Tag: Playwright James Hutchison

James Hutchison talks with Director Heather Dick

Posted on by James Hutchison

James Hutchison Playwright

This week my play Written in Stone is premiering at the Newmarket National 10 Minute Play Festival along with twenty-four other Canadian plays. In last week’s blog, I interviewed Michael Halfin the Artistic and Executive Director of the festival and Heather Dick a director, actor and playwright who is directing my play. 

The plays are grouped into four themed Pods with six plays being presented in each Pod. Written in Stone is part of the “you|TURN” Pod and tells the story about the creation of the Ten Commandments and explains the reason man was given a soul, and how Lucifer ended up in hell. The production is being directed by Heather Dick and stars Bridget Bezanson as Michael, Meredith Busteed as Lucifer, Stephanie Christiaens as Gabriel, and Alexia Vassos as God. 

Usually, I’m the one doing the interviewing on my blog but this week I’m answering some questions Heather asked me about my writing and specifically about what inspired me to write Written in Stone.

HEATHER DICK

What sparked your writing of Written In Stone? Was it in response to an event or interaction between people that you observed?  Or something else entirely?

JAMES HUTCHISON

I was inspired by God. In a manner of speaking. I was doing a lot of reading about Greek mythology and the Bible and early Christians and I’d just written a play called The Blood of a Thousand Chickens which is my interpretation of the story of Oedipus and an examination of belief using Zeus and the ancient Greek Gods to look at customs and traditions and practices. So, I was thinking of ancient times and Gods and exploring religion and that got me to thinking about what might be the best ten commandments for creating a healthy and vibrant society where equality and environmental stewardship were the cornerstones of the law. And so while musing about all of that the idea of placing the creation of the ten commandments in a corporate setting where God is the boss and he’s escaped for the weekend to go play golf while leaving his employees to do the work he’s going to take credit for popped into my mind.

HEATHER

How do you approach writing a play?  Do you begin with characters, an issue you’d like to explore, a theme?

JAMES

It varies. I’m a gardener when it comes to writing. I like to plant the seeds and see what grows. I’m not big into structure initially. I need the spark of an idea to get me going, and then I just sit down and start writing. Sometimes the whole play will simply emerge in a matter of a week or two or in a day if it’s a short play, and sometimes it can take years where I keep coming back to a script and a story I’ve been working on for some time until I get it finished. The big thing for me is I need the spark or the beginning moments usually in order to start writing, and that often gives me enough to get a third of the play written. So, at that point, I’m learning about the characters and the story and what they want and who the protagonist is and who the antagonist is, but once I hit a certain point then I really need to figure out my ending. I need to know how the story ends in order to continue writing the play, because knowing the ending informs the structure of the story and all of the obligatory scenes you need to have in order to reach the end, because everything is leading towards a specific outcome.

Sometimes the story and structure of the play come earlier and sometimes it comes later, but once I know the ending then I put on my architect hat and sketch out the rest of the plot. And if I can’t figure out the ending that’s where the play stalls, and it goes back into the drawer maybe to re-emerge at another date or to join the millions of other unfinished stories in drawers and on hard drives around the world to forever be forgotten.

One of the other things I’ve discovered about my writing is that what I need to know about the character is also influenced by the story. I have a bunch of questions I will ask about my characters especially for longer plays and doing that helps me understand the history of my character and the choices they’ve made in life and what’s important to them. Just as a side note, I never begin with the physical description of a character. It bugs the hell out of me that so many character profiles begin with hair colour and weight and all these other least interesting characteristics. What you need to do is determine the kind of a person your character is, and that means who they are and what they do for work. How they treat people. The physical person is determined by the career and ambitions of your character otherwise you are letting your physical description, which is only the surface aspects of your character, determine the very nature and soul of who your character is and what they want, desire, and need in life. Now that might mean in the end certain physical aspects might be extremely important in terms of self-identity such as a person who values their physical strength but is now growing older and feeling the effects of age. So that character in order to maintain the physical beauty and strength of their youth might be willing to do something such as sell their soul or take an experimental drug to keep what they value most.

