Two Planks and Passion

Building Beowulf: Playwright Rick Chafe’s Rehearsal Journal

2011-07-07T11:23:00.000-07:00

Benjamin Irvine & Daniel Lillford

First Invited Dress Last Night, Preview Tonight!

A near capacity house last night, the cast knocked it out of the park.

In the annual Two Planks and a Passion fundraising auction, Michelin Tire has purchased all tickets for the dress rehearsal night four years in a row. Michelin employees and families are driving up the gravel road to the Ross Creek Arts Centre right up to showtime. Jamie nods, Nathan plays the marimba opening, the cast appears, and 95 minutes fly by.

Rhys Bevan-John

This isn’t a kids’ show, but it becomes obvious very quickly it’s family friendly. The audience is seated on both sides of the playing space, so it’s easy to watch reactions. Two very young girls in the front row get a smile on their face when they realise Jamie’s character, Lara, has to learn to ride a horse—among other things. An eight year old clutches a stick, which seems to have gone from being a light sabre to a broadsword for the evening. The whole audience starts smiling and straining to look when they realise we’re really going to bring a dragon on stage.

Post-show we take a collective breath and share some wine with the very appreciative Michelin crowd.

Today the cast is back at it, working the details. Daniel Lillford, who plays Gautr, is also a playwright. He’s been telling me the last two days to let the baby go, head off and sleep by the pond. I got an email this morning from friend and mentor, Bruce McManus in Winnipeg. Bruce has been reading the blog and offered roughly the same advice. So I spent a couple of hours walking the beach this morning, five minutes’ walk from Roxy’s house where I’m staying. I’ll take the night off, go hear our composer, Mark Adam, playing jazz tonight at Acadia University. Back for the preview tomorrow night.

Jonny Thompson

Jamie Konchak & Alexis Milligan

Building Beowulf: Playwright Rick Chafe’s Rehearsal Journal

2011-07-06T13:22:00.000-07:00

Andrea Lee Norwood as Gussi
4 Days to Opening: War Gear

Costume Designer Leesa Hamilton has sent us the nose pieces for the warriors. They look strange, slightly threatening, and fascinating. I find I can’t take my eyes off any of them. The warriors are suddenly a gang—mess with one, you’re messing with them all.

Jeff Schwager, Andrea Lee Norwood, & Chris O’Neill

It’s our second ten out of twelve day—companies are allowed to call the actors for four twelve hour days in a rehearsal period, working ten hours with two hours of lunch, supper and breaks. The ten out of twelves are usually used for tech days—adding costumes, lighting, sound, special effects—and often there’s little real rehearsal for the actors. But with outdoor theatre with no electrical elements… there’s no tech days. Which translates into more genuine rehearsal time in the last days before opening.

Musical Associate: Nathan Petitpas

Paint Your Dragon (Tail)

Puppet Designer by Karen Jones & Apprentice Stage Manager Morgan McMahon

I hang around for the day because there are still a few rewritten moments in the scenes they’ll still be working out and I may still be called to fix something. In twelve hours I prove to be useful perhaps three times. This is the most difficult part of rehearsals for the writer—for me, anyway. My part’s over, it’s all actors’ work at this point.

I'm slow getting this post together, it's now 5:00 Wednesday. Our first preview audience goes up in one hour. The warriors are suiting up.

Jeremy Webb & Andrea Lee Norwood

Building Beowulf: Playwright Rick Chafe’s Rehearsal Journal

2011-07-05T19:45:00.000-07:00

Jeremy Webb (Beowulf) & Burgandy Code (Grendel's Mother)

5 Days to Opening: Crouching Actor, Hidden Dramaturg

Brilliant actors. Shockingly good first run-through Sunday night. The show is down from a flabby 2 1/4 hours to a svelte 100 minutes and getting tighter. New work in theatre is a collaborative blood sport.

A week ago I was up to the neck in rewrites and cuts. Actors needed final versions of their scenes so they could get off book and get to the real work. I was stuck on a tough-to-unknot second act problem, right where they always get tangled.

Actor Burgandy offered to become my dramaturg for the rest of rehearsals. The dramaturg is the listening mirror for the playwright, reading the scenes—or in rehearsal, reading and watching them—becoming the play’s first audience, and reflecting back to the writer her impressions of what the play seems to be saying. Lots of questions, suggestions, support, options, alternatives are offered, and sometimes, as in this case, lots of editing.

It’s Burgandy’s first try at dramaturgy. Five days later I can say she’s precise and insightful in her reading, a genius at finding the detail in moments, and a brilliant editor.

