Tag: actor

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Thank you to the audience!

THANK YOU to everyone who attended the reading of Alex and Michael and Hannah last night. A play isn’t a play without an audience, it’s truly impossible to know if a play works until you can hear the reaction to it, so you will be a huge help in improving the script, and getting it onstage!

Thank you to Script Salon, Holy Trinity, Playwrights Guild of Canada, and Alberta Playwrights Network for putting on the reading.

AND to the amazing director and cast for making the reading happen…ESPECIALLY Jake Tkaczyk for stepping in 30 minutes before rehearsal began yesterday!

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meet Janine Waddell – intimacy co-ordinator

A director and certified movement instructor since 1991, Janine has drawn from her experience in dance, theatre and film to develop her stage combat and intimacy practices.  She is an internationally certified Advanced Actor Combatant with Fight Directors Canada (FDC) and the Society of Australian Fight Directors (SAFDi) and a certified Actor Combatant with the Society of American Fight Directors (SAFD), the British Academy of Stage and Screen Combat (BASSC) and the Nordic Stage Fight Society (NSFS.)

Janine is an active member of the Alberta Theatre and Film Communities and was recently award the first Alberta ACTRA Intimacy Coordination contract after having choreographed the violence and intimacy for over 75 plays and films in the past decade. Her passion lies in teaching new talent and the joy of discovery in safe spaces.  Janine graduated from the MacEwan Theatre Arts program and is a proud mother of four.

 

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Why I love theatre technicians.

Having sent out what I believe to be a pretty kick-butt play, I’m now at the hard part: waiting. Waiting to see if anyone else with any pull to put the play onstage thinks it’s remotely as good as I think it is.

I used to wonder if writing is what I should be doing, if maybe I just really was not that good. For a while now, I’ve had a different problem: knowing that my writing is good, and still not having got one professional-level — PACT, Equity, etc — production, nor enough of a hit from one of my self-produced shows to keep working on theatre regularly.

Here is where technicians have been my saving grace.

Theatre techs — lighting, sound, set-building, the ones who do everything — are all utterly professional. They are there to make your show the absolute best it can be in the time given, and will bend over backwards, given the equipment and time they have, to give your show what it needs. And given that they work in theatre…they put up with a lot of crap.

Here’s the wonderful Henry Rollins on backstage crews. Maybe this is the reason technicians tend to be detached — I’ve never worked with one who didn’t love their work, but also maintained a very professional yet clear distance from whatever show they were working on.

And here’s the thing of which I am envious: technicians have skills. I was acquainted with a guy in Edinburgh, who produced a show at his own site-specific venue the same year we did Take a Bite.  We made a bit of money.  This fellow ended the Fringe £6,000 in debt.  The understanding among everyone involved in the show was that they were working on spec: if they show made money, they would get paid. But the producer made a terrible mistake: he assumed this included their technician. In the middle of their tech rehearsal, the tech walked out for another venue, because that’s when the producer made it clear he had no intention of paying the tech anything until and unless the show recouped its costs. He had to find and hire a new tech with one day’s notice before the start of the Edinburgh Fringe.

The technicians don’t have to like your show. They will get paid, whether your show is good or not. They will work their butts off for your show because that’s their job and they take pride in their job, but they don’t need to be invested in any show.

How do I know I’m good? Because the techs have not been able to stop themselves from saying my show is good.  When I doubt, I remember that, and grin.

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Busy busy Acting Writing WOW

So.  StageStruck, the Edmonton Regional One-Act festival happened this past weekend.  I stopped posting a while ago about how The Ugly Princess was going, because things very nearly went…pear-shaped, as they would say in Scotland.  (That’s one of my favourite UK expressions, after “mingin’ ” – stinky – and “bollocks” – self-explanatory).  BUT, everyone pulled together, I ended up playing the title role in my own play…and I won an award for Outstanding Actor.  I’m still gobsmacked.  To everyone who donated to the Writeathon to get me writing this play, and to everyone who saw it and wants to see again, THANK YOU. AND.  My play Crushed will be getting two performances shortly – one at a high school in Lac La Biche, Alberta, and the other at a university in Kingston-Upon-Thames.  And I’m getting paid for them. :O

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My show about endometriosis WILL be at Edmonton Fringe 2015!

Okay, it’s also about sex and drinking (when I could still do that) in Scotland, and cats, as well as uteruses (uteri…?)

It was confirmed today that my redux of It Started With an Allergy will be on at the Strathcona Edmonton Public Library for Fringe this summer.  YAY!

Heather Morrow in It Started With an Allergy. Photo by Adrien Guyot & Alix Popescu
Heather Morrow in It Started With an Allergy. Photo by Adrien Guyot & Alix Popescu

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the Ugly Princess cometh!

I actually have PLAY NEWS.

The play I wrote at APN’s Writeathon, which I’ve been babbling about since last September, will get its first, full, public reading!

Ladies and gentlemen, it’s The Ugly Princess!!

