ron reed Archives - Biz Books

The Biz Interview: Carl Kennedy

Biz Books — Fri, 29 Jan 2016 19:42:40 +0000

Common Grace is the latest effort to hit the stage at Pacific Theatre. A family drama about a woman’s return home after the death of her father, the play is directed by Ron Reed and boasts a talented cast – including Shauna Johannesen (who also wrote it), Kerri Norris, Carl Kennedy, Rebecca deBoer, Cara Cunningham, Robert Garry Haacke, and Julie Lynn Mortensen.

We caught up with Carl Kennedy to find out more about Common Grace and what he brings to the production.

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What is your involvement with Common Grace?

I will be portraying the role of Pastor “Dan”.

What drew you to be a part of this production?

First and foremost, Pacific Theatre feels like family. My first show in Vancouver (Jesus Hopped the A Train) was at Pacific Theatre. It’s always exciting to work on a new play. Now, add the fact that we actually have the opportunity to (not only interact), but share the stage with the playwright. How many times in life will an opportunity like this present itself?

The Biz Interview: Shauna Johannesen

Biz Books — Fri, 18 Sep 2015 13:14:33 +0000

Equally talented in the art of acting and writing across film, television, and theatre, Shauna Johannesen offers the best of both worlds to her creative projects, which have included credits like Motive, Cult, and Bedbugs, a short film that made waves at the 2014 Vancouver International Film Festival. With this year’s festival only a few days away, Shauna Johannesen offered us some insights into balancing writing and acting, the film festival circuit, and her career highlights thus far.

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Can you start by telling us a little bit more about you and what projects you have on the go right now?

Sure. Right now I’m working on a family drama called Common Grace which goes up at Pacific Theatre in January, and a screenplay called Trying, which is a Judd Apatow-style comedy about a couple trying to get pregnant. I’m also working as a dramaturg on Ron Reed’s play about the friendship between C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien!

The 2015 Vancouver International Film Festival is coming up. Your short film, Bedbugs, which you wrote and starred in, screened there last year – along with other festival appearances. What can you share about the journey of creating the film and taking it through to festivals?

Films are incredibly collaborative things and you go in with a plan, but you don’t really know what’s going to come out until the thing is done. So it’s been an incredibly informative experience in terms of learning so much more about how films are made, how they evolve, and how everyone contributes to make a thing what it is. And I love Bedbugs. I love what a fantastic cast and crew I got to play with and how much support we got from Crazy8s to make this wacky little puppet film. So taking it to festivals just feels like gravy. Or whipping cream. Like you get to invite everyone in on the fun.

Having gained some experience on the film festival circuit, how are they beneficial for filmmakers and what challenges did you run into along the way?

I think seeing your work in front of an audience is extremely informative because you need to know if your story lands – if your jokes are funny, if your moments lead people on a journey, if people are connecting. You learn how well you succeeded in telling a story – or not. There are jokes in Bedbugs that I thought were funny and no one ever laughs at. Ever. That’s interesting to me. What should we have cut? Where did we need another beat? As far as festivals, it helps to meet people. It helps to win awards. It helps to see what other people are making and creating to spur you forward to the next thing.

In terms of challenges, I would say it’s expensive. Festival entries are expensive and going to festivals is expensive. And also it’s very time consuming to be spending so much time administrating. As a writer looking forward to the next project it’s hard spending a lot of time on emails and correspondence and uploading things to Dropbox when you’re not being paid for any of it. But it’s also a great problem to have, because it means people want to see your film.

You’re a prolific writer as well as being an actor. What inspired you to do both?

I think if you’re a storyteller, if you’re an artist, then that impulse can come out in different ways. I love bringing a character to life as an actor and connecting with my heart and mind and body to a story. It’s so physical and happens with other people – on a stage or a set. But I also love that as a writer I get to create the world, all the characters, and the whole journey myself. But the seed of it is the same. Plus, I like to write what I want to play as an actor and what I want to see as an audience member. It’s all about story.

If someone sees your name in the credits of a film as a writer or actor, what qualities do you want the audience to associate with you as a performer and writer?

I guess I want them to see truth. I want them to see something in the story or the character that feels true or authentic to them. And I hope I make them laugh at least once.

What have been some of your career highlights at this point in time?

Getting my first professional production of a full-length play in January is pretty exciting, for sure. It’s a play I really love, full of funny, broken, deeply human people and I can’t wait to share it. Working with Kristin Lehman and Louis Ferreira on the set of Motive was something I really loved because I think the writing on that show is stellar, and they’re two incredibly gifted, hard-working, and generous actors. And every time Bedbugs plays on the big screen and people genuinely laugh, it’s a career highlight. I could eat those laughs for breakfast.

You’ve written for stage as well as for screen. What are the challenges and rewards of writing for these two mediums?

I would say that one of the challenges of theatre is that you can’t visually cut away to reveal something or button a scene or build suspense – the actor has to do it with their performance and you have to construct it with your words. On the flip side, the challenge for me in film and TV is to not use words so much – to think more visually.