Stage Manager Heather Lewis (left) and Assistant SM, Morgan

The first night we worked together, she insisted on going over the first scene. It’s a long one, a large meeting scene, ten actors on stage. I’d just cut it from about 18 minutes to 12 and promised the actors they could go ahead and memorize it. Burgandy challenged me on every line and we cut it to maybe 8 minutes. But… could we devote any more rehearsal time to re-working the scene in its trimmed form? I told director Ken we’d made a huge improvement to the script, but it meant going over scene one yet again. Understandably, this was greeted as not a good thing, but as I’ve said already, Ken’s a game guy and agreed to read it. Five minutes later, our stage manager, Heather, started Xeroxing cast copies, we were going back to scene one.

The actors were also understandably a little surprised and possibly skeptical at receiving yet another fresh copy of the scene… but it isn’t just Ken, this whole company is a game lot. It was clear the scene was a vast improvement, spirits lifted, and so it went through the week, at least from my point of view. By the next day Burg and I had cut and rewritten 20 minutes or more off the first half of the play. Ken and the actors are reblocking and cleaning up the scenes with the leaner, muscular lines.

Rhys Bevan-John (Drengi) on break

Then we hit the second act knots. Burgandy sets about a campaign to strip two of the plot complications that have been brick-walling me. Much denial, anger, bargaining and so on later, plus three nights this week that went past 4am, we have our script reduced almost a third in length and an exponentially improved story.

Sunday morning, I deliver the last set of rewrites. Jeremy Beowulf Webb looks up from the new pages, perhaps a little baffled, questions me to the effect, “I’ve been pursuing one goal since the first scene. Have you completely changed what that goal is?” I answer in effect, “yes.” Perhaps a dangerous thing to put to an actor six days before opening. Within less than three minutes, Jeremy has worked the whole turnaround, re-thought and absorbed an entirely new throughline for his character, Jeremy and Jamie are off and running the new scene.

Sunday afternoon, Chris, Johnny, Jeff, and Andrea, our new warrior recruits readying for their first battle, have a rewritten scene with Jamie. There’s two clear possible interpretations of the scene, they’d like to know which one I had in mind. I answer I had the first one in mind but the second seems much better. Ken, Burg, the actors and I collectively figure out Jamie won’t enter six lines into the scene. Instead, the recruits will have their own scene for the first page, Jamie will join them at the end. We scratch out a block of text, move another block, change a couple lines, read the new version. Much better. Call it speed workshopping.

Jeremy Beowulf Webb, Stage Manager Heather Lewis,
and Artistic Director, Ken Schwartz discuss the finer points

Sunday evening’s run-through was startling, far beyond anything I could have hoped for at this stage of rehearsal. This was the week Burgandy saved my bacon, Ken and the actors hung in and supported us the whole way through. I owe more beers than can be drunk in a single opening night.

Monday was the last day off we’ll have before opening. Finished the final rewrites Monday morning, emailed them out to the actors 20 minutes late on my noon deadline. Now I get out of the way, catch up on sleep, and the actors work their butts off for the next five days to make gold of it.

Building Beowulf: Playwright Rick Chafe’s Rehearsal Journal

2011-06-29T11:52:00.000-07:00

Jamie Konchak as Lara and Jeremy Webb as Beowulf

11 Days to Opening: The Woman on the Horse

This morning we are all right chuffed. Jamie Konchak, here as our heroine, Lara, beside Jeremy Webb as Beowulf, was nominated last night for three—THREE!—Betties—the Calgary Theatre Awards—for her performances there last year. Jamie’s competing against herself for Best Actress (Drama) in Macbeth and Reasons to Be Pretty, and Best Supporting Actress in The Penelopiad. A loud and proud shout out to Jamie.

Karen Jones Puppet Designer assisted by

Apprentice Stage Manager Morgan McMahon (back turned)

Day off yesterday gave me a chance to catch up with the backlog of rewrites for the week. While the actors worked on swords and puppetry this morning, I snuck in some script work. My to-do list is pretty darn long, but light on leftover changes still to make in the first half, heavy on the second half. Ken and I devised a plan to finish working to the end of the script tomorrow and head back to work the actors from the beginning while I keep ahead of them. Once the rehearsal hall cleared out, I stayed behind and started in from scene one.

Sometimes cutting a scene feels like stumbling around, not sure whether I’m cutting the good stuff or the bad stuff, improving it or just making it shorter. But there comes a point in rehearsal, maybe just of necessity, where you know the actors voices and the scenes so well that the decisions are easy and unneeded words and lines just fall away. Finished the night probably halfway through the first half of the play, blue felt pen highlighter marking all the additions and deletions of this time around, distinguishing them from the yellow highlighter of the last time around, and the black and blue ink of the times before the script started getting messy. End of night, I have a nice pile of cuts and insert pages to hand them tomorrow.

