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.

a sense forgotten.

Smell is all too often easily overlooked, as, for the most part, we prefer to surround ourselves with no odour whatsoever, or, if we are to choose an odour to fill our nostrils, it would be one of a pleasant nature, one you would want to smell over and over: a smell so delicious you want it to consume your body; every breath you take from that moment on you want to hold that same, delightful and foreign scent (for it has to be foreign or else we would get used to it and it would, therefore, cease to be a smell unnatural and noticed by our noses). 

But, as I said before, we prefer to surround ourselves with no smell at all, or, one could venture to describe it the smell of neutrality. 

For this reason it is one of the senses more easily pushed aside, ignored or, even, repressed. Think of smell. What is one of the first things to come to your mind? Decay? If not the first, it should be near the top of the list. And this is frightfully disagreeable. 

Imagine if we associated our sense of sight with dismemberment, death, horror. Or touch immediately with pain. Or sound with noise, offensive and hurtful (which would be a horrible reality as, unlike the other senses, sound is the one we cannot physically stop). 

If this were the case, we probably would repress these other senses as well. It would come naturally. Easily. The only other sense that is as easily forgotten as smell is taste. Not because it is mostly offensive, but because it is only used for a very specific purpose and at a very specific time (unless you are one of those people who go around licking everything in front of them). No, taste is usually only called upon when talking of food or drink. It is utilitarian, only used when absolutely necessary (there is another common use of taste that doesn’t involve eating or drinking, however it is linked to smell and usually, again, in a negative light, such as, “I tasted the tallow as soon as I walked into the room. Dim. I spotted three flames, burning so fierce their smell dripped onto my tongue”). Yet I will venture to say that taste is not “forgotten” the way smell is because, as stated above, smell is in use continuously and because of this our bodies find ways to overcome this continuous assault. 

I believe, however, that an unexpected smell can be one of the most jolting experiences your body can endure. What a great tool to use in the art of theatre-making? No? 

In The Rats in the Walls we experimented with smell. Out of our four performances, only once did it work the way we intended. As the play moves on and De la Poer falls prey to the alluring call of man-flesh, we decided to have a crock-pot, slowly cooking a rather pungent pork stock; the idea being that by the end of the show the room would be overwhelmed by the smell of cooking flesh and boiling bones. The smell did not waft from the back room into the playing space for the first show, so we moved it rather secretively to the back of the playing room for the second. People noticed it then (one side of the room did anyway). Our stock wasn't the same for the third and fourth shows, so the smell was nonexistent for them, which is a shame. The idea, however, remains intriguing. Smell. A sense you cannot control. A sense that brings your whole body into the show and takes your mind out of it for a moment. You better believe we'll experiment with it again.

post-mortem at Exham.

Peter Counter as DE LA POER and Andrew Gaboury as CAPTAIN NORRYS in The Rats in the Walls.
Photograph by Carla Johnston

A “Dramatic Re-telling.” This is how we billed our stage version of H. P. Lovecraft’s The Rats in the Walls. This is significant to us (Peter Counter, Carla Johnston and I – the Four Winds Collective). It isn’t a re-imagining of the story (some small aspects have been re-imagined, however, and some other liberties were definitely taken throughout it’s adaptation to the stage). At its heart, The Four Winds Collective’s version of The Rats was meant to showcase the style and writing of Howard Phillips himself, and not the writing of Counter and Gaboury. Lovecraft’s writing is a whirlwind of detective work and strings of abhorred adjectives. He knows every detail of his story intimately and tells it exactly how he wants to; only revealing enough for the reader to piece together that something is off, something is strange and altogether unexplainable (or unimaginable). He deluges his audience with an overwhelming amount of information, of stories and fables, or names and dates. Lovecraft wants his readers to experience his tales the same way his characters have to; as in real life not everything is immediately clear to the protagonist. The truth to stories are often presented only after the fact, upon reflection - something that is taken for granted all too often in this day and age (why do we need to reflect on anything when Wikipedia and Google, and therefore thousands of opinions and answers are seconds away?).