And I don’t sit down and necessarily fill out the entire character description at the beginning. I tend to go back and forth making discoveries in the writing of the play which means going back and answering more questions about my character in the character profile. So, for example, you could be writing a scene and suddenly your character mentions having worked at an all-night diner in her twenties and that isn’t something you knew before so now you go back and you ask about that time in her life and who she met and what her day was like and how that has informed her life and the choices she’s made and her view of people. Then having that knowledge you go back and continue the story and now the character has specific memories rather than vague ideas. It makes for a more vibrant and interesting story.

A really big thing for me – is finding the right name for a character. In fact, if I don’t have the right name I can’t write. I spend lots of time looking at baby names and the meaning of names and testing names out until I land on the right one. So, once I get an idea for a play then I have to discover who the characters are and what their names are and once I have the right name – boom I just start writing. So, for example in my play Death and the Psychiatrist – Death’s name isn’t death it’s actually Mortimer Graves. Mortimer means “Dead Sea” and Graves means well – graves. And it wasn’t until I had the name that I was able to write the play although the idea for that play – Death having a psychiatrist – came to me late one winter night while I was out walking my dog Zeke and a little voice in my head just whispered, “What if death had a psychiatrist.” It was several years later before I actually sat down and wrote that play and that was the first play I wrote on my current journey as a playwright.

For Written in Stone the choice as far as character names go was made for me because I chose to dramatize the story by using existing characters from Christian mythology including Gabriel, Michael, and Lucifer and of course the big guy himself – God. The thing is I’ve played around a bit with who these characters are in order to make it more entertaining and surprising for the audience.

HEATHER

How is writing a 10-minute play different than writing a full-length play?  What are the unique challenges you face?

JAMES

Written in Stone wasn’t a ten-minute play. It’s actually a half-hour play cut down to ten minutes. Here’s one of the cut lines from the longer version of the play, “What were you doing standing in line squeezing the pumpernickel?” I love that line. Out of context, it sounds ridiculous. So, I don’t always write with the intention of writing a ten-minute play. Sometimes I do. Sometimes I don’t. The reason I cut Written in Stone down to ten minutes is simply because there are so many ten-minute play contests out there and I want my work to be produced and seen.

JAMES

For a lot of years, I worked as a commercial writer/producer so I’m used to telling stories in thirty seconds. Advertising is all about storytelling. It’s about connecting a particular product or service to your target audience emotionally and the best way to do that is through a story that illustrates the qualities the product possesses. That’s the first truth of marketing and advertising. The product actually has to deliver on the promise. Take Tim Horton’s for example. They’ve had a terrible fall from grace as a Canadian icon because they are no longer what they were. They’ve finally degraded the product to a point where they’ve lost the loyalty of their clients. In fact, I want to write a short play about it called Glory Days where we have these two Canucks talking about the glory days of Tim Hortons where they’re reminiscing about when Tim Hortons used to make the donuts in store and how amazing they were. On a personal note, my favourite Tim Hortons pastry was the walnut crunch. It was this heavy cake dough with icing and nuts, and it was awesome. And then the company that owned Wendy’s bought Tim’s and that was the first round of cutting quality and they brought out this revamped version of the walnut crunch that didn’t have the same texture, flavour, or feel of the original and was kind of spongy and light and of course, it failed. Last year Tim Hortons went from the fourth-best brand in Canada to fiftieth, but it’s been a decline that’s been in the works for a couple of decades. And now I’m thinking maybe this is a time travel story and we have these two Canuck scientists who are determined to travel back in time to get a walnut crunch and a double-double and relive the glory days of Tim’s.

That whole rant was simply to say that I worked for a long time in an industry where you had twenty-five seconds and sometimes less to tell a story so ten minutes is a huge amount of time. You can cover a lot and what I really like about the ten-minute format is that you don’t always have to tell a conventional story – you can explore a mood or a question. It’s like music. An individual song might not tell a story but it might paint a particular image and speak about the human experience on some level. I think short play formats have the power to do that as well and something that might be boring in a two-act structure might really be fascinating and compelling in ten minutes. The thing is you have to create some sort of satisfactory experience for your audience so they feel satisfied and engaged.  When you work on a longer work then you need layers, so whereas a short play might be akin in some ways to a pop song a long play could very much be compared to a classical concert. So, in a full-length play, you dramatically explore a particular question and in a classical concert, you explore a particular melody with all kinds of variations.

