Tag Archives: Rattling the Stage

Auditions, Monologues, Music & Me

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ideasmain-2013It’s been a quite a while since I last posted an entry.  Toward the end of last year, I was totally consumed with completing the onerous Teacher Resource document for our textbook Rattling the Stage.  Both the book and TR are now available and can be purchased online at  http://www.mcgrawhill.ca/school/explore/9780071066983/ilit+rattling+the+stage:+a+collection+of+monologues,+spoken+word,+and+short+plays/  One of our iLit series was made into an iBook with Apple, and plans are underway to do the same with the rest of the series.

I’m currently directing a new play for the New Ideas Festival:  http://www.alumnaetheatre.com/ideas.html  Pieces of Penelope, was written by Gina Femia from New York and selected by the festival jury.  I am incredibly fortunate to have been matched with my first choice of plays (there are twelve productions and three readings over a three week period in March.)  After I made my submission, I realized that I had chosen what may be the most complex and challenging of all the plays.  Nonetheless, it was the lyricism and theatricality that attracted me.  Gina’s writing is somewhat reminiscent of Sarah Ruhl’s Eurydice; it is a mixture of “feminist and fabulist”.   Auditions and callbacks were intense.  There was so much talent, Robin Munro my AD and I were able to fully focus on finding precisely the right actor for each role.  Casting will be announced in the next few days and rehearsals begin February 1st.  I’m also so thrilled that classical composer Alan Torok will be creating an original score for the piece.

Yesterday I received two completely different calls about the same topic.  The first call was from an actor we called back for Pieces of Penelope. She asked for constructive criticism regarding her audition.   She’s already an experienced and trained actor but is sincerely interested in getting feedback to help her further develop her auditioning skills. Too few actors have the resolve and courage to ask for criticism.  The second was a call initiated from an email from a total stranger.  She was a parent who’d googled information about auditioning for the Claude Watson Arts Program and found my website.  I was so excited to hear that people are finding the site (it doesn’t take much to excite me) that I happily answered all her questions about the program and the auditions. The most important thing I could tell both parties was to ENJOY.  If you as an actor can find joy in your audition – even when delivering a dark monologue – you’ll be so much more interesting, alive and vibrant.

Last week I submitted my first “pitch” to direct a play that goes up in the summer.  I don’t want jinx myself but I fell in love with the writing which (ironically) happens to be the very antithesis of Pieces of Penelope.  This is a play with men, about men, for men.  It is dark, violent and at times, savagely funny.  I would LOVE to work on it for that very reason and I hope the pitch will convince the producer and playwright that adding my feminine insights and instincts to such a testosterone-driven work is exactly what is needed.  My creative juices are flowing and my fingers and toes are all crossed.

Finally I had the pleasure meeting with the founders of Eclat Arts http://eclat-arts.com/ This is a private summer school studio offering enriched credit courses for impassioned drama students.  Unlike many other summer school programs and camps, Michael Laidlaw and Mary Barnes Amoroso have created a conservatory program with high standards and high expectations and also a substantial number of scholarships and bursaries available.  For those interested, courses include playwriting, improvisation and acting, Director’s Craft, and a Production course.  Their creative board, teaching and guest artist roster contains some of the finest theatre artists in the city including Fiona Boyd, Cameron Porteus and Andrew Lamb.  I’m very proud to join up with Eclat ensemble and very much look forward to working with them and their students in the summer.

Before I  retired I was afraid I’d no longer have the opportunities to exercise my artistic chops.  As the saying goes, use it or lose it. I couldn’t have been more wrong.  bigfishsmallpondThere’s nothing like jumping out of one’s little pond and diving head first into another one that’s bigger and deeper.  I’m so looking forward to working on these projects and many others throughout the year.  I wish you the same.

Happy new year!

So Where Did November Go?

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Here I am at the end of November saying, “Huh?!? Where did all the time go?”