There are entire sections of the story we have left whole; held together the exact way Lovecraft wrote it out. We edited for flow and pacing and yes, we did take liberties in order to create the character of Edward Norrys (which, through examining his original story, we easily pieced together). But I would say the show we wrote/adapted is 80% Lovecraft, 20% Counter and Gaboury.

The three of us (the collective) trained and graduated from a devised theatre program at York University. The program, currently in it’s final year before evolving into something structurally different, used to be called the Creative Ensemble. It was three years of non-stop group devising; three years of starting with a common inspiration and developing an original piece of theatre while embracing methods outside convention.

So often, outside a classroom setting, the theatre I’ve been a part of since graduating has all been of the same mould: I get a script, a get a character, and I get called in to rehearsal while someone else tells me what they want me to do. I hate this mould. Or, rather, I used to. I still participate in this style of theatre mostly because I can’t really avoid it. But this year I’ve taken these kinds of productions as a way of forcing myself to get out of my head (one thing the Ensemble was bad for was an instilled sense of “my ideas are better than yours” and a lack of very specific, conservatory-style training to implement those ideas to their greatest potential). I am forever thankful to the training I received at York, for it has made me sure of my potential. But potential needs to be nurtured. It needs to be taken by someone else who can also see it and shape it towards, hopefully, a helpful end. This year I’ve been using these despised-theatre-moulded-productions as a way of making myself better. And less conceited. Ha.

As I said above, after graduating I found it hard, or rare, to become part of an original piece of theatre with the intention of being created in a similar way to those we created in university.

We had this thing in Ensemble called a “first pass.” After devising, we showed what we had to our classmates, received critique, then went off to retool our creations.


The Rats in the Walls we performed over the last two weeks was in it’s “first pass.” Our focus was telling the story, relating it in the Gothic Horror style, and presenting it in one of the many historic homes that have been preserved across Canada. We put the show up, gave it legs and begun experimenting with methods of story-telling and staging. Now, like most pieces of theatre, we will allow it to incubate, to grow and we will re-examine scenes. We found what works, and what can work even better. Who knows? Maybe next time, a “Dramatic Re-telling” will not be a fitting label for it. Maybe next time, the show will be a little more even, 50% Lovecraft, 50% Counter and Gaboury. Who knows?

We don’t. But we’ll find out. Why not come along for the ride?
--

adapting the rats.

How we came to be adapting H. P. Lovecraft's The Rats in the Walls:


"Let's devise a piece of theatre."

When Peter came to Carla and I with the drive to devise something we immediately lit up. Devised theatre is what each of us have trained in; it is the style of theatre that excites us most often, but the style that we find the trickiest to apply to the world outside university... until a simple phrase woke us up.

Yeah, we can do this. 


Initially our ambitions were high instead of realistic. Good ideas, but outside our specialities. Thinking too much is a good way to create unnecessary roadblocks. So is patience.

Peter found a story and an idea to do a show for the Fall. Site-specific nonetheless.

Strange. I usually embrace patience. I still do, but sometimes you just have to pick your obstacles. The Rats in the Walls that we are performing on October 21st and 28th is just the first experiment in the never-ending pursuit of making a piece of theatre. It is a base coat. Peter and I have adapted the short story into a script and we are using this version to explore how best we can communicate the story to an audience. In the process we are delving into the possibilities of staging horror.

And then I inquired about a house at Black Creek Pioneer Village and was asked by the GM if this was something I could see being ready for Hallowe'en. I said yes. Two months. I've done more with shorter time, I told myself. 

The Rats in the Walls is one of H. P. Lovecraft's earliest and lesser known works. Taking place in the region of Anchester, England, in the mid-1920s, it follows the jounral of a man known only by his surname, de la Poer, as he seeks to reclaim the seat of his ancestry. The War has left him alone, the last of his familial line, and, dealing with the threat of having a once glorious ancestry fade into obscurity, de la Poer seeks to chronicle the more obscure portions of his family's past.

The only thing is, no one knows the exact reason why his family left Anchester all those years ago although the  mysterious incident has immortalised their names in local legend and folklore.

