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.

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