HEATHER

What do you hope that audiences will take away from seeing Written In Stone?

JAMES

I hope they laugh. My favourite quote of all time is from George Bernard Shaw. “Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.” To me, satire and comedy are wonderful tools for holding up a mirror to our hypocrisy and lies. I’ve always liked comedy and satire and one of my favourite films is Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb by Stanley Kubrick starring Peter Sellers and George C Scott, and it’s all about the insanity of living in a world where we live minutes away from Global nuclear annihilation. The first time I saw the film was at an Arthouse here in Calgary called the Plaza theatre, and it was when Ronald Reagan was sabre rattling, and the USSR was burning its way through elderly communist party leaders, and so tensions were high between the two superpowers, and we were living with jets in the air ready to respond to a nuclear threat within minutes. And this is just an insane way to live, but the fact that we live in this insanity is what makes the film so tremendously funny. And now with Putin, a couple of years ago threatening to rearm his nuclear arsenal and the potential of another arms race being bantered about I have to say the film is as relevant if not more relevant today. And so, with my little play, I’m asking people to think about the ten commandments and what they say and examine them based on what we’ve learned about our world and our place in it. So, yes I want people to laugh, but I think if they want to go out after the play and have a pint and play God and discuss what laws their ten commandments would contain I think they’d have a terrific discussion about what is truly important in life and what if any are the guiding principles we should live by.

HEATHER

Are you working on a new piece now and if so, would you like to talk about it?

JAMES

I don’t talk about new work until after the first draft is finished and it’s sat in a drawer for some time and then come out for a polish. I find if I talk about an unfinished piece of work the feedback I get takes me down the wrong path. Now for other people – they thrive from feedback. They love to take ten pages and share them. Me, I don’t work that way. In fact, nothing kills my idea quicker than getting the wrong feedback. It sabotages my creative process because I can’t unhear what I’ve heard. So, my advice is, if you’re like me, don’t share your work before it’s finished. That’s the same advice Stephen King gives in his book On Writing which I read back in 2010 when I began this playwriting journey and have reread several times since.

Having said that I’m in the process of finishing a new two-act comedy called Under the Mistletoe. These were originally two one-act plays that I’ve combined into one full-length play. And this is a good example of a play that’s had a long journey to completion. Early drafts of some of this work go back to 2011. It’s come in and out of the drawer several times and even had a couple of workshops. The second act worked fine, but I’d had some feedback on the first act and it took me in a direction where the story died. And it’s been dead ever since. I kept trying to rewrite the first act, over the years, but I could never get it to work. I’d lost the spark – the thing that gave it life, and no matter what I did I couldn’t get it back. Well a few months ago I thought I’d try again, and I pulled the play out of the drawer, and I decided to rename the characters, and once I gave the characters new names it made the play feel fresh and I was able to give it a complete rewrite and recapture the magic that had been there when I originally wrote the play.

JAMES

Basically, it’s similar to Neil Simon’s Plaza Suite. The play takes place in one hotel, but each act is a different story with different characters. I also wanted to write a play about characters in their fifties because I’m in my fifties and life is very different now that time is short.

The play takes place at Christmas thus the name – Under the Mistletoe. In act one there’s a character named Mike Riley who’s unemployed, divorced, and living in his brother’s basement. So, he’s a little depressed especially because he’s spending the holidays in the Gingerbread Suite at the Prairie Dog Inn Regina.  But then he meets Claire McKenzie and they spent a romantic night together and Mike thinks his luck is finally starting to change so On Christmas Eve he purchases the Two Turtle Doves Holiday Romance Gift Basket and hopes to make his relationship with Claire more than a one-night stand.

Then in act two, I have Harvey Swanson and Nancy Potter who have been friends for years but after they kiss in a movie theatre during the ending credit of Casablanca they decide to try and make their friendship a romantic one. So, they book the Candy Cane Suite at the Prairie Dog Inn Regina for a romantic rendezvous. The only problem is Harvey is having a tough time getting over the death of his wife and he feels guilty about being with another woman. So, the big question is will Harvey and Nancy become lovers or will these new romantic feelings and Harvey’s reluctance to let go of the past end their friendship?

