“Rope’s End” Ends

So as all you regular readers know … Okay, I doubt I have any regular readers just yet. So anyway …

Last December, after “Nuncrackers” wrapped up, I decided to take a year off from acting.

There are a lot of reasons. I want to do a lot of things that require a steady time committment that I can’t offer if I’m constantly rehearsing. I want to work on a music project I have in mind. I would like to improve my musical and performance skills, which may involve taking some night classes, and I’d like to get the house into some sort of order.

I announced my intention to my wife, who was quite happy with it. She’d been hassling encouraging me to take some time this summer, among other things to allow us to go camping.

Two days after my promise to her, Jamie Eberle approached me. Jamie and I have worked together as actors, and he’s directed at least one other show I was part of at Many Hats: “Nurse Jane Goes to Hawaii.”

And yes, that’s me with the stocking over my head.

The redhead is Tammy Hansel. If I say anything other than that she’s striking and talented, I risk turning this post into a love letter. Why’s it interesting? … Ah yes …

Tammy and I played a married couple in “Enchanted April.” I’d always wanted a chance to work with her again. “Nurse Jane” was fun, but not the chance to really try and work with her onstage I’d been looking for.

So Jamie phones me and says “I’ve got a show for you. It’s a two-hander. It’s called ‘Rope’s End.’ It was submitted by the playwright, Douglas Bowie, to the Many Hats Company.”

I was deeply flattered. To be offered half of a two-person show is a fair-sized mark of respect in any theatre community. And particularly in one with as much talent as this town has.

I say “Well lemme look at it …”
He sends me the script. I read the first act and think What IS this Disneyfied … crap?.

Then I read the second act, and the whole thing suddenly gets a lot more interesting. Not that the first half wasn’t, but it had looked very predictable until the last few lines.

This, I have discovered, is a huge problem with “Rope’s End.” It’s a great show, but terribly hard to synopsize without blowing key plot points. Anyway …

I’d probably have said “Yes,” at this point. But then I asked:
“Who’ve you got in mind for the other role?”
“Tammy,” he replied.

And I was done like dinner. To be asked to hold up your half of any two-hander is a mark of respect, but to be asked to do so opposite someone of Tammy’s calibre is big juju. I’ll be honest with you, I wanted desperately to carry it off well enough to impress her.

{Honestly, I don’t think I did … But very little seems to impress Tammy, really. Not because she’s hyper-critical or anything, but because she has, at least on the surface, tremendous equanimity. Not to mention a ton of talent and a wealth of experience.}

So I told Jamie “Yes.” And we set about putting together “Rope’s End.”

I find I’m at five hundred words, so I’ll post more a bit later. I’m trying to limit my post length. Because you know how actors go on and on …

Nunsense Part II: The Eternally Delayed Post

When we last left our hero, he was explaining how he’d gotten into a Christmas show … And here it is April. Some blogger, eh?

Instinct suggests (the same way a policeman might suggest it’s time to go home when he finds you wandering down Main St. with no pants) that you probably have no great interest in this now. But I’m sorta bloody-minded that way, so I’m going to finish up. I’ll rejoin you at the next post, which is just up ahead.

So last fall, a friend forwarded me an audition call for the third “Nunsense” production to be launched in Summerland at Centre Stage Theatre. To be perfectly blunt, I ignored it. I know, I know … Did I not just say in my last post that I was determined to get involved?

Well yeah. But that had been some years prior. However, my friend (whom we’ll call “Angel”), who’d worked closely with both me and Jim Warne in “Fools,” was persistent. And finally in a last-ditch effort she phoned me at home and gently threatened me with grievous bodily violence if I failed to turn up to the auditions.

So I dutifully turned up. I need to point out here that I jam with musicians on occasion, and my voice has been described as competent, even entertaining. But the competition was stiff.

I regret that I don’t know the name of the first man ahead of me, but he was a professional musician. I figured right away that they would pick him. But the second man to arrive was James Fofonoff. I’ve worked with James several times, and he’s a) a very talented and enthusiastic actor, and b) a damn fine man to work with. Gets along with everyone, takes direction, and brings a sweetness to every production he’s in. With James in the running I ranked myself third banana out of three.

