play called The Sunset Limited and that was also another hard one.
As W.O. Mitchell says, those characters marked me. And I think the thing I love most is the relationship that characters create with the audience. One of my favourite things I ever got to do was The Drawer Boy by Michael Healey. I was playing one of the farmers. In The Drawer Boy, this young kid comes to hang out at the farm and find out about these two old guys. It was an older character, and I was younger, and I was really worried because it didn’t feel real. I didn’t feel in it, and I was really up in my head about it and nervous, you know, that I was a fraud or I was going to fail, and then one of the things that actually cinched me into it was – I don’t remember how it came about – but maybe it was offered by Morris and he said, “Here’s a toothpick. Just chew on the toothpick for the whole show.”
And so, I would have these toothpicks in the show, and I just chewed on this toothpick the whole time, and it helped me feel like that cranky grumpy guy in that story. Well, you know, a bit later – after the run, I got a little blue index card in the mail and on it was glued a toothpick, and on the backside, this person had written, “We attended the show and your Morgan was like seeing my grandfather alive again, and he passed away in 80 whatever.” She was so clear that she had an experience of seeing her grandpa that day, and I was able to offer her unbeknownst to me an experience like that. And so, you know that play holds a special place for me too because of that story. It’s quite a lovely play.
W.O. Mitchell reading at Trent University
JAMES
W.O. Mitchell perfected the technique of appearing not to be performing. To be spontaneous and to appear as if he was telling the story for the first time. So, he’d draw his audience in through deliberate mistakes or confusion, he’d say, “Oh, did I tell you? Or I forgot to mention.” And in your performance, you totally capture that sense of spontaneous and unrehearsed storytelling. So much so that my son heard a couple of ladies leaving the theatre and they enjoyed the show, but they remarked that they were surprised that you seemed to lose your place and had to go back. Which means to them it was completely natural. So, to me you’re one of those actors who really achieves a feeling of reality in your performance no matter what part you’re playing. That’s a long speil just to ask, how do you do that?
NATHAN
Morris said this the other day and I think it’s true. I think when we get curious about people then we kind of fall in love with them. And I think it’s true of the characters we play, and I think in the rehearsal there is something about just falling in love with the reality of whoever they are and whatever drives them. You’ve heard it said that one of the actor’s adages is don’t judge the character even if you’re a villain. Villains are motivated by what they believe to be true or good or at least by what is in their best interests.
And I think the actor’s job overall – and W.O. Mitchell did this in spades too – is to collect people. To watch people and to observe what they do and why they do it without judgment and to allow them to steep into you and to become part of you and the energy of being them and how they participate in the world. It’s partly that and it’s partly just having fun. It’s just fun to try and make it as real as possible.
Saint Sammy and Brian: Saint Sammy calling down the wrath of the Lord to smite Bent Candy’s new red barn. Illustration by William Kurelek from the 75th Anniversary Edition of Who Has Seen the Wind. Available from Freehand Books.
JAMES
You know, it’s interesting that you mentioned fun, and I think W.O. Mitchell is able to capture the feeling of childhood and play and imagination and curiosity. What are your thoughts about the child within you in terms of that living in you as an actor?
NATHAN
I have three kids now and when I watch the four-year-old and two-year-old play for them every game is real. They just believe it. My little guy just thinks he’s the Flash. He thinks he’s the fastest thing going and so he’ll be like, “Watch this Dad.” And he will just run through and he’s like, “You didn’t even see me, did you.” And I remember as a kid wearing my North Star Velcro runners and those are the fastest shoes, and I can run so fast in my North Star shoes because they’ve got shooting stars on them and that makes my feet fast. And I believed it to be true.
Our adult logic brains know it’s not true, but it could be in your imagination. And the audience does the same thing. They all know they’re not seeing W.O. Mitchell. Karen said, “Nobody’s coming to see the actual W.O. Mitchell. They’re coming to have an experience of W.O. Mitchell and if we deliver it in a way that doesn’t give them any reason to doubt too much – then the audience will let their imagination see me as him.” And so, you know, I think our imagination is a remarkable and amazing gift, and I think as creatives we may access it a little bit more at times, but it’s there for everyone. They just have to access it.
JAMES
This is storytelling at its simplest and best. One actor. Minimal set. What is it like for you as a performer doing a one-man show? How do you create that connection with your audience?
NATHAN
I’ve done a number of one-person shows now and it gets to be a lonely room as opposed to having one or two other people or a group of actors to hang out with. It can be lonely in that way, but the audience really becomes the best friend of the show. And especially in something like this where it’s such a direct address. The whole point of the show is the relationship of the storyteller to the audience. At the end of the play, W.O. says that this is the thing – the energy of a live audience responding to a story – that’s where it’s at.
And for me, that is where it’s at. I love that relationship. I’m always curious about it and excited about it. Sometimes puzzled by it, you know, sometimes it lands really well, and people just explode with laughter and sometimes they don’t, and you can’t put together all of why that is, but people get to be who they are and so it’s a really lovely sort of bond that I’ve come to love about performing. And that’s the amazing thing about storytelling in theatre. And at the end of the play he says,
“You know…the energy of death lies behind everything I’ve written—it’s death and solitude that justify story telling. Telling stories draws us human aliens together in the mortal family, uniting us against the heart of darkness, defending us against the terror of being human. Writing’s a lonely act—like playing a dart game with the lights out. You have no idea whether your darts are coming anywhere near the bull’s-eye. But this (open handed gesture to audience)…this dilutes the darkness, gives me what all stage performers love—that immediate thrust of a live audience responding to story magic. (Looking out to audience, grins). We were flying tonight!”
“Imagine truth as a chain of great mountains, their tops way up in the clouds. Writers explore these truths, always looking out for new paths up these peaks.”
“So the stories are paths?” Pasquale asked.
“No,” Alvis said. “Stories are bulls. Writers come of age full of vigor, and they feel the need to drive the old stories from the herd. One bull rules the herd awhile but then he loses his vigor and the young bulls take over.”
“Stories are bulls?”
“Nope.” Alvis Bender took a drink. “Stories are nations, empires. They can last as long as ancient Rome or as short as the Third Reich. Story-nations rise and decline. Governments change, trends rise, they go on conquering their neighbors. Like the Roman Empire, the epic poem stretched for centuries, as far as the world. The novel rose with the British Empire, but wait…what is that rising in America? Film?”
Pasquale grinned. “And if I ask if stories are empires, you’ll say- “
“Stories are people. I’m a story, you’re a story…your father is a story. Our stories go in every direction, but sometimes, if we’re lucky, our stories join into one, and for a while, we’re less alone.”
Excerpt from Beautiful Ruins a Novel by Jess Walter
I finished reading Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter a few days ago and I really liked that passage, and I thought stories can be many things but in the end maybe the whole purpose of a story is as Alvis puts it – to make us feel less alone. And maybe it does something more. Maybe it also makes us feel more connected to each other. And in this age of disconnection and conflict and rage maybe that’s a good thing.
But I have to wonder if that’s about to change. I wonder if the creation and telling of stories is about to be disrupted.
Tom Scott – I tried using AI. It scared me.
That’s because I watched a YouTube video by Tom Scott and he had a story to tell about how he thinks AI might be about to change everything. Scott is a British YouTuber and web developer who produces educational videos across a range of topics including science and technology. Scott thinks a big disruption is coming. Artificial intelligence could soon be ushering in a revolution in how we work and interact.
What that will look like exactly – I’m not sure.
But I will say this, artificial intelligence makes complete sense to me. And it will eventually be much smarter than us. It’s something we already do. We build machines that are faster than us – such as cars and airplanes. They exceed human ability. And bulldozers and excavators and dump trucks exceed our physical strength many times over. So, of course, we’re going to eventually build machines that are smarter than us. It won’t be biological intelligence it will be machine-based intelligence and the mechanism will not be the same as our brains. After all, do machines such as excavators use muscle and bone – no. They use steel and hydraulics. So, why wouldn’t AI be based on something other than what makes our organic brains work?
Where did all the secretaries go?
So, what does this mean? On a big scale, it might mean that the old idea of work for pay and jobs and how we organize the world will change. Remember secretaries and secretarial pools? Do you remember how many people were employed as secretaries? It was huge. In 1950 if you said one day there won’t be these huge numbers of people working as secretaries people would have a hard time imagining that world. Who would do the work? How would managers handle all the filing and paperwork and scheduling? Where are the secretaries now? They’re gone for the most part – yes there are a few but in the past, secretaries offered everyone administrative support. Nowadays we have administrative assistants who provide support to the top brass. A lot of the jobs and the work secretaries did was replaced by Microsoft Office and Google Docs.
So, we’ve had lower-level jobs being replaced by programs and machines for some time now but maybe we’re on the cusp of a change where AI might be able to replace more advanced jobs. Just think how different the world would be if you could eliminate half the middle managers in your organization. Heck, maybe you could eventually eliminate 90% of managers and vice presidents and in the long run maybe even a CEO or chairman of the board. Any job that requires decision-making could be a candidate for replacement by AI. Are we there yet? No. Will we be soon? Maybe. How soon? Well, that’s partly what Tom Scott’s video is about.
Star Trek offered hope for the future.
I’ve always liked science fiction stories about artificial intelligence. Who doesn’t like HAL? Everyone’s favourite homicidal superbrain. But you know one of the things I’ve always found odd was the desire of an AI character like Data from Star Trek to be more human. Why would an AI want to be human? I’m more interested in humans that want to be more like Data. Those are the stories that interest me. Humans that desire an increased capacity for analysis and decision-making without the interference of emotion. Although I must say I do enjoy Kryten’s attempts to be more human on Red Dwarf. Kryten is the robot from the long-running British comedy scifi series about a small group of misfits returning to earth after three million years in deep space. And I get it. I understand that even a story about artificial intelligence is actually a story about being human. I mean the same goes for Chicken Little and Paddington Bear and Woody from Toy Story. All stories are about some aspect of humanity and what it means to be human. They aren’t really about what it means to be a marmalade-loving talking bear or a chicken or a toy.
And so one of the reasons I loved the original Star Trek series and Spock so much was because the Vulcan culture was all about controlling your emotions and using logic to live life and make decisions. It was a rational way of approaching the world and I loved the idea of humanity reaching for the stars and overcoming our darker tendencies. Star Trek was hopeful. And in a world where we still live with the daily threat of nuclear annihilation, I like to believe that in the future we’ll unite in a way that allows us to reach the stars and explore space. I hope that humanity lives on long into the future and that our tendency towards emotion and conflict and tribalism doesn’t prove to be a great filter. The thing is if we’re going to reach the stars and subsequently ensure our survival as a species then we’re going to need AI. We’ll need robots. We’ll need machines and computers that exceed our human ability.
I’ve actually written a play about artificial intelligence.
I’ve actually written a short play about artificial intelligence called Perfect Match. The Perfect Match Corporation provides humans with robotic companions. It’s a half-hour comedy and you can download it from my website and read it for free. If you want a good laugh or some interesting topics to chat about or are looking for a short funny and easy-to-stage comedy I can’t think of a better option than Perfect Match.
Anyway, I have rambled on for some time following my mind where it leads me. Maybe that’s a big difference between human intelligence and AI. Our brain is never quiet – it is always thinking. And it is always – regardless of how logical we want it to be – tied into our emotional and physical selves. Our needs, desires, and hungers are part of who we are and they influence our actions as significantly as our intellect. Anyway, have a listen to Tom Scott and his recent story about how backing up his Gmail and trying to fix a problem with e-mail tags led him to think – Holy Sh*t! Are things about to change? He never actually said, “Holy Sh*t! Are things about to change?” I did. That’s me using some artistic licence and a more dramatic set of words to convey the idea.
If you don’t get a chance to watch it Scott basically looks back on the previous big disruption to the world when the internet and smartphones completely transformed the way we live and how we do business. The warning shot then was Napster. Napster changed the music industry and heralded in a very different world. This time the warning shot might be ChatGPT.
Oh, and while we love stories and stories connect us I guess the question for me is – will all the stories and plays and poems and movies and music we’ll be consuming in the future be the creation of the human brain or HAL?
And then just as I was working on this blog post right on cue, I got a newsletter from Descript which I started using a few months ago to help me with transcribing my audio interviews into written text. They just published a blog post titled: The ultimate list of AI tools for creators. I’m guessing the ultimate list of artificial intelligence tools will need to be updated – constantly.
How do you write a good story? Well, I think a big part of it comes down to creating believable characters. Flawed characters. Characters that reflect the whole range of human behaviour.
