Interview: George F. Walker

The Burden of Being Walker
by Jim Murchison

George F. Walker has received nine Chalmers Awards, five Dora Awards, three Governor General's Awards (including a 2009 Lifetime Achievement Award) and the Order of Canada. In 1997 his six-play cycle Suburban Motel premiered at Factory Theatre (Toronto) and Rattlestick Productions (New York). Plays from the cycle have since had numerous productions in the US, the UK and Germany. Walker's latest play The Burden of Self Awareness is playing at Great Canadian Theatre Company in Ottawa.

CharPo Ottawa Editor Jim Murchison spoke with Playwright George F. Walker about his career.

The interview started a little late and I was initially paranoid that I had the date wrong as there was no one around that seemed to know an interview had been set up. But then George Walker came walking up the stairs pointing at director Arthur Milner saying “his fault”, as Milner nodded in agreement and said, “My fault, my fault.” Walker said he relied on Milner to get him where he needed to be. Milner told Walker he had already told him to stop doing that. After a sound check, there was some sound bleeding from the downstairs lobby into the gallery and so we went around the corner and found some comfortable chairs in the entrance of the mens washroom. So that is where I interviewed one of Canada's and the world's most produced playwrights.

CHARPO: What fascinates me most about your career is the way it started, working odd jobs; finally as a taxi driver seeing a pamphlet for Factory Theatre Lab: You were obviously already writing, doing poems and stories I believe? I mean were you thinking when you did your first try at a play that this was going to be your career? 

WALKER:  Oh, Absolutely not. I just... wrote one.

CHARPO: (laughs)  

WALKER: I'd only seen one live play. I saw Henry... I don't know Henry something, at the Royal Alex. 

Review: (Ottawa) The Burden of Self Awareness

(photo by Andrew Alexander)

Money or Nothing
by Jim Murchison

Martin Conboy’s set is uncluttered. Spare furnishings and three columns that rotate to reveal a wine rack when it’s a restaurant, a bookshelf when it’s an apartment and other times, like when they are outdoors it is just three columns. Conboy’s lighting is also supportive and illuminates the actors with no hoopla or effects. It is simple and doesn’t detract from the words or the actors. The conversation is the central point of The Burden of Self Awareness, George F Walker’s often very funny look at the darker side of the widening economic gulf between the wealthy and the dwindling middle class.

The play is directed by former GCTC artistic director Arthur Milner and his respect for Walker and the material allows him to confidently let the cast deliver the story effectively. They certainly do with a quirky blend of pathos, humour and realism. A lot of people may not use real as an adjective to describe Walker’s characters, but the edge of madness is something that is very real in society and I feel that the play reflects that actuality. While the events in the story are certainly concentrated and often comedic, I really think it packs a punch that isn’t overly exaggerated.  

Review: (Ottawa / Theatre) Dancing With Rage

(photo courtesy The Collection Agency Entertainment)

Only the Tickets Sell Out
by Jim Murchison 

It really doesn’t matter what I say in this review as to the bottom line for the GCTC. The entire run is already sold out! There are no tickets to be had or sold barring inheriting one or an extension to the current run. People will tell you that there is no star system in Canada, but Mary Walsh appears to be an exception to the rule.

Mary Walsh has developed a story about Margaret Delahunty’s quest for her lost lovechild conceived during an adolescent fling at Expo 67, after breaking away from centennial pied piper Bobby Gimby. That’s the simple straightforward story, but there are many twists and turns and character changes on the wicked meandering road to the final chapter of the story. There are many changes of costume and character, most done in view of the audience and there are a number of sound bytes and rear screen projections that help Ms Walsh to have conversations with herself as another character or fill in parts of the storyline, the very few times that she actually leaves the stage. 

Review: (Ottawa) Morro and Jasp do Puberty (Undercurrents)

(photo by Jim Moore)

Awkward as An Art Form
by Jim Murchison 

The best clowns take a recognizable weakness in the human condition and expose it in a way that makes us laugh and illuminates something of the common human spirit.  What better common experience than puberty is there? We have all been through it and if you haven't, get permission from your parents before you read the review.

The key elements of the set are not surprisingly the toilet, the bedroom and the telephone; all things of extreme import for the evolving adolescent. Heather Marie Annis and Amy Lee as clown sisters  Morro and Jasp respectively play all the moments of angst and discovery with comic zeal. Weaved into the mix are quiet secrets whispered to the audience, love fantasies and discoveries about feminine hygiene products set to the epic music of Richard Strauss.

