Gruppo Rubato

Storyboarding the video

// February 9th, 2010 // No Comments » // Kris's Soapbox

I’ve been on film sets many, many times over the years.  I also watch a lot of DVD commentary.  So I know a lot about filmmaking.

That’s what I kept telling myself.

On one end of the spectrum, you have the Robert Rodriguez “10 Minute Film School”, where everyone is a filmmaker because they say they are, and everyone is a film expert because they’ve been seeing movies all their lives.  On the other end of the spectrum, you have Steven Ascher’s “Filmmaker’s Handbook”, which provides tons of detailed information, and just enough to scare you into thinking you should be going to film school.  I used both — plus some great tutorials at IndyMogul’s 4-Minute Film School — to get a handle on what we were getting ourselves into for the Airport Security shoot.

Patrick and I knew we wanted to shoot scenes from Airport Security almost a year ago.  It was clear that good scenes were going to be cut from the play as it was evolving, and the idea of being able to film those scenes and use them in another aspect of our theatre project was very exciting to us.  When we wrote and toured Churchill Protocol in 2007, we wrote a two-minute teaser scene that actually served as a prologue to the play.  We shot it in one night using a Digital8 camcorder, and the resulting video — while not perfect — served us well in pitch sessions, as grant application material, and as multimedia used to promote the play as we took it across Canada.  This time, we wanted to up the ante.

What sold us on the idea of going for broke this time was a quick look at the local resources available to us.  SAW Video in Ottawa has terrific training courses, and as a co-op it also offers members the ability to rent some high-end equipment at reasonable rates: they have a Sony PMW-EX1 in their inventory, which would let us shoot in high-definition video.  So we got excited at what was possible, joined up, and started looking for dates where we could take their workshops.  Sadly, aside from the camera workshop, our schedules didn’t allow for as much training as we’d have liked — so I ended up relying on a lot information from other sources to fill in gaps.  Patrick had the benefit of having taken a documentary filmmaking course while he was working on his MFA, and I’m still jealous about it.

In spite of our lack of formal film crew training, we knew we needed to be prepared for this shoot.  In order for us to be able to commit 15 pages of script to video in only two days of shooting, we also knew we had to be as organized as possible.  Aside from scouting locations and figuring out costumes, most of the pre-production planning involved setting up storyboards for the scenes, and using those storyboards to figure out where we’d need to put our camera, what to shoot, and in what order shooting should take place.

You may have seen storyboards before; if not, here’s a nice example I found on artist Josh Sheppard’s site.  A storyboard helps a filmmaker visualize the end product well in advance of the shoot by outlining the visual look of the project in a series of still images.  Putting a storyboard together illuminates issues that you just can’t see when visualizing the film in your head.

The problem with me and storyboarding is that I can’t draw worth a damn.  I tried for a couple of days to draw stick figure diagrams that described shots, but I kept getting confused about angles and continuity and things, and I ended up very frustrated.  My eureka moment came when I realized I could mock up the set and characters using household objects, and the shoot photos of the “set” to show how each shot might look.  Of course, I don’t have kids and don’t collect action figures, so I had to get creative about what to use to represent a person.  I ended up using tubes of face cleaner and glue sticks and bottles of saline.  But in mere minutes I began to see and resolve problems with angles and sightlines that I could never have conquered with scrawled stick figures.

Once I had horribly and sadistically photographed every skin cream and lotion in the house, I put all of the storyboard photos together into a coherent order, saved them as a deck of PowerPoint slides, and then arranged to bring them to the shoot along with a spreadsheet that listed all the shots we needed for each scene.

I tried to organize the spreadsheet in such a way as to minimize the number of times the camera would have to be moved: start at a wide angle, then get other shots and closeups; then move the camera to a new position and repeat.  Using the skin-care-storyboards as a reference, we set up our shots on set to match, and carefully logged each take as we went in the spreadsheet.  Having my laptop on location was a Good Idea.  As you can see from the example photos above, we did a pretty good job of making the camera shots match my hygiene-product-photos.