In real life, people want to find love and success and figure out a way to be content with the world. And there’s certainly no shortage of books and seminars out there telling you how to meditate and find peace of mind, how to take it one day at a time, or how to reach for the stars and achieve your dreams.
If you’re looking for an insightful book that provides useful suggestions about how to live a happier life you might want to pick up The Four Agreements by don Miguel Ruiz. Have you heard about the four agreements? Do you know about Toltec Wisdom? If you haven’t – give this little book a read, or at the very least pick it up and put it on your bucket list.
The Four Agreements are:
Be impeccable with your word
Don’t take anything personally
Don’t make assumptions
Always do your best
These four agreements are a guide to reducing conflict, creating peace of mind, and fostering a better world. But when it comes to telling a good story there wouldn’t be much of a story to tell if people always told the truth and never made assumptions. People lie all the time. They’re selfish. Some are sociopaths. Do you really think a sociopath cares about anyone else?
So, with apologies to don Miguel Ruiz and nods to all the stooges, clowns, buffoons, jesters, writers, filmmakers, playwrights, poets, musicians, and scribes in the world here’s a look at the dark side of human nature – the opposite side of the four agreements. Because if you’re going to write a good story then the characters have to be believable, and people often choose the dark side – they lie and cheat and act in selfish ways. And sometimes people lie and cheat to achieve what they think is the greater good.
So, let’s look at the good side of people and the bad side of people when creating a story because no human is entirely good or entirely bad.
The First Agreement: Be Impeccable with Your Word.
The first agreement is to be impeccable with your word. To speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid using the word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. Use the power of your word in the direction of truth and love. *
That sounds like good advice. Be truthful. I like that. I don’t always do it. Nobody does. But it’s a good thing to keep in mind because lies are insidious. They can transform us and change who we are.
But it’s not just individuals that lie. Corporations lie. Governments lie. Entire nations can lie. In fact, one of the things our new information age has made faster than ever is how quickly a lie can spread until it overshadows the truth. And let’s face it if everyone told the truth Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, Mike Hammer, and Lieutenant Columbo would be out of a job.
The Flip Side of the First Agreement: Lie.
So, to write a good story why not try the flip side of the first agreement and instead of telling the truth – lie. Do not say what you mean. Gossip and use the power of your word to be deceitful, jealous, and malevolent.
Is that any way to live? Of course not. But if you’re writing a good story lying can be a useful device. Is Tony Soprano impeccable with his word? No. Does Daemon Targaryen use the power of his words in the direction of truth and love? Of course not. Does Homer Simpson always tell Marge what he’s up to in The Simpsons? Rarely.
So, if you want to write a good story let the half-truths, deceptions and lies power your story. Just remember in fiction, as in life, the lies are usually discovered. And when that happens there are usually consequences.
If you’re looking for a movie where the lie is central to the story look no further than Waking Ned Devine. Waking Ned Devine is a film set in Ireland and tells the story of a small town where Ned Devine has won the national lottery. Unfortunately, Ned is dead. And so, the entire town decides to pretend that one of the other members of the community is actual Ned so that they can claim the lottery and split it amongst all the members of the community.
It’s a wonderful film filled with genuine warmth and terrific characters, and it shows that while we often think of lies as being a negative thing – in this particular film – the lie serves to show the warmth and love and joy of being part of a small town. I’d highly recommend it. If you’re looking for a terrific warm-hearted comedy to watch, then I’d suggest you gather your own family and friends around the digital box and enjoy an evening with Ned Devine.
The Second Agreement: Don’t take anything personally.
The second agreement is not to take anything personally. You need to remember that nothing others do is because of you. Instead, what others say and do is a projection of their own reality and their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won’t be the victim of needless suffering. *
I guess that means you should forget what the critics say. Good or bad. Well unless it’s good. Good reviews help sell tickets, do they not? We are herd animals, after all, and we do seek out the opinions of others and in particular, our peer group when it comes to our choice of clothing, career options, and entertainment.
But if you allow yourself to be happy or unhappy based on the actions and opinions of others – every day will be an emotional rollercoaster. Are you happy because the sun is out or unhappy because it’s raining? We need rain just as much as we need sunshine so don’t let the weather or the opinions of others rule how you feel. But that’s a whole lot easier said than done, I know.
I mean who hasn’t been hurt? Who hasn’t hurt others? And often the hurt is unintentional. But if you’re trying to write a good story then having characters that are reasonable or forgiving or are immune to the actions and opinions of others doesn’t offer you a lot to work with. So instead of not taking anything personally maybe your characters should take it personally.
The Flip Side of the Second Agreement: Take things personally.
The flip side of not taking anything personally is to be offended. If you want to write a good story let the opinions and actions of others determine your actions. Revenge, jealousy, and anger are just three of the many emotions your characters can feel when they are easily offended or feel wronged. The pompous, the self-righteous, and the fanatic are all characters fueled by their need to be right.
Those who are offended often want revenge and without revenge, there would be no second pie thrown in a pie fight. There would be no deadly games played by Dr. Evil and Austin Powers. Sunshine or rain there would be no Frank, Charlie, Dennis, Mac, or Dee in Philadelphia. No Selina Meyer. No Liz Lemon. No Michael Scott. No Basil Fawlty. No Hangover! No Galaxy Quest! No Arsenic and Old Lace! In comedy, when you turn the other cheek, it usually gets slapped.
If you’re looking for a story where revenge drives much of the action look no further than Game of Thrones or Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan or John Wick. In all of those particular stories, revenge plays a central role in motivating the characters and driving the plot. I recently rewatched the entire series of Game of Thrones for the first time since the show ended back in 2019. Binge-watching Thrones made certain themes more obvious and one of the themes that powers much of the action for both “good” and “evil” characters is the desire for revenge.
Sansa Stark arranges for the vile and wicked Ramsay Bolton to be eaten by his own dogs. Cold-hearted and ruthless Tywin Lannister is murdered with a crossbow while sitting on the privy by his own son Tyrian Lannister. The double-crossing and lecherous Walder Frey has his throat cut by Aria Stark. Sansa, Aria, and Tyrian are easily three of the more sympathetic characters in Game of Thrones, but they are not above taking revenge. And as an audience, we love to see the underdog win. Because most of the time, in life, the underdog doesn’t win. Most of the time the underdog is crushed and destroyed and left with little opportunity for any sort of recourse, justice, or revenge.
Usually in a comedy revenge doesn’t reach such murderous heights as it does in Game of Thrones unless, of course, you’re talking about Ready or Not or Zombieland. No, in most comedies the revenge is something less lethal more like Jim Halpert from The Office putting Dwight Schrute’s stapler in a Jell-O Mold. Watching the war between Jim and Dwight trying to outsmart and outmaneuver each other is fun because the battle between the two is never won. Victory is only temporary. There are many more battles to be fought.
The Third Agreement: Don’t make assumptions.
The third agreement is to not make any assumptions. Instead, you need to find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. You should communicate with others as clearly as you can in order to avoid misunderstandings, sadness, and drama. With just this one little agreement, you can completely transform your life. *
How many times have we assumed something and then lived to regret it? The truth is we make assumptions every day. We make assumptions about people’s motives and desires and character. I think the assumption is one of the most powerful tools for writing a good story. Who doesn’t chuckle to themselves when they watch the ending scene of Romeo and Julietwhere Romeo thinks Juliet is dead, but she isn’t dead and Romeo not knowing this kills himself? Okay well maybe that’s not funny but it shows – how on stage – and by extrapolation life – jumping to conclusions can have deadly consequences.
But Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy – nobody dies in a comedy – or is that an assumption? There were more than a few deaths in The Grand Budapest Hotel and the entire world was destroyed in Dr. Strangelove. So, death and comedy are not mutually exclusive. Death being a part of the human condition is often the subject of both comedy and tragedy.
The Flip Side of the Third Agreement: Make assumptions.
So, the flip side of not making assumptions is to make assumptions. If you want to write a good story have your characters make assumptions about people’s motives and desires. Never ask questions. Assume that all gossip is gospel and that there could never be another explanation for things other than the one you believe.
Assumptions fuel misunderstandings and create characters working at cross purposes. Part of its power lies in the fun of letting the audience in on the secret. Tootsie, Mrs. Doubtfire, and Some Like it Hot would lose a lot of the comedy if we didn’t know that Tootsie was in reality Dustin Hoffman, Mrs. Doubtfire was actually Robin Williams, and Daphne was really Jack Lemmon. Other characters operate from the assumption that each of these characters is what they appear to be – a woman. But we know better, and the fun comes from the exploration of gender roles and sexual expectations in combination with the ever-present possibility of discovery.
Of course, if you want to write a good story this doesn’t mean you can’t hold something back. After all, Sleuth would lose a great deal of its fun if we knew from the start exactly what was going on. I’m assuming, of course, that you’ve read Sleuth. You have read Sleuth, haven’t you? Seen the movie? Not the Michael Caine – Jude Law version but the Michael Caine – Laurence Olivier version. If you haven’t seen it or read it maybe go and see the movie or read the play or at the very least add it to your bucket list.
One of my favourite comedies is Being There starring Peter Sellers as Chance the Gardner. In the film, Sellers plays a man of simple mind who has spent his entire life living an isolated existence in a home with a walled yard where he spends his time gardening and watching television. In fact, his entire knowledge about the outside world is based on what he’s seen and heard on the boob tube. When the “Old Man” who owns the home dies Chance is forced out into the real world for the first time.
The humour comes from the fact that the audience knows Chance is a simple man who only talks about gardening, but every other character in the story from billionaires to the Russian Ambassador to late-night talk show hosts assumes that Chance means more than what he says and thereby reinterpret his words to be much more profound. The result is that by the end of the movie Chance finds himself rubbing shoulders with the political and business elite in Washington D.C. and is even being considered as a possible candidate for President of the United States.
The Fourth Agreement: Always do your best.
The fourth and final agreement is to always do your best. But you need to remember that your best is going to change from moment to moment; it will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick, but under whatever circumstances you find yourself, simply do your best, and you will avoid self-judgment, self-abuse, and regret. *
I actually really like this agreement because it acknowledges that our best fluctuates. We’re human. We’re not machines. And so sometimes when we look back on our lives, we feel we should have done better. But understanding that we’re not always able to be in top form allows us to look at our life with a little more compassion. Maybe we were tired or hungry or had just been through some challenging life event and our ability to respond was compromised. But of course, sometimes even when we’re in top form we don’t always do what’s best for ourselves or for others.
The Flip Side of the Fourth Agreement: Always do your worst.
And of course, the flip side of always doing your best is to always do your worst. If you want to write a good story have your characters try to find the easy way out. Look for shortcuts. Lie their way out of deadlines. Make excuses. Avoid the hard work or try to get others to do it for you.
Comedy thrives on the misadventures of the underachieving incompetent. Think of Inspector Clouseau searching for the Pink Panther – The Three Stooges fixing a leaky faucet – or Homer Simpson trying to prevent a nuclear meltdown. Do the Stooges see themselves as incompetent? No. They see themselves as helpful. Does Inspector Clouseau believe in his crime-solving abilities? Of course, he does. Does Homer’s incompetence prevent him from becoming an astronaut or a secret agent? No. Instead, Homer’s incompetence combined with his predilection to being an underachiever makes the comedy twice the fun.
Of course, the other aspect of doing your worst is causing chaos and destruction. A good villain operates from just such a principle. And one of my favourite villains is Count Olaf from Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events. A Series of Unfortunate Events is the story of the Baudelaire orphans, Klaus, Violet, and Sunny and Count Olaf’s relentless attempt to steal their inheritance through a number of villainous acts including murder, kidnapping, and arson. Does he succeed? You’ll have to read the books or watch the brilliant Netflix adaptation to find out, but rest assured in the process of going after the Baudelaire orphans Count Olaf leaves behind him a rather long path of death and destruction.
In Life
So, in life, it’s probably not a bad idea to try and follow the four agreements, but if you want to write a good story then you might want to consider the flip side. Because as good as we try to be we don’t always succeed. Sometimes we get jealous. Sometimes we lie to get what we want. Sometimes we cheat. And even though life is tough we often make it tougher by how we live and the choices we make. Just consider the case of George Costanza from Seinfeld. George truly embraces the flip side of the four agreements. He lies. He takes things personally. He makes assumptions. And he seldom does his best. George is a shining example of how not to live your life.
And that’s why we have stories. We’re all flawed humans struggling to make sense of our world and our place in it. Comedy lets us laugh at our struggles and tragedy lets us weep at our flaws. Stories help us cope with our failures. They help us to understand what it means to be human. They allow us to appreciate our good side and acknowledge the dark side and help us to have a deeper understanding of the human condition.
