Check out Drama, Daily’s list of female theatre bloggers.   There are some really cool people on this list!

http://dramadaily.wordpress.com/2010/01/28/the-wtb/

STEPHEN MASSICOTTE

Award-winning playwright Stephen Massicotte is one of our own, and Calgary certainly loves him right back.  A graduate of the University of Calgary, Stephen has premiered many of his plays on Calgary stages. Mary’s Wedding premiered at the ATP playRites Festival in 2002, and The Clockmaker premiered at the festival in 2009.  Ground Zero Theatre has produced Stephen’s Looking After Eden, Pervert, and The Boy’s Own Jedi Handbook (also produced by ATP).  He and his plays have won numerous awards, including the Betty Mitchell Award for Best New Play (Mary’s Wedding in 2002 and The Clockmaker in 2009), the 2003 Alberta Literacy Award for Drama, the Canadian Author’s Association Carol Bold Award for the best English-language play, and the 2007 Gwen Pharis Ringwood Award for best play.

Stephen currently resides in New York.

1. What’s on your mind these days (in 10 syllables or less)?

Too much really.  I think too much.

2. Last we spoke, you were writing the libretto for an operatic adaptation of Mary’s Wedding. Has this process affected the way you look at the original script?

Well, it’s an interesting and odd process taking something that’s finished and has had an extensive life and then being asked to essentially rewrite it.  For the most part writing the libretto is about boiling down the play to it’s bare essentials which like I said is tough, because isn’t a play already supposed to be boiled down to it’s bare essentials?   The farther I get from the actual writing of the original Mary’s Wedding script I can see more and more how much of the play I wrote on raw emotion and just plain old nerve and instinct.  I don’t think I knew enough to know I was way over my head.

3. How would you describe the Calgary theatre scene?

It’s a great scene and close knit.  For the size of the city it’s also pretty large and varied.  It’s really quite a great place to learn your job while working as an actor, director, writer, designer or stage manager.  There’s enough stuff going on that you can find the work and it’s small enough that your work likely won’t get lost in the shuffle.  That said, it’s also just big and competitive enough that you still have to be good.

4. What’s the biggest difference between writing in Calgary and writing in New York?

For me writing in New York can sometimes be intimidating.  Just a five minute subway ride away are new plays by David Mamet, Neil Labutte, Martin MacDonough, Lynn Nottage, etc, etc. with the world’s best actors and directors working on them.  I think in Calgary I could pretend I was the only playwright on earth.  Here, you’re constantly reminded that you are not by advertising on taxi cabs, subways, posters, billboards and stars you walk by in the streets…  it can get a little overwhelming.

5. When in your career were you disappointed?

All the time.  I hate to sound ungrateful because I’ve been relatively successful.  Maybe I am too hard on myself or I aim to high or something but even my successes disappoint me.   It’s a dangerous way of thinking (not that I chose it) because on the one hand the dissatisfaction can suck a lot of enjoyment out of things however, it can be (and usually always is) the thing that pushes me to be better, dig deeper, work harder, get back on the horse etc.

6. As an audience member, what kinds of shows do you see?

I’ll see most anything but I mostly seek out serious plays and comedies.  I’m not a huge fan of musicals but have liked them when I go but don’t usually seek them out.  I like plays in the ballpark of my own tradition, I guess.  I’m not too big a fan of experimental theatre or dance shows but have been blown away by these too.  My favorite kind of play is what in the old days used to be called High Comedy which by today’s standards would be a funny drama.

7. How can we attract new audience members to the theatre?

Get them into theatre at a younger age.  Same as how they get people hooked on religion.

8. What are three plays we should all read?

Emphysema; A Love Story by Janet Munsil, Blackbird by David Harrower, Thom Pain (based on nothing) by Will Eno.  Tough to pick three.

