Going it Alone

*This post has been altered out of respect for a friend who does not wish to be identified. 

I am immersed again, thinking on our missing and murdered. The astounding generosity and ingenuity that is personified by the people of Cahoots Theatre Projects has brought me to a retreat to focus on furthering the script [now called] In Spirit. Among other writers and dramaturgs, in this strange little town of "twee", I think of May 6, 1978.

One girl is occupying the largest room in my mind - fueling the busiest muscles of my heart.

It is a lonely thing in so many ways, this play. I have come off of working on big group development - the Fort at York for weeks, with fourteen other actors and various other staffies, creative and non. The Mill for Theatrefront, with a dozen or so artists I admire newly and for ages. Big groups. Here I sit at the Green Room used by the Shaw festival, the only person. Not one other soul in the room, and it's a big one. In Spirit quickly became a three-person play. I worked with Andy and Michaela as soon as I had a draft to hold in my hands. We invited people to respond straightaway - it was us three or more, always. Today I am alone. This seldom means "lonely" for me, but this time, it does.

The other aspect that has me feeling like a tiny single-celled organism is that I am realizing, more and more, that this play is not enough. It is not enough to write a play about a girl who was murdered, and whose killer was never "brought to justice". Justice can hardly be served in this case. Even if the killer were found, proven guilty, and sentenced to jail for all of eternity, never would his mother glance out the kitchen window in hopes that her child was puttering down the lane on his new bike - "Sorry, mom! I got lost." or "Sorry mom, I ran away, but I came home because I realized..." whatever. No. Whoever killed got to grow up. The murdered did not. This girl did not.

She was imagined into adulthood by all of those who loved her, but she did not do the things that she ought to have done. She was cut short by someone who had no right to make that choice for her.

A play will not change that.

What I want is for the man who killed her - and it was almost certainly a man - to suffer. I do. And it goes against all of the faith that I have in our kind. Us humans. What have we done? How have we bred a person who can commit such an act? Why do I have a hunger for vengeance about this, a desire for the man who did this to suffer worse than any murdered child has ever suffered? He was a child once! It's a safe assumption to guess that he suffered in his youth - he must have to become such a creature. In spite of this, I have no sympathy for him. I want him punished.

A play is not enough. And so the play must demand what is.

Does this serve this girl? Does it serve her beautiful mom? Her sisters? All of those people who were effected by her short time with us? That is my hope. That is my aim.

This week, I do it alone. Never have I been so alone as any murdered woman or girl was in her last moments. And this is just a play. I wish it were more.

from Michaela : A Hole in the Sky

*This post was altered out of respect for a friend.

As the actor asked and honored to walk for a brief time in a missing girl's shoes,
I found myself so profoundly affected by her.

I never had the pleasure of meeting her in person,
but I do feel like in some way I was allowed to know her... even if only a little.

The process of this play was beautiful and difficult and excruciating.
It struck me with such a profound sadness at times that I would need to stop and allow the wave to pass... grief for a relation, one of our young.
And now in light of the recent passing of my dearest Mama,
remembering the experience of In Spirit [retitled] is suggesting some strange kind of solace.

My Mom lived a long full life and raised kids and raced cars and was an active member of her community… this girl was robbed of that before she could even reach the age of thirteen. Just a babe really.
Even still, she was a great babysitter, loved her new bike and was loved and respected by her community.

And in the telling of this story I was ever reminded of the need to remain present.
To delight in some things and take heed of others. To always do your best and to know that it’s okay when you don’t.

The strange solace lies too in the reminder that at any time, especially those times when you feel exceptionally alone, those spirits are there. Our ancestors walk with us, carry us and continue to love us from another place. They continue on within us, through our eyes, our expressions, our subtle ways of being… our laughter.

As a friend said to me the other day, “It is like a hole in the sky.”… and that it is.
But somewhere I believe there is a huge reunion where there is only remembering and love and joy.
And maybe the only way to get there,
is through some hole in the sky.

in love like that

There are times I fear celebrating inside happiness because I don't want to chase the joy away. There are better days when I am able to look around, shake my woolly head and revel in how fucking beautiful this life is.

Today I had a reading of a play I conceived of three years ago. Back when I first wrote it, I quite loved it. I shared it with some trusted friends and fellow writers- feedback was encouraging. In spite of this, I let one person's lukewarm reception cool my own feelings about it. I let it slide to the side and pursued other stories. I'm glad for the work I did in that time, but I missed this play like home.