Playwright Kristen Da Silva. Photo by Patrick Hodgson
“I wrote a comedy with a character who has terminal cancer, and I didn’t know whether that was going to work, whether people were going to be willing to go there and laugh in the same breath as they’re going to cry. I lost my aunt to the same cancer I wrote about, and you know we didn’t get to confront some things in real life, because we’re not always capable of doing that with our loved ones, but I got to confront some of those things in the play. So, I think that comedy is a doorway to some tough conversations. And I set out to entertain people, but I don’t shy away from tackling things that might be more difficult or might evoke sadness, because I think there’s something really cathartic about feeling all of those emotions in one night.”
The Rules for Playing Risk, Where You Are, and Hurray Hard are just a few of the plays where playwright Kristen Da Silva takes a comedic look at the loves, ambitions, and struggles of the everyday people in her plays. In fact, that’s one of the reasons I love her work so much. These are people you can relate to and understand and identify with. These are stories about people trying to navigate the intricate, and mystifying road of relationships, love, and sometimes even death all delivered with humour and humanity.
All the more interesting is the fact that prior to diving into playwriting and acting full-time Kristen spent the first part of her working life in the corporate world. Home on maternity leave with her youngest son, and feeling a need for some intellectual stimulation, she wrote her first full-length romantic comedy Book Club. Other plays were soon to follow including Gibson & Sons and Hurry Hard both winners of the Playwrights Guild of Canada Comedy Award.
Her most recent play, The Rules of Playing Risk, a touching story about a grandfather and his estranged grandson getting to know each other for the first time, premiered in April 2021 in a video-on-demand production from Theatre Orangeville. I contacted Kristen over ZOOM back in February 2021 to talk with her about her creative process, thoughts on comedy, going down rabbit holes, and what she’d say to her younger self if she could go back in time.
JAMES HUTCHISON
A couple of days ago, I watched this documentary from 1964 called Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr. Leonard Cohen, and it reminded me of my childhood, because I grew up in the ’60s, and I was watching the cars and the way people were dressed, and I had this avalanche of nostalgia hit me, and I found myself diving into memories of my childhood. I was wondering, for yourself, do you have triggers that take you back to your childhood? And what was that childhood like?
KRISTEN DA SILVA
My favourite part of my childhood was camping. We used to go up to Wasaga Beach where there was a campground, and we had a trailer, and the smell of smoke from a campfire and the smell of Avon Skin So Soft still brings me right back to my childhood. My parents, like everyone, used Skin so Soft as a bug repellant.
The winters were a bit tougher because when I was seven we moved to Nobleton – which is a village surrounded by farmland. It was very different from the neighbourhood where I had spent the first seven years of my life – where there were a lot of families packed in tightly together with kids, and it just facilitated kids playing more easily. In the country to play with someone, you had to be driven to their house.
But at the campground kids used to play all day, and I remember coming back at whatever time curfew was, but all day long we just ran around and played capture the flag and explored the woods. I have great memories of that.
JAMES
I guess when I think back to my childhood and what’s different today is the sense of freedom children had to play. To explore. I remember riding all over Calgary on my bike, you know, going for miles, all over the place.
KRISTEN
Yeah, it’s very true. It’s really changed. I would lose my mind if my kids were gone all day, and I didn’t know where they were. But that was normal in the ‘80s. There were no cell phones. No way to really check-in. It was just come in when the streetlights come on.
JAMES
Supper time is when the mothers are standing on the porch shouting for the kids.
KRISTEN
One of my aunts used a whistle to call us back. When we heard the whistle, we came running. And other than that – we were on our own.
JAMES
At what point did you find yourself being on stage and telling stories, and where do you think that impulse to perform comes from?
KRISTEN
I think it started with dance. I didn’t really enjoy dance in terms of the lessons, but I remember really enjoying the recitals. That feeling when you go out on stage and you’re suddenly not as bound by your own awareness of yourself, and you can express yourself in braver ways through performance and through playing a character. I think that’s what really drew me to theatre and kept me coming back time and time again.
And I remember when I would go to a movie, I would leave the theatre and still be in that world. I was a big reader and I think I was living in a fantasy a lot of the time. Every activity I did as a kid I turned into a story for myself. I remember going skiing and weaving a tale as I was riding the chairlift about what I was there doing and where I was in the world. I spent a lot of time inside my head. Inside fantasy. And I think being on stage was an extension of that.
I first started acting in school. I believe we did Rapunzel, and I think I played Rapunzel’s mother. I played Mary in the school Christmas pageant, which was in French. I remember going to the manger and we were speaking French. And then after that, once I got into higher grades, there was a school play you could audition for every year, and I always did that.
JAMES
So, it’s interesting to me that you’ve got this storytelling narrative going on in your head and this love of fiction and literature, and then you go to university and major in political science and labour relations. How does that happen?
KRISTEN
Well, I’ve thought about it a lot because it really is strange. And the weirdest part is that my parents encouraged me to major in theatre. And I said, “No.”
I think I felt scared of failing. If I were to pursue what I really cared about – and it didn’t work out – that felt like too big a thing to put on the line. These weren’t conscious thoughts that I had back then, but now looking back on that decision I think that’s the main reason I didn’t major in theatre.
Also, it wasn’t a usual career choice at my high school. I didn’t know anyone who had done that in my peer group or slightly above my peer group. I couldn’t look to someone else and go, “Okay, so that’s a path I could take.”
JAMES
What were the university years like for you? Because I understand you did keep your foot in the theatre circle. You joined an improvisation troupe.
KRISTEN
Yeah, I kind of didn’t deliberately do that. You know honestly, when I think back to that time I was really overwhelmed by the experience of attending university, because keep in mind, like from the age of seven on, I lived in this tiny village, and we had one stoplight, and you know even going to York and seeing that many people in one place was a really new experience for me.
I don’t think I was really sitting down in an organized way and thinking through things. You have to declare a major, and I had done very well in my last two years of high school in history and in law, and I thought, “Well, I’m good at these things. I think maybe I’d like to pursue something like that.”
And then at York, in order to graduate, you have to do an arts credit in your first year, and you can pick any art. I picked theatre because that was what I was already familiar with and liked. It was because of that that I got into the improv company because the professor who taught me, Fred Thury, ran Vanier College Productions, which at that time was sort of like a theatre program for non-majors. It was where people could continue learning about the craft and perform.
He asked all the people that were in his acting class to audition for Vanier College Productions, and – I think even before that happened – they’d already cast the improv company, but somebody had left, so he approached me during class one day and basically said, “You’re going to come and be in this improv company.” It wasn’t really, “Do you want to be in this?” It was, “You’re going to be in this.” Which is sort of how Fred was. He was like, “You’re directing the next play. I see your potential, so I’m not going to give you a choice.” Which I think, given my personality, and how wishy-washy I was – is what I needed.
And after that happened, I was smitten. We were performing sketch/improv shows once a week, but we were rehearsing and writing new sketches, I think, two or three times a week. Some years I was also involved in a mainstage show. It became really busy and was also social, and you know you’d think, before class I’m just going to pop over and help with costumes, then you find yourself there for three hours. Oh, shoot, I missed my whole lecture. I really got distracted and sidetracked, and I had a lot of catching up to do on my other classes.
JAMES
You mentioned you grew up in a small village and you talked a little bit about your friends. Have you retained any friends from your childhood or the university days? And, if so, what’s it like having that long connection with someone?
KRISTEN
I have friends from my camping days. We don’t see each other very often, but once in a while we might chat over Facebook. I’m still in touch with my best friend growing up and we see each other once in a while. We’ve lived in separate places a lot since childhood. She was in Kelowna for several years and then, you know, once you have a young family, you don’t see people as often as you’d like.
The people I’ve stayed closest with are the people I met in university doing improv and doing Vanier College Productions. I’ve made a few very close friends through that, and we lost touch with each other for a little while, but we reconnected probably ten years ago. Some of my closest friends are people I met in university.
What does it mean? I mean, I think it’s just that thing of having a shared experience with someone, someone who understands how dear you hold a place that other people, who have not been a part of that, find hard to understand. We went through these experiences in university that shaped us as people, and as artists, and there’s that sort of mutual history together that matters.
And there’s just that thing of people who have been there for you through your life, the people who have been there for your major milestones, good and bad. They become the people that you trust the most, and you turn to, and in some cases, and for me, this is very true, they become your family, your chosen family.
So, they are very important to me. And particularly in the last few years, as I left my previous career behind to embark on playwriting and acting as a full-time pursuit. That was really scary. And those were the people that kept me focused, cheered me on, and bolstered me, and let me know I’m doing the right thing. And when you lose faith, having somebody there who can say to you, “Don’t lose faith, you are on the right path” is totally invaluable. That’s the role we try to play for each other.
I think anytime you see somebody who’s been successful at something often it’s because of the people around them, who support them. Maybe we don’t appreciate that enough and how important that is, because doing something all on your own and maintaining your own momentum takes superhuman confidence.
JAMES
So, I’m wondering now, at this age and with the life you’ve lived, and the wisdom you’ve gained, if you were to have a time machine and you were able to go back to the campus when you were a young student in the bar having a beer, and you went up to your younger self, what advice would you give her?
KRISTEN
I actually think the way things turned out and the path I took is exactly how it had to happen in order for me to arrive where I am, and I’m happy with where I am. I’m grateful for where I am.
So many things had to be in alignment for me to pursue this career and one of the things that absolutely had to happen was I had to go into the corporate world, because if I had not done that – I wouldn’t have had the money saved to make a go of it.
The business skills I developed are really useful as an entrepreneur, as someone who’s trying to manage their own business, if you will. I have a great agent now, but certainly, in the first few years, everything, marketing my work, negotiating, all of that was me. I learned a lot of those skills in business.
And I also wouldn’t want to tell myself to avoid things that were painful or avoid things that you could look back on as regrets, but you can’t, because as cliche as it sounds, all the things that you’ve done and gone through become where you draw your stories and your understanding of the world from. Life is an incredible teacher. There is no shortcut to learning some things.
So, I wouldn’t want to go back to myself in university and tell myself anything that might change what I decided to do, because I think what I decided to do is why I’m where I am right now.
JAMES
So, you’d buy her a beer and say, “You’re on the right path, kid.”
KRISTEN
Yeah, I think I would probably just give her a pat on the head and maybe tell her it’s going to work out. I think that’s what I would do.
JAMES
I want to talk a little bit about some of your thoughts on theatre and writing, but I want to start by asking you about some of the writers you like and admire and who they are and why you happen to like their writing, and I’m thinking particularly playwrights, but it could be novelists, or other writers too.
KRISTEN
I’m really interested in who else is writing comedy, and I’m big into Canadian writers in general. I’d hate to leave anyone off a list because I have so many friends who write. If I were to pick a single play that really moved me recently it would be What a Young Woman Ought to Know by Hannah Moscovitch. I listened to it on the Play Me Podcast where they do radio readings of Canadian work.
There are some American playwrights whose work I like as well. Annie Baker comes to mind. Currently, I’m reading a Lynn Nottage play called Sweat, which is fantastic.
And in terms of other reading, I tend to gravitate to things that are not comedic. The last novel I read was The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead, and I highly recommend it. I finished it at 2:00 am and, without giving too much away, there’s this twist, one of those gut-punch sort of things. The power of really good writing amazes me.
JAMES
We talked about you majoring in political science and I have a BA in sociology. And I’m wondering if political science and sociology are about exploring the balance between the individual and society. And I’m wondering if that’s a fundamental subject of drama, right? Conformity versus individualism, and the tension between those two. So, I’m wondering what are some of your thoughts about freedom and conformity and stories? Do you see any of those themes in your own writing or in writing that you like?
KRISTEN
I view reading as one way to better understand things I have never experienced, or I never could experience myself. I don’t know how much I have to say about the specific subject of individuality versus conformity, but certainly good stories often have a character that’s willing to challenge their status quo or the status quo of the world. To make things better, and that’s certainly a theme that’s appealed to me.
I think reading things that are written from a point of view you don’t personally own can grow empathy and understanding for other people and find the commonalities between yourself and other people because there’s always something, regardless of what the story is, relatable in there. Someone has written this story, and it might be their own story, or it might be a story about their community, and that’s such a gift to be able to open a page and grow your understanding.
JAMES
So how does comedy provide insight into the world? Because you’re a comedy writer, and I agree, I like finding the comedy writers. Why do we need comedy? What does it do for us? How does comedy help us understand the world?
KRISTEN
I think it plays a huge role, and I think that’s because it’s really hard for people to be vulnerable and comedy is a way for us to put down our guard. Laughing with someone is a really quick way to find common ground. We both found something funny, and now we’re laughing. There’s a science behind what laughter actually does in our brain, and some of those brain chemicals allow us to feel a little more open for a while after we feel them. In that way, comedy is like a doorway into being able to examine ourselves without the level of fear we might feel doing that directly.