9. What’s a great Calgary theatre memory?

The Boy’s Own Jedi Handbook premier in the Studio Theatre at the U of C.  It was a stellar night for me and everyone involved… the audience reaction was just tremendous.  But what moved my life and career in a different and unforeseen direction, is that it kept on happening the next night and the next but with more and more people being turned away.  I’d never had that kind reaction to my acting, or nearly anything else I’d done in my life, so it was the first time I thought, jeez, maybe I’m a writer, and maybe I’m good at it.

10. What’s your dream gig?

Not sure how to answer this.  I try to make whatever I’m writing the thing that I’ve been waiting and dreaming to work on.  I guess a dream gig might be having the first choice in the world of actors to do a play of mine, like Cate Blanchett, Ian McKellan or something.   Sometimes the dream gig is something simpler, but somehow nearly as unattainable, like writing a play for thirty actors or even a play that will have more than three productions.  It’s a touch biz when even one or two productions of a play is considered pretty big success… that might be less than 5000 people seeing your show which works out to be about 500 dollars for the playwright.  Compare that with audience and payday of the equivalent success in TV, music, film, or even fiction.  So the dream gig sometimes is just getting the show seen in multiple theatres in multiple cities.

A Scene from The Clockmaker, ATP

Introducing the newest addition to Verb Theatre’s The Digital Inkblot…

the VERBATIM

Interview Series!!

For those of you who don’t know how interviews work, it goes something like this:

We ask questions.

People answer.

We post what they say…

verbatim.

In Verbatim, each interviewee will be asked 10 questions.  7 of these questions will be asked of all interviewees, and 3 will be custom-tailored to the artist.  If there is an artist you’d like us to interview, shoot us an email and we’ll see what we can do!  Please enjoy our first Verbatim interview with Stephen Massicotte.

Here’s a post from a great new blog, The Most Exquisite Moments, out of Ottawa. It’s a great account of a non-Calgarian’s first weekend ever at The Auburn. And really, of the many “first time at The Auburn” stories I’ve heard, this one’s hard to beat.

Meeting Sharon Pollock (or, why Ottawa needs its own theatre bar)

January 26, 2010 by jessicaruano

The Auburn Saloon is situated right between Vertigo Theatre and Lunchbox Theatre, right below the Calgary Tower, and across the street from the Epcor Centre that contains six theatre spaces, including the One Yellow Rabbit’s Big Secret Theatre. The food is decent, the drinks are plentiful, and there’s just enough space for a monthly poetry slam. Theatre folks usually hang out here on Sunday evenings, but it is likely you’ll catch a handful of them any night of the week.

I first became acquainted with the venue shortly before seeing Blind Date: the audience was asked to spend time at The Auburn before the performance officially started, so that the Parisian clown could find herself a date for the show. For support such as this, The Auburn, I was informed, has received awards for its contribution to the theatre community. I kept returning to the venue because it was a convenient meeting place, and I didn’t mind waiting around in the comfy chairs near the front entrance.

This past weekend I realized that the Auburn was also a great place for random encounters. After seeing Blind Date for a second time, I went to the bar to order a drink, and this guy started chatting with me…  and no, this story is not going where you think it’s going. Turns out that he and his friend (essentially, the Calgary equivalents of Wayne and Sterling) were regulars at the bar, and they were quite willing to chat with me about the local theatre scene and make pizza with me at 3am. Total score.

We met up again yesterday evening: there I was delighted to see Ken Cameron, Artistic Director of the Magnetic North Theatre Festival. I politely barged in on his conversation, and he introduced me to his companion, Johanne Deleeuw, from Alberta Playwrights’ Network, and… to Sharon Pollock.

As it happens, Sharon was hosting an informal discussion entitled “Theatre in Kosovo: Before and After the War” with playwright Jeton Neziraj, the Artistic Director of the National Theatre of Kosovo. I had the chance to chat with Jeton about his work, and he gave me a package of his scripts that he had stashed in his backpack. He would very much like his work to be produced in Canada — any takers? let me know, and I’ll get you in touch.

