Diving into work at Walterdale...

Last week was kind of a special one for me with regards to Walterdale Theatre. At the AGM I became the President for the 2017/18 Season, a posting I am very excited about especially considering the team that I will have to work with on the Board. It marks a return to the Board after a 5 year absence where I poured myself into production and a new job and work on other Boards. I think that after the experience I have gained on the Theatre Alberta and APN Boards I go back with a lot of skills that will help me serve the organization.

I also was surprised with an Award last week. I was selected for the Outstanding Season Contribution Award. Because they knew I was attending as incoming President they didn't tell me, so it was a very nice surprise. I was glad that Mark had decided to come along and since Walterdale has been so much of my theatre family over the years, I did feel like I had a lot of friends there to share the win with. It is always wonderful to be recognized and thanked for what you do and even nicer when it is done in front of people you love.

As for my Walterdale non-Board work this year, I am happy to announce that my play, Water Beneath Her Feet, has been selected for development and production at this year's From Cradle to Stage Festival. This means that I get to work on the script with dramaturge Tracy Carroll between now and February and then the developed script will be presented at Walterdale as part of the From Cradle to Stage Festival in May 2018. I had my first session with Tracy tonight and am looking forward to diving into a new draft with her questions and comments buzzing in my head.

And So It's Happening... Workshopping THE EASY ROAD for Skirts AFire...

This Thursday I will be working with a fabulous dramaturge (Tracy Carroll) and 5 amazing actors (Michele Fleiger, Lora Brovold, April Banigan, Stephanie Wolfe and Jenny McKillop) to workshop my script The Easy Road in preparation for Skirts Afire in March.  I am nervous, but so excited.  A workshop opportunity, especially one a month and a bit ahead of the presentation is an incredible opportunity.  I can read my play to myself and make adjustments and changes, but until I hear it aloud, it's hard to really get what shape it's in.  I am in a great position.  I will get to hear it, definitely more than once, possibly with different actors reading different roles, and I will get to have fabulous discussions with someone who knows a lot more about play construction than I do.  And then, blessing upon blessing, I will be able to go away and rewrite.  And I will have time to make changes and more changes before the first week of March when we go back into workshop preparing to present it.

When I first started writing plays, I didn't really know about this process.  I was lucky enough to encounter it on a smaller scale through the APN Playwright's Circles, once at 10 Days of Madness before it was cancelled, and in courses at the University and then applying that to my rehearsal process for my fringe shows.  I rarely have had the opportunity to have a dramaturge like Tracy Carroll there to shepherd the process.  And to have this group of women reading for me.  I have seen them onstage and been blown away by them all, so to have them read my work and help me write a better play is just amazing.  We think that playwrights work alone, in a vacuum, and for some of the time, we do, but better writing happens with this kind of collaboration.  I promise to make it count!

Whirlwind Weekend! ... Next!

Had a great time this weekend rushing from thing to thing.  The boys took up a significant portion as they usually do, but with one organizing a play date for Friday evening and the other having a bowling party on Saturday afternoon it meant that I couldn't see as much as I wanted. Oh well, it happens and I can't really complain because I do get out to a lot of things. Plus I was happy to see them both engaging positively with their peers and since I didn't have to do much more than be there it was all good.

It did make for a bit of running around.  After Mark got home from work on Saturday I scooted off to catch some of the Skirts AFire Festival. I was treated to a magic show by Billy Kidd and then a reading of a work under development (Her Story) by Annette Loiselle and Nadien Chu.  It might be the playwright in me, but I really love play readings.  I also have a very strong visual imagination so I am not bothered by not having a full set and all the blocking.  Plus with the strength of the local talent for actors, I have rarely been disappointed with the presentation. The reading was compelling and I am curious to see its future development.  I know, as a playwright, that the opportunity to hear your work read in front of an audience can tell you a lot about where it needs to go next so I hope that these two ladies got what they needed from it.

Sunday was it's usual madness.  I took the boys to piano then met Mark for lunch and did the switch so I could head off to Peep Show and my play reading. I was ever so pleased with the reception of my piece and have so many idea of where to go next with it.  I was also delighted with the line up of work. It was wonderful to hear five strong and varied pieces by all the writers.  Some of the pieces were comedies, some were dramas, all five had a strong individual voice.  I am thankful to the actors - Karyn Mott, Lora Brovold, Alison Wells, and John Ullyat - for their great work in bringing the text alive.  And I am also thankful to Tracy Carroll who acted as both dramaturge and director and was a wonderful resource int he process.  As well, I am so happy to hear that Skirts AFire will definitely be on the go next year.  It was a great opportunity and based on the turn-out at the events I attended, it is a festival that people want to go to! Following Peep Show was a Closing Concert by Colleen Brown.  She was delightful and the final song of Bird on A Wire was simply beautiful.  A nice end.