Last week I taught a workshop on  How to Write a 10 Minute Play.  As an experiment, every activity in the workshop lasted exactly ten minutes (and yes, I used my timer on my iPhone 5 to ensure exactly ten minutes).  The students did a 10 minute warm-up, I gave a 10 minute intro,the 24 of them pitched their play ideas 10 times to 10 directors (60 seconds each), followed by a 10 minute writing session of their opening scene, 10 minutes to rehearse, 10 minutes of performances, and finally 10 minutes of debriefing after each activity.  The point was to feel how short and how long 10 minutes can be.  As expected some of these 10 minute segments were far too short, and others were painfully long.

It’s been almost 10 months since I retired.  Since then I trekked through jungles and cloud forests, rappelled down waterfalls, and drank beer while sitting in hot springs in Costa Rica.  I dog-sat three chihuahuas in San Francisco, made friends with tattooed ex-cons at the Delancy Street Project, and did a Thelma and Louise road trip around the rest of the state of California.  Our textbook entitled Rattling the Stage, was published.  I attended four days of intense workshops at Directors Lab North.  I joined a company of transmedia story-tellers via The Mission Business and performed with them in an extended five month theatrical adventure including at the Toronto Fringe, Nuit Blanche and the Evergreen Brickworks.  I was a caretaker-turned-chief-of-a-militia in an end-of-the world-apocalyptic-pandemic-with-interactive-audience-and-online-followers scenario.  That was fun.   I wrote a play.  I met at a speed-dating match up with new playwrights in order to direct a show for the New Ideas Festival next March.  I got my website (www.janetkish.ca) set up.  I started this blog.  I designed and now have my very own business cards and I guess my own freelance business as an independent artist.  I am writing a curriculum support document for our book that will be finished by the next few week (hallelujah for that!)  I got my NEXUS card and drove to Buffalo just to have lunch.  I adjudicated a Canadian play festival and have agreed to adjudicate for Sears Drama Festival in early 2013.  I started teaching master class workshops. I joined Eclat-Arts to be a guest artist next July.   I began privately coaching young actors who plan to audition for post-secondary theatre schools.  I’ve reconnected with many former students who are all grown up, long lost friends and relatives who I hadn’t seen in years. I’m taking pottery classes and went to a firing range with real live zombie hunters to learn how to shoot guns. Huzzah! I’ve applied for multiple opportunities to participate in theatre festivals and labs across North America and have begun to receive my “Thank you, but no thank you letters.” I went to a wedding of the daughter of a good friend of I’ve known since she was a baby and watched proudly as her mother and her father walked her down the aisle.  Last week, I attended a memorial of another friend who died unexpectedly and far too young.

I’m alive. I’m living.  Time is precious.

 

 

A Life, Deconstructed

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One year ago, I was running our final dress rehearsals for The Dreamcatchers; after which, all the scenery, costumes, makeup, gobos, gels, CD’s and toolboxes were to be packed into nineteen rather large suitcases.  The beautiful Jiibay sticks had to be cut in three pieces in order to fit, and the holster, gun, billy sticks, sixteen O.P.P. caps and the hangman’s noose were lovingly bubble-wrapped. After almost two years of intense planning, promoting, politicking, fund-raising, creating, and rehearsing, this was a true labour of love.  We were taking our devised and very Canadian theatre piece to Scotland, to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe – the mecca for all theatre practitioners.  My people.  My tribe.

I joked that this play would be my swan song.  I didn’t realize, to a certain degree, it actually was.

I was 57 years old and had been teaching secondary school Drama in Toronto since 1979.  During that time, I taught thousands and thousands of teenagers, some of whom would grow up to be doctors, lawyers, scientists, engineers, architects, bankers, professors, carpenters, plumbers, truck-drivers and every imaginable work position that is out there. More than a few, I’m proud to say, actually went on to become successful actors, writers, designers, directors and filmmakers.

I am one of the lucky ones. I love teaching.  I love theatre.  And, I loved sharing that love and respect for the arts with my students.  Actually, it’s more than that. Theatre is my passion and obsession. Not only was I teaching drama during school hours, I was spending my evenings and weekends directing and producing.  A sixty hour week was the norm, and a hundred hour week was not unheard closer to opening night.  The best hours were those on the Saturdays and Sundays, or the late cold Monday nights in December when we could get lost in the folds and wrinkles of figuring out how to make that scene work, how to find just the right energy for that character, or how accidentally, we’d discover footlights gelled purple can create just the right tones of magic and shadows of mystery. Summers and holidays were invested in writing new plays, another obsessive-compulsive love. For a teacher in Ontario, extra-curricular activities and time are given freely, there is no compensation whatsoever.  If you are involved in the theatre you understand why we spend so much time doing what we do; most people, however, believe, we’re certifiably nuts.

