Board of Awesome

With pride and sadness, Verb wishes our current Board President, Kristen Nixon, the very best as she embarks on a new adventure in higher learning in Toronto, and in doing so, leaves Calgary and Verb Theatre this summer.  Kristen has been the President of Verb Theatre Society since its inception, and has provided great leadership and support during its growth.   On behalf of the Board of Directors and Staff of Verb Theatre, I am happy to wish Kristen a safe and happy transition into her new academic adventure!

In the meantime, our rock-awesome VP, Kirsten Varsek, will serve as Acting President.  Our AGM is coming up shortly, so if you are interested in becoming involved with Verb’s Board of Directors, please contact us at: jamie@verbtheatre.com

~Jamie Dunsdon

Artistic Director

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Are You Ready for the Summer?

Sorry for the absence recently.  Fact is, it’s summer!  And as we all know, theatre people disappear in summer.   Fear of the sun?

Seriously, Calgary theatre is dead in July in August.

’tis the season for drama camps, I suppose.  It seems that half of the artistic community makes a living from the pockets of Calgary parents.   Summer drama camps are cheaper than daycare, so everybody is teaching for Artstrek, CYPT, Pumphouse, etc.

But where are the shows?  I’m teaching a Drama 1000 class this summer, and struggled to find a couple of productions for the students to see.

If you’ve got a show on this summer, Calgary or not, send us an email or comment below!   Hell, send us your poster image, and we’ll post it!  Here are a couple of suggestions of my own:

If you heading south at all this summer, be sure to check out The Empress Theatre in Fort Macleod.  It’s amazing.  Oldest theatre in Alberta, old vaudeville-style stage, antique wood floors, the works!  Oh!  It’s haunted!  I can verify.  Plus they have a couple of shows on right now:  The world premiere of The Worry Wart by Calgary’s Alice Nelson (and designed by yours truly), and Dickens of the Mounted (which isn’t a fantastic title, but is hilarious), starring Calgary’s Justin Michael Carriere as Charles Dickens’ inebriated son.

If you’re heading north, of course you should check out the Edmonton Fringe, but specifically you should check out Our Last White Night by Calgary playwright Andrew Torry.  I’m sure I’ll post showtimes again later in the summer!

What else?  Tell me!

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There’s an app for that

City art? There’s an app for that

By NANCY TOUSLEY TUE, MAY 25 2010
Reposted from the Calgary Herald

Now this is getting with the program: The City of Calgary Public Art Program has launched an app that allows visitors to make a self-guided tour of 16 works of art in downtown Calgary by using an iPhone.

The app includes photographs, audio and details about each piece and the artist who created it. A geospatial component helps users locate the individual installations plotted on a map of the downtown, and pinpoint their real-time position on the circuit.

“The 16 artworks included in the tour span a four block radius in Calgary’s Centre City,” say Dianne Quan, program coordinator for the Public Art Program.  It takes about one hour to complete the walking tour the old-fashioned way and guided tours continue to run every first Thursday of the month.

“The iPhone app lets people do the tour on their own time. It’s another way to engage citizens in the art.”

Some facts about the tour supplied by the Public Art Program:

Distance: 1.2 km through downtown buildings, including seven different Plus-15 corridors

Duration: Allow 40 – 50 minutes to complete the circuit.

Accessibility: Wheelchair accessible.

Hours of access: Most +15 corridors are open Monday to Friday, 7 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Cost: Free.

Artwork: 14 to 16 interesting public art pieces from the Civic Art Collection.

Location: Suggested starting point is the south entrance of the Municipal Building (8th Avenue and 2nd Street S.E.) by the parking pay station. The tour is primarily indoors with just a few quick jaunts outside.

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Frozen Yogurt

I always thought Frozen Yogurt would be a really great name for a winter arts festival in Calgary.  The sub-heading would read CalgaryCultured to Perfection or something.

Oh!  Or Now in Hundreds of Different Flavours!

Or something about toppings.  Ummm…

…The poster could be a frozen yogurt Calgary tower.  Oh! Or a cow eating a frozen yogurt, questioning whether or not that is considered part of a vegan diet.

Speaking of things that are cultured, the Calgary Arts Development Authority has a nifty blog.  Last month, they announced some interesting stats and figures regarding arts and arts funding in Calgary and have been kind enough to post them online for those who couldn’t attend.  Some of these stats are really encouraging, though the number of full-time, employed artists in this city is a touch frightening.  Anyway.  We’ll discuss that later.

