Audrey and Dan in the Valley of the Whales (Wadi Al-Hitan)

I’m quite excited as at the end of the month I get to share these sassy cats with my hometown of Vancouver, as they roll into town to speak at the Future of Tourism Talk being put on by G Adventures and Planeterra. Aside from loving listening to Audrey and Dan talk, the event looks like it should be an interesting one with thought-provoking ideas around culture, travel and sustainability, shared by Bruce Poon Tip, Paula Vlamings, David Suzuki, and my friends Audrey Scott and Daniel Noll.

On May 31, 2012 G Adventures invites you to the Future of Tourism—an evening of discussion, debate and creative exchange between visionaries from across the tourism spectrum.

Together we’ll explore the roles travel and sustainable tourism play in the world today, and set the agenda for the future of our industry and our planet. Join Bruce Poon Tip, Paula Vlamings, Daniel Noll & Audrey Scott and RSVP for this special FREE event. Space is limited and will sell out fast!

Here are the details:

• Date: Thursday May 31st, 2012
• Time: 6:45 – 9:45 pm
• Location: The Centre in Vancouver for Performing Arts (777 Homer St.)
• Registration: By Donation on Eventbrite (tickets are going fast)

Hope to see you there!

Emme

You can catch Ross tonight (Saturday May 19th, 2012) and me with my feet a stomping at Pat’s Pub and Brewhouse at 403 E. Hastings St. at Dunlevy Ave in Vancouver. Show starts at 9 pm.

Curious as to what Ross sounds like?  Here is my favourite youtube video of him:

Tonight he will be playing with his new band, which I am very much looking forward to hearing.  The band includes Karl Gans (previously from Ross Neilsen & the Suffering Bastards) and Young Will Pacey (the new band mate).  Speaking of which I am a little overdue sharing Episode 3 of Ross and Karl’s Great Bass Search (for Episode 1 & 2 , click on the links), so here are the fools themselves:

Really, how can you not love these boys with classy videos such as that.

Hope to see you at the Show tonight.

Kisses,

Emme xoxo

• Here on Being Emme (contest closes at midnight TONIGHT, March 18th, 2012), and
• Roamancing (contest closes at midnight on Wednesday March 21st, 2012).

 

Victor Victoria plays at Vancouver's Metro Theatre, March 17th – April 7, 2012.

The Interviews …

• Victor / Victoria Director is a Size Queen ~ Gay Vancouver ~ Mark Robins

What do you do when you’ve done it all? If you’re triple threat Jeff Hyslop you look for projects that excite you, like Metro Theatre’s upcoming production of Victor/Victoria.  And if you’re director Mark Carter, you realize size sometimes does matter.

“It’s all about the script and this is a quality script.  I didn’t hesitate,” explained Hyslop (pictured right with director Mark Carter).  “It was perfect timing too as I was moving back to Vancouver and it wasn’t a starring role so the weight of show wasn’t going to rest on my shoulders.”

• Chatting with Jeff Hyslop ~ Greater Vancouver Professional Theatre Alliance ~ Trilby Jeeves

What does one limit themselves to asking when doing an interview with one of the most prolific and successful Canadian Triple Threats, actor, singer, dancer, the notable Jeff Hyslop? (Actually, “Quadruple” as he is also a director.) My challenge was to direct the myriad questions I had and the stories he had into the short, but time-stopping two hours we shared. Publicist Cheryl Hutcherson set the scene comfortably and we soon sailed into the creative, exciting, rich world of Jeff Hyslop.

Opening Night Reviews …

With Opening Night, just last night, the Reviews are only just coming in, so I will be updating this section, as I see more.

• Review Vancouver on Victor Victoria at Metro Theatre ~ Ed Farolan

It’s always a full house when the yearly musical is presented at Metro, and the cast and crew deserved the proplonged standing ovation on opening night.

• Theatre Review: Victor/Victoria – Jeff Hyslop Has Mighty Big Shoes to Fill ~ Gay Vancouver ~ Mark Robins

Filling in for an injured Jeff Hyslop, understudy Seth Little was opening night’s highlight as Metro Theatre presents the stage musicalVictor/Victoria. …  Almost at par with Little’s wonderful performance Saturday night was the scene-stealing Karin Inghammar as Norma Cassidy who milks every ounce of fun from the ditzy blonde moll as she drops malapropisms like bonbons across the stage.