As de la Poer reclaims his name and digs deep into the foundations of his past the local superstitions seem to grow and fester in his mind. Do they actually have grounding in reality? Is it better to just leave what's forgotten remain forgotten? Are the sins of the father bound to surface again in the son? And what is that scurrying he keeps hearing at night?

Join me and my theatre group, The Four Winds Collective, as we uncover The Rats in the Walls.

For reservations email info[at]fourwindscollective[dot]com

a turn of affairs.

In the last two months I have taken to writing by hand (it happened as I was travelling around Paris and Rome) and I cannot will myself to begin writing on a computer again.

This will probably change when I begin writing a new play (I love an automatic formatter. What a gorgeous invention) but for now I think I'll stick to the freedom of Moleskins and Sharpie pens.

Until we meet again.

inside out.

I wish for you to stand up for what you care about by participating in a global art project, and together we’ll turn the world inside out.
                                                                              - JR

The breadth of JR’s TED Wish is masterful: a global art project about the stories that tend to stay hidden amongst the crammed houses and skyscrapers of our cities, that tend to remain overlooked amidst the hustle of business and consumption of the internet. To be part of this feels wonderful; however solitary the project might be, being initiated from one’s home, from the very machine that has secluded more people than it has enchanted, the knowledge that there are, at this particular moment just above 3000 of us spread rather sparingly across the globe, allows a sort of admission of a new community: a community on the fringe; a community of expression; a community of those who want to tell a story (maybe even a story they never knew they wanted to tell) but have had no one to listen.

I find it remarkable that JR has been able to pull these stories out of so many people with nothing more than a simple request.

“You know you’ve been here for a few hours, trying to understand, discussing with your fellows. During in that time you haven’t think [sic] about what you are going to eat tomorrow. This is art.”

There are so many stories we should be aware of. Browsing the Inside Out website gives you a very real glimpse of this, but what’s more interesting is the awareness of how many stories you realise are not being told.

How many people who don’t have an outlet, or are unaware of those outlets available? How many people result to living in their own torment? In their own self-imposed exile?

What’s so important about this project is that it’s not about JR; his portrait’s not up there. It’s only you. And a trend I keep running into while browsing the portraits and reading their statements is that these are 3000+ people who believe in beauty.

And that’s a wonderful thing indeed.

Please check out JR’s INSIDE OUT Project. Browse the portraits. Read some stories. AND JOIN! It's not too late! It’s still only in its starting phases, meaning they’re printing the portraits and should be shipping them to us soon. I can’t wait to see them posted all over the place.

And here’s the link to mine if you can’t find it amongst the crowd.

…crooks in the Senate.

Things I learnt about politics in Canada from Debate 2011 (the English one):

1. Saying something like “What Canadians need to understand is...” instils me with a rage and contempt for whoever the speaker is. Don’t tell us what we want or need to understand. Tell the facts and we’ll decide on our own.
   
2. TELL THE FACTS! We want to hear truth... which... I’m pretty sure is the reason we’re in an election in the first place...
   
3. If everything the other three (and all the citizens are asking you about) is “simply not true” I think you need to take a minute and ask yourself “Why does the vast majority keep spouting fiction? I think I’ll have a good look at what’s actually going on here. Maybe I’m not allowing myself to listen to what they’re actually saying.”
   
4. And, after you do that, if it actually isn’t true don’t just leave it at that. INFORM THE PUBLIC AS TO WHY IT’S NOT TRUE. We want details.
   
5. Our leaders have a hard time looking into each others’ eyes (Layton and Duceppe are  better than the others). FOR THE LOVE OF GOD look at the person you are answering a question of. You’re not debating the camera (unless you’re the first to answer the question). You’re debating the three others in the room.
   
6. I’m glad the respect I gained for Gilles Duceppe in ‘08 continues its upward growth. He’s the most level-headed of the bunch. A shame his goal is to divide the country...
   