That’s going to be up on my website come January.

Otherwise, I’ve got a huge amount of rewriting to do and I’ve been spending a lot of time working on my blog and interviewing other playwrights, actors, and directors. I love doing the blog because I’ve always liked to learn about people and what drives them. I have a degree in sociology and had considered becoming an archaeologist when I was younger, but my life took a different path. Still, I’m interested in people and society and why we do what we do and live as we do. Sociology, archaeology, and playwriting are all just different aspects of exploring humanity.

If you’d like to read more about the Newmarket National 10 Minute Play Festival then check out last weeks blog where I interview Michael Halfin the Artistic and Executive Director of the Festival as well as the director of my play Heather Dick: Written in Stone: The Story of the Ten Commandments – Premieres at the Newmarket 10 Minute National Play Festival.

And if you’re interested in reading up on Brand Rankings from 2018 see the link below to the Maclean’s article on Tim Hortons. Just on a side note this year Tim Horton’s was ranked 33rd. Still a long way from the position they once held and not the place you’d expect such an iconic Canadian brand. Although, is it really Canadian any longer and has it really been Canadian for some time? 

The Tim Hortons brand is badly broken. Here’s how to fix it.
by David Thomas May 17, 2018 MACLEAN’S 

“Last year, Tim Hortons reputational brand ranking plummeted from 4th place among Canadians in 2016 to 50th, according to Leger. Another survey in 2018, from the Peter B. Gustavson School of Business in Victoria, B.C., found Tims had free fallen to 203rd spot on a brand trust basis, from 27th place a year earlier and number one overall as recently as 2015. It’s a short drive from iconic to notorious, when you’ve driven off a cliff.

The company’s owners since 2014, Restaurant Brands International (RBI), were based in the U.S. before moving the head office to Oakville, Ont., with a further move slated to downtown Toronto. And RBI is backed by Brazilian investors 3G Capital, who are legendary, if not downright notorious, themselves for their love of cost-cutting at the companies they buy.”

Heather Dick – Director Written in Stone 

Heather is excited to be directing at the Newmarket National 10 Minute Play Festival for the first time. As a director, actor and voice artist she has worked across the country. Favourite directing credits include: Earth Tourist (Chandlier Factory Prods.), Forgotten Voices (World Premiere), Mail-Order Annie and Streethearts ( Sirius Theatrical Co.), The Art of Listening (Canadian Premier, Southern Mirrors Prods.), La Sante C’est Pas Sorcier (Waterwood Prods. – Ontario Tour), and The Peacemaker (Golden Horseshoe Players). For over 30 years, Heather has coached and taught workshops in acting, comedy and voice for many independent Toronto acting studios. She is also the Founding Artistic Director of the Sirius Theatrical Company (Toronto) where she currently teaches acting and voice and has produced multi-disciplinary performance pieces. Heather Dick is a member of Canadian Actors Equity Association. www.siriustheatrical.com

Interview with the director of 500 bucks and a pack of smokes – Ruthie Dworin

Posted on by James Hutchison
Poster for 500 bucks and a pack of smokes Directed by Ruthie Dworin and starring Carolyn Applebaum, Reed Thurston, Kajol Char, and Gayathri Rao.

“I think the most important thing comedy provides is catharsis – especially with farce – like this is a tragic situation that we get to laugh at Donny being a fool and we get to laugh at everyone else on stage being horrible and we get to live out some ridiculous aspects of human nature and laugh at it and not take it seriously and that makes the world a little bit lighter. And then there’s also the communal experience of being in a theatre and hearing everyone else laugh around you and that’s why live theatre still exists.” Ruthie Dworin

My one-act comedy, 500 bucks and a pack of smokes, is one of two student productions at the University of Chicago this weekend. 500 bucks and a pack of smokes is the story of Donny Bracco who after being told by his doctor that he’s dying puts out a contract on his own life. So, when his doctor calls him on his birthday and tells him the lab made a mistake, Donny is more than a little upset. Making matters worse, the original killer Donny hired, subcontracted the hit to another killer – who subcontracted it to another killer – who subcontracted it to another killer – who doesn’t know Donny is the one who put the hit out on himself. With time running out, Donny has to find the killer and convince him to call off the hit, otherwise, this might be the last birthday he ever celebrates.