Catch Victor Victoria at the Metro Theatre in Vancouver from March 17^th – April 7, 2012, with performances on Wednesdays to Saturdays at 8pm and two Sunday Matinees on March 25 & April 1 at 2pm. Tickets can be purchased here.

So what is the musical you ask?  Victor Victoria at the Metro Theatre, based on the 1982 musical comedy film by Blake Edwards (adapted from the 1933 script of a German film by Reinhold Schünzel), which I am sure there are a few in Vancouver’s Arts Community that could relate to the premise behind this story.  You see Victoria (played by Sylvia Zaradic) is a struggling performer looking for her big break. On the advice of Toddy, a middle-aged gay performer, Victoria takes on the real life role of Count Victor Grazinski, a gay Polish female impersonator.  Why you ask (or at least so you asked in my head)?  To get an agent and her big break, of course, and that is exactly what she does.  Only, as I am sure you can imagine, it is not all that smooth sailing playing the part of a man, when you become the bed ‘fellow’ of a known gangster.  Bring on the conundrums, misunderstandings and delightfully ridiculous!

Sylvia Zaradic and Jeff Hyslop, as Victoria / Victor and Toddy

Now, if this hasn’t perked your curiosity, just wait until you hear who is playing Toddy!  None other than Jeff Hyslop, the quintessential Phantom of the Opera from the traveling Canadian Production!  Also known, by those of you close in age to me, as Jeff the mannequin in the children’s show Today’s Special.  The Metro Theatre puts on great musicals, but with Jeff Hyslop in the cast, this is one musical not to miss.

So how do you win the tickets?  We have a pair of tickets to giveaway here and a pair to giveaway on Roamancing (stay tuned for that giveaway in a day or two) with your choice of Wednesday March 28 or April 4th.  To enter:

• Comment below with something crazy you have or would do for your dream job;
• The Deadline to enter is Sunday March 18th, 2012 at midnight PST.

To be entered a second, third and fourth time:

• Tweet this post with me, @EmmeRogers, @MetroTheatre and #VancouverTheatre somewhere in the tweet, so I see the tweet;
• Share this post on facebook and include @Roamancing in the text when you post it (this should link Roamancing’s facebook page, so I’ll see the post); and/or
• Share this post on G+ and include @Emme Rogers in the text when you post it (this should alert me on G+ of your post).

I shall pull the name of one lucky winner from commenters, tweeters, facebookers and G+ers, and announce the winner on Monday March 19th.  Very much looking forward to making somebody happy!

Oh, and if sadly you don’t win, the play is running at the Metro Theatre in Vancouver from March 17^th – April 7, 2012, with performances on Wednesdays to Saturdays at 8pm and two Sunday Matinees on March 25 & April 1 at 2pm. Tickets can be purchased here.

Kisses,

Emme xoxo

Jesse Roper playing at the IBC Canadian Showcase

As far as week’s go, this past week has been pretty damn fantastic ~ enjoying my first music pilgrimage into the history of Rock & Roll and the Blues in Memphis, discovering some bloody fantastic Blues talent at the International Blues Challenge, cheering Canadian Ross Neilsen on in the Semi-Finals of the International Blues Challenge, and coming home to discover some simply beautiful music that Chris Blake has written for Roamancing.  Now to top it all off, I went to pull the name of a winner for Studio 58‘s Julius Caesar tickets and was thrilled to pull Kelly Lui’s name, who interned with Ahimsa Media this past summer.  To make this especially fantastic, I went to congratulate Kelly and discovered it was her birthday!  Happy Birthday Kelly!

For those that entered, but didn’t win, we are entering you for a second chance at the tickets on Roamancing’s site.  For anyone unaware of the contest, that wishes they’d entered, you can still do that on Roamancing’s site until midnight.  Just drop us a comment with which Shakespeare play you would most love to see as a gender bender (ie. with men and women playing opposite gender role). Here’s a little of what you can expect from the play:

Catch this gender bender of a Julius Caesar at Studio 58 in Vancouver, February 2nd – 26th, Tuesdays – Saturdays at 8 pm and Saturdays & Sundays at 3 pm. Tickets can be purchased here.

The upswing of Alyzee and I missing out is that Langara College’s Studio 58 has decided to extend our two tickets to you delightful people in a little theater giveaway for their latest play.  I’ll get to that in a minute, as first I’ll fill you in on the play.

