SDA Provincial Festival: Day 3

The final day at the Saskatchewan Drama Association was a great one! My workshops are all over for the week, so I was able to just sit back, relax, and enjoy the afternoon performances. And enjoy them I did.

GLAMORGAN - Carlton Comprehensive High School - The Mad Hatter Players are known for their technical savvy, and they did not disappoint yet again. Not only was the set solid and effective, but the use of lighting effects and sound design really helped bring this play to life, particularly as it approached its climax. The ending moments of the play were truly gripping. Rare also is to be equally entertained by watching a stage crew dismantle a set after a production is over. The Carlton crew performed like a well oiled machine and it was great to see that teamwork in action.

ROSIE - Michael A. Riffel Christian High School - This sensational play was written, directed, and acted by an extraordinarily talented grade 12 student named Emma Fiorante. Remember that name because you will undoubtedly hear from this creative young mind in the future. Part pantomime and part music, Rosie was all stunning. Everything, from the set to the lights to the sound, served the story without distracting from it. The entire ensemble worked together so beautifully, but the final moment with Miss Fiorante alone onstage as Rosie embarked on a new adventure, was such a simple and glorious moment that I'm totally crying again as I write this.

I have to say that the plays in the festival this year were particularly strong, so competition was stiff across the board when it came to handing out awards. But what made the atmosphere of this festival so great (and it's not always this way) is how most everyone was there to celebrate great theatre, and one another, rather than focus too much on the outcome. That's what I love to see and I saw a lot of students congratulating one another for jobs well done. That is truly what this weekend is all about.

Adjudicators Russ Ramsden and Bill Hales had the unenviable task of selecting names and plays to bestow awards upon, although I think they did a really terrific job spreading the wealth among all the wonderful shows I saw this weekend. And as Russ himself says, it's all icing anyway. Runner-Up to Best Overall Production was awarded to Carrot River's incredibly lovely rendition of Goodbye to the Clown and Best Overall Production went to Regina's spectacular Rosie.

Congratulations to all of the participants this weekend! I'd like to send a special shout-out to my actor friends Taryn Freemantle, Philip Wiens, Emily Herridge, and Jake Heisler for taking home very well deserved acting awards. They are among a long list of actors (too long to name here) who truly impressed me this weekend. Bravo!

It's amazing how the adrenaline rushes out of a person immediately after a week packed with so much activity. I know I'm ready to stuff myself silly before hibernating for the next week or so to catch up on all the sleep I missed out on the last 7 days. So until next year, the balcony is closed!

SDA Provincial Festival: Day 2

Yet another terrific day at the Saskatchewan Drama Association Provincial Festival! It all got started with another session of my iPlaywrite workshop. I had some really wonderful students from Maple Creek and Yorkton who came up with some very thoughtful material in our time together. Using photos of tableaux and tweets from junior students at the Middle Years Festival, they put together scenes and monologues that have now been uploaded to Facebook. If you want to check out what they came up with, head over to www.facebook.com/sdafest. I've posted videos of all the scenes they came up with, as well as the students from yesterday's session. As you'll see, it's amazing what can be written in a short amount of time! Be sure to like the page and feel free to share with all your friends.

After a quick lunch, the plays continued with 2 productions in the afternoon and 3 more evening performances. Again, it was a nice variety of plays and there was a lot of great work happening up on the stage.

THE SPIRIT OF LIFE AND MAGDA AND JOSEF - Swift Current Comprehensive High School - Two plays for the price of one, these challenging plays about the Holocaust were respectfully brought to life by a strong ensemble of actors who really worked together to tell stories of various characters who were affected by the horror of World War II. I quite enjoyed the simplicity of the staging and how well all of the actors worked together. Plays with a lot of monologues are not easy and so I appreciated that the entire cast remained onstage throughout, providing solid support for one another.

KILLING BILL - Yorkton Regional High School - This hilarious play was so much fun to watch thanks to the actors, directors, and technical crew committing 100% to making every moment as big and broad as possible. There was a scene in which an enormous pancake was brought onstage by a huge ensemble of actors in martial arts attire (you had to be there) that had me laughing so hard, I wasn't sure I was ever going to rid myself of the giggles. All of the actors were awesome, but Nicole Logan and Nicole Hedley were particularly hysterical. There must be something funny about the name Nicole! I also thought the visual elements were very strong.