It is precisely the state of point-and-shoot cameras and easy-to-use tools that made this kind of storyboarding possible: I was not limited by my artistic inability or, in many ways, my understanding of how this stuff “should” be done.  And doing it all with my iPhone camera and household objects cost me nothing but time.  The resulting time savings on the set were immeasurable.

In my next post, I’ll give you a list of Things You Don’t Learn Until You’re On The Set And Have To Make Do.

The casting crunch

// February 8th, 2010 // No Comments » // Blog

Since we managed to work out a deal with ACTRA to be able to use union talent for our video shoot, we were faced with a bit of a time crunch for casting Airport Security.  By “crunch” I mean that we were less than 48 hours from calling “action” on our first camera shot.  So it’s a good thing I had the week off.

Under the ACTRA Independent Production Agreement (AIP), all speaking parts must be played by ACTRA members or apprentices; we managed to get a few non-member permits by virtue of our existing theatre cast, but we still had seven union roles to fill.  Any background performers had to be non-union (we don’t call them “extras” anymore, because that makes them sound like “bonus material” when they are, in fact, key to making scenes look good… besides, “extras” sounds like free toppings on a pizza).

We updated the non-union casting notice we had sent out earlier in the week to state that we were only offering background roles to non-union talent, and then we sent a casting breakdown out to the ACTRA office, who in turn forwarded it to a local mailing list of actors and agents.

As an actor, I have looked at and responded to many casting breakdowns.  I have never written one.  A casting breakdown outlines all of the roles that are being cast; for each character, you specify age range, gender, ethnicity, and anything else that is important, along with a brief description of the character.  Sometimes the breakdown says a little about what the character does.  So I sat down with Patrick and wrote two-sentence descriptions of the characters in his script, arriving at things like:

FIRST OFFICER — 35-45, male, diminutive stature (5’6” or shorter), any ethnicity.
Works in airport security; a little unsure of his own ability but very curious about things he doesn’t know.  Works closely with SECOND OFFICER and relies on her wisdom.

CATSA OFFICIAL / ANNOUNCER — 30-45, female, any ethnicity but must be able to speak English and French fluently.
Bureaucratic, unwilling to budge from the rules as written; the sort who believes rules are written for a reason, and doesn’t question the rules.  Cordial to a fault.

My impish nature made it hard to resist the temptation to write things like “hates wearing socks but is forced to do so by her domineering mother, whom she never mentions” and “cries spontaneously at the mention of Whitney Houston”, but I managed.  Mere moments after sending out the full breakdown, electronic submissions began to pour in.  It was now Monday evening, and we were to start shooting on Wednesday morning.

By far, we received the most interest from non-union talent.  For eight background roles, we received more than 50 submissions.  And let me say that if I were an unscrupulous film producer who never wanted to pay anyone and take total advantage of the dreams of others, going with non-union talent would be the way to do it.  While many people simply submitted a quick photo, contact information, and availability, several folks offered to dump work shifts, skip classes, or dye their hair just for the golden opportunity to stand for hours in a fake airport lobby for a few scant moments of screen time, with no lines to say and absolutely no pay in return.  It’s not hard to see why many filmmakers never bother trying to produce their work via the union route.  The sheer volume of submissions — all received in a matter of hours — was impressive.  In a way, though, having so many people to choose from was a blessing: when the time came to pick background talent, all I had to to do was compare our shooting schedule with people’s availability, and there were dozens of diverse faces to choose from.