I also had the chance to chat with Sharon, the Governor General Award winning Calgary playwright. I had seen her play Blood Relations at the Shaw Festival when I was in high school, and my friend Bronwyn Steinberg will be directing that same play at the University of Ottawa this April. So, for me, this was a major Canadian celebrity encounter; and yet entirely convivial. Sharon is brazen, articulate, outspoken, and a great listener: she let me ramble about my thesis for awhile, and we discussed the legitimization of performance in Canada, with a focus on that which is not text-based. It was glorious.

—

And that is why Ottawa needs its own theatre bar: so that I can have more random encounters with celebrities that I admire. How about it, Ottawa?

——————————————————————————————————————————————–

No doubt The Auburn can be a bit contentious, it definitely has it’s detractors, and we’ve all been in the position where we’re just not in the mood to hit it up some nights, but this is a hell of an example as to the role that place does have in our community. Encounters like these don’t happen every where, and places like The Auburn don’t exist in every city. Here’s hoping Ottawa finds theirs.

by Jamie Dunsdon

Do you ever look at production stills?  I do.  Back when I was an undergrad at the UofL, I was hired as the department of drama’s archivist. One of the many perks of the position was complete access to the archive files of all of the department’s previous productions, and I was, on several occasions, called upon to sort through the production photos and slides to provide visually engaging shots for media or promo.  What a blast!  And though I didn’t appreciate the value at the time, it was also truly educational.  A lesson in stage pictures.  Even now, I really enjoy spending time on 2×2ltd., which is Morris Panych and Ken MacDonald’s website.  Check out the Gallery.  Awesome.

I’ll get back to this later.  This post is actually going to be about promoting theatre.  Eventually.

For now, I’d like to return to the discussion we’ve been having about filming plays in our Theatre (sans theatre) posts.  For those of you following along, we left off discussing the potential benefits and risks of filming theatre.  In particular, we were examining the British site, Digital Theatre, which provides access to filmed productions for a fee.   In my post, I mentioned how interested I was in the Young Vic production of Kafka’s Monkey, one of the few productions available for download on the site.

And now I have a confession.  I caved.  I downloaded.

Here is what I posted on Vancouver’s The Next Stage, where our post inspired some discussion about the Digital Theatre experience:

Once I went through the payment process, it took a while to download. Probably close to an hour. No instant gratification here. Once downloaded, I dimmed the lights in my house (standby light cue 1…go) and hit play.

My first impressions of the medium were high. The variety of camera angles made the experience a lot like watching a film. It was dynamic and fun! I really enjoyed the play! At the end of the production, as the credits rolled (no program in my lap, I’m afraid), I sat for a moment trying to gauge my reaction. I had enjoyed it…but something was missing.

The thing that was missing (I think) was the magic. We often talk about the magic of theatre, with little thought as to what that actually is. But the magic of theatre IS theatre. Yes, it’s live, and yes I truly missed the audience camaraderie and the ability to reach out and touch a performer (in the show, she reaches out and touches us!), but there is more. Simply put, the show was not complete. It felt a lot like reading a playscript or listening to piece of a play on the radio: you’re only getting PART of it.

So (why) should anyone take advantage of Digital Theatre?  Since posting this, I’ve thought a lot about how theatre artists watch plays, and I’ve come to conclude that I frequently attend theatre for the educational value.  That is, I go in with an artist’s eye.   I’ve tried to turn it off, but often with little success.  The great thing about Digital Theatre, then, is it still provides an education for theatre makers.   It keeps us appraised of what’s going on in the world, allows us to communicate to each other more precisely about the art we’re creating.  As an AD, it gives me a taste of a play I might consider producing one day.  Yes, I’m missing a key component in the conversion from theatre to film, but it’s a lot like (as I said above) reading a script or listening to it on the radio…or looking at production stills.

