1. What was were the elements that drew you to be part of this production?

I saw the play about 10 years ago and was extremely impacted by it. That was early on in my acting career and Espresso was one of a small number of plays that helped galvanized my love of theatre.

2. Can you share some of your creative process in preparing for the role from the initial planning of the production all the way through to opening night?

Well, a lot of my preliminary work is centred on dialect study, Getting the Italian rhythms and pronunciations comfortable in my mouth. There is a certain musicality and passion that I am striving to embody for this production.

Recommended Reading The Perfect Stage Crew
2nd Edition Click a cover for more details Empire of the Son Ignite: Illuminating Theatre
For Young People

3. Are there any books or specific authors that have been influential to you so far in your creative journey?

The short stories of JD Salinger were a big influence on my younger creative self. They came into my life when I was asking some very big questions. At one point a good friend and I were interested in his stories written from war time Europe for magazines (which had not been published in book form) and we copied a bunch of them and made ourselves little handbooks. Also, for the craft itself, I love a book called Tips for Actors by Jon Jory. It’s a brass tacks look at the work of an actor in a voice that I really respond to. It’s my field guide for any role.

4. What were the biggest challenges for you as an actor in preparing for this production and how did you deal with them?

One of the biggest challenges is simply my love of the previous production… I do not want to just try to recreate something that was beautiful to me. I want to allow this role and this production to be a wholly new thing. I am trying to come at the script with new eyes, and so am making reading the play over and over a priority. As I read i am asking the question, what information do I NOT know? Looking for the details, the circumstances, the questions that will have to inform MY choices.

5. What can you share about any future projects that are in development?

Next season I will be in the 1st show of Pacific Theatre’s season, The Rainmaker. I’m very excited about that!

Espresso is on now at Pacific Theatre until June 14th. For tickets, please visit PacificTheatre.org.

The post The Biz Interview: Robert Salvador of Espresso appeared first on Biz Books.

What were the elements that drew you to write this play?

This play is my love letter to the kids and young adults who wrote me after Espresso, looking for a compassionate voice to tell them they weren’t shameful, they weren’t disordered, they shouldn’t die for being a sexual being that didn’t fit neatly into the “straight” jacket. I realized addressing the huge issue of bigotry towards homosexuality (be it cultural or religious) was absent from my work. Like most people I suspect, I did not feel qualified to have the conversation. But I am realizing the lack of action is a lack of love. Time to love. Children are dying. Artistically, I wanted to put this conversation into a world full of provocative unexpected humorous flawed and gorgeous souls.

Can you share some of your creative process in writing a play, from the initial idea to opening night?

I met a priest through Michael Kopsa named Rob Repicky: a beautiful articulate immensely intelligent and compassionate man who worked at the Newman Centre: a very progressive Roman Catholic community in Toronto. He took a leave of absence and did a pilgrimage to Spain. He walked the Camino to Santiago and shared his journal with me. So, he became Father Ryan. I was doing A Streetcar Named Desire with Craig Erickson at the time and he said “Cia, write me a part in a play.” I said “What do you want to be?” He said “A boxer.” And that is how the character of Leap was born. Blake is a fifteen year old girl who is right out of a page of my own journal at that age. Many of her poems are mine, many of her experiences are right out of my high school. I had a “best friend” like Tracy and my Mom did do handwriting analysis and so forth, haha. Greta started off being a real ball breaker based on a woman I knew and I could not STAND the way she treated men and I had to exorcise my frustration with her by making fun of her in a play. As you can well imagine, that just made for shitty art. So… I changed Greta into someone much more like myself, exposing the most moronic of all my behaviours. It’s embarrassing, but ultimately I suppose I hope to learn something. Finally, I created Martha as the main antagonist. She was the hardest for me to write. I didn’t want to give her a reasonable voice because in real life, I don’t agree with her. But I worked very hard to love her and now I do and she has immense humour, love, wise and sensual things about her spirit and some arguments that I just don’t have the answer to. That’s risky theatre to write but the most exciting, ultimately. Do any of us think we’re doing harm to children? Most of us act out of love. And sometimes we just frankly screw up.

Are there any books or specific authors that have been influential to you so far in your creative journey?

Father Rob Repicky. But the first person who got me rethinking sexuality was Colin Thomas and his play Flesh And Blood, about twenty years ago. It changed my life.

What were the biggest challenges for you as an actor in preparing to perform in your own plays?