Mind you, we fared very well with union submissions, too.  With resumes and photos and demo reels to use as a gauge, we created a shortlist of three or four names for every role we were casting in a matter of hours.  While we were open to the idea of holding some auditions, we were hoping that we could cast the seven actors we needed based on our knowledge of the local talent pool (it’s a healthy size in Ottawa, but not massive) and forego auditions altogether.  In this area, I found working with agents especially useful.  As an actor, my agent submits me for breakdowns on my behalf whenever she thinks there may be a good fit; the cool thing about this process is that I got to see how she does her job.  It’s also possible that she tried really hard because she knew I was doing the casting… but I won’t hold it against her! All of the local agencies submitted electronic packages to me, each with a slate of 30 or so actors hand-picked to fit the breakdown we wrote.  The submissions contained photos of the actors, and in all cases I could click on an actor’s name to have a better look at their resumes, profiles, and demo reels.  In several cases, phone conversations with the agent helped me delve more deeply into a particular actor’s interest, fit, and availability.  In cases where I didn’t know the actors whose names were submitted, being able to look at a demo reel online was crucial.  In fact, the decision on casting for the actress who portrayed our most challenging role was solidified based on the strength of her online demo reel.

Note to self: get a demo reel.

Patrick and I met on Tuesday evening, with about 14 hours to go before we were to start shooting our first scene.  Now, the pressure on shooting Wednesday’s scene was not as bad as it sounds, because it primarily involved roles that were already cast or on offer.  We focused on Thursday’s shoot, then: we went over all of my short lists, and finalized our choices for every role.  No auditions required.  All that was left was to confirm those people’s availability for the shoot, do up their contracts, and send them email with notes on their parts and what to wear to the set.

With everything in front of the camera set to go, we only had to worry about everything going on behind it.  Trivial, right?  Ha!

What box does this go in? (Part Two)

// February 7th, 2010 // No Comments » // Blog

With less than a week before we wanted to start shooting scenes from Airport Security on HD video, we still had not received word from the local ACTRA office on what options, if any, we might be able to use in order to allow union members to participate at our level of budget.  And while you may, dear reader, feel the urge to vent frustration with ACTRA, I caution you against it: this is exactly the same thing that happens every time I — or any entrepreneurial artist with a gut understanding of how a 14-year-old with a camcorder has more freedom to create digital media than any trained, unionized professional — talks to any non-grass-roots organization about ideas that don’t fit into older notions of what theatre, film, and promotion should be.  The truth is that the waters are so murky and so complex that nobody is willing to take the lead on setting guidelines and making things happen; in the meantime, innovators in this area are left expressing frustration at a system that that can’t keep pace with the rapidly-changing world of media technology and self-production.

There was a time when — probably thanks to my Catholic, prairie upbringing — I would have simply shrugged, defeated, and put my visions of cross-media and cross-discipline work on a shelf until the gatekeepers defined the rules.  But I am rapidly learning that the way to push the yardstick forward is to transgress, to show that such transgressions do not make the sky fall, and then force someone else’s hand.  I’m not proud of it, in the least… but it works.

One week before shooting, then, Patrick and I were faced with the prospect of doing an all non-union version of our video project.  It wouldn’t be too hard, actually: the only union member who was supposed to be in front of the camera was me.  The other members of the theatre cast who were available for the shoot were not members of ACTRA or Equity, and were therefore as free to perform on a non-union shoot as any other member of the public.  Many of the characters in the three scenes we wanted to film will not appear again in the theatre incarnation of Airport Security, so we could conceivably cast other non-union friends in those roles as well.  As time pressure mounted, it became clear that the best option would be to put out a non-union casting call for our video.

And so we did.  And in what felt like minutes after the casting breakdown was posted on Facebook, we got a call from the local ACTRA office.  There were options available to us, after all.  I have no doubt that the office would have gotten back to us at some point — they really were trying to see what they could do for us — but the tight nature of our timeline forced us to act, and the visibility of the casting call forced other people to act as well.

