Tag: Writing

Playwright Wendy Froberg: A Woman of a Certain Age

Posted on by James Hutchison
Wendy Froberg – Actor, Playwright, & Psychologist

Wendy Froberg, Playwright & Actor: “Is life a search for truth? I think ideally it is. I think people that go off into the light happily – however you want to say it – those are the people that have somehow discovered the more profound fundamental truths about life. I always tease people and say, “No one is lying on their deathbed saying they wished they’d worked at the office more or wished they’d partied more.” You know generally what gives people a sense of peace and meaning – again because we’re talking about aging meaningfully – is that they made those profound human connections. They struggled, but they overcame. They had loss, but they healed from that. They were transformed. And I think the happiest people are the ones who live most truthfully.”

Wendy Froberg is an actor, playwright and psychologist and this month Calgary audiences will have a chance to catch her award-winning play, A Woman of a Certain Age, from May 13th to 19th at Knox United Church. The play won “Best of Fest” at the 2015 Calgary International Fringe Festival and since then has received strong reviews and successful runs at the Edmonton, Lethbridge, Regina and Winnipeg Fringe Festivals.

“… a stellar performance… hits a nerve…what a show!”
Louis B. Hobson – Calgary Sun

“…honest, entertaining…a convincing portrayal…emotionally poignant”
Clare Clancy – Edmonton Journal

“…expertly done…astute…warm, funny…you will enjoy the hour”
Lisa Campbell – Winnipeg Jenny Revue

The play is an entertaining and insightful story about six women who are trying to cope with the demands of family and career as they struggle with the physical and emotional challenges of growing older in a culture obsessed with youth and beauty. I sat down with Wendy to talk with her about her play and how she got into playwriting.

Poster for A Woman of a Certain Age by Playwright Wendy Froberg

JAMES HUTCHISON

Tell me a little bit about how you got involved in playwriting?

WENDY FROBERG

I was an actor in high school, and I did a little bit of directing, but my parents weren’t thrilled about me becoming someone in the arts, so I put theatre away for many years and pursued a career in psychology. But as an adult, I got back into acting, and I started auditioning, and I realizing there were limited opportunities for women. And since I had lots of stories I wanted to tell, and I’d always liked writing, I decided to try writing plays

JAMES

Well psychology isn’t totally different than writing and acting, because you’re looking at motivation and characteristics. Where do you see the connections between psychology and playwriting and acting?

WENDY

Well that’s absolutely right, as a psychologist, or as an actor, or as a writer you’re looking at human beings and their motivations. And when we talk about a character’s dramatic arc, for example, the idea that a character changes from the beginning of a play or movie to the end of it that’s certainly similar to what we do in psychotherapy. We want somebody to change from the beginning of the process to the end of the process. I was actually out of psychology for a number of years while I was pursuing playwriting, acting, and directing, but I’ve always felt like I was doing psychology because I was doing it through my art. I was digging into a character or creating a character in my writing.

JAMES

Can you tell me about the genesis of your play, A Woman of a Certain Age?

WENDY

As you know, as a playwright, often whether we intend to or not, parts of ourselves end up being in the play. Whether they’re done literally or whether they’re done from our emotional experience. As I became older and passed out of the ability to play the ingénue roles and got married and had children I began to realize that I was beginning to have a different currency in the world. I wasn’t looked upon the way that I was when I was younger. There are a lot of issues about growing older that have to do with the physical aspects of aging. It’s when you go from being someone who can turn a head when you walk into a room, to being someone that becomes somewhat invisible. And that’s actually a tagline I use when I’m promoting my play and talking about it. The women that I’m portraying are struggling to age with meaning and grace in a culture that’s obsessed with youth and beauty and wants to make them invisible.

JAMES

You’ve done some talkbacks with the play. What sort of conversations have you had with people after they’ve seen the play? When it’s the actor playwright sitting there – what are some of the themes that get discussed?

WENDY

It’s different things for different people. There’s a character in the show who’s a widow as well as an aging mother and she’s suffering from dementia and living in a care home and I get a lot of women who say, “I’m going through exactly that with my mother.” And often, they’re tearful and they say, “That’s exactly how she behaves.” And they’re grateful for the fact that somebody recognizes how difficult it is to watch your parent go through that.