SEUESSPEARE: MEET THE MACBETHS - Greenall High School - This cute play in rhyme was done well and the audience was certainly with it from start to finish. Macbeth is my favorite of all Shakespeare's plays, so I enjoyed the absurdity of this translation. Tiffany Favreau as Lady Macbeth had a lot of really nice comedic moments as she slowly descended into madness and searched for ways to get the spots out, out, out of her dirty laundry.

GOODBYE TO THE CLOWN - Carrot River Junior Senior High School - I have a history with Carrot River, as they've produced several plays of mine over the past few years, and just when I think they could not get any better, they present yet another play that totally knocks my socks off. I wasn't sure if a play written more than 60 years ago would have the impact it may have had when first written, but all my doubts were cast aside the very moment the lights went up on this truly lovely production. The concept of setting the play in the 1950's, in a virtually black and white world, was an inspired one. The visuals were simply spectacular and added enormously to the overall impact the show had on the audience. What's more, the actors created wonderfully rich characters, each of them turning in a performance that moved the audience to tears. I know I was sobbing long before the lights came down.

GABRIELLE - Rossignol High School - In the 6 years I've been coming to Provincials, I have enjoyed watching how much the students and plays from the Northern Region have grown. Not only do the plays out of that region generally address important topical issues, but they continue to tackle more and more ambitious material every year. This play, written in the 1970's, is just as relevant today as the day it was written, and I appreciated ths group for stretching themselves with a play that required area staging, lighting cues, and sound elements. Sara Daugenault as Gabrielle had a very tough role to pull off, but with her powerful voice and strong stage presence, she certainly rose to the challenge.

I can't believe there are only 2 more performances to go! I swear this festival flies by faster and faster every year. So until tomorrow, that's a wrap!

SDA Provincial Festival: Day 1

The 2014 Saskatchewan Drama Association Provincial Festival got off to a big start today as students from around the province poured into the Dr. William Riddell Centre at the University of Regina. My day started with a feast at the director's luncheon, where I was thrilled to be in attendance as my high school drama teacher, Jackeline Rutledge, was honored with SDA's Lifetime Achievement Award for all of her contributions to educational theatre in Saskatchewan. This award could not have been more deserving. Mrs. Rutledge (as she will always be known to me) always encouraged me to follow my dreams and talents, and without her I know for a fact I would not be where I am today.

After the luncheon I had a phenomenal time working with students from Moose Jaw, Swift Current, and Yorkton in my brand new playwrighting workshop, "iPlaywrite: Collaborating Via Social Media." It's a brand new workshop for me so I was unsure how it was going to turn out, but I had a blast with the students and was amazed at all the creative ideas they came up with in our time together. The concept of this new workshop is for students to collaborate on writing a new play with other students via social media. Currently I have students in Toronto writing a collective with students in Houston, using social media outlets such as Twitter, Skype, Instagram, Vine, and Facebook to share their ideas with each other. It's been going so well that I decided to see if I could get the senior students at the Provincial Festival to collaborate with the junior students I worked with earlier this week at the Middle Years Festival. Using ideas, characters, photos, and videos generated by the juniors, I challenged the seniors to come up with scenes and monologues that built upon the information that was provided by people they had never met. The results were incredible, and if you stay tuned to the blog, I will post some video clips from our afternoon together to Facebook and Instagram. (First I need to secure a decent internet connection that's a lot faster than the turtle-slow connection provided by my hotel, but I promise it will be worth the wait!)

If that wasn't enough, there were four productions in the evening. And, boy oh boy, what a variety of plays they were.

