Fundraiser Alert! Get Your Ride Washed by a Shameless Hussy…

Vancouver-based company Shameless Hussy are holding a car wash to raise money for their upcoming tours…swing by if you’re in the Arbutus area. I’m sure they’d be happy to give your bike a wash if you want to roll that over too…

This One Goes to Eleven: Christine Willes

Christine has been a professional actor since 1976, and now holds the positions of Department Head and Artistic Director at the William Davis Centre for Actors Study (which recently merged with Vanarts, Vancouver’s institue of media arts). She has just started work on her next directorial effort: Mary Zimmerman’s Metamorpheses, a contemporizing of several of Ovid’s Greek myths set in and around a swimming pool.

1. In one word, describe your present condition.

Working.

2. In as many words as you see fit, describe the present condition of the Vancouver theatre scene.

Thriving. You have to remember that I have been part of the theatre scene in Vancouver for 30 years. When I arrived there were 4 theatres in town and UBC hired guest artists to perform with students on their main stage shows.

Because it was so difficult to launch a career as a freelance actor, I became part of the group that pioneered co-operative production in Western Canada, first in Edmonto, then with Roy Surette and Michael McLaughlin here in Vancouver. I was president of the board of directors at Touchstone for several years. I built on the groundwork of cooperatively created new plays with the Modern Girls Collective. So to pick up a Georgia Straight now and see the choice theatre-goers have is absolutely amazing. The range of work is also spectacular - pure commercial to pure experimental and everything in between.

The place I see where not enough is being done, and I can contribute, is in offering first rate productions of internationally celebrated plays by women that will never be produced by the larger theatres. I did that with The Unexpected Man, and now with Metamorphoses.

3. For an actor, what’s the best argument for pursuing theatre in a town with so much dangling film and TV work?

The best arguments are artistry and employability. We have to keep practicing what we do, and change the frame to stay vital. The great artists of all ages move between genres - in visual art from painting to sculpture to print-making. The actor that can move from stage to screen to TV to voiceover to videogames is the most employable, the most engaged in the practice of their art.

4. Is there an air of elitism surrounding theatre here?

There is an air of elitism surrounding theatre everywhere, as there is for any high performance activity from sport to art. That doesn’t mean we get to sneer - it means we have to accept the responsibility of making theatre for our community with dedication and humility. We are public servants, not elitists and/or sycophants.

5. What have you found to be the most common misconception surrounding actor training here?

That you’re either born with talent or you’re not - that acting isn’t a skill that can be learned. Acting can be taught, and it can be learned. I’m a “90% perspiration, 10% inspiration” kind of artist. And the perspiration has to go into skills - use of self, voice, movement, memory, text analysis.

6. What defines ‘risk’ in terms of theatre work in Vancouver, and what kinds of it should we be taking more of?

Daring to do what no one else is doing.

7. What is the criteria that you have for selecting plays to mount?

I have to love the play, and be absolutely terrified because I don’t know how the hell I’m going to do it.

8. What do you see as the most counter-productive aspect of actors training here, and what’s the fix?

Avoiding the Herculean task of teaching beginning artists how to use their personal experience to bring characters to life.

9. As a director, what are your chief expectations of your actors?

Tell the story and leave the audience gasping in the aisles.

10. What are your top 3 theatre reads?

Anything by Chekhov, the Poetics, all the produced women playwrights from Aphra Behn to present day.

11. What’s next?

Release of the Dead Like Me movie, season two of Reaper, the first year of actor training now the the William Davis Centre has merged with Vanarts.

On the “Fascism” of Stage Directions

Fist-shaking dictator or helpful tour guide? The meaty bone of contention that is the mighty stage direction is surely one of the most-debated elements of our work. Actors loathe them, playwrights adore them, directors sorta kinda appreciate them. How do you feel about direction from the page?

In a typically erudite essay, the UK Guardian’s Chris Wilkinson discusses the potential value of the author’s indication of intent, and offers some insightful perspective as a sort of ‘instructions for use’.