Jamie Konchuk as Lara in a scene you'll never see.

Which calls for one more Jamie photo today. Yesterday began with the announcement the first scene of the play, where Lara tells the story of Beowulf to three children in the woods, is cut. The last time I worked with this company, I didn’t find out Ken had cut the first scene of the play until I arrived for the preview, so I thought I’d strike first this time. I liked the scene very much, but it really is a much better start to the story to jump straight into the second scene in mid-action. So to our left is a photo of the scene you’ll never see.

Building Beowulf: Playwright Rick Chafe’s Rehearsal Journal

2011-06-28T10:22:00.000-07:00

13 Days to Opening: Cut, Cut, Cut

Playwright’s holiday over, today was the end of the week stumble-through, everything blocked to date, pages 1-70 scheduled. In reality, this beast is getting really big. With 8 minutes left in the work week, Ken calls it at page 53, 90 minutes into a no-intermission show. Sharpen your swords, there’s going to be cutting and lots of blood.

9:00 a.m., as always, Ken picks me up for the 10 minute drive through green up the mountain. It’s foggy, moody, gorgeous. We don’t get much fog on the prairies, I love this. Roxy Music’s on Ken’s iPod. We give 5 minutes to our fan boy love of everything Bryan Ferry has ever done, then 5 is left for Ken to trash everything ever done by one of my favorite movie directors, Tim Burton.

But first the rewrites: day begins with Jeremy, Burgandy, and Ken looking over the tiny new 8-line scene from yesterday. They give a try at connecting the obscure and bewildering action contained therein with the bewildering and obscure action contained within the earlier meeting of their two characters. In fact, they each try connecting the action of the two scenes in about eight different ways. Nope, none fit. I have no defence. Many rewrite options are suggested, I promise a quickie rewrite of one of them before the afternoon stumble through.

The rest of the morning is spent on the story of Beowulf’s battles with Grendel and his Mother. Jonny tries Grendel for the first time and is kind of fantastic—somehow he’ll have to manage it on stilts by next week, which he’s also trying for the first time. Jamie is teaching him in between rehearsing her scenes. Which leaves not a lot of time as she is in about 95% of the scenes in the play. Also working her fight choreography on breaks and learning to play guitar, which seems to be for relaxation. The Grendel and Mom stuff is a big nasty scene, but with a great energy… and it comes in at about 27 minutes in the afternoon stumble through. It should probably be about 15. Snip snip.

Another fantastic lunch, another amazing benefit of working at the Ross Creek Arts Centre—Greg and Carole’s cooking. For the first time I have to miss my favorite part of the day—joining in with Alexis’s warm up and then watching the daily hour of dragon work—to find a corner and come up with a rewrite for the morning’s scene. All for naught, it’s in the 17 pages we don’t make it to today. We’ll get to it Tuesday.

The stumble-through starts at 3:00, the dust clears at 5:22. The scenes are pretty clear, the actors are way ahead for this stage as far as I can see, there’s no shortage of good stuff and I think the story’s emerging. We say good nights, tomorrow’s day off for the actors. I will get all the days off I want once the script is declared complete and no more cuts or rewrites allowed. But not tomorrow. Ken offers to start marking cuts in the Grendel scene while I sort through rehearsal photos. We hang around and start casually talking about more cuts. And more cuts. And more cuts. All of which will be my work for tomorrow. Cut. Rewrite. Repeat.

All day it’s been foggy out. Beautiful, moody, green below, grey above. I wish pleasant weather for everyone’s day off, but for me, this would be perfect for tomorrow, writer’s cocoon weather.

Building Beowulf: Playwright Rick Chafe’s Rehearsal Journal

2011-06-26T18:09:00.000-07:00

14 Days to Opening: Bringing the Game Up

Just wrote a new version of a speech for Daniel, a rewrite for back in the second scene. Daniel plays Gautr, an old father to two sons,the favoured son and the overlooked son, of course. He has a stirring speech in the course of a war council, cajoling the council members with past glories of Geatland, demanding they prove themselves worthy of their ancestors. The first version was okay. But Daniel is doing far better work of the text than the text is giving him to work with. Which is a nice sort of challenge to the playwright, the imperative to bring your game up to be worthy of your actors.

