Day 18 - Saturday September 30 2006

- last day of rehearsal in Toronto - feels like we're already gearing up for the move - psychologically shifting ground - as hard as it was to leave Ottawa, leaving this environment of rehearsal and table-work feels odd - another leave-taking

- subtle changes to the atmosphere in the room - any new faces stand out - it's a protective environment that is harsh and nurturing at the same time - critical but informed eyes are sought but they tread lightly - speaking of new faces in the room: my one chance to see my son's show at Ryerson meant sitting in at the director's invitation to a tech rehearsal - not really fair for young actors to subject them to the sudden intrusion - not exactly strangers - worse still it's the Rainvilles - Simon's dad - another actor - bless them they did well in spite of the distraction

- Friday's run felt like we'd touched down and though wobbly we were on the ground - lots of folks in the room but all of them informed and part of the extended family - Richard let me go right away to race over to Ryerson

- we're creatures of change clinging to the comfort we know - there are still some line changes - it feels like we're on the ground now and really walking the landscape of the play - there's some distance to go yet but the pieces are fitting more snuggly

- more imagery: there's a climbing motif in Stephen's play and in rehearsal it really feels as though we are finding the handholds as we go - play-making is like that - we investigate the relative strength and security of the next spot to cling to and there are big risks - the distance to fall seems great but the heights are there to reach as well - so it's deliberate still - the real playing is in the descent - Jack Kerouac once described the image of running down a mountain side - and ultimately it's like that a free-fall of "flying" or running down the mountainside - every handhold noted remembered but sailing past

Thursday October 19 2006 - so the time somehow got away from me - so easy to devote a moment or two when away from home then too much to catch up on - we got straight into "tech week' when we got back to Ottawa - on set with media calls and building in sound and light cues and scene transitions - somehow in the midst of all that Richard grabbed moments to clear up beats and worked his way through the entire text and to overuse the recurring imagery: this time through we crawled every inch and got right down on the ground to look at the minute twists and bends we could follow - the tech period and the long days of Q to Q's feel like a gestation phase - there is time to be onstage "in play" yet waiting to be told where to pick something up so that a scene transition can be smoothed out - so a piece may gets worked and reworked - actors run lines with each other or on their own and it all just feels like a further settling in to the world

we had the luxury of two days off over the thanksgiving weekend and the out of towners came by for Monday Thanksgiving at our house - a home cooked meal - Victor roasted a leg of lamb - delicious - we had a big turkey and everyone brought trimmings treats

and then the week of the opening of a show - two five hour rehearsal days followed by previews and notes and then the adrenal extravagance known as opening night - there was a nice build to it - we got closer and closer to the story we wanted to tell - word of mouth seems to be very favourable so that has meant good attendance and an enthusiastic response

thanks for reading this - and thanks for your interest in live performance

Monday September 25 2006

Day 12 - the six day work-week got extended for me - yesterday I went out to Stratford again and got to do a call-back for a director - so no complaints about the opportunity but the week seemed longer than usual - Sandy had a nice dinner for me when I got back to town and I called family to say the audition had gone well - there were a few surprises - first there was a part they'd wanted me to look at - alas (or alack as the bard might say) that information never quite got to me - so got to do a cold-read as they are so quaintly named - "Take your time with it Paul, don't feel you have to rush. You're doing splendidly and we understand it's a bit last minute." - well they did understand and were patient and supportive and worked with me through the thing - the other surprise was getting to audition with Stephen Russell who played DeGuiche in the NAC-Manitoba Theatre Centre -Theatre Calgary production of Cyrano (with RH Thomson as Cyrano) - Stephen is a real treat - wickedly funny and a magnificent presence onstage - we shared a dressing room on that and he kept me loose and laughing

actors have a weird kinda family that stretches far and wide - intense rehearsal and run periods getting shows up and going - creates a kinship - in the last few weeks at Tarragon there's been a steady stream of familiar faces - we had a significant number of the NAC Hamlet cast around - and when we did Cyrano in Calgary during the time of ATP's Playwrites festival the place was crawling with theatre folk

how's the play going - well we're going to run the whole thing in about half an hour - we've worked right through the piece again and we're down to about ten thousand feet - the work is ever more detailed and choices are more focused - still some questions but a lot of anwers too - "Why did you say it that way?" - "Because it's dramatic!" I adored Jonathan's answer to Richard's question - not a lot of actors would have the honesty and gumption to avow that reasoning for an acting choice - it's been much quoted since - Richard's fighting to keep the tension building and the moments real - in my case he's on me when the choice is something pat or cliche or just my same old scthtick - sometimes it's hard to catch yourself slipping in to the comfortable or tried and true party favourites - he's looking for something else too in the telling of this - it's gotta be close to the bone and on the edge - there's has to be vitality - "It's not life and death - it's more!" to paraphrase Duffy Daugherty

