a bad theatre experience during an otherwise beautiful night.

The theatre piece sputtered. The actor was afraid to look at the room he was struggling to control. People were around him, drinks in hand, wanting to enjoy themselves. The actor wanted attention, he wanted to be loved, he wanted the people listening to take his side and really trick themselves into thinking, “Yeah, this actor from Ottawa really gets the Blues because he’s telling us a story about this girl that he once thought he loved and how he suffered a not-quite-real heartbreak because of it. Yeah, I can dig this.” No one in that room, by the way, was foolish enough to trick themselves into thinking this. This was an event of musicians and real artists (not saying theatre is not real art, but this kind of performance did not belong at the event because there was no passion, no real understanding of the thing that was coming out of the performer’s mouth and being presented to the public, many of whom were also performing at some time that evening and many of whom were musicians). Instead of stepping up to the challenge, this thespian secluded himself from the wonderful event happening in the, how many?, five or more different rooms around him? Before his act, I spied him, script in hand, head down and buried beneath the words on his pages, sitting in the very space he was later to perform in. I think he moved to see one of the acts leading up to his. Or maybe he just looked up from where he was because another act was happening in the same room, I can’t be sure. But you know what the most aggravating thing of all was? His act was maybe halfway into the palette of programming arranged that night. And he left after he was done. He didn’t even stick around to see the act that the organizers of the event, the ones responsible for him being there, put on themselves. He didn’t stick around for the burlesque, or the headlining band. He disappeared after he lost the room. Rather: he actually disappeared as he was losing the room, because a musician who played earlier in the night stepped in to accompany him and totally took what little attention he held onto right out of his hands and into her saxophone.

I tell you this not because he is a Canadian star who, because of that, I guess, should have demanded respect, or something, but because it saddens me that the worst part of such an inspiring event was the sole piece of theatre. It saddens me because I call myself a theatre practitioner. It saddens me because the Canadian star claimed to have been developing this for years, through many workshops and, I believe, grants. It saddens me because this isn’t the only incident like this that I’ve experienced; time and time again, in an atmosphere where people are present, where there is no real distinction between the performers and the audience, where the people who are at the event are there, drinks in hand, just wanting to transcend, to party, when “theatre” is added to the programme it seems continuously unable to capture the attention and emotions of the room.

Why is independent theatre so often the most inaccessible of the fine arts? There are a couple reasons I think this happens. ONE, I think it’s because “theatre” naturally assumes attention will be given, that certain preconceptions will be met. So the traditional performer of plays doesn’t really have to fight to gain it right from the top, because the lights dim on the audience and everyone assumes they should be quiet now. Because these preconceptions are the standard for the majority of produced theatre as a result new, independent theatre generally caters to those who acknowledge them. Those who acknowledge them are, namely, theatre people. TWO, I think this happens because of bad curatorial practice. If the piece of theatre requires people to sit quietly, contemplate, and use their imagination when they shouldn’t have to (the actor in this instance was still on book and stumbled to find his place a couple times), then maybe it’s not the best idea to add them to the line-up of an event that is taking place across an entire floor of a loft and is labeled as BYOB, and was also, coincidentally, the organiser’s birthday.

When placed side by side, the other fine arts have immediate merits; they evoke something almost innocently, but clearly tailored from you, because they never forget that the crux of their art is to communicate with the audience.

When placed side by side at events with the other fine arts, it seems people just don’t know what to do with independent theatre (especially people who are not in theatre and, as a result, don’t care about appealing to its clique by staging theatre for theatre people). The same, I believe, can be said vice versa; theatre people generally don't know what to do at these kinds of events.

And I think it can all be summed up very easily by the following awkward exchange, that most of us will recognise, between a theatre practitioner and potential audience member:

“Hey, what do you do?”
“Oh, I act.”
“Wow, that’s great. Can you show me?”

 ...

The question then becomes, "Why can't we show them?"

slowly going crazy.