It’ll be at Script Salon, put on by APN and PGC:

Holy Trinity Anglican Church, 10037 84 Ave NW, Edmonton, AB
Google Map
7:30 pm on Sunday, 3 August.

AND HERE’S THE CAST

I’m a wee bit excited.

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A kick in the butt, and I’m rethinking my life. Yes, again.

I’m going to try – and fail – to describe the Dramaworks workshop I was at for the last five days. Investigative Theatre, 35 hours in total, with Vladimir Shcherban, Associate Director of Belarus Free Theatre.

I knew very little about BFT before this. I had heard they’d done shows the government of Belarus didn’t like them doing, that some of their members had been arrested, and that they’d won several awards, including a Fringe First.

During those five days, I saw videos of two of BFT’s shows. (OH MY GOD, there aren’t words to describe how fantastic they are!). I acted out the days of the week, and got told “Good try” (after which I wrote in my notebook Don’t be hurt!). I sculpted my most horrible secret in plasticine (and everyone else got the feeling behind it), I took photos to show “Edmonton’s pain”, I filled my notebook with what Vlad said, and my own ideas for my solo show. He kept saying Бетон сітуацыя! – Concrete Situation! – that we each needed to get into what we wanted to show the audience, or else it would be dishonest. He talked about how it’s best and strongest to NOT talk, to find the object, the smell, the sound that would involve the audience – you’re not telling the audience anything, you are drawing them in. He said British theatre is wonderful…but they talk too much (!). The words are wonderful, but why do you have a body?

I came home every night to do my homework (lots), with my brain feeling like scrambled squid. And one thought in my scrambled brain…MORE, good enough isn’t good enough, MORE!

Rather than feeling inadequate and hopeless, I felt SMART, I felt yes, I’m right, I am still doing this!!

I also thought – and this is going to take a LOT of work – that I have to stop being afraid.

So yeah. It was farking amazing.

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Audacity.

Robert O’Hara used this word a lot in our breakout session, Don’t F*ck with my Play, yesterday at Banff. About we playwrights having the audacity to say to a director:

“No, I can’t work with you.”

To people not in theatre: “No, this is not just a hobby.”

To the director, producer, or actors who want to change what you wrote to suit them. “NO, that is not what I wrote, you’re not doing it.”

About asking the production team what they need from me, the playwright, and informing them what I need, at the start, so that the play doesn’t get screwed up.

And if the situation changes during rehearsal, work to fix it. And if it can’t be fixed, decide if I’m going to shrug, wait for the terrible production to be over and move on. OR, if I’m going to tell the production team I, the person who wrote the play which has given them all work, isn’t happy, and take the crap that comes with being a ‘difficult writer.’

Sometimes, it’s not enough for the show to go on. I did recently pull the plug on a project I was really looking forward to, because it was already making me unhappy. And that’s not the point. I’m still disappointed and miffed, but better that, than insane.

This weekend, an Obie-winning playwright told me I was good. I met Karen Hines and told her about the award I was nominated for and how proud I was to lose to her, and she laughed. I made a whole room of people laugh. I don’t deserve to be f*cked around.

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Why I dislike being a “woman writer”.

Besides the fact that “woman” in this case is used as an adjective when it’s a NOUN. I HATE THAT.

This post may seem like I’m looking the gift horse in the mouth, and I genuinely don’t know why this occurred to me today, but it has, so here we go:

This morning, I received an e-mail saying “I’m pleased to inform you that Crushed has made a sale.” I get that same e-mail about every six weeks or so.

I wrote Crushed in 1997. It had its premiere at the Walterdale Playhouse, during their Evening of One-Acts program — it’s now called Cradle to Stage (now accepting submissions…do it!). This program did — and does — get some heavyweight dramaturges to assist the playwrights. Mine was Vern Thiessen. And here it is, my little two-hander one-act, doing quite well in the fledgling world of online publishing. And a sliver of me wonders why.

It’s very short, 18 pages, though its playing time has always been not less than 30 minutes. It’s about two sisters…the younger is an abusive relationship, and she in turn is rather abusive to her older sister. It’s a very, VERY cheerful story.

Does it still have legs because there are still too few really good scripts out there for actresses? Is it because I happened to get it right — how an abused woman thinks, and how she might in turn end up hurting the people around her? Because — very unfortunately — domestic abuse is happening?

I’ve been very lucky. I have never been physically abused by a man — I wouldn’t stand for it. I have never been turned down for a job because I’m female. But maybe it’s because I’m older, and still on my own, or because there does appear to be a true movement to belittle women lately, that I’m pondering how little progress we’re actually making. I’d like to believe there are more men like these in my own sphere, who not only don’t believe I’m lesser, but would step up when another man says I am. I wish Suzanne Moore of The Guardian wasn’t right…but she is.