This morning begins inauspiciously for our playwright. Ken’s laptop is open, I mention I have a new scene to insert, that fits right between the first two short scenes we’ll work today. This one’s even shorter, maybe twelve lines long. Which makes three short little scenes in a row. “When did this turn into a movie?” asks Ken. Or something like that. Which is a big ouch. Film is short, pithy, visual scenes. Theatre is long, meaty, probing, dialogue soaked scenes. Directors everywhere disdain playwrights who write film scenes for stage. My next play has 48 tiny short scenes. But Ken’s a game guy. We’ll try the new scene tomorrow, but already he’s got to re-imagine how to set the first two tiny short scenes of the day to accommodate this new one.

The first scene up is, well, maybe eight lines long. It feels kind of, uh… filmy. Andrea is Gussi, a young man recruited and unprepared for battle, about to go AWOL. Rhys is an upper class warrior who catches him sneaking off, but is beyond caring. Within two minutes, we’ve all realized the initial circumstances of the scene are wrong. The imagery in the middle is completely confusing. And the ending is…. a big, long film moment. Rhys and Andrea manage to put it together and pull off a completely workable storytelling scene. But… their work is far better than what the text is forcing them to make do with. And I have no idea how else to set this crucial moment. If it ain’t broke don’t fix it? Or bring the game up? Table it for now.

Jamie and Ben – AKA Lara and Halfburinn—are up next. After much problem-solving over how we’re going to establish the new convention of a tent on stage, the intimate love scene works out quite beautifully. Moving on, disaster strikes (in the story this time, not the rehearsal hall). Tons of physical stuff to work out, big fight scene, but the bones of the scene are good. Composer Mark’s marimba underneath make a beautiful sad linking of the two contrasting halves of the scene. And it all leads to the big trial scene I rewrote my first night here.

Which works far better than I’d supposed. It’s long. Or I suppose you could call it a long, meaty, probing, dialogue soaked scene. And it seems to work, holds tension, has lots of identifiable moments I can trim to tighten it up. But I have a long list of scene fixes to work on and I agree with Ken not to mess with it any further until after tomorrow’s end of the week stumble-through of everything we’ve worked through up until now.

11pm, I broke that promise the moment I got home. Went straight to the trial scene, spent two hours revising, then started chipping away at the list…. Only got three items crossed off, but including that nice, meaty little speech for Daniel to sink his chops into. All coming along.

Building Beowulf: Playwright Rick Chafe’s Rehearsal Journal

2011-06-25T14:40:00.000-07:00

15 Days to Opening: Unexploded Bombs

Unexploded bombs are the little setups you write into a script early on, and don’t get around to dealing with them. Our hero gets a letter she doesn’t want to open, tucks it into a drawer. We all know she’s going to open that letter eventually in the story—at least someone has to. I think I only have a couple unexploded bombs left in the script. There’s one I’ve been worrying over for two drafts now, couldn’t figure out a way to pay off on a set up, but just detonated it now, 11pm. Just a tiny short scene, just at the right time. As these things do, it strikes me as pure gold now, especially as it’s 11pm and I have zero judgment left. Things have an unfortunate way of seeming otherwise by next morning.

Another beautiful morning, we moved outside and ran everything we’ve worked on so far this week to very near the halfway mark. No disasters, no detonations I noticed. I got to play photographer all through it, which is probably a good idea. I paid worry to the details of how the scenes worked, put all my concentration into how they looked through a lens.

Yes, the capes are the first piece of the costumes to be delivered. And no, great as they look, the sunglasses and sun hats are not part of the design.

After the run, Burgandy slipped up sideways to me, script in hand, asked if I wanted to hear a suggestion on a scene. Sort of, in a strange way, like one of the characters she’s playing does to our poor friend, Beowulf. I’ve come to expect these mid-rehearsal visits, or rather hope for them. Because she always brings a very precise observation about a moment that just doesn’t quite work—a script problem, not an acting problem—and then we have a quiet little conversation that, so far, has always led to an elegant solution. Burgandy has the gift of turning a script problem into an opportunity, an unexploded bomb.

In the afternoon, Jeff led the dragoneers with their prototype body pieces on an attack pattern through the playing space, to their destined battle with Beowulf. Manipulating the head, Jeff calls out the choreography, “Attack! Two, three—Rear up! Big Breath! Forward and turn!” This is just getting the track down he repeats to his team of nine, “This isn’t puppetry yet.” We get the basic track of motions down, he promises, and gradually, gradually, add layers and then details.

Turned cloudy and cooler in the afternoon. Fine weather for dragons.

