Aaron Willis, Vinetta Strombergs and Mark Brownell are your new Ontario CPAG members.
The election of these members following a 96-1 vote in support of indie reform by membership at the 2008 AGM in Toronto, and the 46-2 vote demanding these reforms proceed with due haste at the 2009 AGM in Montreal (presented by newly-elected Quebec CPAG member Zach Fraser), indicates a huge amount of momentum for a new approach to contracting indie theatre.
Is the age of CAEA actively discouraging and opposing work by independent artists coming to an end? The cumulative message behind all of these votes, motions and AGMs is that resolving this issue is a major priority for CAEA membership nationwide.
It looks like a little romance is blooming between cast members Rodrigo Fernandez-Stoll and Jamie Robinson. The pair met while rehearsing Debbie Does Dallas (now playing at the Theatre Centre) and they claim to be “just friends”. We’ve heard that before…
Today in Vancouver this theme will be taken to the next level with The Grey Relay. More specific instructions have been provided to confirmed participants, but the general jist provided on the event’s Facebook Page is this:
“*** The Grey Square Grand Plan ***
A minimum of 16 people, dressed in GREY, walk single file SILENTLY and make a grey square SILENTLY on a city corner.
Someone in that group will be designated timekeeper.
After 15 minutes, led by the timekeeper, they walk single file to another city corner and make another square.
This goes on all day, all around the city.
People can be funneled in and out once the route and times are ascertained.
We need: people to form grey squares; volunteers to hand out leaflets; volunteers for communication and organization tasks.
This is not a protest. This is about art and artists taking their space.”
"As staged by Mr. Hughes, the current “Oleanna” flies bravely in the face of Mr. Mamet’s prescriptions about acting. “There is no character,” Mr. Mamet has written. “There are only lines upon the page.” This “Oleanna” squints to read between those lines, and Mr. Pullman and Ms. Stiles have obviously been encouraged to create characters who are more than what they say."
by Michael Wheeler
Although material on the Praxis Website usually refrains from mentioning or linking to reviews, famed New York Times theatre critic Ben Brantley’s review of the recent Oleanna revival in NYC is interesting enough to be come the exception that proves this rule.
In his review, Brantley makes the argument that the production starring Bill Pullman and Julia Stiles is not a success in large part because the performers do not use the correct acing technique: a Practical Aesthetics approach to performing the text developed by Mamet and taught by the Atlantic Theatre Company he helped to found.
The original production of Oleanna starring Rebecca Pidgeon (who is married to Mamet) and Practical Aesthetics co-creator William H Macy, “seemed to move at warp speed” and left Brantley, “with shortened breath and heightened blood pressure”. The current production he writes, “seemed slow to the point of stasis, and its ending found me almost drowsy.” Both productions had roughly the same running times.
Creating a complictaed and contradictory character is not normally a flaw in the approach of a performer. A medium still heavily influenced by Stanislavsky and Psychological Realism normally rewards those artists that create multi-layered characters who are “more than what they say”. In fact, not to do so in many post-Chekovian texts is to risk one-dimensionality – it is assumed that the process of creating a character includes plumbing the world between the lines to create the fully formed human being within.
Brantley argues that this is not however, the approach that should be taken with this text:, “because “Oleanna” is a play about people for whom language is a conditioned reflex: They don’t think before they speak, even when they believe they do.” This – in a nutshell – is the essence of the technique that Mamet and Macy have worked to develop. In direct response to what they refer to “the method”, Practical Aesthetics forces the actor rely on their will over their intellect by distilling the creation process to a three step process that prizes the text over all else.
Because I haven’t seen the production, it’s impossible for me to have an informed opinion about Brantley’s analysis. I broke one of the few rules of curating material for this site because I was struck by a review of a piece of theatre that was conscious of not only what elements the production succeeded and failed, but posited informed reasons why they did as they related to the craft and approach the artists used to create it. It seemed to me rare, insightful, and good evidence as to why having your show reviewed in The Times still matters a little more than all the rest.
a blackbird now,
I spend days flying and nights trying to reach you
over frozen lakes and towns
guided by your breath
underwater blood, the smell of salt
when you dream of flying
or wake and find bits of glass in your mouth
know I’ve visited and left notes, clues
so that you,
always at ease and moving perfectly,
might look and find me
Rupal Shah is an independent theatre producer and a community outreach coordinator. She works with nightswimming, DVxT Theatre, Pleiades Theatre and inDANCE.