Michaela Washburn, Craig Lauzon, Gail Maurice and Michelle Latimer are helping me bring it to what is should be. By blessed luck, the grant I snagged is being augmented through the generosity of VideoCabaret. Through their own indie contracting, we also get to have Andrew Dollar contributing in a technical advisory capacity. This team is so remarkable I feel like I'm in love. I actually feel swoon-y over this. This is my job. Fuckin... what?

Ever lucky, me.

The play is reading this Friday afternoon at 3:30 in the Cameron House back space. We would love to have people in attendance who are willing to engage in a dialogue afterward. The greatness of workshop comes from exploring what-ifs with many people all in the same room.

It is my aim to work on production in this way. How many shows have you seen that just fuck the dog all the way through? In my experience... most of 'em. Why oh why is there not a feedback process during a run? Is acting so bloody precious that we can't adjust, edit, change and improve once opening night has passed? I call bullshit. I know that we MUST do these things. So many shows with gobs of talent can be saved this way.

Egos have shaped a construct that make theatre garbage. Actors are trained that changes beyond opening are detrimental because directors have too much power. Directors don't want their work altered once it is out of their hands. Directors teach acting at acting schools all over the shit. Of course we learn this- it maintains their dominance. Directors should be more like conductors. Where is the first violin on a theatrical stage? Where's the g.d. oboe tooting out its b flat or whatever? Theatre is weird, man.

Actors, of course are rendered impotent by the system we have in place. Flaccid actors are welcomed into most rehearsal processes. Vacant people who can appear clever or void on command. Also desired are people who choose to shut down their own opinions for the sake of avoiding cubicles. Those ones can be puppetted easy peasy. Misguided egotism. Some actors would rather parade around in shitty writing and directing instead of making rent as barristas or busboys. How? How is donning arsehole in your field better than working in a job that the general public views as subservient? Isn't it insulting to your own field to enable drek? Isn't it nobler to scrape bruschetta from the plate of some restaurant patron than to serve up third rate theatre to a patron who might support work that you are proud to be a part of?

Directors.

Directors have become such dictators that the collaborative methodology is a farce in most rehearsal halls. We fear claiming our own space. How many great actors enable shit work because they have chosen to stifle their own good sense to get hired again? Most of us, I think. The ones who do speak up are all too often written off as selfish, difficult people. Serving the story is seldom priority, and in my life, story is the core. The blood, the guts, the stink, the spit- all of it. It ought to be. We know this. Yes? The thing is the thing, other shit is not the thing.

Why have we castrated ourselves? Theatre is hard, but why pretend at subscribing to some structure of working in an effort to make it less challenging when we know that that sort of imposed structure makes for homogeneous work? One structure cannot be applied to any two plays. Must not. When one person is added or taken from a room the format of working MUST be affected because the energy in the room is affected. Why pretend it doesn't? And doesn't that deny the power of theatre? Live bodies in a room- THAT is the power. We ignore it in rehearsal. So fucked! Forced adherence to a system of working toward a strong piece is suicide. It is safe, it is succumbing to mediocrity.

I don't know how to do it right, but I do know how to do it wrong. There are loads of examples of that.

No surprise that this workshop of Mom's Birthday feels like love- I don't know how to get that right either, but I am surrounded by examples if how to fuck it up. Have done so myself. Many times. On a grand scale and in mini versions. Maybe in both love and theatre, we keep doing it cause nobody's figured it out yet.

I don't know. I'm glad to know that I don't know, really, cause if I knew I wouldn't have anything left to do.

Throughout my life I have periodically listed to myself "Things That I Know". That list doesn't change a lot:
1) I love my Mom
2) I pursue honesty
3) I love sleep
...and a few others that come and go depending on my state of mind.

I wonder at starting a list of "Things to NOT Do With Theatre-Making".
1) Do not censor questions
2) Do not cling to a final draft, allow for improvement
3) Do not be late

What would you put on there? Are axioms problematic either way? Absolute yeses and absolute nos?

I don't know. Ever lucky.

Peter Brook

Peter Brook visited a small housefull of us at the Harbourfront Studio theatre today (April 8). I felt a little giddy recalling the teenie eenie run of TransCanada that had played there two years ago. Something I'd written for Cliff Cardinal and Lena Recollet, directed by Cowboy Nolan, had inhabited the space that Peter Brook was taking up. I love this city.