Have we lost the ability to critically examine a piece of art? Is it too much to ask the audience to do some work? To create a play that's meaning is incomprehensible upon the first watch? I realise this may be seen as trying to siphon money from patrons, architecting a built-in re-watch factor. I realise a play is meant to be seen. Yes. It is. But the greatest works of art are also destined to be studied. 

I wrote these lines about a few months ago. At the time, I was fed-up with people reading things on a purely face-value and not taking the time to look past the action, sex and special effects in a work of art (specifically my own). I was disillusioned with the pathways of theatre; from page-to-stage seemed the longest journey. The number of people I felt like I had to impress just to get to the next phase was disheartening. Every time you add another person into the mix, it seemed, you would lose that much more control as the creator; it was a slightly xenophobic thought, one that believed everyone I had to impress who came into contact with a new script would undoubtedly take it upon themselves to demand changes, eventually forcing me to abandon the work of art that I, individually, wrote (take the phrase "work of art" lightly). After all, this is the age of the term "creator controlled." While I still haven't passed into that second phase, I have recently been able to experience it from a different aspect, one I believe I've mentioned here before: as a director. Being a director for the premiere staging of a play has forced me to think a bit differently. I haven't lost all of my angst (as my writer-self has been dormant for what seems like altogether too long) but I am able, I think, to objectively examine this question.

 An artist gets all giddy when they throw that tiny, seemingly insignificant object / moment / line / symbol into a work of art that, upon first glance, will render mostly unremarkable to the audience. That thing that, upon second viewing beckons a double-take; was that in there all this time? How did I miss it? Those little moments, those tiny, slightly opaque secrets are an artist's admission that, yes, they have thought of everything (we hope). I'm unsure if this attention to detail is positive or not. On one hand, it is conceited / obsessive compulsive / self-destructive, and, ultimately, it adds a layer to the work that just so happens to make it slightly more inaccessible to the average reader / watcher / listener. On the other hand, it shows you just how much thought the artist has put into this piece and the love they've developed to flesh it out and complete it in only the way the artist can / feels they must. Something we can all agree on, however, is that this attention to detail itself is not enough to make a piece of art good. And herein lies my initial problem. In order to have a piece of art critically examined, it has to generate the interest of the people who will do the examining. And, surprisingly enough, these people are not in limited quantity. I believe every person wants something to obsess over; it is human nature after all. It is why we have come so far as a species.

So how do we get these people interested? Well. It must become accessible. Not accessible in that it becomes fluff, shallow summer blockbuster material, but accessible in that it guides the audience's experience from beginning to end (even if the audience is told to guide their own experience). This has to be done. To answer my question above, yes, a piece of theatre can be incomprehensible upon first viewing, but the audience's experience of it must be defined so they feel like they've done something productive. There does need to be an outcome for the audience, even if it's to pique their interest to figure out more.

Picture going to an art gallery and hiring a tour guide. If the guide has no plan, no connection between the pieces they show you or the things they tell you, you are probably going to be frustrated and think the gallery is an incomprehensible mess; nothing more than a place for highbrow intellectuals. You probably won't pay to go back there, much less pay to go on another tour. But if the guide does what they are hired for and guides your experience, hopefully at the end, even if you don't walk away loving expressionism, you should at least walk away with having understood the reason for it. And, even better, you may walk away with having thought of something you had never thought before. 

Comprehension comes in many different forms and on many different levels. It is up to you, as the artist, to choose which ones you want to show the audience, and which ones you want to hide from them. But you can't hide them all.

Unless you want the audience to hide from you.

so what. it's a string.

I think the reason I'm having problems moving forward with my new play is because I'm not done with my old one; I keep wanting to write but every time I put my fingers in front of that new world, they seem to tense up. I learnt this in January when I re-read my first script; why did I think it wouldn't apply to my second one?

I'm relieved as a cat that sees something important and then shortly thereafter thinks, "Well, I could just sleep."

with a different hat.

