Directing Without Baggage
A new tale as old as theatre
by Richard Wolfe
Richard Wolfe is a specialist in contemporary theatre and performance. Plays he’s directed include Terminus by Mark O’Rowe, Bashir Lazhar by Évelyne de la Chenelière, after the quake by Haruki Murakami (with Craig Hall), Stupidity (La Estupidez) by Rafael Spregelburd, Blue / Orange by Joe Penhall and Thom Pain (based on nothing) by Will Eno. He’s also dramaturged or directed many new Canadian plays including Omniscience by Tim Carlson – as well as scripts that have been translated from French, German, Japanese, Spanish, Mandarin and Russian. Mr. Wolfe has received four Jessie nominations for Outstanding Director and one for Significant Artistic Achievement, while the shows he’s directed have received over 40 nominations for excellence in Vancouver professional theatre. He’s been the artistic director of Pi Theatre for the past five years.
I’m currently directing Jason Rothery’s new play Inside the Seed for Upintheair Theatre. The show premieres at the Cultch in Vancouver, opening their Studio season on October 2. I like working on good new scripts. There are no production models to consider from famous interpretations of the past, nor is there any critical baggage to haul along during the process.
This is the first time I’ve worked with Jason, or more precisely, on a script written by Jason and it’s been a pleasure. As far as I can tell, Jason trusts the process and he trusts me. He didn’t balk when I told him I was going to stage the play in an alley configuration rather than a traditional proscenium. He embraced the notion that the actors, rather than entering and leaving the stage in a realistic way, would stay onstage throughout as a kind of contemporary chorus (we call it “the global organism”). He always sounds calm over the phone when I suggest tweaking a certain line or point out a logic trap or bring forward a general question from the company. His response to every request so far has been generously collaborative.