7. ...although this brings up another important point: Gilles Duceppe is fighting tooth and nail to represent the Quebec people. That is his goal (or objective in theatre-speak). His passion is his people (and he’s essentially representing a whole nation). And that’s where he stands apart in the Canadian political climate. Mr. Duceppe hasn’t lost sight of why he’s allowed to lead; his people put him there and he is grateful. Harper, Ignatieff and Layton need to reassess their objectives in this election. It’s clear to anyone watching (at least I hope it is) that their top priorities are not to represent their people. Harper’s driving force is more power while Layton’s and Ignatieff’s is to oust Harper (and essentially obtain Harper’s objective). And while these are fine goals they just aren’t as grounded, nor do they allow the kind of impartiality that Duceppe is allowed.

a new enchantment.

 
First, a video:

 
Next, an article by Michael Kaiser, the President of the John F. Kennedy Centre for the Performing Arts:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-kaiser/the-millennials-project_b_844309.html
 
Lastly, a quote from p.69 of Daniel Clowes’ Wilson:

“When you imagine the future, you always think there’s going to be more stuff, but really there’s just different stuff. And it’s never the stuff you were hoping for.”

 
A small response:

As David J. Loehr states in his 2amt response to the article above, the phrasing of Kaiser’s question is inverted. The reasoning (in the question and, arguably, the entire article) is not quite attuned with the realities of his social surroundings. Art is constantly evolving; it needs to in order to remain relevant. So please, I guess this post is an invitation to Mr. Kaiser and anyone else who finds themselves in a position of artistic influence to go out and explore the world around you in a new context. Break the walls you’ve personally erected and experience something you wouldn’t normally experience because if you just sit there and wait for the next Vaudeville circuit to come along you’ll be severely disappointed. Everything has a time and a place. The same things that were relevant, astonishing and truly influential today are not going to be tomorrow (and sources of influence sometimes can’t even be recognized for their value until well after their time has come and gone). Loehr asks you to come and have a conversation with the missing artists and the absent twenty-somethings and I wholly agree. Come out and talk. Please. Don’t just advertise with us and expect us to obey. It’s real easy to see through dishonesty.

“While the conscious mind writes the autobiography of our species, the unconscious mind does the work.”
                                                    - David Brooks, The Social Animal

no cockamamie ornamental fluff allowed.

I’ve been reading, and thoroughly enjoying David Mamet’s True and False – Heresy and Common Sense for the Actor. While some may find him harsh and arrogant there’s no denying the tone he sets in this book is no different than the tone Stephen King sets in his own memoirs, and guideline for aspiring and serious writers, On Writing. These two authors are talking common sense, Mamet going so far as to make it part of the title and King writing an foreword stating that basically all other writing books out there are full of BS. And while their common sense may dissolve into repetition frequently (in Mamet’s case, a little too frequently) both authors understand the most important thing they want to teach and are not afraid of using a power drill to teach it (even when you read the same sentence for the twentieth time in a slightly-over-one-hundred-page-book and you roll your eyes or instead read “yadda-yadda-yadda” you know that sentence’ll be the one you remember).

Both of these authors have realised there is no sense in sugar-coating the most important lessons. They have obviously become frustrated with the abundance of fluff and misguided, cryptic adjuncts attached to what could be helpful lessons. Mamet and King want to teach you in the simplest terms so as to require no deep, academic unpacking; they are writing of skill acquired through means of experience (honestly, what better teacher is there?). Now, some will have problems with this in-your-face attitude but you have to understand these authors are still people – not everything they say is perfect and not everything they say will work for you. This is what’s worked for them. Understand they aren’t afraid of insulting you (because really: they didn’t write this book for you. They wrote it for someone interested in writing and acting not for the emotional being that constitutes GIVEN NAME SURNAME).

With that being said, give both books a try. They come with my highest recommendation for anyone in either theatre or literature and I have every guarantee you’ll learn something.

thoughts on True and False:

Mamet’s talk about theatrical training in schools is somewhat misguided. He is correct when he states there is nothing a teacher anywhere in the world can teach you about “portraying emotions” because they are not you (I guess the exception here is if the teachers are actually abusing their students in some way or another... and if this’s the case I think there’s a bigger issue to deal with here). Emotion is something to be experienced first hand and unplanned. As Mamet states, emotion is a by-product of pursuing an objective; of taking an action. We don’t think about getting mad when someone hits us; it just happens. Emotion is completely uncontrollable. Any attempt to control it is false. And we don’t want to see false emotion.