Review: (Ottawa) A Quiet Sip of Coffee

(photo by Lily Jamali)

A Loud Mosaic
by Jim Murchison

The concept behind A Quiet Sip of Coffee is intriguing right from the get go.Theatre graduates and best friends, Anthony and Nathan, one Gay and one straight write a prank letter to a fundamentalist organization dedicated to reformation of Gay men. They are looking for funding of their play Never Cry Wolfman, a play that examines the monster within. Surprisingly, they get a favourable response provided that they agree to go through some Gay reversal therapy. The problem is they never actually wrote a play but they need the funding, so they accept.

Review: (Ottawa) The Tashme Project - the Living Archives

This Is the Unfolding of Life
by Robyn Lester
@RobynRobinRob

The Tashme Project: The Living Archives created by Julie Tamiko Manning and Matt Miwa is a play that demonstrates the true beauty of storytelling and the transformative power of memory.

Through the verbatim re-tellings of true stories, this play opens our eyes to the realities of the 2nd generation Japanese-Canadians (Nisei) who were interned during WWII as children. Through their memories of that experience, and the hardships they continued to face after the internment, we are given a living history lesson. One that is all too often overlooked.

Review: (Ottawa) Ciseaux (Undercurrents)

Two Lives Entwined
Some people are forever bound together…for better, or for worse
by Robyn Lester
@RobinRobynRob

There are some heavy themes at work in Lisa L’Heureux’s Ciseaux. Political upheaval, child soldiers, even sex trafficking. It’s all there, playing out before our very eyes, forcing us to consider the realities of our world.

Ciseaux follows two young girls, Phanie and Olivia. When we first meet these characters they are eight years old. Phanie is loud and abrasive. A bully. Olivia is quiet and timid. An easy target for Phanie. But every action has a consequence, and it just so happens that the choices they each make affect the other in unimaginable ways. And with that we are pulled from the comfort of the classroom and thrown into a world of war and child soldiers. 

Review: (Ottawa) Rider Girl (Undercurrents)

Game On (Life as Sport)
by Jim Murchison

Rider Girl is a play that works as a play and a pep rally all the while drawing analogies to the game of life. I can only imagine how it plays in Saskatchewan. Don’t get me wrong, the Ottawa audience was thoroughly entertained by creator/performer Colleen Sutton but a rabid CFL fan that had never seen a play in their life would be equally drawn to this piece that succeeds on two levels.

Sutton’s infectious enthusiasm pulls the audience in to the game, but it is the parallel that she draws to life’s four quarters and the flags that fall on the field of life because of financial and emotional pitfalls, that will cast the spell on the avid theatre goer. It is incredible how people get so ecstatic or crestfallen over the triumphs and disasters of their team and yet play tight defence on their personal problems when they should be calling on help from the team.

Review: (Ottawa) This is War

This Is War
And War Is Hell
by Jim Murchison

Eric Coates designed a season with the theme "fearless" and this is perhaps the most fearless play so far. The subject of Canadian troops in Afghanistan and the effects of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is a tough one to tackle. I don't want to get into the specifics of the story but sexual tension, Gays and women in the military, battle fatigue, insomnia  and just war itself are all explored. In a civilian office an affair or a bad decision can be awkward or career ending. In a war zone a bad decision can maim or kill you or the people that you work with.

Review: (Ottawa) Goodnight Desdemona, (Good Morning Juliet)

A Wormhole to the Bard
by Jim Murchison
@JimMurchison

Imagine if Alice in Wonderland was about a beleaguered assistant professor who falls through a garbage pail, instead of a looking glass and finds herself lost in a land of Othello and Romeo and Juliet. That is what happens in Ann-Marie MacDonald’s Goodnight Desdemona, (Good Morning Juliet). It is a fantasy journey of discovery that has elements of Lewis Carroll, Jules Verne and William Shakespeare but is 100 per cent Ann-Marie MacDonald. 

Ann-Marie MacDonald’s script is witty, clever, insightful and thought-provoking as it examines one woman’s quest for literary and academic achievement that takes her instead to a place of personal enlightenment. Wrapped up in the middle of this, is a re-examination of Shakespeare and the lines between comedy and tragedy. Primarily though it is good fun. It plunges a dagger into the belly of Shakespeare and pulls out a rubber chicken. 

