Sunday Feature: Louise Pitre on Company

 

                                                                    (photo by Trish Lindstrom)
The Gift of Company
by Louise Pitre

Louise Pitre earned a Tony nomination for her role as Donna Sheridan in Mamma Mia. She has starred in Gpsy at the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre under Gary Griffin's direction; On The Rocks, her first self-penned one woman show at Theatre Passe Muraille in Toronto, Annie at Young People's Theatre (YPT); Mame, Goodspeed Opera House in Connecticut, The Toxic Avenger (directed by John Rando); A Year With Frog and Toad for YPT in Tornto (she played Toad); Piaf, Les Miserables - Toronto, Montreal, Paris and more. Ms Pitre is the winner of four Dora Mavor Moore Awards all for best performance by a leading lady in a musical. She was a judge on CBC's Over the Rainbow - Canada's search for Dorothy in Andrew Lloyd Webber's production of The Wizard of Oz and can be seen as the host of CTV's series Star Portraits on Bravo TV. Ms Pitre is the recipient of three honorary degrees from the Royal Conservatory of Music, Humber College and her alma mater, The University of Western Ontario (Honorary Doctorate of Music). She has four recordings.  www.louisepitre.com

I am in rehearsal for 'Company'. I am a Founding Artist of Theatre20. Gary Griffin is directing 'Company'. 

This is the culmination of a lot (more than a lot) of preparation and the realization of a dream. To be in a room with a cast like this one is the thing you like to imagine as a performer.

It is all there for us to execute. And to be doing this piece in particular is a gift. The kind of gift you wish for and shines in your mind for years and years. 

We are so lucky that Gary Griffin has agreed to direct us. He sees what most others don't see.

The Abominable Showman: Tom Kitt and American Idiot

Photo Courtesy Type A Marketing

Ain’t nothing like a Pulitzer
Pulitzer and Tony Award-winning composer Tom Kitt sits down for a frank tete-a-tete about the landmark Broadway musical American Idiot – which headlines Quebec City, Montreal, Kitchener, Hamilton and Toronto in early 2014 – and what it feels like to see one’s name up in lights on the Great White Way …

by Richard Burnett 

@bugsburnett

John Cameron Mitchell famously debuted his drag-punk rock musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch at the gloriously rundown Jane Street Theatre in NYC’s West Village back in 1998, the very same venue where Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer and conductor Tom Kitt kicked off his sensational Broadway career with a bang back in 2002, working on the raunchy Debbie Does Dallas: The Musical, which was adapted from the 1978 porn film that starred Bambi Woods. 

“That was one of my first big shows,” says Kitt who has since gone on to score such musicals as the landmark Next to Normal (for which he won the Pulitzer with his old friend Brian Yorkey, with whom he attended the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theater Workshop as a team when they were both students at Columbia University) and, of course, the Tony and Grammy-winning rock musical American Idiot, for which Kitt arranged the music of Green Day for the Broadway stage.

The North American national tour of American Idiot – which tells the story of three lifelong friends forced to choose between their dreams and the safety of suburbia in a post 9/11 world – will headline in Quebec City (Jan 2-3, 2014) and Montreal (Jan 4-5) before headlining several cities across Ontario in March 2014.

“American Idiot is a wonderful musical and I am so proud to be a part of such a visceral show,” Kitt told me this week.

In a Word... Anton Lipovetsky on his musical Cool Beans

(photo - cropped - by Brandon Gaukel)

Dreams Manifesting

by Gaëtan L. Charlebois

Playwright Anton Lipovetsky is a writer, composer and actor. Most recently, he performed at Bard on the Beach in Measure for Measure and Elizabeth Rex and composed/sound designed Midsummer Night's Dream at Studio 58, where he is a graduate. Other credits as composer include The Park (Studio 58), FLOP! (Delinquent Theatre) and Broken Sex Doll (Virtual Stage) which earned him the 2013 Jessie Award for Outstanding Composition. He is the recipient of the 2011 Mayor's Arts Award for Emerging Theatre Artist and the 2012 Jessie for Most Promising Newcomer. This winter, he can be seen in Carousel Theatre's Seussical as The Cat in the Hat.

CHARPO:  First, tell our readers about your personal journey to this production and, while we’re at it, how much you are participating in the show (and whether you’ve been present in productions of your pieces before).

LIPOVETSKY: It's been two years since Solo Collective commissioned me and my writing partner / friend Ben Elliott to write a musical. We went through tons of different ideas—a farm, an ice winery, a mad scientist's mansion, a book club... Nothing seemed to stick... It was our first time being commissioned from scratch and I think the amount of choice was intimidating... We didn't know what we wanted to write about, or “say.” After we went separate ways over this project (Ben's on tour now rocking it in Chelsea Hotel) I began exploring the hipster-coffee-shop-world further and uncovered a theme I was really interested in-- identity. Where does it come from? How do you define yourself...and is that even possible? With dramaturg Aaron Bushkwoski and Director Rachel Peake's guidance I began developing some characters that I've really fallen in love with. And so began the long process to get to this full musical (it's about 70 pages with 12 full musical numbers). I reached out to the talented writers I know and took as much advice from them as I could. Many times I questioned whether I was cut out for it and I faced writer's block constantly--I'm so new to writing and I feel like I'm constantly learning things, basic things, through trial and error, and the trials and the errors added up into something of which I'm quite proud. Always trying to push myself. Now, I'm ready to enjoy the process and watch others bring their talent to it, bring it to life. Usually on a musical that I compose for I am also musical directing the actors, but this time I have Mishelle Cuttler's great vision and guidance—I feel lucky to have her perspective and participate simply as the writer. In rehearsal I'm observing, making changes wherever I can to tighten the script and score. Soon I'll need to get out of everyone's way completely, give them the space they need to make the show their own.