The problem is that filmed theatre ISN’T marketed to theatre practitioners only.  In fact, the Stratford theatre/film mentioned in Col’s post is targeted to the general movie-going, Cineplex-loving population.   Or let’s look even simply at the ways we use film and photo to promote our stage plays.  We’ve all taken part in those media calls where the local TV station films a scene from our production, or posted a filmed scene on Facebook as part of the media blitz.  But there seems to be a consensus that something vital is lost in translation.  Could these attempts to reach out to an audience actually being damaging the public perception of theatre?

How about poorly chosen production stills?  I can’t tell you how many university brochures I’ve seen that pick the most “theatrical” stills to promote their season.   Young kids with big wigs and rosy cheeks, wearing outrageous costumes.  In the production, these choices were perfect.  Out of context, they look ridiculous and often poorly executed.  They look like theatre I don’t care to see.

Or radio?  It seems that this medium is a little more successful at capturing the real experience.  I’ve twice been impressed by the quality of the CBC Radio One presentations of Buzz Job, but just today I heard a clip from last season’s NiX on CBC…and cringed..  The sound bite didn’t sell the production well at all.  But then again, NiX was a very visual production.  The vocal choices matched the visual and design choices.  Too bad the radio audience doesn’t know that.

So, how do we pick which un-theatrical medium we should use to promote our theatrical shows?  How do we capture the experience of theatre in a way that won’t turn off potential audience members?

Seriously, any ideas?  I’m taking notes.

By Col Cseke

In the first week of the High Performance Rodeo I saw Buzz Job, the True Story of Cal Cavendish, minute for minute one of the most entertaining shows I’ve seen all year. Created by the ridiculously talented duo of David vanBelle and Kris Demeanor (along with a few numbers from the Cavendish songbook) it tells the tall-yet-mostly-true-tale of a 1970’s frustrated Cavendish who flew along downtown Calgary to perform a “buzz job” on the Calgary tower, showering down both copies of his record and a hundred pounds of bull shit.

It’s an amazing story, one of those stories that inspires folks to say “well, fact is always stranger than fiction.” Which, in fact, is what I had someone say to me after hearing me gush about how great a story it was. It got be thinking, and I realized that as a writer I’ve never really gone after “true” stories. It does though, seem like there’s a bit of a boom of “true story” shows happening in town.

Two big examples; Theatre Calgary is launching their massive new musical Beyond Eden by Bruce Ruddell, a modern rock musical telling the story of a 1950’s archeologist and a Haida artist who go on an expedition to “save” ancestral totem poles. It’s epic, it’s Canadian, and it’s based on a true story.

And at ATP’s playRites festival, which has a reputation of heralding new Canadian theatre trends, three out of the four shows are based on true  stories. How Do I Love Thee and The Highest Step in the World tell the true stories of a historic couple of poets in love and a NASA pioneer, and in what seems like less than a realistic depiction of historic characters and more of an “inspired by history’ piece, Abraham Lincoln Goes to the Theatre combines Lincolns shooting with Laurel & Hardy.

These examples are all around me, and I wonder if I’m missing out by ignoring all these stories that are seemingly just waiting to be written. Are audiences more eager to see a play if they’re familiar with the historical characters or events? I’m sure some are. I’m sure others would have loved Buzz Job as much as I did wether it was based on a true story or completely fictional. So, what to write? It probably comes down to what all these sorts of questions inevitabley do; audiences love good stories, whether based in fact or fiction, and, whether based on wild imagination or the most true to life circumstances, a boring story remains just that, boring.

From the Rodeo Blog

by Mark Hopkins

2010.01.14

The History of Ten Foot Henry

Speaking of local history, here’s an unpublished article that I wrote for the 2009 Rodeo program:

THE HISTORY OF TEN FOOT HENRY

Henry was born in 1932. A young, mute bald boy, he was the star of a pantomime comic strip created by Carl Anderson.