One of the other fun things about the relationship between Equity and ACTRA is something called the reciprocal agreement.  Written in 1971, this agreement between the two organizations essentially states that you can’t be a professional stage actor and an amateur film actor, and vice versa.  It states that Equity members who want to work in film and television must join ACTRA, and ACTRA members who want to work on stage must join Equity.  Many, many Canadian actors (including me) are members of both organizations (with all the surreal strangeness that entails: two sets of union dues, two insurance plans, and two retirement plans for people doing the same job in two different contexts — that’s a whole other quagmire), but there are many Equity actors who are not in ACTRA, and vice versa.  I tell you this because, in our region, there have been problems with members of one union working “illegally” in the jurisdiction of the other union, generally due to ignorance of the reciprocal agreement; and I suspect that one of the reasons we were called so quickly after our casting breakdown was posted was because it was suspected that our intention was to put Equity members in front of a camera — which is not true.  But I digress.

In the midst of being inundated with resumes from non-union people who were keen on being in our video (more on that in another post), I met with the ACTRA branch office staff member and came away, less than an hour later, with a plan.  In fact, it’s important to point out that they bent over backwards to help us, on an impossibly-short timeline, and we owe them a huge debt of thanks.  We were given permission to set up our project under the low-budget production agreement, and while they usually do not allow non-union members to take part in such projects, the idea that we wanted to preserve cast members from the Equity-approved theatre production was seen as reasonable justification for getting a few permits.  Once we have a theatrical screening of the finished video (which we plan to do at a theatre company fundraiser in March), we can post video to the web.  And we were able to audition and cast all the other speaking roles from the ACTRA talent pool, which was a huge bonus for us.  Turning the production into a union shoot also allowed us access to a couple of other terrific services, such as posting our union casting call to a local mailing list of ACTRA talent and talent agents, and an incredible insurance package. Less than 12 hours after that non-union casting call went out, we updated it to a union casting call; 24 hours after that, we had an almost all-ACTRA cast for our project, and were ready to begin shooting.

In the midst of this, some people asked why we’d want to go union in the first place.  Aside from the fact that Patrick and I are both proud union members ourselves, the simple answer is that the project is too important to us: with a two-day shooting schedule and a sixteen-page script, we did not have time to teach non-union actors, with limited on-camera experience, how to animate a performance within the technical machinery of a film set.  Patrick and I have also never produced a video of this length or magnitude before, and in a sense we wanted to cover our asses by bringing people to the set who could help us along.  The ability to use ACTRA talent on-set was a huge factor in the success of our shoot.

In my next post, I’ll talk about casting!

What box does this go in? (Part One)

// February 7th, 2010 // No Comments » // Kris's Soapbox

One of the most significant and complicated hurdles we had to jump to make our video for Airport Security is related to the unions and associations that govern actor participation in theatre and film/TV work.

As I have said before, we are living in a world where the realms of film, media, and live performance are rapidly converging.  Theatre companies want to incorporate footage into their work; multimedia companies want to incorporate live performance elements into their work; everyone wants to do neat things in the lead-up to projects that span the gaps between all forms of media.

Looking at Airport Security from the theatrical perspective — which is governed by Canadian Actor’s Equity — we have an agreement in place that lets us use a certain number of non-union actors in our production.  As part of the whole package deal, Equity has worked out clauses in agreements that permit us, as producers, to use our actors in filmed material as long as that material is only used for promotional purposes.  Basically speaking, we have a great deal of latitude as long as we don’t create anything that is more than two minutes long.  In 95% of cases, this covers everything a theatre company needs: footage of a play that is filmed at a media call, fun promo videos or teasers, and anything else the marketing and publicity people can cook up.

The “problem” with our scenario is that we wanted to film three scenes that aren’t even in the play anymore, three months before that start of the Equity contract; and the scenes added up to fifteen minutes of screen time.  Equity’s clauses don’t cover it.

The simple solution, then, was to treat the fifteen minutes of video as a totally separate project, and work with ACTRA — the Alliance of Cinema, Television, and Radio Artists — to find out what we can do to be able to use our theatre cast in front of the camera… but the problem is not that simple.  ACTRA’s agreements are not the same as Equity’s; the quotas and methods for non-union participation are different.  So even though we have an Equity-approved cast for the play, and we wanted to use all of the same actors in the video, there is no guarantee that this is actually possible under ACTRA’s jurisdiction.  We could produce a video called Airport Security and a play called Airport Security, and work with both unions independently to make it all happen — but when we want to use the same people in both projects, we can’t just do whatever we want.