If you are interested, they’ve posted some stats in a few different formats.  If you have time, go through them all.  Very worth it.

1. Here’s the condensed version.

Lead with Culture: 2009 Report to the Community from Calgary Arts Development on Vimeo.

2.  Here is their report online or in PDF.


3.  And here’s the extended version (don’t worry, it’s not actually 47 minutes long).

So check that stuff out.

Okay, CADA, I promoted your website.  Now YOU have to make Frozen Yogurt a reality.  Deal?

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The Bechdel Test

A friend posted this on Facebook the other day.

I understand that it’s a cinematic tool, but I couldn’t help but wonder: how well does contemporary theatre hold up against the Bechdel test?  In some ways, it’s a difficult test to impose.  There are a lot more one-woman plays than one-woman films, after all.   Still, an interesting lens for looking at the works of Shakespeare, Moliere, and Ibsen, all of whom have female leads…but what kind of females are they?

I think contemporary theatre has more luck passing the test.  How many contemporary plays can you think of that pass the test?  Here are a few, off the top of my head:

  • Unity (1918) by Kevin Kerr
  • Marion Bridge by Daniel MacIvor
  • The Attic, the Pearls, and Three Fine Girls and More Fine Girls
  • This is For You, Anna by The Anna Project
  • Proof by David Auburn
  • Doubt by John Patrick Shanley (sort of…they talk about the priest a lot)
  • Wit by Margaret Edson
  • Les Belles Soeurs by Michel Tremblay
  • Albertine in Five Times by Michel Tremblay
  • The Rez Sisters by Tomson Highway
  • Ernestine Shuswap Gets Her Trout by Tomson Highway
  • Perfect Pie by Judith Thompson

Can you add to the list?

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On Deck

The following video was made during tech for our most recent production.  Cayley Burton, our understudy, takes us through her reactions to the process.

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The Shape of a Girl Production Stills

In case you missed it, here are a few stills from our recent production of The Shape of a Girl by Joan Macleod.

Braidie…………………..Jessica Robertshaw

Director…………………Jamie Dunsdon

Stage Manager………..Marcia Liber

Set/Sound Design…….Anton deGroot

Understudy…………….Cayley Burton

Lighting………………..Jamie Dunsdon

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Apologies

by Jamie Dunsdon

- – -

Closing a show can be tough, especially when it’s one you care about.  Tearing down the set, saying goodbye to the team, and letting go of the character can all be difficult.

But that’s nothing, compared to the post-show-acolleaguey, the most painful experience of all.

The “acolleaguey” or “colleague apology” usually occurs in a bar or coffee shop, or in a lobby of another theatre.   It’s usually awkward and always hard to watch.  You catch the eye of somebody else in the industry, you end up in the same circle, and you have to explain why you didn’t catch their show last week.  You could have the most legitimate excuse in the world (“I had to attend a funeral.”) or the worst (“My ferret ate my car keys and then choked and died, and my car broke down on the way to the pet crematorium.”).  You can even avoid the conversation all together.  It doesn’t matter.  It’s always uncomfortable.

Having just closed a show myself, I’ve received a few acolleagueys in the past week.  And, like prison relationships, they’re even more uncomfortable for the person on the receiving end.

I have to admit that during the run of the show, I was disappointed when a couple of fellow artists I expected to attend, didn’t.  The inevitable “I went to HIS show…” ran through my head.  I suppose it has something to do with the muddy line between “friend” and “co-worker” in the theatre industry.   We hope our friends and family will support the projects that are important to us, but that’s perhaps a bit presumptuous when you consider half the population of the Auburn your friends and family.

It’s also harder for younger artists, I expect, for whom every show is a BIG deal.  Most older, established artists make no apology.  And I think we youngins should learn from that.

So.  Thank you for your regrets, but it’s not necessary.  I understand.  The fact is, most of us can’t afford to attend every show in the city, and even if we could, most of us don’t want to spend all of our evenings thinking about the same things we do during the day.   Moreover, we can’t expect artists to fill up all the empty seats of Calgary theatres.  If we’re only producing our theatre for other theatre makers, we’re doing it wrong.

