Saturday
Jan232010
"Inspired by a true story"
Saturday, January 23, 2010 at 2:28PM
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.
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.
Reader Comments (1)
"Are audiences more eager to see a play if they’re familiar with the historical characters or events?"
I think a lot of people come to these shows because they are NOT familiar with the characters, or at least they could learn more about a famous historical figure. Sometimes as writers we try to tell the untold stories (Buzz Job), and sometimes we want to give a new voice or a new perspective to a story we've heard. There may be some security in knowing who the play is about, but I think people are mostly just interested in a good story.