It gets even more complicated in our case, because the whole point of filming these three scenes was to create video that could be posted online.  That’s an area that ACTRA is still wrestling with a bit.  Technically speaking, ACTRA’s jurisdiction covers the Internet, perhaps because putting live performance on the web involves the use of a camera, and because film and TV producers salivate at the prospects and profitability of Internet distribution.  The issues around Internet exhibition and distribution are still being worked on because they is complex (involving everything from copyright issues to compensation for performers and many things in between), and as of now there is no “Internet Production Agreement” that handily covers our project idea.  The only real digital media provisions that exist now, as far as I know, are in the Independent Production Agreement, which applies to big boys like feature film producers and television networks.  The rates for “Internet use”, then, are commensurate with that level of budget.  There is a terrific low-budget production agreement that is used by ACTRA members to produce their own work: the rates are very affordable, but the stipulation is that everyone who appears on camera has to be an ACTRA member or apprentice… and there is no explicit coverage of Internet use as part of the agreement.

You may be beginning to see the quagmire we were in: we had non-union members in our theatre cast, and wanted to use them in our video; but no low-budget agreement exists that allowed us to use non-union members, and in any case we didn’t even know if what we shot could be put on the web.

We wanted very much to be able to set up this project as officially and properly as possible.  The quagmire I just described is one that will arise more and more in the coming years, and it’s only by going through the proper channels that we can let both ACTRA and Equity know that their members are interested in and are doing this kind of work.

Of course, we’re also on a timeline. Airport Security (the live theatre version) opens in June. I’m in Winnipeg for the month of February.  And we want to post one scene per month on our web site in the lead-up to the theatre opening.  So we had to get all the prinicipal photography done early.

We contacted the local ACTRA office and posed the question.  Options were explored, but there was nothing on the table that immediately satisfied our desired outcome AND our budget constraints.  The question was bounced up the chain, but we didn’t know how long it would take to get an answer, OR if the answer we’d get would be one we could work with.  So we were faced with two options:

1. Pray for a deal of some kind, and make it work with our existing people
2. Recast the whole video with entirely non-union talent and bypass ACTRA altogether

As union members ourselves, we weren’t big fans of option two.  But with four days to our first day of shooting, we were running out of time to make a choice.

Oh, shoot

// February 6th, 2010 // No Comments » // Kris's Soapbox

Are you tired of watching theatre audiences grow old and wither?  Are you worried at the non-theatre-going kids of today will become the non-theatre-going adults of tomorrow?  Well, you’re not alone!  So what are you gonna do about it?

The folks at Gruppo Rubato — those folks include me — had an idea for audience development that involved their new theatre project, which is called Airport Security.  While we’re quite sure that doing a satirical play on the topic of travel security has broad audience appeal, we’re also very aware that there’s an almost-infinite pool of non-theatre-going people out there for whom our little show will be utterly invisible.  We think we’ve got some great material to share, though, and want to invite the non-theatre-goers along.  So.  How can we reach those folks, and help them feel welcome?

Here’s our take: let’s meet those non-theatre-goers on their turf: outside the theatre.

Our playwright for this project, Patrick Gauthier, wrote a bunch of scenes for the play that, for various reasons, will never be seen on stage.  We have decided to film these scenes and use them as an integral part of the project.  The idea is that the filmed scenes and the play function together as a whole: instead of putting together a 2-minute YouTube promo video that shows a clip from the stage show, we’ll offer three online scenes from the world of the play– shot on location, as professionally as we can muster — presented in a form that non-theatre-goers are more used to seeing.  Instead of seeing an “online ad” for a story, they’ll see a story.  We’re very excited about the idea.

This means that our little theatre-producing company turned into a little theatre-and-film-producing company this week.  We finished shooting our scenes yesterday, and we have learned an awful lot about planning and shooting a video.  I’d like to share some of the experience with you, and that’ll be the focus of the next few posts.