Some of the things I love about theatre is the overlapping edges of each specialty within the discipline mixed with the openness, or encouragement for experimentation amongst practitioners. Although some people do like to specialise in one particular role, by no means is this a universal quality. Most of the people I know involved with theatre would label themselves under the general umbrella of being a “theatre practitioner.” They dabble in set design, lighting design and stage management. They explore acting and directing and maybe costume design on the side.

Which is as they should; the pursuit of theatre needs to take many different parties into consideration whilst creating the product (the set designer, for example, must take the actors into consideration because they’ll be the ones playing on it, the lighting into consideration as to work together to achieve the effects desired, the play into consideration to create the most faithful interpretation of the script’s world, and the audience for visibility, sight lines, and overall impression, etc.). Every aspect forces us to think differently and to look at something through an alternative pair of eyes. I find this to be absolutely necessary practice in, not just the arts, but daily life; keeping your mind thinking on one channel for too long is bound to close it (think Rick Santorum on women’s liberties or Rob Ford on subways).

A friend of mine introduced me to the Six Thinking Hats philosophy by Edward de Bono, a philosophy designed for the critical examination of basically anything (she finds it useful as a tool to get students thinking about assignments in different ways) using a different coloured hat to represent different aspects of reasoning within the human brain (informative, creative, emotional, etc.). While the actual aspects of reasoning I won’t concern myself with here, I do enjoy the image of different hats representing different ways of thinking (as I’m sure most of us in theatre have heard someone say, “Let me put on my director’s hat for a minute”).

Being trained in collective creation, or devised theatre, I often find myself concerned with every aspect of a show at all times. What I’ve realised within the past year is that narrowing my focus to one specialised aspect is astonishingly freeing.

But in order to do this, I actually have to tell myself to put on another hat (or walk a mile in a different pair of shoes… or see the world through different eyes… whatever image gets this to work for you).

The most common hats I try on, in order or frequency, are playwright, performer, dramaturge and director. This last one is my least experienced one but also the entire reason I’m writing this.

Performer and dramaturge are ranked very close together for me. Neither of them would I say I excel at, but I will say that with them I hit my mark every so often - enough for me to want to keep practising them.
In all of these roles I am often asked to give my opinion. It is when this happens that I find it easy to lose sight of the exact specialty I’m supposed to be, or of which hat I should be wearing. Because no matter what I tell myself, I do love to talk about my thoughts (case in point: this blog).


IN PROGRESS

Specifically talking as a playwright, or about a play “in progress,” it’s easy to realise that people look at a work in progress as being easily mouldable and/or something they can help influence. Often during the reception of this push-to-help, the playwright can easily become defensive, dismissive or emotional, even if the help is offered in the most innocent of ways. Sometimes these interactions are confusing for both parties, yet it’s really unclear why. It seems like a simple relationship: you’ve asked someone for their input and they gave it to you. They are doing exactly what you’ve asked. It doesn’t seem logical to get angry at someone because they’ve followed orders.

But that’s not it, is it?

At this point you’ve opened yourself up. Writers are notorious for wearing their emotions on their sleeves and, I mean, why shouldn’t they? They just spent anywhere from a few months to a few years by themselves working on the next Governor General’s winning piece of theatre. Of course they want the first people they show it to after leaving their dank hole of an office (read: cafe / basement apartment) to shower them with praise. But it’s not that easy, is it? Not only is it not that easy, that would probably be detrimental to the development of any future work coming out of that particular author (READER: It’s perfect! WRITER: Oh no, am I at the peak of my career? How can I improve on PERFECT???).