Read on over at Chris’ blog, there’s some great examples of seemingly unactable stage directions, including some of the ways Sarah Kane manages to brilliantly infuriate people…

Hamlet

Hamlet by Harry Venning - Week 46, 1988

Facebook is my friend, except…

A couple months ago, I wrote a column on using the social networking tool Facebook to promote your artistic practice. I myself use Facebook quite often to promote plays I am doing publicity for. One of my current clients, Metamorphoses, is no exception. They are a brand-new company, and don’t yet have a website, so we are using our Facebook event page as a kind of website, with links, photos, etc.

The play (which, by the way, I think is going to be fantastic), is a modern retelling of 10 of Ovid’s Myths. The primary image that we are using to promote this play is this lovely photograph, courtesy of Pink Monkey Studios.

I uploaded this photo to the Facebook page, but today, it disapeared, and I received this email from the fine folks at Facebook:

Vaughn Jones as Eros the God of Love in Metamorphoses

You uploaded a photo that violates our Terms of Use, and this photo has been removed.

Among other things, photos containing nudity, drug use, or other obscene content are not allowed, nor are photos that attack an individual or group. Continued misuse of Facebook’s features could result in your account being disabled.

If you have any questions or concerns, you can visit our FAQ page at http://www.facebook.com/help.php?topic=wphotos.

Now, when I uploaded that photo, it never entered my consiousness that this photo might be controversial. And, to be fair, I did violate their terms of use, which, to be honest, I have never read in great detail. They own the site, it’s their call.

Looks like Facebook is your friend when it comes to promoting your artistic endeavor. Except if there’s a photo of a bum involved.

So, I got to thinking… if nudity is at issue here, where is the line drawn? If I am a painter of nudes, would the Facebook powers-that-be consider that to be deletable? How about a photograph of a naked, pregnant woman? I’d love to hear if anyone out there has had a similar experience with Facebook, and what it was about their art that violated the terms of use. And, interestingly, the poster for the show, which I also uploaded as the main image to represent the event, has the same photograph on it, but it was not deleted. So, image alone = violation of terms of use. Image with words and other stuff on it = okay. You understand my confusion.

The other thing that blew me away about this experience was how quickly they found and deleted my photograph. It was only about 24 hours. There must be thousands upon thousands of photos being uploaded to Facebook all the time, how can they possibly keep on track of them all? Again, please, if you have any experience with this, I’m dying to know…

Rebecca is a contributing columnist and founder of Titania Productions, a Vancouver Marketing and Public Relations Company.

A Posthumous Letter to Sarah Kane

Dear Sarah,

I’ve been meaning to write you for some time now, as you’ve been on my thoughts quite a bit lately. Pretty much every day, actually. You’ll forgive me if that sounds a bit creepy, please allow me to explain.

I write a blog, you see. A theatre blog to be precise, and I’m proud to say that lately it’s been doing pretty well readership-wise, and you have had some influence in that. I want to give credit where it is due, and I don’t make any money from it directly - I write it in the hopes that my readers will talk a little more about theatre, thus elevating it somewhat in the larger public conciousness, so that more people will consider the theatre as an entertainment option and then eventually some of those people will come out and see one of my plays and then I will get some money from it. Oh, sorry, I’m a playwright too, you see, like you - well, that is to say, not a playwright of your calibre or notoriety, not yet anyway, but I do hold some such aspirations. Anyway, I digress. Habitually. Back to giving credit where it is due, and my thoughts and your presence among them.

Because of the aforementioned blog I am confronted with your name daily, and repeatedly. You see, I wrote a little post about you some time ago, and out of the 138 posts that I have written to date, that Sarah Kane post has been responsible for the vast majority of new traffic that Google and other such engines of its type have shepherded my way. To be exact, that article - the one about you - has been viewed from a key word search for “Sarah Kane” 816 times. It is my top post. It seems that there are an awful lot of people out there looking for answers about you, so much so that I’m beginning to suspect that you may qualify for official cult status. There’s been 6 SK hits to my site today alone, and it’s early. I wonder how many hits your Wikipedia page gets a day? A lot I’ll bet.

So what the heck is it that makes you so enigmatic? Is it your small yet enduring body of work, your suicide, or the articles of your body of work that ended up proving to be such a clear window into the psyche of a suicide? Should I be worried that so many people are looking for answers from you? Or relieved?