I also have a theme that runs through the show about physical appearance and women often say, “Yeah I’m struggling with the concept of whether or not I should get Botox or should I get a facelift or should I have the courage to let my hair go gray and be natural and embrace the concept of aging because that’s a difficult thing to do, because if you acknowledge that you’re older then people will make assumptions about you and think you’re ready to go out to pasture.” And in the play I’m never judgmental about whether someone wants to do that or not. I think a good play poses questions. You never want your play to be preachy. You never want your play to simply be about your point of view that you’re forcing on your audience.

JAMES

Do you find people take away hope from the play after seeing it?

WENDY

I think they do. I always say that it’s sometimes humorous, that it’s sometimes poignant, but it’s always truthful because that’s what I want to go see. A show that’s truthful and genuine.

JAMES

You mentioned truthful. That’s an interesting idea – because when we see acting that is truthful and sincere it has impact. But what about life itself and theatre’s reflection of life – do you think that life is a search for truth?

WENDY

Is life a search for truth? I think ideally it is. I think people that go off into the light happily – however you want to say it – those are the people that have somehow discovered the more profound fundamental truths about life. I always tease people and say, “No one is lying on their death bed saying they wished they’d worked at the office more or wished they’d partied more.” You know generally what gives people a sense of peace and meaning – again because we’re talking about aging meaningfully – is that they made those profound human connections. They struggled, but they overcame. They had loss, but they healed from that. They were transformed. And I think the happiest people are the ones who live most truthfully.

JAMES

You’ve done the play at a number of fringe festivals. Tell me a little bit about that fringe experience and travelling across Canada. What was that like?

WENDY

Well in 2012 I had been touring as an actor with a fringe show that had gone to Calgary, Regina, Winnipeg, and Edmonton. When I go to fringe festivals I work the lineups really hard. That’s how we get our shows promoted to a large extent. You work the lineups for other shows. And you hand out flyers and you tell people about your show and you get them to know a little bit about you as a performer and or as a writer. And I kept noticing the demographic. The demographic was me. They were middle-aged women. And there were a lot of the husbands and boyfriends with them but the women were the ones that typically decided which shows to see. And I had this play in my head because I recognized there’s an audience here so I think I’m going to write it. You know it’s like Field of Dreams. If you write it they will come – because we love to see ourselves portrayed truthfully and with a certain amount of dignity on stage.

JAMES

How much has the show changed from when it started?

WENDY

When I first presented the play it was at the Calgary One-Act Play Festival in 2013 where it won best script and I had a different director the first time around. My director wanted to try a lot of different things so we had projections and a lot of technical stuff and it ended up being quite cumbersome and crisis ensued with things not working the way they were supposed to.

JAMES

Projections didn’t go, the lighting cue was missed, the music lost.

WENDY

Yeah, things like that. When I ended up working with my next director Valerie Ann Pearson, who is a gem, I can’t speak highly enough about her…

JAMES

She was my junior high drama teacher.

WENDY

She is the loveliest person ever.

JAMES

And her husband, Pat, was my radio instructor at SAIT.

WENDY

I love Pat. He’s just a doll. I love them both. Anyway, I just approached her, out of the blue, because I didn’t really know her, but I’d seen her on stage – you always know those people on stage more than they know you. And she liked the story and I talked to her about what I felt – which was that the story got lost in all the bells and whistles – and she said absolutely. She said, “I think this needs to be told really really simply because it’s the story. If you have a strong story you don’t need all that other stuff.”

And since I was thinking of doing it for a fringe I was like absolutely, because another thing about the fringe is you get ten minutes to set up your show and five minutes to strike your show, because the next theatre group is coming in to perform. And so you better have a pretty lean mean machine working there, especially for a one-woman show where it’s just me or me and my son. So now when I write things, I always write things with that in mind. Would this work at a fringe festival? Could it be transportable and quick to set up?

And because the play is easy to set up I’ve also gone on to perform it privately. I’ve done it in people’s living rooms – I’ve done it in people’s guest houses – I’ve even done it in hotel ballrooms.

JAMES

Have play. Will travel.

WENDY

Have play. Will travel. That’s my name. I’m thinking next year, because I took this year off of fringing, I’d like to go beyond Winnipeg. This means I don’t think I’m going to drive, which means I’m probably going to have to rejig my show so it doesn’t even have a set – which happens a lot in fringe shows. Or, have something simple I can pick up locally.

JAMES

I like that for the title of something – Beyond Winnipeg.

WENDY

Beyond Winnipeg, I like that.

JAMES

Beyond Winnipeg, the life story of Wendy Froberg.

WENDY

Yeah, yeah I like that. Have Play. Will Travel. I like that one too.

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

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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