We were asked to sing one of the production numbers. I’d barely heard it. I was recovering from a nasty cold and probably sounded like a hippo gargling. I went into the big crescendo-ing chorus a verse early and had to blast out the last verse and chorus at near-full-strength and an octave or so up.

I still have no idea why they picked me.

But I’m humbled and grateful that they did. The next day I was offered the role of Father Virgil Manly-Trott.

I could write a lot more about the production, but you could probably listen to the soundtrack from “A Chorus Line” while watching the first half of “The Sound of Music” and get a sense of what it was like to rehearse and stage “Nuncrackers” out of it. And in fact there’s community-theatre video of the same show all over YouTube.

In the end, everyone in the audience, and everyone in the cast had a wonderful time. I was especially lucky. I got a sweet little tear-jerker solo song, I got to dance to the Sugar Plum Fairy (no, I don’t know ballet. It’s a comedy, remember?) and I even got a star turn as Sister Julia Child (of God) and taught everyone how to make Christmas cake (“Now add the rum–musn’t forget the rum!”).

(No, this isn’t me, but the resemblance is too close for comfort)

But beyond that, it was just an enjoyable project all the way through. I got to work with director Lori Grant, the fabulous Jean Wnuk, whom I’d long wanted to work with, and too many others to list here. Everybody was positive and upbeat, even when the steps weren’t coming, or the songs didn’t quite gel, or …, or … and the endless other things that can go marvelously and hopefully undetectably wrong in live theatre.

And as the Little Sisters of Hoboken, and Father Virgil Manly-Trott, sang themselves into last year, I’d like to think Jim Warne would have been singing and clapping along.

Nuncrackers Part I: “How do I get myself into these things?”

This post was originally intended for the Christmas season. Unfortunately I … Well I got lazy was what really happened. But it’s time to play catch-up.

I rediscovered my love of acting in 2007, in time to join the cast of “Barefoot in the Park.” Abruptly hungry for more I read for and received the lead role in Neil Simon’s “Fools,” with the Summerland Singers and Players.

It’s a long line between “Fools” and “Nuncrackers,” but I hope you’ll be patient while I draw it.

“Fools” was great. I was privileged to share the stage with some seasoned scenery-chewers and with possibly the brightest leading lady I’ve ever worked with, Braleigh Nelson.

Say what? … Well hurry it up, I’m trying to blog here … No I can’t give you her contact info! Will you back off please?

Braleigh is a captivating actress, an astoundingly beautiful woman, an innovative and mischevious thinker … I could go on. Suffice it to say that like many people, I think she’s pretty damn wonderful. And at the time of meeting, she was about 18.

At the other end of the scale was Jim Warne. An enormous amount has been written about Jim and his passion for and contributions to local theatre in the Okanagan. Jim, at the time of meeting, was 78.

He’d had a dicky ticker for a long time–Quad bypass at 53 or so. His wife died unexpectedly several years before him, and when he spoke of her he sounded utterly bereft. His heart meds made memorization difficult, and in the role of Doctor Zubritsky he worked harder than any of us.

Working with Angie Johnson, cast as his wife, Jim put approximately a hundred extra hours into getting his lines down. And it almost worked.

Sadly, “Fools” ran only one weekend. He had just time to do the role perfectly and without error once. In earlier performances I remember him coming off stage so frustrated that tears rolled down his cheeks.

Nobody, but nobody I’ve worked with has ever put in the kind of effort he had to. But his final performance was lovely. He really made the show fly. Sadly, it turned out to be his last role. Jim passed away a couple of years later.

In the course of working with him I visited his home. On the walls were a couple of posters for “Nunsense,” and “Nunsense II.” Jim, it turned out, was nicknamed “Father Jim.” He’d directed both “Nunsense” shows, and was magically enthusiastic about them.

So enthusiastic was he, in fact, that I resolved that if the opportunity should arise, I’d get involved in any future “Nunsense” show, in whatever capacity I could.

On to Part II

Back again

As I was explaining over at the writing blog, I’ve been pretty preoccupied with any number of things.

Acting-wise, this has meant playing the minor character Doctor Chasuble in the Twisted Tree Theatre production of “The Importance of Being Ernest.”

Of the production itself, I think the thing that stung was that my wife, who was directing, didn’t appear to think I was handsome enough to play the lead role, nor even the second male lead.

