IS 2 WEEKS ENOUGH REHEARSAL?

Certainly 2 weeks is enough time to create something passable, even watchable, but it's mostly broad strokes and the show will lack details and finesse until well into the 2nd week of the run.Granted, it is certainly somewhat easier to mount a show like "Dial M..." in two weeks (cast of 5, single set) than something like, oh, say ... "Beauty & The Beast" (cast of 22, multiple locations, huge technical requirements) . The poor dancers In "Beauty..." just about collapsed trying to learn all the choreography, harmony and staging in such a short intense period, not to mention the crew trying to deal with all the technical elements in their single alloted rehearsal.

Why are rehearsal periods shorter now? Because theatre companies can't afford to pay the salaries for longer periods. They need to get the show on the stage and start generating revenue. Why is that? Well, for starters, Government funding is getting smaller and smaller. Not that I think it's any government's job to keep the arts alive, but the cuts are getting more and more severe. I have particular issues with funding cuts to arts in the schools. Anytime you make a cut to education of any kind, you are putting a hole in the infrastructure of your country's future. If there's no one learns that art is a part of life, then art dissapears from life and life becomes colourless. Any 'quality of life' survey includes the arts as one of it's measuring sticks...but I digress.

Big business, faced with profit margins and the global economy, is also offering fewer and fewer funding dollars.

And...here's the biggest problem, why leave the house when Hollywood makes it possible to watch a rented movie in your house for 5 dollars? I'll tell you why....because life doesn't happen in your family room. Life is interaction with the world, and most of the world happens 'out here'. Sure you can watch that movie over and over and over again, and it will never change. Go see the same play every night for a week and it will be different every time because it lives, and breathes and has a relationship with the people who are watching it. It lives for YOU. That movie doesn't, and the people with the money behind it certainly don't. When we're on stage, we see you, we feel you, we breathe with you (and listen to you talk and unwrap your candies). But we know you're out there, and we take our cues from your responses.

I think theatre's need to start marketing the unique-ness of theatre. A play happens only once, just for you, just tonight, and then it's never the same again. And if you look at the heart of most plays and compare them to the heart of most movies you'll find different things....real stories at the heart of one, and mostly just marketing and money at the heart of the other.
I will continue to pay $30.00 for mediocre theatre than $12.00 for what Hollywood thinks is a good movie.

I could go on, but my life is pulling at my shirt sleeve.

"DIAL M FOR MURDER" WEEK 2

"Dial M For Murder"

Yesterday, the beginning of our second week of rehearsal, we did a run thru, well, stumble thru, of the play. We're feeling quite chuffed with ourselves. Considering how much time we've had so far, the show is in really good shape. This is due to the fact that we have a cast of well seasoned, dedicated actors who know what they're doing, and a director that allows the actors to get on with it. Michael Shamata, our director, knows how to sustain that wonderful mix that I admire in a director. He creates a safe place for us to play, encourages us to take risks and make mistakes, manages to find time to talk about the things that would normally be discussed around the table in a longer rehearsal period, but always knows what he wants to see, what will serve the play, and where the show as a whole should be going.

Now, all of that being said, I feel obligated to state that 2 weeks has not now, nor will it ever be, enough time to mount a properly rehearsed play. Sadly however, this is the reality of Canadian theatre at this point in history. For my thoughts on this, I've decided that it deserves it's own post: IS 2 WEEKS ENOUGH REHEARSAL?

What Happened To Winter?

Ok, there is something seriously wrong with the weather. It's the end of January people. When the annual ice wine festival was setting up in town, there was concern that all the ice sculptures would melt. I've been seeing house flys and lady bugs, and yesterday I was chased by not one, but TWO wasps on my back deck. This isn't right.

