The Citizen, 2007-02-22, Page 23By Paul Ciufo
“Today we’re going to find a
Rachel, and a Milli, and a Fred,” said
Eric Coates, artistic director of the
Blyth Festival.
It was a frigid January morning, -
14°C with the wind chill, and Coates
was referring to roles in plays that
won’t run until the heat of summer.
Bundled in heavy winter clothes, he
waited to feed a Toronto parking
machine that refused payment until
precisely 10 a.m. (it was 9:57 a.m.
— “damned computers,” muttered
someone nearby, “a human being
would let you”).
In Blyth, population 1,000,
there aren’t any parking meters at
all.
Actors are scarce too in Blyth in
January, so Coates had arranged to
hold the auditions at The Tarragon
Theatre. Coates had also agreed to
let this playwright sit in for several
hours as he and director Marie Beath
Badian trawled for talent.
The Rachel referred to by Coates
is a character in my play Reverend
Jonah, which Badian will direct in
August in Blyth. The actress
selected to play Rachel will also
portray Milli in Gary Kirkham’s
Queen Milli of Galt, to be directed
by Coates himself in July.
In the warmth of the studio the
first actress appeared, pale and
pretty, wearing blue jeans and
medium black heels with no socks.
Her one-page résumé, accompanied
by a glossy photo, listed appearances
in TV soap operas and Law and
Order, and noted theatre roles
including Sibyl in Private Lives and
Honey in Who’s Afraid of Virginia
Woolf played on stages across
Canada and the U.S.
She had at her disposal a dozen
accents, from Scottish to German,
and was an accomplished dancer.
In his deep tenor voice, Coates
informed the actress that he was
going to read the part of the mother
in the scene. “To make it as difficult
as possible for you, I’m going to
read Stacey. I’m not going to do a
funny Stacey voice,” he joked.
And then they were off, the actress
slipping effortlessly into the skin of
the daughter, Rachel, 20, and diving
right into the intense emotions and
conflict of the scene. I marvelled as
the actress drew me into the scene,
stirred up strong empathy for the
character. No costumes, no props, no
scenery, no build-up of plot – just a
sliver of a play in the hands of a
pro.
“That’s a lot of acting for this early
in the morning,” Coates remarked
after they’d finished.
Badian called for another run-
through of the scene, and offered
some direction: “Stacey says ‘Where
is my real daughter?” This is the
very first time Rachel has ever
spoken back to her mother.”
After repeating the scene, the
actress gathered herself to switch
over to the part of Milli, who is nine
years older and quite different from
Rachel.
Coates offered some guidance up
front: “Milli really, really loved this
guy and never got a chance to tell
him. But don’t fall into the trap of
too much emotion too early. Don’t
fall into a reverie. Milli is a very
practical woman.”
It struck me that the directors had
read and re-read the scripts, studied
the characters and puzzled over what
made them tick, treated these
fictional beings as loved ones they
keenly wanted to know and
understand.
One of the greatest joys for a
writer is to have his characters come
alive to people in this way. And it
bodes well for the eventual
production of the play: directors who
are keen and diligent inspire the
actors who in turn captivate and
convince the audience.
I suddenly felt fortunate that my
script was in the hands of these
passionate and professional artists,
and I was also hit by a strong urge to
re-write the play yet again, make the
script as exceptional as possible to
justify the great care it was
receiving.
The actress was complimented,
thanked, and sent on her way. She
was followed by a parade of more
than a dozen performers, all very
talented, each with a distinctive look
and a unique take on the roles. Some
played Rachel as distressed and
angry, while others came across as
sarcastic and dismissive.
Most played Milli as revealing
carefully considered truths about
herself to a confidant; however
one actress had a subtly diff-
erent approach, portraying her
as stumbling upon the truths in
the moment, during the
conversation.
To the latter Coates gave a high
compliment: “Thank-you You taught
me something new about the scene”.
A number of the actresses ended
the scenes in tears, struggling to rein
in the strong emotions they’d
unleashed. Badian gently pointed
them toward a box of tissues on the
window ledge. “Heavy scenes
today,” Coates said.
