Stratford, Ontario

On a perfect Saturday, after a rocky start at the car rental place (we ended up with a Lexus, sigh), three of us hit the road to spend the day in Stratford, Ontario, home of the Stratford Shakespeare Festival.

Trenna packing up

The sky was insanely blue, the traffic wasn’t too terrible, the gossip was juicy, and the leaves were starting to change to brilliant yellows and oranges.  Sometimes Ontario is just lovely.

Janelle driving us to Stratford in style

After a decent lunch at a place called Backstage (Othello’s next door was closed) and a vanilla-less London Fog at a sweet café staffed by sweet people (but with no vanilla in their London Fogs), we hit the bustling streets full and revitalized.

The culinary festival was in full swing.  There was Chuck in a truck selling some sort of kitchen thing to the crowd, little kids on each street corner busking with their violins, and break-dancers busting a move in front of the BBQ rib extravaganza.

Something in the water

And then the theatre…  Though the Stratford Festival of Canada recently rebranded to the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, we opted for two non-Shakespeare plays.  The matinée we saw, The Little Years, was presented at the Studio Theatre, the smallest and newest (and my most favourite) space at the festival.

It was the perfect venue for The Little Years, a seemingly little play that manages to be about time, education, family, devotion, obsession, math, regret… and it was absolutely heartbreaking.  I think the only person who can tackle these themes with equal parts humanity, raw emotion, wit, and intelligence is the one and only John Mighton.  The production was elegantly pared-down with the lighting and sound design painting the stage and air sometimes intrusively, but mostly evocatively.  Irene Poole as Kate blew me away.

And, completely randomly, three quarters of the Virginia Aldridge, BSc team ended up sitting next to each other in a row.

Irene Poole as Kate in The Little Years. Photography by Cylla von Tiedemann.

Then we had soup

Mennonite summer sausage soup and bread

and admired the random food items strewn across downtown in celebration of… food, I guess.

Hello lamppost, whatcha growin?

Fountain lions wearing knit foodie hats. No big deal.

We braved our way through the busy theatre store where I resisted buying any t-shirts I would have loved to wear to school in grade 8, and found our seats in the enormous and quite lavish Avon Theatre.

Despite an unusually annoying audience (lots of SHHHH! and “It’s starting!” and loud mouth-breathing and program shuffling and full-out talking “what’d he say?” and incessant waves of coughing), The Homecoming was the extraordinary theatrical experience I’ve been craving.

I’m a sucker for 20th century British playwrights to begin with, but this absurdist family drama is the kind of thing that puts your nerves, morals, and expectations through the blender.

Written in six weeks by the genius that was Harold Pinter, I don’t even know where to begin describing its plot and all the questions it raises.  Can I just say it’s dark and hilarious and you should read it, if you can’t see it?  But if you’re in the Stratford neighbourhood before Oct 30th, you should check out this grounded, engaging production directed by Jennifer Tarver and starring a truly cohesive and riveting group of actors.

From left: Ian Lake as Joey, Cara Ricketts as Ruth, Brian Dennehy as Sam and Aaron Krohn as Lenny in The Homecoming. Photography by Cylla von Tiedemann.

All in all, a very successful day that I’m still slightly surprised actually fell into place and happened.

How travel and theatre are similar: part 2

One more thing: MONEY!

How could I neglect to mention money in my last post about the similarities between theatre and travel?  As in: you never have any.

Producing a show or backpacking across the globe on a shoestring budget both involve a disproportionate amount of time trying to keep hard-earned bills firmly in your wallet and credit cards safely tucked away. Ha.

With my wads of cash in Giza, Egypt

The cost of things and what you’re willing to spend money on quickly becomes warped.  You shell out a fortune on the ever-rising plane fares and then spend the rest of your trip looking for as much free stuff to do and experience as possible.  Not so different from splurging on a theatre space or a slot in a festival only to spend the rest of the time making sets out of milk crates and rehearsing in your living room instead of buying lumber or renting rehearsal space.

The set for our show Virginia Aldridge, BSc

And the whole time you’re exploring and discovering (literally or metaphorically), you’re likely living off cornflakes or stealing the buns from the hostel’s complimentary breakfast for a free lunch.

How theatre and travel are kind of similar

Poster in Avignon, France

A few thoughts on how theatre and travel are kind of similar, at least to me…  Do you have any other ideas?

