Sunday Feature: Interview - Eric Coates, artistic director GCTC

each other's resources
Eric Coates goes into the capital Fearless
by Jim Murchison

Eric Coates has fast established himself, not just  as an artistic director of an important Canadian theatre company but as a member of the Ottawa community. He has embraced not just his position but the community as a whole. He has found a different way to humorously make his point on cell phones by taking his pulse on stage while shutting his cell phone off and proving that survival is possible, to sending out security to confiscate them, to threatening to track people down at their place of employment. He is a natural showman and a passionate promoter. He takes theatre far more seriously than he takes himself. We sat down with him to talk about where he has come from and what's in the future. Hopefully we capture his excitement for his work in this interview.

CHARPO: First of all I wanted to thank you for doing this interview. It is wonderful how instantly you have become involved with the Ottawa community. Have you enjoyed the honeymoon period?

COATES: (laughs) Well yeah I have. It's been very busy. I've tried to see everything that I can. It's not an environment I've ever experienced before. The number of small companies, emerging companies in relationship to the one I'm running; it's a new experience, so I certainly feel that it's in my best interest to meet and greet as much as possible and see what's out there and hopefully turn it into something that benefits everyone. 

CHARPO: Well, it's been noticed. I see you and Jillian Keily frequently at stuff: everything from the Gladstone companies to the shows Evolution is doing. There is a mandate that you've indicated you're excited about. Where a theatre has a mandate to promote Canadian artists, Canadian ideas and Canadian plays, do you think that there is anything that limits you in what you can do within your mission statement? 

COATES: No, keep in mind that this answer is in line with my previous job where I was working with a similar mandate but a much more conservative constituency if you will, so for me it feels like the skies have opened in a good way. The clouds have parted and although I loved my old job, even within a Canadian context, I have so much more freedom to explore different topics. Just the simple fact that the political content isn't seen as something purely to agitate is a huge gift to me. The fact that there's not really the same concern about profanity on stage, things like that: it suddenly makes the palate a lot more colourful, there's a lot more artists I can work with.

The Devil's Advocate #1

The Devil is Making us do it...

(see all Devil's Advocate topics so far)

Welcome to a new feature on CharPo. Every once in a while a question has to be asked of people who love theatre which may be provocative or even incendiary. That's what this open forum/thread is for. Join the convo in comments below.

On to the business of Devil's Advocate #1!

Canada's unique Fringe circuit has habituated theatre-goers - especially young ones - to small shows at low prices. (Even with this premise, some bitch there are too many solos at the Fringe.) Is it possible that we have created a climate where companies outside of the Fringe can no longer charge a fair price for tickets? Have theatre-goers been trained by the Fringe to expect hit-or-miss productions? Has accelerated growth at some of the fests tipped the balance between good productions done by veteran artists and crap? In short:

Is the Canadian Fringe circuit ruining Canadian theatre?

Review: (Stratford) The Three Musketeers

Steven Sutcliffe (photo by Cylla von Tiedemann)

Buckle Your Swashes!
Director Miles Potter helms an impressively large production

by Stuart Munro

@StuartMunroTO

The seventeenth century is alive and well at the Festival Theatre thanks to a new production of The Three Musketeers, adapted by Peter Raby from Alexandre Dumas’s novel of the same name. The story follows the exploits of d’Artagnan as he makes his way from Gascony to Paris in hopes of joining the King’s Guards, the Musketeers. Along the way he befriends Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, falls in love with the beautiful Constance Bonacieux, makes enemies of religious and social leaders, and gets caught up in a religio-political drama that has the potential to tear France apart, and England along with it. If it sounds like a lot of story, let me assure you it is. And while the pace can sometimes be difficult to keep up with, the end result is one of good cheer and great action.

Review: (Stratford) Tommy

Robert Markus and company (photo by Michael Cooper)

Tastes of Reality
The spectacle of Tommy is mind-blowing, but at what cost?
by Stuart Munro
@StuartMunroTO

As the curtain came down on Tommy last night, the audience around me was jumping to their feet, screaming and cheering – a testament to the fact that they had had an amazing evening. As for me? Well. I was more confused than anything. Sure, I’d understood the (thin) plot. Yes, I’d enjoyed the music, the dancing, and several of the performances. But whatever it was that’d caused everyone around me to leap to their feet had been lost on me. If Tommy had a broader lesson to impart, I’d missed it completely.