Building Beowulf: Playwright Rick Chafe’s Rehearsal Journal

2011-06-24T13:57:00.000-07:00

16 Days to Opening: Mounting the Horse

Just finished the day’s rewrites. After falling behind yesterday I’m officially back up to date—all the scenes we’ve worked so far have been have received all the nips, tucks, line changes, and order switches that have shown up in working through them these first three days. The first half of the play turns out to be very clean, much less revision required than I would have thought. Tomorrow we run the play up to page 38 or so—very close to having worked up to the halfway point.

Warm, blue sky this morning, and the view… Roxy, who runs the camp program at the Ross Creek Arts Centre loans his house without charge to visiting artists. Its front door is a two minute walk to the beach on the Bay of Fundy. Such a beautiful day. Perfect for horseback riding.

But also for scene rehearsal. We get through five of them. And all deliver up the best kind of surprise—they all played better than I thought I’d written them. These are the times playwrights love actors.

Burgandy took her entrance into scene three, walked up to Jamie and grabbed her by the hair. Suddenly a completely different scene, playing directly against the text as written, and a hundred times better.

Scene six begins with the parents saying goodbye to their sons, untried recruits off to the first war in twenty years. I’d written it as a tender/comic scene where the parents are double-cast as their sons, so that halfway through the scene the parents would turn into their own children. Except casting to cover all the roles in the play made this doubling impossible, so that concept is on the trash heap. Within a few minutes Ken and the actors have tried three different approaches and hit on something that’s both tearful and hilarious. Jeff plays a father too verbally inept to explain how to hold the sword he never expected his son to have to use. It’s so funny you have to laugh. Except it’s so painful you have to cry.

The rest of scene six, Andrea, Chris, Jonny, and Jeff are just plain funny playing the inept recruits despite playing exactly as I’ve written it. I’ll take credit on the assist.

Burgandy and Jeremy take the first run at the scene I’ve been most worried about in the first half of the play—Beowulf sees a ghost. Ken says play with it. Mark, the composer, plays spooky bell sounds, running a violin bow over a set of strange metal rims that look like hubcaps. Burg and Jeremy run the scene five times with five completely different blocking approaches. They all work. I think all of us are surprised.

A break to outdoors in the afternoon to test the evolving technology of the horse puppet. Karen has built the beginnings of a head and a platform to be carried by the selected strong men of the cast, Jonny and Rhys, and made out of two by fours, a cloth saddle, shoulder pads, and two modified backpacks borrowed from a Mermaid Theatre show. Some adjustments for Jonny and Rhys’s differing heights, and the platform works fine. Once Jamie climbs up though, we’re into not ready for primetime territory. Back to Karen’s workshop, we’ll see the next version in the next day or two…

Building Beowulf: Playwright Rick Chafe’s Rehearsal Journal

2011-06-23T14:51:00.000-07:00

17 Days to Opening: Waking the Dragon

Here comes the spoiler.

Beowulf, is the thousand year old poem telling the story of an unnaturally strong hero, who as a young man fights and kills two terrorizing monsters. As an old man, a king without an heir, he fights one last dragon, while enemy nations gather at his shore, awaiting his end and their chance to take his kingdom.

For the play, I’ve stuck mainly to this last movement of the story, old King Beowulf and his last dragon. I’ve given old Beowulf the daughter he never knew he had: 18 year-old Lara comes to her father’s land seeking help. Instead, she’s put into the unwanted role of heir to the throne on the eve of war. And then there’s this dragon.

So a father and a daughter are thrown together at the same moment their country is suddenly under attack for the first time in nearly twenty years. A man whose fate has arrived too soon, a girl who has to take up her destiny before she’s ready. And an entire younger generation raised in peace that has to deal with their parents’ expectation that, without question, they will defend their land to the death.

But for most of us in the rehearsal hall, it's still only our second day into this journey. Alexis leads us through a physical warmup. Alexis plays Sissa, Lara’s new servant and confidante, but Alexis is also the one of the two puppet masters, and associate artist on the show and so is involved in a lot of the directing and design choices, and mother to two small children who are staying at the centre, and also a yoga and Pilates instructor. She works the core muscles half of us don’t even know how to find, preparing for the physical work coming over the next weeks.

Next up, I’ve arrived with a rewrite. I’ve reduced the large trial scene from later in the play by a third. The actors give it a cold read—cold meaning in this case unrehearsed, rather than unenthusiastic. Both kinds are known to happen of course, but this one meets general approval. I’m not convinced the new version maintains the tension the scene requires, but it’s definitely a big improvement. More work to come on that one when we spend more time with it in three or four days.