I've been observing how different our approaches are - it's collaborative work and some people really like to hone the work more privately taking the directing notes and trying to internalize and incorporate - then there's folks that like to talk through the process aloud and engage in a creative stream of conversation that builds almost a concensus vision - I've never been a real talker preferring the note and mull approach - but the more I engage in the process the more I admire that ability to open things up - Saturday we hit some sticking points and Richard was quick to say these may be huge clues to something worthwhile lurking nearby - the discussion that followed brought a lot of insight from all sides - and I felt that we were being led to the place we needed to get to - a destination that was inevitable but not obvious at the outset

gotta go do the run - one last thing though - a gestural language and physical vocabulary start to get layered in - they've been there but now Richard points them out and locks in their thematic presence - they are texture - meant to add without drawing focus

hope I've shaken off what Michelle called the Monday dum-dums cause it's time to put the whole thing on it's feet

Thursday September 21 2006

Day 8 - Wed Sept 20 - Richard showed us two versions of a portion of a scene just to emphasize for us the playing style - in a play that moves very little there aren't a lot of "events" - not a lot happens so moments can be heightened if they are allowed the room to "land" - it's similar to the film/theatre style debate - actors talk about and wonder at the difference between stage and screen work - it's a matter of scale - what reads or is detectable from the back row of GCTC is different from a movie house with an actor's face magnified in close-up on a giant screen - it calls for a shift in perspective on the part of the actor - someone once described working with Bogart and thinking the guy's mystique way overblown - later that same day upon seeing rushes (screening of the day's filming) the actor got to see an extreme close up of Bogey and the meerest flicker of an eyebrow conveyed the whole story - mystique renewed

- in our case Richard suggests find complexity of meaning and intention in the stillness of a story where a stuff happens in a small way - a critic once used the term " the hurried pace of incident" to describe a story that threw so much at it's audience that the reviwer at least felt lost - this tale is being shaped around a restraint that echoes louder for the quiet that it happens in - there's a big point of departure our director has given us

- it does feel like departure since we are still new to the staging process - we had a run-through for the designers on Tuesday and since then we've gone back in for another pass - yesterday more detailed work on the first scene - feels like we did our initial fly-past and have now come down fron thirty thousand feet to twenty or so - the ground looks closer and things stand out more - but there's a lot to do yet -

Day 9 Thursday - more layers - we finish off some work on the first scene - Richard talks about the ability of Lawrence and Graves to engage in verbal jousting that has layers of meaning and intent - there's a deftness to the thinking that comes from encyclopedic knowledge - they memorized the OED (Oxford english Dictionary) just for fun - Richard describes a Tom Stoppard play where he puns at a power of four - his puns have four levels of twisted humour and still the imagery evoked stirs the gut - arguments delivered with a sang froid - gloves off - bare knuckle of banter

we're also now folding in the very practical aspects of scenic shifts - we choreograph the mechanics of reinventing the space to create another locale - a bit of precision movement that still manages to keep the story going without too much of a pause

my bike lost a peddle today so over lunch I'll try to fix that - my hour long rides from Mimico are feeling longer as the days turn autumnal and the west wind blows - the sun is shining today though and it's always a treat to ride in along the lake

Day 8 Tuesday September 18 2006

- the streets around the Tarragon are filled with movie production vehicles - they're shooting a film version of Hairspray - Christopher Walken was seen getting touch-ups on his make-up

-we're up on our feet today - blocking - that's the grown-up version of "okay you go over there and then I'll say" - as the stage pictures get created you can see actors' impulses bring lines to life and moments come into sharper focus - the process is luxurious in some ways cause we get to approach things at a snail's pace and revisit them as we work - you try it one way then another and meaning is uncovered and sometimes whole new ones discovered - and then when you run a scene it all goes by so qickly it seems to all get lost - it's not though and in terms of the playing we are still in early days - the shape is what we're after - it always reminds me of a visual artist's preliminary sketching - I loved seeing the Degas exhibit at the National Gallery some years back - his paintings of dancers included the changes in hand positions that he refashioned but left in - I'd never seen that done - it made me aware of the work that went in to the piece while at the same time suggesting the movement of a dancer - one painter friend poo-pooed the work saying it was old and staid but I found abstract worlds in the cheekbones of the dancers - and I loved being able to glimpse the work in "ghosts of drafts past"

we're away from the table work and that's a big change - there have been some high points and low moments too as changes come in - some of the scenes take off but I've seen a somewhat dispirited playwright as new offerings get dissected - Victor told a story of a playwright gathering up a new draft after a read at the table - without so much as word he simply took all the copies he'd printed out and deposited them in the wastebasket on the way out the door - next day he was back and the new draft sailed - it's a task for the brave - a metier to test one's mettle

Wednesday September 13 2006 -

Dear Blog - 15 minute break so a quick blog - Day 1 - first read - all Tarragon staff (15 of them)in the room sitting in chairs just beyond the table - at the table: writer, cast, and production team of Oxford roof climbers: - playwrightStephen Massicotte - director Richard Rose - Lise Ann Johnson dramaturg par excellente and GCTC Artistic Director - set and costume designer Charlotte Dean - lighting designer Graeme Thomson - our sound designer couldn't be there but his name is Todd Charlton - our stage manager Kathryn Westoll - and assistant stage manager Tara Tomlinson - script coordinator MK Piatkowski -Diane Pitblado our speech and dialect coach - (Wow! what a bunch - nervous? - what me nervous!?)