I think comedy is a huge opportunity to bring people in and have them hear what you have to say. It’s very disarming to laugh. And when people are relaxed, and they’re enjoying the story you can say some things and you can get some things across in a way that you might not be able to do off stage.
I wrote a comedy with a character who has terminal cancer, and I didn’t know whether that was going to work, whether people were going to be willing to go there and laugh in the same breath as they’re going to cry. I lost my aunt to the same cancer I wrote about, and you know we didn’t get to confront some things in real life, because we’re not always capable of doing that with our loved ones, but I got to confront some of those things in the play. So, I think that comedy is a doorway to some tough conversations. And I set out to entertain people, but I don’t shy away from tackling things that might be more difficult or might evoke sadness, because I think there’s something really cathartic about feeling all of those emotions in one night.
Debra Hale, Melanie Janzen, Kristen Da Silva in Theatre Orangeville’s production of Where You Are. Photo by Sharyn Ayliffe
JAMES
In our correspondence, I mentioned that I finally got around to watching all nine seasons of The Office and you wrote back, “Oh, that’s one of my favourite television series.” Why does The Office appeal to you? What do they do well? Why is this one of your favourites?
KRISTEN
The first time I watched The Office I was going through a very tough time. I was living on my own for the first time in my life, I had a one-year-old son, and it was a very stressful, lonely sort of time. And someone said, “There’s this show you should watch, The Office, it’s funny.”
So, I put it on one night, and there was just something so comforting about it. It was about everyday sort of scenarios where people are just going to their office job, and the company they’re in is a paper company, and everything feels kind of low stakes from that point of view, but the personal stakes are really high. Steve Carell is a genius in his role. And that character is so believable, even though he’s so outrageous. The writing is funny, the characters are solid, and you feel like the actors are having fun. It became like comfort food to me.
JAMES
You know the entertainment industry has a tendency to label people. This actor does this type of character. This writer does this type of writing. In what ways is that helpful? And as a comedy writer in what ways do you think that’s a hindrance?
KRISTEN
That’s an interesting question. I don’t know. I don’t know if there would be resistance to seeing something of mine that isn’t funny at all. I think over time, as I’ve written more, I have become more comfortable with putting more drama in my comedy, but I don’t yet feel compelled to write a pure drama, and whether or not people would embrace it – I don’t know.
As an actor, I do both. I have done a lot of comedy on stage, but I’ve done drama on stage as well. And in terms of film and TV work, it’s mostly drama. I think that some of the best comedic actors are also some of the best dramatic actors, because I don’t think the skill set is different. I just think that with comedy, there’s a technicality that sort of comes in about timing, and for some people that doesn’t come naturally to them. The really great actors are gifted with that skill, and they always say you should play a comedy like a drama. You should take it very seriously. Whatever’s going on should mean the world to your character. I think that’s what makes comedy work. If we go back to The Office, you know, Dwight is just as serious as can be. And it’s funny, because the actor, Rainn Wilson, has chosen to commit to that.
JAMES
Now that you’ve written six, seven, eight plays are you noticing any particular themes in your stories? Is there anything that you gravitate towards now that you’ve got a body of work?
KRISTEN
Oh, yeah, for sure. For sure. The same themes show up in everything. For me, it’s a lot of stuff around relationships and familial history. Mothers and daughters. Daughters and fathers. Fathers and sons. Brothers. Pretty much everything I’ve written, except one thing I think, speaks to those themes and explores the challenges inherent in those relationships. A lot of things around people trying to work out what happened in their past and make amends.
I’ve just finished writing, The Rules of Playing Risk. It’s about a grandfather and his estranged fourteen-year-old grandson who he doesn’t really know and whose father he didn’t really know either. The story is about what prevented the grandfather and his son from having a really meaningful father-son relationship and how that has impacted the grandson.
The play also deals with trauma and with PTSD. Not in a very open way, it really only deals with it through how the characters have adapted (or maladapted) to their own traumas. I was interested in the idea of how many generations does this affect – what gets passed down and how far-reaching some of that stuff is. I have a personal connection with that. And in the research for this play about this grandfather and grandson I took a lot of details from my own family history.
Both of my grandfathers were in the Second World War, and when I asked my family what my grandfathers had told them about their memories of being in the war it was sort of shocking to me that, at least in my family, they never talked about it. I mean, they would have gone through some horrific things that we now understand carve a lasting imprint on the brain and affect everything about somebody.
And I was interested in that. You know, how does a person go through this terrible thing that must have had a deep impact on him at a young age, and then come home, marry, and have kids immediately. That had to impact him and the way he parented, and it had to have impacted everyone around him. And so, I was curious to see how that showed up in my own family when I was growing up. And how does it show up in me now?
Neil Foster and Liam Macdonald in Theatre Orangeville’s production of The Rules of Playing Risk. Photo by Sharyn Ayliffe
JAMES
If you look at the plays you’ve written and characters you’ve created is there a particular character or a couple of characters that maybe are closer to who you are as a person?
KRISTEN
I don’t know. I’ve never thought of that. I would probably have to say that the character I’ve got in this new piece, The Rules of Playing Risk, whose name is Maggie is probably the most like me in terms of how she thinks and how she responds. Our backstories are different, but I would say in terms of personality, she’s probably the closest. She’s quick-witted but cares about people, and she engages in the world with humour, more so than anything else, which is very me. There are probably parts of me in everybody I write. Probably, there are parts of you in everybody you write too.
JAMES
Even some of the nasty characters? The not-so-nice characters?
KRISTEN
Oh yeah, that’s the interesting stuff, right? Like, where did those come from? Are those the things we don’t like about ourselves that we’re exploring on the page? I haven’t written a lot of villains because my plays don’t tend to have a villain. The only play that I can think of that really has someone who was set up to appear to be a villain at first is Five Alarm where there’s the rivalry between the two main characters competing in this chili cook-off. And a lot of that was extracted from my own life. The character isn’t based on me, but some of the things that end up explaining her behaviour I could relate to.
For her, it was the feeling of being left out of things, and she acts this way, because she feels rejected. And I can remember feeling some of those things in my life and certainly, I’ve observed other people who are very spiny and have a hard time letting people in or being vulnerable and that stems from having been rejected and not feeling safe around other people.
JAMES
I suppose that’s because as humans, so often, our behaviour is designed to protect us.
KRISTEN
Yeah, exactly. I think most people want to experience a true connection with others. And it’s just, there are so many things that happen in our life that scar us and make that hard. The more things that someone’s been through the harder it is for them to find the courage to open themselves up and to be hurt again. There are people who struggle with that forever and never resolve it. And it’s sad. Unfortunately, tragic things happen, and people become so defensive over a lifetime that they can’t let others in. That theme shows up a lot in my writing.
JAMES
Do you think a lot of theatre and stories are about characters attempting to be their authentic self and maybe that’s why we relate to it? Is that one of the appeals of drama? Watching characters trying to do that. And then how hard is it for people in life to be their authentic selves?
KRISTEN
It’s really hard. I do think that’s the appeal. I think that’s the appeal in writing it too. Sometimes you can resolve things through writing that you can’t resolve in the world, because in writing I have the ability to force the conversation between two people. And as a writer, I can choose to allow that person to take whatever step, even if it’s just that tiny step that allows the conversation to start. I can force them to do that.
In the real world we all have people in our life that you want to say, “Stop! Everything you want is available to you. If you would just lay down your defences and reach out for it you would have richer, more meaningful relationships and that might mitigate some of your feelings of being rejected.” You see these people struggling to belong, and a lot of the time their struggles are self-defeating. You’re right – it’s fear-driven. No one wants to be hurt, and vulnerability is the most important ingredient in connection, but it’s so hard for most of us to be vulnerable.
JAMES
We started talking about comedy, and now I think we’re talking about tragedy.
KRISTEN
I think they’re the same.
JAMES
Are they?
KRISTEN
I think they are. I don’t know about you but if you were to break down what your comedies are about you could take some of these same subjects and make them into a drama. If you took out some of the jokes and changed the dialogue.
Even my play Hurry Hard, which is about these people who want to win a local regional bonspiel, is really a story about this estranged couple whose marriage ended because they weren’t able to find vulnerability together and figure out their problems.
And it’s also about this relationship between two brothers where this tragedy happened. The older brother was on track to having an incredible NHL career, and a stupid choice by his younger brother led to an accident that basically took him out.
And they both have to live with that in their relationship – the level of guilt, on one hand, that has made this relationship dysfunctional and then, on the other hand, this guy who loves his brother, but his brother took something away from him and that’s left him bitter about what his life ended up actually being.
All of these storylines could be put into a drama very easily and still work. I don’t think comedy and tragedy are very different.
JAMES
Subject matter may not be different, but the tone is.
KRISTEN
Yes.
Adrian Shepherd-Gawinksi, Bruce Davies, and James Hawksley in Lighthouse Festival Theatre’s Production of Hurry Hard. Photo by Melissa McKay
JAMES
How would you describe your writing process?
KRISTEN
I think most of my writing happens when I’m not in front of my laptop. So, before I start writing, now, usually I have had the idea in my head for a while, and I have started to work out some of the details, so when I get to the actual phase of sitting down to start writing dialogue I have a sense of who the people are already. Their voices have been in my head. I’ve probably already played with some lines of dialogue, I’m starting to figure out the relationships, I know what the conflict is and I’m working out the details.
So, I do a lot of thinking before I sit in front of my computer, and then I tend to write in bursts of a day or two where I’ll sit at the computer the whole day and I’ll get a lot of writing out. Usually, the first thirty pages of something new flow out of me and they’re really easy to lay down. When I’m writing a two act play once I get to a point where there will be a natural intermission there’s always a timeout. I almost feel like I lose momentum at that point, because I’m trying to figure out act two.
The first few times that happened, I panicked. And then once I had worked my way through that painful period a few times, now I expect it to come, so I don’t panic. And I will take as much time off as I need. There might be a break of a month or two in between writing. I have things I need to work out, because I don’t really do detailed plotting. I don’t plot it out on paper. I plot it out in my brain, but I also leave space for the characters to tell me what’s going to happen. I think at some point the characters start talking, and they start doing things, and then you’re just there to report it. I think they need room to do that.
JAMES
Do you find you always know where the play is heading in terms of an ending? I know John Irving – this is so bizarre to me – in interviews, he says that he always comes out with the last sentence of his novel. He writes down the last sentence for The World According to Garp or Cider House Rules – he writes down the last sentence and then he writes the story, and he said, he has never changed the last sentence. That just shows you how unique writing is. There’s no other writer in the world who does that. But that’s how he writes. So, maybe talk a little bit about endings and when those come to you and how they help you in your writing process.
KRISTEN
I don’t always know the ending. I usually have an idea of where it will go, or I have two or three alternate endings in my mind where it could end up. And that’s because I find as you’re writing you’re taking new paths you didn’t expect.
At some point something occurs, and you follow it, and it opens up a different lane, if you will, and you need to be able to be open to that effecting where the story ends. And I think part of the pleasure of writing is discovering that. The reason I don’t write a detailed plot is because I think I would lose interest if I already knew where it was all going to go. I think part of the joy of writing, for me, is discovering the story.
JAMES
A lot of your stories deal with relationships and romance. Are you a romantic?
KRISTEN
I have to admit, after all these plays I’ve written about love that I must be a romantic. I didn’t think I was before. I really didn’t.
I don’t know what your childhood was like, but my parents and family weren’t effusive, and we dealt with life through humour. That’s how we would show love. That’s how we managed disagreement. We managed most things through humour, and humour is a door. Humour can be used to open a door, but it can also be used to close things off.
So, I have had a hard time with romance in my real life. But I think there’s a part of me that really yearns for that and has always wanted the world to be more ideal. And you have to believe in love, right? What else is there? If you can’t root for love and root for the most powerful thing in life then suffering will quickly outweigh everything else. I think, again, back to what we really, really truly yearn for, above all else, is connection. It’s human connection. We are social creatures who rely on each other.
JAMES
I read in a couple of interviews you gave that your friends say you have a tendency to head down rabbit holes.
KRISTEN (Laughs)
Oh, God.
JAMES
How do these rabbit holes serve you in terms of your creative life? Are the results useful?
KRISTEN
I think it’s always useful. You might not need the specific information or knowledge that you’ve gained but there is something useful about constantly challenging your brain and opening new pathways and learning new things. So, something will catch my interest, and my interests are varied, and I think what my friends find amusing are the unexpected topics I’ll go down a rabbit hole on.
