The Brussels Post, 1978-07-05, Page 28GORDON McCALL
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16 —THE I3LYTH SUMMER FESTIVAL ISSUE, JULY 5, 1978
As rehearsals start
Cast is "finding" the play
[By Alice Gibb]
When Gordon McCall talks. of finding a play, he isn't talking
about the physcial process of locating a script he wants to stage.
,
Finding a ployls.-that peculiar process which goes on for weeks
before, the audience ever sees a play on •stage. It's the process
when actors, se t designers, the director and sometimes the
author take the fiat words and instructions from the printed page
and transform them into a believable drama for the play's
audiences.
If the director and cast are successful in finding the play, the
audience will never be aware of the process. If the director and
'cast aren't successful, then the audience will be painfully aware
and embarrassed or bored or angered by the unfinished product
they've seen on stage. They may, like many already have, giVe
up live theatre for the predictable monotony of the television se t
in their living room,
Gordon McCall, the director of His Own Boss, the second
presentation of the Blyth Festival of the Arts, and the cast of the
play, have been spending the last week in, the gymnasium of
Clinton High School, going through the painstaking process of
finding the comedy - understanding the lines, discovering what
dialogue works and what doesn't, gradually shading in
interpretations of the characters, and then finally starting to
block out the play - practising movements on stage and getting
afeel for how the play will run in front of an audience.
The director has worked with established scripts when he
directed plays by Bertolt .Brecht, ehildren"s plays and an' Italian
16th.. century comedy, The Three Cuckolds for theatre
companies in Vancouver.
He's also worked with new scripts - like The Collected Works
of Billy The Kid, by the former London poet, Michael Ondaatjc.
McCall met with Roulston earlier in the spring for the first
time, read the.script of His Own Boss quickly and then sat down
to discuss questions and problems he could about the play.
Ultimately, the final say about how the play will be staged
rests with the director, but -on the understanding that he won't
do anything against the intent of the writer.
McCall says the only problems with the play to date have been
to clarify the overall statement Roulston is trying to make and a
problem with one of the play's six characters. Although McCall.
hopes to have completed all the changes in the play's, script -four
days before the curtain goes up on opening night; as director, his
actual deadline for script changes can be as tight as five minutes
hefor -c the curtain goes up. -
In writing his play ; Roulston has been particularly conscious
of the fact some writers want to play director and offer
over-elaborate instructions about the play's characters,
movement on stage: etc. To avoid this-, the author has given a
brief description of the character at thc beginning of the script,
leaving the director leevoy in building the action on stage.
The cast are scattered about a table, pencils in hand,cokc cans
and coffee cups in profusic n, mimeographed scripts in loose leaf.
binders, reading through to.e play's first act slowly., line by line,
testing each other's reaction to the dialogue, discussing whether
one line should be softened so the character is less "bitchy'',
whether words in another line should be changed to clarify a
situation and tentatively experimenting with different expres-
sions when delivering their lines..
Rehearsals for the play started a week before, when the cast
met each other for the first time, listened to an explanation of the
Actors Equity -rules governing rehearsals (the director can work
his cast seven hours a day, with breaks for lunch and coffee) and
meeting the play's author, Blyth writer Keith Roulston,
The comedy, is about a young man from the city,fed up. with
working on the assembly line, who comes to a country town to
take over his late uncle's cheese factory. The idea for the play,
Roulston's second, came on one of his blackest days when he was
running his own small business in Blyth.
Although the play is humorous, the theme is slightly more
serious - you have to have small businesses as an alternative to
big business, if you don't have small businessmen then you.
won't have small towns, but if you. want small towns then the
• small businessMan has to believe someone cares about him and
the government doesn't always prove to be one of the agencies.
that seems to care.
Since Roulston had just finished an article on a cheese factory •
for his magazine The Village Squire, he decided this would be an
ideal setting for his play about the tribulations of running a small
business.
The idea for His Own Boss came to him, when he was in the
midst of rewriting The Shortest Distance Between Two Points,
his first play produced at the Blyth Festival last summer. He
stored his cheese factory idea until the end of the summer, then
mentioned it to James Roy, the festival's artistic director and
after Roy was convinced theidea had potential, he commissioned,
Roulston to put his ideas on paper.
Now the writer sits at rehearsals, listening as the cast
members slowly dissect each line of his script testing the play's
structure, the dialogue and the characters. Now and then he
answers questions from the cast about a character's background,
now and then he notes changes which will have to be re-written
into the final 'script.. It will still he -another two days before the
actors have finished going through the first act step by step.
From the director's point of.view, working with a new play,
one which has never been tested on stage, has both its
advantages and disadVantages. First; -since the author is both
alive and present, lines and even entire scenes can be changed,
and modified, so the final play is a compromise between author,
director and cast.
However, with an "old" script, a play by George Bernard
Shaw, for example, the director doesn't have to worry about
re-writing, and can spend extra time on finding a different
interpretation of the play.
McCall, Who teaches in the drama department of Queens
University, has worked with both "old" and "new" scripts.
After sitting in on the play for a few more days, Roulston will
stay out of the rehearsals until the cast are doing full run
throughs of the play.
Last year, Roulston found by the time opening night finally
arrived, half the lines in his play, also a comedy, no longer
seemed funny. The actors were scared the lines would die on
stage, and the writer found -•fie couldn't sit still long enough to
take a scat with the audience.
But, surprisingly, the audience did laugh - at the same lines
the writer and cast thought were stale. And each night the play
was produced, audiences would laugh at different lines, since
each audience brings a personality of its own to a performance.
By the end of the play, Roulston was able to sit through a
whole performance, but in the early days of •a production, he
wants to be free to walk out if things get too bad.
'Although. Roulston can qualify as an established playwright
by the end of this summer, few theatres in Canada are doing
Canadian plays. Many that are Specialize in plays about one
subject - e.i.the workingman or plays with a regional location so
Roulston's published play may sit for years before it's produced
again.
In the meantime, McCall and his actors - Peter Snell, Karen
Wiens; Heather Ritchie, Kate Trotter, Toni McCamus and David
Kirby - sit surrounded by the boxes and other paraphenalia
meant to represent the finished set for His Own Boss, and go
over and over the lines of the play.
if they find the play, if the. "play says it" as, McCall hopes, •
then the frustrations, the doubts; the long hours, the endless
cups of instant coffee, will be worthwhile. The -first time the
audience .reacts to a linep the first time the audience leaves 'the
theatre, still talking ab out what they've seen on stage, the
process will be complete.
Live theatre
is best.
This is the
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PLACE
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