Mamet does, however, miss the point of institutionalised studio-based training [I separate this from the academia of Theatre Studies as this course of education is not for the actor. It is, like Mamet says, for the English student. In True and False, however, he doesn’t even pretend there is worthiness to this stream of education. Academic studies in theatre are as necessary as academic studies in any field (maybe more so because one of the main functions of theatre is to provoke discussion)]. Institutionalised studio-based training is not designed to teach emotion but to make oneself aware of their bodies. It is not to stock up their mind with emotional reserves they can tap at a moments’ notice but to stock up their mind with the ability to relax and listen when suddenly told to perform in front of a roomful of prying eyes; to listen when something changes onstage. It is to make the actor familiar with the demon called “Stage Fright” so as to not force their actions in its presence. And that, to me, is so very important. Yes, I agree this can be achieved outside the classroom but the classroom focused on this task shouldn't in any way hinder an actors’ development.

Everyone has experienced that “feeling of being watched,” or actually has been watched before (by someone who maybe thinks you’re cute, for example). In this situation our bodies tense. We become aware of how we are acting so as not to do too much, or to acknowledge, or to try and heighten our attractiveness. ALL OF THIS HAPPENS BECAUSE WE NOTICED ONE PAIR OF EYES ON US. Imagine what would happen if there were one hundred pairs? Logically our bodies should freeze and become incapable of rational thought. This is fear (and Mamet speaks brilliantly about fear in True and False). In other terms, an institutionalised studio-based education should acquaint their students with situations of fear and, subsequently, bravery / courage and, to a lesser extent, this training may help naturally reclusive people with an interest in performance become more comfortable and extroverted in social situations. If a person can’t hold a mundane, day-to-day conversation there is no hope or luck that will allow them to act (if a socially reclusive person can hold a mundane, day-to-day conversation but chooses not to they are probably rather formidable actors because they are constantly listening to their surroundings unprovoked).

It’s interesting the very thing Mamet advocates for is, in my experience, the same thing most schools offer. Moreover, it seems he’s tailored his book to actors who have gone through or are currently going through the same kind of education he lambastes. In doing so, Mamet’s created a kind of retroactive, unintentional (? - benefit of the doubt given) hypocrisy in requiring a prerequisite in order to fully understand the heresy and common sense of acting. 

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Maybe, however, institutionalised training needs more truth in it. It doesn’t help anyone (except maybe the board members) to be worried about money, numbers and success (there’ll be plenty of time for that after university/college). We need more people that speak and teach like Mamet and King: to tell it how it is and not be afraid to slap some sense into people. After all, the one thing the greater population of today lacks is common sense.

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Addendum – My perception may be a bit askew as my experience comes from Canadian theatre schools and education in the mid- to late-2000s. I don’t know how they do it in the U.S nor what the focus of acting schools of the late-1990s (or earlier) were like.

on delusion and new gods.

Watching the four party leaders speak today in the wake of a half-assed attempt to stabilize democracy in Canada I realised something: the “ecomony” is bullshit; it is a tactic for fear-mongering: the new God. We don’t partake in rituals in order to favour an angry deity anymore but to appease an upset and unstable economy. The economy will do what it will because it is controlled by masses of humans who make decisions that eventually affect other humans because their voices were the loudest the same way the religious fanatics who claimed to be the receptacle of the voice of god were. It is great rhetoric because, just like the peasants of the medieval villages, there is no way to prove in the midst of number-crazed people in positions of power that it is not a force unto itself but is, essentially, controlled by “god”-fearing fundamentalists.