Cast & Crew for 500 bucks and a pack of smokes. L-R Jess Robinson – Stage Manager, Gayathri Rao (Carmen), Reed Thurston (Vinnie, Murphy, Powell, Stubby), Kajol Char (Sophia, Sid), Carolyn Applebaum (Donny), Ruthie Dworin – Director

The production stars Carolyn Applebaum as Donny Bracco; Reed Thurston as hitman Vinnie Torelli, Officer Powell, Detective Murphy and Stubby the hobo; Kajol Char as widow Sophia Falco and butcher Sid Valencia; and Gayathri Rao as Sid’s sister Carmen. Ruthie Dworin is directing. The production is being stage-managed by Jessica Robinson with sound design by Ro Redfern. Tickets are just $6.00 in advance or $8.00 at the door and are available online at the University of Chicago Box Office. Plus you can catch a free preview on Thursday, February 7th.

I gave Ruthie Dworin a call a couple of weeks ago to talk with her about the University of Chicago, the production, and her approach to directing.

JAMES HUTCHISON

As a director what type of culture do you try and create for your actors in the creation of a play?

Ruthie Dworin

RUTHIE DWORIN

I grew up doing a lot of acting so I’ve seen a lot of different kinds of rehearsal rooms. I’ve seen a lot of directors who create good rehearsal rooms and bad rehearsal rooms and everything in between. So, I’m a student director and I’m still honing my craft and figuring out how to create the rehearsal room that I want but the best rehearsal rooms that I’ve been in as a director and actor have been one where the director sets forth a clearly stated vision so that everyone knows what we’re all working towards and to provide a framework and a container for the actors to fill. And that allows for a lot of creativity from the actors and from the designers and that allows for a lot of play too which I feel is very important.

And then I like to use Viewpoint exercises to build an ensemble. Ensemble work I think is good for any kind of play. We use ensemble building for helping people to feel comfortable and physically liberated which allows them to explore how the characters move in different ways and also allows them to take a lot more risks. Viewpoints can also be more helpful for exploring character relationships with different kinds of boundaries and with different kinds of constraints than a typical rehearsal room using scene work and what the script offers.

JAMES

You mentioned before our interview that you were part of a commedia dell’arte troupe and that’s a particular kind of comedy with a long tradition behind it. How does your work with the commedia dell’arte help you in terms of putting on a contemporary play like 500 bucks and a pack of smokes?

RUTHIE

Commedia’s been helpful in a lot of different ways. It’s been helpful in allowing me to think of emotions on a much higher scale because what makes a commedia show funny is that it takes every day human emotions and then takes them up beyond the scale often even bigger than 10. I explicitly said those words in rehearsal and I think that’s going to help the actors a lot. It also frankly gives me a lot of exercises that I can use with actors that are unfamiliar with taking emotions to that kind of height and I can help them get more comfortable with amplifying reality and amplifying realistic emotions.

Ruthie and other members of her Commedia Troupe in Performance

RUTHIE

It’s also helpful for thinking about each character. So, I wrote down for each of the characters in the play who their commedia character would be because it’s helpful for me to think about the show and it’s helpful for me to think about helping actors in crafting their characters. So, I’m calling Donny – Tartaglia because the person who plays Tartaglia in my troupe plays him very much like a straight man where everything is happening to him and he’s just trying to gain some control in that environment and he’s very nervous and falling over all the time which are some of the characteristics for Donny.

JAMES

As the playwright, I’m curious about what attracted you to the play?

RUTHIE

I like that the script moves so quickly. I like the dry humour. I like that everything is huge and that a lot of the humour allows for the actors to get up and play a lot more with the words. And the characters were so clearly delineated, and I have one guy playing Vinnie, Murphy, Powell and Stubby and he’s having a lot of fun creating all those characters.

Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts, University of Chicago

JAMES

From a student point of view, what are some of the things you really like about the University of Chicago?