I've been hearing highly paid specialists saying that this has nothing to do with global warming and that climate changes like this are quite common in the grand scheme of things, but I don't buy it. Sure, I admit that I'm thrilled to not be shovelling the driveway or cursing as I scrape the ice off of the car. And driving back and forth from Niagara to Waterloo on days off is much easier in the rain than in a snowstorm, but it still feels wrong. It feels like we're screwing around in class and getting away with it but when the teacher finds out, there'll be hell to pay.

On a different note...
I did an audition yesterday for "Aladdin", the highly condensed stage version of the Disney movie. A new company in Niagara Falls is planning on running the show from April to September. While I would LOVE to be able to live at home for that long, and I certainly don't need to do very much acting to play Jafar, part of me worries about whether this company can actually sell the show for that long. The thought of the show closing half way through the summer, once all other summer festivals have been cast, gives me hives. Here's me talking like I already have the part. How's that for positive thinking. Perhaps I'll just wait and see if there's an offer first.

SMALL TOUR OF "SERENITY"

I've been wanting to post some pics of our charming little place for some time now but it took me days and days to get the image hosting set up and hours and hours of uploading in FUCKING DIAL UP. Have I mentioned how much I hate the fact that we can only get dial up???? Anwya, here at last are a few shots of the house that we are having a love affair with.




The view from the front porch is breath-taking when the evening sun slants across the orchards.







This is one half of the living room (sofa out of view to your left). Note that th PS2 is paused mid-game.









A dark and slightly confusing picture of one half of the dining/music room. Dining out of view to your left.










One of my favorite features...the Zen Lounge at the top of the stairs.









The master bedroom.

"Dial M For Murder" STARTS REHEARSAL

"Dial M For Murder"

We started rehearsal yesterday and are already moving through this very dense, very 'talky' piece quite quickly. There is a lot of information to be pieced out and many tiny details involving placement of items on stage that have to be worked, considered, re-worked and re-considered.

We started blocking the murder scene today. They say that for every minute of choreography that you see in a dance number on stage, at least one hour of staging time has gone into it. It's the same with something as complicated as staging a murder, with the added complication of making sure that the scene can be performed over and over again without actually injuring any of the actors involved.

Here's what the audience sees:

Margot crosses the stage, having been roused from bed to answer the phone. She picks up the phone, but no one is there. As she puts the receiver down, Lesgate, who has been hiding behind the curtains, sneaks up behind her and wraps a scarf around her throat. There is a brief struggle, during which Margot gets turned around to face her attacker and he lays her across the desk so that he is lying on top of her, still trying to strangle her. She feels around on the desk, finds a pair of scissors and stabs him in the back with them. He releases his grip, stands and then drops dead, tipping over a chair with him as he falls. The whole thing takes less than 60 seconds.

Seems simple enough, no?

Here is a sampling of the questions that we had to address in the preliminary creation of this 90 second moment of action:
Where does Deb's (the actress) hand need to be placed in order to protect her throat from any possible damage from the scarf?
Where does my head need to be in order to keep my nose from being bashed by her head when she jerks it back?
What steps, exactly, does it take for Margot to get laid back on the desk with her attacker on top of her?
What props might need to be removed from the desk that might still be lying there from the scene before, and who removes them, and when?
Where does the lamp need to be positioned in order for Margot to have enough room to lie across the desk?
What does she have to do in order to make sure that the phone receiver falls to the floor every time, and not on the desk, otherwise she'll be lying on it.
Does the phone cradle need to be secured to the desk to keep it from falling to the floor as well?
Where do the scissors have to be placed so that she can reach them?
How can the scissors be lightly secured to the desk to keep them from accidentally falling to the floor, but still be available for her to pick up?
After the stabbing, how can both parties quickly get up from the desk while at the same time concealing the stage magic that make is look like a man has scissors sticking out of his back?
Where, anatomically, did she stab me? Did she puncture a lung? Interfere with the spine?
How long would it take to die?
How do I pull the chair over with my body weight, night after night, without hurting myself, but still making it look like I drive the scissors deeper into my own back by rolling over on them?
And, most importantly, because Margot refers to "his staring lifeless eyes", how do I lie with my eyes open until someone covers me with a blanket in the next scene?