At the beginning of the pandemic, I got super into astrophysics, and I was trying to understand string theory, and I still don’t understand it. I watched hundreds of hours of video and read more things about it because once I’m curious about something my brain doesn’t want to let go of it until I understand it.
I sort of hyper-focus on things and that includes writing, which I think is a gift as a writer to be able to hyper-focus and get a lot done in a short period of time, but as a human, it’s a gift and a curse, because you can get distracted by it and end up down a path that really isn’t overly productive. Maybe it will be later, but I don’t think at any point in the future anyone is going to call on me to save the world using string theory.
JAMES
If this is a plot point in a play when you say, “No one is going to call on me to save the world using string theory.” We of course know you’re going to need it.
KRISTEN
Exactly. Well, I better do more research then because I’m just not ready yet. I actually don’t understand it.
JAMES
I’ll bet half the people studying it don’t understand it. Let’s talk a little bit about the first play you wrote called Book Club. Tell me how that came about and why you decided to write it.
KRISTEN
Book Club is the only play that I wrote without any plan going in whatsoever. Like none. It started as a lark. I was on mat leave with my youngest son, and it’s physically busy, but it’s not intellectually very challenging, and I needed something for my brain to work on. I really didn’t write it with a lot of intention. In my later work, if I was going to talk about a subject, I gave it some thought as to what I was trying to say, as opposed to just improvising the whole thing. So, that play, I think, is quite different from the rest of my work.
JAMES
You had mentioned to me that Norm Foster is a mentor and somebody you connected with. How did that relationship happen? How did you connect with Norm, and what sort of sage advice has Norm Foster provided you in your career?
KRISTEN
Oh, gosh, we initially connected on Twitter. I had made a joke and I wrote, “I wish community theatres would do a goddamn Norm Foster play every once in a while.” Which is obviously a joke because it’s hard to find a community theatre that doesn’t have a Norm Foster play in its season. But I didn’t know him, and I tweeted that and someone else – not Norm – took exception to my tweet.
JAMES
They didn’t understand it as a joke.
KRISTEN
No. I thought it was obviously tongue-in-cheek.
JAMES
Yeah, I thought it was obvious too. I thought it was funny.
KRISTEN
Because he’s extremely well produced. Like he is the most produced playwright in Canada, and it’s well earned.
JAMES
If only Tom Hanks could get a break.
KRISTEN
Right. “I wish people would recognize Tom Hanks and put him in some movies.” It was that kind of a joke. Anyway, someone took exception to it and that person responded angrily to my tweet and listed all the places that Norm’s been produced, and I didn’t even see it. I’m at work and my friend texted me and she goes, “Oh my God, you gotta go on Twitter. Somebody didn’t like your tweet and Norm Foster responded to that person defending you.” So, I went on Twitter and Norm basically had said, “I think she was being tongue-in-cheek, and I thought it was funny.”
And then we followed each other, and I was talking to another new playwright, and he had shared his play with me, and in his play he had a foreword he had written, and it included a quote from Norm about his play. And I wrote him back and I said, “Did Norm Foster read your play?” And he said, “Yeah, if you send him a play, he’ll read it.” And I thought, wow, that’s wild that he takes the time to read other people’s plays, because people must be sending him plays constantly.
So, I sort of put that knowledge away, and I still didn’t really have the guts to ask him, because I didn’t know him. And I thought that’s sort of an audacious thing to ask someone, you don’t even know, to spend three hours reading your play when you don’t have a name, and no one knows who you are.
But then one day, I think he had just liked a tweet of mine or something, I decided why not just ask? At that point, I’d written Book Club, and I thought it wasn’t terrible, maybe it won’t be a waste of his time. Maybe he’ll have something to say about it, and maybe he’ll offer some feedback. So, I found myself writing a message. And as I’m writing the message, I find myself not just saying, “Will you read the play, but will you mentor me?”
And, he responded and said, “I’ll read your play. Send it to me.” So, I sent it to him, and he read it right away, and I thought, “Wow how generous that he not only will read my play, but he will read it immediately and provide me with paragraphs of commentary on it.” So, he read Book Club, and he wrote me an email that said, “It’s very difficult to write comedy, and you know how to write comedy.” And he said, “I would love to mentor you. I want to be who discovers you.” And that was the start of what ended up being, to this day, a really meaningful friendship in my life.
He didn’t teach me how to write, but he did help me figure out what worked and what didn’t work. He gave balanced feedback, you know, as complimentary as he was about it, he also had things to say that helped sharpen it. And so, I would ask him questions, if I was confused about something, or if I was struggling with something. And it could be related to the writing itself, or it could be related to the industry.
Because he knows how the industry works. And I didn’t know. I didn’t understand anything about it. I didn’t know how playwrights made money. I didn’t know who made decisions, or how to submit things, and how you get your work produced. I didn’t know any of that. He gave me really solid advice, and he opened doors for me by introducing my work to other people. That is what eventually led to me being produced professionally. There aren’t enough words to describe how important he’s been in my career.
JAMES
Every artist needs their champions.
KRISTEN
Absolutely. And he’s had success and he has the grace as a human being to be willing to send the elevator back down and help other people succeed, and nurture other people with their writing, whether they show great promise or not, he will still read and give notes to people. He has an incredibly generous spirit to other writers because he is really passionate about writing.
JAMES
I’m going to take a little side shift here.
KRISTEN
Okay.
JAMES
Because the reality is we’re in COVID. And we’re in lockdown, and we’re experiencing it, and I’m just wondering what have you found the most challenging, for you personally, living in a pandemic?
KRISTEN
Well, being very honest it’s mental health. Anxiety. I didn’t write for the first nine months of the pandemic or do anything that I loved really, because I was using so much of my energy and my personal resources to manage my way through how scared I felt.
I felt really worried about the sickness itself. Especially in the beginning when we had very little information. I remember thinking, “Can I be outside? Am I going to get sick if I walk my dog?” We didn’t know anything about the virus yet. We didn’t know how contagious it was or how deadly it was. And so, I was scrubbing my groceries down with Lysol thinking if I didn’t do that my family might get sick and God forbid one of them could die, and as a mom of three kids, like all parents, you worry.
So, there was that, and I love my career. I love what I do, and I had an amazing exciting season lined up, and now all of a sudden, I had to watch each show sort of wash up on the shore. Cancellations came in waves. Things got cancelled or postponed, and I know a lot of artists probably felt the same way – it’s not just your livelihood. If you work in the arts, it’s not something you just do to make money. It’s the opposite, right? We almost make no money, and we do it anyway. So, there’s something in it that’s completely integral to our existence. And that being threatened sent me into an existential crisis. I thought, “What would I do if theatre didn’t recover? How would I find meaning for myself? My children give me a lot of meaning and purpose, but theatre also gave me a lot of meaning and purpose.”
JAMES
It’s part of your identity. It’s part of who you are.
KRISTEN
Absolutely. My entire life has included theatre and performing. So, it’s been a profoundly challenging year, but it’s also been a very ground-breaking sort of breakthrough year in terms of understanding that you cannot build your whole life around one thing – that’s very dangerous. So, you have to figure out where your inherent happiness is and how to find joy in life if things you count on right now were to go away, because they can. That’s what we’ve all learned. Things can go away very quickly.
Andy Pogson and Beryl Bain in Lighthouse Festival Theatre’s Production of Five Alarm. Photo by Daniel G. Wiest
JAMES
I want to talk about honesty, and I want to talk about it on three levels. How important, do you think, is it to be honest with yourself? How important is it to be honest in our personal relationships, and how important is honesty in the writing and presenting of stage plays?
KRISTEN
It’s vitally important in all three areas, I think, again, going back to vulnerability, which requires telling the truth and looking at yourself with a clear eye. Like being able to see the things about ourselves we might not like, and not reject those things but embrace them and accept them. You know, accepting that we’re fallible, that we all have flaws, we all make mistakes, make bad choices. Being able to confront that with honesty, but not with condemnation. I think that’s meaningful when you’re talking about being honest with yourself, but it’s also meaningful when you talk about being honest within relationships. I think dishonesty is often a protective measure. There’s that feeling that if I’m honest about something – whatever that might be – if I’m vulnerable, I might be rejected. They might not accept me anymore.
But deep truly meaningful love and intimacy only comes from the ability to be extremely honest. You can’t build a relationship with somebody on dishonesty because the other person is operating without information that they might need in order to understand why you behave the way you do, and you’re also not able to be yourself. So first, you have to do the work of confronting that in yourself. Why do I react to that? Why does that trigger me to be really upset or feel threatened or angry? You have to be willing to look at things that have either happened to you or that you are ashamed of.
The topic of shame and how it keeps us from being honest with ourselves is also very interesting to me. As a kid I struggled in school to complete things, and I struggled with being able to pay attention. And the way that the world reacted to that was that I was not behaving. I wasn’t being compliant. I was a troublemaker. I didn’t care. I was lazy about school. And those labels stuck to me. And so now, whenever there’s something in my life where I’ve dropped the ball my immediate reaction is to feel shame. I feel ashamed that I’m not as good as other people at organizing my life.
And it’s the same in interpersonal relationships. I think we avoid that feeling of shame because it’s so threatening, because to feel that we aren’t worthy of other people’s acceptance and love is threatening. You know – the idea that we can be ostracized and wouldn’t have people around us, that we would be abandoned. Fear keeps people from being vulnerable with each other.
And on stage, if you want the audience to go on a journey with you, you have to have vulnerability. So as an actor you have to find that. As a writer you have to find that. You have to tell the truth about things. You have to be willing to tell an honest human story showing people that are flawed and still lovable.
JAMES
You mentioned your play, Where You Are, was more personal, because it was inspired by your aunt who suffered from the same cancer as one of the characters in the play.
KRISTEN
Yeah.
JAMES
Why did you feel the need to explore that and create a story around that experience?
KRISTEN
Because I love my aunt so much, and I guess it was sort of a love letter to her. She inspired that story. And I wanted to do what I could to keep parts of her here. I didn’t know how to say goodbye to her and close that chapter. And writing something felt like a way to express what she meant to me. But it also, in a way, helped me process my own grief.
My aunt was given a year when she was diagnosed. And you’ve got one year to do everything you’d want to do, and at the same time, you’re battling an illness. It made me think about my own mortality a lot and what it would be like to know that you had a finite amount of time left. The play, however, is not about my aunt. A lot of the piece is fictionalized. Most of it is very fictionalized. It’s just about the experience.
JAMES
It’s inspired by that experience.
KRISTEN
It’s inspired.
JAMES
Sometimes audiences don’t understand that even though your aunt died from the same cancer the actual story you end up writing from that has touchpoints…
KRISTEN
…but is different. Exactly. One of the main things in the play is the decision to treat the cancer or not. And that came from a conversation with my uncle. He told me she had struggled really hard with the decision to stop chemotherapy because she didn’t want to let her sisters down. She didn’t want to say to her sisters, “I’m not going to do everything I can do to prolong my time here.” Because it comes down to time. When you have a terminal cancer all the treatment is designed to buy you more time, it’s not going to cure it.
And with my aunt and many people who go through cancer treatment, the treatment itself is very debilitating. She would have the chemo, and that whole week she would feel miserably sick. And just as she started to come around it would be time for another round of chemo. And so, she had to make the decision whether she wanted to prolong the time she had or accept that her time might be shorter, but that her quality of life would be better for the last months that she had. And I wanted to explore what it would feel like to be terminally sick and to be thinking about your loved ones and trying to make decisions that are best for you but also honouring your loved ones and the sense of obligation you feel, and that’s really what the character in the play struggles with.
In the play, she has a hard time telling her niece that she’s sick because she doesn’t want it to change their relationship and then everything between them will suddenly have a different colour. Which it does once you know someone’s sick. Every time I spoke to my aunt – every time I saw her – I thought, what if this is the last time? And I remember saying goodbye to my aunt. She had a celebration of life, for her birthday. And I knew saying goodbye to her that day after this celebration would be the last time I would look her in the eye and say goodbye. And we said goodbye like it wasn’t the last time. We said goodbye like it was just another visit and we would see each other again at Christmas. And we both knew we wouldn’t.
So, there was a great deal of pain, but there was also a great deal of beauty and grace the way she navigated all of that. It was really inspiring. And I thought, you know, if I can do anything, I can write this story and maybe if I write this story, it will help other people also understand their pain.
JAMES
What’s been some of the audience reaction to seeing the play? What have you heard back from people?