Review: (Ottawa) You Fancy Yourself

The Joys and Heartache of Being a Child
by Robyn Lester
@RobinRobynRob

It was an exciting night at the Great Canadian Theatre Company for the opening of Maja Ardal’s You Fancy Yourself, which was originally slated for last year’s season and then unexpectedly delayed. The play, both written and performed by Ardal, is loosely based on her own childhood memories of friends, school, and trying to fit in as a foreigner. It weaves together a universal story of the confusion and alienation we all experience as children, and tells it through the eyes of a young Icelandic girl, Elsa, now living in Scotland.

Review: (Ottawa) Like Wolves

(photo credit: GCTC/Andrew Alexander)

A Howling Good Time

by Jim Murchison 

Walking into the GCTC you see a spacious apartment, with a second level balcony tucked upstage left. Jessica Poirier-Chang has designed a set that has an almost antiseptic look that instantly puts the question in your head; home or institution? That is a central theme to the play that is set around the lives and potential deaths of an elderly couple named Vera and Sam. Do you make sure your remaining years are comfortable and look for something safe or do you chase your bucket list and bravely go forward doing all the things you meant to do but never could because of family, job, procrastination, fear or financial circumstance?

Sam and Vera have been married for 50 years and are now returning to the scene of the crime; the very spot where they spent their honeymoon. It’s not as romantic as it sounds. The rural setting has changed and where once there was a sleepy little inn, now there is a retirement high rise. When Sam is struck with a mild heart attack, the family races to his side. 

Review: (Ottawa) The Edward Curtis Project

Quelemia Sparrow

What the eye sees, the heart feels
by Nanette Cormier

Edward Curtis (Todd Duckworth) first photographed Princess Angeline, also known as Kickisomlo, the daughter of Chief Sealth of Seattle in 1895. She was the first Native American he photographed. He would go on to take over 40,000 photographic images from over 80 tribes.  

Written and directed by Marie Clements, The Edward Curtis Project explores the difficulty of integrating and making sense of what we see in the world around us through the eyes of an early 20th century American photographer, Edward Curtis, and a present-day Métis journalist, Angeline. 

Review: (Ottawa) Blue Box

Carmen Aguirre's Blue Box
It's Not About Recycling
by Jim Murchison

Last night was the coldest night of the year so far. There was a certain anticipation I had of what one might refer to as Latin heat. Anything remotely warm at that time would have been inviting but hopefully I was going to experience something that sizzled. When the play starts the first surprise for the audience is that the play they are seeing is not actually called Blue Box. That is merely a title more suitable for marketing purposes. I do not wish to destroy the play's first revelation, so you will have to see it to discover for yourself the actual title.

The sanitized for public consumption title is likely the only compromise that this production made. As Carmen Aguirre recounts her underground life in the resistance of Pinochet’s oppressive Chilean regime, she discusses how one might have to select comfortable clothes to be tortured in. She engages directly with the audience to the point where her body is leaning into the front row inches from the face of an audience member discussing the passionate fucking she received by someone she calls Vision Man. She pulls people from the audience to demonstrate surveillance techniques and invites them up to dance as well. 

Review: (Ottawa) The Number 14

Sarah Rodgers, Scott Walters (Photo Credit: David Cooper)

The Wheels on The Bus
by Jim Murchison 
@JimMurchison

There is a vintage 1959 bus sitting outside the GCTC. The lobby is filled with memorabilia. Video and artwork of Chris Brown and Stuart Kinmond represents the history of city bus travel in the Fritzi gallery. That is the big hint that The Number 14 is about a bus. It is one weird, wacked out bus.

If you can remember the craziest bus ride you ever took and then magnify it and multiply it by a thousand, then you kind of have an idea of what The Number 14 is all about. It is Cirque du Soleil on acid on a bus. It is not a play as much as an experience. It has been going on for 20 years since it was first developed by Vancouver’s Axis Theatre. Director Wayne Specht was part of the original company that developed the show and he directs it with precision. It is essential when you have six actors that have to create the illusion of braking and accelerating on a completely stationary stage.

