"Squillions of kisses"

While I had planned to adapt a number of Noel Coward's amazing, amusing letters into a play for CowardFest, a couple problems popped up to nip me in the bud. Sad to not be participating, but I'm happy to go watch some fine work from local companies.

Do take in as much of the festival as you can and - in lieu of a full play - here are just a few of the Grand Old Man's wonderful words below.

Dear Darling old Mother,

Thank you very much for your letter. I could not send a card and this was scarcely odd because there were no cards to send… I have been out in the yaught this afternoon it was very rough and I was fearfly sea sick and Uncle Harry took me ashore and I was going to wait on the beach for TWO HOURS but a very nice lady asked me to go to tea with her I went and had a huge tea this is the menu 3 seed buns 2 peacies of cake 2 peacies of Bread and jam 3 biscuits 2 cups of tea when I thank her she began to preach and said we were all put into the world to do kind things (amen). I am afraid she did not impress me much but I wished her somewhere…

I hope you are not miserable.

It makes me miserable to think you are.

…

I have got to go to bed bed now so goodbye from your ever loving sun Noel. Squillions of kiss to all love to Eric the dogs are so nice down here. I had three little boys to tea yesterday each about the size of a flea. I had to amuse them and didn’t enjoy it much.

-Noel

Darling,

The play is going very well, I come back to town on Sunday. I have been very ill the last few days, it started off with a sore throat and me losing my voice. Manchester always affects me like this, it is a beastly hole.

Aren’t the air raids awful, please wire me if they go anywhere near our delectable residence.

Farewell for now, my lamb

Ever your ownest

Snag

The play, dear, has all the earmarks of being a failure. Jack and I sat grandly in a box on the First Night and watched it falling flatter and flatter. And I must admit… we got bad giggles! They were all expecting something very dirty indeed after the English Censor banning it and they were bitterly disappointed.

We suffered a little during the first act but gave up suffering after that and rather enjoyed it. I find on close reflection that I am as unmoved by failure as I am by success, which is a great comfort. I like writing the plays anyhow and if people don’t like them that’s their loss.

Good by darling Snig. I’ll cable every week. Your photograph is a great success in a small leather frame.

Your loving Snoop.

The moment I switched out the lights, Gertie appeared in a white Molyneux dress on a terrace in the South of France and refused to go again until four a.m. by which time Private Lives, title and all, had constructed itself.

Al Rae is coming out swinging

The show mentioned in this CBC Scene article I wrote is happening tonight. Check it out if you can - should be hilarious, interesting and moving all at once (so get ready to cry/laugh/think simultaneously).

The Winnipeg Comedy Festival's artistic director will be joining the lineup for the Coming Out Swinging gala Thursday, April 11, to discuss - with a few laughs - his choice to come out of the closet a few weeks ago, ending a 23 year marriage and a chapter of his career.

(continue reading on CBC Manitoba Scene)

Dionysus in Stony Mountain | Review

Ross McMillan and Sarah Constible in Dionysus in Stony Mountain (photo credit Leif Norman)

Plays don’t often get more ambitious than Dionysus in Stony Mountain, the final show of Theatre Projects Manitoba’s current season. With two actors, a modest set and just two hours of stage time, the play sets out to tackle Canada’s penal system, modern liberal values, environmentalism, mental health, intergenerational strife, capitalism, Christianity and Nietzsche.

Make no mistake: this writing is thick with thought, particularly the first act when up-for-parole James (Ross McMillan) explains to prison psychiatrist Heidi Prober (Sarah Constible) why he’s traded his lithium for Nietzsche (McMillan returns in the second act as Uncle Eric, dispatched by Heidi’s distant parents to investigate why their daughter has quit her job and dropped off the map).

It’s not always possible to keep up with the play’s philosophical arguments; not with a writer as subtle and well-read as Steve Ratzlaff. The words come fast and furious (often furious), not just leaping from subject to subject, but pirouetting through the air.

But that’s fine; you don’t need catch everything. It’s not necessary to get every Nietzschian skewering of Winnipeg, penitentiaries and small-L liberalism (though a quick glance at Nietzsche's Wikipedia page before you attend won't hurt). The only point you need to grab onto is that Nietzsche proposes a world free of moral baggage. If the weak get crushed by the strong, hey, that’s only natural.

How desperately, gut-wrenchingly attractive that mindset is for anyone trying to escape guilt – guilt at being unable to repair a broken world.

And that, ultimately, is what Dionysus in Stony Mountain is about: how we use institutions, philosophies and religions to cope with the ‘dark nights’ of human existence. And how, when those systems fail, what we’re left with is each other.

It’s a moving, compassionate play about pain that succeeds if you can hang in when something goes over your head (it did many times for me during the night). Constible and McMillan handle the denser material with speed and style, but it’s in the moments of open, honest vulnerability that the actors really shine. While there are times in the evening when Bill Kerr’s direction strays from the relationship between these two actors - McMillan’s speeches directly addressed to the audience stand out - wait a moment and the play gets back on track.

Is deep, philosophical writing an act of intellectual snobbery? No. It’s an invitation to think about meaningful, resonant issues, both specific to Manitoba and universal to human life. Now that’s an ambitious play.

Dionysus in Stony Mountain (by Steve Ratzlaff) runs until Sunday, April 8 at Theatre Projects Manitoba.

Crystal City - Ads That Write Themselves

Not too long ago, I Facebook statused that 'you know your trip was stellar when every picture can be turned into an ad' endquote. I'm ready to back that statement up now. Behold, a few ads that might have been from my trip to Crystal City with Chantal Verrier and Chaley Voth for our CreComm Travel Assignment.