I hate being a “woman writer” because that implies what I’ve written about couldn’t possibly matter to anyone but other women. So I put it out there, brothers: if your sister is being beaten up by her boyfriend, isn’t that your problem? What about your daughter, or niece, or your best friend’s daughter? If that boyfriend said “She was asking for it,” would you really say “Yeah man. Women“?

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Take Pains. Be Perfect.

“We will meet, and there we may rehearse most obscenely and courageously. Take pains. Be perfect. Adieu.” A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

This morning, I ordered The Hollow Crown. I have, I admit, already seen it, and pre-ordered the DVD I could play in Canada the moment it became available. That’s for another post. (It’s excellent. All four parts. Buy it. Buy it buy it buy it.)

It will be clear to anyone who knows me, and any regular readers I have, that I’ve been going through a bit of a funk. This site is my professional face, so I won’t go on about the other facets of my existence not going right, but my professional playwriting facet hasn’t been going the way I wish either, which has compounded things.

About a month ago, I asked myself, “Why am I still doing this?” And for the first time in my life…I couldn’t answer myself right away.

I chose to devote my brain, my every moment really, to writing for theatre. I chose it because I love doing it. But WHY did I love it?

I couldn’t remember.

The wonderful Mr Simkins’ Guardian article gives one reason the majority of us (yes, I’m saying US) keep at it: “it’s a drug – and once it gets in your system, it’s difficult to break the habit”. When you do get a role, when a show you’re doing goes well, it is very like a shot of adrenaline. You feel great.

It’s the bite of the theatre bug. At the end of high school, where I’d been called one of the best actors they’d seen in a long time and an excellent writer, I asked my drama teachers if they honestly thought I could hack it in drama school. They said no. I wasn’t thick-skinned enough, I’d be eaten alive. Good, I thought, that’s that. So I did my English degree, intending to become…a journalist? …a teacher? Lying to yourself is futile, ladies and gentlemen. Halfway through my third year, I won a playwriting contest. I had been infected by the theatre bug when I was FOUR. No escape.

Take Pains. Be Perfect.

So. Apparently this is what I’m meant to do. I’ve worked my tail off at it. Other theatre professionals have told me I am good and should keep at it. And here I was, about a month ago, questioning at age 38 what the hell I’ve been doing. Ultimately I chose to write and keep writing because I love it…

But without remembering, even for myself, why I love it, I had my worst anxiety attack in years.

There were some shows in the last month I wanted to see. I didn’t go. One night I tried watching a movie at home, a movie I’d seen before and enjoyed, just to take my mind off things, and stopped it in a panic when I saw the boom mike in frame. I’m not watching the movie anymore, why is the mike…! I went to the house of my best friends, while they were feeding their kids dinner, and had a breakdown with them.

Now…we come to Shakespeare.

I was at home after a long day at my day job, watching cat videos on YouTube. I happened upon a review of The Hollow Crown series, and although I’d seen them already…I watched it.

A very brief prelude for all who haven’t seen it: the review contained a clip of the scene in Henry IV part 2, where King Henry — played by Jeremy Irons — is awake in the dead of night, wandering into the throne room of his blue-moonlit-castle, saying “uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.”

Stendhal’s Syndrome. I am not exaggerating.

Take Pains. Be Perfect.

Perfect script. Perfect adaptation of a perfect script. Perfect actor in that part. Perfect setting. Perfectly set. Perfect perfect PERFECT.

And when the last bit of The Hollow Crown was broadcast in Britain last year, and was pre-empted by Wimbledon…there was an outcry from the public. Over Shakespeare.

These films had the very best actors cast in exactly the right roles, and exactly the right crew making them, from the costumes to the swords to the direction. They were perfect, and the audience agreed.

I am still learning, in this, my long, rarely-paying playwriting career. Some tidbits I’ve learned:

– when to admit that a script I have worked diligently on is still not ready to be seen.
– when to leave the director and cast to get on with it, and when–because I’m the producer and coming up with the money–to step in.
– that the perfect actor may not always be cast in their role, sometimes for the stupidest of reasons, and so that show will not be perfect — and one must get on with life, and the next show.
– that audiences and critics are seeing your show with NEW EYES. Listen and weigh what they say…they may be right.
– that striving for the perfect show means getting hurt. Badly.

My fellow playwright Kim McCaw told me once about a good friend of his who’s been an actor in London for years. He’s been in too many shows to count, and after every show, his friends and family have come backstage and said “Well done, we really enjoyed that.” Then he was in War Horse. And everyone came backstage screaming “OH MY GOD! That was AMAZING!”

Many shows turn out badly. Some shows are good. A few are perfect.

I am taking pains to be perfect. I am hurting because I want my work not to be good, but perfect. Whenever I have written the best script, and gotten the perfect director for it, and the perfect actors in each part AND for each other, the show has been perfect. And on those few occasions, the audience, no matter how small, has loved it. I am selling only the scripts of Crushed and Take a Bite because I am that proud of them. They are, I daresay, perfect.

THAT is what I love.