Now, as we enter a new era in Canada’s history, one of a government in contempt of Parliament and concerned deeply with playing the “game” of politics (meaning the gambling of the nation’s lives and beliefs), an era of yet another publicly funded election that will, most likely produce the same results with slightly different numbers, we will become witness to the passion play of economic appeasement in all its glory. This is delusion in its purest form.

that poor, poor man. *UPDATED*

The conviction of the truly disillusioned is a frightening thing to witness. We’ve all had those moments watching reality television when someone truly atrocious is allowed to grace the panel of judges with their presence. This can’t be real, we think. They had to have set that up, let them through for comic relief because we believe no one is like this in real life, right? And as we watch the judges snicker and do everything they can to not hide the fact these contestants are being made fun of, the most important question passes through our minds: How can their loved ones allow them to make a fool of themselves like this in front of an international audience? Doesn’t anyone actually care about these people? And this gives us a sense of greatness: If it were one of my friends, I would never allow them to be subject to such ridicule.

But really:

How do we know when we’re stuck in the middle of it?

Sure, it’s easy enough to call attention to it when we’re watching through a television screen (it's like looking over the shoulder of someone using a computer - the onlooker always finds the links first). But what happens when we find ourselves in that position? Are we actually able to see how bad something is? I can’t edit a script until I’ve had time away from it. A new, devised piece of theatre can’t/shouldn’t/isn’t ready to be finished without the introduction of an “outside eye” in the rehearsal process (hopefully in the form of a director). All creative people know that when you’ve fallen too far into something you can’t see the forest for the trees.

This being said and in order to make sure you don’t end up being ridiculed in front of a brimming audience (unless that’s what you’re looking for – what do I know?) please, for the love of all that’s holy, take some time and ask yourself why you are doing this. Be truthful. It would also help by surrounding yourself with people that aren’t afraid to break your ego once in a while. These friends are probably the best friends a person can ever find.

The performing arts is full of the most deluded, egotistical, self-righteous people you will ever find. And, sadly enough, it has to be. The latter two of those three qualities are actually rather necessary for a person to succeed in this field (in the form of confidence – no one wins by being self-absorbed *coughSheencough*). But the first only and always remains an obstacle for every one of us to overcome.

Theatre is the heightened expression of emotions and daily struggles. If you have a hard time functioning in a mundane, day-to-day conversation I don’t think this is the right path for you. Theatre cannot and will not be a substitute for real life experiences. You actually have to go out and do those yourself. PLEASE GO OUT AND DO THOSE YOURSELF. Theatre is about society and community. It is about the present and why the present needs to express itself on stage. We cannot be deluged with our own greatness and expect audiences to shower us with roses. We need to actually interact with the world if we want the world to interact with us and in order to do this we need to learn how to listen. A conversation always has two parts. You can’t always talk.

Really, what I’m getting at is that too much of one thing is detrimental to the goal you’re trying to achieve. Please, take some time to refresh. Attack your passion from a different angle, with all new eyes. Theatre will always be here. Just because you don’t act or study for a few months - a year, who knows? - doesn’t mean you’re giving up your dream. If anything it will always be part of you and everything you’ve experienced in the interim will be sifted through unconsciously and stored in your mind into that file cabinet marked “Life Experiences” (or, as most people call it, “Memories”) to draw upon later. Honestly, it will only make you stronger and more self-assured.

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Addendum: "...to draw upon later..." this may sound like an endorsement of The Method. It is not. My advice in this column is with the intent to make a more well-rounded, and ultimately more comfortable actor. I am not giving advice to allow an actor the ability to preconceive how they may react to the extraordinary circumstances of a play but to awaken the actor to their body so they can listen to what their body, and the other actor, is telling them onstage.

nothing more than a spectre, floating.

It’s times like these I understand the melancholy anguish of Sherlock Holmes and why he resolves to whittle away the dead space between cases with drug. Cocaine. Transcendence. He brings his mind to another plane because anything, anything is better than the monotony of daily life arguing (paraphrasing): If your mind is not preoccupied with something of meaning should you waste and potentially damage it by being preoccupied with something mundane?

Or is it that, after a worthy cause, even the mind of the great Sherlock Holmes has spent all of its creative juices? I wonder how he would fare if his cases were one after another, back-to-back, instead of spread out, allowing him to recover in between and act at the peak of his power when a new one arises?