Please sign our petition: Protect the Fringe!

// September 2nd, 2007 // No Comments » // Blog, Kris's Soapbox

There have been a lot of strange changes to Fringe over the past couple of years.  Two very large ones have caused furor in 2007:

• the abandonment of door sales in Edmonton
• the creation of an “Encore Series” in Vancouver, where the festival has hand-picked five past shows to return and perform again, at a higher ticket price, in prime venues, and at prime times during the regular Fringe festival

Many people have complained about these changes.  Law suits have been threatened.  But everything that is happening is symptomatic of a larger problem: the Canadian Association of Fringe Festivals, which is staffed entirely by executive directors of Fringe Festivals, does not represent artists at all and is, therefore, making decisions that affect the health and integrity of Fringe.

This is odd, since the first article in CAFF’s mandate is to “safeguard the integrity of Fringe”.

A number of touring artists have come to the conclusion that we need artist representation on CAFF so that sea changes such as door sales, ticket surcharges and cannibalistic fundraisers can be discussed among a wider range of stakeholders.   To that end, I have created a petition that I hope you’ll sign, and tell your friends about.

You can find it here: http://www.thepetitionsite.com/6/protect-the-fringe

Click the “petition overview” link on the left to get a ton of background info, including a list of abhorrent Fringe policy transgressions from the past two years.  Click the “letter” link to see the actual petition, and then please sign it.

The wagon train: Alberta-bound

// August 14th, 2007 // No Comments » // Blog, Kris's Soapbox

“This is not going to work,” Dave said as he stood on the step in front of our house in Saskatoon, watching me haul my big-ass suitcase through the door.  “We’re f#@ked.”

I smiled at him and watched as Pat emerged behind me, hauling his own big-ass suitcase.

“We are so f#@ked,” Dave repeated.  He opened the back of the van and showed us the incredible lack of space.  The minimal storage space was already packed with bags.  Seven of us were to fit in to the van, and we still had to account for seven people’s luggage as well as some set pieces “and two guitars,” Dave said. “Who the f#@k brings guitars on tour?  Here. Let me just move my alto sax so you can get your bag in here.”

The caravan moved to pick up Chris Bange, from The Medicine Show.  More bags.  One more guy.  Then on to pick up the chick from Lola in Slacks.  More bags.  Another guitar.  Another person.  Then on to pick up the rest of the Tangelico gang.  More bags.  Two more people.  A stew pot.  No road trip is complete without a stew pot.  One never knows when one will be struck with the urge for stew.

We hauled all of the luggage out of the van on to the sidewalk.  Seven weary travellers spent many minutes gazing at the pile of stuff, then at the van, then at the other travellers.  “We’re f#@ked,” Dave muttered.  We thought about touring naked.  We thought about tying things to the roof.  We thought about stacking the women on top of one another (they’re small).  “We are so f#@ked,” Dave muttered again.  At this point it may surprise you to hear that Dave teaches English, but I have it on good authority that he focuses on literature because he eschews vocabulary. 

Ultimately the alto sax and a sandwich board were left behind, and we managed to get everything in to the van.

Nobody would be able to move on the six-hour drive to Edmonton, mind you.

In Lloydminster (my old elementary school stomping grounds!) we stopped at the mall for a bite and a shift change, so that we could all let new parts of our bodies go numb for the second part of the ride.

We arrived in Edmonton mid-evening, weary and sore but otherwise intact, and preparations for the Edmonton Fringe will begin in earnest tomorrow.  Patrick is flying back to Ottawa tonight so he can be at a funeral tomorrow, and will return a mere few hours before our first performance on Thursday night.

An open letter from touring artists of the Canadian Fringe Festival circuit

// August 12th, 2007 // No Comments » // Blog, Kris's Soapbox, Patrick's Soapbox

Recent developments in the administrative structure of the Edmonton and Vancouver Festivals have raised serious questions about the philosophy of the Fringe, questions  about the financial viability of Fringe touring, and questions about the future of artists’ participation.