One would think a fire can only burn so intensely for so long before it extinguishes itself.

The longer I worked and the older I became, the more immersed I was.  Teaching though, started to change, or at least the board politics became more complex over the years.  Earlier in my career, I had become a department head in the east end of Toronto. I actually hate administrative work, and I wasn’t planning to climb the edu-ladder.  Nonetheless, I did want to have a voice in the direction and shape of the program.  I spent fifteen years developing a drama program that was recognized provincially for excellence of curriculum and outstanding productions. Eventually, I moved to a performing arts school where I was the Curriculum Leader of the Arts.  At this school, students are required to audition and it has an excellent reputation for attracting those who are academically and artistically “gifted”.  The parents are committed in providing their children with enriched opportunities.  The environment there is exciting, vibrant, alive and throbbing with creative energies. It also happens to be exhausting to work there, and filled with never-ending pressures and deadlines.

Time flies.  Just when I acclimatized to the culture and tempo of the new school, I went through almost four years of hell.  A series of personal crises occurred: the palliative care and death of a close family member; my diagnosis of a debilitating autoimmune disease; then, another diagnosis, far more frightening and serious than the first; and finally, a long and painful recovery from thoracic surgery.   I returned to work after three months sick leave to discover I was eligible to retire the following month – February 2009.  Instead, I jumped right back into the swamp.  I wrote a new play, ran morning rehearsals at seven, and evening ones that ran until ten at night.  Three weeks after my return, Before the After Party a show about mortality, performed at a competition where it was chosen as the Outstanding Production to be featured at the Regional Showcase. I did my best to catch up with administrative work piled up in my absence, and to re-establish the flow with my classes – who basically had been on a hiatus from the time I was gone.  I couldn’t yet climb a flight of stairs post surgery, but I returned to the sixty hour work week.  I was not going to leave the job I loved with my tail between my legs.  As a matter of fact, for the next two years, I truly believed I would keep doing what I loved so profoundly, until I dropped dead in the wings.

That brings us back to The Dreamcatchers.  Creating and watching it come to fruition on the Edinburgh stage, both consumed and satiated me. It was as if I had arrived at my destination. As an educator, I had done all that needed to be done, and given all I had to give.  I found it difficult to return to the same old, same old.  That spring I’d been asked to work on a new drama textbook with McGraw-HIll Ryerson and their iLit series.  Not only did they want me to be part of the team, but also to help promote the book after it was published, by providing workshops for teachers and students. The publishing world is completely alien to me, but I couldn’t turn down the chance to do something new, and to actually contribute to an educational project that is so innovative and visionary.  I agreed, even though this was significantly inflating my already too heavy workload.

I was over-worked. I was tired.

Fast-forward to Thanksgiving weekend 2011.  I woke up that Saturday morning upset, worrying and stressing about some administrative problem that seemed very significant at the time, but honestly it’s something I now consider to be trivial. As I kept turning the problem in my head, that morning, I had a flash of insight,  an epiphany, an aha moment, if you will……   and, I knew exactly what to do.  Could it be that simple?  What would happen to me?  How could I survive without?   I mused for the next two days about my options, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized, this was the right thing to do.

It was.

On Monday, October 10, 2011 I typed up by notice of retirement and resignation letter.  I handed it to the principal the next day.  After thirty-three and a half years, I would soon be retired from teaching and my life as I knew it.

February 1st, 2012 was the beginning of my new existence. I’ve had to deconstruct all the parts of my life since then, and now I’m beginning to put some of them back together again.  There have been moments of tears, and other moments of rue, but mostly there has been laughter, adventure, new friends and new experiences.   I’m learning about myself and all the things that really matter.  I’m creating a new life. I’m creating the new me.

Oh, the drama!