The big job of the day is the first large ensemble scene, Lara’s arrival in Beowulf’s kingdom, Geatland, just as the outbreak of war seems inevitable. It’s a 9-11 moment, a Pearl Harbour moment, director Ken tells the actors. War has arrived out of nowhere, they aren’t even sure who the enemy is or how they can possibly fight them. The characters haven’t been weighing these decisions for a week, he says, they’ve only found out in the last fifteen minutes. Jeff and Andrea play two old men trying to work out the chances of their sons surviving a battle, young men who have never had to lift a sword. Soon there are ten characters in the village long house, arguing the level of sacrifice that can or must be made. Ken and the actors run through two hundred questions and tentative decisions, choices tried out in action, modified, discarded, then another two hundred. Just before three o’clock, the whole scene is run through, twice. Not bad at all, and I have a script scratched with notes for an easy rewrite tonight.

The actors go outside to work with the dragon puppet. The work on this big scene has left me with the nagging question, what is on Beowulf’s mind this whole time? With an enemy on his coast he doesn’t have the warriors to face, he discovers now a dragon may—or may not—have awoken in the land. He hides everything he’s thinking, we’ll only get glimpses. But I know I have to get deeper at it than in his key scenes I’ve written so far for the second half of the play. Ken and I bat around ideas and possibilities in the rehearsal hall. A few of them stick really nicely. There’s at least 8 or 9 scenes to deal with before I need any answers though. A few days at least.

I go out to see the company’s first efforts with the full prototype dragon. Nine actors working out the opposing leg movements of a giant lizard scuttling across a huge field. Jeff, Alexis’s husband and our second puppet master, leads the dragon march. Jamie fills in for Alexis inside the puppet so Alexis can watch from outside. Alexis and Jeff's four year-old Timothy is also watching, very pleased with the dragon… but as the legs tangle a hundred yards across the field and the dragon backs up to start again, Timothy inevitably asks, “Why does this show take so long?”

Lucky for me, dragons just take a while waking up.

Building Beowulf: Playwright Rick Chafe’s Rehearsal Journal

2011-06-22T14:01:00.000-07:00

18 Days to Opening: Stage Magic

Eleven actors. Sixteen characters. One musician. Two monsters. One horse. One dragon. Pond, sky, fields on all sides. A mountaintop at the edge of the Bay of Fundy. Stage magic.

Day one of Beowulf rehearsals—or day eight, depending how you count, as the five actors playing the major roles have been here since last Tuesday getting a head start—but this is day one for me and for the remaining six actors joining in.

It’s outdoor theatre but we begin indoors. We’ve shook the hands, signed the contracts, paid up the coffee fund, met all the staff at the Ross Creek Centre, seen the costume designs, wondered at the array of percussion instruments that will become the story’s musical character.

We’ve met the first three parts of the dragon puppet—the head, one leg, and two ribs. Three actors will operate those body parts, nine actors will eventually animate the whole puppet. Somehow they’ll collectively create a beast to battle Beowulf, somehow without tripping over each other, somehow within three weeks. Alexis and Jeff are the puppet masters. Jeff demonstrates operating the head and one leg of the prototype, telling us the tricks will be walking together like a lizard, and making the ribs breathe. Alexis sets the condition that there will be dragon practice and exercises every day, we’re aiming for an injury-free battle to the death.

Which naturally segues to the sword-fighting. Jamie and Ben show us the sword-training scene they worked up last week. Broadswords zinging through the air, blades on blade, swords on shields, crashing steel on steel. It’s more stage magic, but aided by Nathan playing percussion, it’s a startling scene. Nothing’s held back, Jamie’s panting by the end, not faked.

I seem to make it injury-free as well through the script’s first read-through. Playwright reactions to their first reading fall somewhere between elation and black despair. I’ll call this one tempered relief. None of the scenes hit me as disasters. Several are very good. A couple clearly need an overhaul, but a couple might be home runs. Nothing leaves me in a suicidal fit—good sign.

The leads—Jeremy and Jamie as Beowulf and Lara—are fantastic. All five who have been here a week already are. The six who started today sound close to, or even already great on day one. Tons of palpable chemistry already. I can get away with an awful lot with a cast this good. The pluses are adding up.

It’s too long though. Probably 20 minutes to lose, we’re agreed it really needs to run without an intermission. Director Ken says 20 minutes will come out easy. Directors always say that. I say 12 will come easy. The other 8 will come one way or another.

Last two hours of the day we’re outside in the playing space, staging the opening. Alexis—puppet master, actor, and associate director—introduces the eleven to the opening sequence worked out in the first week. Song, movement, percussion, explosive percussion, running and ducking, we’re in a war zone. And Jamie’s opening story, the first lines of Beowulf. Beautiful. Half a dozen short cuts to make, easy.