Photographer: David Cooper

The play is Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, but Julius Caesar with a twist, a Julius Caesar gender bender.  You see, when casting for the play, Director Scott Bellis decided to break with tradition and offer the parts of Caesar, Brutus, Cassius and Octavius to women.  I must say this very much tickles my fancies, as traditionally the parts of women in Shakespeare’s play would have been played by men.

For those of you not familiar with Julius Caesar, it is Shakespeare’s masterpiece of political power-play and manipulation, examining the conflict between one person’s ambition and the good of the state, all set in a life-and-death struggle for control of Rome. As Director Scott Bellis puts it, this is very much a tale involving traditional male roles and a story of ‘honourable men’. “In this alternate telling, we are discovering what it means for a male Mark Antony to avenge a female Caesar; what a same-sex marriage looks like in the house of Brutus;  and how being a ‘man’ can say more about your social status than your gender in this very different vision of Rome.”  Sounds fascinating!  Would love to see how all of this unfolds.

And if you are curious about Studio 58, you can read of Alyzee Lakhani’s most recent experience there with The 13th Chair.

So the Giveaway.  We have a pair of tickets to giveaway here and a pair to giveaway on Roamancing (stay tuned for that giveaway in a day or two) with your choice of Wednesday February 8th at 8 pm, Thursday February 9th at 8 pm or Saturday February 11th at 3 pm.  For the giveaway here, to enter:

• Comment below with which Shakespeare character, of the opposite sex from you, you would love to play;
• Deadline Thursday February 2nd at midnight PST.

To be entered a second, third and fourth time:

• Tweet this post with me, @EmmeRogers and #VancouverTheatre somewhere in the tweet, so I see the tweet;
• Share this post on facebook and include @Roamancing in the text when you post it (this should link Roamancing’s facebook page, so I’ll see the post); and/or
• Share this post on G+ and include @Emme Rogers in the text when you post it (this should alert me on G+ of your post).

I shall pull the name of one lucky winner from commenters, tweeters, facebookers and G+ers, and announce the winner on Friday February 3rd.  Very much looking forward to making somebody happy!

Oh, and if sadly you don’t win, the play is running at Studio 58 February 2nd – 26th, Tuesdays – Saturdays at 8 pm and Saturdays & Sundays at 3 pm, and tickets can be purchased here.

Kisses,

Emme xoxo

Joel Stephanson‘s Corridors: A Podplay, is among other things, an artistic response to that very experience: of being alone in a crowd, occupying the space of a million different people and stories, many of which are never brought to light.

Photo by Sera Katie

Quiet Hum Theatre Company‘s experimental offering uses the very same ‘isolating’ technology create a certain intimacy: through the iPod, we hear the stories of others, while a narrator guides us through the spaces they occurred in, many years ago. In Corridors we gather personal histories through our headsets, by way of overheard conversations and confessions between certain Vancouver residents long ago, while at the same time wandering the ancient Chalmers Heritage Building — also home to Pacific Theatre and The Holy Trinity Anglican Church.

I’d never experienced a podplay before Corridors, and so was slightly taken aback by its unconventional format. After being given an iPod, a prodigious pair of headphones,  and shown which the Pause/Play button was, I was left to wander Chalmers Heritage Building only loosely supervised, with the narrator gently guiding me to various nooks and crannies in and around the building. It was surreal to experience a play in which the only “special effects” were auditory, and where I was imagining the invisible characters at the very spot I was standing, many years previous, having the conversation I was hearing.

Photo by slworking2

While I was listening, it was business as usual in the Pacific Theatre lobby, as Box Office attendants and other staff were getting ready for other performances. Just like in the real world among iPod listeners, they paid me no mind, and the general, unobtrusive bustle in the lobby added a whole other dimension to my experience of the play. Although most of the play takes place in more solitary parts of the building, there is a constant reminder that the present is continuing in Chalmers Heritage Building, even as we are trying to consolidate the snippets of the building’s past as we hear them in Corridors. It is almost as if the present is jostling with the past for our attention, washing over it, and making it blurry, more distant and harder to picture.

Photo by Chris D 2006.

Many characters in the play are aged, and struggling to recall their past, as they are having trouble finding their bearings in the modern — and changed — Chalmers building.  Being surrounded by both the stories from the past and the present in Corridors, we can understand their struggle to organize the information surrounding them as we listen to the play.

