Old Growth mainpage
tour dates and ticket info
reviews
press release
cast/crew
Acky-Made productions
photos
blog
more links
Old Growth - fast facts
Both Alex Eddington and Aura Giles have Master’s degrees in Music – his in composition, and hers in flute performance.
Alex and Aura met at the University of Alberta in 2004. He was her T.A. for Introduction to Composition.
Aura moved to Ottawa for her Master’s degree. She came to see Alex’s show The Fugue Code at the 2007 Ottawa Fringe...and later that summer, as Alex and director Alison Williams were beginning to plan Old Growth, it dawned on them that Aura might be the ideal second performer for the show.
Aura’s character was originally supposed to be nearly mute, communicating primarily through her flute.
Alex really did work as a street canvasser for an environmental not-for-profit. It was the hardest job he has ever had.
Old Growth is Alex’s attempt to write the strongest possible script about our relationship to our environment. He shares this problem with his character: nothing else he has read or heard has gone far enough – to evoke the emotional and moral response needed to change how we live.
The seed of Old Growth was a commission/challenge from Alex’s father to write something (be it a poem, a symphony, a novel, an opera...) that convinced people to take action on climate change. Not just talk...
During the rehearsal process, Alex, Aura and Alison have had almost daily discussions (sometimes tearful, always unplanned) about relevant issues.
The axe is real. The finger is not.
The two hand-drums are a cajon and a djembe-cajon, both all wood and manufactured in Ontario by Mountain Rhythym percussion. Alex found them expressly for this show.
Old Growth is lit with only naturalistic stage lighting, portraying a gradual change from early evening, to sunset and into dusk. Onstage are three lanterns, a large flashlight, and a circle of 12 LED candles.
While most of the music in the show was improvised in rehearsal (and is somewhat different from performance to performance), the core material is a series of pieces that Alex wrote for Aura well before the script and story of Old Growth were hammered out. Alex gave himself the challenge of writing music that “sounds like a tree”...and these pieces – called Branchings – were the result.
Old Growth is Acky-Made’s first show with live music – which might be surprising, considering The Fugue Code (2007) was a comedy-thriller about J.S. Bach!
Alex revisited his childhood interest in magic for the show – with considerably more self-discipline this time. Old Growth contains sleight-of-hand magic with traditional objects (coins and sponge balls) as well as some unexpected materials (chewing gum, receipts, rubber bands, finger rings, water, light...)
As befits a show about environmental responsibility – and trees – the marketing campaign for the 2008 Fringe tour of Old Growth is virtually paperless. Instead of posting posters and flyering flyers, Alex and Aura will be working the Fringe lineups with magic, music, charm... and hand stamps.
Old Growth mainpage
story
characters
script excerpts
music
tour dates and ticket infocast/crew
Acky-Made productions
reviews
other press (previews etc.)
publicity photos
notebook/scrapbook
blog
Join the Acky-Made group on Facebook!
booklist/further reading
links
what can I do to take action?
thank-yous
sponsors
donate!
THEATRE MAINPAGE
AlexEddington.com HOME