Directing: The Art of Stepping Up

I haven't directed since the nineties.

Buddies in Bad Times' Rhubarb! Festival is a legendary kick-starter of artists, shows, and collaborations. Everyone gets a half-hour slot, repeated over several nights, to make a brand-new performance happen. No critics, no boundaries, and an audience up for anything. Performing there is always a joy.

When I expressed interest in directing, Buddies paired me with a novice playwright who was really a visual artist. She came to the first rehearsal and was so terrified by everything about the theatre that she went completely AWOL for the rest of the process. She was from another province, so no one knew where to reach her about her script, which – though promising – desperately needed rewrites and clarifications, even for a Rhubarb! play. Yet I had to hide all of my own panic from the cast (who were brave and good through all of it). On opening day I felt too scared to get out of bed... until my wise partner Jovanni gently reminded me: "Your actors need you to go in there and reassure them that everything is going to be okay. This is just not a good day to fall apart." I learned something about the job of a director that day, and have confirmed it many times since: that it's not so much about being fearless, and more about putting your fears in a safety deposit box while you go take care of your company's. Making decisions, serving your playwright/the writing, communicating with your design and production teams, giving everyone a strong sense of clear and shared purpose, encouraging and heeding your actors, shielding them as much as possible during the period when they are most vulnerable. Until they don't need you to do that anymore. Which is, traditionally, opening night.

SInce then, I have never sought (or been offered) a chance to put those lessons into practice. But when Toronto's own Emma Mackenzie Hillier personally asked me some months ago to direct a little workshop of a play she was developing, I couldn't say no. Firstly because I adore Emma, and if she's behind a piece, I trust that. Secondly because it was just a reading, so how badly could I muck it up? Lastly and most of all, because Ruby Slippers Theatre's Advance Series – curated by Vancouver powerhouse Diane Brown – is all about women creators stepping up. Changing the dismal statistics about women in leadership roles in theatre, changing the equation... just like the women in Go, No Go, Natalie Frijia's exciting story about the Mercury 13, who fought for a place in the early days of space exploration.  When someone you respect gives you an opportunity to lead, when someone has faith in you, you really have two options: run away, or deliver. I've tried running away for long enough that I'm ready to try the other thing. After all, improving the status of women in the arts is going to take a lot of risk, a lot of failure, a lot of stepping up.  So I assembled an extraordinary cast of women and gender non-conforming artists, and did my level best. In the course of directing that reading, I realized that I've picked up a thing or two over the years about how to put a play together. Maybe it's time to own that, and pass it on. Furthermore, when I look around at what's going on for women in the world, this much seems clear: for those of us who have some choice in the matter, today is still not a good day to fall apart.

I don't even have a snazzy photo, because I was one hundred percent focused on what was happening in the room. Instead, I'll just salute the heroic and generous collaboration of Natalie and the cast, my Mercury 13 (one of whom, in the time-honoured tradition of working women everywhere, even had to confront a last-minute childcare crisis... so her amazing little boy and his toys hung out quietly behind an onstage curtain during the reading!) Thank you, Emma, Natalie, and Diane, for the adventure.

A workshop and reading of Natalie Frijia's GO, NO GO took place on Sept. 10 and 11 as part of Ruby Slippers Theatre's Advance Series of new plays by women, hosted by the Vancouver Fringe Festival. The cast included Meghan Gardiner, Ming Hudson, Pippa Mackie, Katie Sly, and Agnes Tong.

Feed, Fight, Flee, and... Flirt: Rehearsing "And Bella Sang With Us"

In real life, fighting and making love are intimate acts: outside of whoever you're doing them with, no one else exists.

In the theatre, representing either violence or sexuality comes with a set of paradoxes.

During stage combat, your first duty is to your own safety and that of your fellow performers. Your second duty is to make it look like you're trying to hurt them.

Staging love/attraction/sexuality, meanwhile, turns one's most private moments into a PDA.

