Gruppo Rubato

After more than fifteen years, I have finally learned to appreciate props

// May 23rd, 2007 // No Comments » // Blog, Kris's Soapbox

It’s sad that it took this long — until I was finally in rehearsal for a play that I helped to write — for me to realize how intricate details about props can have such a critical impact on a show. The “gut instinct actor” in me generally scoffs at the kind of director who obsesses for weeks over which chair is the perfect chair for the set, and then for weeks more about how meticulously the chair must be placed upon the stage.

The script for The Churchill Protocol calls for a “sheaf of news clippings”. Natalie, our director, has suggested that a box of news clippings might be a more bold choice, since a “sheaf” is something that is carried around in the pocket (like a wad of kleenex), and a box implies a more formal approach to keeping track of something.

Let’s say, just for the sake of argument, that a military man were to keep clippings of articles written by or about a certain reporter. Just as an example. An utterly random example. Ahem. There is a great deal that is said by how those clippings are kept: if they’re in a ratty old box, the appearance of the collection sends a very different message than if they appear, neatly organized, inside a carefully labeled and stored accordion folder. Is the collector a casual observer, or is he meticulous to the point of fanaticism or even psychosis? This is yet another example of the kind of thing that a playwright does not consider when writing: in fact, the prop may have just been tossed in to serve the dialogue (I can say that because I think I did the tossing in this case. It’s hard to tell. Not that it matters, really, because this is just a random example) An astute director and designer will latch on to a small detail like this, though, and use it to lift just a bit more meaning from the page. They may even helpfully suggest that this detail can aid with the actor’s creation of a performance. Ultimately the show is that much better because the effect of that attention to detail is far more reaching than the detail itself.

At the end of the process, of course, the playwrights will no doubt claim that the creepily neat box of painstakingly-organized news clippings was just the prop they were originally thinking about.

An early birthday gift from the Canadian government

// April 24th, 2007 // No Comments » // Blog, Kris's Soapbox

Our director and a fine young actor (serving as Pat’s less hairy proxy) met with me this afternoon to read through and talk about our Fringe play, The Churchill Protocol. I baked fresh bread and made chicken chili. The fine young actor brought along a small pizza topped with an oddly incredible combination of broccoli, pineapple, and assorted meats.

I hadn’t really read through our latest draft since it was finished at the end of last month, so I was eager to take another look at it. I was also really excited to hear the text out loud, since we usually only get to see it on paper. Plays are funny things in that how they appear on the page may have absolutely no relation to how they appear in a theatre. Sometimes a play that seems perfect on paper will fall flat on the boards; I think The Churchill Protocol is a play that doesn’t read well, which either means that it sucks or that it has been written with performance in mind. I hope it’s the latter.

I’m very happy with how the reading turned out. The script is not without its problems (no script is perfect, anyway), but most of the criticisms are minor and, on the whole, we think that what we need to do is get the play up and running in rehearsal in order to smooth out the rough spots. It is at times quite funny, but it also has some great meat on the bone: it’s just about everything we set out to create, although the script we have now looks nothing at all like the one we started with last year.

All of this is bolstered by some more good news that propels us forward. We found out on Friday that ours is one of eight projects that has been selected to pitch to a panel of artistic directors, producers, and festival curators during the Magnetic North Theatre Festival Industry Series. This means that we have a chance to present the piece as a product that, after a summer of evolution on the Canadian Fringe circuit, will be ready to tour or be presented as part of other theatrical programming (likely domestic, but possibly even international).

On my way to the gym tonight, already beaming after a productive day of script review and brainstorming on pitch angles and promotional ideas, I tuned the car radio into the top story on CBC World Report, and my grin widened to the point where it ate my face.

You see, the bizarre events portrayed in The Churchill Protocol are catalyzed by a brash reporter who has caught wind of secret flights, coming from Afghanistan, that have been landing in the middle of the night near Churchill, Manitoba. The “cargo” on those flights is live, and the reporter has every reason to believe that the Canadian Forces are smuggling Afghan prisoners into Manitoba for secret detention on our own soil. We came up with this conceit during our last workshop, in December; while it proves to be an interesting setup for the play, it doesn’t have much grounding in reality. It’s believable, and there is past precedent for secret detainment in the Canadian history books, but it’s not likely to be happening now.

Or so we thought.

Tonight’s lead story in the Canadian media is like a hunk of gold, studded with diamonds and fringed with platinum, that has landed in our laps. Canadian authorities have apparently been turning Afghan detainees over to Afghan authorities, where those detainees are being horribly tortured. The Canadian government is being accused of willful blindness, which technically makes Canada guilty of war crimes. There are even unconfirmed reports of Canadian authorities committing some acts of torture themselves. Now, the Canadian government doesn’t seem to want to get into the business of running a prison in Afghanistan, but they can’t knowingly turn prisoners over to people who commit torture… so what can they do? At one point during discourse in the House of Commons today, Stephane Dion suggested that Canada might want to bring the detainees to Canada so that they can be held safely; Prime Minister Stephen Harper said “I’m not sure what the leader of the opposition is suggesting. We’re not going to bring Taliban prisoners to Canada.”

To be clear, then: the leader of the official opposition actually suggested (though he later backed down) that we openly do exactly what the reporter in our play thinks the government is doing.

I simply can’t ignore it. For the purposes of The Churchill Protocol — and because it is suddenly the biggest story in the country — our brash young reporter is going to riff on the “what-if” idea that Harper’s flat denial of prisoner importation is a lie.

Thank you, universe. I will remember this the next time I’m angry at you!

The official title for the formerly untitled play involving a goat

// March 16th, 2007 // No Comments » // Blog, Kris's Soapbox

It’s official as of this afternoon, since we’ve sent our material off to the Ottawa Fringe Festival producer:

Our 2007 Fringe production, coming soon to a major Canadian city near you, is The Churchill Protocol. And our entry in the Ottawa Fringe Festival program will look a little like this:

Gruppo Rubato presents The Churchill Protocol by Patrick Gauthier and Kris Joseph Directed by Natalie Joy Quesnel and her unborn baby Our government is secretly shipping live cargo from Afghanistan to northern Manitoba. A reporter is hungry to find out why… but the truth might stop his heart.A new comedy from the producers of 2006’s sold-out hit The Man Who Went to Work One Day and Got Eaten by a Bear.”Gauthier’s work is smart, funny, cynical and urban…” - Ottawa Citizen Appearing at Studio Leonard Boulne (venue 3)