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!
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