Actors love to live as fully as possible through their time on stage. In And Bella Sang With Us, I get to deduce, chase, argue, mime, sing, drink, kiss, make jokes, make a fool of myself and others, and perform heroic deeds. I'm a lover, a fighter, a friend, and (as The Wire would have it) "good police".

I knew I'd ease into the fighting slowly, able to bring the aggression only once I'm sure I know the choreography and that no one's going to lose an eye. (I'm lucky in that Sarah May Redmond and I just worked together on He Said It. In fight scenes as in love scenes, trust always helps.)

On the other hand, I was startled to hear from director Sarah Rodgers and her assistant Ian that whenever Simon Webb and I are playing ex-lovers O'Rourke and Harris, our volume drops to a nearly inaudible whisper. As Ian put it: "If this were a film and we had microphones, it would be very steamy!" Simon and I are both stage animals and, once into performance, I doubt we've ever gotten a volume note in our lives. However, this is rehearsal, and this is different. The overt sexual content of this play is pretty mild – it's essentially a buddy cop story set in 1912, after all – but Harris and O'Rourke have a pretty torrid history, even if only the tip of it is currently bobbing above the surface.

I do feel that, particularly when we play lovers with actors who are strangers, there needs to be a period (even one run-through, if the schedule is tight) where it is just for us. We need to create intimacy... because erotic and sexual material, in the context of the theatre, is not generally about exhibitionism. It's not actually a PDA. It's a very private moment... shared.

Not to worry, though, Rodge: now that Simon and I have got the hang of it, we'll bump it up a decibel or forty. Next I need to focus on improving my hand-to-hand... while wearing a long skirt. Good times.

And Bella Sang With Us plays at the Cultch Sept. 9-17. Tickets and more information here.

My comments about intimacy and privacy are obviously not universally applicable: when it comes to the Kardashian family, for example, all bets are off. However, most reality TV stars haven't seen fit to turn their talents to the stage. Yet.

Back on the boards in September

Gearing up to rehearse And Bella Sang With Us for the Vancouver Fringe in September. This fast-paced historical adventure passes the Bechdel Test with flying colours and with Sarahs to spare: we initially had *four* of them in our rehearsal room, which made it feel like some sort of Presbyterian convent (or the world's most goyishe mikvah). In the interests of sanity, they have been renamed Sarah May (Redmond), Sarah Louise (Turner), Sarah Roa (her full name), and Rodge (Sarah Rodgers), for the duration. Sally Stubbs is around as producer and playwright, and stage manager Patricia Jiang is on hand to keep all that estrogen on the straight(ish) and narrow.

Our resident menfolk include assistant director Ian Harmon and ASM Kenta Nezu. Versatile SImon Webb rounds out the cast, playing all mankind. Simon should compare notes with dear Rob Fortin, who played The Men when we did the equally female-centric For Home and Country at the 4th Line Theatre. Or possibly with Chris Hemsworth from Ghostbusters... though at least our action-packed tale is unlikely to retroactively ruin the childhoods of any whiny American boy-men.

First day of school.

We had our first read-through yesterday for And Bella Sang With Us at Sarah Rodgers' home. I haven't done a Fringe for a decade... but working with Sarah, one of Vancouver's most in-demand directors, on re-imagining a Sally Stubbs play that explores the fraught and forgotten history of Canada's first policewomen? How could I resist?

Maybe things are different here in Vancouver, but in my experience, it's not a typical first reading of a Fringe show when you have senior professionals – Barbara Clayden, Brian Ball – giving design presentations. First readings are always heady times, though, aren't they: full of possibility and enthusiasm; long before the realities of deadlines and budgets and our own limitations set in. And that's especially true when everyone there is doing it for love.

The cast crackles through the first read: I look forward to being in the room together. And I am very excited about fighting again. It's been years since I got to do some quality stage violence, and fight director Derek Metz is going to work with me to help blow the rust off. I've always learned choreography very very slowly, and I'm not able to really go after another actor until I'm pretty sure that (a) I know what I'm doing and therefore (b) they won't get hurt. Then, and only then, am I able to make it look like I want to kill them. Just another of the paradoxes of the theatre.