This past Tuesday was a National holiday in Canada (it was our birthday), and a lot of us here in Vancouver had taken advantage of the occasion to spend a four-day weekend away. So returning to the city on Tuesday afternoon my family and I found ourselves in the middle of a sea of cars coming back from Whistler or the Island, all of us heading towards one of the two bridges that grant access back into downtown. The day was a scorcher and traffic was slow. Slower than I’d ever seen it, actually. Dead slow. When we hadn’t moved a foot in twenty minutes we tuned into the local AM news station in the hopes of hearing some indication as to the cause of the gridlock. It seems that there was a “distraught women” clinging to the edge of the Ironworker’s Memorial Bridge and the police had closed it down - both ways - forcing all traffic to the Lion’s Gate Bridge while they attempted to talk her down. They attempted this for five and a half hours, and eventually convinced her to take another shot at her life, it seems. What is normally a twenty-minute car-ride turned into a four hour slog for us, and we missed the movie that we had planned to see that night. Intermittently on that slow crawl home we would hear a frustrated motorist yell “just jump, already!” or “step on her fingers!”. I didn’t yell anything, even though I shared a certain amount of their frustration, I just kept thinking of you and the woman on the bridge and felt sad and a little scared for her and read a magazine.

I wish that woman had read 4.48 Psychosis. It might not have kept her off that bridge that day, but maybe she would have felt a little less alone. I wish those impatient motorists had seen the production of 4.48 that I’d seen last year. I know their long drive would have been different. And I wish that you could have felt the impact that your work has had, and continues to have, while you were still alive.

Anyway, thanks for the blog hits.

Sincerely yours,

Simon.

The Death of Sarah Kane 4:00

Congratulations, it’s a blog!

As hard as this is to admit, I had no idea what this blogging thing was all about when my love interest started her first one a couple of years ago. Working then as a travel photographer and on the road for weeks at a time, photoblogging was a natural fit for her to graphically chronicle her adventures, and it sure helped to shorten the distance between us during those long separations early on in our coupledom. But, truth be told, the fact that she had one and I didn’t made me kind of jealous, and so I began cooking up an idea for a blog of my own…

Jackie’s been off the road and digging into her own business as a Vancouver food photographer for a while now, and her company has been doing so well lately that she’s decided it’s time to dive back into the blogging pool. I’m proud to announce the birth of her new bouncing baby blog: Basil Gazing, dedicated to the wonderful world of food and the people who provide us with it. And hey, it’s even got its own interview series! And photography that will literally make your mouth water. Blogger and baby are both doing fine.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled theatre blog, already in progress…

Isn’t your city supposed to be the theatre capital, or something?

Teenage girl: I need Romeo and Juliet. But do you have any with, like, the English on one side and Shakespeare on the other?

-Barnes & Noble, Union Square

From my favourite website: Overheard in New York

This One Goes to Eleven: Stephen Drover

Oy. To do Stephen’s intro any kind of justice could turn this into a very long heading. In the interest of getting you to the interview portion faster, I will default to the trusty bullet-pointed list:

Stephen holds a BFA in acting from Memorial University’s Sir Wilfred Grenfell College in Newfoundland, was an Associate Director for Theatre Newfoundland Labrador, earned an MFA in directing from UBC, co-founded Pound of Flesh Theatre - a Vancouver company dedicated to experimentation and contemporization of the classics - where he sits as Aristic Director, received a Jessie for directing Skydive, a Realwheels production set entirely in mid-air, is the recipient of the 2007 Ray Michael Award for Outstanding Body of Work by an Emerging Director…did I mention that he’s all of 34? Oy.

Stephen’s most recent directorial project was the very well recieved run of Orphans at the Firehall. We’re very grateful he made some time for our 11 questions…

1. In one word, describe your present condition.

Reclined.

2. In a bunch more words, describe the present condition of the Vancouver theatre scene.

I’m not sure I will say anything here that has not been said before (The scene is exciting, on the verge of making a major developmental boom, great indie stuff, etc, etc.) I think that, yes, there is some great work happening and we make a valiant fight in competing with the mountains, the view and reality TV for people’s attention. I think what Vancouver theatre suffers from is a lack of community. We don’t have a theatre centre or even a theatre bar (where DO actors go for a drink in this town?). I just did a show in Calgary where I met more people in one week than I did in my first year in Vancouver. Mostly because everyone hangs out together in the same places. This creates dialogue and sharing ideas and a tighter community. I think if we could get to that, we would really be a force to be reckoned with.