The Edmonton festival has announced the suspension of sales of tickets at individual venues.  We feel that this policy will be detrimental to the artists’ interests in several ways:  first, it will limit access to those who pass venues and spontaneously decide that they want to go to a given show.  Second, it will limit access by removing the cash basis of ticket sales.

We also understand that tickets purchased at the so-called “kiosks” will be subject to a surcharge payable to the festival.  This not only increases ticket costs to the audience, thus limiting access again, but also makes mockery of the festival’s stated policy of returning 100% of ticket revenues to the artists.

We understand that Fringe Theatre Adventures in Edmonton is trying to streamline the operation of ticket sales, and we sympathize with the organizational concerns about volunteer shortages; however, it is counter-intuitive to suppose that kiosks where tickets for many shows are available are going to run as efficiently as  booths for individual shows.

Our second concern is with the Vancouver Fringe’s newly-announced Encore Series, which the festival proposes to run within the cadre of the general festival.  Presumably, the Encore Series has a budget for promotion, production, and administration which is not independent of the rest of the festival.  One further assumes that the attention and energy of media sponsors and media representatives will be drawn to the Encore Series, and
it is self-evident that it is intended by the Festival as a kind of representation of elite excellence.

We find all of this not only unfair, arbitrary, and bizarre, but highly offensive.  No one who has extensive experience touring the various Fringes has any objection to the notion of competition; by engaging to produce theatre in this way, we undertake to compete for the approval, the attention and the money of the audience.  Nor do we in any sense deny the right of the Vancouver Festival to produce theatre outside the cadre of the festival.  We
do find it patently absurd and ill-advised for the Festival to produce what amounts to a Festival of chosen, juried work within the supposedly unjuried, unmediated forum celebrated by the mandate of the Canadian Association of Fringe Festivals.

We urgently and earnestly ask that these two policies in particular be reconsidered not only by the individual Fringes concerned, but be debated and –we hope—repudiated by CAFF itself.  Touring the Canadian fringe circuit is a difficult task, undertaken only by highly dedicated, and for the most part, highly skilled and experienced individuals.  Do not make the task any harder than it is.

Sincerely,

THEATrePUBLIC Theatre Society
The RibbitREPublic
Keira McDonald
Rob Gee
Mark Scott (Laugh Inc)
Dave Dawson, Black Sheep Theatre
Patrick Gauthier & Kris Joseph, Gruppo Rubato
Screwed & Clued Theatre Company
Alex Eddington and Alison Williams, Acky-Made Productions

Who do you have to f#*k to get a review in this town?

// August 6th, 2007 // 1 Comment » // Blog, Kris's Soapbox

We had five media personnel (read: critics) at our Saturday night performance of The Churchill Protocol.  Four of these reviewers were from Edmonton.  One was from Saskatoon’s StarPhoenix.

The Edmonton reviewers come en masse to the Saskatoon Fringe, hoping to see as many of the touring shows as possible so that reviews can be printed right at the start of the festival.  In a way, it’s kind of nice to know that our Edmonton Fringe review is in the can two weeks before we open: good or bad, it’s done; there’s no reason to stress out over it.

We would really have loved an opening night review from the StarPhoenix.  We had no advance press here, of any kind, and no other media opportunities (these were all drawn by lottery) .  Aside from our entry in the Fringe program, thenm, nobody really knows we’re here.  Our attendance numbers to date are highly demonstrative of this fact.

Handing out flyers in Saskatoon is infuriating during the first weekend of the festival, too: not only are you seeing the same small crowd of people in every line for every show, but the fact that there are only four venues means that there are often more performers handing out flyers than there are audience members to take them.

All this is meant to indicate that there is very little about our audience situation that is in our complete control.