It’s been a week since I finished In All Kinds of Weather. Four days since I finished editing. With the close of this play, my reason for getting up in the morning (in a timely/productive fashion) has finished as well. My drive is deflated. For now, at least. I’ve created a cocoon around me, fallen into hibernation to prepare my mind for the change it’s undergone. I’ve picked up an old project and am slowly getting it to a place I’m comfortable with, but my drive isn’t there. It’s not immediate. In other words, I’m spent. I find myself catching up on movies and readings I’ve been meaning for too long. I’m consuming so much of this escapist entertainment and all the while leaving my own creative juices to recuperate you can almost see the track marks on my arms.

I’ve realised this happens every time I complete something. In the past I would become restless, impatient with myself during this period -

JUST GET UP! STOP WASTING TIME!

But now I understand it needs to happen, that my passion will come back. That my ideas will begin to generate again at a new pace, with a new vision. So I’m trying to let it go. I keep reminding myself this happens, over and over, and will continue to as I grow older. And I guess it makes me feel a bit better.

I’m still anxious as hell, however -

WHEN’S IT GONNA END?

they've stopped talking.

I've been away. Busy busy busy, what with rehearsing for the New Ideas Festival, generally being unemployed and worrying about finances, and writing the ending of In All Kinds of Weather. Yes. That's right. It's done.

And that's a weird feeling. I mean, I've finished plays before and usually feel somewhat regretful that it's over; I don't want to say good bye! There's so much more I could write about them!


But not this time.

I said good bye.

Rather: they said good bye. They grabbed the till and the most marvelous thing happened: they accepted their fate. They knew it was time to go. I saw them, each of them, that look in their eyes. As I was writing, I don't know where exactly but they would each turn to me, in their own time, and look straight into my eyes. Unquestioning. Almost nodding. This is it. We've had our time.

I have never been so satisfied with ending a play before (which makes me wonder if those other plays I finished actually did end...).  Maybe it was because I knew the ending before I began. I knew their images: how I wanted them to be remembered and what I wanted these characters to stand for. Their images were already inside from the top, fermenting (an image which explains, pretty accurately, the story of writing this play, with all the unpredictable alleys it brought me down. It felt, at certain times, that something else was guiding me). The ending aged as I wrote. It was ready last Friday. I have never been so content.

I still have a lot of reflection concerning the creation of this play, but I think the most immediate, stark lesson I've taken from it is the importance of that final image (or those final images). You can't just pick an ending out of the air. You need to find a picture (not literally), study it, then figure out how to re-create it. All the ingredients are there, you just have to look for them. A picture has many layers and it's your job to explore each one. In time, you'll have all the ingredients to make really good beer.

Maybe now I'll stop writing about them like they're real...

a question for adults.

As a kid I had tremendous focus.

I remember spending hours outside, watching worker ants gather food for their families; trying to capture that elusive mantis; marveling at the metallic sheen of the various dragonflies my brother and I captured (though, in hindsight, the means of capture were rather unorthodox) and nursed back to health (case in point).

I remember the toys I had, LEGO and any sort of miniature figurine, preferably of the robot variety (Zbots, various dollar store finds, Reboot), and spending days, weeks, constructing worlds, storylines and games for each that usually culminated in some sort of epic, world-shattering battle that took over the entire basement rec-room.

My imagination, like most kids’, was untamed.

This even bled in to the literature I read, although only recently has it actually become considered literature. I was a very visual child and to a large extent still am as an adult. All throughout elementary school, and for the first year of high-school, I did not enjoy reading. Books. Novels. Words. Too bland. Boring. My mind worked so hard during the day playing with toys and learning in school that if I wanted to unwind with a book it better have had pictures in it. Comics. Or, better yet, movies (don't have to read those).

It wasn’t until Grade Ten that I could successfully pick up a picture-less novel and actually enjoy it. I have a sneaking suspicion the main reason for this is because I didn’t care about reading description. Why can’t I just see it? Hear it? All I wanted was the dialogue. The voices. That’s it. Even the old comics with that yellow box of description at the top drove me nutty. I couldn’t do it. Just voices please. I can see everything else, thank you very much. And that’s the key right there.