3. Where did your love of theatre come from?

Not sure really. Nothing about my upbringing suggested that I would end up in the theatre (I was supposed to be a doctor or an anthropologist). But I suppose I was attracted to time as a medium that can be shaped. Theatre is all about using time in the most effective way possible and there really are no “do-overs” (that’s a bit of a heady way of looking at it). Also, growing up in Newfoundland, the culture is very event-oriented so I’m inclined towards groups of people getting together.

4. How did you arrive at Pound of Flesh’s mandate of producing classical plays as interpreted with contemporary sensibilities?

I guess it came from my frustration at being consistently bored by something I loved. I knew in my heart that classical theatre was (or could be) exciting and vibrant and sexy and timeless (all the words used in school to describe it). But I was not seeing much evidence of that. Classical theatre is kept on a pedestal to some extent. But once you realize that it’s ok to play with it, to move it around, to re-interpret it (Shakespeare, for instance, won’t mind. His career will not suffer), I think it frees you up to actually have fun with it. And make people want to see it. I suppose the challenge is to pull it down off the pedestal without dragging it through the mud.

5. Where will the next generation of theatre-goers arise from?

The technologically minded. I just went to HIVE (at the Centre for Digital Media, no less) and of the 11 shows I saw, at least 6 had me watching video or wearing headphones or both. I personally spend hours a day in front of a computer (as I - and you- do now), including for entertainment purposes. It makes sense that audiences tend to gravitate and respond to theatre that recognizes and uses our interest in multi-media. I think the challenge (for me, anyway) is to keep a focus on the narrative and resist the seduction of flash. Fantastic imagery is great. But at the end of the day, I think theatre works best when I care about the people in front of me.

6. How do you approach the text when you start to work on a new piece?

Well, I read it as much as I can and I try to do an extensive text analysis. If it’s a text I’m to adapt or edit, I let my gut do the thinking for a bit and I move things around or cut pretty indiscriminately. Then after a while my brain will check my gut’s homework and take over. I tend to have a recurring nightmare: it’s first day of rehearsal; everyone is gathered around the table chatting; the stage manager looks at her watch and says to me “It’s time”; everyone looks to me, expecting me to say something smart about the play and I realize I have not read the script. Being unprepared freaks me out a little so I try to spend as much time as I can with the text before we start.

7. What sort of relationship do you foster with your actors in rehearsal?

I really need them to trust me, the material and especially their instincts. I enjoy a collaborative environment and I always want to engage the actor as a partner in the process. If specific choreography is not required, I tend to never block a scene before I go in the room but rather let the blocking and choices evolve from the actors’ instincts and my responses to those instincts. The actors need to feel like they are working for the play and not for me. I also firmly feel that rehearsal needs to be fun and that you are not sacrificing work ethic if you goof around a little. I just directed Orphans for Wink Theatre at the Firehall and so many times rehearsal would feel like an episode of Jackass as we would hit each other and roll on the floor laughing. It sounds silly but I believe this does not detract from the work but rather creates an atmosphere of camaraderie and enjoyment. This makes the work better.

8. Who are your big theatrical influences?

Katie Mitchell for her ability to make mythology breathe; Adrian Noble for making Shakespeare incredibly exciting; David Mamet for “Invent nothing, deny nothing”; my teachers at UBC and Memorial University; Peter Brook.

9. What do you see as the most common stumbling block for neophyte directors here?

Development opportunities. If you want to be a director you kinda have to be a producer too and make your own work. We don’t tend to create initiatives to foster the growth and development of young directors. Very often, first-time directing opportunities are given to established actors rather than to young directors and it sometimes takes years for a new director to acquire professional work, only after his/her mettle has been proven. It’s the stretch between the Fringe and professional (the “emerging” phase) that can be very difficult, especially if a young director does not have a head for producing.

10. What are your top 3 theatre reads?

“A Director Prepares” by Ann Bogart. Very inspiring and I always go back to it when I feel a little lost.