Anderson had tried to break into the comic market previously, with strips like The Filipino and the Chick, Raffles and Bunny and Herr Spiegelberger, the Amateur Cracksman, but none of them caught on, so he returned to a career in carpentry (and invented a patented folding desk) until the debut of Henry in The Saturday Evening Post, which quickly became a bonafide hit. In fact, Henry outlived his creator; after Anderson’s death in 1948, Henry was drawn by John Liney and Don Trachte until 2005, and classic strips are still distributed by King Features Syndicate. Henry starred in his own book and in a Fleischer Studios animated film.

In 1981, Henry caught the eye of a young Blake Brooker. “He was the most enigmatic and interesting cartoon character, because he never spoke out loud.” Brooker commissioned his friend Gregg Casselman to help create a gigantic, wooden cut-out of the character, and Ten Foot Henry took up residence in Brooker’s backyard on 25th Avenue SW, near the Stampede grounds.

“It was boomtime and it seemed as though legions of drunk and out-of-control construction workers were taking over the inner city,” remembers Brooker. “We built Henry so that we could put up a thought bubble with messages like ‘Depressing, isn’t it?’ for all the passing commuters.”…  Read the rest of this article on the Rodeo Blog.

If you’re liking our new blog, and want more Calgary-theatre-blogging, check out these two temporary blogs over the next few weeks…

Mark, bicycle-swallowing-co-AD and OYR office mate, Hopkins is running a very fun and entertaining festival blog for the High Performance Rodeo here http://www.hprodeo.ca/blog

And at Theatre Calgary, production dramaturg Shari Wattling has a behind the scenes blog chronicling the creation of one the largest new shows happening in Canadian theatre this year, Beyond Eden, here http://theatrecalgary.com/edenblog/

There are some great insights to be had in these blogs, happy reading

By Col Cseke

While I don’t disagree with much of Jamie’s concerns regarding Digital Theatre, let me point out a fairly significant point not mentioned in the post below, and that is that this Digital Theatre phenomenon will expose us to theatre we would otherwise never see. Theatre from different cities, countries, continents.

Example one; In the wake of the huge success of simulcasting high-def Opera performances from the Met in New York in high-def Cineplex Odeon is set to do the same with live theatre. They’re going to screen live performances from England’s National Theatre, the first screening just a few weeks away.

http://www.cineplex.com/Events/NTLive.aspx

Example two; Last year Stratford did the same with Christopher Plummer’s starring in Ceasar and Cleopatra, here’s the trailer…

And example three; Edmonton’s Northern Light Theatre has put up their annual Halloween production of Urban Tales as a live webcast in addition to selling tickets to the live act.

http://northernlighttheatre.com/season/play2.html

What’s great about this is I live in Calgary, I wasn’t in Edmonton on Halloween, I did get to Stratford last summer, and I bet I won’t be in London England this coming year either, but now I can get exposed to live performances there, either sitting at home or sitting in a movie theatre. I think that’s great. Not as a substitution to live theatre, but as another way of being exposed to more theatre. As an artist it’s one more way, in addition to reading plays, trade magazines, online reviews, blogs, etc, for me to get to know and understand theatre. It may also be a way for us to get our claws into some new audience members.

It is now possible that the first play a Calgarian will see will be at the Cineplex in Chinook mall and, aside from whomever sells them their popcorn, will have no Calgarian, or even Canadian, involved in the production. Tragic? Awesome? Merely less-than-ideal? I’m not sure, but as with anything new we can either just hope for it to go away (which maybe it will but probably not)or we can look for the opportunities within this new form and have fun exploring it. And if  while we’re at it we can maybe get some new audience members, say the high school kids that if they weren’t being forced to see our production of Shape of a Girl wouldn’t see a play before their 18th birthday for example, that’s great too.

by Jamie Dunsdon

It’s cold outside.

Do you really want to risk the bad roads to see that play downtown?

It’s really cold.

Plus the car’s defroster hasn’t been working very well…

I heard there’s construction on 9th ave.  Probably wouldn’t make it in time anyway.  Parking’s bad downtown.

You know, I heard you can catch this play on the web.

They filmed it.