This is probably the most challenging part in the development of a play (in my opinion) because now you are not just concerned with your play, you are also concerned with what other people think of your play. While it may not sound it, this is quite the dangerous situation to be in. It’s during this time that it is all to easy for the playwright to lose sight of their own intentions as they are continuously bombarded with thoughts, ideas and viewpoints they themselves had never had. It becomes all to easy to concern yourself with appeasing your new audience instead of appeasing yourself (I am aware of how masturbatory this sounds). Now, this is not to say “fuck what they want, I’ma do what I want.” That won’t get you any fans, friends or, really, anyone to care about you. A play isn’t a play without an audience, after all. What I’m saying is it’s important to realise what feedback from your target audience will actually, legitimately help you as opposed to what was subjective to just one person. And that’s where it gets tricky and dangerous. As it goes, we’ll all develop our own methods of dealing with this in the most effective way possible. I’m still having trouble finding my own. The only one I’ve found to work 100% of the time is by giving the whole process time itself, however I am aware that distancing by a factor of time won’t always be in the equation. So the search continues.


THE DIRECTOR’S HAT WOULD BE A… WHAT? A BASEBALL CAP?

I’ve been thinking about this because I’ve recently put on my director’s hat to re-read a play (VIC HARBOUR by Peter Counter) I’ll be directing for this year’s Toronto Fringe Festival. Last time I read it I used this hat as well, but underneath it I still had my dramaturge’s hat on (I picture that one as a beret). Which was important for me at the time because that read was still about feedback and questioning choices. Even with this knowledge, however, I feel I still fell into the trap of just saying things because I like the sound of my voice (this is why I’m not a professional dramaturge). I still felt, like many of us do when asked to give feedback to a piece of art, that this is still mouldable, and that nothing is set in stone.

I’m going to guess that these ways of thinking are only possible when you personally know the artist. Physical distance and anonymity quickly disperse these thoughts, waving them away like the smoke from a stranger’s cigarette. It’s amazing how differently I approach something my friends send me through email compared to a printed, bound book or published play that was written at the same time. Something that gets lost all to easily when thinking with those two thoughts in hand (‘this is still mouldable’ & ‘nothing is set in stone’) is subtlety. I believe I found the subtlety the last time I read Counter’s script.

…once you realise this artist is not just living and currently re-writing the script but has created a piece of art because he has made choices long before your eyes ever laid upon the words and that the reasons for those choices are to be found all throughout the play, then I believe you’ve written off most of your subjectivity and can fully appreciate the work of art in front of you…

So instead of asking the writer why he made certain choices, ask yourself why the characters are making those choices. Just because the writer is alive doesn’t mean you should defer to them every time you run into a problem (unless it is horribly obvious or just completely missing). It’s the same way you’d approach something by a dead author (no matter how often you write him, Shakespeare will not answer your questions). Writers are clever and they like (read: love) to leave clues for you (it’s actually kind of sick the amount of pleasure it gives them). Approach the work as if you don’t know the person holding the pen. Because in all honesty, the author’s done their work. Unless they demand to be there every step of the way (which is a whole other topic of conversation) when rehearsals begin, the director, the actors and everyone involved should consider the script set in stone. It is time to stop moulding. It is time to let the script mould you.

a muse.

I've been thinking about the topic of the writer's muse and am intrigued, but by no means surprised, that the idea is usually embodied by a female; to accent the role of writer being historically embodied by the masculine. I realise this is antiquated, but am, myself, unfree of its impositions; my muse(s) [it changes depending on the project] definitely fit into this mold, and so do I into that of the useless-writer when they are, let's say, missing.

I'm curious, lady-writers specifically but i would love to hear any writer's take on this: does this idea of having a muse translate to you?

a play remembered.

It's amazing to realise a play isn't finished. I'm currently revisiting a play I started, maybe four years ago now, and the characters are still as fresh in my mind as they were when I was figuring them out. It's amazing to be able to pick them up again as if I never stopped writing them. I feel this is the mark of in-completion; their story is not finished. Never was. They're still trying to tell it to me. And when I re-read the play last night, my first time in, I'll say about half a year, their voices were so clear and strong that they let me know right away what was wrong with it.

What didn't fit.

Now I'm re-writing. Changing. Creating new scenes. Now I'm listening to them again.

I'm happy as a wee dog.