RUTHIE

There’s a million ways for students to get involved. Our shows are entirely student-produced – all our main stages, all of our workshops, every single small production is student-produced so students are making everything happen from start to finish. Students are acting, students are directing, students are designing, students are production managing, students are stage managing, and students are picking the shows that actually get produced. 

JAMES

What kind of experience do the professors and instructors and support staff bring with them that you think is really beneficial for students? 

RUTHIE

Basically, every single person who works as a professional staff member here is involved in the professional theatre community in Chicago – one of my professors is a senior ensemble member at a theatre uptown and I’ve gone to see a couple of shows that he’s directed at that theatre and I’ve learned a lot from them.

And for the mainstage shows we have professional staff for each of the areas of design and for production management and stage management and for direction. So, student directors have a weekly cohort where they sit down with a professional director and workshop things to make their shows work well and look good and the student designers do a lot of the same things. It’s very helpful and they also teach classes as well.

That’s why Chicago is the first and only place I applied because I just fell in love with the school and I’m not majoring in theatre I’m majoring in linguistics because the linguistics program here is very good, but I also wanted to be able to do theatre with an exciting group of people without having to go to a conservatory.

A Streetcar Named Desire, University Theatre – Fall 2018, Photo by Matt Mateiscu

JAMES

You mentioned you’re taking your degree in linguistics and since you’re looking at language how does that focus on language influence the directing and staging of a play.

RUTHIE

I think a lot about language in terms of specific word choice because it informs all of the characters and it also informs a lot about how all the people talk differently to each other. Does Donny talk differently to Sophia than he does with Vinnie? Those things are very important. Linguistics is a scientific abstract version of things and theatre takes that knowledge and applies it to a specific situation which I think is fun and very useful.

JAMES

Do you have a preference for comedy or drama?

RUTHIE

I don’t really have a preference. The last several things I have worked on have been dramas and have been very heavy on symbolism and so I was specifically looking for a comedy this time around.

JAMES

What do you think comedy provides us in terms of its snapshot of the world?

RUTHIE

I think the most important thing is catharsis – especially with farce – like this is a tragic situation that we get to laugh at Donny being a fool and we get to laugh at everyone else on stage being horrible and we get to live out some ridiculous aspects of human nature and laugh at it and not take it seriously and that makes the world a little bit lighter. And then there’s also the communal experience of being in a theatre and hearing everyone else laugh around you and that’s why live theatre still exists.

JAMES

Why should people come out and see your production?

RUTHIE

The show is going to be a lot of fun. We’re going to laugh a lot and we’re going to throw things around on stage. Things are going to break and the actors are going to have a lot of fun on stage creating a lot of very huge characters that people can laugh at and enjoy and audiences will be able to relate to the small seeds of truth in it.

* * *

Ruthie Dworin is a second-year student at the University of Chicago majoring in Linguistics. Her theatrical background is mostly acting, but she discovered directing sophomore year of high school. She has assistant directed in her hometown, Louisville, KY, and at the University of Chicago on productions like A Bright Room Called Day by Tony Kushner, Julius Caesar, and Animals Out of Paper by Rajiv Joseph. In Louisville, she directed 26 Pebbles by Eric Ulloa and at UChicago she has directed Love, Loss, and What I Wore by Nora and Delia Ephron and short pieces by local playwrights for the annual New Work Week.

The Committee on Theatre and Performance Studies supports innovative work at the intersection of theory and practice across a broad spectrum of disciplines. The University of Chicago’s undergraduate and graduate programs in TAPS stand out for the intellectual commitment they demand, the interdisciplinary perspective they require, and the extraordinary collaborative opportunities they provide with theatre, dance, and performance companies in Chicago, across the country, and around the world.