“Year of the King” by Antony Sher. Written as a day-by-day diary of an actor preparing to play Richard III, it’s a great reminder that all artists, even the great ones, go through the same processes of doubt, frustration, exploration, discovery.

“God: a biography” by Jack Miles. Not a theatre book per se, but it sheds wonderful light on the process. It analyzes biblical text and examines God not as a divine deity, but as a character whose actions come from real human intentions. It asks questions like: “Why did he create Adam? Was he lonely? Did he actually just want a pet? Someone to boss around?” As silly as it might sound, it reminds us that mythology and characters from timeless narrative are not immune from concerns of objective, obstacle and action. Every literary character is a character that can be dissected and, ultimately, played. Despite the baggage it carries.

11. What’s next?

Pound of Flesh has been commissioned (with several other companies) by the Caravan Farm Theatre to create a piece for their season next year, a new adaptation of the medieval morality play Everyman. So I’ll be going up to the farm in August to start work on that. Then, after I re-rehearse Skydive for its tour to Calgary and Montreal, I direct Unity (1918) at UBC.

Hamlet

Never in my wildest imaginings had I imagined that there was a regularly run comic strip out there for theatre types. Shows what I know. Meet Hamlet, the board-trotting pig and his consortium of barnyard thesps as they oscillate between the stages and pubs of Jolly Olde.

Our most heartfelt thanks to creator Harry Venning for granting us permission to run the occasional piece of his work. Hamlet has run in the London trade publication The Stage since 1988(!), and Harry also writes a popular comic called Clare in the Community in the UK Guardian. You can check out his other work at his Amazon seller’s page.

Hamlet 1988, week 41- by Harry Venning

How Much is Enough of an Audience?

When talk turns to low show attendance here in Vancouver, inevitably someone in the crowd is going to blame either the ‘Great Outdoors’ or our ‘Natural Beauty’ as the single greatest enemy in our fight to fill seats. This weekend’s long-awaited approximation of summer to the tune of 30+ degrees certainly put up a good argument in defence of that position. So holding a Saturday matinee at this time of year, and on a long weekend to boot, was some pretty ambitious and optimistic scheduling. Nevertheless, one local indie company did just that, and apparently the turnout wasn’t all that epic. It was, however, apparently just enough.

Now, I myself did not go to the play in question, although I have been meaning to; its reviews have been pretty solid, I love the work and its one of the first plays I ever did as a young actor. I couldn’t make this matinee because I had to work (although, truth be told, I would probably have been at the beach anyway). The night bartender that relieved me did see it however - this guy would pass up front row tickets to the Rapture for a half decent play - and he told me all about it, as he is wont to do. But what really interested me was how he launched his tale of the tape, indulge me as I share that shift change-over conversation…

As my relief tells it, he was the reason the play went on this particular afternoon. “?”, says I. “Well, they said they weren’t going to go up unless they had at least four people in the audience, and I was number four”. I pressed him as to whether the person dealing with the box office might have been kidding. “No, there were three people waiting in the foyer that couldn’t buy tickets until I’d bought mine. They looked pretty happy when I showed up. It was a little feeling of power, really.” (He’s Welsh.) So, as the play was a three-hander, we can assume that someone involved with the production had decreed that they would not take the stage until there were more people in the house than there were on the stage. My bartender was their tipping point.

I’m completely flummoxed by this. Is this an old theatre custom that I’m unaware of? Are there financial considerations here that are beyond my grasp? Surely if you advertise a product and even one person goes out of their way to take you up on your offer you have a responsibility to give them their time and their money’s worth. Are we at a stage in our evolution as entrepreneurs that we can be enforcing mandatory minimums of our clientele? Or is it unfair to the performers to have to play to a crowd numbering less than their own? What do you guys think?

Updated: Rebecca at Terroristic Optimism responds with her thoughts, and a proclamation to her own company on the subject.

On the Difference Between a Critic and a Reviewer

Terrific article by Chris Dupuis over at his newly re-christened site Time and Space, in which he offers a modest proposal for a new model of responsibility for our critics. It’s a great contexualization of the actual job, and the post itself follows the very guidelines that he propounds within it.

