Rhonda has been a TV/film actor here for over a decade and decided 3 years ago to roll up her sleeves and start producing independent theatre with a vengeance. Most recently she produced and performed in Spanish Girl at the Havana. Somewhere in her busy schedule she finds time to be a freelance photographer.
1.) In one word, describe your present condition.
Happy and content
2.) In as many words as you’d like, describe the condition of Vancouver indie theatre.
Small, hard working, and growing day by day.
3.) What prompted your move into theatre production?
A friend’s storytelling and success of producing a showing of Hamlet on the North Shore. A conversation that took place in LA before making my move home again to Vancouver.
4.) What informs your choices of stage material?
The size of the cast, the set design, and content.
5.) What is the responsibility of theatre to our audiences?
To evoke people, to awaken their inner souls.
6.) What has been the biggest challenge in running your theatre company?
Finding people to run the box office.
7.) Where will Vancouver theatre be in five years, and what must we do to get there?
Well, with a few people I know and have worked with I think it is on the up and up and will develop to a scale of beauty in no time, and with the only thing that gets you anywhere: HARD WORK.
8.) How do you view the relationship between the theatre artist and the critic?
I think UNTIL a group of hardworking theatre critics get together for FREE in their spare time and put together a full play, and invite a long time standing thespian to sit through it, make notes and pick it apart for all it’s worth, their opinions don’t really matter, because the only point of having them there is to help fill the seats and so far we have no trouble doing that (LOL). Unless of course they are of the positive sort, then they are invited time and time again.
9.) What’s the best experience you’ve had at a play that you weren’t involved with?
I’d say a showing of Cabaret on the North Shore had solidified my decision to one day produce Moulin Rouge on stage.
10.) What are your top three must-reads?
A Sense of Direction by William Ball, The Boys Next Door, by Tom Griffin, and The Actor’s Checklist by Rosary O’Neill.
11.) What’s next?
Thinking about doing a documentary, or perhaps directing another show, haven’t quite made up my mind yet.
Simon Ogden 