Review: (Ottawa) Fly Me To The Moon

Moonstruck

by Jim Murchison 

@JimMurchison

Fly Me to The Moon is the second play by Marie Jones to play in Ottawa this season. The first one was Stones in His Pockets and both have been directed by insightful Irish Canadian John P Kelly. Sarah Waghorn's set focuses on the stage right bedroom but the brownstone townhouses are a prominent backdrop reminding you that you are in working class Belfast. The set is simple and honest, like the play. 

The action takes place primarily in the bedroom of Davy Magee, an 84 year old invalid who is a fervent Frank Sinatra fan that loves to play the horses. He is under the care of, among others, Frances and Loretta. Although Frances and Loretta are the only characters we see on the stage, their conversations inform us of the struggle of a host of characters and their lives in Belfast.

Review: (Ottawa) The Secret Mask

Within (and without) the Family

by Jim Murchison

Usually, the conflict and resolution of family rifts and the discovery of truths that we all recognize and relate to makes for good theatre. When it is layered and crafted as meticulously as Rick Chafe's understated masterpiece The Secret Mask it makes for great theatre. Most of the time we grow up not learning enough about each other, not speaking our minds and harbouring our resentments, but in The Secret Mask father and son meet as virtual strangers. George never really knew his father Ernie. Ernie left when he was two. At the beginning of the play the father is more the child, learning to speak and grabbing at fragments of thoughts in an effort to pull himself back to cognition after a stroke has severely reduced his memory.  George naturally resents his father deeply for leaving and dislikes him more for what he imagines him to be because he has never really known him.

Review: (Ottawa) East of Berlin

Simon Bradshaw on stairs (photo credit - GCTC/Andrew Alexander)

The Walled City

GCTC offers a work which is mysterious, thought-provoking and layered

by Jim Murchison

Before the play starts, as you enter the theatre there is a sense of ominous mystery and foreboding. An iron stairwell winds down from somewhere stage right. Wooden crates are stacked everywhere. An unused stone fireplace centre stage is filled with luggage. There are several light fixtures but not a single shade. All the light bulbs are bare and exposed. Black metal poles jut out from various angles, looking like God has been playing pickup sticks in a bomb shelter and at any moment all could collapse. Light spills through grates creating horizontal shadows that imply we are peering through blinds into some secret forbidden place.  

Set designer Ivo Valentik and lighting designer Martin Conboy have created an atmosphere that almost creates a living breathing character. The set and lighting implies we are going to see something mysterious, thought provoking and layered; and we do.  

Review: (Ottawa) Blood on the Moon

D'Arcy McGee

Filling In (Well)

Blood on the Moon at GCTC ropes in the audience

by Jim Murchison

The play originally set to open last night was You Fancy Yourself, but due to a serious illness, actress Maja Ardal on Doctor’s advice was forced to withdraw.  The news is that she is responding very well to treatment and the Artistic Director Lise Ann Johnson hopes to bring You Fancy Yourself to GCTC patrons at a later date.

Pierre Brault was asked to step in with his acclaimed solo show, Blood on The Moon and he accepted. The play is about a little known but interesting piece of Canadian History, the trial of James Patrick Whelan, the alleged assassin of Thomas D’arcy McGee.  Canada was less than 1 year old on April 7, 1868 when McGee was slain by a gunman’s bullet in the back of his neck. Many believe that Whelan’s ghost still haunts the streets of Ottawa and it is his ghost that seeks redemption in this play, looking for the fairness he never received in life.

Review: (Ottawa) A Midwinter's Dream Tale

(photo credit: Andrew Alexander)

Well, Virginia...

Merging makes for a romp for Company of Fools

by Jim Murchison

A famous 1897 editorial response to an 8 year old Virginia O’Hanlon in the New York Sun proved beyond a shadow of a doubt the existence of Santa Claus. Recent films and editorials tell us there is no Shakespeare! The Company of Fools must take us for a pack of idiots. A Midwinter’s Dream Tale is allegedly written by Bill Shakespeare and a Company of Fools. Indeed! Everyone knows Shakespeare doesn’t exist. William Shakespeare is a marketing device; he’s a fictional character dressed in a dandy’s clothes and a ridiculously large collar used to sell a product: the Don Cherry of the 16th century. He’s an interesting, colourful character but not real in any way. Oh well, regardless of who actually authored this production; merging A Midsummer Night’s Dream with The Winter’s Tale is an entertaining and lively romp.