My favourite part of this play was that I was able to explore Chalmers Heritage Building in what is probably the most curious and imaginative way possible — Corridors is like a dramatic tour within a play. The narrator leads the listener outside the building, up stairs, into a chapel,  a sanctuary, a defunct gym, an elevator, a parkade and several other spots in the building — many of which are nicely furnished with comfy couches for easy listening.

Installation by Alex MetCalf (click to read more). Photo by abrinsky (http://www.flickr.com/people/abrinsky/).

A couple of times I thought I made a wrong turn, so rewound and replayed the instructions, marveling that I could do that — stop the play and listen again that is — until I was sure I got it. Not something actors would take kindly to, I‘m sure. Corridors is in many ways the opposite of what you’d expect at a traditional evening at the theatre: instead of a stage and an audience, all the world’s a stage (or at least the ancient building is), and instead of a numbered seat in among many, there is only you, mobile audience of one.

Corridors offers the strangely haunting experience of being able to occupy many different times at once. It also provides us with little- known histories (and fictions) that evoke a Vancouver very different from the one we know now. And being a solitary, but interactive play, makes me think about the many forms of solitary-but-social media that fill our world now, and wonder what that means in terms of the forms that theatre, history, learning, and interaction can take. Big questions I know, but that’s a credit to the play — it is a bold experiment that raises many questions, specific to our present historical moment.

 Corridors: A Podplay is written & directed by Joel Stephanson, and presented by Quiet Hum Theatre Co. You can see it in the Chalmers Heritage Building — the same place as Pacific Theatre and the Holy Trinity Anglican Church. The remaining shows run on Dec 16, 23 and 30. Since Corridors ends before Pacific Theatre‘s evening show commences, you must arrive sometime between 4-6 pm to see it. See Quiet Hum’s website for details.

Rob Monk, Robert Sidley, Devin Pihlainen and Brian Hinson in FCP's The Tempermentals. Not Pictured: David Nicks. Photo by Devin Karringten.

The play shows us just how hostile the McCarthy era was towards homosexuals, suspected leftists, or anyone thought of as threatening to the fabric of “good, clean American society”. The danger of the times is especially strident in the crackly recordings of General McCarthy‘s outrageous speeches that intersperse the performance. I couldn’t help but laugh at his warnings about how to spot a communist, because they were delivered in dead seriousness, but sound like the ravings of one who has taken leave of his senses entirely. Of course, nothing is funny about his opinions, or the laws and policies they supported. We see their oppression and cruelty that hurt, bully and punish the people in the play, whose only crime is being who they are.

And in this dark and hostile climate, there is a beautiful, hopeful thing: the love between Harry and Rudi. It is a sweet, mischievous, witty love, between two unlikely mates. Rudi is an up-and-coming LA fashion designer, who moves easily through the glamour crowd, charming everyone in his wake. Harry on the other hand, is political science teacher, with a background in law, who is terribly passionate, but easily incensed and uncompromising in his vision of a safe society for homosexuals.

Rob Monk, Robert Sidley, Devin Pihlainen and Brian Hinson in FCP's The Tempermentals. Not Pictured: David Nicks. Photo by Devin Karringten.

Neither belongs in the other’s world — especially because Harry is married — but the two are like a refuge for each other, a space away from the world where they don’t have to fight or hide. It is really touching to see how their love for each other emboldened the movement that led to the founding of the Mattachine Society — the first specifically homophile society in the United States. Watching the play, you really get a sense of how terrifying it was to take the stand that Harry, Rudi and their allies did. But while also seeing how doing anything other than taking a stand involved living with the tremendous amount of shame and loneliness that comes from living like a fugitive while having done nothing wrong.

Harry Hay and Rudi Gernreich were stunning human beings who showed incredible courage in hard times, and their actions shaped history. I know this now thanks to The Tempermentals, playwright John Marans, Fighting Chance Productions and director Ryan Mooney for bringing this play to the Canadian stage for the first time.

The actors did an great job transporting the audience, and so did the unusual set design. It is stark and intimate with few props, and with four different platforms that light up at different times. This set up with the minimal lighting gives the impression that we are overhearing whispers, secret rendezvous, and dangerous truths. Congratulations to actors Brian Hinson (Harry Hay), Devin Pihlanien (Rudi Gernreich), James Gill, David Nicks and Rob Monk (all three of whom played a variety of characters wonderfully and in quick succession).

You can (and must) see The Tempermentals at the PAL Theatre in Vancouver until December 3rd.  Showtimes are 8 pm from  Tuesday — Saturday, 2 pm matinees on Saturday and two shows on Sunday at 2 pm & 7 pm.