The local paper sent someone to see our play on Saturday evening.  We had a great show that night, too, so hurray for us.  But during the day on Saturday we learned that the StarPhoenix doesn’t publish on Sundays.  And since Monday is a holiday, there is no chance for the review to be published before Tuesday — halfway through the festival, and halfway through our run.

This angered us, of course, and I make no bones about it.  It costs us more than $2,000 to bring the show to town (not including what it costs for quaint luxuries such as food), and since the only money we make is from ticket sales, we need butts in seats.  Even shows that have had mediocre reviews have managed to pull in good crowds simply because the reviews were published, which actually speaks voumes for a theatre-going public that is willing to take risks on plays as long as they’ve heard of them. 

“Well,” we thought, “there’s always Tuesday.  A review on Tuesday will help us for our last three shows.”

While it is true that no paper was published today [Monday], many reviews were posted on the StarPhoenix’s web site.  Ours was not.  In fact, many of the new reviews were of shows that were seen by StarPhoenix staff on Sunday — one day after our show was attended.  So what’s the deal?

Our fear is that the reviews on the web site are the ones that are going in Tuesday’s paper, which means that the earliest we will see our review printed is Wednesday — two thirds of the way through our run, and in the final days of the festival (when most people’s show-viewing schedules have been decided).

There are a number of things that I detest about the Fringe circuit.  One of them is that shows live or die on the strength of their reviews (which is amusing, especially since Fringe reviewers are often totally unqualified for the work they do.  We were reviewed in Toronto by a food critic, and in Winnipeg by a woman who writes a weekly pet column and whose latest article reviewed several types of sunglasses you can buy for your dog.  I swear to God that I am not making this up).  I fail to understand how any media outlet can proudly claim to review every show at a festival, and then renege on that commitment by saving the lion’s share of the reviews for a publication date at which the reviews become utterly irrelevant. 

I am eagerly looking forward to getting to Edmonton, where we know we will have at least three reviews posted on or earlier than our opening night.  I am trying to take comfort in that, but the last days of the festival in Saskatoon are going to be difficult and stained with negativity, no matter what our eventual review says about our show.

Suck it up. It’s Saskatoon.

// August 3rd, 2007 // No Comments » // Blog, Kris's Soapbox

August in the Bridge City.

The Saskatoon Fringe Festival opened last night, and everyone is optimistic about how it will turn out.

The Festival here — this is no secret — has been mired in controversy in past years.  Last year, for example, the program didn’t come out until opening day.  Debts were not paid to many venues, resulting in a lack of theatre spaces this year.

The festival administrators are working hard to make the Saskatoon Fringe more appealing to artists.  There are fewer venues this year, which should help increase average audience size.  The program was distributed free with the city paper some weeks ago.  Media coverage is significant.  Pizza parties are being thrown for artists to keep us happy and fed.

But Saskatoon is not Winnipeg, and it is not Edmonton.  We are spoiled by the larger cities.

Looking at it objectively, Saskatoon manages a pretty sizeable festival considering its population of just over 200,000.  In terms of the number of companies represented here, the festival is the same size as the one in Ottawa — a city of just over a million.  The artists like to complain about the venues and the technical rehearsals and the audiences, but unless a miracle puts Saskatoon on the same playing field as its sister festivals to the East and West, this will never change.

The infrastructure that is present on Edmonton and Winnipeg simply does not exist here.  Theatres have to be created out of school gyms and church basements.  Technical equipment has to be brought in for almost every space, and there is a shortage of technical personnel to operate it.  Companies, like ours, who are used to getting top-notch assistance with our shows, are working here with less because less is simply what is available.

And that has to be good enough.

The residents (aside from the ones who think the Fringe is just a big street party where people get mugged) genuinely like having us all here.  And our shows may not look as sexy or run quite as smoothly as they do in other cities, but everyone agrees that this is a great festival for performers because it is laid-back and we can all get to know each other better.  So when it comes to feeling the urge to whine about how imperfect this festival is, I constantly remind myself of a coleague’s mantra:

“Suck it up.” Smile.  Genuinely. “It’s Saskatoon.”