THE TROJAN WOMEN - North Battleford Comprehensive High School - Anyone who has seen as many plays as I have will have undoubtedly seen one or more adaptations of this story, so I had an idea of what to expect going in. So it came as a nice surprise to see some thoughtful and unexpected ideas brought to this production that made it stand out from the others I have seen. What I enjoyed most was the addition of two live musicians onstage. Using a select, but well chosen, number of instruments, they really helped the transitions between scenes and allowed them to occur without going to blackout. Anyone who knows me knows how much I despise pretty much any and all blackouts. In fact, I have a new play coming out later this year titled "Blackouts Are Bad." No blackouts here and I know the audience also enjoyed the visual elements of this production, the costumes in particular.

THE MOUSTACHE - Lampman School - This so-over-the-top-that-you-have-to-look-down-with-binoculars-just-to-see-the-top dark comedy had the audience by the throat from the second the lights went up, and never let go for its entire 50 minute running time. This is a difficult play to describe because it morphs from a pleasant comedy into a dark, dark, dark satire that involves mass murder, world domination, and finally, nuclear warfare. There was a lot of theatrics at play, and when I say "a lot," I mean A LOT. It was fun to be a part of such a hot crowd, and you could really feel the shift from laughing along with the characters to feeling slightly uncomfortable for wanting to laugh because the subject matter was so disturbing. Yet we all continued to laugh in spite of ourselves, which I think would have made playwright Davis Alianiello very proud to have written a script that zinged so many nerves.

HIM & HER - Vanier Collegiate - I had the great privilege of adjudicating this play last month at the Region 2 Festival in Moose Jaw, so it was wonderful for me to see how a play continues to develop and grow over time. In the four weeks since I last saw it, small yet significant changes were made to the original script by Keyanna Burgher that improved the production exponentially. I loved the play when I saw it the first time, but tonight it had a shiny and professional polish that took my breath away. Jake Heisler and Emily Herridge as the title characters are exceptional actors who are able to make an audience both laugh and cry, sometimes within the span of a single sentence. They are both so honest, so genuine, so natural, that you really believed their characters existed in the real world. And better yet, that you knew them. I have to admit that I lean toward the "less is more" school of theatre, and this production knew exactly what the script required and resisted the temptation to add any unnecessary bells or whistles. The result was a deeply moving portrait of two people in love that had me smiling through tears.

PANDORA - Hanley Composite School - I was told this was the third time this original drama by Hanley's director Leanne Griffin has advanced to Provincials, and it's easy to see why this would be the case. The script provides a number of creative challenges for both actors and technical crew, and everyone involved in this production certainly faced those challenges head-on. One of my personal favorite theatrical conventions, and one I have used several times in my own plays, is a chorus that remains onstage throughout a play, providing constant support to the main characters in the story. The chorus of five girls in this production were very strong and always "present." They definitely added energy, power, and humor to the otherwise serious plot.

With that, Day 1 at the SDA Provincial Festival is in the history books. It was a long day, but one filled with laughter, tears, creativity, and more than a little craziness. I can't wait to see what tomorrow has to offer!

Time Capsule

I was floored when a Canadian high school drama teacher got in touch with me and asked if I would mind being the subject of an entire unit in her Grade 10 drama class. A requirement of her curriculum is to study a Canadian playwright, and after years of studying the likes of Robertson Davies and Merrill Denison, she felt it was time to mix things up and introduce her students to a contemporary (not to mention living) playwright. She happened upon one of my scripts (Split) and thought my point of view would grab the attention of the students in her class. Needless to say, I was thrilled by her request and more than happy to oblige.

Seeing as I am alive (and relatively well, at least compared to Davies and Denison), the final assignment of the unit was for the students to pair up and get in touch with me via email to ask me one question that they could then turn into a visual presentation. I have to say that it's pretty cool that there will be a dozen or so posters all about me on display in some school foyer where I have never been!

Anyway, some of the questions I got were the usuals ("How did you start playwrighting?" "Where do you get your ideas?"), but one of the groups asked a particularly thoughtful question that I thought warranted a blog post unto itself.

YOU HAVE WRITTEN A LOT OF PLAYS. IF YOU COULD ONLY PUT ONE INTO A TIME CAPSULE FOR FUTURE GENERATIONS, WHICH ONE WOULD IT BE? AND WHY?