The play was fun, not too much work. I suspect we made some money in the end.

However, the director feels any profit should have been shared out amongst the cast and crew. And I tend to agree.

The Many Hats theatre co-op operates on this principle, and has a schedule of “shares” allocated to the director, producer, actors, et al. We feel this is a more satisfying business model. Oh well. Here’s to the next show.

In my case the next show was “Nuncrackers” with the Summerland Singers and Players. More on that in the next post.

“Tartuffe” goes to festival

The theatre community is small and, dare I use the term, incestuous around here.

And for that reason my first festival experience is proving difficult to write about. It’s likely that people who know all the players in this post will read it, and I seriously would prefer not to step on any toes. Yet I have to be truthful if I’m to write about this at all, otherwise what’s the point?

We took “Tartuffe” to festival, you see. And Donna, as the maid “Dorine” took Best Actress. And I would say that that was a recognition of the effort she put in. When she took over from the late and much-missed Sharon Amos, Donna was already in another show with Many Hats Theatre Co. She worked extraordinarily hard to get up to speed and get her lines memorized.

Josephine received the award for best director. And this is the hardest part to write about.

I like Josephine as a person. Most people who met her would. And I undoubtedly respect her ability. But in this show she did two things that distressed me greatly:

1) She never once held a complete run-through. Even on dress rehearsal night, she didn’t run the show complete and entire.

2) She directed very little. One actor complained in frustration: “if I’d known we were going to have to direct ourselves, I wouldn’t have auditioned.”

Confronted with, for example, an actor delivering his line from the wrong place–In complete contrast to the blocking she had herself created in a long process the rehearsal prior–Josephine would sometimes not make any comment. Or worse, tell the A.D., stage manager, or actor who brought it to her attention “it’s not important.”

When our assistant director raised the issue privately, Josephine on several occasions said “I’m not an acting coach.”

I believe Josephine won the award for her bravery in choosing “Tartuffe” for Festival, for her clarity of vision in the set design and in costuming, and above all for assembling a good cast–A skill of hers which I have always respected and admired.

And I choose to believe that it was for all these things, perhaps, that she deserved the Best Director award more than any other director there.

Or maybe it’s directorial genius that I simply don’t understand. My experience in “Enchanted April” was so completely different that I’m at a loss to explain it.

The Adjudicator, Andrew McIlroy, was constructive in his critique. And I believe that he made the award in good faith, not in response to the same small-town-theatre-community politics that make this so difficult to write.

In any case, whether I’m fully in agreement or not, my congratulations go out to Donna and to Josephine for their awards.

“Tartuffe” is scheduled for a few performances through the summer, and I hope and plan to be part of them. This time I want to watch carefully to see whether I missed some subtlety of directing technique I hadn’t previously spotted.

Wow–what a last-few-weeks

Things are hectic here, and getting hectic-er. But finally I have a bit of breathing space and can play catch-up here.

My acting career has heated up again lately, to wit:

1) A part in a sitcom pilot, “Get Floored,” as a sleazy, (failed) womanizing, van-dwelling salesman, which films soon.

2) Auditioning for a part in LaFontaine for one of several recurring characters.

3) Continuing work on “Tartuffe.” Festival draws ever nearer, and I’m finally persuaded that the show can be Festival-fit by the time we get there.

“Get Floored” will be entered into a competition in New York. I’ve been comitted to Sunday read-throughs on Skype for weeks, and can’t wait for filming to begin. It’s only my second real TV experience–My NexTel commercial counts, but barely.

“LaFontaine” is a sort of American Gothic series about a Small Town Where Something Evil is at Work. A friend of mine has already secured a part in it. I’m not telling anyone who the friend is or what the part is just yet, though. I want her to get to break the news.

I auditioned for two parts, the Honest, Bemused Sheriff and the Mysterious Resident Who Knows More Than He Lets On. Okay, they’re well-worn stock characters. But both Lori and I feel that the writing’s great. And “stock characters” is only another name for “archetypes,” after all.

The auditions were held in town on three successive nights when I couldn’t be there. So I drove roughly two hours the following week to audition.