We first get to introduce ourselves around the room and state what part we play in the scheme of things - some directors like to get cute with this part and have funny or pithy comments accompany intros (tell a joke - describe a pet peeve - talk to your neighbour then introduce her/him to the rest of us) - but Richard likes to cut to the chase

Charlotte Dean who designed last year's No Great Mischief - gives a design presentation - so we are introduced to the world we will inhabit - a maquette with tiny chairs and tables and people gives us a feel of the overall look - the mechanics of entrances and exits are described - and with the help of the model and the taped out floor ( stage management is busy long before the actors arrive) we can get a sense of things to come -

then we read - I'm not sure what draft we're on by now but the read goes well - applause all around - at lunch Richard and Lise Ann confer with Stephen over where this latest pass at the play sits - there are changes coming and the afternoon is spent talking over impressions -

I quickly eat a lunch and slip into the fancy duds I've brought along - it's off to Stratford for me - an actor's life hi diddle dee dee - you get to work on a piece and focus but still there looms the need to find future employment - and when a call comes to audition for the Stratford Festival well ... - Marti Maraden made this happen for some of her Ottawa actors - over Marti's eight years of running the NAC she formed a strong link to the Ottawa acting community - she brought us in to work in a way that had never happened - in fact she announced from day 1 that she would be looking to that aspect of the Centre's mandate - so we"veterans" were invited on the mainstage and a younger generation that included Jonathan Koensgen and Simon Rainville and Jordana Cox and David Coomber and David Bernstein got to experience the 'big house' under Marti's nurturing direction - the NAC was revitalized over her tenure there and her loyalty to we actors continues - last year Kate Hurman had a season there and this past Monday a few more got to be seen by ... well let me tell you bout that -

- so I walk in to aroom full of the most celebrated band of actors and directors you could assemble - Richard Monette and Martha Henry and Diana Leblanc and Brian Bedford and Marti Maraden ... the table stretched across a rather large room and it was filled with Canadian theatre luminaries - my jaw went a little slack and I just sais: Wow!

-didn't sleep much that night

Day 2/3/4 - so the work around the table has continued as those initial responses to the
draft are implemented- Stephen is heroic md the writing goes on - Richard talked a bit yesterday about how we are of necessity cut off from the sources of inspiration out in the world as we bury ourselsves in work that supposedly mirrors life - then out of the blue comes news of another massacre in Momtreal and I think yeah we do seem to get cut off

It's now Thursday of the first week and we are still plugging away at the text and looking to be up on our feet soon - rough blocking (stage movement - well for a director it's kinda stage pictures) - this afternoon we had the inimitable John Stead in for gun work - he's the expert - fight directors like John S and our own John K come with a discipline to make sense out of violence and mayhem 0 guns are scary things and they can make boys act silly and everyone a little skittish - they make me nervous - I love the mechanics and the architecture of them but I hate the violent potential - what I adore in working with them is the stillness and the protocol that everyone gratefully embraces -

the work is exhausting somehow though and I feel drained - so home to my buddy Sandy's - next time some talk about the people you meet - play nice -P

Welcome to the Great Canadian Theatre Company's new Artist's Blog! The blog is a new way of bringing you, the reader, a 'behind the scenes' look at the inner workings of GCTC.
During each of GCTC 2006 - 2007 Season Lineup an actor, director, playwright or designer involved in the production of a specific play will write a journal on the creative process of putting that play on. If you've ever wondered what the rehearsal days are like for an actor, asked yourself what the stages of designing a set are, or have wondered how a director brings it all together, then this blog will give you a direct 'in the trenches' view on how it all happens, from the artist's shoes.


For our first blog series, we would like to introduce Ottawa's own Paul Rainville who will be playing the part of Jack in the GCTC and Tarragon Theatre World Premiere of The Oxford Roof Climber's Rebellion. Paul is known at GCTC for his parts in Better Living, Pauline and Turgenev, Criminal Genius, Inexpressible Island, Our Country's Good, The Collected Works of Billy The Kid, Summer of the Aliens, Art, McLuhan: The Musical, Relative Good and No Great Mischief.