Written by Pete Townshend and Des McAnuff, the show (often styled The Who’s Tommy), relates the story of Tommy who, after witnessing a murder via a mirror, is told by his parents, “You didn't hear it, you didn't see it, you won't say nothing to no one ever in your life.” And so Tommy becomes “deaf, dumb and blind,” seemingly unaffected by anything and everything – until he’s placed in front of a pinball machine by his cousin. Suddenly, Tommy is a wunderkind and a local hero. Over the next ten years, Tommy amasses a huge following, before his hearing, speech, and vision return to him.

Review: (Ottawa) Carousel

Spinning for Spinning's Sake 
by Jim Murchison 
@JimMurchison

The amount of dedication that it takes to do musical theatre is remarkable. The size of the productions at Orpheus and the general quality of the shows done by people outside of their regular day jobs is usually very impressive. Having said that I was concerned that Carousel might be a little dated. It is much more than that. It is a social dinosaur. 

Carousel is a musical based on the mediocre Ferenc Molnar play Liliom. It was very popular, probably for the strength of three well crafted songs, If I Loved You, June Is Busting Out All Over and You'll Never Walk Alone. The last song is so inspirational that Jerry Lewis used to close the MD telethons for Jerry's Kids with it. The rest of the song and dance numbers are little more than filler.

There are some very fine messages in Carousel: Don't worry about what other people think of you; Stick to your path and your principles; Don't let your parent's mistakes hold you back or use them as an excuse for your own failure. 

There is another message that is so out of place that it transforms what might be a trite but somewhat entertaining escape into a jawdroppingly stupid choice to perform at any level in this millennium. When someone that loves you beats you, it doesn't hurt. To be fair, the frame of reference here is after a ghost has struck his daughter she doesn't feel it and as I am not an expert on the paranormal perhaps that is the true effect of ghostly beatings. In the real world being beaten by someone you love sometimes wears off after a couple of generations. Sometimes.

creating a/broad, June 1, 2013

Filming (Part II)
by Cameryn Moore
@camerynmoore

When we last saw our intrepid heroine, she had just finished her first day of film production for the movie version of Phone Whore, and she felt like she was going to die, that it was too damn hot in the apartment where the film was being shot and all the water in her body had been expressed out through her forehead, and furthermore she was a talentless wooden puppet of a performer who had neither the stamina nor the style to make it through the rest of the shoot.

Things got better.

For one thing, the weather turned to shit, which seems like it should be a bad thing, but remember, we were indoors. And if I’m going to be trapped in an apartment where we can’t open the windows because a refreshing breeze might blow the amber gel out of alignment at a crucial moment…. If I’m going to be stuck in that apartment, then a difference of 5 or 10 degrees outside makes a HUGE difference inside. I no longer had to mop my brow, or have someone do it for me, every 10 minutes. It also seemed like a steady, sullen grey outside made controlling the lighting inside a lot easier, so yay for that.

Theatre For Thought, June 1, 2013

“BEWARE THE IDES OF MARCH” - AND OTHER WARNINGS OF THE FRINGE
joel fishbane

The old timer was a veteran of the Canadian Fringe circuit. In the early 90's he toured several plays and enjoyed a modest success. He was a scant 21 then and now, almost 40, he’s that silver fox reminiscing about the good old days. It’s 2001 and I’m a blast from the past, the physical embodiment of his younger self. This is probably why he’s picking on me. All I want to do is get drunk at the Montreal Fringe Festival. But the old timer wants to kill the buzz. 

“Beware!” he croaks. “Beware ‘The Ides of March’!”

“March was two months ago,” I say.

But he isn’t referring to the date. The Ides of March is a one-man show about a young boy’s coming of age, as told from the perspective of his tricycle. “Beware!” the old timer croaks again. “It’s terrible!” Then he sits back and looks around at the army of artists swirling through the beer tent. “Nothing makes you feel your age worse then a Fringe Festival.” 

“What do you mean?” I ask.