If it happens once it can and will happen again (and maybe that's not such a bad thing).

This is the second rule of theatre. In the truest sense it means: When you discover a moment in a story – a truthful moment – it will happen again and again, even more naturally as you incorporate it. But of course, as you might have guessed, it’s not always that positive. It can also mean that if something goes wrong, it can go wrong again and again until it’s truly fixed.

With this knowledge, I present to you this week’s blog.

I left off last week, telling you about our interesting “keep-me-on-my-toes” preview, in which, among other things, the wooden leg of our table snapped when Vincent (Tremblay) leaned too hard on it.

The next day is the big Opening Night – the true unveiling of the show to patrons, subscribers, colleagues, friends, reviewers, peers and more.

I’m happy to say that it went super well. This is in part due to a minor miracle from our designer Cory Sincennes. He tracked down and found the exact wooden table leg to match our other table on set. (Thanks to friend/angel Jim Meer at the Citadel who helped out, giving us one they had in stock and had no present use for.) Cory called me with the news the morning of opening and, after our disastrous night before, it felt a little like winning the lottery. Okay, maybe not that good. But to say I was happy was an understatement. Our Technical Director, Paul Bezaire, was perhaps even happier to hear this. To replace a section of the table is much easier, and more effective, than trying to find two new tables that match, that are also in the aesthetic that Cory was attempting to create (a run down St. Petersburg bar in 1969) - and only a few hours to do it in. So yes, to use a baseball analogy, Cory hit a huge home run late in the bottom of the ninth inning.

The news also meant that maybe – just maybe – luck was turning our way.

The whole week went great in fact and the show settled into its run without any major mishaps beyond the normal realm of a theatre performance. Meaning, yes things were still tried and dropped and changed but the show was now a well-oiled machine.

On the second weekend of the run, we celebrated the era of the play – 1960s – and the production, hosting a “Party Like It’s 1969!” post-show shindig for audience and friends of our Board. Kind of like a “friend-raiser” type of event. We partied up or down to the beats from the 1960’s with our extraordinary sound designer Dave Clarke spinning the beats for us (staff, friends and some board members) to dance in our lobby until the wee hours of the morn.

Giving the camera some 60s lovin'

As you can see, everything was going great.

And then the second rule of theatre occurred – if it happened once, it will happen again.

As I was watching the show one evening, the table broke again. It was in the same exact place in the script as the preview night – at the top of Act Two when Tremblay leans on the table. I immediately started to get upset – not with them, not with anyone. Just upset at the situation. I respect the script and the production so much, I hate to see the audience get removed from the experience in any way.

However, as quickly as I got upset, I was suddenly laughing. This time it was WAY funnier. The actors had had it happen before and they knew the play better now, so they were able to riff on it, surf the laughs a little and entertain us. In fact, I found out later, that they entertained us so well that folks there that night thought it was all a part of the show.

Kerouac, Tremblay & the soon-to-be-broken table

It was what I would call a moment of theatre magic.

The next day a steel leg was pulled from our basement, touched up with paint by Paul Bezaire and put into service for the next show. No they did no longer match. However, it was a more solid fix and now Vincent could lean all he wanted too. Sometimes, that’s just more important. I must confess that if we did have the money, I would be more than tempted to break the table leg every night! I’m serious – it was such a great scene.

However, I am happy that me and everyone else there that night were treated to a piece of theatre magic – a hilarious gift that was just for us. Sometimes the things that are going wrong, turn into those perfect moments that you’ll remember for years down the road.

Bradley

PS - Thanks so much for the outpouring of concern for my girl Bella. I'm happy to say that she's doing well - her cone is off and she's already back to her usual antics. (Meaning, my rest is also over!)

Week Four – Re-learning the first rule of theatre: “What can go wrong, will go wrong.”

In week four, we have preview performances on Tuesday and Wednesday, open on Thursday and then perform three more shows for the full week. During the day on Preview Nights (Tuesday & Wednesday), we’re still teching and tweaking the show. It's anything from trying to get the haze just right with a proper setting, to integrating new props and locking in brand new lighting and sound cues. Any and all tweaking is allowed during preview rehearsals – we want to get things just right, after all. All of this is done from noon to 5 PM. Then it’s dinner break, with cast and crew called to be back in the theatre at 7:00pm.

Tuesday Night Preview
Tuesday night. The first preview. We have, what I would call, a dark show. This often happens as we are trying to find the right tone or "the sweet spot" for performance. It’s still a good performance, just a bit darker than the ideal. We talked about it as a team that night and figured out what alterations we needed to make.