They both tear you out of your shell

I was really really shy as a kid. I didn’t say a word to my kindergarten teacher for six months.  I let people get away with things because I didn’t want to speak up.  And then I fell in love with theatre.  I got to play the romantic girly part in my grade 8 production of Molière’s L’Avare (and I don’t care that I got the part of Elise because I have the same name and it would be less confusing for everyone). All through rehearsals, our gym/French/drama club teacher would yell “plus fort!” from the back of the auditorium and I found my voice, as cheesy as that may sound.  After that, high school plays got me to hang out with older, cooler, crush-worthy kids while chanting “stage right, stage right, we won’t give up the fight!” like the nerds we actually were.

When you travel by yourself, you have no choice but to firmly make that terrified part of yourself shut up: you go up to people for directions, for help, to book a bed in a hostel, and then, slowly but surely, you start going up to people purely for the hell of it.  You talk to the cool kids because no one knows you are not that cool in real life.  As a traveller, you can be a new you in every new place.  This makes potential gaffes much less scary (if you screw up or embarrass yourself horribly, you’re leaving town anyway), and potential friendships worth the risk (what risk?)

The friendships are intense

…and sometimes very short-lived.  Working on a play is not unlike travelling with an ad-hoc group of backpackers that seems to form organically on the road.  Friendships are made intense by the circumstances.  We are thrown together into sometimes do-or-die situations and we come out of them a tight family.  You end up telling each other things after one beer you wouldn’t dare tell your oldest buddy.  There’s something really special that happens between people when you’ve experienced each other’s most tired, dirty, vulnerable sides.

When the curtain comes down on a last performance, we hug and cry and promise to do this again soon. Next season. For sure.
When the travellers’ group disbands, there are hugs and tears and promises to visit each other in everyone’s respective countries soon.  Next year. For sure.

It’s beautiful and intense and sad.  I made some of my (still) closest friends both through theatre and through travel.  But there are also those people I sometimes (more or less secretly) yearn for whom I haven’t seen since closing night in grade 12 or that last, midnight bear-hug in the Kyleakin youth hostel common room ten years ago.

Time is weird

Travel and theatre are ephemeral.  Once it’s over, that’s it (at least for that version of it).  You can take pictures, you can even film it in HD, but performances will will come out flat and the colours won’t seem quite right.  So if people don’t come see your play or don’t hit the road with you, there’s not much you can do if you want them to experience it.  snooze=lose.

Top 5 plays about travel

Being a rule-breaker and unstoppable rebel, I say: screw Aristotle and forget unity of place!

But maybe he had a point: staging literal journeys on stage can be tricky.  But when it’s well done, it can be pretty awesome.

Here are my favourite plays about travel. 4 out of 5 of them are Canadian.

Is this list completely biased? Yes, yes it is.

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Passing Places by Stephen Greenhorn

Passing Places/Points Tournants photo credit: Marlène Gélineau Payette

I saw a production of this Scottish “road movie for the stage” in a French translation at one of my very favourite theatres in Montreal: Théâtre de la Licorne (which has recently reopened after renovations with a very exciting new season that includes Rearview (see below) and My Pregnant Brother).

It was 2006, but the production of Points Tournants (trans. Olivier Choinière) was so funny, fast-paced, and beautiful that images of it are seared into my mind.

It somehow worked that these two guys speaking Quebecois slang were driving from Motherwell to Thurso (with a stop in one of the most gorgeous places in the whole wide world: the Isle of Skye) in a puttering Lada trying to sell a stolen surfboard with an ex-boss (and his imaginary friend) hot on their heels.

There was a car on stage. In a tiny black box theatre. That kind of thing impresses me when it’s done well.  It was.

What a trip!

BRIAN. Maps. Imaginary landscapes. Representations of the world. All the information’s there. Everything you need to know. But you still have to prescribe your own course of action.

ALEX. What the fuck are you on about?

BRIAN. A map’s not for telling you where to go. What it tells you is exactly where you are. It only describes your position. You have to decide your own destination and journey. See?

Pause.

ALEX. This is going to be a very long drive, isn’t it?

—-

Rearview by Gilles Poulin-Denis

Rearview

A one-man road-trip from Montreal through Northern Ontario (produced by La troupe du jour).  Apparently this piece was written by the Fransaskois actor to give himself a meaty role, but looks like a brilliant new playwright was born in the process.

As Guy sits in his typical motel room, he looks back on his wild night of driving through the Canadian Shield and we learn how he fled an awkward party in hoity-toity Ville Mont-Royal only to end up here, in the middle of nowhere, always looking behind his shoulder.