This list covers only the really important topics. There were a mountain of other, secondary issues that came up in the time that we spent staging this moment.

SING LIKE YOU DON'T NEED THE MONEY

Can there be anything more moving, more heart-rending, more simple and pure than a group of seniors singing “Somewhere over the Rainbow” ? I play for a senior’s choir on Monday afternoons….when I’m in town. They’re a lovely bunch, and I enjoy doing it for several reason. 1) It keeps my piano fingers in shape. 2) They pay me. 3) It reminds me that, especially since I often sing for a living, that the human voice, lifted in song, is special and there doesn’t need to be a paycheque involved.
I found this last rehearsal particularly moving because the choir was practicing “…over the Rainbow” so that they can sing it at a memorial service for a departed friend. I found it tough to play the song without weeping.

TOO MUCH TO SAY ABOUT TOO LITTLE

I had to take the car in for an oil change today. There’s a little café across the street where I usually wait. LAINEY’S - Homecooked meals with a flair!. Now, I don’t know what Lainey thinks ‘flair’ means, the food is your standard, back-end-of-the-city, hidden-in-a-nasty-strip mall eatery. And for what it is, it’s pretty good. They used to do a mean hot turkey sandwich, but I see that’s been taken off the menu. ANYWAY…lots of seniors in there when I went in today. Must be the lunch rush. Here are some snippets of conversations I heard from the table around me.

Table 1. 4 old gals.

“That’s two good meals I had today”
“Well I should say so! You had pancakes this morning for Pete’s sake!”

Table 2, a very elderly man is eating his pie. The woman critiques.
“Well it LOOKS homemade. That pastry is old though.” (She picks from his plate) “Look at that, it’s not flaking, it’s peeling !”

Table 3, two blue-collar guys
“I don’t lie on the beach here in the summer. Don’t know why I’d pay all that money to go do it in one o’ THEM places.
“Well, you could lie in the shade.”
…and then, later on…
“I guess she’s a good cook, eh? They say she don’t measure nothing’ or this that n’ th’other. Lived with the Mennonites or the Amish to get the recipes.”

Table 4, a pair of old gals.
“Darlene, come ‘ere, quick. There’s a guy out there takin’ pitchers. He took one this way first. Look, he’s still takin’ ‘em. Now he’s taken one the other way. Like I says, he took one this way first, eh? People got too much time.”

If some yob taking pictures in a parking lot ever excites me that much, please feel free to drive a stake through my heart.

A RANT - RETURNING EMAILS

Here’s a favourite pet peeve: People who don’t respond to emails !!! I’ve noticed that this particular disease seems to be most dominant in the 20-somethings, the very people who grew up using it as their primary communication tool. COMMUNICATION! Theoretically it’s supposed to be a two-way thing, no? And I REALLY love to hear, “Oh, I’ve been so busy” as an excuse. Busy !!?? It takes you 30 seconds to reply to and send an email. You had enough time to read the fucker, didn’t you? If your life is so busy that you can’t organize your tiny brain to respond to an email, you’ve got big problems. Busy! You’ve been busy playing video games and watching the latest parade of beautiful/stupid people on television and surfing porn on the internet.

Feel free to post your thoughts on the issue.

On a calmer note, isn’t there something wonderful about getting a hair cut? There is a belief in Native cultures that hair is where you hold your power and that only a man’s wife should touch his hair. Some spiritualists believe that hair is a repository for unwanted, used up emotional residue like fear, sadness. Perhaps that’s why you tend to feel lighter after a hair cut? It could all seem awfully trivial to even talk about hair until you consider the billions and billions of dollars we spend on shampoo, conditioner, spray, paste, wax, mud, moulding putty, fixer, clarifier, colour, shimmer, highlighter, detoxifier, pomade,…..and the list goes on. Scary huh? Ever tried to read ALL the product labels in the hair care aisle at the drugstore?

