I’m happy to confirm the cast and director of the upcoming public reading of Alex and Michael and Hannah !
Sunday, October 17 at 7:30 pm Mountain Time, Holy Trinity Anglican Church, 10037 84 Ave NW, Edmonton, AB T6E 2G6.
In-person: Wear your mask! The event will also be on Facebook Live the day of!
So says the Alberta caucus of the Playwrights Guild of Canada, anyway.
The weekend of May 29 to 31, 2015, the annual PGC Conference will be held here in Edmonton. And on the very first night, ten short plays by Edmonton writers will have public readings at the latest Script Salon. A brand new snippet of mine, My Boyfriend’s Cat, will be one of them.
It’s only occurred to me now that this is a national event, and other theatre folk from all over Canada will be here and may be hearing my work. So. Cool.
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.
At last, I have a smidgen of theatre news to share: my play The Ugly Princess will have a public reading as part of Script Salon, a new reading series starting in April!
The Salon is the brainchild of David Belke, and will take place the first Sunday of every month, 7:30 pm, at Holy Trinity Anglican Church.
The Ugly Princess will have her day on 3 August 2014…so it will be ever-so-slightly in the Fringe after all.
“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.
Absolutely, insanely good news this week on the theatre scene from Theatre Alberta and Alberta Playwrights Network. Bonkers, really.
Just now, on CBC Radio Daybreak Alberta, the world met the winner of the Alberta Playwriting Competition’s grand prize, Katherine Koller. I’m especially giddy about this one because a scene from her winning play, Last Chance Leduc, was presented at Peep Show at the first Skirts Afire festival earlier this year, so I’ve already heard some of it, and it’s amazing. Katherine is a terrific writer — I’m so happy for her!
AND. As part of her prize, Katherine’s play will getting a public reading at this year’s Playworks Ink conference, which for the first time will be held at the Banff Centre. AND. One of our guests, giving a masterclass, will be Christopher Plummer.
Read that again. Please. I had to.
Registrations aren’t open just yet. Please keep on eye on Theatre Alberta’s site for when they are, and book right away. But not before me. I’ve booked the time off work and I’m getting in first.
I can’t believe I haven’t talked at all about the readings at Peep Show this past Sunday. Simply amazing. The number of people who told me, after hearing the first ten minutes of Marathon/Sprint…”That is MY mother…oh my God!” Hee hee hee! The actors loved doing it, the audience loved hearing it, ALL of the plays read were terrific, a great day!
Skirts Afire as a whole did wonderfully. I look forward to being part of it next year too!
So; more writing to be done. I follow a group called New York Neo-Futurists on Twitter, and have participated almost every week in their Twitterplays for a while now. You get a prompt, and you write a play — it can only be tweet-length, and that has to include the hashtag so the world knows you’ve written it! We’re now on Twitterplay number 204 (#tp204). This week, probably by dumb luck — submitted first? — my tweet of a play appears on the NY Neo Tumblr first! All the tweet-plays are always fascinating. I really recommend keeping up on them.
So today is the day. Come to Skirts Afire and hear a snippet of my play Marathon/Sprint and four other wonderful shows at Alberta Avenue Community League today at 2 pm! Admission by donation — tell everyone you know, and see you there!
And for a bit of extra fun, check out Theatre Alberta’s very cool feature about Edmonton actors describing their Roles of a Lifetime — I’m in there, describing my role as Countess Marie-Laure de Tilly in Michel-Marc Bouchard’s amazing play Lilies.
So Skirts Afire is now in full swing — more events today, all afternoon and evening!
Because it’s always tricky — tomorrow everything and everyone jumps ahead one hour, so to catch Peep Show, be sure to be at The Alberta Avenue Community League by 2 pm Daylight Savings Time tomorrow, Sunday, March 10.
And the theme colours are red and black. That’s what I’ll be wearing!
Below is an e-flyer with more details about Peep Show, part of Skirts Afire, where you can here a snippet of playwright Heather’s newest work, Marathon/Sprint.