Maybe you should just catch it online, then…  The defroster and all…

I first learned of Digital Theatre by reading a brief article on it in the London Theatre Guide, and – like all things British – it scared me. The basic concept as described in the article is this: Digital Theatre or www.digitaltheatre.com is a website devoted to posting filmed productions of plays online shortly after they have closed.  Unlike archival filming, each production is shot from different angles over the course of several performances and edited together, allowing the at-home audience the luxury of close-ups and different perspectives.  This scared me.  I didn’t do any more research at the time, but I knew this new movement would lead to nothing less than the complete demise of theatre as we know it.  After all, why would people make an effort to see a show in the theatre before it closes if they know its going to be online anyway?  We all know what the internet did to television!  As a theatre producer and artist, I decided I had to TAKE ACTION…so I posted the article on Facebook (with my own commentary, which read, simply “Eep”) and left it at that.  Now THAT’S political, baby.

A few months passed and I came across this website again.  I cursed under my breath, and clicked the link.  I was very ready to hate this website.  Before I knew it, I was watching an online tutorial about how Digital Theatre works and what kind of productions are available.  As it turns out, my first impressions of Digital Theatre formed by skimming one article were… ill informed.  Heres’ the real deal:

Digital Theatre IS a website that posts filmed productions of plays after they have closed.  But, unlike youtube or any major television network’s website, you have to pay to download a production.  The cost to download is £8.99/play, about $15 CAN.  A student ticket to the same show, live, goes for only £1 more.  This isn’t iTunes, folks.  The film crew works with the artists to choose the locations of the cameras as well as the way in which the different shots are edited together to serve the integrity of the staged production.  It even has the complete support of the various British theatre unions. Further, DV doesn’t provide footage of every play from every theatre company, but picks and chooses from the best of the best.

“We’ve always said it doesn’t compete,” says Delamere of the digital alternative to a live performance. “Nothing will be available [online] until after a production has completed its live life. It’s meant to be complementary.’” ~ London Theatre Guide

So now I feel a bit silly.  I don’t know that I agree with Delamere, but I admit, I am deeply interested in downloading Kafka’s Monkey as presented by the Young Vic starring Kathryn Hunter.  I watched the trailer and found myself very curious.

So how do we feel about this technology?

I still have a few concerns. I still imagine that a few people will neglect that trip out to the theatre if they know it will be online eventually.   Not many, but a still a few.  I imagine more than one graduate student will download the latest West End hit for a one time fee of $15, and show this film to the students in her tutorial (year after year), rather than actually requiring them to attend the production.  Somebody will figure out a way to post it to Youtube.  Yes, I imagine that will happen.

On the other hand, this kind of service paves the path for a globalized theatre community.  Let’s face it. The show is in Britain, so I wouldn’t have seen Kafka’s Monkey anyway (I used up all my Airmiles on a gift certificate for Bath & Body Works).  The Young Vic, then, isn’t really losing my business because they didn’t have it.  If anything, by expanding their market beyond geographical limitations, The Old Vic should be making money off this venture by capitalizing on a whole new audience for their work.  Could live theatre be the last business to finally go worldwide?

Further, I’m not even convinced they would lose business in the city of the production.  The cost of the download isn’t significantly cheaper than the cost of a live ticket, and even though the download can be watched repeatedly, I don’t know many theatregoers who regularly attend productions more than once anyway.  Besides, as we all know, nothing beats a live show.

Still, we should watch this technology carefully.  Currently, Digital Theatre only films a few shows and only releases them on the website after the live run has closed.  The download fee is enough to make one feel safe.  But what if these videos were posted during the run?  Or what if there was no charge to download?  Accessibility is as much a threat as it is a goal.  How would this technology serve theatre in, say, Calgary?  Which shows would you pay to see live?  Which would you pay to see online?

And of course, we are left with the biggest question of all.  If we film a play -  even from 30 different angles and using the artists’ input to maintain integrity – is it still a play?  What happens when we remove the live element from an artform that is, by definition, live?

Or is it, by definition, live?