Tear The Curtain has undergone some minor rewrites. (Dawn Petten & Jonathan Young)

by Michael Wheeler

After one week of intense tech, Tear The Curtain! will open to a sold out Bluma Appel Theatre tonight.

Like lead character Alex Braithewaite, the show has been taken apart and put back together again to find the best way to Tear The Curtain! This new version of the show has a number of small differences that separate it from the 2010 Vancouver one at The Arts Club. Tiny re-writes and re-edits means it is tighter, cleaner and has a more straightforward narrative without sacrificing any of the layers of medium that also contribute to the story.

Laura Mennell as Mila Brook

Tech-wise, the show has gone from projecting two 4500 lumens projections on top of each other, to one massive 10000 lumens projector to fire video from. Beyond the benefit of one projector being less nerve-wracking from a technical standpoint, it also means the colour and richness of the projected image is more consistent throughout the surface area (and there are several) that it projects on.

It’s been an intense process with flys to be timed, new lighting cues to be built, new wireless mic levels to be set and managed, new timing for entrances and exits and as well as a cast member with food poisoning, a dress rehearsal for an audience of educators and a preview that was the first ever Sunday matinee at Canadian Stage that I can ever remember.

Goodbye Monday night shows that never got a decent house, hello busy Sunday afternoon theatre on Front St.

Jonathan Young as Alex Braithwaite

It’s worth bringing this up with The City of Toronto set to receive a report this fall about what to do with the 3 theatres it runs – including the Bluma Appel.  Let it be noted that access for not-for-profit groups to large venues, just like this one, is essential to allow shows like this to be created by non-millionaires.

Anyhow, this is a quick run people: 2 weeks! That’s it and it will be gone. Click here to figure out how and when to come see the film noir film/theatre hybrid Kim Collier and The Electric Company invented for the Cultural Olympiad in 2010 and has been taken apart and re-assembled for Toronto in 2012.

Click here to read more posts about Tear The Curtain!

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by Michael Wheeler

Two years ago, as part of a Canada Council-supported Director in Training residency at The Tarragon Theatre, I was shipped out to Vancouver to learn more about how the technical aspects of theatre-making were being approached out West. I was paired with The Electric Company, where I became assistant to director Kim Collier while we were shooting the film sections of an in-progress theatre/film hybrid. (During The Olympics!)

My film scene has been cut from the 2012 production!

I pretty much immediately fell in love with the company/production/script and so I was thrilled when they asked me to come back and continue as Assistant to The Director for the rehearsal process at Progress Lab leading up to opening night at The Arts Club’s Stanley Theatre in September 2010.

Anyhow, longtime praxistheatre.com readers know this already because, of course, I blogged the heck out of that whole experience.

Two years later the production is coming to Toronto as the opening production of The Canadian Stage season at The Bluma Appel Theatre and really, I am quite excited. This super-cool medium-bending production I was a part of that none of my friends and colleagues have seen is finally coming here.

Even better, I will be joining the production when it moves into the theatre to begin teching into the space.

I’m hoping that my experience as assistant director on Peggy Pickit Sees The Face of God in The Bluma Appel last year, combined with my knowledge of Tear The Curtain when we put it together originally will make me useful. The cast is rehearsing in Vancouver first, so I will be playing catch-up. If nothing else, I can still hopefully provide some interesting online updates.

Jonathon Young and Dawn Petten in Tear The Curtain. Eventually Kim determined filmed and live sequences required different acting styles.

by Michael Wheeler

Probably the most surprising and luckiest thing about my professional development residency as Director in Training at The Tarragon Theatre is how much of it I ended up assisting and or observing director Kim Collier.

The decision to go to Vancouver to observe The Electric Company shoot a film for a multimedia piece they were working on as part of the Cultural Olympiad was a last minute add-on to a trip to Alberta to observe Tarragon Artistic Director Richard Rose as he transferred Courageous to The Citadel and directed Betrayal at Theatre Calgary. So it was an unexpected bonus when Kim and I hit it off, and the company invited me to return this summer, where I was her assistant on the World Premiere of Tear The Curtain at The Arts Club’s Stanley Theatre. In November, when The Electric Company’s Studies in Motion came to Canadian Stage (NOW Magazine’s #1 Show of 2010), I also had the chance to spend a week understanding how all the technology works in that show.

The combined effect of these experiences has been to explode my mind in terms of the possibilities that contemporary live performance offers, and I can’t think of a better set of experiences for someone who was searching to understand how complicated technical elements are integrated into large scale venues as a director. I had a moment during ‘video levels’ of Tear The Curtain where I found that I had abandoned my too-cool-for-school lounging seated posture to stand and make an “aaahhhh” kind of sound as the full scope of what Kim was about to accomplish literally came into focus. If you think I’m overdoing it here, I’m not the only one.