Of course artists should support each other, and of course we should try to see as much theatre as we can.  I firmly believe it’s one of the most important ways to grow as an artist.  And established artists should absolutely check out what the emerging community is doing, keep in touch what the young folks are playing at.  But let’s dispense with the post-show apologies, okay?  There’s no way everybody can see everything.  Let’s celebrate each other’s work, and find ways to fill up our audiences with people we’ve never met.

So.  For once and for all, on behalf of everybody:

I’m sorry I can’t or didn’t see your play, performance, or workshop.  I didn’t know you were in that!  You know, I tried to come on the Thursday, but it was sold out!  Also…I thought it started at 8:00, not 7:30, and parking downtown was ridiculous.  What?  You close on Saturday?  Aw, man, I planned to see the Sunday matinee.  You know what?  I have to be out of town that week anyway.  Damn, if I wasn’t so low on cash, I would totally go.  Besides, I’m in rehearsals all week for this other show across town.  It goes up next week!   …Are you coming to it?

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Oedipus Evolving

Here’s a wonderful Calgary Herald article that hit the stands this Mother’s Day morning. Steve Hunt spent hours and hours over the course of the whole project, coming into rehearsal to get to know the participants and our process. It was a avery unique experience to have a journalist become invested in a project, and it’s a real testament to how addicting working with this population can be.

Nigel Kirk  during rehearsal with the Mustard Seed Theatre.

For homeless actors, drama onstage and off

BY STEPHEN HUNT, CALGARY HERALD MAY 8, 2010

Oedipus Evolving runs at Epcor Centre’s Motel on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Pay what you can.

Two Saturdays before opening night, Nigel Kirk has a meltdown.

It all starts in the Philosophy Cafe, at the Mustard Seed’s creative centre.

When Kirk perceives the moderators of that day’s event ignoring the rules — Kirk says they refused to listen, told speakers they were wrong, and played devil’s advocate — Kirk who has been homeless since 2007, expresses what they call non-productive behaviour.

He doesn’t do much, really — slams a door so hard it breaks a wall — but he knows it was not his best moment.

“Yeah, that was part of my anxiety disorder,” Kirk says. He’s been diagnosed with anxiety, post-traumatic stress and depression. “That’s part of the reason why I can’t work right now, because doctors are afraid I’d eventually hurt a person and not just a wall.

“(But) the staff understands it’s part of my mental illness and want to work with me to help me get better and get better medical services.”

In these early days of May, however, Kirk has other, far more theatrical, things on his mind.

Things like learning lines — a lot of lines — blocking, rehearsing, and the history of ancient Greece.

Those are all part of the variables involved in putting together a play starring six homeless actors — Kirk, Pat Joly, Sherry Love, Barclay Wolfchild, Miroslav Ludva, Marc Saurettev and Sheehan Herlein — which co-directors and project organizers Col Cseke and Aviva Zimmerman have been doing five nights a week since the beginning of April.

And not just any old Neil Simon romantic comedy, either. The Mustard Seed Drama Club is endeavoring to produce an updated version of Oedipus called Oedipus Evolving, an ancient Greek classic tragedy of truly epic proportions.

It’s the legendary story of Oedipus, the man who meets an oracle who prophecies that he will one day kill his own father and fall in love with his mother, and then, when he sets out to avoid just that, stumbles into doing it all anyways.

While that might intimidate the most classically-trained actor, Kirk, a smart, quick-witted 25-year-old guy who has been studying acting since junior high, is excited about doing a Greek classic.

“I love Greek literature,” he says. “I’ve read all three of the plays in the trilogy.”

Nigel Kirk  during rehearsal with the Mustard Seed Theatre.

While earlier similar projects, such as the City of Calgary’s This is My City project, dealt with themes of homelessness, this time around Cseke and Zimmerman wanted to do something far removed from the day-to-day grinding reality of their acting company’s homeless stars.

“It’s one thing for them to tell their own stories, but it’s totally another to get to play kings and queens and all this high tragedy and stuff,” says Cseke.

Zimmerman thinks classics stretch the imaginative boundaries of the cast members.

“Something that really touched me, a quote I heard a while back, is ‘The first step to implementing a better reality for yourself is to imagine it,’ ” Zimmerman says. “And that was the idea behind this play: having characters. We’re separating ourselves from our self — creating the separation so we can imagine this other world.”