He began by speaking to the importance of space and its influence on the work. The moat between himself and the house seats distressed him, as he wanted more of a dialogue than a lecture. Made me smile to picture Cliffie jumping out toward the Canada Day crowd two years ago with a big damn plate of glazed dougnuts- how the kids whipped out at him like frog's tongues.

Jani Lauzon asked him to speak to multi-culturalism. He noted that the term "multi-culturalism" was a horrid one. He said that ultimately work on a global scale is more powerful when one works with people who come from a variety of sources. He said that people "absorb the rhythm of their source" and became quite animated when he observed how immediate the exchange is between two people when they have different rhythms. "The moment there is a meeting, something can be shared, exchanged." This led to a question about his interest in South African stories.

He spoke of the way that all forms of creative expression were outlawed in the townships under apartheid. Reminded me of how those in power came to Canada to study the treatment of the First Nations (specifically the reserve system) when formulating the system some decades ago. Ultimately, it seemed as though the vigour that came from finally developing their theatre legally was what drew him to work on South African works.

Andrew Pifko asked about whether Brook had noted the emergence of any styles in the theatre of late, whether for better or worse. Brook responded with "style is something one should never be conscious of." He observed that someone is always hard at work on "next week's cliche". He spoke to the drive of a project and how basing it in a certain "style" is not genuine and generally crap. "If it's a style, then it must be abandoned."

Somebody I couldn't see asked about auditions. Brook thinks them an evil that are sometimes necessary in spite of it all. He knows working sessions to be much more helpful for everyone, as compared to the lone nervous actor spewing his memorized solo work for three to five minutes or what have you. When working on multiple exercises with other actors, those casting do not judge whether the actors are fit to the project, they come to know it.

Someone at the back asked whether Mr. Brook could trace the moment when he decided he had to become a theatre creator. Brook took exception to the usage of the word "Creator". He said "I hate. Hate when people presume to use the word 'creator'." He thinks it pretentious. I later giggled when Mr. Marc Bendavid sheepishly admitted it was he who posed the question. I use this word regularly, in spite of the fact that my own preferred spiritual term in reference to a greater energy than single humans is The Creator. Theatre is creation- creation of a storytelling experience among people in a space.

__________

This post is old now, and I will conclude it when the impulse strikes me again. For now, I just want to send it off...

once i had this dream of you

Did I ever tell you?

I dreamt your head was bleeding all over you, pouring down in thick red globs, running fast in places, bright red and shining. You were stumbling around, drunk from loss of blood. It was a bright wide open space, broad daylight downtown. A hotel lobby and business all around. Pieces of your head were on the wall, on carpet, in your mouth as you smiled and on your t-shirt, an old white one. Leaking down into the waistband of your jeans, making you warm and sticky, forming crusts of dark brown red in places. You were breaking your head against the wall, I could see, but had set that aside for a second.

There was something about the way you looked at me that made me see I was the only one who might try to save you. Thought you should be saved, knew you to be a thing of pain and beauty. Everyone else could only see the damage. You told me without talking that you were going to keep pounding. -after you’d looked over the lobby full of complacent citizens, people in professional clothes, preoccupied with being busy, moreso than with being people, confirmed that they were not good company, you would continue mashing the organ that holds you in it, pulp it out of thinking on it anymore. You told me deep inside of me that you would let me save you.

I was scared to take hold of you, not sure of where your wounds were, knowing you had been breaking pieces vicious for a time. I know that this has taken you over before, but not like this. You veered back to the wall and I grabbed your ribcage whole. Your legs gave in and I drew you into my arms- encircled you, pulling your poor head against my heart, willing it into mending with my hands.

With this I break myself against you.

Did I ever tell you that I dreamt this dream?

good thursday

This play, Quilchena, is generating its own momentum. Affirmation that there is more at work on this than just little ole me.

First, an invitation by Cahoots Theatre Projects to apply with them to have me housed as their playwright-in-residence for 2007/2008. Wow. My first offer of this sort from a professional company. A company that is so well matched - what good fortune. Fingers crossed, lads.

Second, SummerWorks lets us in! Really? Oh, my. This will be an adventure. I already anticipate my greatest overall challenge will be keeping the play within the time limit. Best to focus on a logistical concern rather than... oh, it's my first directing work. It's the first one person show I am writing, and the story will affect the people who make up the community I come from... these are far bigger than me. Ultimately they will work out as they will. It's only for me to check in that I am moving from a place of good intention and toward furthering communications. (I'll repeat to myself as I rock back and forth under the kitchen table)

Am presently trying to figure whether a 2nd draft and workshop are achievable before I run out of province to get wrapped up in Thy Neighbour's Wife. I suppose if I've been looking for the nudge, the SummerWorks news is it. Is it unreasonable to ask people to come to a second reading already? I feel like I ought to be paying them, which means I should do. One ordinarily finds it challenging to get people to go to theatre for free- and that's only sitting in a darkened room watching people make-believe. Asking them to interact, engage and discuss... is that more or less?