KRISTEN
It’s been really touching, because I’ve had people reach out to me on social media that saw the play elsewhere and wanted to tell me that they really connected to it because of a personal experience they were either going through or had gone through. And in some ways, although it’s tragic and there are parts of the play that are gut-wrenching, there’s also a message of hope to it and ultimately joy, and that’s what I wanted to achieve. I’m really proud of that piece.
JAMES
Do you think that play indicates a shift in your writing?
KRISTEN
Yeah, I do. I think that’s the first time I really tackled something more challenging. And then it emboldened me to continue to explore things that aren’t light-hearted. It’s comedy, but it’s also real life. And real life is tragic sometimes. I hope that people can find something in the finished play that helps them process their own life in some way.
I spend a lot of my time thinking about story and what story means and how stories should be told. I’ve read Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting by Robert McKee, Making Movies by Sidney Lumet, The Playwright’s Guidebookby Stuart Spenser, and The Hidden Tools of Comedyby Steve Kaplan among others and you can learn something from all of them. In fact, I’m starting to reread some of these books because most of them I read seven or eight years ago. I’ve listed these books along with a dozen others at the end of this blog post that you can check out.
Plus if you’re looking for some submission opportunities have a look at my Submission Opportunities for Playwrights page. I’ve listed several opportunities and provided a short description of each as well as a link to each opportunities website for further information. This is a list I update and add to a few times a year adding new opportunities or removing old ones that have been discontinued.
When it comes to writing you’re always learning – always seeking knowledge – always on a quest to improve your ability to tell a good story. Which brings us to the subject of this blog. What do you say when somebody asks you about your story? Do you have a one-line description? Do you dive into a quick summary of the plot? Do you even know where to begin? It can be a challenging question to answer because it depends on how you define your story.
Do you define it by genre?
Do you describe your story based on its three-act structure?
Do you describe your story based on a classification system such as the one described in the book Save the Cat by Blake Snider where he identifies ten different types of movies including Monster in the House, Dude with a Problem, and Superhero? Each type of movie Snider discusses has particular storytelling elements. For example, in Monster in the House, the protagonist is trying to survive a monster. The house must be a confined space and some sort of sin is committed that unleashes the monster. So, in the film Fatal Attraction the Monster is Alex Forrest played by Glenn Close and the sin is the affair. These are primal films.
That’s one book. Another book is 20 Master Plots by Ronald B. Tobias and his categories include Master Plot Classifications such as Quest, Escape, Underdog, Metamorphosis, Forbidden Love, and Revenge. Again, each Master Plot has specific elements and in the Quest plot, for example, your protagonist is motivated to find a person, place, or thing. The protagonist should have one or more companions on his journey and in the end what the protagonist discovers is different than what he thought he’d find.
And just this week I stumbled upon another book called The Seven Basic Plots by Christopher Booker. This is a hefty volume with the paperback edition coming in at 738 pages compared to 278 pages for 20 Master Plots and 195 pages for Save the Cat. This is a much more academic book and his classification system includes The Quest, Rags to Riches, and Comedy. Yes, comedy is a stand-alone category. So, too, is tragedy.
So, which of these classifications is the right one? The answer is they’re all right and you can use whatever one works for you. I’ve come to the conclusion that the most important thing is whether or not it helps you with your writing. Can you use it to understand your story and does it give you a way to talk about your story with others?
So, I’ve been thinking do any of these classification systems work for me? And I like a lot of the things they say and the story elements they discuss, but I think they’re too complicated. So, after some thought here is my unscientific story classification system including thirteen examples of each.
I think there are only three types of stories. There’s the survival story, the love story, and the quest story. That’s it. And each story can be told as either a comedy or a drama with extreme comedy being satire and extreme drama being tragedy. As far as genres go each type of story can have multiple types of genres so, for example, you can have a science fiction or fantasy story that is about survival, or you can have a historical fiction or a vampire story that is about love.
THREE TYPES OF STORY – SURVIVAL STORIES
SURVIVAL STORIES
TYPE
GENRE
ENDING
Ready or Not
Satire
Horror
Happy
Marathon Man
Drama
Suspense
Happy
A Quiet Place
Drama
Science Fiction
Happy
Misery
Drama
Suspense
Happy
Sleuth
Tragedy
Mystery
Unhappy
Shawshank Redemption
Drama
Epic
Happy
Parasite
Tragedy
Suspense
Unhappy
Star Wars
Drama
Science Fiction
Happy
Zombieland
Satire
Horror
Happy
Harry Potter
Drama
Fantasy
Happy
Death Wish
Drama
Revenge
Happy
The Incredibles
Comedy
Superhero
Happy
The Poseidon Adventure
Drama
Disaster
Unhappy
Survival stories are pretty easy to define. The main character is trying to survive. The threat could be a supernatural force or a real threat like a shark or an aspect of society such as an oppressive prison system. It’s also a category that doesn’t have a lot of comedy but the comedy it has tends to be satire and that’s probably because most of the time we’re dealing with life and death here. In terms of endings, it seems most of the time the protagonist survives the ordeal but often at a terrific cost. And if he doesn’t survive it’s often because the protagonist sacrifices his life for the greater good or for a particular person or cause.
THREE TYPES OF STORY – LOVE STORIES
LOVE STORIES
TYPE
GENRE
ENDING
The English Patient
Tragedy
War
Unhappy
While You Were Sleeping
Comedy
Romantic Comedy
Happy
The Princess Bride
Comedy
Fantasy
Happy
Airplane
Satire
Romantic Comedy
Happy
Up In the Air
Tragedy
Dramedy
Unhappy
Moulin Rouge!
Drama
Musical
Unhappy
Sleepless in Seattle
Comedy
Romantic Comedy
Happy
Die Hard
Drama
Action
Happy
Doctor Zhivago
Tragedy
Epic
Unhappy
Christmas in Connecticut
Comedy
Romantic Comedy
Happy
Some Like It Hot
Comedy
Crime
Happy
Her
Comedy
Science Fiction
Unhappy
Marriage Story
Drama
Family Drama
Unhappy
So, our second great human urge is love. This was an interesting category. A lot of the films make sense. The Princess Bride and While You Were Sleeping are obviously films about love but Die Hard? How is that a film about love? Well, the first Die Hard is about John McClane trying to save his wife and prove himself worthy of his family’s love. The later Die Hard films I’d classify as survival stories because the primary goal is simply survival and beating the bad guy since there is no longer the tie-in to love as a motivating force. The thing that defines a love story is that the main motivation which moves the story forward is the pursuit of the person who is loved. In the end, the protagonist either finds love or doesn’t find love, but either way he or she grows in some way as a person.
THREE TYPES OF STORY – QUEST STORIES
QUEST STORIES
TYPE
GENRE
ENDING
Chinatown
Tragedy
Detective
Unhappy
Lord of the Rings
Drama
Fantasy
Happy
Stand by Me
Comedy
Coming of Age
Happy
2001: A Space Odyssey
Drama
Science Fiction
Happy
Wizard of OZ
Drama
Musical Fantasy
Happy
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Satire
Myth
Unhappy
Moana
Comedy
Myth
Happy
Pirates of the Caribbean
Comedy
Action Adventure
Happy
The Hangover
Satire
Buddy Movie
Happy
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Drama
Action Adventure
Unhappy
Planes, Trains, and Automobiles
Comedy
Buddy Movie
Happy
Jumanji
Comedy
Fantasy Adventure
Happy
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Drama
Western
Happy
Quest stories are those stories where the main character is on a quest to gain knowledge or solve a problem or get home. It’s often a story of transformation as the person who starts the journey isn’t the same as the person who ends the journey. For example, the first Indiana Jones movie Raiders of the Lost Ark is different than any of the other Indiana Jones films because Indy isn’t a believer in the supernatural. It isn’t until his encounter with the supernatural forces unleashed at the end of Raiders that he realizes there might be more to this world than he thought.
There’s one type of quest story where the protagonist doesn’t really change and that’s the traditional detective story. Miss Marple, Sherlock Holmes, Columbo – none of these characters go on a personal journey. Instead, they solve a crime. Do we really want our detective to be going through a personal journey? No. We want our detective to outsmart the killer.
CLEAR OUTCOME
So, each of these categories has a clear outcome. In the survival story, the protagonist either defeats the enemy or is defeated. In the love story, the protagonist either wins the love of the person they want to be with or they don’t. In the quest story, the protagonist either completes the quest and wins or doesn’t complete the quest and fails.
If you look at something as complicated as Game of Thrones it becomes clear that the story at its very basic level is a quest for the Crown. And of course, what we learn is that anyone who goes after the throne is eventually destroyed.
So, what am I going to do with this? I think it’s a good way for me to keep my stories focused when I start working on a new project. That means I need to figure out which category my story fits into and then I need to make sure that what drives my story is either survival, love, or a quest. The specific elements of the story are based on the genre. And that’s something I’ll need to think about on a deeper level because there are all kinds of genres out there. The good thing is I don’t think you need to understand every genre you only need to understand the genres you write about.
STORY PLANNER
So, I’m going to incorporate some of these ideas into my story planner and that means one of the first things to decide when I start writing something new is what type of story is it? Is it a story about survival like my comedy 500 bucks and a pack of smokes, or is it a story about love like my comedy, Under the Mistletoe, or is it a story about a quest like my detective story Heart of Stone: A Jessica Quinn Mystery? And then I’ll evaluate whether or not this is a helpful exercise.
In the meantime, I have some reading to do. The Secret Life of the American Musicalby Jack Viertel beckons. Plus, I’ve recently finished a new blog post called The Four Rules of Comedy. In the meantime, check out some books on writing and submission opportunities for playwrights by following the link at the bottom of the page.
BOOKS ON WRITING
I thought I’d add a section to this blog post and list some of my favourite books on my bookshelf related to writing so you can check them out for yourself.
Stephen King – On Writing
A Memoir of the Craft
“Immensely helpful and illuminating to any aspiring writer, Stephen King’s critically lauded, classic bestseller shares the experiences, habits, and convictions that have shaped him and his work. “Long live the King” hailed Entertainment Weekly upon publication of Stephen King’s On Writing. Part memoir, part master class by one of the bestselling authors of all time, this superb volume is a revealing and practical view of the writer’s craft, comprising the basic tools of the trade every writer must have. King’s advice is grounded in his vivid memories from childhood through his emergence as a writer, from his struggling early career to his widely reported, near-fatal accident in 1999–and how the inextricable link between writing and living spurred his recovery. Brilliantly structured, friendly and inspiring, On Writing will empower and entertain everyone who reads it–fans, writers, and anyone who loves a great story well told.” (Description from Thrift Books.)
With insight, humor, and practicality, Natalie Goldberg inspires writers and would-be writers to take the leap into writing skillfully and creatively. She offers suggestions, encouragement, and solid advice on many aspects of the writer’s craft: on writing from “first thoughts” (keep your hand moving, don’t cross out, just get it on paper), on listening (writing is ninety percent listening; the deeper you listen, the better you write), on using verbs (verbs provide the energy of the sentence), on overcoming doubts (doubt is torture; don’t listen to it)—even on choosing a restaurant in which to write. Goldberg sees writing as a practice that helps writers comprehend the value of their lives. The advice in her book, provided in short, easy-to-read chapters with titles that reflect the author’s witty approach (“Writing Is Not a McDonald’s Hamburger,” “Man Eats Car,” “Be an Animal”), will inspire anyone who writes—or who longs to. (Description from Authors Website)
“This description may be from another edition of this product. Learn the basic techniques every successful playwright knows Among the many “how-to” playwriting books that have appeared over the years, there have been few that attempt to analyze the mysteries of play construction. Lajos Egri’s classic, The Art of Dramatic Writing, does just that, with instruction that can be applied equally well to a short story, novel, or screenplay. Examining a play from the inside out, Egri starts with the heart of any drama: its characters. All good dramatic writing hinges on people and their relationships, which serve to move the story forward and give it life, as well as an understanding of human motives — why people act the way that they do. Using examples from everything from William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet to Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, Egri shows how it is essential for the author to have a basic premise — a thesis, demonstrated in terms of human behavior — and to develop the dramatic conflict on the basis of that behavior. Using Egri’s ABCs of premise, character, and conflict, The Art of Dramatic Writing is a direct, jargon-free approach to the problem of achieving truth in writing.” (Description from Thrift Books.)
