Sunday Feature: TJ Dawe on directing Never Shoot a Stampede Queen

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by TJ Dawe
@TJ_Dawe

TJ Dawe is a Vancouver based writer/performer/director/dramaturge. He's participated in more than 100 theatre festivals. He's been involved, in one way or another, in the creation of 30 or so plays. One of them has been made into a movie starring Daniel Radcliffe. Another one has been touring the world for 10 years. Seven have been published.

I’m in Kamloops. Directing the premiere of a solo show. Adapted by Mark Leiren-Young from his memoir Never Shoot a Stampede Queen. It tells the story of his first journalism job, as a reporter for the Williams Lake Tribune in 1985. 

Mid-wifing this show is bringing to mind something I once read about P.G. Wodehouse. I’ll get to that in a bit. 

If you don’t know where Williams Lake is, don’t worry. Neither did Mark, when he got the job. The opening line of the show is “Where the hell is Williams Lake?” It’s in Northern BC. It’s a mill town, population 13 000. 

Mark worked there for a year. He went in with the brash attitude of any city-bred 22- year old university graduate, thinking this job would be a stepping stone to a real reporting gig, at a real newspaper in a real city. That goal did actually come to fruition - Mark has written for many major newspapers and magazines since then (he’s currently the head theatre writer for the Vancouver Sun). Not to mention writing scads of songs, sketches, plays, screenplays, teleplays, biographies and autobiographies (he has a memoir coming out this week, titled Free Magic Secrets - about a disastrous magic show he and two friends put on in their late teens). But in less than a year of arriving in Williams Lake he grew to value the place and the people who lived there. Against all probability, he found himself sticking his neck out to help form a Union at the newspaper, in spite of physical threats and the easy out of an already secured better job in Vancouver. 

Book Excerpt: Free Magic Secrets Revealed by Mark Leiren Young

The Coolest Thing

[Publisher: We are enormously pleased, today, to be offering the first in an occasional series of excerpts from published Canadian books by theatre writers. GLC]

Mark Leiren-Young is a playwright, screenwriter, journalist, author and occasional contributor to The Charlebois Post. His bestselling book, Never Shoot a Stampede Queen (Heritage, 2009), won the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour. His stage plays have been produced throughout Canada and the US, and have also been seen in Europe and Australia. He has written extensively for TV, including the premiere episode of the series Grand Illusions: The Story of Magic. As a journalist, he has written for such publications as TIME, Maclean’s, Utne Reader and the Walrus. As a journalist and magic fan he has interviewed Doug Henning, David Copperfield and Penn and Teller’s Penn Jilette.

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When Lisa saw the blade of the guillotine race toward the back of Randy’s neck, she began to scream. It sliced, then stopped … with a sickening thud. The executioner smiled, satisfied. Lisa started to cry. And her lover’s headless body twitched, then lay there motionless until finally it shouted, “Normannnnnnn!”

The arms of the corpse flailed until two not-so-dead fingers connected with the latch holding its head in place. “That hurt.”

Lisa stopped sobbing, bent over to look at the man she was mourning and scowled. “Your head’s still there.”

“No problem,” said Randy.

“And you didn’t bleed. Weren’t you supposed to bleed this time?”

“I didn’t bleed? Normannnn!”

Vancouver Playhouse Memories

PLAYHOUSE MEMORIES

by Mark Leiren-Young

[Mark Leiren-Young is Vancouver Editor of The Charlebois Post as well as a playwright, writer and pundit. This article appeared in The Tyee where he is also a frequent contributor]

One of the most magical experiences I've had in the theatre was walking through the doors of the Vancouver Playhouse and discovering the stage had been replaced by a mountain. The play was K-2 and as brilliant as the set was, the performances by Terrence Kelly and Tom McBeath as two stranded climbers were even better. I became a bit of a groupie for both actors after that – if either of them was in a show, I wanted to see it. I still do. The first time I heard the name Robin Phillips (one of Canada's most acclaimed directors) was when I wondered who the wonderful actor was onstage opposite William Hutt in the Playhouse production of The Dresser. I'm sure a play had broken my heart before that night, but right now I can't remember when.

SERIES: Vancouver Playhouse - What Went Wrong?

Curtains for the Vancouver Playhouse

With no hero in sight, the theatre is closing. In its honour, let's keep the arts centre stage.

by Mark Leiren Young

[Mark Leiren-Young is Vancouver Editor of The Charlebois Post as well as a playwright, writer and pundit. This article appeared in The Tyee where he is also a frequent contributor]

News that an arts organization is dying can be a little like news about the impending death of a comic book superhero. Superman, Batman and Captain America never seem to stay dead very long -- although every so often they're briefly revived with new characters wearing the capes and costumes.

So when I heard the Vancouver Playhouse was bringing down the final curtain last Saturday after 49 years, my first thought was the company wasn't really dead. This was a play for an emergency cash infusion, because unlike the infamous deceased parrot in the classic Monty Python sketch, an arts organization can always be reanimated. All it takes is a big enough cheque.

Blog: Theatrum, October 22, 2011

by Mark Leiren-Young 
(Reprinted with permission leiren-young.com)

Not long after Never Shoot a Stampede Queen was published, one-man-show sensation TJ Dawe called. He wanted to know if I was interested in adapting the book for the stage. After we met I discovered that he'd read the script for a production of an earlier incarnation of my crazy Cariboo tales that my friend Kennedy Goodkey (co-writer and star of The Beast of Bottomless Lake) performed at the Adelaide Fringe Festival. TJ had never forgotten the script or the stories and he wondered if I'd take another shot at a stage version.