Then off to my rehearsal and finally, several hours later, home to bed!  A busy time!

I also heard about the following upcoming events and encourage you to check out one or more of them:

New Work at Walterdale - From Cradle to Stage 2012...

This past Saturday and Sunday I checked out the work being presented at Walterdale Theatre for their annual new One Act Festival, From Cradle to Stage.  It is the first year in a while that I have not been involved in the Festival as I had hoped to submit and then didn't and then with Nine on my plate on one end and my University work on my plate on the other end I didn't have time to contribute in another way.  The Festival holds a special place in my heart, as it is one of the few ways that 'late emerging' playwrights can get their work produced.  The formalized system in place to work with dramaturges (Tracy Carroll and Brian Dooley) has also meant that those playwrights selected for production can get real, concrete help with developing their work. It's a fabulous experience (I went through it a few years ago when I submitted Pieces in 2007) and for someone over 30 who doesn't qualify for Nextfest or who might not be ready to self-produce at Fringe, it fills a gap in the development process.

The two produced shows were quite different from each other, as is often the case. The first, Apocalypse, Saskatchewan by Dion Huel, was a funny piece about three elderly men in a small Saskatchewan town who get carried away with the idea that Zombies are attacking. There were many laughs, and although I feel the piece as written was actually a two-act play (it ran at about 95 minutes) it was well-received.  The second, The Carrying by Jennifer Robinson, was a fascinating pieces about two women carrying mysterious bags to an unknown location.  An somewhat abstract piece with movement and intentional repetition, it was well-directed and performed and it was one of those plays that you think a lot about afterwards. I quite liked it.

On the Sunday afternoon, the festival wrapped up with readings of the four other finalists.  There were 6 finalists selected from a pool of 37 entries.  The afternoon demonstrated the wide variety of the submitted plays.  Ostensibly staged readings there was also a wide range in the degree of the staged component.  The four plays ranged from being pieces about relationships (The Loneliest Number and Magpies) to a  modern fable about abuse begetting abuse (Poor Defenseless Creatures) to an historical piece (Mary!).  All in all, they were four works in development that will be interesting to watch for in the future.

* These two events mark #21 and #22 in my theatrical goal for the year 2012

I Made This! Or Rather, I am Making This!

The past 8-9 weeks I have been involved in APN's Edmonton Playwright's Circle working on a piece called Little Monsters.  The Circle experience has been great. Led by facilitator Conni Massing and filled with 8 playwrights of various stages in their writing career, we supported each other and helped everyone to write the best play they could. The most important thing for me is that it gave me deadlines and those are so much easier to write towards than a blank future.  Accountability is so important for a writer.  It would be wonderful to think that we could motivate ourselves, but for me, it is the deadline.  Anyhow, I started this piece at Playworks Ink in November during a workshop with Daniel MacIvor.  Prior to the workshop I did not even know it was a play.  I was about halfway done a first draft by mid-December, but I stalled until I joined the circle.  I stuck it in my life in a time I thought was pretty free (that was thrown off by Gibson being in Titanic) but I made it work - hammering out a rough first draft that I was very happy with and a second draft that I was even more happy with.  It still has a way to go, but in the 9 weeks of the circle I have done so much more writing than I have in the last 2-3 years. 

Anyhow, TONIGHT the Circle is sharing excerpts from our plays with the public for FREE! We got to select the excerpt and work with professional actors and a director today and tonight they will be presented.  It is at 7:30 p.m. in the EC Board Room at the Transalta Bus Barns. One of the actors asked me if I had slept last night in anticipation and to be honest, I slept very well.  When I saw the list of actors that would be reading my script (Nadien Chu, Annette Loiselle and Mat Busby) I was really relaxed about it.  They are all very good and actually well suited to the roles they read. Having Tracy Carroll shepherd them as Director didn't hurt either. I love my Circle Playwrights, but it is a different thing to hear your words read by real actors who try different things and go for it. Tonight will be extra exciting to hear it read with an audience in the house. I hope you can come!