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Stephanie Moroz as Helen O'Neill in Studio 58's production of The Thirteenth Chair by Bayard Veiller.

I’d never been to Studio 58 before last night, and I have to say I have fallen in love with the place. Sure I had to navigate my way down a few winding staircases to get there, but for me that provided added charm — when you’re going to see a murder mystery on the rainiest of November nights, it only makes sense that the path to the theatre would have its perils. Cue thunder and all that. But fun aside, I was really impressed by how small and secluded the Studio 58 theatre is.  Draped with heavy purple fabric all around, with strict rules about exits and entrances, the audience and actors really are in a little world of their own for the duration of the play. It seems like the perfect set up for the audience to be drawn right into the story happening only a few feet away. With actors as talented as the ones in this cast, that’s exactly what happened.

Now a bit about the story — we enter it on the eve of an engagement between the son of the wealthy host and his sweetling (pictured above). Just when before their engagement is announced, a family friend (Edward Wales) objects strongly, begging the boy’s parents to wait 24 hours before they allow the engagement. His misgivings cast a shadow of suspicion upon the innocent looking Ms. O’Neill.

Lindsay Winch as Mary Eastwood in Studio 58's production of The 13th Chair by Bayard Veilles.

Much to everyone’s frustration, Wales can’t say anything about why he is suspicious, and only begs them to wait and see what the evening brings.

Later that evening a vivacious medium arrives at the party. The medium is to hold a seance that will reveal who murdered Wales’s friend, Spencer Lee — we can gather than one of the party guests is guilty. After much skepticism, laughter and magical demonstration, the group sits down to their seance. When the light’s come back on. . . can you guess? Here’s a hint: the services of one Inspector Donahue are required, and he is summoned immediately.

Kazz Leskard as Inspector Donohue in Studio 58's production of The 13th Chair by Bayard Veiller.

Don’t let the Inspector’s expression there fool you, he’s a hard-boiled detective, he is. With evidence and everything.

But don’t worry about the story ever getting too dark. When things threaten to get too serious, the two entertainers (who’s clever stage names have slipped my mind) accompanied by live piano music (composer Matt Grinke) take the stage with silly, feel-good numbers that you’ll be humming on your way home.

Thanks to director Sarah Rodgers for this wonderful play! And a warm congratulations to the whole cast and crew — there are so many talents that have contributed to this play — including an Irish Dialect Coach (Ashley O’ Connell) — that I can’t possibly name them all. Notable faces of the cast include: Cheyenne Mabberley as the medium Rosalie Le Grange, Kazz Leskard as Inspector Donahue, Stephanie Moroz as Helen O’Neill, Katey Hoffman as Grace Standish (whose character I am certain draws from Popeye’s Olive Oyl) and Joel Baillard as Edward Wales.

The costume and lighting crews are magicians, and their talent and hard work is hard to ignore in this performance.

You can see The 13th Chair at Studio 58 until December 4. Showtimes are at 8 pm from Tuesday through Saturday, with matinees at 3 pm on Saturday & Sunday.

P.S. Outside, during intermission, I found a flyer entitled “Do the Charleston like a pro!”, containing steps to the popular dance whose name I hitherto had not known. Thank you Studio 58  for educating me, about the dance and the name. While waiting for the bus in the shelter of the Canada Line station later that evening, I practiced the steps as I remembered them from the flyer. It seemed like the only thing there was to do, since it was still pouring rain and the bus was certainly taking its time.  I’m sure I provided entertainment for my fellow stranded travelers. And soon I am sure I will dance it like a pro. After all now I have inspiration.

Craig shares an inside the theatre look at Greg MacArthur's Snowman. Oct. 25, 2011

As you read the interview below, the lines in bold are my questions and the chunks of elegant prose are Craig’s answers.

What was the inspiration to get the actors of Snowman to rehearse in Stanley Park?

To be honest with you it was kind of circumstance. Besides their being a lack of theatres in this town — especially theaters that are artist run — there’s a lack of rehearsal space, a lack of places to actually create your plays. Part of the idea behind Progress Lab 1422 was we all got tired of not having a rehearsal space so we built our sets in the rehearsal hall, and rehearsed on the sets that we’re going to be performing on. It was kind of unheard of, in a weird way — it seems strange that it is kind of unheard of, for actors to be rehearsing on their sets from day 1 of rehearsal, but it is. The challenge with the Progress Lab is that there are four companies in there and occasionally, of course, there are conflicts.