At first glance, this is a variation on the old question, "Of all the plays you've written, what's your favourite?" This question is, obviously, a tough one to answer (impossible, really) because each play is special to me and the most important thing in my life at the moment I am writing it. However, this question had just enough of a twist on it that I immediately had an answer. I knew exactly what play I would want in a time capsule and, although it may or may not be my favourite (like I said, I have no favourites), it does represent a large part of who I am as a writer and, even more-so, a person.

SIXTEEN IN 10 MINUTES OR LESS

Perhaps I'm cheating a little, considering this play is actually made up of ten separate 10-minute plays, but if you read the play as a whole you will discover that they are not separate at all. Not only do the characters overlap, but the themes connect in a way that (I hope) paints a clear picture of my personal outlook on life.

I bring up the subject of "theme" because I am often asked what the themes are of each of my plays. I love turning that conversation around and asking students what they think the themes of my plays are. While there are no wrong answers, their answers rarely line up with what I had in mind as I was writing. For instance, Split could certainly be classified as "a play about divorce." But it's actually a play about love and all of its various permutations. Divorce was simply the hook upon which I hung stories about characters who are afraid of love, embarrassed by love, embracing love, etc. Similarly, I Don't Want to Talk About It could be considered "a play about silence," but it's actually a play about listening.

 

This brings me to the theme of Sixteen in 10 Minutes or Less. All of the characters in the play are sixteen years old, which is the hook I used to create this play. But "a play about being sixteen" is not the play I was interested in writing. I wanted to write a story about a group of teenagers who are not quite kids anymore and not quite adults either. Thus, the theme of the entire play became "Not Quite."

FRIEND REQUEST - Not quite friends.
DOUBLE CLICK - Not quite attractive.
BRACE YOURSELF - Not quite smart enough.
LAZY EYE - Not quite normal.
FIREWORKS - Not quite in love.
PAY PHONE - Not quite trusting.
BENCH WARRANT - Not quite popular.
WHEELS - Not quite independent.
TUMBLEFUR - Not quite understood.
STATUS UPDATE: A SYMPHONY - Not quite ready.

Another reason I am fond of Sixteen in 10 Minutes or Less, and why I've chosen it as the answer to the question in question, is the variety of styles I was able to include under one title. I pride myself on being able to write a serious drama one day and a laugh-out-loud comedy the next. It may come as a surprise (it does to me) that I wrote Lip Service, a wacky farce, the same week I finished I Don't Want to Talk About It, a much more serious play about suicide. Likewise, Split and They Say... were both written in a span of two days. If you take a look at them side by side, they could not be more different. One is a seriocomedy made up of very short vignettes that span a year, while the other is a straight forward situation comedy that takes place in one place and one time. I never want to write the same play twice, so I always try to take a brand new approach with my work when I'm staring a new play after finishing another.

Sixteen in 10 Minutes or Less was fun to write because I was able to hit on a wide variety of theatrical genres. Among others, it includes an ensemble piece (Friend Request), a comedy duet (Brace Yourself), a drama (Wheels), a monologue (Tumblefur), an absurd comedy (Pay Phone), a fantasy (Lazy Eye), a romance (Fireworks), and a choral piece (Status Update: A Symphony). My idea was to keep the audience on their toes by never allowing them to be quite sure what's coming next. I was also conscious to make sure each individual play could stand on its own in the event it is performed as a stand alone production. I believe I succeeded in doing these things, or at least I hope that's the case. I've always told myself that a belief is the end result of a hope, and by hoping that each characters gets what they want, I believe in them. To that end, I say: mission accomplished.

So while I could proudly pick out any one of my plays to put in a time capsule, right now -- today -- I would select Sixteen in 10 Minutes or Less. And I could not be more honoured that the rights to this play are carried by Theatrefolk. Founders Craig Mason and Lindsay Price understand better than anyone I know what teenagers are thinking of, dreaming of, and made of, which is exactly why they have done such an incredible job nurturing the play. In the two years since publication, it has slowly discovered a large and passionate audience of teenagers and adults who have repeatedly let me know what an impact it has had on audiences. It means the world to me to know that it has touched the lives of so many people.

To read a preview of any or all of the plays included, visit Theatrefolk.