One Down

Ottawa Fringe came shuddering to a close on Sunday night, and now it is already two days after that, and many since I've written. Why? My girlfriend's in town, for a start. And also, I have to admit, I was and am worn out. Fringed Out. And this is only the first festival.

Why? Because The Fugue Code is a very tiring show to perform. Because it needs a charged-up audience to feed off of, and since audiences here have been small (despite one near sellout - in a 75-seat theatre!) there's sometimes not been as much energy coming back at me as I would hope (though these things are unpredictable, considering that a 13-person 11:00 pm crowd laughed louder than a 41-person Sunday evening). Because Ottawa has this odd way of being unjuried (anyone can get in from a lottery, as is Fringe standard) but judged: there are awards given by a panel of local theatre professionals, which while not as prestigious as a Dora &tc would be mighty nice to have on one's poster. So one worries, and worry tires one. If one is me.

Yesterday, though, I went up into the Gatineaus to decompress on a hike with my girfriend's relatives. In the evening I kayaked lazily on the Gatineau river, rescuing an escaped pool noodle and wishing sweet dreams to a dozing downy mallard en route. Tonight, another relative has a dinner party even further north into Quebec. This is the exact opposite of my life over the last two months: rural, unstructured, not Ontario, physical activity that isn't performing the show. Yes, my limbs can still move in other ways than the show's gestures but they complain a little.

I keep thinking about that snoozing duck. What a big, beautiful, soft butt he had. Some of the nicest feathers are underneath. Is this a metaphor? I don't care.

See you in Toronto, I expect.

yesterday seems so faraway

Yesterday evening was the third performance of "The Fugue Code" in three days. Today I hurt. The soles of my feet, the tops of my feet, my ankles, my shins, my calves. My right big toe has what may be mini-splinters and what may be lacerations from the stage floor. My left thigh is strained from publicity chalking. My right knee is mysteriously bruised. My shoulders are tense, but that's usual - it's the hurt below the waist that is new to me.

We're halfway through our Ottawa run, and we've only just come out of the first weekend. Today I'm trying to convince myself to take the night off. Today is already almost noon. Response has been good - very good. No reviews yet, and I will post them when they come, but yesterday we had 49 people in our crowd (amazing, I'm told, for a sunday on the first weekend at Ottawa Fringe), including 12 performers who said amazing things to me after. That they would never have considered being that physical on stage, taking such risks, punching characters so much, trying to play four characters at once - but that when I do it, it works. It works, and it's funny and it's entertaining and they followed the story and they laughed and they we engaged throughout. And I must be snorting crack before the show.

We did not know if we could safely expect that people would climb on board and stay with the plot! But it would seem that my hard work makes them work hard too. I'm pretty happy. Alison's pretty happy. Last night felt like the real beginning of the tour. We treated ourselves to a good Italian meal before trundling off to ill-attended 11pm shows.

Friday and Saturday were good too, if a hair loose. I need to remember to spap my character changes quickly. I need to remember to breathe. I need to remember to look at specific people in the crowd. I will breathe as much as possible before our next performance on wednesday at 11pm.

We have a piece of theatre that's worth seeing. I have no idea how it happened, or how I perform it, but perhaps I shouldn't ask too many questions.

good Night, I mean g'mornig imean

encounters with the famous

Yesterday I met Fringe superstar TJ Dawe. This is TJs first time performing in Ottawa, so, oddly enough, he and I are on similar pages at this point in terms of public excitement about his show. (except for some scripts that he has authored or co-authored coming here before him). Three years ago I saw "Curse of the Trickster" in a huge, packed, hot Edmonton venue, and never forgot his charisma and precision. This year he's performing "Maxim and Cosmo", which are apparently not the names of a Russian guy and a Greek guy, but the names of two respected monthly publications. I still can't shake the idea that it's a show about friendship across the divide between eastern-western Europe and western-Asia-that's-still-really-Europe. Apparently he had a decent crowd for an 11pm last night, and only 1 walkout (he seemed to prefer this to no walkouts, if I read his tone correctly)! Earlier in the evening I met TJ for the first time, in the beer ten entranceway, after years of wondering what he's like offstage. What follows is a transcript of my first encounter with this Fringe heavyweight:

Me: You're TJ Dawe.
TJ: Oh. Who are you?
Me: I'm Alex Eddington. You don't know me, but I've seen your stuff...
TJ: Oh. What show are you doing?
Me: [explains the premise of "The Fugue Code"]
TJ: Oh, are you a musician yourself?
Me: Yes, I'm a composer by training, I've only come to theatre recently. Because of Edmonton.
TJ: Do you know anything about noseflutes?
Me:...yes. I've played them before. I've performed on them.
TJ: I just got my hands on a bunch of noseflutes. [small smile betraying restrained excitement] Would you like to try them?
Me: ...Sure.