I meet the dragon puppet designer, Karen—pronounced CARR-in, “German,” she says. “Or English.” She’s brought a couple more dragon parts and a length of rope, probably five meters, to represent the length of the tail, to see if it seems the right proportion with actors manipulating it. We share the perspective that it’s great to be able to work out and build the puppet—and the script—in response to the actors’ work, instead of building the whole show in advance and forcing all the pieces to fit. As we talk, Alexis re-thinks the blocking on the fly and sends half the actors into the woods to the left, the other half to pond’s edge to the right, while composer, Mark, sings out for them a new variation on the opening song.

Burgandy, veteran of—I’ll have to check how many Two Planks and a Passion productions and get back to you—pulls me aside. From the readthrough, she says the trial scene is still wrong. Burgandy was in the script workshop a year ago, where the scene was considerably different. She suggests a direction for a rewrite. My wife, Martine, had the same problem and suggested the same sort of change. Independent verification is pretty convincing. Ken agrees. I’ll try to have a quickie new version of the trial scene for tomorrow, sort of a prototype, just in case we get to it.

Good running start.

Launched!

2009-07-16T07:47:00.001-07:00

Last Sunday saw the launch of our production and the anticipation (and weather-related anxiety) were thick in the air. We couldn't have asked for a more special night- a sold-out house with the L.G. in attendance, every kind of weather save for rain and a wonderful performance from all concerned.

Sunday's performance was the culmination of three years of work by Allen Cole, the company, and many of the artists who had been instrumental in its development. Here's to all of them and the great collaborative effort our opening represents.
The production has garnered perhaps the most glowing praise of any presentation in our 18 -year history, and we are thrilled to be sharing it with audiences at Ross Creek until the 9th of August.

Coming Together

2009-06-26T15:09:00.000-07:00

The set for Rockbound is taking shape-we'll be working on our new outdoor stage after Canada Day! A massive wooden Island adjacent to a 30-foot long launch in a secluded forest clearing. It's being put together by our intrepid property manager Mike McMahon and an army of workers who are working feverishly (it's pretty hot) until opening. Here's a sneak peek.

Spaces

2009-06-13T13:11:00.000-07:00

Every year I choose a different spot on our 186 acre site to present our Theatre Off The Grid productions- this year it's a spot nestled out of site of the road or the centre- and over time the site reverts to its original overgrown state.

Today I visited the stage from Our Town last year, and there isn't a trace of our production left. How wonderfully transitory the whole thing is- and how strangely sad too.

Over time the fields and forests of this place will fill with the ghosts of Homer, Wilder, Day and McKay- and the people who listened. At the same time the cycle of life here-Coyotes, turtles, birds, deer- comes eating its way through our stages. I think the impermanence of it all makes the drama we stage here more poignant. We're constantly reminded that, no matter how we try, it will all change.

Gatherings

2009-06-08T09:11:00.000-07:00

Artists from across Canada are coming to our small corner of the world this week to begin rehearsals for Rockbound. It's incredible how in a few short weeks the Ross Creek Centre is transformed into a bustling hive of creativity in the middle of the forest. 14 performers and 8 other creative artists will gather here in June, along with many other artists-in-residence who are teaching and exploring here over the summer.

Each year we create a family- of sorts. Although for a brief time, artists do become very close while working here-it's a powerful experience very unlike working in a Canadian city, and one we are very proud to create.

Only 36 days until opening-the countdown begins.

Setting Sail

2009-06-04T13:13:00.000-07:00

Only 10 days or so until we begin rehearsals for Rockbound, and something wonderful is beginning to happen in the fields behind the Centre complex. A 30-foot long boat-formerly a launch from the HMCS Bonaventure, is being converted into the set for our upcoming production as well as a writer's studio for the Centre.
The notion to convert the boat into a writer's studio came from Chris O'Neill, the Ross Creek Centre's founding executive director- but the idea to utilize this historic craft for a set for Rockbound came from company members who were working on the piece in a workshop situation in December of 2008. It's amazing what happens when artists begin to talk about crazy ideas at three in the morning- but this idea was too good to pass up.

Sir Paul Wreaks Havoc! Rehearsals for Rockbound Imminent!

2009-05-27T11:10:00.000-07:00

Everything is falling into place for our summer production of Rockbound. Cast and crew will begin arriving on the 8th of June and rehearsals begin on the 16th at the Ross Creek Centre. We're also preparing to attend the season launch for the Chester Playhouse's summer season on the 12th of June, as they will be hosting a week of performances of Rockbound August 13th to 16th.

The Chester playhouse is a special place to Two Planks, as the company cut its teeth touring to the playhouse in the early 1990's. To return there with a work inspired by the south shore of Nova Scotia is a special opportunity indeed!