Beyond technical technique – I did learn a lot of less definable things as well. Working with Kim pre, during, and after winning the biggest prize in Canadian Theatre has been kind of amazing to bear witness to. Understanding the level of commitment and work ethic that gets you to that point in a career is another thing I will likely consider ad-infinitum. Seeing how the close knit group that comprised the core team behind The Electric Company’s productions worked is also something I want to keep in mind.

The biggest thing that has stuck with me about Kim though, is how dedicated she has been to her artistic community and fellow artists in Vancouver. Her accomplishments weren’t achieved by deciding how much of her time to spend on her art and how much to spend being a good community member. They are directly related factors and the improvement of one has led to successes for the other. Bottom line: If you want to do crazy shit – you have to work with your peers to make it possible. I asked Kim if she would talk to me over G Chat about this further and here’s what we talked about:

11:05 AM me: Hi Kim. Thanks for doing this

Andrew Wheeler as Eadweard Muybridge in Studies in Motion. As better projectors increased the visibility of performers over the several years that this show toured Canada, actors had to increase the subtlety of their performances.

Jonathon Young (foreground), Andy Thompson, Lucia Frangione, and Laara Sadiq in No Exit. Some actors perform live for an audience via offstage cameras.

Progress Lab (the building)

Collier directs on the set of the film shoot for the multimedia production Tear The Curtain

The Electric Company Theatre‘s Kim Collier is the fourth director in Canada to receive the Siminovitch Prize in Theatre.

There is no more prestigious or lucrative prize in Canadian theatre than the $100,000 Siminovitch Prize. The annual award cycles through directors, playwrights and designers each year. This year, it was awarded to a professional director who advances Canadian theatre through a body of work achieved in recent years, while influencing and inspiring younger theatre artists. $25,000 of the award must be awarded to a protege of the winner’s choice – this year Collier chose director and The Chop Co-Artistic Director Anita Rochon.

Both Rochon and Collier work out of Vancouver’s Progress Lab 1422, where Rochon is also Associate Artistic Producer with Rumble Productions . Neither director is stranger to Toronto: Collier’s No Exit dazzled at Buddies last year while her Studies in Motion comes to Canadian Stage in November. Meanwhile Rochon’s Kismet One to One Hundred wowed audiences as part of Free Fall last year at The Theatre Centre.

Congratulations to both, and indie theatre in Vancouver a little bit too.

Kim Collier
Prior to her career as a director, Kim studied acting at the University of Victoria, physical theatre at Mime Unlimited in Toronto and in 1994 graduated from the 3 year acting program at Studio 58 in Vancouver. A year later she co-founded Electric Company Theatre whose work quickly became recognized nationally as a driving force behind the resurgence of activity in Vancouver’s independent theatre scene.

Under the direction of Collier, the company has created a dozen original works through an intensive collaborative process including three landmark site-specific productions. Kim also has a growing presence on major stages and festivals across Canada with productions at Theatre Calgary, Festival TransAmerique, National Arts Centre, the Citadel Theatre and Canadian Stage. In 2011 her live-cinematic interpretation of No Exit is being presented by the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco. Kim is the recipient of multiple awards including three Jessie Richardson awards for directing, a Betty Mitchell for Best Production and in 2009 the Vancouver Mayor’s Arts Award.

Previous Siminovitch Prize Recipients:

Toronto director, Daniel Brooks in 2001;
Montreal playwright, Carole Fréchette in 2002;
Montreal designer, Louise Campeau in 2003;
St. John’s director, Jillian Keiley in 2004;
Toronto playwright, John Mighton in 2005;
Toronto set and costume designer, Dany Lyne in 2006;
Montréal director, Brigitte Haentjens in 2007;
Toronto playwright, Daniel McIvor in 2008;
Calgary and Toronto designer, Ronnie Burkett in 2009.

Laura Mennell plays the mysterious Mila Brook in The Electric Company's Tear The Curtain. Photo by Brian Johnson.

by Michael Wheeler

One of the unconventional things about this residency is that unlike a traditional curriculum that would begin with basic fundamentals and conclude with something grand and complicated, I am taking the best opportunities I can get when they are available. This approach led me to begin my training program by participating in the first half of a 3-week film shoot for The Electric Company’s newest production – Tear The Curtain, commissioned by The Arts Club Theatre Company to open at The Stanley Theatre in Vancouver in early September 2010.