  

Wednesday Night Madness

Understandably on Wednesday night we're all excited to see the performance after all of our adjustments. However, it just so happens that that’s when the primary rule of theatre takes hold: What can go wrong, will go wrong.

The flying cue ball - One of many "surprises" on Wednesday night's preview

ACT ONE

The house is almost full and there's the usual buzz of excitement in the air. Our cell phone warning goes off – a not-exactly-subtle, not-exactly quiet cue of ringing cell phones swirling around the space, moving into phone ringing ridiculousness. You immediately see folks reaching to turn off their phones. Works like butter.

After that’s all quieted down, we call the GO CUE, and now the show machine actually starts. All good to this point.

Lights up on Brian Dooley. He delivers the first three lines of the show. Great. Good. Everything is going smooth.

Until I hear it. The crinkling of candy-wrapper number one.

Whatever.

Candy-wrapper number two.

No big deal.

Candy-wrapper number three.

Slightly irritating because I’ve missed Dooley’s fourth, fifth and sixth lines. But it’s okay. It happens. We get through it. I make a mental note to institute a candy-wrapper warning for the rest of the season and we move on. Things finally start to move along nicely. The actors are in the “sweet-spot” as I like to call it, and all in all, everything is going well.

Or so I think.

I spoke too soon.

Near the end of the first act, we subtly drop light snow in the window of the set as Tremblay relives a moment from his childhood. During what is normally, in my humble opinion, a magical moment, our elegant light snowfall becomes a large avalanche. It obviously gets a big response from the audience. The poor actors know something is up, but since they don’t see it, they have no idea what. Thankfully, we all have a good sense of humour and we laugh it off at intermission saying ‘well better tonight than tomorrow at the opening’.  Ha ha.

ACT TWO

We should’ve known that Act Two was off to a troubled start when we have to ask two ladies to remove their coffee cups from the stage.

Then, at the top of the act, as Tremblay waits for Jack Kerouac to finish reading his play Les Belles-Soeurs, he leans on the table. Well this night, the table – which we’ve been rehearsing with for weeks - snaps and is suddenly in two pieces. Fortunately, the audience howls as it does play well into the scene. The actors take it in stride and even add their own comments, creating more laughs. And even more laughs as Tremblay tries to re-set up the now broken table. Very Charlie Chaplin. It's all very funny, but the actors now have to be thinking ahead to the end of the play, since the blocking is going to be completely different with the table out of commission. Not that I'm worried about that – I know they can handle it.

The next surprise awaiting us: audience participation. 

About five minutes after that, Michel Tremblay sits down at the newly broken table, and I hear a booming voice from the audience: “Don’t be scared go get him a beer!” I thought he said, “Don’t be scared go get him a dress!” so I'm super confused why – in this play – he thinks Kerouac should be wearing a dress. But whatever – everyone has their own interpretation, right? (I was later corrected by the actors, who thought my version was much funnier.) This happens more often than you'd think. An audience member will forget that they're not at home and we're not the TV that you can just yell at or talk to. Don’t get me wrong, it can definitely be a compliment – it means they’re very engaged, however it can also take the actors and audience out of the scene!

Then, of course, two cell phones go off right after each other. The first, in the middle of the audience and the second, down right, where the ladies with their coffees are sitting.

Okay, can't get worse right?

Wrong.

Tremblay and Kerouac start playing pool. I should have figured. Tremblay hits the cue ball so hard that it not only flies off the table (as planned), but flies right off the stage and almost hits one of the coffee ladies, (there is justice), but thank our lucky stars it’s only a close call.

Then, during the climatic struggle when the characters actually wrestle with each other, one of the small booze bottle flies off the stage - again close to hitting one of the coffee ladies down front. Seriously? Seriously.

Thankfully, that was the last of our bad luck for the night.

After all that – thanks to an awesome script, actors and crew – folks still stood for a standing ovation. I immediately went backstage after and congratulated the team for getting through it. They were excellent - it was just everything around them seemed to fall apart! 

So, once again I was reminded that what can go wrong, will go wrong - and that, my friends, is why we have previews in the theatre.

Bradley

PS - If you haven't seen them yet, here are a couple video previews of the show.