While both are experienced in this type of work, Cseke and Zimmerman understand that every day brings the potential for high drama — and quite often, personal and emotional catastrophe for someone in their unique, brittle group.

“In past projects, people have gone to jail before a project,” says Zimmerman. “People have gone to rehab. People have been barred from the shelter, or have fallen off the wagon and they’re coming back wasted and aren’t allowed in. That’s the volatility of what goes on.”

That said, it’s closing in on and opening night and all six cast members keep showing up.

Zimmerman, who has been working with the residents of the Mustard Seed since late 2008, sounds as if she almost can’t believe it.

“This is the biggest project that I’ve done,” Zimmerman says. “I’m crossing my fingers and my toes and I don’t know if everyone will make it to performance.

“But there’s also a moment,” she adds, “A threshold when they buy into it. They see the value and they get really excited and they want to be here.”

On the streets for over a decade now, Kirk left an abusive home at 14. He has battled drug dependency, and admits to illegal behaviour to pay for those drugs, but has been sober for five and a half years now.

His doctor has diagnosed the trio of mental problems, but despite them, Kirk is also focused and meticulous. He carries a brown briefcase everywhere, writes essays about homelessness and is writing a one-man show (he studied playwriting with Eugene Stickland) that was read by Cseke at the homeless cabaret at the downtown library in late February.

Despite his stage experience, Kirk has never played the lead before.

“During the rehearsal, the audience isn’t there,” he says. “And as far as I’m concerned, (during the performance), the audience isn’t really there either. I just keep telling myself that. I think of myself,” he adds, “as the heterosexual, male, kd lang of the theatre.”

Kirk doesn’t get banned from the Seed for damaging the door, but five days before opening night he receives bad news: his bid to get in the Mustard Seed’s Step Up Program, in which he would have his own apartment, is denied.

Kirk sounds demoralized, even though he once gave up the same apartment on a matter of principle when he felt the Seed mistreated a friend.

“I’ve been clean and sober, I’ve been working on my goals, I’ve been working on my mental health, I’ve gotten connected with a better doctor,” he says. “It kind of gets frustrating.’

What’s interesting about a project like Oedipus Evolving is that it has brought a lot of disparate souls together in a project that appears to be bringing out the best in everyone.

“A lot of homeless people, especially when they’ve been on the streets for months and months, their pride, their self-esteem dwindles,” cast member Herlein says. “Even for the set designers who are gonna be doing this, they even have a ton of pride, because they’ll see how their sets and props actually fit in.”

It’s still two weeks to opening night and there’s agita in the air. It’s a night without Zimmerman, who is more or less the den mother of the group. While Cseke also has the trust of the group, on this night, it’s a challenge to get everyone to focus. There are the personal dramas, some bad — Herlein is venting about getting the runaround for six hours at the local walk-in clinic because they suspect him of being a pill chaser — some good — Joly getting accepted into a YWCA carpentry apprenticeship, or Ludva getting a job interview at the University of Calgary. Either way, the wild energy these life-swings generate can derail a rehearsal in a hurry.

Cseke gets everyone to gather in a circle and conducts a warm-up, then gives the cast an exercise: he wants them to go through their dialogue and verb it — assign an action word to each line of dialogue so that the text will have some levels to it.

Nearly an hour after it appeared things might be falling apart, the entire cast sits at a long card table in the middle of the Burning Bush Room, verbing their scripts.

It could be any community hall conference room in the city. There are tinderblock walls and an air of general drabness. On the wall, Zimmerman and Cseke have hung various banners, dealing with the qualities an actor must embody (“Teamwork,” “Staying in the moment,” Trust”, “Confidence”) and the themes explored in Oedipus Evolving (“Pride,” “Revenge”).

You could be anywhere, except for the telltale sight of a carry-on luggage bag sitting on two wheels in the corner of the room, next to a blue backpack: a pair of cast members’ life stories.

It’s dead quiet, except for the occasional action word. This is the sight of everything working right.

Later that evening, Cseke is delighted with the way things turned out. “The fact that they could sit down and do book work just blew me away,” he says Cseke. “That was definitely I think the most challenging night I’ve had on the project so far, but also the most rewarding.”

Marc Saurette (left) and Nigel Kirk (right) hangout in the evening at Mustard Seed's Foothills shelter. The two homeless men are also avid actors in the Seed's drama program which is putting on their own version of the classic Oedipus this year.