This meant my cross-Canada study of the relationship between direction and design in theatre began with a crash course in how to direct a film. It took me a couple of days on set, and a couple of reads of the integrated script (which overall is formatted as a film not theatre script), to fully appreciate the magnitude and ambition of what I had gotten myself into.

The story operates on two levels: Plot-wise it is a film-noir styled story set in a semi-fictional Vancouver full of gangsters, tycoons, a secret cell of revolutionaries and double-crossing vixens. Fundamentally it is a narrative that will entertain.  Thematically, it attempts something very complex and intricate by centring the plot around an embittered theatre critic in an era where film is becoming the dominant medium. The lead character is both fighting this shift, in part to keep his livelihood, and searching for the reason he was so enamoured with theatre to begin with.

Jonathon Young plays critic Alex Braithewaite. Photo by Brian Johnson.

This is not just an intellectual existential problem for the lead character to be considered by an audience. The show is a combination of both mediums. The Stanley Theatre – where the show will premiere – was once a movie theatre that has been transformed into a theatre theatre. All of the filmed sequences have been shot with in the Stanley Theatre and many of the shots are from the audience’s POV of the stage – or acknowledge in some way when that they were shot in the same room where the audience will experience the performance. Experientially – the line between film and theatre as mediums will be blurred as the same actors from the filmed portions will also tell the story through live scenes.

Still with me?  Also, all of this was happening in the heart of Vancouver in the middle of the Olympics. Not too many of the huge crew of people that were working three weeks of consecutive 12hr days seemed all that aware of snowboard cross, curling or the luge – even though the Olympic village was around the corner.  We had important things to do! (Not entirely true: Managing Producer Nathan Medd scored last minute tickets with his family to the Opening Ceremonies and came back with some impressive photos on his iPhone.)

My role was to observe – and occasionally be a sounding board for – director Kim Collier as she tore through an ambitious and demanding shooting schedule. Although I have been on film sets before, I have never considered each day and shot, from a director’s perspective, as such the learning curve was both steep and fascinating. One of my first realizations was that a production that used a large number of professionally filmed segments like this had only recently been made possible, or at least economically feasible, by new technology.  The film sections are not actually shot on film; a RED One high-res camera was used. This is considerably cheaper than shooting on film and allows all of the information to be stored digitally and viewed immediately.

This technology is not flawless.  RED One cameras are a little too good – they can show too much detail and not have the pleasant hues that come from shooting on film. To combat this effect – and to contribute to a film noir-ish feel throughout, there was a single person whose only job was to keep a thin mist of haze circulating whenever camera was rolling. Keeping this haze perpetual and consistent was a major battle throughout each day, but was key to both the atmosphere and continuity of the material being filmed.

Kim Collier (foreground right) directs while a Red One camera is operated by a RoboCop-like suit wearing cameraman. Photo by Tim Matheson.

A second element that jumped out at me as a theatre director learning to direct film was how little time there is for experimentation or mistakes. In theatre I think our creative process often leads us to take time feeling our way into things, trying different approaches, and sometimes using good ol’ trial and error. This is not even remotely a possibility on a film shoot – not only do you have to know exactly what shot you want ahead of time, but exactly what you want from each of your actors and your DP for each individual shot well ahead of time. Certainly you can make adjustments on the fly and always keep your eyes open for discoveries and opportunities – but time is money and a professional film crew is a lot of people’s time.

The biggest day of the shoot was my last one, when a huge number of extras were used to create the crowd shots both of the audience filling the theatre and of a party in that occurs in the lobby of the theatre. On that day over seventy volunteer actors (myself included) showed up at 8am on a Saturday to be dressed in high fashion of the 1930s and strike a number of sophisticated poses and while feigning conversation throughout the day. Most ingenious use of the RED One Camera occurred at the end of this day when the seventy actors were shuffled to completely fill small sections of the 600ish seats the theatre with the camera “locked down”. Later in the editing room these multiple iterations of ourselves will become citizens of the same time and space filling the entire audience in a single shot.

I am already looking forward to returning to Vancouver to join the theatre portion of rehearsals for Tear The Curtain leading up to an early September opening night. The whole company has been awfully nice to a guy from Toronto whom they’d never met before, and it was awesome to be included in this ambitious process. I’m looking forwards to learning the process by which The Electric Company and Director Kim Collier integrate the filmed and live materials both in the rehearsal hall and in tech at The Stanley Theatre. Next post – Michael Healey’s Courageous arrives at The Citadel Theatre in Edmonton.