It’s hard to memorize because I remember all sixteen drafts. Once in a while I’ll come out with a cut line and my scene partner is like “what?!” There comes a time when I really have to stop giggling with glee when a great actor can deliver a humorous line exactly the way I hoped they would. I feel dreadfully exposed. This time around I am playing Greta and Greta has some faults similar to my own. The other day, Tom said “I’m not sure why he says he loves her” and it was hard for me not to fall through the floor, into the basement and crumple up into a ball and say “just let me die right here, I know, I know, I am completely unloveable!” But then that’s when the director comes in. The director says “because blah blah blah” and Tom goes “aha, of course!” and then all is well in the world. Yeah, mostly it’s working up the courage to be so exposed. But I only write about things I believe in. So, passion quickly out rules fear.

What can you share about any future projects that are in development?

The Arts Club Theatre has a play soon to be produced called Frankie Armitage. I’m working on an experimental operetta with Fugue Theatre called Dog Park. I’m writing a pod play for The Gateway with Neworld. Horseshoes & Hand Grenades have called me in as script editor for their Forgiveness Project. Prairie Theatre Exchange in Winnipeg is developing Diamond Willow with music by beloved genius John Mann. And last but not least, I’m premiering a new play this summer at St Lawrence Shakespeare Festival in Prescott, Ontario called Maid for a Musket: a real fun little romp about the war of 1812.

Leave of Absence is now on at Pacific Theatre.

The post The Biz Interview: Lucia Frangione – Writer and Co-Star of Leave of Absence appeared first on Biz Books.

What was were the elements that drew you to be part of this production?

Kaitlin Williams: This is a very unique production of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe as the whole story is told with only two actors. That alone is very appealing to me. I also love C. S. Lewis, and I love the Narnia stories. I have fond childhood memories of reading them with my brother and sister, and then watching the BBC adaptations on VHS until we knew them by heart. I’ve always loved Lucy for her ability to believe with such an open heart and for her tremendous courage. This adaptation is especially exciting as I not only get to play Lucy, but also a number of others including vastly different characters like the White Witch and Father Christmas. It means I get to do a lot of fun character work, which would be any actor’s dream, I think.

Mack Gordon: A chance to work with my wife on a great show that so many actors I look up to have worked on before.

Recommended Reading The Perfect Stage Crew
2nd Edition Click a cover for more details Empire of the Son Ignite: Illuminating Theatre
For Young People

Can you share some of your creative process in preparing for the role from the initial planning of the production all the way through to opening night?

Kaitlin WilliamsTo prepare for this production I actually read through the entire series of The Chronicles of Narnia again. Because the play starts with Peter and Lucy as grown ups returning to the wardrobe many years after their adventures, it was important to have some context and know their larger story, and to know where Wardrobe fits in the big picture.

I also focused on dialect and character voices to help distinguish all the different characters I play in the show. I also spent time reading up on C. S. Lewis and his background and history.

Mack Gordon: It starts with research. Read the books, know about the author, understand the world at that time as best you can. I like to examine the text quite closely. Figure out why the writer chose each specific word so that I know exactly what my character means with each line he speaks. For LWW dialects and character work is also very important. I play no less than seven distinct characters in the show and I need to get to know the physicality, cadence, and tempo for each. Then, in the rehearsal room, we work on relationship and storytelling. How do these characters feel about each other. What offers does the other actor bring to the table that surprise me? How do I respond to these offers? Obviously, somewhere along the way we’ve also got to memorize the lines?

Are there any books or specific authors that have been influential to you so far in your creative journey?

Kaitlin Williams: I don’t read a ton of books on the craft of acting, although some of my favourite authors would be Uta Hagen and David Mamet (True and False). I like to read plays in my spare time, and some of my favourite playwrights include – Kevin Kerr, John Patrick Shanley, Joan McLeod, Steven Adly Guirguis and Lucia Frangione.

Mack Gordon: The man himself, CS Lewis. I think of Peter as a sort of Stephen Fry narrator. Mr. Beaver’s got a little bit of funk to him that I apply with a sort of 30’s gangster feel. These are all just initial impulses though.

What were the biggest challenges for you as an actor in preparing for this production and how did you deal with them?

Kaitlin Williams: The biggest challenge as an actor in this production is the amount of text there is to learn, as well as the challenge of playing so many different characters. I tackled these challenges by working hard in rehearsal and outside of rehearsal. I’ve been focusing on protecting my time during the two weeks of the rehearsal process so I don’t overbook myself when I need to be studying my lines and characters – that certainly helps the process.

Mack Gordon: I think the dialects are going to be a big challenge for me. I plan on working with Dialect Coach Brett Harris. He’s good!

What can you share about any future projects that are in development?