EPILOGUE: OPENING NIGHT AT THE SEED

On Friday, after Alberta Ballet’s world premiere of a ballet about Elton John, two small chalkboards set up outside on either side of the Mustard Seed complex on 11th Avenue advertise a more humble world premiere.

Tonight: Oedipus Evolving! the sign reads, 5:45 p.m. in the Burning Bush Room. Doors open 5:30.

Outside, a few men linger, smoking cigarettes and thinking about dinner.

Upstairs on the second floor of the Mustard Seed’s Creative Centre, there’s a packed house, waiting to see a troupe of homeless actors tackle their first Greek classic, a 3,000-year-old tragedy about a guy who kills his father and sleeps with his mother.

It takes quite a story to make homeless guys think someone’s life is messed up, but none of them can top the tale of Oedipus.

Finally, it’s showtime.

Five weeks after rehearsals started, everyone who signed up enters from stage right and takes a chair. Through the good weeks and the not-so-good ones, they all made it to opening night. That’s worth four stars right there.

Kirk lies on stage, wrapped in a white duvet, white gauze wrapped around his eyes to indicate his blindness, while Saurettev, the black-leather hatted former trucker booms out the show’s introductory notes.

The show itself is a cross between a Greek tragedy and a multimedia, 21st century wink at the idea of tragedy.

After a few anxious moments early on, the cast settles into their parts. Wolfchild is hilarious as Creon, Oedipus’s brother-in-law whom he suspects of plotting to bring him down. Herlein, Joly, and Saurettev all provide terrific cameos, while Kirk grows progressively more distraught playing the tormented king Oedipus.

And then it ends. Lights up.

Behind me, two Mustard Seed residents stand and gather their things. Time for dinner. Maybe time to grab a quick smoke too.

“That was awesome,” one guy says to the other.

Outside, 20 minutes later, Kirk stands, having a cigarette with some women who saw the show. (“My last addiction: nicotine,” he says).

“If you’re coming to see this play, leave homelessness at the door,” he says. “Because this play is not about homelessness. It’s about Greek tragedy. It’s a normal, professional theatre piece put together by high quality actors who just happen to be homeless.”

The photo’s above are from a Calgary Herald photo gallery by Gavin Young, check out the whole gallery here.

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Shape of a Blog

Cayley Buron, the understudy for The Shape of a Girl, is a high school student who has joined our team as part of Verb’s Teen Mentorship Program.  We’ve asked her to contribute to our video log and blog.  Click here to watch her first vlog entry, or read her comments on the rehearsals thus far, below:

May 6, 2010

First blog entry of my life! I don’t know why I never jumped on the whole blog bandwagon. I just didn’t.

Whoa, that was totally a Braidie statement.

So far The Shape of a Girl has been an awesome experience. Jess is just incredible, such an inspiration. I pretty much absorb everything Jamie says. Marcia is always on the ball. I have enjoyed the whole rehearsal process so far. The atmosphere is so creative and we know we have to get work done, but everyone’s chill. We laugh a lot.

The table work at the beginning was interesting because I’ve never gone through a script like that before. Blocking was quite the process and the movements and our ideas are constantly being refined. This week, we’ve been doing scene work. Sometimes we spend almost an hour on one scene, working to figure out Braidie’s character and her reaction to the past and present events. Braidie is quite a complex character but we’re working on finding her voice and all her teenage girl quirks.

Over the next few rehearsals we’re doing runs of the show, and still trying to come up with Braidie’s costume. Dress rehearsal’s Monday, so it’s coming up pretty quick! I’m getting very excited to see the final product.

Being a part of the rehearsal process has just been so fun. Every day the show continues to develop, and I’ve realized that it truly is a process. The show comes together and evolves into something stronger every time. Everyone is so open-minded and supportive of each other. They all already knew each other before the show, but they’ve made me feel so included. I even got to suggest the blocking for one of the most serious scenes, which was awesome.

I really love this play. I love working with the people and I think that the script is brilliant. Joan MacLeod is a very good playwright. But I also think that it explores a really important issue, especially in society today. It’s kind of like a rude awakening, but bullying is an issue people need to be aware about and we need to recognize when things have gone too far. Girls will be girls, but girls can also be mean to each other.

I’ll post another entry in a few days.

:)

~Cayley Burton, Braidie Understudy

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