The Last Book On Screenwriting That You’ll Ever Need
Here’s what started the phenomenon: the best seller, for over 15 years, that’s been used by screenwriters around the world Blake Snyder tells all in this fast, funny and candid look inside the movie business. “Save the Cat” is just one of many ironclad rules for making your ideas more marketable and your script more satisfying, including: The four elements of every winning logline The seven immutable laws of screenplay physics The 10 genres that every movie ever made can be categorized by — and why they’re important to your script Why your Hero must serve your Idea Mastering the 15 Beats Creating the “Perfect Beast” by using The Board to map 40 scenes with conflict and emotional change How to get back on track with proven rules for script repair This ultimate insider’s guide reveals the secrets that none dare admit, told by a showbiz veteran who’s proven that you can sell your script if you can save the cat. (Description from Thrift Books.)
20 Master Plots and How to Build Them by Ronald B. Tobias
“This book shows the reader how to take timeless storytelling structures and make them immediate, now, for fiction that’s universal in how it speaks to the reader’s heart and contemporary in detail and impact.Each chapter includes brief excerpts and descriptions of fiction from many times, many genres – myth and fairy tale, genre and mainstream fiction, film plots of all types, short story and novel.Find 20 fundamental plots that recur through all fiction – with analysis and examples – that outline benefits and warnings, for writers to adapt and elaborate in their own fiction.Ronald B. Tobias has spent his career as a writer moving from genre to genre, first as a short story writer, then as an author of fiction and nonfiction books and finally as a writer and producer of documentaries for public television. He is currently a professor in the Department of Media and Theatre Arts at Montana State University and the author of the Insider’s Guide to Writing for Screen and Television. He lives in Bozeman, Montana.”
The Complete Guide to Turning Story Concepts Into Movie and Television Deals by Michael Hauge
“No one is better than Michael Hauge at finding what is most authentic in every moment of a story.” –Will Smith “Michael Hauge is a story master, and this book is an absolute must have for anyone serious about telling great stories for the screen.” –DeVon Franklin, Vice-President of Production, Columbia Pictures Concise, authoritative, and comprehensive, Writing Screenplays that Sell is the most complete guide available on the art, craft, and business of screenwriting for movies and television. Renowned Hollywood story consultant Michael Hauge–considered “one of the most sought after lecturers and script consultants in the U.S.” by Scriptwriter magazine–covers every aspect from concept to deal: screenplay development, artistry versus commerciality, adaptations, copyright protection, living and working outside Los Angeles; finding an agent; and more. Reflecting the latest trends and scripts, Writing Screenplays that Sell includes insight and detailed information on: Finding and selecting commercial story concepts Guidelines for story structure, including: Opening scenes that immediately grab the reader – The five most common goals in Hollywood movies – Why most adaptations fail – The most effective use of flashbacks – Creating emotionally powerful endings Tips for marketing a script–script consultants, script competitions, pitch fests, virtual pitching, e-mail blasts, log-line listings, audio script readings, and Internet resources for screenwriters A complete, in depth analysis of the screenplay for Avatar, the biggest box office success of all time Whether you’re an aspiring artist looking to break into the business or a seasoned pro looking for tips to boost your skills, Writing Screenplays that Sell is the one essential guide you need. (Description from Thrift Books.)
Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles
A succinct, engaging, and practical guide for succeeding in any creative sphere, The War of Art is nothing less than Sun-Tzu for the soul. hat keeps so many of us from doing what we long to do? Why is there a naysayer within? How can we avoid the roadblocks of any creative endeavor-be it starting up a dream business venture, writing a novel, or painting a masterpiece? Bestselling novelist Steven Pressfield identifies the enemy that every one of us must face, outlines a battle plan to conquer this internal foe, then pinpoints just how to achieve the greatest success. The War of Art emphasizes the resolve needed to recognize and overcome the obstacles of ambition and then effectively shows how to reach the highest level of creative discipline. Think of it as tough love . . . for yourself. Whether an artist, writer or business person, this simple, personal, and no-nonsense book will inspire you to seize the potential of your life. (Description from Thrift Books.)
“Could you be getting in your way of producing great work? Have you started a project but never finished? Would you like to do work that matters, but don’t know where to start? The answer is Do the Work, a manifesto by bestselling author Steven Pressfield, that will show you that it’s not about better ideas, it’s about actually doing the work. Do the Work is a weapon against Resistance – a tool that will help you take action and successfully ship projects out the door.Picking up where The War of Art and Turning Pro left off, Do The Work takes the reader from the start to the finish of any long-form project–novel, screenplay, album, software piece, you name it.Do The Work identifies the predictable Resistance Points along the way and walks you through each of them. No, you are not crazy. No, you are not alone. No, you are not the first person to “hit the wall” in Act Two.Do The Work charts the territory. It’s the stage-by-stage road map for taking your project from Page One to THE END.” (Description from Thrift Books.)
Turning Pro is the follow-up work to Steven Pressfield’s classic, The War of Art. What we get when we turn pro is we find our power. We find our will and our voice and we find our self-respect. We become who we always were but had, until then, been afraid to embrace and to live out.
Substance, Structure, Style, and The Principles of Screenwriting
Robert McKee’s screenwriting workshops have earned him an international reputation for inspiring novices, refining works in progress and putting major screenwriting careers back on track. Quincy Jones, Diane Keaton, Gloria Steinem, Julia Roberts, John Cleese and David Bowie are just a few of his celebrity alumni. Writers, producers, development executives and agents all flock to his lecture series, praising it as a mesmerizing and intense learning experience. In Story, McKee expands on the concepts he teaches in his $450 seminars (considered a must by industry insiders), providing readers with the most comprehensive, integrated explanation of the craft of writing for the screen. No one better understands how all the elements of a screenplay fit together, and no one is better qualified to explain the “magic” of story construction and the relationship between structure and character than Robert McKee.(Description from Thrift Books.)
Thanks, But This Isn’t For Us by Jessica Page Morrell
A (Sort of) Compassionate Guide to Why Your Writing Is Being Rejected
A fun, practical guide that reveals the essentials of good fiction and memoir writing by exposing the most common mistakes literary writers make. All great works of fiction and memoir are unique-but most bad novels, stories, and memoirs have a lot in common. From clunky dialogue to poorly sketched out characters, sagging pacing to exaggerated prose, these beginners’ mistakes drive any agent or editor to their stock rejection letter, telling the aspiring writer “Thanks, but this isn’t for us,” and leaving many to wonder what exactly it is that they’re doing wrong. Veteran writing coach, developmental editor, and writing instructor Jessica Page Morrell will fill in the gaps in every rejection letter you’ve ever received. In Thanks, But This Isn’t for Us, Morrell uses her years of experience to isolate the specific errors beginners make, including the pitfalls of unrealistic dialogue, failing to “show, not tell,” and over-the-top plot twists. These are just a few of the problems that keep writers from breaking through with their work. Sympathetic and humane, but pulling no punches, Thanks, But This Isn’t for Us shows writers precisely where they’ve gone wrong and how to get on the right track. In sixteen to-the-point chapters, with checklists, exercises, takeaway tips, and a glossary, Morrell helps readers transcend these mistakes so that they don’t have to learn the hard way: with another rejection letter. (Description from Thrift Books.)
While other books give you tips on how to “write funny,” The Hidden Tools of Comedy offers a paradigm shift in understanding the mechanics and art of comedy itself, and the proven, practical tools that help writers translate that understanding into successful, commercial scripts. Steve Kaplan unlocks the unique secrets and techniques of writing comedy, deconstructing sequences in popular films and television to show when comedy works, when it doesn’t, and why. (Description for Kaplan Comedy)
An insightful primer on the art of dramatic writing
An accessible, contemporary guide to the art of dramatic writing During the ten years that Stuart Spencer has taught playwriting, he has struggled to find an effective playwriting handbook for his courses. Although most of the currently popular handbooks have good ideas in them, they all suffer from the same problems: they’re poorly organized; are composed mostly of quirky, idiosyncratic advice on how specific playwrights have gone about writing their own work; and are full of abstract theorizing on the nature of art. As a result, they fail to offer any concrete information on how to construct a well-written play or any useful guidelines and exercises. Moreover, few of these books are actually written by working playwrights. Out of frustration, Spencer wrote his own book. The result, The Playwright’s Guidebook, is a clear, concise, and engaging handbook. Spencer addresses the important principles of structure, includes insightful writing exercises that build upon one another, explores the creative process, and troubleshoots recurrent problems that playwrights actually face. (Description from Thrift Books.)
Why does a director choose a particular script? What must they do in order to keep actors fresh and truthful through take after take of a single scene? How do you stage a shootout–involving more than one hundred extras and three colliding taxis–in the heart of New York’s diamond district? What does it take to keep the studio honchos happy? From the first rehearsal to the final screening, Making Movies is a master’s take, delivered with clarity, candor, and a wealth of anecdote. For in this book, Sidney Lumet, one of our most consistently acclaimed directors, gives us both a professional memoir and a definitive guide to the art, craft, and business of the motion picture. Drawing on forty years of experience on movies that range from Long Day’s Journey into Night to Network and The Verdict –and with such stars as Katharine Hepburn, Paul Newman, Marlon Brando, and Al Pacino–Lumet explains how painstaking labor and inspired split-second decisions can result in two hours of screen magic. (Description from Thrift Books.)
“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:
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
Urban Stories Theatre supports local playwrights who write about social justice issues and helps these playwrights go from first draft to finished production. The company is made up of a core group of local artists who oversee all productions and workshops.
Urban Stories and the Knox Theatre Collective are presenting, The Just Acts Youth Edition from June 5th to 8th at Knox United Church. The Just Acts Youth Edition is a showcase for young writers to develop and present their work on stage.
Helen Young is the Artistic Director and one of the founders of Urban Stories Theatre. Her theatre, film, and television work goes back more than 30 years and includes acting, singing, dancing, stunt work, writing, teaching, and directing. I spoke to Helen about her thoughts on theatre’s place in our culture and this year’s festival.
JAMES HUTCHISON
I’m wondering where you think theatre fits into our society and culture now that we have so many other ways of communicating ideas and engaging in conversations with others such as Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and of course Facebook.
HELEN YOUNG
I think theatre will always be important and necessary, because we need to connect in person. I do and see a lot of theatre, and nothing beats an audience reacting to live theatre. Or leaving the theatre and hearing people discussing what they’ve just seen. I would rather see a live show than a movie. We need human contact, and that’s one of the things that’s driving Urban Stories Theatre to move towards a more socially aware focus starting now.
JAMES
People go to the theatre to be entertained, but they also go to be enlightened about some aspect of humanity. However, if a show isn’t entertaining it won’t draw an audience. How do you balance your desire to entertain an audience with your desire to deliver a message?
HELEN
That’s a good question. It’s a fine line to walk. We have a couple of shows that have been submitted that are very dark. They’re good plays about important issues, but a play like that has to be handled very carefully. We try to find a balance with the shows we do. The play fests are a bit easier because we can do a dark play followed by a lighter one, it allows the audience a chance to breathe. But sometimes, a very dark play can take the audience on a journey that they would never normally experience so that’s a good thing. Amanda Wheeler (my voice of reason) and I decide together what plays we will do, so we look at all sides of the play before moving forward.
JAMES
You have a play festival coming up called Just Acts Youth Edition. What is the Just Acts Youth Edition?
HELEN
Every year we do the Just Acts Play Fest in February where we invite playwrights to submit short plays on a common theme that changes each year. It has been running for about 8 years now and is very popular. So, we decided to do a Youth Edition for younger writers. UST works with the Encore Junior High Drama Fest each May and we perform the student written plays. Last year we did a show of the plays from the festival. This year we are moving to a more social justice, humanity theme. So, we looked for more socially aware plays and performance pieces.
JAMES
Where did the idea for the festival come from?
HELEN
Young voices are often taken for granted or not heard at all, so we wanted to offer a platform for them to be heard. I have been going to Youth Riot for a few years now and watching the faces of the writers and performers when an audience reacts to a piece they wrote. I wanted to offer another avenue for these creative young artists to express themselves.
JAMES
What was the response to the first year?
HELEN
Our first year we didn’t really have the advertising in place so we didn’t get as many people as we had hoped for. The feedback was very positive and the young writers were thrilled. This year we are more focused on getting the word out and getting more audience feedback.
JAMES
You have two very different offerings this year. First up is The Make Believer Project which is being created and performed by the girls in this year’s festival. What is that show about?
HELEN
The Make Believer Project is a spoken word piece that the girls have been working on with playwright Eugene Stickland over the past few months. They have been journaling and reading the pieces to each other. Eugene put all the pieces on paper and handed them to me. I gave the girls parts to read and divided the show into three parts. So, the show is about their lives and their hopes and dreams. It’s very moving and sometimes a bit hard to listen to.
The Make Believer Project: a spoken word, poetry and storytelling performance written and performed by Summer, Savannah, Nicole, Gemini, Shelby, Krisdena, Maegan, Sapphire, Aurora, Kailynn, Kiara, Tamika, Rayanna, Kaylie, Aaliyah, Brooke, Halona, Lyric and presented by The Stardale Women’s Group.