A RANT - BABY STROLLERS

Picture it. IKEA. Saturday afternoon. Big Sale. Nightmare. The place is like an ant hill under construction. And apparently, families don’t do happy, picturesque weekend things anymore. An outing to IKEA now qualifies as “quality time”. Here’s the problem: when there is that many people working the aisles, like sharks trolling for chum, a little common sense and civility would make it easier for everyone to navigate. However, give anyone a baby stroller or a shopping cart loaded down with 3, 000 lbs. of shelving units, and they immediately start using it as a battering ram to make their way to the check out. Just because you are pushing something in front of you, you are not excused from having to say, “Excuse me”.

A statistician told me once that it has been proven, without a doubt, that traffic fatalities drop dramatically anywhere that seatbelts become mandatory. However, what they don’t tell you is that accident rates actually go up. People, surrounded by their metal shell, feel safer and therefore bolder. Like all those small-dick red-necks and bleach-blond-real-estate broads on the expressway who suddenly become charter members of the ‘Get-the-fuck-out-of-my-way’ club. Going faster and driving more aggressively does not give you the right of way. The statistician suggested that if you really wanted to lower accident rates, every steering wheel should be fitted with a big spike, pointing directly at the chest of the driver !! I suggest the same for baby strollers. How about a spring-loaded boxing glove that delivers a smart punch to the abdomen of the driver every time the front wheels come in to contact with anything ….like my ankles.

A RANT - RURAL MAIL DELIVERY

So who knew that when you move to a house that has a Rural Route address that you have to NOTIFY and register with the Post Office to affirm that you are actually living there? Anywhere else you move, you simply notify the rest of the world and wait for the mail to arrive. Sorry, not that simple with Canada Post!!! By chance, I happened to be at the post office in town today and there is a stack of mail for us because the delivery person is bringing it back to the office, preparing to return it to sender. Did they wonder why all this mail was coming from various sources to our address??? Could that many different institutions suddenly, randomly start sending mail to an unoccupied house? Perhaps they could have just knocked on the door...."Hello, do you actually live here? Oh, well then here's your mail." But that would be too simple, wouldn't it. That would mean they'd have to actually get OUT of their car, maybe take a step or two.

SCOTT FREETHY LOSES A LIMB

Michael, on a shopping trip to Toronto, finally found Scott. I was beginning to wonder why I was getting no responses back from my text messages. Granted, when he says he’s going to sleep for a week, he really means it. Especially because he can drink with even more Bacchanalian resolve than I can. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone who can suck a bottle of booze dry like that, to the point where it implodes. And with New Year’s Eve just past, I couldn’t help but wonder if he drank himself into oblivion and went to sleep under a streetcar, or tripped and fell on another lesbian who beat the crap out of him. But, the explanation is not as colourful as any of my musings, he simply left his cell phone charger in Oakville and has been cellular-free since the battery died. THAT makes me laugh…Scott Freethy without a cell phone permanently attached to one hand. I’m sure he’s having phantom pains like people who lose a limb.

Kim & Jason are going to come for a visit and see our new house. It’s a good thing that they are so religious devoted to their hairdresser in Virgil that they make the hour-plus drive from Toronto every once in awhile. It means that we get the chance to host them in the country rather than them always hosting us in the city. I’ll have to think of something to make for dinner, and I KNOW I won’t be serving tequila….not after the weekend we decided to have a Mexican night. Poor Jason….flat out on his stomach, puking over the edge of our back deck in the middle of the afternoon, while his wife and I are pulling his pants down, ‘cause we thought it would be REALLY funny if he woke up outside with his naked ass in the wind. Ah….tequila….I’m sure that upper-middle-class-retired-artsy neighborhood hasn’t bee the same since we left.

