First-Person: Director Philip Akin on The Whipping Man (Toronto)

Thomas Olajide and Brett Donahue (photo credit: Keith Barker)

Complications of Biblical Proprotions

as with most sea changes some people swim and others sink

by Philip Akin

[Philip Akin has been acting and directing for over 30 years. In 2000, he was a founding member of Obsidian Theatre, Canada’s leading black theatre company, and has served as its Artistic Director since 2006. In this role, he has worked tirelessly to provide opportunities and guidance for emerging artists. In 2002, he was part of the team that launched the Obsidian Mentor/Apprentice Program, a one-of-a-kind program that has so far helped 31 black artists embark on exciting careers as directors, dramaturges, producers, production managers, lighting, set and costume designers with some of the most established performing arts companies nationwide.]

It always seems like a surprise to me that Obsidian ended up doing a season based on freedom and what it means with two plays that have whips as central characters. I mean I am the guy who wouldn't let people in my first playwrights units write about immigrating to Canada, growing up Black in any small Canadian town, slavery or the Underground Railroad. I did that because I always believed that Black Theatre was being defined by just those subjects and I wanted to widen the vision as it were.

Picture of the Week, March 21, 2013

Rolline Laporte often does photos like this one for Yellow Moon at La Licorne in Montreal. Indeed, it is becoming her trademark: high def, outdoor setting, cutting colours (from a nevertheless reduced palette) and odd perspective. Here she has also captured the essence of the two central figures of the play - the waifish Muslim Leila (Sylvie De Morais) and the badboy Lee (Benoît Drouin-Germain) - and the essence of the play by putting the two in a vague place that may also be the scene of the crime that is central to the story. 

(Read our review)

The Album, March 21, 2013

Review: (Ottawa) Death Trap

(from the company website)

When Playwrights Kill It
by Jim Murchison

Ira Levin was a master of suspense when Stephen King was a neophyte. Deathtrap was the longest running comedy thriller on Broadway and a hit movie as well. For those that have seen it they need no synopsis and as the director's notes state, anyone that doesn’t know the play doesn’t want to know anything before seeing it. It would kill the fun.

  

The set design by Mike Heffernan is terrific. An A frame chalet style home serves as a work space and museum for the macabre. The walls are adorned with weapons, handcuffs and theatre posters. The staircase that goes to an upstairs catwalk leading to an offstage loft style bedroom is particularly well utilized. 

Things I Wish I Had Been Told in Theatre School

Things I Wish I Had Been Told in Theatre School

by Callam Rodya

[Here is an article everyone is talking about, not only in Canada, but around the world. We asked Mr. Rodya for rights to reprint it here and he very kindly agreed. Enjoy! If you wish to respond to the article and the subsequent discussion, visit Mr. Rodya's website. Or you can add the things you wish YOU had been told to the comments below and we will forward the response to the author. GLC]

Theatre school was great. It is great. But it can omit some of the more fundamental and important career lessons. School is, after all, a bubble. It’s not a natural professional environment.

So, with what little wisdom I have regarding a career as an actor, here’s a list of some things I wish somebody had told me in theatre school. Some of these lessons, I had to learn the hard way. Others simply would have saved me a bit of time.

1. “Stealing the show” is not a compliment. The ensemble is more important than your “moments”.
2. You’d be surprised how few people are willing to pay for theatre tickets when they aren’t your friends and family and have no personal connection to you whatsoever.
3. No, you can’t actually play forty and fifty-year-olds in your twenties. At least, no one will pay you to do it.
4. By the same token, there are very few roles in the theatre for twenty-year-olds.
5. The stage manager always works much harder than you. And technically, you work for him/her, not the other way around.
6. Most people don’t get drunk on Opening Night…because they have a show the next day…idiot. Oh, and cast parties are more likely to be cast dinners.

Review: (Vancouver) Maladjusted

It’s The System That Is Sick
more than a pill is required

by David C. Jones
Theatre For Living (formerly Headlines Theatre) works in communities using a variation of Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed technique. A topic is explored through community engagement, people connected to the subject matter share stories and thoughts. That information gets boiled down in a workshop setting and then a cast is chosen to help create a play. The casts are often real people and not actors.

Maladjusted is about the mechanization of the mental health system. People are compartmentalized for ease of care. Treatment cases are decided not on individual needs but on what box people fit into.

In a Word... Playwright (and producer!) Steve Galluccio

Learning What a Producer Does...and pays
We might be able to recoup our original investment in the end, but I doubt it.

Steve Galluccio is a playwright (Mambo Italiano), screenwriter (Funkytown) and television writer (Ciao Bella). He has also started to produce commercial theatre. The upcoming season at Centaur Theatre will open with his new work, The St. Leonard Chronicles.

CHARPO:  First, tell us how your relationship with 39 Steps began.

GALLUCIO:  I was in New York  (in 2009) with friends and we went to see this play 39 Steps that I knew nothing about. Denise Robert was sitting next to me and during intermission she said: "This could work in Québec I want it." And I said : "It could definitely work  and I want it too." It was a done deal, by the time the second act started, we decided we were going to bring this back home.

CHARPO:  Now, the process of getting rights and were they expensive?

GALLUCIO:   We came back to Montreal, went back to New York and met with the people at Samuel French who distributes the play worldwide I believe. We talked about our plans, they listened and said they would get back to us. They did, the rights were extremely expensive so Denise got in touch with the good people at Musicor to see if they were interested in becoming our partners, which they did. By October of 2009 the exclusive rights to 39 Steps in Canada were ours.