Chris puts some responsibility back on the artists as well, which struck a real chord for me. He suggests that we should be taking greater initiative in engaging with the critics that we invite to our shows, and beginning the dialogue with them even before the start of the run.

Rather than hate the reviewers, try to work with them by providing them with as much information as possible about your work and the context in which you are working, assuming they haven’t gone to the trouble to do this themselves.

If this kind of effort continues to be made towards the delibration of the art amongst the practitioners ourselves and with the invested critics, it just might compel a new benchmark for the tradition of arts critisicm and discussion in Canada. Great stuff. Click here to read the full essay.

The Art of the Business Part 6: Managing your Flow…

For a downloadable or streaming audio podcast of this article, click here.

A bunch of years ago, when Julia Cameron first published her book The Artist’s Way, I, like most other artists I knew, went out and bought a copy, and started working my way through it. I loved it; I was doing my exercises, my morning pages, my artist dates. And then I came to Chapter 6, and hit the wall. It took me seven months to get through “Recovering a Sense of Abundance.” Why? It was a chapter on money.

In a previous column, I talked about putting a value on your work. Sometimes, as artists, that’s hard to do—there is tons of competition out there, first off, always someone who’s willing to sell their stuff at a lower price to get the sale. Also, there is a kind of attitude in the world that, because we as artists get intrinsic value from our work, we don’t need to be compensated financially. Plus, it’s boring. And administrative. And not creative. Add to that the whole romantic notion of “the starving artist” (Moulin Rouge, anyone?), and no wonder we are often a mess when it comes to matters of money.

But if you want to feel like a professional and have others perceive you as such, you need to take some control of your cash flow. This month’s column is dedicated to some tips about just that.

1. You are a small business. If you are selling CDs, paintings, or working as a Production Assistant on a movie, you are self-employed. What that means is, your income taxes and CPP (Canada Pension Plan) payments don’t come off your cheque. If you bill the client for $1000, they give you a cheque (hopefully!) for $1000. It’s your responsibility to pay the taxes on that income. However, as a small business, you also get certain tax breaks (yay!—more on that later).

2. Set yourself up a separate bank account for your business transactions. Go for a credit union as opposed to one of the bigger banks, they will charge you less fees. Funnel all your business expenses and income though that account.

3. Taxes. It’s a good idea to take 20-25% of everything you earn and put it in a separate account from your regular business account. This money is earmarked for income taxes at the end of the year.

4. GST (Goods and Services Tax—5%): In Canada, you can make up to $30,000 in one year from your self-employment without having to charge your clients GST. However, once you hit that mark, you have to start. You can get a GST number from the Canada Revenue Agency. Many small businesses like to charge GST, despite the fact that they may not be at the $30,000 mark yet, and despite the added administration work of figuring it out (you get to write off all the GST you spend on your business), because it gives them the impression of being bigger than they are. You know, fake it till you make $30,000.

5. Set up a System Part 1. You can buy a small business software package like Simply Accounting or Quickbooks, or you can just use an Excel spreadsheet to track your income each month. You need to know two things: how much you have billed in any month (meaning, you send the invoices, but are still waiting for payment, like they owe you credit) and how much actual income you had that month (when people actually paid you and you cashed the cheque. Again, yay!). This spreadsheet, which shows both your income and expenses each month, is called a Cash Flow Statement. The goal is to keep it in the black, although this doesn’t always happen!

6. Expenses: When you go to file your income tax return at the end of the year, you can write off any expenses that are related to the cost of your doing business. For example, as an actor, you can write off headshots, acting classes, postage for mailing submissions, office supplies, books/plays, Casting Workbook, and even a portion of your rent, telephone, internet and car expenses. The list is extensive. Talk to someone at your local union office, or CARFAC (Canadian Artists Representation) if you are a visual artist, and they will often have a comprehensive list.

7. Set up a System Part 2: Part 1 was about tracking income, Part 2 is about tracking expenses. It is imperative to save your receipts for anything you think might be a business expense. Write on the receipt what it is related to, if it’s not obvious. Then clean out your wallet once a week or so, and dump all the receipts into a shoebox or a container someplace accessable. Once a month, go through the receipts, and enter them into your spreadsheet. You may want to break the spreadsheet down into categories, like Transportation, Meals & Entertainment, Books, Marketing, Bank Fees, etc. If you have a lot of expenses, you may need to do this more often than once a month.