I was required to have a one-minute monologue prepared, but due to my schedule and perhaps the effort I’d been putting into “Tartuffe,” I left it late and wound up driving to Vernon with Lori reading it to me while I memorized it. I was actually surprised at how well it came out.

I didn’t, and still don’t really, think I got the part. Once my initial read was done, Lori and I hit the pub across the road to have dinner and wait for our friend. As we were polishing off dinner and a beer, Lori’s phone burbled with a text message.

“Get back over there,” she said, “[Friend] says they want to get you to read again.”

Audition and call-back all within two hours!

The story, I learned later, was that [Friend] entered the audition hall and heard the production team discussing whether “maybe we could get that guy, you know, the heavier-set … black shirt …”

“Salt-and-pepper hair?” she asked, “Goatee? Kinda shaggy hair? I know that guy.”
“Oh … Where’s he from?”
“The south valley.”
“Damn,” said the director, “He’s probably home by now.”
“No,” said [Friend] “He’s just over the road at the pub.”
“Do you think you could get him here?”

And so events unfolded. I was the very last person into the audition room. And if nothing else, I have the satisfaction of knowing I was good enough for them to consider again. They weren’t desperate–There were three hundred auditionees for about ten roles. So they must have seen something they liked to get me back.

And thanks a bunch to [Friend] for the opportunity, as well as to Cameron Gordon and the Okanagan Actors’ Alliance.

Cameron is directing the multiply-lauded production of “Hamlet” from Shakespeare Kelowna and will be up against Chamber Theatre’s “Tartuffe” at Festival.

Meanwhile, “Tartuffe” is playing at the Summerland Centre Stage Sunday and Monday night, the ninth and tenth of May. It’s turning into a very nice show, I think. I have more to say about that, but it’s waiting in my fornix to get properly processed, as I explain on the writing blog.

“Hair:” Terrific at any length

So I went to see “Hair” last weekend.

The show was terrific. I’d had misgivings, but all were proven to be without foundation. The concentration of talent on the Lakeside Hotel ballroom stage was tremendous. In fact, for the first time I felt that the stage space was too small to contain the show.

I owe Pat Brown an apology. I wasn’t sure he could pull off a young hippie character. He brought tremendous energy to his performance as George Berger. I did spot him seeming to catch his breath in a few unguarded moments, but his voice was strong, and his acting convincing. I had no trouble accepting him as the de facto leader of the Tribe.

There isn’t room to fully compliment all the performers apropriately. So if any of you read this and feel left out, please don’t–This is purely a space consideration. Everybody performed with tremendous presence and great singing.

Amanda Cole: The opening number, “Aquarius,” has to grab the audience from its first notes. Cole’s voice made my spine tingle. Occasionally her power was such that she overrode the microphone. The final number, “Let the Sunshine In,” hangs on a series of crescendoing, high-pitched wails. Cole, more than ably assisted by Yanti Rowland, nailed it right to the floor.

Lucas Penner, performing Claude, the Hamlet-ish central character, is a real find. His indecision nicely counterbalanced Brown/Berger’s conviction. He sang beautifully and drew the audience’s sympathy.

Hud’s role is a pivotal one. I feel that in a place as racially homogenous as the Okanagan, it can sometimes be hard to find actors of colour. Ricardo Mathias‘ performance of “Coloured Spade” was humorous and edgy all at once.

Jason Demetrick as Woof deserves special mention for his determined, ambisexual, Peter-Pan performance, which gave the show some fine comic moments.

Jill Barnes and Bill Watt were wonderfully misunderstanding New York parents. Barnes, in fact, was the only actor onstage using a Noo Yawk Mudda accent, which helped anchor the show in its big-city foundations.

Aidan Mayes as Jeanie gave a star turn singing “Air,” a number that manages to combine air pollution and orgasm. In that song she was well accompanied by Chloe Richardson (Chloe) and Jennifer Goldberg (Chrissy). Jennifer also gets mention here for her own performance of my dad’s favourite song from the show, the sweet, pathetic, lament “Frank Mills.” Kudos also to the lovely Julie-Anna Martin (Sheila), who did a nice job of “Good Morning Starshine.”