Personally, I prefer inclusion, but my normal-o-meter has never been particularly functional.

This blog is really useful as a means of sorting through my foggy scramble-head to sift out the topic-specific stuff. Piece by piece, thoughts get clearer. I am ever more dependent upon the keyboard to stitch together my own coherence. I get the feeling this would be an oddly ironic final entry before the last tenuous shreds of my sanity finally go the way of the dodo.

"It all seems so clear to me now..." and I'm discovered by my landlady stripped naked and eating a skinned cat in the neighbour's bluebox. Christ.

Hey, isn't tomorrow his birthday?

Oh, yeah!

Every so often I am happy to discover that I have been wrong about something.

'Bout a year and a half ago, while in the midst of having a play of mine produced by a company that had an existing infrastructure and staff and an annual budget and all of that fancy stuff, I found myself battling disinterest in the form that my play was inhabiting. Not theatre itself, but naturalistic (in fact hyper-realistic in this case) theatre. I kept saying to my closest friends "I love the team on this, but I'm kinda over this play." While the story was still one that I cared a great deal for, and I was honoured to be working inside the nurturing environment of Native Earth, I was feeling uncomfortable with the structure of the play. I suspect, only now, that this was largely a product of fear.

As is my general custom, I prefer to criticize my present state harshly before anyone else can. It's safer and I don't ever have to be surprised by anyone's judgment because mine is already in full bloom. This keeps me in a near-constant state of discontent, which serves to keep me from getting lazy, but also makes for a lot of flagellation. All around it's a tiring thing to maintain and prevents me from gaining perspective of the motivations for my behaviour until well after the fact. Good to be aware of this, now to take steps to alter this pattern. Anyway... enough tangential blather.

Last night I saw the Company Theatre production of Tom Murphy's A Whistle in the Dark. My regret is that I was not early enough to sit front and centre. The show was, at times, uncomfortably intimate in the best possible way (a phrase used by a friend of mine to describe his experience of sitting in the front row for my play, Dreary and Izzy). There was acting work going on that absolutely drew me in. It has become a rare thing to be able to shut out the noise of my life while experiencing storytelling of any form: plays, films, books.

This was the first I had ever seen of Joseph Ziegler's work, having avoided most things Soulpepper. Frankly the privileged white male dominated empire that is Soulpepper makes me feel like wretching. Too bad, cause Ziegler rocks the Casbah. Other reasons I might have missed this show: it's not a new work, it's not Canadian, it's all white, it's mostly male, it's at the Soulpepper space... more of my own baggage impeding the enjoyment of this rich life, I suppose. Good reasons to go include: it's Irish, it's from an emerging company, I have repeatedly been told to catch it by friends who know me well, there are reportedly good actors in it. The only one I already knew to be fantastic is Sarah Dodd.

Also outstanding were Allan Hawco (who I had never seen perform- holy shit he is a powderkeg in this play), Aaron Poole (who spent much of the play listening while vibrating and doing it with such commitment and in such a creepy/menacing way that he was utterly compelling), Richard Clarkin (who I'd seen do Uncle Scar umpteen times while I was living in an usher hell sponsored by Disney, but have never seen really live a character. So so fine. Thorough, full and layered.) and Dylan Roberts (whose character you just immediately adore and want to have over for lunch).

To sum up, realism has made a welcome return to my heart. Will I write more of it? likely not anytime soon. Will I see more of it? likely not, as it is so often executed so poorly. It ought to be the easiest thing- we live in reality for the most part, don't we? I was holding that as a truth for the past year and a half (that it's a simple thing to get right), but really I have so few examples of people getting it right. How blind we are to our own ordinary glory. How unobservant. Is that also borne of fear, or just laziness? Poor self-esteem as a race? Living half-numb?

Right, so... who else has done this well?

The Actor's Repertory Company with their Pinter this summer past. Siobhan Power had stellar moments in Rubenfeld's Spain. Am I forgetting something? Someone? OH! Caroline Cave in Tremblay's Past Perfect. Hm.

Actors. Falling in love with acting and actors again. Spring fever indeed.