8. Hire a professional. If you are totally lost with this stuff, or you are in a place where it is getting to be too much for you to handle yourself, you might want to hire a professional. An accountant can actually save you money, because they may know of hidden deductions that you were unaware of. A professional organizer can help you to create a system for your paperwork and for your computer.

Okay, so I’ll be the first to admit that all this talk of Cash Flow Statements and taxes and accounting is not the sexiest or most exciting topic in the world. However, getting a handle on your finances and setting up systems to deal with money can actually take a great deal of stress off, because you know exactly where you are financially, all the time. And that allows you more time to be creative, and to make a living at what you love to do. How awesome is that?

Finally, I’d like to give a plug to the Prosperous Artists blog and podcast. Dean and Rosh are based out of Michigan, and they have fantastic tips for the business side of being an artist. Coincidentally, the topic of their most current podcast is also cash flow.

So, until next time, here’s to bums in seats everywhere…

Rebecca is a contributing columnist and founder of Titania Productions, a Vancouver Marketing and Public Relations Company.

Praxis Service Announcement

Dear Gentle Reader:

We’d like to take this opportunity to thank you for taking the time to stop by and visit the site. Readership has been steadily increasing for the last little while, and the number of you that are checking us out regularly is both humbling and exciting. We are most appreciative and would welcome any comments or feedback on the site and what you’d like to see more (or less) of in the future.

And if you like what you encounter down here at The ol’ Next Stage, may I modestly suggest stopping by the sites of some other good Canadian folk blogging away across the country, working hard to stimulate good conversation on the progressive world of theatre.

Praxis Theatre’s resident marketing guru Ian Mackenzie (know in the Canadian quadrant of the theatrosphere as the “Blogfather”) has, after exhaustive research, compiled a comprehensive list of Great White Northern theatre blogs on his site Theatre is Territory. Have a stroll around the list and hey, if you’re in any way inspired to start a theatre blog of your own, there’s lots of room in the pool…

Someday - and that day may never come - I will call upon you to do an interview for me…

This One Goes to Eleven: Peter Boychuk

Meet Peter Boychuk: Man of Many Hats. A young published playwright with a number of regional awards under his belt already, a Studio 58-trained actor who has performed on stages across Canada, and by turns director and dramaturg of mainly new works. And for his day job: arts administrator. Peter is the Director of Communications for the Alliance for Arts and Culture.

Our thanks to Peter for trying on our interviewee hat for eleven questions.

1. In one word, describe your present condition.

Primed.

2. Removing restrictions on word count, describe the present condition of the Vancouver theatre scene.

I trained in Vancouver, left for seven years, then moved back simply because I wanted to, so my perspective is not unlike that of someone who has just got back together with their ex. Lots of “this is different” mixed with “whatever happened to” but all topped with “why did I ever leave?” What’s fantastic is how well small companies like the Electric Company and neworld and Solo Collective have prospered. When I left, they were indie companies just starting out. Now they are the darlings of the Vancouver cultural scene, and have been instrumental in creating leading edge initiatives like See Seven and Hive.

3. Why is theatre important?

I find it interesting how often I ask myself this, or how often the theatre community asks this of itself. Why are we so preoccupied with whether what we do matters? I think it’s largely because - let’s face it - theatre is not a money-making enterprise, so in order to justify our existence to funders and audiences we tie ourselves in knots trying to justify our work. Theatre is important to me because many of the best moments of my life have been spent either making or viewing theatre. Full stop. I don’t think theatre is going to change the world and I don’t think watching a play makes me smarter and I don’t think people who go to theatre are better than other people. I just like it. And I think it’s important because it has had such a profound impact on my life and personal happiness.

4. What is it about playwrighting as a discipline that compels you?

The amazing opportunity to tell the kind of stories I want to tell the way I want to tell them, the thrill of seeing them made manifest by talented people, and the rush of sitting with an audience and watching them respond immediately to what we’ve created.

5. How important is a historical grounding in theatre to creating it?

It’s imperative, I think. It’s like the old adage: you can’t know where you’re going until you know where you’ve been. However, that being said, I think the only real way to learn about theatre by doing it, be it at a community, professional or student level.