AN ACTOR'S RANT

I’m slowly coming to terms with the fact that the rest of the urbanized world has conspired to make sure that, those of us who choose to live in the peace and serenity of the country, pay for it by being denied anything other than dial-up internet access. I have called all over central Canada and so far, my only options are satelite internet, which means having a dish installed, which they will happily do for a fee of anywhere from $600 to $1300 dollars !!!!!!! Capitalist bastards. So now, after making the decision to never have a land line again, so that we don’t have to pay Bell $30 a month just for the PRIVILEDGE of having a phone, we are forced to use them again. Matt Helm was right….the phone company does rule the world.

A RANT - THE CASH GRAB

I can’t believe that Canada Post wants me to pay $30.00 to have my mail re-directed. Not only that, but there was a time when ‘change of address’ cards didn’t require stamps. So now, they would like you to pay twice. Really, how hard can it be? Haven’t postal codes made it ‘computer simple’? Where does this $30.00 go and how did they arrive at that amount as a fee? Can you introduce me to the person who gets paid that money? Because I’d like them to explain to my what the process is and how it’s costs breakdown. Much like the $55.00 we’re paying for the priviledge of having Bell connect our telephone. Again, who gets that money? Or is it one of those modern anomalies called an “administration fee”, which is just corporate speak for CASH GRAB. As far as I know, administration means data entry and information filing, right? So maybe there would already be people on staff who’s job it is to take care of such things, which would mean they’re already getting paid. So, what….do they get a bonus every time someone changes address?

SLEEPING LIKE THE DEAD

Oh this house sleeps so well. It’s so quiet here. I wonder if it will be that way in the summer too, or if I’ll be thrown out of bed by the first explosion of the bird-bangers in the vineyards at six a.m. We’ll see. For now, I indulge in the fact that it’s almost ten a.m. and I’m just having my first cup of coffee. LUXURY !!!!

I have decided that I will make a trip out into the world today. I’m feeling that since most everything thing is open again, there are some things that I could get done without putting myself through too much stress. I will not, however, be going to the gym. I think I’ll leave that until my lower back has recovered a little more from all the box shifting and heavy lifting.
So, taking stock of what I did yesterday, I see that the dining/music room has been cleared of boxes and odd furniture and that the CD player is set up. The back hall closet is re-organized with shelving units to handle all our various household gack. The storage shelves in the office have been put together and several of the boxes emptied on to them. And the upstairs bathroom now has all it’s towels and toiletries filed into drawers and cupboards.

I was thinking about how nice it would be to watch TV last night. This is one of the reasons that I decided to suspend our satellite service for awhile. At many points, it would have been so easy to just turn on the tube and vegetate. Problem is, before you know it, an hour has gone by and you’re still channel surfing, hoping, in vain, that something interesting will pop up out of the 300 channels you have to choose from. I have decided that TV is the electronic version of a psychic vampire; all it ever does is take from you, it rarely gives you anything back. I’m hoping I can wean myself from it’s clutches.

NEW YEAR, NEW HOUSE, NEW BLOG

New year, new house. I wake in the serene quiet, exhausted and weary to the bone from the last two months of shows and 2 weeks of moving. Exhausted, but calm, and feeling lighter than I have in weeks. I wander through the chaos of the unpacked rooms, stumbling with my precious coffee. Even the chaos seems right somehow. I think we belong here.

Since we won’t have any internet service for a few days, I find myself suffering from withdrawal, my morning ritual of email and surfing is not an option. Michael forces me, unknowingly, to have a melancholy moment by playing Scott’s CD, which includes the song he wrote after Terry died during the opening night performance. I realize how much we, as a cast, went through in 6 months of “Beauty & The Beast”. I feel another kind of withdrawal. I’ve become so used to seeing, and drinking in, certain people on a daily basis. Ah well, show biz. File the memories, learn the lessons, then pick up the next script and begin again. New memories, new lessons.

The next 3 weeks stretch out before me like a summer field, the rehearsals for “Dial M for Murder” a distant mirage on the horizon. The thought of puttering from room to room, pushing boxes, hanging art, not leaving the house for days if I don’t want to, makes me giddy with anticipation.