I wanted a picture. I wanted to live in that picture. To study it. To give it the time it begs for but rarely gets. And I had the time. I had all the time in the world. No job. No worries about providing for myself. No worries about feeding myself. Nothing except playing and exploring my imagination.

As a kid I had tremendous focus. Because I had tremendous amounts of time.

I remember reading and re-reading the first, maybe three, issues of Jeff Smith’s Bone, evoking the small-town innocence of the Barrel-Haven and the mystical woods surrounding it. I remember studying each panel until the forested valley was all around me. I escaped into this world. It was so real to me. And still is. I can still remember living so intimately with these characters who weren’t even my own but of another’s creation. When I read through it now (and I do, often) I always find it remarkable that the beginning, those first three issues, go by so quickly – they are just the beginning of the story, after all.

But wait a second. That can’t be right. How did I find such life in something so short? Same goes for The Lion King. It’s only a ninety-minute movie and, upon adult viewing, certain aspects (like Simba’s exile with Timon and Pumbaa) are so quick now when I remember them taking so much time as a kid (in a good way). How can this be?

Time hasn’t changed since I was a child. It still passes with the same frequency and regularity. Perception and experience modifies it as we grow old, however:

Research suggests a person’s perception of how much time has passed between two points and how well memories are recorded onto an individual’s brain are partially dependent on the amount of new experiences that person has during any given day.

The above quote is taken from the About page on Matt Danzico’s 2011 project The Time Hack. He’s attempting to lengthen his perception of time by trying something new and zany every day. The result is rather whimsical and inspiring.

Which brings me to the onus of this post. It is the question:

Are we actually hurting our experience of the world with how much choice is available to us at any given moment?

I’m reminded of one of my good friends, a few years back, stating at a party: I have no time to re-read anything. There’re too many things to read.

And this opposing quote from C.S. Lewis: I can't imagine a man really enjoying a book and reading it only once.

As we grow up and transform into that wonderful and frighteningly awful word, adult, it seems we lose focus. I can say for certain I don’t allow myself the same amount of time I used to to live in a work of art. I look, consume, and move on to the next. Same with books (yes, I am on to reading actual, picture-less books now although graphic literature will always hold a special place in my heart. So will books that have drawings put at specific intervals throughout. I love this! Why don’t writers hire artists to do a series of woodcuts anymore? Is it too juvenile? All the classics have it. Maybe I’m just a fan of multi-disciplinarity. I love when a product of one medium inspires another). I, like my friend, rarely take the time to revisit my favourite books / plays / paintings / etc., and I’m not sure that I like this lifestyle.

I ask the question above not as a proponent of either side but with another question hidden firmly within the original:

How can we fully appreciate a piece of art without the appropriate time to experience it?

Art demands time. Why, as people at a particular phase of life, don’t we make the effort to spend time with something we like? Are we actually satisfied with reading / watching something briefly and then clicking the “Like” button and stumbling away? Is that enough to actually appreciate something? Or is it that we feel guilty spending too much time with any one particular thing when there are so many others awaiting us? It’s a mystifying conundrum and I’m as guilty as anyone for acting in this manner. I’d say about a sixth of the books on my bookshelf I haven’t read yet. And I keep adding to this because I keep finding books I’d like to read. But how many times have I said to myself that I’d like to read that again (“I’ll probably catch so much more the second time around!”)? Too many.

It's a thought that's been on my mind most of this year. And I think I’m going to work towards improving it.

It’s been too long since I’ve explored the woods around the Barrel-Haven.

these are the stuffs history, nations, cultures are made on.

To watch Hosni Mubarak today in his late-night speech in Cairo, as he used every means of rhetorical deflection to delay his inevitable end, was to watch a man so deluded, so deaf to the demands of history, that he was incapable of hearing an entire people screaming in his ear. And it is almost always that way: the dictator, coddled in his isolation, surrounded by satraps and servants, immersed in his own sense of essential-ness, is the last to know.

- The New Yorker's David Remnick 

What an eloquent, descriptive image of a man at his last moments. 

Egypt, not only has your dictator heard you, the whole world has. 

Your people are inspiration to us all.