And we parted ways, beckoned by beers and shows and friends.

openings

Tonight, I open "The Fugue Code" at the Ottawa Fringe festival, uncertain of several things. Uncertain my my audience: size, type, responsiveness. Uncertain of tech: although I have a fine stage manager (Alison) and a fine house technician (whom Alison *taught to tech* back at their arts high school), we ran out of time before we could finish a solid cue-to-cue yesterday. Also, the sound system is finicky, and this is an, um, rather sound-dependant show! Uncertain of myself: what will change, and what will stay the same tonight - what suprises will I give myself, despite all the line runs, all the on-its-feet rehearsal?

If I compare my nerves to last year's opening of WOOL, though (in Winnipeg)...I'm a much more put-together person. But WOOL was very personal - it disclosed things - I was ME on stage. Plus, WOOL was put together in, like, 2 weeks.

Yeah, I'm ready. Here's to a new show and a massive tour! Think of me at 9:30.

previews and postviews

When Alison first sent me our rehearsal schedule, there were THREE scheduled previews for high school students in Ottawa, including one very shortly after our arrival. Despite her insistence that the kids would be in small groups, be drama students, and would have to write something about "The Fugue Code" for their classes, I never quite lost my dread until, for whatever reason, it was revealed that I would actually be giving ONE preview, at the school where we have been rehearing in Ottawa, only 3 days before our actual opening at Ottawa Fringe. So, I would be fairly ready, making this a fair test.

Yesterday, I gave that preview, and now I think I can perform through anything.

It was hot. Very hot. Hot enough that my glasses fogged when I got into my car afterward. Not only had that never happened to me, but I never knew it could happen. The auditorium was not only not air conditioned, but predated airconditioning. This was our second run with movement of the day. And the students were in Grade Nine.

Now, keep in mind that their teacher (Alison's father) told me afterward that some of these kids had never sat still for an hour before. But considering that they are a drama class, it would seem that many of them have no idea how to experience theatre. Was I like that in Grade Nine? No, but I suppose I had been exposed to theatre from a young age.

Mostly, they were good and quiet but unreadable. Hard to make laugh, or slouched, or seemingly distracted. But I had one constant, loud, and apparently peer-supported heckler.

I would say his main transgression was to say "Be a Man!" a lot. Being, of course, already a man, I was mystified by his comments, until I realised that perhaps in his eyes, the two of my characters who are gay (or possibly bi in the case of Antonius but he never tells me) are not exactly men. Matter of opinion, all sorts of reasons like being raised in traditions like Being A Jerk, but certainly not one to share with me OFF AND ON FOR 40 MINUTES WHILE I WAS PERFORMING? I certainly hope that my adult audiences realise that they are not sitting alone really close to a television screen.

Smaller transgressions (supported by neighbouring peers - there was counterpoint) include it's-dark-and-spooky vocal SFX during the blackout scene, and (actually, this was charming if really weird) CHANTING ALONG with a certain pre-recorded character in the climactic scene.

Alison says Grade Nines are like this. Was I like this?

The next day, apparently, one of the members of the class apologized on behalf of the behaviour of others - probably not his own. Sort of like when I'm in choir and I put up my hand and say something to the conductor like "Could you please clarify whether we should be in fact singing the correct pitches throughout the entire piece, because I, personally, am not sure that we actually are."

Now to take the show in front of so-called grown-ups. They don't heckle, usually, but much of the time they've confused Art and Entertainment right enough. (this show won't help)...

feet

Some of you may be wondering what implications performing barefoot has had on my feet. I know I once wondered that myself. Instead of carrying the usual one-person brunt, my feet now carry 12 characters - or perhaps 6 each - or actually 6 and 5 because, as it turns out when I last counted, I really play 11 characters (will the number continue to diminish throughout the run, as my characters, um, merge or something?).

Simply put, my feet are filthy all the time - but apparently very happy being so! After rehearsals at the Ridgemont High School auditorium they have been actually black, not just the soles but also on the tops of some of my toes as well (I have no memory of walking on the tops of my toes at any point during the show, but I don't remember a lot of how I do what I'm supposedly doing anyway). It takes 15 minutes soaking in a bathtub, an ever-blackening pumice stone and heave-duty body wash (we're talking moisture beads, people) to get *some* (usually about 3/4) of the black off, but I figure that what's left jammed into the wee thumbprint creases etc. won't make it onto my sheets. The bathtub is slowly greying.

At night I put on some Burt's Bees peppermint foot lotion to cool my little ones during their rest. In the morning warmup I stand on a softball to massage my foot muscles. I manually spread my toes. I practice putting weight on the tops of my feet. I use talcum powder. I talk to my feet like they're two old friends in a nursing home.

And all this from someone who used to have trouble remembering that those two things all the way down there belonged to *him*.

press photos, part 1

Please use these photos freely! Click on them to see a larger image. All photos by Hugh Wesley.