Currently she is co-producer (with Naomi Campbell) of The Turn of the Screw, presented by DVxT Theatre and Campbell House, which runs until November 7th at the historic Campbell House Museum. For more info click here or call 416.504.3898
Unemployed and fresh out of theatre school, I decided that I should get coaching for my Shakespearean monologues. I did not know Douglas Campbell, but of course knew of him and that he lived nearby. Armed with a healthy dose of just-out-of-theatre-school-chutzpah, I looked him up in the phonebook and called him. To my surprise he said, “Well, if you’re not doing anything right now, come down to Laval Street”.
I was out of my roach-infested Park Ave apartment like a shot, down to the picturesque Carre St. Louis. His wife Moira Wylie answered the door and welcomed me into their living room. Douglas was sitting in his chair by the window and chatting with their daughter-in-law Moya O’Connell. We were all introduced and Douglas turned to me and asked in his booming voice, “What have you been working on?” I said I wanted to start fresh with the Constance monologue from King John and they invited me to read it.
After I finished they gave me wonderful feedback and career advice. Douglas then proceeded to regale me with tales of “his day” and then quite out of the blue asked me, “How would you like to come and live here?” They were doing a show at the Piggery Theatre outside Montreal and needed someone to housesit.
I was only too glad to get out of Park Ave even for a month. I would now be living (temporarily) in one of the most beautiful quarters of Montreal, surrounded by the accumulated mementos of a life well-led in the theatre world: photos of great theatre productions, a prop tree decorating an office, books with inscriptions from various notables (I was at liberty to plunge at will into their vast theatre library). Inadvertently, I had been given the opportunity to live vicariously through them and imagine what my theatre career might become.
This display of generosity from someone so exalted remains to this day a seminal moment for me in my pursuit of this precarious career, where the generosity of others means so much.
"The map on the seat-back screen. I realized that I was flying over places i had never heard of before..."
Volcano AD Ross Manson on touring Goodness to Rwanda
An Africa Trilogy purist could quibble that this is not strictly an “Africa Trilogy” related post. This quibbler would point out that Volcano Artistic Director Ross Manson blogging about his experience touring the Edinburgh Fringe-winning production of Goodness he directed to Rwanda, is about an entirely different production and creative team (save for Manson himself).
Fair enough, but the stated dramaturgical goal of the Trilogy is to create a piece of theatre that examines the relationship between Africa and the West. In this regard, the detailed and passionate record he has been keeping about touring a Western-created play on the nature of genocide to Rwanda is pretty much a perfect fit.
You can read the blog complete with comprehensive photography here:
On October 5th 2009, CAEA members sent a strong signal that they weren’t joking at the previous AGM held in Toronto when they voted 96-1 to pass a resolution in support of researching new solutions and contracts for use in creating indie work. With no action taken by CAEA almost one year after the resolution had passed, members returned a second vote that explicitly details their dissatisfaction. Approximate estimates (official numbers are still not available) pegged the tally at 42 for, 4 abstentions, and 4 against.
The motion, which was submitted by Sarah Stanley, was presented to the AGM by Montreal indie artist Zach Fraser. Of particular note was the address to the AGM made by CAEA founding member and ACTRA Lifetime Achievement recipient Walter Massey, who spoke eloquently in support of the resolution.
For the second straight year CAEA membership has voted overwhelmingly to support a new approach to encouraging, creating and contracting indie theatre. All that remains is to see if CAEA staff and the soon-to-be-elected Council will choose to ignore the expressly and explicitly stated desires of membership for a second straight year.
The motion:
WHEREAS there is continuing dissatisfaction among the Equity Member/Creators with the current options to engage Equity artists, including the Independent Artists Projects Policy, Small Scale Theatre Addendum and Coop Guidelines that are available to its members;
AND WHEREAS Equity adopted a member resolution passed at the last National Annual General Meeting, resolving that steps would be taken by Equity to address this dissatisfaction by consulting with a committee, struck by Council, made up of volunteer CAEA Member/Creators whose purpose is to field concerns & suggestions, gather information and seek advice from fellow CAEA members as well as examine alternative options, devise revisions or alternatives to the current agreements and policies and report back to the Business Representatives, senior staff and membership at large, except that committee and advisory work will be initiated and guided by Council and answerable to Council;
AND WHEREAS there is further and growing dissatisfaction among the Equity Member/Creators with the lack of any tangible progress made by such committee and advisory work;
BE IT RESOLVED THAT Equity deem this matter a priority and take such steps as may be needed in order to cause senior staff to prepare a full report addressing these issues to be presented to the membership at large by the next National Annual General Meeting.
Lets call them anti-commercials! All three are well produced calls to action by local artists and activists inviting you to participate in your community in different ways. If this website was a TV station this is what we would air between shows:
“After the years and years of weaker and waterier imitations, we now find ourselves rejecting the very notion of a holy stage. It is not the fault of the holy that it has become a middle-class weapon to keep the children good.”
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