JAMES
What do you think audiences will take away from the show?
HELEN
These twelve to sixteen-year-old girls have lived through so much in their young lives. As aboriginal girls they are often stereotyped and/or ignored. But they have hopes and dreams and wants and needs just like any other girl. I want audiences to see them and hear their stories. Maybe we’ll think twice before judging someone on their appearance. That’s what I would like to happen, to have people walk away thinking about them as girls first.
JAMES
The second offering is a play you’ve written called, Touch of Grace, which deals with the teen sex trade. How did this project evolve?
HELEN
I have a degree in sociology, and my focus was woman’s correctional facilities. Many of the women I spoke with were forced to grow up too fast. That’s where Grace began, girls growing up too fast and doing whatever it takes to survive. I also focused on the people who help these girls. Social workers who burn out fast. The play doesn’t deal with facts, it deals with an almost mystical sense of love and empathy that Grace has towards others. Something that touches them and allows them to open up their hearts and souls. The people at the group Home need Grace as much as she needs them.
JAMES
What do you hope audiences will take away from this show?
HELEN
We’re all in this world together, and it’s always easier to deal with what life throws at you when you have a good support system. Many of us take our friends and families a little bit for granted. If people walk away from this show and talk about it or go hug a friend, then I’ve done my job.
***
Urban Stories Theatre and the Knox Theatre Collective present The Just Acts Youth Edition from June 5th to June 8th at 7:30 pm at Knox United Church. (506 – 4th Street SW) Tickets are just $10.00 and available at the door or can be reserved by e-mailing urbanstoriesyyc@gmail.com.
The Just Acts Youth Edition
The Make Believer Project: A 20-25 minute performance of spoken word, poetry and storytelling. The Make Believer Project gives these young aboriginal girls a much deserved and sorely lacking voice. Written and Performed by Summer 16, Savannah 17, Nicole 17, Gemini 17, Shelby 14, Krisdena 14, Maegan 15, Sapphire 12, Aurora 12, Kailynn 12, Kiara 14, Tamika 15, Rayanna 13, Kaylie 11, Aaliyah 13, Brooke 12, Halona 14, Lyric 11 and presented by The Stardale Women’s Group.
A Touch of Grace by Helen Young is a play that tackles the teen sex trade by showing how the tragedy of a 14 year old sex worker helps a case worker find a sense of hope and belonging. This is a sneak peak at a section of the play. Cast: Belanna Internoscia, Krista Stephens, Adrianna Rabeda- Kowalczak,Emily Sharp, Ben Wild, Brandan Severtson
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.
***
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.
Andy Curtis, Devon Dubnyk, Arielle Rombough, Kevin Rothery, Katherine Fadum. PHOTO CREDIT: Benjamin Laird Arts & Photo
Gather up the family and invite your friends, coworkers and neighbours to come experience the true spirit of Christmas at Lunchbox Theatre’s production of It’s a Wonderful Life. Presented as a radio play from the 1940s this production is a fun, energetic and inventive retelling of the classic story.
The Lunchbox production features an outstanding cast, brilliant direction, a beautiful set and an amazing mix of sound – both recorded and created live – to bring the story of George Bailey and the town of Bedford Falls to life.
I give it two thumbs up. Although I went to see the play with my sister, her husband, my niece, her boyfriend, and his mom and we all gave it two thumbs up so that’s twelve thumbs, right? How can you argue with twelve thumbs? That’s got to be as good as, if not better than, four stars or five sugarplums.
It’s a Wonderful Life asks the question: Does your life matter? Can one man or woman make a difference?
Devon Dubnyk, Arielle Rombough. PHOTO CREDIT: Benjamin Laird Arts & Photo
I think there’s a fundamental human need to live a meaningful life. When we reach the end we want to feel, in some way, that we’ve made a difference – that we’ve made the world a better place.
But of course sometimes when we face a crisis in our life we feel lost. We feel like nothing matters. We feel like we don’t have a friend in the world, and if you’ve ever felt like that then you can relate to George Bailey as he stands on a bridge thinking about jumping into the icy waters below and ending it all.
Luckily for George he has a guardian angel. An angel named Clarence. And Clarence shows George what the town of Bedford Falls would be like had George never been born. Let’s just say that George made a big difference in the lives of a lot of people.
That’s the story in a chestnut shell and the Lunchbox Theatre production does an amazing job of telling that story. I love the fact that we’re transported back to a Christmas Eve in the 1940s to hear and be a part of a “live” radio broadcast.
Katherine Fadum, Arielle Rombough, Devon Dubnyk, Andy Curtis. PHOTO CREDIT: Benjamin Laird Arts & Photo
The production stars a talented and versatile cast that includes:
Kevin Rothery as Freddie Filmore playing Clarence & others
Devon Dubnyk as Jake Laurents playing George Bailey
Arielle Rombough as Sally Applewhite playing Mary Hatch
Katherine Fadum as Lana Sherwood playing Violet Bick & others
Andy Curtis as Harry Heywood playing Uncle Billy & Others
Connor Pritchard as the Studio Assistant Edward Irvine
The entire ensemble captures beautifully the feel and energy of a live radio show while bringing humour and warmth to a classic Christmas story.
And if you like Vertigo Theatre then you’ll be familiar with Craig Hall and his inventive staging of noir thrillers from the 40s and 50s. His affinity for that time period shines in this production and even though it’s a “radio play” there’s never a dull moment. The actors are kept moving as they participate in creating the story and jumping from character to character.
Kevin Rothery. PHOTO CREDIT: Benjamin Laird Arts & Photo
The script for It’s a Wonderful Life is an adaptation of the original 1946 film written and directed by Frank Capra and starring Jimmy Stewart. And even though this version of the story is less than half the length of the movie playwright Joe Landry manages to skillfully keep much of the plot without losing any of the heart of the original film.
The costumes by Deitra Kalyn and the set and the lighting design by Anton de Groot only add to the nostalgia and drama of the story.
And the sound design by Aidan Lytton – much of it created live on stage by Connor Pritchard and the rest of the cast – is a marvel to watch and experience because – as this production proves – you can build an entire world with sound. You can be transported to any time or place. And the Lunchbox Production of It’s a Wonderful Life not only transports us to Bedford Falls but it takes us on a journey where we are reminded about the truly important things in life and the real spirit of Christmas.
***
After you see the show you can help spread the word by Tweeting about it, sharing an update to Facebook, posting about it on Instagram or writing a blog post. At the end of every Lunchbox Theatre Show the cast poses for photographs so you can add a photo to your social media shares. It’s a great idea and one that more theatre’s should be doing. Here’s my photo from when I saw the play:
Connor Pritchard, Andy Curtis, Devon Dubnyk, Kevin Rothery, Katherine Fadum, Arielle Rombough.
***
And one final thought, that I have contemplated long and often on many a Christmas eve as I’ve sat waiting for Santa to arrive: Why on earth did George and his wife Mary name their daughter Zuzu?
Olive Kitteridge is a hard woman to love, but she’s one of the most interesting and complex characters you’re ever going to see or read.
I stumbled across the mini-series Olive Kitteridge last year. I hadn’t heard about it. Apparently, I’ve been living under a rock. I mean it won a lot of Emmy’s and a whole sack full of other awards so it’s not like nobody knew about it. But in my defence, I don’t tend to watch award shows. Actually, the last awards show I sat down and watched – commercials and all – was the 1978 Oscars. I was disappointed Citizen Kane didn’t win Best Picture. I wonder if it will win this year? Probably not. I’m guessing it won’t even get nominated.
Olive Kitteridge is 25 years in the life of someone who makes other people’s lives miserable. And yet, this person is not a villain – they have a heart – they’ve felt pain – they’ve been hurt – and they do good and help others but are often blind to their own destructive behaviours and actions.
Francis McDormand is Brilliant
I watched Olive Kitteridge and from the opening credits and music, I was hooked. Frances McDormand is brilliant as Olive. There’s a profound sadness and anger and yet a glimmer of hope and love in her performance. This is a complex woman. I watched the first episode – took a break because there was a lot to absorb and then binged on the remaining three the following night. You know a series is good when you can’t stop watching.
Fantastic Novel
So, I got out the novel – from our fantastic Calgary Public Library – because I wanted to compare, Olive Kitteridge, the novel to the mini-series. The novel is different. The mini-series tends to focus more on Olive whereas, in addition to Olive, the novel gives us more stories about other characters in the town. I thought the novel was fantastic. Well worth reading.
Worth a Second Look
And after reading the novel I decided to watch the mini-series again – and I liked it even more. The acting, directing. and writing is brilliant – there’s no other word for it. A strong cast with Frances McDormand, Richard Jenkins, John Gallagher Jr., Zoe Kazan, Jesse Plemons, and Bill Murray just to name a few. But of course, you can’t have great performances without a great director and Lisa Cholodenko has done a marvellous job of creating moments of truth and revelation between her cast.
Terrific Adaptation
And what an incredible job of adaptation by Jane Alexander of the Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Elizabeth Strout. It’s not easy to adapt a novel for the screen but this adaptation is true to the book while using the strengths of visual storytelling to create an amazing mini-series.
I Loved It
Did I like? I loved it! And if you love a good drama, you’ll love it too. Just a word of warning – if you’re going to watch the mini-series or read the book stock up on doughnuts. Doughnuts play a central part in the story. Life is tough and sometimes we need that old-fashioned-sour-cream-glaze to get us through the day.
***
The Community Where Your Characters Live
One of the reason’s I was interested in Olive Kitteridge is because it’s about Olive but it’s also about the community where she lives, and I’ve been working on my own play about a place called Stories From Langford: Every town has its secrets. I think knowing the place where your characters live and exist is important.
Place can define character. It can shape character. A place has a huge impact on the dramatic structure of your play.
Do you remember the movie Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? The stage play takes place at the home of George and Martha but in the movie they move the action to a diner for a few scenes. On stage, they never move to a diner. The move to the diner was motivated by “film thinking” In other words, “We need to move the characters because the audience will get bored if we stay in one location for the entire film.”
When I watched the film that change of location feels completely unmotivated – it feels wrong. And, from what I’ve read, Edward Albee, the author of the play, thought the change of location was wrong as well.
Why is it wrong? Because the home of George and Martha is the battleground. The home is personal. The cafe isn’t. The cafe is a public space. Why would you set a family battle in a cafe? It makes much more sense to stage the action in the space that the characters call home.
It’s a small flaw in an otherwise brilliant film version of the play. A small flaw that can be forgiven considering the performances and the script. But when it comes to your own settings – when it comes to where you want to place your characters – as often as possible set the action someplace personal. Does that mean it always has to be in a home – no of course not. The play can be anywhere you want so long as there’s a personal connection to the characters. If it’s going to be in a restaurant for example then that restaurant should have a personal connection to the characters in your story. Otherwise, keep them home.
‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. The stockings were hung by the chimney with care, in hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there.
The children were nestled all snug in their beds, while visions of sugar plums danced in their heads. And Mama in her ‘kerchief, and I in my cap, had just settled down for a long winter’s nap.
When out on the roof there arose such a clatter, I sprang from my bed to see what was the matter. Away to the window I flew like a flash, tore open the shutter, and threw up the sash
The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow gave the lustre of midday to objects below, when, what to my wondering eyes should appear, but a miniature sleigh and eight tiny reindeer.
With a little old driver, so lively and quick, I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick. More rapid than eagles, his coursers they came, and he whistled and shouted and called them by name:
“Now Dasher! Now Dancer! Now, Prancer and Vixen! On, Comet! On, Cupid! On, Donner and Blitzen! To the top of the porch! To the top of the wall! Now dash away! Dash away! Dash away all!”
As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly, when they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky so up to the house-top the coursers they flew, with the sleigh full of toys, and St. Nicholas too.
And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof the prancing and pawing of each little hoof. As I drew in my head and was turning around, down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound.
He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot, and his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot. A bundle of toys he had flung on his back, and he looked like a peddler just opening his pack.
His eyes–how they twinkled! His dimples, how merry! His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry! His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow, and the beard on his chin was as white as the snow. The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth, and the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath. He had a broad face and a little round belly, that shook when he laughed, like a bowl full of jelly.
He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf, and I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself. A wink of his eye and a twist of his head soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread.
He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work, and filled all the stockings, then turned with a jerk. And laying his finger aside of his nose, and giving a nod, up the chimney he rose.
He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle, And away they all flew like the down of a thistle. But I heard him exclaim, ‘ere he drove out of sight,
“Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night!”