Finally: Randall Robinson. He spent most of his time as a background member of the Tribe. But left the stage at a critical juncture to reappear as Margaret Mead in tweedy coat and hat (and as he showed us, only boxers underneath), complete with lipstick, asking nosy questions which Claude and Berger answer with the title tune “Hair.” He also had to perform the vocal-cord shredding falsetto “My Conviction,” which he did with great aplomb.

Lynne Leydier pulled the whole show together brilliantly, and at the finale I don’t think there was a dry eye in the audience. There was great music, therefore great musicians. The choreography was intense and well-done, with the Tribe ebbing and flowing en masse onto the stage and off again, or showing up for a fervid dance and vanishing immediately.

I can’t wait to see what Lynne decides on for the next Soundstage Productions musical. And for myself hope that next year, instead of sitting in the audience, I can be a part of it.

Links to some of the talented people involved. If I’ve left you out, please drop a comment below:

Ten 2 Nine
(featuring Pat Brown and Randall Robinson)

Aidan Mayes

Jennifer

An exit

It feels as though someone else should be writing this. But this isn’t someone else’s blog.

The theatre is a weird, sometimes fraught, place.

You watch as someone performs a difficult part flawlessly and don’t give it a second thought, because that’s simply what’s required and expected. You share the sweat-trickling, rictus-grinning moment when someone drops a line, because although it’s not supposed to happen it nearly always does. And you get to know people in flashes, between rehearsals and in the backstage moments between acts.

This week one of the brightest lights in the Penticton theatre scene went dark. Sharon Amos was suddenly taken from us.

Sharon and I acted together in three shows, and worked together in at least another two. And it was always a privilege. She performed her parts near-perfectly every single time, and always seemed surprised when people noticed. She covered other actors when they flubbed their lines, and never taxed them with it. First to memorize and last to criticize. She was an example to me, and to any actor.

But there was so much more to her. In the in-between moments I learnt about her family, her deep involvement in the community, her tirelessness, and her strength of will.

Once we were talking backstage about her current list of projects. I was astounded to hear how much she had on her plate, and said so. She smiled ruefully.
“Some retirement.” she said.
Then her cue came, and she lifted her head, squared her shoulders, and sailed out onto the stage.

Until that moment I hadn’t known she was “retired.”

It never stopped her being the busiest person I knew. Less than a week ago she had been planning to return from vacation and take up the role of the maid Dorine in Chamber Theatre’s production of Tartuffe, a role with more lines and more complexity than the two “leads.”

Sharon would certainly agree that the show must go on. Another Dorine will be found. But nobody will do it like her.

“My thoughts are with her family.” Those words are hopelessly inadequate.

But we are all poorer for her loss. Not just the theatre community but the Okanagan as a whole. She touched the lives even of people who never knew her.

But the cue comes for all of us. And we leave the backstage world to be scutinized in the glare of the lights and offer our performance.

And for Sharon Amos, the audience is surely applauding.

Tartuffé

Heaven forbids, it is true, certain gratifications, but there are ways and means of compounding such matters.

My hiatus from acting ended with a thump just before Christmas. I was asked if I’d audition for either of two main roles in the Penticton Chamber Theatre performance of Tartuffe, Molière’s play about hypocrisy.

To create a public scandal is what’s wicked;
To sin in private is not a sin.

It’s being directed by the fabulous, if sometimes outwardly flaky, Josephine Patterson, who directed another play I was in, Many Hats’ production of Enchanted April, which, without denigrating the other excellent shows the company’s put on, I feel was the best production from MH so far. Tartuffe was effectively banned in its time, with the King ordering it censored and the Archbishop of Paris threatening excommunication for Catholics who watched it.

There is no rampart that will hold out against malice.

I auditioned, and was not entirely surprised to secure the role of Orgon. I was not entirely surprised because I was one of only two or three of the right approximate age. This is a youngish cast, featuring four players under twenty-five. One of whom, Rhiann, intends to play a seventeenth-century wife in thigh-high black leather boots, which I mention only for the opportunity to use this quote:

Although I am a pious man, I am not the less a man.

It’s entirely in keeping with the costuming thesis of the show, which is “outrageous” … for all but me. Orgon wears sensible robes, apparently. He’s a smart but stolid fellow, wanting something to believe in, and thinking himself to have found it in the rapacious con artist Tartuffe.