A solitary path in Stanley Park. Photo by Stephen Downes.

That must be a challenge for actors to have to rehearse in a completely new space just days before their opening.

Yeah, it is. And it’s always been a challenge. That was the reason for this rehearsal space, but when there are conflicts, one company of the two has to go somewhere else, and that ended up being us just through the luck of the draw this time. The nice thing is we have a scenario where the venue actually pays for us to go rent somewhere else. In terms of rehearsing in Stanley Park we just needed a place that was of exclusive use where there’s not going to be a yoga class in there after we leave, where there’s not a bunch of Ukrainian women coming into to make perogies halfway through our rehearsal. I like the idea of being able to go out once in a while too, because a lot of Snowman takes place in the outdoors, either in a forest or on a glacier. A lot of it is quite intimate in its nature so it’s kind of got a feeling of two people walking on a path and telling each other a story. We’ve been using it as an opportunity to get out of the room once in a while, wander through the trees to practice our lines and get a sense of what it means to actually look someone in the eye and tell them a story.

Do you think these outdoor rehearsals will influence the way the play is performed?

Oh, absolutely. The first day of rehearsal, we actually left the room. I said “Okay everybody, get your stuff on,” and we went out. And I asked them each to tell a personal story, something that they felt strongly about and a story that they were good at telling, that they really wanted to tell. We did that, we just wandered through the trees and told stories. What I was trying to do was highlight to them that even though they’re telling a story that happened in the past, that all of that emotion, and all of the poignancy of the moments inside these stories are still there and come rushing back when you’re telling them. Because Snowman often has the tone of hindsight, it would be easy to say “Oh it all happened before, so there is no emotion to the story, so I could just tell it.” Well, when I asked these guys to tell their personal stories, especially the two men in the cast, both of them burst into tears, one of them was talking about this life-threatening situation he had with his heart, and the other one was talking about the birth of his son. . . All the emotions were just so on the surface. It was a nice way of showing them that even though this story is told in hindsight it has to be in the moment and real in its telling. It doesn’t matter how much distance there is if it’s an important personal experience, it will have resonance.

Photo by Jarek Zdziech

How do you interpret the creative vision behind Snowman? What do you think is driving that play?

It’s a play that’s about isolation, in a way. These four people are in this very isolated place in northern Alberta or the Yukon– that’s where we think of it as — they come to what you could see as the edge of the world, because they are living at the edge of a glacial shield. They’re all living there together, and theoretically they all love and know each other, and yet they’ve stopped communicating years and years ago. So everything that they’re saying on stage, they’re telling the audience what they were feeling, but they’re not telling each other, and they’re very isolated. . . and kind of frozen. They’ve been going on the same track for so long, they’re not really sure why they’re going down that road any more, and they’ve literally just being traveling north. Because they didn’t have anywhere else to go or anything else to do, and as they’ve done that they’ve forgotten why they’re doing what they’re doing, they’ve stopped communicating with each other as couples sometimes do, and they’re stuck in a rut — they’re frozen in time, in a way, just going through their routine without any heat or passion in what their doing. . .

Greg‘s funny because he’s from Montreal and is very much a city kinda guy, a transient guy that goes wherever the work is and so on. But all his plays for some reason are set in the North, and he’s not from there. But I think there’s something in the North the speaks to him in terms of alienation and isolation.

Photo by Jos van Wunnik

What does your creative process involve? Is it like talking to yourself, walking around the city?

It’s exactly that! You make doodles, you talk to yourself, there’s a Shakespearean thing where he talks about “Your eyes in fine frenzy rolling” which is basically that creative moment where your eyes are rolling in the back of your head and you’re just imagining it. I’m a big walker, I think best when I’m just walking around, and you just kind of start picturing it. That’s how I do it anyways, I just start to imagine the world, the rules of the world and then I start to bring other people in to what I’m envisioning and we build from there and it becomes a much more collaborative process. And sometimes I search images online, like for this play I found a picture of this white birch forest. There was something about the stark, monolithic nature of these trees that spoke to me with this play. You just start building a world in your mind. Sometimes it’s an easy thing and sometimes it’s not.

Craig Hall’s last production in Vancouver for the time-being, Greg MacArthur’s Snowman, opens tonight and runs from November 4th – 19th, 2011 at the Art’s Club Revue Stage on Granville Island.