Kaitlin Williams: I just wrote a new one-act play and submitted it to a festival. I’m hoping that it will be accepted and produced in the new year. We are also remounting Wardrobe in the spring of 2013, so I’m looking forward to that. Mack and I are also featured artists in a new book launching in December called We Make Stuff. The book features 100 artists from the Vancouver community. I also just launched a new website where folks can check in to keep up to date on news – KaitlinWilliams.com.

Mack Gordon:I’m going to be in The Cat in the Hat at Carousel Theatre in February and I’ve written a short play for the Pull Festival of emerging artists for January.

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The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe is now on at Pacific Theatre until December 15th before going on tour at The Evergreen Cultural Centre from December 18th to 22nd.

The post The Biz Interview: Kaitlin Williams and Mack Gordon of “The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe” appeared first on Biz Books.

What inspired you to take on this production?

When I read this script, long before I ever had the chance to see it, I knew it was pure, absolute essential Pacific Theatre material. John Patrick Shanley wrote it for us. He didn’t know that at the time, but he did.

I also knew it was one of the great scripts I had ever read. The subtleties, the economy, the complete mastery of the ebb and flow of our sympathies and understanding, the revelations about character and event, the carefully managed perceptions and misperceptions. Absolute mastery. In service of an important, powerful, utterly human story that simply had to be told. On our stage. By our artists.

It was just as clear to me that Erla Faye Forsyth had to play Sister Aloysius, one of the great original creations in all the literature for the stage. That Erla is precisely the actress to bring an audience the elusive and intricate balances embodied in this most complex and misunderstandable – and perhaps misunderstanding – of human beings. We need to dread her, but we need to love her – and it’s darn hard to find an actress who embodies both. Effortlessly. And we’ve got her. Think of the starch of Erla’s Miss Daisy, combined with the winsome charisma of her clown character in Lucia Frangione’s Holy Mo, and you’ve got a pretty amazing, and distinctive, Sister A.

Can you briefly walk us through your creative process for this production, from the early stages all the way to opening?

No bells and whistles, no extras, no clutter. Design-wise, to match the lean economy of the script with a spare, elegant, impassioned production. Clear, uncluttered attention on actors and text: truthful, direct, un-performed; characters absolutely connected to one another, dancing, boxing, interrogating.

Are there any books or specific authors that have been influential to you so far in your creative journey?

Writing In Restaurants by David Mamet. For a vision of the necessity of live theatre. I have a great deal of difficulty with what Mamet says elsewhere about the practice of acting, but find his manifestos about the power of embodied storytelling endlessly invigorating.

Backwards And Forwards by David Ball. There is no better, clearer book about the irreducible mechanism of storytelling than this. Obviously essential for playwrights and dramaturgs, but equally so for actors and especially directors.

Story by Robert McKee. There is no more thorough, detailed book about the complexities of storytelling than this. There are important differences between telling stage stories and screen stories, of course – language predominates in theatre, image in film – but truly, nearly all the rest of it applies. (Well, except all that stuff about genre: marketing-driven Hollywood has niched its product in a way we theatre types can mostly disregard. Consider it “helpful problem-solving tips” rather than gospel.)

Playwrights John Patrick Shanley, Lanford Wilson, Stephen Adly Guirgis, Helen Edmundson, William Shakespeare.

What were the biggest challenges for you as a director in developing this production and how did you deal with them?

My job as director: keep the audience in doubt. Achieve every reversal in audience sympathy and judgment that Shanley wrote into this intricate, confounding story. It’s so easy to let the audience settle too easily into one perception or another – which is not the playwright’s intention. Quite the opposite.

What can you share about any future projects that are in development?

Once Doubt opens, I get back in my Artistic Director chair and polish up details on Pacific Theatre’s 2012-13 season, which we announce March 15. Then I’m up on my feet again, acting: I rejoin the cast of The Last Days Of Judas Iscariot at The Cultch in April, playing Butch Honeywell. After that, the thing I’m most excited about — I’m back in front of the keyboard again as playwright in May / June / July to start work on my first new script in a decade! My last three projects – A Bright Particular Star, You Still Can’t and Refuge Of Lies – were all about completing or reshaping earlier scripts I’d set aside. Since then, the fields had to lay fallow for a few years, due to the demands of running a theatre company. But now, three projects all think their time has come (in order of increasing difficulty): a stage adaptation of a film, a stage adaptation of a non-fiction book, and an original play about the waning friendship between two of my favourite literary figures. I’m borderline giddy to be getting back to writing – which I’d begun to thing might not ever happen again. Whew.

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Doubt: A Parable opens at PacificTheatre.org on March 2nd, 2012. You can also check out Ron’s blogs: Soul Food Vancouver, Soul Food Movies, and Oblations.

The post The Biz Interview: Ron Reed – Director of “Doubt: A Parable” appeared first on Biz Books.