We'll be blogging every two days throughout this creative process-follow our trials and tribulations as we make our way towards opening night on July 12th- Thanks Paul McCartney for helping us move our opening night from the 11th- we love you, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Black and White a great night - what recession?

2009-04-19T05:15:00.000-07:00

Fabulous night last night, with patrons coming out in their finest Black and White outfits. It has become a thing to try to outdo each other with fabulous black and white outfits and I am thrilled. Ken's quiz seeemed harder this year, but people still liked it. Ken did a great job of auctioneering, and the donors were amazing. We're so lucky to have the support of the visual artists and craftspeople of Nova Scotia and happy to be able to give our art back to them.

The meal was incredible, by Cocoa Pesto's Scott Geddes and what a wonderful guy to work with. Calm, easy going and everything went smoothly, also thanks to the twenty volunteers and staff. We even had two people, friends of Dan and Roxy's who spent part of their holiday volunteering in coat check! We want to know what people thought of doing a buffet instead fo table service - it seemed easier for sure, but is that okay for a gala night?

A minor glitch with the bar early on - last year no one drank white wine, this year they all wanted it - Mr. Strickland of Gaspereau Vineyards drove back to the winery in the early evening to restock us!

Bridget Bezanson and Steve Dooks performed, and were beautiful, as always. It will be a pleasure to have Bridget with us for the summer in Rockbound.

Two Planks wins Merritts

2009-03-25T06:45:00.000-07:00

OK, so I am not so conflicted now :-) ...A lovely evening, hosted by Neptune Theatre in a generous move.

Monday March 23rd, Two Plank productions took home four awards (named in honour of Robert Merritt, a NS theatre professional). They were:
Denyse Karn for costumes for Jerome: The Historical Spectacle.
Allen Cole and Ami McKay for Sound for Jerome: The Historical Spectacle.
Ken Schwartz for best director for Our Town
Our Town as best production...

I am so proud of everyone who has worked on these seasons and these shows. Everyone had a part to play and they did it with style and generosity. Congrats.

See the chronicle Herald article here:
http://thechronicleherald.ca/ArtsLife/1113140.html

Funny, the newsprint edition says Two Planks took top honours...City vs rural? It's all good...

Thanks to Sue Leblanc for the pictures!

Merritt Awards

2009-03-19T02:32:00.000-07:00

Monday night is the big night. It'll be an interesting switch to take the event in a sense out of the theatre ghetto and into the public eye when at Neptune. I did like the opportunity to see people I hadn't seen before - do we need to be on better behaviour now with more public there?

I am still conflicted about awards and the value of them, but as Ken says, if they're happening, nice to be recognized.

What to wear?

Here is the stuff about the Merritts:

Artistic Director Ken Schwartz ended his week well. The news was released on March 6 that his two productions of 2008 had garnered 9 Merritt Nominations for outstanding achievement in a variety of categories. Still to come are the final decisions at the end of March at the Merritt Awards themselves, but in the meantime, he is thrilled at the recognition for the work of so many talented artists both at Two Planks and at the other nominated companies.

The Two Planks nominations are:
Lead Actor: Graham Percy as the Stage Manager in Our Town
Supporting Actor: Ryan Rogerson as the Crazy Cajun Frog Man in Jerome: The Historical Spectacle
Supporting Actress: Burgundy Code as Mrs. Webb in Our Town AND
Melody Johnson as Mrs. Gibbs in Our Town
Costume Design: Denyse Karn for Jerome: The Historical Spectacle
Sound Design: Allen Cole and Ami McKay for Jerome: The Historical Spectacle
Outstanding new play or playwright: Ami McKay for Jerome: The Historical Spectacle
Outstanding Direction: Ken Schwartz for Our Town...
Outstanding Production: Our Town
Stay tuned for the results and congratulations to all of our colleagues!
Click here to go to the Merritt Awards Site.

2009-01-22T16:13:00.000-08:00

Welcome to the first blog of Two Planks and a Passion Theatre, the little company that could...Since 1992, we've been creating magic, often with very little beyond talent and passion (hence the name of the company). Now we're based on the site of the Ross Creek Centre for the Arts and not touring so much, but producing award-winning professional outdoor theatre off the grid - no lights, no amplification, just the talent of the writers, director, designers and of course, the actors.

Artistic Director Ken Schwartz will begin to write soon here, about his process, the upcoming summer 2009 production of Rockbound by Allen Cole and his work in schools to use theatre to combat bullying....

Image of Ironbound Island, NS, Frank Parker Day's inspiration for the fictional island of Rockbound.