Commedia dell’arte was an early form of professional theatre, originating from Italy, that was popular in Europe from the 16th to the 18th century. The characters of the commedia usually represent fixed social types and stock characters, such as foolish old men, devious servants, or military officers full of false bravado. The characters are exaggerated “real characters”, such as a know-it-all doctor called Il Dottore, a greedy old man called Pantalone, or a perfect relationship like the Innamorati. (Source Wikipedia)

Viewpoints is a technique of composition that acts as a medium for thinking about and acting upon movement, gesture and creative space. Originally developed in the 1970s by choreographer Mary Overlie as a method of movement improvisation, The Viewpoints theory was adapted for stage acting by directors Anne Bogart and Tina Landau. Bogart and Overlie were on the faculty of ETW at NYU in the late 1970s and early 1980s during which time Bogart was influenced by Overlie’s innovations. Overlie’s Six Viewpoints (space, story, time, emotion, movement, and shape) are considered to be a logical way to examine, analyze and create dances, while Bogart’s Viewpoints are considered practical in creating staging with actors. (Source Wikipedia)

QUOTA Gets a London Production in the British Theatre Challenge

Posted on by James Hutchison

Quota gets a London production and wins the Audience Choice Award as part of the British Theatre Challenge.

“All societies are based on codes of behaviour and when someone deviates from that code there has to be a way to handle the situation otherwise chaos would reign supreme, and we don’t want that now do we. We want everything nice and tidy. All the socks in the sock drawer and all the undies in the undie drawer.”

That’s a line from my play QUOTA. It’s what Dave Dixon gets told by Kathie, the Civic Census taker, after he gets flagged for corrective action.

  • QUOTA premiered at The British Theatre Challenge Act II in London England at the LOST Theatre. The production featured Anthony Acosta as Mr. Dixon, Stacey Norris as Kathie, and Alex Dowdin as Officer Carmichael. Photograph by Rah Petherbridge Art & Photography
  • QUOTA premiered at The British Theatre Challenge Act II in London England at the LOST Theatre. The production featured Anthony Acosta as Mr. Dixon, Stacey Norris as Kathie, and Alex Dowdin as Officer Carmichael. Photograph by Rah Petherbridge Art & Photography
  • QUOTA premiered at The British Theatre Challenge Act II in London England at the LOST Theatre. The production featured Anthony Acosta as Mr. Dixon, Stacey Norris as Kathie, and Alex Dowdin as Officer Carmichael. Photograph by Rah Petherbridge Art & Photography
  • QUOTA premiered at The British Theatre Challenge Act II in London England at the LOST Theatre. The production featured Anthony Acosta as Mr. Dixon, Stacey Norris as Kathie, and Alex Dowdin as Officer Carmichael. Photograph by Rah Petherbridge Art & Photography
  • QUOTA premiered at The British Theatre Challenge Act II in London England at the LOST Theatre. The production featured Anthony Acosta as Mr. Dixon, Stacey Norris as Kathie, and Alex Dowdin as Officer Carmichael. Photograph by Rah Petherbridge Art & Photography
  • QUOTA premiered at The British Theatre Challenge Act II in London England at the LOST Theatre. The production featured Anthony Acosta as Mr. Dixon, Stacey Norris as Kathie, and Alex Dowdin as Officer Carmichael. Photograph by Rah Petherbridge Art & Photography

I wrote QUOTA while I was doing a little research for another play about the internment camps that the Canadian government ran during World War One and World War Two.* It’s always bothered me that we were fighting dictatorships that put people in camps while we were doing the same thing. Of course our camps weren’t concentration camps but once you have a different set of laws and rules applied to one group in your society – how do you keep it from going to the extreme?

Maybe you keep it from going to the extreme by making sure the rule of law applies to everyone equally regardless of race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, or ethnicity.

Of course that’s only if you believe that everyone is equal. Not everyone believes this. And if you’ve seen Avenue Q you know that we’re all a little bit racist. We’re all human and we make assumptions and have distorted beliefs about people and sometimes we’re not even aware of our own prejudice. But that’s a lot different than laws being enforced by a government that are intended to limit the rights and freedoms of a particular group simply because of of that group’s differences.

But governments are not composed of robots. Governments and Prime Ministers and Presidents and Kings and Dictators are all people. And so I have to wonder what kind of people are they? Are they good leaders? I think not if they allow such laws to be passed and enforced.

But what makes a good leader? I think good leaders don’t seek power for themselves but instead seek to empower others. Bad leaders are afraid of diversity. They’re afraid of others having power. They see the cup as half full and they want what’s in the cup all for themselves. And while I know there are lots of different definitions of leadership I think great leaders enlarge the world they don’t limit it. They share.