6. Stage directions: friend or foe?

My relationship with stage directions has evolved a great deal since I started writing. Unlike most writers, stage directions in my first plays were extremely scant (George enters. George kills Doug. Exit George.). My background was as an actor, so it didn’t seem to make sense to put a lot of energy into writing lyrical stage directions because no one was going to follow them anyway. When I was going to Studio 58, a common practice was to take a black marker and ink out everything that wasn’t a spoken line. It wasn’t until I started directing that I could see the benefits in stage directions again. I realized that, even if you don’t follow them, they can tell you a lot about the playwright’s intentions, and that knowledge is crucial to directing a piece well. So these days I like to have more fun with stage directions. I try to compose them in a way that fits with the tone of the scene. If the scene is funny, I try and make them funny. If the scene is bleak, they tend to be quite sparse.

7. What kinds of theatre would you like to see more of on our stages?

New plays. Which is the answer you would expect from a playwright, but there you go. I think it’s extremely unfortunate that we concentrate so much of our time, resources, and energy in this country on reinterpreting the classics. What are the two largest national theatre institutions? Stratford and Shaw. How do most of the regional theatres program their seasons? The latest Pulitzer prize-winning play followed by a big splashy (usually American) musical followed by one of the canon followed by a Special Holiday Presentation of Christmas Carol and/or Peter Pan, followed by… To their credit, the regionals usually throw something homegrown into the mix, often with the proviso that it be a two-hander or something with low production values because new plays usually don’t perform very well financially. But given that Joe Playwright’s new work is sandwiched between Romeo & Juliet and Miss Julie - plays so timeless that we study them in school, is it any wonder that it doesn’t perform well? Who can compete with that? (”Don’t worry Joe, so long as your play outperforms Hamlet, we’ll produce your next piece…”).

Now don’t get me wrong, I worship Shakespeare and Shaw, Scrooge is an important part of my Christmas, and the scripts for Proof, Doubt, and Frost/Nixon all knocked my socks off. But the sad fact is that theatre in this country simply does not exist without subsidy (Stratford receives almost a million dollars a year from the Canada Council alone), so why are we spending all of our money producing the work of writers from other countries, many of whom have been dead for hundreds of years? Taxpayers would think it was ludicrous if we started subsidizing The Gap. So why do we do it with theatre? The most common complaint about new work I’ve heard is that it doesn’t tend to be very good. And as someone who has seen a lot of new work, I think there’s some truth to that. But the only way that new work will get better is if we throw some resources at it. You don’t strike gold without mining hundreds of tons of rock. The theatre company I was just with programmed an entire season of new work, and you know what? Most of the shows had better than average box office returns. We have to develop a culture of new work in theatre. The film industry doesn’t have to convince their audiences to take a chance on an original script, so why do we? End of rant.

8. What do we as theatre artists need to be doing to convince a broader audience to dig on theatre?

Boy, if I knew that, I’d be a rich man, wouldn’t I? I think we need to stop thinking of theatre as something that is good for you. Theatre is entertainment, plain and simple. It needs to be created, produced and packaged as entertainment. And that doesn’t mean it has to be crap. Just look at Shakespeare’s plays. They were crowd-pleasers but they were brilliant. We also need to be playing to our strengths. Instead of whining about the fact that all people do is stay at home and watch CSI on their plasma TV, we need to think of what we have that sets us apart from that experience, and then market that.

9. Do you aspire to any particular theatre-creation model?

Write a good script. Find a fantastic director. Hire the best creative team you can find. Use everyone’s talents to beat the play into the most effective evening of theatre it can be. Repeat.

10. What are your top 3 theatre reads?

Because I think the best way to learn about playwriting is by reading great plays, I’m going to list plays. And because I think Canadian playwrights deserve more attention, I’m going to list three of my favourite Canadian plays.

Age of Arousal by Linda Griffith

Suburban Motel by George F. Walker (this is kind of cheating, because it’s actually six plays)

The Drawer Boy by Michael Healey

11. What’s next?

I’m starting up a company devoted to new play development. We will be debuting a pair of exciting new one-act plays on October 8-11, 2008 at the Havana Theatre. Details to come.