Chatting with Romeo and Juliet

Pam Patel and Marc Bendavid are performing as Romeo and Juliet for the >Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre. Artistic Director Steven Schipper has chosen to set the play in modern Jerusalem, with the Montagues as Jews, the Capulets as Muslims and the friars, Mercutio and Prince as Christians.

How are rehearsals going?

Marc   It feels right for the two weeks it’s been. The play is starting to take shape. We have lots of work to do but time to do it in.

Pam     The blocking is fluid. It has room to develop, even during the run and I appreciate that. I’m sure everyone does.

How does it feel playing these celebrated roles?

Marc   It doesn’t serve to think of it that way. I haven’t felt like I’m conjuring some ancient actor’s spirit. I try to approach the text thinking about how they would be my words and not think about their history.

Pam     I’m not thinking about other Juliets, although I sometimes use them for reference. Primarily I’m trying to connect with Juliet personally, find what it is in myself that makes me her and be genuine on stage.

How do you connect with your character?

Pam     It didn’t feel I was getting her until we got up on our feet and were blocking the scenes, interacting with other characters. My realizations came based on the way that she moves in the space and the relationships with other characters. Now that I have that, I’m just starting to feel her in my body.

Marc   For me it’s all about the text – the relationships that he has are all in there. They’re in the metre, they’re in the character’s lines. I look for a way that I would say the things that he says and do the things he does – find different meanings for a word, ask someone with more experience for advice. It has to do with my relationship with the text. If there are real mysteries I try to bring in my life to the work and make it as personal as possible, but the basic understanding is in the text.

Do you find the story hopeful?

Marc   As a story it has an enormous amount of hope - I don’t think it necessarily ends on a hopeful note. It’s a director’s choice; there is room for a director to shape the end. Prior to this rehearsal, I would have thought it was a play full of joy that ends terribly. This director has chosen to end hopefully, that’s how the play makes sense to him.

Pam     When I’m in it, I’m not thinking “the audience needs to feel this or that.” This is me being as true to the character as I can be – this is me telling a story. The individual watching it – they’ll feel whatever they feel. I’m not hoping they’ll walk away with this or that, I hope it triggers something, that we are able to trigger some reaction in them. If I was an audience member, I’d think there was a great amount of hope and a great amount of pain.

How has doing this play affected you?

Marc   I never have any idea where I am, what I’m doing, where to be, when to be there. I’ve become some muttering, insane person… which hopefully will go away.

Pam     This experience is a bit wild for me. I never thought I would be doing a Shakespeare play. It’s not that I didn’t appreciate language before, but now – I appreciate so much of the language that I use. It’s something I hope I can bring to my other work.

Marc   I had a teacher at National Theatre School; when he directed our second year Shakespeare play, he became this confused, bumbling, disjointed man. We loved making fun of his befuddlement. Now his behaviour makes perfect sense.

Has the concept (setting the play in Jerusalem) influenced your choices?

Marc   Not really. It’s a basic premise. The themes are there and they happen to fit with a particular part of the world, but they could fit with many places, Rwanda -

Pam     Or here.

Marc   It affords us details, but it doesn’t do anything other than slightly contextualize it for people who might think it’s not a pressing or important play.

Pam     What’s amazing to watch in this process is how these different bodies – with varying backgrounds, ethnicities and histories – how they come into the space and inform one another. It shows that we hold history in our bodies. It’s what I love about this casting – these bodies coming together and informing each other. I think you can see that we bring our own languages, cultures and histories to the stage

Romeo and Juliet runs November 24 through December 17 at RMTC.

Selling Booze in Manitoba

This past while, Kenton Larsen has been guiding our advertising class through the stormy waters of liquor advertising in Manitoba. While ads from the States (and even other provinces) are not subject to the MLCC's sometimes bizarre, often confusing rules, locally produced ads are. Some examples of the law:

• A bar shouldn't speak about the liquor it serves as an "escape" from life's troubles
• No one can be seen to consume any alcohol
• A car cannot be heard
• You cannot use children's music

And so on. I decided to test the limits of these rules (against Kenton's wise warnings) by openly mocking them. If I quote the law that says an ad can't speak to the quality of the booze (I wondered), will I get away with it?

No! Kenton faxed (who does that anymore?) some of our ads over to the MLCC to check if they were on the level. And mine was struck down for implying the very thing I was speaking against. Which... is what I was doing. So I am justly caught. Sigh...

I did get the satisfaction of a good quote though. As relayed to me by Kenton Larsen, the MLCC employee's response to my ad was:

"Your student has broken the law in a very clever way."

Worth the autofail friends, worth the autofail.

A Manitoban Who Loves His Job

In Manitoba we love to slag our crown corporations. Why?

Because they're so slaggable. Large bureaucracies with total control over influential areas of citizen life, populated by union-protected workers - not that unions are necessarily bad, but they can act as protectors to employees who, occupationally, should be taken out behind the woodshed (I tried to think of a 21st century equivalent to "taken out behind the woodshed" and failed. Google it.)

But there's at least one Manitoba crown corporation employee working hard to help serve our needs!

A few posts ago, I spoke about a mini-campaign I was going to launch to bring Picaroon's beer (delicious) to Winnipeg (so good!) for sale in local marts (mmmm). Last time I was out purchasing adult beverages, a helpful salesperson informed me that yes, there was a form I could fill out for said request. Joy!

I fired it off, truly doubtful I would get a response. Oh, me of little faith:

So this post is dedicated to you Steve Moran, Product Ambassador of Manitoba Liquor Marts! Thank you for being on the case. Of beer!

***
Generous Update - Theatre by the River's political satire is up and running (and getting great reviews). If you need a laugh in the midst of these elections (COUGHsonegativeCOUGH) you can't do better.