Tirednesse

We did runs of the show each of the last two days - first on the stage of a standard-issue 1960's high school auditorium with an audience of 300 empty chairs - then yesterday in the drama room for Alison's dad: the drama teacher. I went into yesterday's run thinking it would be low key, but somehow bringing more energy to it than I actually have - perhaps because of the apparently delighted high school student who lingered a long while by the drama studio's glass door-window, and even went to get a friend! The runs were good - the show is under an hour - the sound cues are working okay except that a boombox is not the ideal way to cue them or hear them. But now. But now! Last night I collapsed into idle consumption, letting You Tube decide my time for me as I linked from Chriss Angel clip to Chriss Angel Revealed clip. Not the way I like to live, usually, but entirely necessary for those two hours before I got up the strength to soak my blackened feet. I drove to the St. Laurent Centre to see "Fracture" but the mall was closing and there were sketchy dudes around and I couldn't figure out where the theatre entrance was (apparently it's UNDERNEATH - yeah, that makes me feel secure at night with sketchy dudes and a mall that closes at 9:30 pm out of what can only be fear) so I pretended that the suburban drive was all I really wanted, and went home to Farley Mowat (I've been reading a copy of "The Boat Who Wouldn't Float" that a library threw out). I wanted to go to Dows Lake but didn't. I can't get photos on my website to behave properly (sorry! I'll post press and rehearsal photos here at the The Blog if need be). I have a line run in 10 minutes. I have to pick up the posters, and POSTER THEM. The good news is: the sun's out, and I get to look at Parliament all day. The peace tower gives me goosebumps, in a good way.

The show opens in a week! All my publicity mentions this site. Let's hope for more traffic...

'til next,

Alex

TRNT gives way to TTWA

I just realised I haven't written in a good long while! And that I'm in Ottawa, leeching wireless off of Alison's dining room airwaves. And that the show opens in 11 days - and that there are a few pages on my website whose content has been "Coming Soon" for, like, 3 months. Patience! It's a lot more work than I thought, setting up a site from scratch.

I could already tell by the end of that paragraph that blogging is restful for me and that I should do it more often. Not that I've been impossibly stressed, but there's been a lot going on of course. Of course! I'm working on my first multi-character show, my first actual play-play script. And my first 6-city tour (almost wrote 60-city. Heaven forbid. Where? Minsk? Utrecht? Carracas? Atlantis?).

So what's new? We're in Ottawa. We rehearsed in Toronto at Hub 14 right up until the exact entire end of May, then pretty much the moment I finished (ahem, minus some tweaking to be done when we return to Toronto) the massive 41-cue sound design opus we packed up our personal affects plus a home office and trucked Acky the Volvo sedan on up to Ottawa. By the way. Last year I developed a Fringe tradition of referring to tour-stop cities by four-letter code names. Did I mention this yet? Maybe last year's blog did. OTWA (or TTWA), TRNT (TDOT), WPEG, SKTN (pronounced "S'k'toon"), EDMO, VANC (COUV?). Now, we're here. I'm staying in my very own extremely empty house - the owners are on vacation for a length of time extending before and after my month-long visit - there is nothing upstairs but plaster and drywall and vague pencilled plans for fixtures. I'm sleeping on a pull-out couch in the curtainless back room, my head under a solarium window - it's actually very comfortable. I've set up a road office in the dining room - printer, laptop, press kit supplies, labels, wireless router...except that the ethernet hookup seems to have fled with the house's owners - which is why I'm at Alison's family home, not far down the street in fact.

Toronto! We rehearsed 60 hours in that fine little movement studio, culminating in a pre-preview for an audience of one who had already read the script. So many suprising things for me in this rehearsal period:

- that the perfect costume pants turned out to be the ones I was wearing all along

- that the best solution for storing small props on my body would come from a magic supplies store

- that the show needs to be performed barefoot

- that a script that was once 75 pages can become 27 and still need trimming and still say pretty much the same things but better (actually, I learned this with WOOL last year: specifically that a story is stronger when you don't have the emotional reaction for the audience, but let them have it for themselves...)

- that I can play 12 characters and keep them all straight!

- that I can fall off a ladder in a potentially horrible (but actually pretty much okay) accident because of a hand gesture.

- that I learn line changes very quickly if I write them in by hand, and much less quickly if I dictate them to Alison-cum-Toshiba.

Now we're looking forward to a preview for some Grade 10 drama students on Thursday, and rehearsals at various schools. We open on the 15th of June. TTWA may be the warmup festival for publicity, but I want the show to open with a bang - OTWAns deserve it! And plus, WPEG sends its reviews out to do sneaky early reviews, so if we want to take that city by storm...the real work happens now.

I need to spend some time with the smaller characters. Alone.

'til the next!