You know one of the purposes of theatre and story is to provoke discussion. Discussion about politics, morality, relationships, love, religion, and power. And comedy allows us to shine a light on attitudes and behaviours in a way that drama doesn’t. That’s why I wrote QUOTA. I wanted to take a look at how individuals go from being a member of society to becoming an identified minority and having their rights violated.

So, I’m excited to announce that QUOTA gets a London production and is being produced by Sky Blue Theatre as part of The British Theatre Challenge – Act II.  The British Theatre Challenge is an annual international playwriting contest run by the Sky Blue Theatre Company and this year, in addition to the ten winning plays produced in December 2016, an additional six plays will be produced on Friday April 7, 2017 at the Lost Theatre in London, England.  If you happen to be in London check it out.

Quota by James Hutchison

QUOTA is the story of Dave Dixon who – while looking for a job on-line – is interrupted by the Metro City Census Taker. This is unlike any census Dixon has ever taken and when he’s asked whether or not he was spanked as a child he refuses to answer. That causes the Census taker to call for police back up and Dixon finds himself being targeted for corrective action because of his unemployment and the fact that he’s left handed. When a 2 kilo bag of white sugar is found on the premises and Dixon is facing jail time for trafficking he has to make a moral choice between naming names and protecting himself.

QUOTA gets a London Production

Guilty by Pete Barrett: Guilty takes Alice Golding one step through the looking glass into a bizarre courtroom scene, peopled by men, where she is tried for her many failures: her failure to get on with her own mother, her neglect of her children, her failure to find a job and contribute to the family budget, her failure to maintain her looks and figure and the consumption of an entire cheesecake in one go, thereby robbing her family of a Sunday treat and leaving them bereft. Of course, there can only be one sentence: life.

About Michael by Peter Anthony Fields: A first-year high school English teacher meets with the school’s administrators for what he believes is his mid-term job evaluation. However, as the meeting progresses, he soon discovers that the evaluation is actually an interrogation…

Threatened Panda Fights Back by Rex McGregor : As the World Wildlife Fund’s poster boy for endangered animals, Ling enjoys a comfortable life full of adulation and all the bamboo he can eat. But when a rival species challenges him for the role, he risks losing everything.

Mother’s Ruin by Michelle McCormick: As new parents, life for Esther and Tom has become a continuous cycle of miscommunication and long waits for invitations that never arrive. Then one simple question threatens to change everything. ‘Where’s the baby?’

The Waiting Room by Steve Shapiro: This is the place where you wait between lives. Barbara and Helmut arrive separately and must be assessed to see if they have fulfilled their pre-incarnation pledges, and while The Girl and Dinesh negotiate a better life next time. One of them is destined to make a mark in history.

Sky Blue Theatre strives to produce diverse and relevant works as well as being a hub of creativity and professional development for emerging artists. Lost Theatre is dedicated to promoting and developing young and emerging talent through regular productions, festivals, training, workshops and showcases in addition to year-round education and outreach activities.

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* Internment in Canada – World War I & World War II

At the beginning of World War I, the Government of Canada enacted the War Measures Act which gave it the power to suspend and limit civil liberties as well as the right to incarcerate “enemy aliens”. Enemy Aliens were citizens of states at war with Canada and who were living in Canada during the war. The camps were operated from 1914 to 1920. Twenty-four camps housed 8,579 men which included 5,000 Ukrainians and 2009 Germans. The camps provided forced labour which was used to build infrastructure as well as some of Canada’s best-known landmarks such as Banff National Park.

During the Second World War 40 camps held an estimated 30,000 to 35,000 prisoners. This included Germans and Italians and after Pearl Harbor approximately 20,000 Japanese Canadians were taken from their homes on Canada’s West Coast without any charge or due process and placed in remote areas of eastern British Columbia. The Canadian Government stripped them of their property and pressured them to accept mass deportation after the war ended. Most of the Japanese Canadians that were placed in camps were Canadian Citizens.

Links & Sources:

Recommended Reading – Olive Kitteridge, the Pulitzer Prize, and Doughnuts

Posted on by James Hutchison
olive-kitteridge

Hard Woman to Love

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.

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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.

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