Brilliant writing, acting, and staging.

I saw this production in May 2011 at La Nouvelle Scène in Ottawa, and it looks like you could catch this play about travelling as it travels to Montreal in December 2011.

GUY. On rentre dans un village. Rolphton. Sure, pourquoi pas. C’est weird. Y a personne Manu, c’est mort. On va traverser le village pis vite parce qu’y a rien icitte ! Pas de restaurant, pas de station de gaz, pas personne. Je te gage que ça grouille plus dans le cimetière.

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Le Collier d’Hélène by Carole Fréchette

Helen's Necklace

One of the most beautiful plays I have never seen.  I’ve read Helen’s Necklace (trans. John Murrell) several times and even heard Fréchette read it once, but that’s as close as I’ve gotten.  Still, it remains one of my favourite plays.

We follow Hélène, a woman visiting Beirut for a conference, as she wanders the streets of a ruined city, searching for the effervescent necklace she has lost.  She encounters people who have lost much more than she has, but the stabbing pain is universal and the simple beauty of language and being confronted with the world is breathtaking.

Carole Fréchette talks about her play (en français!)

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Inexpressible Island by David Young

Inexpressible Island

I saw this play in 1998 when it was presented by Necessary Angel in a very cold theatre in Toronto. This is a different kind of travel.  The kind that brings you to Antarctica for science (and to plant a flag) in 1912; the kind that makes men go mad, fight over chocolate, pray for survival, and bite off frost-bitten fingers (that image will never leave my brain, I’m afraid).

Exceptional, exciting writing. Nothing near the territory of crusty historical dramas.

PRIESTLY.  I remember how the loss of a single biscuit crumb left a sense of personal injury which lingered for a week. How the greatest friends were so much on each other’s nerves that they did not speak for days for fear of consequences. That prowling danger behind another man’s eyes. (Pause.) You have forgotten the real game, Dickie… how we warmed our hands on the fiercest fires of Hell.

—-

Ubuntu (The Cape Town Project)

Ubuntu (The Cape Town Project)

This play resonated with me so much.  I know it’s not because I learned to walk and talk in South Africa.  And I don’t think it’s just because the production I saw at Tarragon Theatre starred two of my favourite Toronto actors (Michelle Monteith and David Jansen)… it may have been the extraordinarily well integrated physicality, the set made out of suitcases (I’m a sucker for that kind of thing), the mystery at the core of the plot, the in-your-face/delicately nuanced performances, and the intimate look at the meeting of cultures…

Whatever it was, I loved this play by Theatrefront, a unique collaboration by Canadian and South African artists over two continents.

I was thrilled to find out Ubuntu will be touring: if you’re in Canada’s west this winter, check it out!

Summer festivals

Extraordinarily talented students of the Civica Accademia d'Arte Drammatica Nico Pepe promoting their show in Avignon, France (2010)

For a few weeks every summer, when the theatres are dark and quiet between seasons, streets all around the world come alive with sweaty performers flyering, postering, and trying to get you out to their shows.

Theatre festivals bring all sorts of local and international artists out to tiny and not-so-tiny theatre and not-so-theatry spaces.  Over the years, I’ve collected a few festival experiences– some as an artist, most as an audience-member– and all have been unforgettable.  Unless I’ve forgotten about one- it’s possible, though unlikely because theatre festivals are pretty overwhelming.

I definitely wouldn’t mind being overwhelmed at the Edinburgh Fringe (the mother of all theatre festivals) this month or in Avignon (where I had a blast last year), but right now, I feel pretty darn lucky to be in Toronto.

Today is the last day of SummerWorks, Canada’s largest juried theatre festival and attracts some top names, where I got to see some breathtaking theatre (I’m talking about Evan Tsitsias’s Strange Mary Strange here).  Following the Fringe Festival by just a couple of weeks, I barely had time to catch my breath.  The pace, the energy, the budgeting, the sunburns, and the knowledge that it’s all going to end soon all remind me quite a bit of travelling.

Standing in line for a risky production in a sweltering theatre yesterday afternoon, I managed to capture that elusive feeling you get when you travel… You know, the one where you truly appreciate the moment, when you easily take more risks, grab a random ice-cream, and sit on the sunny sidewalk doing magic tricks with your brand-new friends.

Now, if I could only feel like a traveller in my own city a bit more often…