First-Person: TJ Dawe on Lessons he's Learned on Directing Never Shoot a Stampede Queen

What I learned Before...why it is wrong
by TJ Dawe
@TJ_Dawe

The director's job ends on opening night. What a crock. 

Here's how the gig works, as I learned it in theatre school:
-the director directs the rehearsals
-she gives notes after every run through, tech dress, full dress, previews, and opening
-after that it's the stage manager's job to preserve the show in its opening night incarnation
-if the director wants to watch the show again after opening, she's welcome to buy a ticket like anyone else
-she is not welcome to give further notes to the cast, crew or designers. 

I didn't study to be a director. I studied to be an actor. I didn't study to be a writer, dramaturg, designer or stage manager either. I stumbled into self-created theatre, and wound up doing all of those things, going on instinct, learning by osmosis. Mostly outside the bounds of theatre as it's practiced in established, regional houses across the country. Outside the rules Equity fights to uphold. Working exclusively with new scripts. Creating them myself, or midwifing the works of others. Usually while on tour. 

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

Pinning Pages
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.