I found myself wondering what
the actresses had been through in
their own lives, what experiences
they were tapping into as they
sought the right emotional pitch.
Before one actress’s audition,
Badian asked how her wife was
doing.
Then the actress read the Reverend
Jonah scene, in which Rachel
accuses her mother of being a bigot.
“I can’t believe my mother is such a
homophobe!” the actress stormed.
How had the actress’s own family
reacted to her being gay, and
marrying a woman? As actresses
read the Milli scene, in which the
character outlines the greatest regret
of her life, I wondered what real
heartache lay behind the
performances.
The directors gave comments after
each actress’s first stab at the
scenes, then asked for a second
read-through; I gathered this was a
way of gauging how well the
performers took direction. “Be less
careful. It’s more visceral, from the
gut,” Coates told one actress. To
another he stressed, “Milli doesn’t
like showing her vulnerability’. The
actresses nodded and replied, “So
she is a Beatrice” (from
Shakespeare’s “Much Ado About
Nothing”).
Since Reverend Jonah is new
and unpublished, several perfor-
mers noted they’d been unable
to read the entire play in advance
of the audition. So they
posed questions before launching
into the reading, trying to get a better
sense of the character and the
context of the scene. “Is Rachel
afraid of her mother?” one actress
asked.
It also became evident that the
world of theatre, film and TV in
Canada is a small one. Badian
greeted one actor with, “We were
in the same episode of The Eleventh
Hour together. I was the cop.”
Coates asked one actress, “Still
a yoga queen?” and after she’d left
he remarked to Badian, “It’s been
years since I saw her; it’s great to see
she has grown so much as an
actress.”
Some of the performers had
appeared on the Blyth stage before,
and had tales to tell. An actor vying
for the part of Fred in Reverend
Jonah spoke of acting in Dan
Needle’s The Perils of Persephone
close to 20 years ago.
“I was supposed to be asleep on a
couch, until my cue, underneath a
bunch of newspapers, and
sometimes I thought the gales of
laughter from the audience would
blow the papers right off me,” he
said.
There were some hilarious
moments on the auditions day as
well. Coates returned from a
washroom break looking
scandalized, and related that an actor
had just accosted him in a
highly inappropriate place for a
chance to audition. “I was actually at
the urinal. That was a first,” he
said.
At lunch, Coates and Badian
discussed the various performers’
suitability or lack thereof.
Some were ruled out because they
didn’t have the right look for the
part, or their portrayals of the
characters were “too aloof” or “too
pushy”.
A short-list for Rachel/Milli
began to emerge, and leading the
pack was Ingrid Haas who shone in
two plays in Blyth in ’06 and ably
portrayed Rachel for a well-received
public reading of Reverend Jonah in
August.
After several actors had taken a
crack at Fred, Coates asked me if
any of them had captured the
character as I’d envisioned him.
Unfortunately none of them had
done so, although one actor was
close, I said.
When I left, the directors still had
auditions stretching out in front of
them for hours.
As I stepped out into the bitter
wind, I thought of the audiences who
would finally settle into their seats
wearing shorts and sandals on fine
summer evenings in Blyth. Little
will they suspect they’re seeing the
fruits of labour started on a glacial
January day.
THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2007. PAGE 23.Entertainment Leisure&
All shook up
It was a fun evening of entertainment as Blyth Legion
Ladies Auxiliary hosted an Elvis night featuring
impersonator Dan Granger. (Vicky Bremner photo)
Seeds of summer sown in sub-zero city
WED. MARCH 7/07 – 7PM
BLYTH MEMORIAL
HALL
Tickets on sale at Blyth Festival
Office, Blyth General Store,
Ernie King Music
(Goderich & Wingham),
Dixie Lee in Clinton. Credit
Card Orders: 1-800-465-7829
Happy 70th
Birthday
Shirley Dale
“Come & Go”
Saturday, Feb. 24
2 - 4 p.m.
Blyth Legion
The Brubachers of Ethel
Restaurant & Bakery
Real Home Cooking
Try our Cinnamon Buns
519-887-8659
Mon. - Fri. 7-6:30;
Sat. 8-6:30, Sunday Closed