The reward of film and TV both as an actor and a writer is that you have something tangible when you’re done. You can watch it again and again. You can look at it. In theatre, the beauty and the difficulty is in its ephemeral nature. But you get to live the story with the audience in real time which is this beautiful, marvelous, kind of sacred thing when it’s done well. You actually breathe the same air and hold your breath together and affect each other. It’s alive.

What advice would you give to actors who are considering writing their own material?

Do it. Absolutely do it. But also, learn about writing. I studied writing for a long time. I’ve written a lot of stuff – and it’s hard. Sometimes you write things that are bad. Very bad. It’s hard to do it period, and it’s hard to do it well. So read the books on story and structure, then practice and get feedback. And don’t let wanting to play the part cloud your judgement about whether the story works or not. Then rewrite. And rewrite again.

Which books and authors have been influential to you in your career so far?

I’m most moved by stories that explore the depth of human experience. I connect most with stories that have some kind of existential longing. Stories that make me feel, think and laugh. I loved
A Circle of Quiet by Madeleine L’Engle. The Brothers K by David James Duncan. Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott.

I saw Good People last year, by David Lindsay-Abaire and half-way through I almost jumped out of my seat because I realized “This play is about something.” And it was fantastic. The Last Days of Judas Iscariot by Stephen Adly Guirgis, too.

And I love good television – I love The West Wing, Six Feet Under, Parenthood, The Good Wife. And I love seeing smart, funny women telling stories – they influence me. Elizabeth Meriwether. Tina Fey. Amy Poehler. Amy Schumer. Smart and funny. Gets me every time. I’m sure gonna miss Jon Stewart.

Where can we go to find out more about you?

You can go to my website, which should be updated this month, or you can find me on Twitter!

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Our thanks to Shauna Johannesen for speaking with us!

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The Biz Interview: Ron Reed – Director of “Doubt: A Parable”

Biz Books — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 06:36:14 +0000

In Vancouver’s theatre community, Ron Reed is best-known as the Founder of Pacific Theatre. When he’s not working behind the scenes as the Artistic Director, Ron is often a contributing to productions as an actor and writer. On Pacific Theatre’s newest production of John Patrick Shanley’s Doubt: A Parable, Ron is handling directing duties. He spoke with us in advance of the play’s opening to share some insights into the process.

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.

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The Biz Interview: Alison Chisholm – Director of “Compassion for Killers”

Biz Books — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 03:06:06 +0000

Alison Chisholm is the director of the new play, Compassion for Killers, a Whirlwind Theatre production which is now on at Pacific Theatre. Alison was kind enough to take time out of her busy rehearsal schedule to speak with us about the development of the production and the challenges of directing a play that is entirely a solo performance.

What inspired you to take on this production?

Christopher Cook and I have worked together before and he mentioned that he wanted to write and perform a show. I have not directed since university so I was grateful for the opportunity to work with Chris again, especially since it was a brand new script and a great story.

Can you walk us through the creative process as a director in putting this production together from your earliest involvement all the way to opening night?

I started working as a dramaturge after a few early drafts of the script while it was still in the workshop phase. Then after a few more drafts we got it on its feet and have been rehearsing with it since.

Two of the important themes in the story are redemption and compassion. As a director, what was your approach in creating a stage experience that would allow the audience to connect with these themes?

I think Christopher Cook took care of this for me in the writing. As a director all I am doing is trying to make sure that the characters are clear, relatable, and likable and that their stories are all clearly laid out.

What was the most challenging aspect of putting this production together?

Being a solo performance involving 6 different characters, I think the most challenging aspect was making sure that we clearly differentiated the characters and their involvement in the story. We also span two very different timelines so being able to differentiate those has been a challenge as well, but I think we’ve come up with some great and creative solutions.

Which element of Compassion for Killers and your involvement in it are you most proud of?

The development of new work is by far the thing that I am most proud of. I think it’s important to provide opportunities to present new plays, so I’m honoured to be able to do that with this production.

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

I can’t think of any specific books that helped influence me in this process, but there are a lot of local artists who were huge inspirations to me, including Ron Reed at Pacific Theatre. His encouragement of emerging artists has helped me find the confidence to pull this off. And of course Christopher Cook’s writing was a huge inspiration as well.

What can you share about any future projects that you are developing?

In the future I am really hoping to write a musical. I’m not sure exactly when that would be happening, but right now I’m tentatively aiming for some time in 2012, but we’ll see what happens. Any updates on that project would be posted on our blog at whirlwindtheatre.com.

Compassion for Killers is at Pacific Theatre until July 30th. Visit PacificTheatre.org for details.

The post The Biz Interview: Alison Chisholm – Director of “Compassion for Killers” appeared first on Biz Books.

ron reed Archives - Biz Books

The Biz Interview: Carl Kennedy

The Biz Interview: Shauna Johannesen

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The Biz Interview: Ron Reed – Director of “Doubt: A Parable”

The Biz Interview: Alison Chisholm – Director of “Compassion for Killers”