And knowing money is a root of evil, in Christian charity, he’d take away whatever things may hinder your salvation.

I was later more surprised to learn that I’d been considered for Tartuffe! But Orgon, honestly, is more me.

One is easily fooled by that which one loves.

The whole thing is in verse, an excellent English translation by Ranjit Bolt. There is, however, a real risk. If it’s read as verse then it tends to come out sounding very much like Green Eggs and Ham. So I’m learning to break the lines up so that they sound much more like regular dialogue.

The exciting part is that this play is supposed to be going to the Okanagan Theatre Zone Festival, OZone (for which I was privileged and challenged to create last year’s website). This will be my first Fest. Festival performances are open to critique by an adjudicator.

It’s like some savage rite of passage, only instead of say, having your nose slit with an obsidian knife, you are instead gently flayed by a critic who will ask you about motivation, about your impression of who your character is, and about esoteric crud you’ve never even thought of. You might be asked, for example: “Why did you move upstage right on that line?”

The correct answer, by the way, is unlikely to be “Because we don’t rehearse here: our rehearsal space is a storage locker ten feet by ten feet with a pillar in the middle, so you have to walk around it.”

The Only Musical in Town

So I didn’t, in fact, audition for “Hair.” Lori’s job allows her to take every second Monday off, and the show, it turns out, will be in January rather than at Christmas. Which I suppose means it makes more sense, really. But it’s a longer comittment than I want to make right now. Particularly as rehearsals tend to be on Sunday.

I confess, also, that I have been a bit frustrated with the director. She’s passionate and competent, but everyone knows that when she builds a show she tends to cast the same guy in the lead role. It’s been true for at least the past two years, and actually goes back farther.

Let me clarify that for the past two years he seemed to merit it, by my unexpert observation. But he’s had an nearly unbroken string stretching back … Well, a long time. I once mentioned to someone that I was in a Soundstage show, and his reply was “Oh? So what’s the name of the latest Pat ___ vehicle?”

I’m not impugning Pat’s talent. He’s great, and he has star quality, that elusive attraction we all wish we had. But it’s a little disappointing to know before you attend the audition that the fix is essentially in.

And that’s what really changed my mind. I went to the auditions, ostensibly to cheer on some friends. But also just in case I decided I wanted to try out at the last minute.

The hopefuls were lined up by a table outside one of the Lakeside Hotel’s main ballrooms, filling out a form and having their pics taken. Then they were assigned a number and waited.

Just before the process started, the usual leading man showed up and walked straight in. No form, no number. That put the cap on it for me. Not running him down. Nor even disputing her choice. But I didn’t want to audition as though it were for any role at all if that wasn’t the case.

I was at a rock show quite recently, and met the young man cast as Claude in the production. I was greatly pleased to see that half of the dual lead role had gone to a person who was both talented and age-appropriate.

“So who’s Berger?” I asked.
“The usual guy.” He said. I believe he hadn’t worked with Soundstage before, but we both clearly knew who he meant.

It’ll be interesting to see what they do here: Claude is somewhere between eighteen and twenty-five. Berger is supposed to be the same age, roughly. But in this case Berger’s being played by a man twenty-plus years older.

Scrooge in A Christmas Carol fine. Fagin in Oliver: excellent. Even Jesus Christ in Superstar. But a fortysomething playing the twenty-odd-year-old leader of a tribe of hippies?

Oh well. If you don’t like the game, you have to go play somewhere else. I don’t wish to seem critical–Nor, to be honest, to jeopardize my chances of one day appearing in another Soundstage musical–and I surely don’t want it to seem as though I’m critical of the talent involved. I also know that it’s Lynne’s show and she can direct it as she chooses.

But It limits the shows she can put on. As someone I know put it: “She’ll never put on The Producers. He couldn’t be either of them.”

It also poisons the talent pool if you’re auditioning people with the tacit assuption that major roles are wide open, when in fact you’ve already filled them.

It’s all good for me. I have my Sundays off, and Lori and I can plan weekend trips and things. I must admit that I kind of wish I’d auditioned, even just for a background role or something.

Canada Bill Jones was getting robbed blind in a crooked Faro game when another professional gambler approached him and asked whether he couldn’t see the game was rigged.
“I know,” Bill sighed “But it’s the only game in town.”