 

Week Three - A curveball in the middle of Tech Week

Aaaah... tech week. The week of 12-hour days. (With allotted feeding time, thank goodness.) We simply call them 10 out of 12’s. Despite the longer days, it’s the week I look forward to the most as a director. All the elements – from costumes to lighting to sound - finally arrive and need to be knitted together so they can start working as a cohesive unit.

Mid-week, we start our Cue-to-Cue or Q-to-Q. That’s when we carefully craft each change of lighting, sound or multi-media from cue-to-cue or moment-to-moment. I always feel like painter who has been scratching away at a charcoal drawing, dreaming of colour. I’m exuberant when all my paints and brushes have suddenly arrived, but I can’t linger in it - I have to quickly finish the painting for the exhibition. Without overlooking anything, of course. In my case, I’m painting with sound, light and actors – a three or even four-dimensional painting.

Michel & Ti-Jean Tech Week: a rollercoaster ride

The Gifts
Cory Sincennes and Matthew Skopyk are not only talented, but it turns out that we all share a similar aesthetic. I can’t tell you how much of a gift this is. It makes things go so much smoother when we’re all imagining the same movement of sound and light to tell the story. It also helps to have a wonderfully talented stage manager like Cheryl Millikin, who always keeps things moving.

The Curveballs
But, of course, things never go totally according to plan. Sometimes life has a way of interrupting your work routine. Just as we started tech week for Michel & Ti-Jean, my dog Bella got sick. Something she ate got stuck inside her and when I returned home from work on Monday evening it was obvious that she needed medical help. She spent two long nights in the downtown Edmonton Veterinarian’s Emergency Clinic and just as we were starting cue-to-cue on Wednesday morning, she was undergoing the knife. I admittedly, (and hopefully understandably!), broke one of the rules of the theatre, and took a phone call from the vet during the somewhat intense cue-to-cue rehearsal. Thankfully, it was all good news. Bella’s operation was a success, she was recuperating and no one begrudged me too badly for taking the call! (For those concerned dog lovers, it turns out Bella had eaten some cloth, which was wrapped tight in grass inside her intestine. She would have died without medical help. She is now resting at home with her new friend, the dreaded cone. See picture below.) 
 
So in the end, tech week is a long week that on one level pushes you to be painstakingly slow as you examine every moment, and on another forces you to move faster than you thought humanly possible. And, as demonstrated this time, it always has its ups and downs, its blessings and its surprises. And despite the rollercoaster ride this time, it remains my favourite week of the process. 

Bella - also known as tech week curveball

The Second Week

The stunning set designed by Cory Sincennes

The second week: the week that the volume gets turned up. We all start talking a little louder, moving a little quicker. Things get more exciting, we get more intense – from the outside you can almost see the Roxy buzzing.

We kick off Monday with the cast moving in. We’re very lucky at Theatre Network because in the second week we get to rehearse on the stage with the actual set. It may not be fully complete or painted, but it’s safe to rehearse on. I can’t tell you how useful this is to the process, and how much I appreciate it. We’re able to rehearse in the building because the technical crew and designers are gracious enough to switch to an evening schedule. We finish our day at 6 PM and then they start their work - painting, building, hanging and focusing lights. Often there is a lovely cross over between 5:45 and 6:30 where all of us – cast, crew, designers, technicians and administrative staff will all be in the building at the same time. The actors will be leaving, but the crew – Paul, Ashley and Scott - are waiting in the lobby to start work and the administrative team Nicole, Katy, Jessica and Jill will be having an after work meeting with Board Members Paul Manuel, Gail Hall, Michele Toma, Ross Reekie, Dianne Johnstone, Seham Chadi, Bruce Duncan and Amanda M. Read.

It's a hive of activity built on the anticipation of the coming show - I love it!

This week we made some radical changes to our blocking from week one. It happens sometimes, especially after moving to the set, and you have to be flexible and open to change. For example, it became clear to us after being on stage the first day, (mind you it took the whole day to realize this), that we had to flip the positions of Michel Tremblay and Jack Kerouac at the primary table. Sounds small, but this one change had a profound effect on the opening scene of the play and the rest of the scenes. It seems strange, but by making that switch, the scene suddenly popped for us. Even though the first time we tried it, it radically messed with the actual scene, in the end it left us excited and inspired to see what other choices – better choices – we could discover.

It’s during the second week that you really have to remember to be a sensible artist and by that I mean SENSIBLE - you sense that there is greater potential than the run you just had. Keeping this in mind made all the difference for us this week and we haven’t looked back - it was the right choice.