Our HUGE and CRAZY Project: Blog installment #1

I'm tired today. This past week has finally caught up with me. It was a doozy. I'll explain, though I should probably start at the begining...

When Jacqui and I first decided to come to apply to come to Pacific Theatre they ask what type of apprenticeship we wanted. It's really great because the apprenticeships are really geared toward the interests of the people who come. If you want to direct you can direct, if you're an actor they let you act, if you want to design they'll find a way to plug you in or if you want to do a delicious mix of everything, heck that's cool too. So anyway as Jacqui and I were applying the one thing we knew for sure was that as a part of our apprenticeships we wanted to compile a show and perform it.

I say "compile" because one of the types of theatre we're most interested in is called ethnography or oral history and you don't really "write" plays like this, at least in the traditional sense where everything is coming from your brain/imagination and your brain/imagination alone. Basically the process of creating an ethnographic play looks sort of like this. 1) Interview people 2) Write down the interviews word for word 3) Take your stack of interviews and cut them together into a script. It's sort of like a documentary film but for the stage.

So for the last 5 months that's what we've been doing.

It's been crazy.

When we first got here we had no idea what we wanted our play to be about. Initially we decided that we wanted to do sort of a slice of life sort of thing and interview people from every demographic in Vancouver and have the show be about life in the city.

We were excited but then we attended a playwriting workshop and realized that while life in the city is interesting it lacks a solid central story and to loosely quote the guy who was doing the workshop "Plays need to have a story!" So it was back to the drawing board.

Now when you're choosing a topic for your ethnographic play (Which is a common dilemma...Seriously. It's getting to the point where I can't even order a coffee anymore without having the guy behind the counter choose a topic for his ethnographic play right in front of me...it's becoming quite the global problem!!) there are several ways to approach choosing a topic.

You can:

1) Pick an event and then get lots of different people's reactions to it or to tell it from their perspective ( "Well I was at work when the aliens attacked and hoo-boy!")

2) Pick a topic or current issue and ask people about their opinions on or their experiences with said topic ("I've never much cared for broccoli and I'll tell you why. It all started when my Aunt Crab Apple came to visit in the summer of '45...)

3) You can pick a certain group or community of people and try and tell their story ("You know being a member of the Kool-Aid fan club has been quite a journey for me...)

or 4) A mixture of any and all of these. ( My Aunt Kool-Aid had just visited the aliens when the broccoli attacked. At the same time Crab Apple '45 was just becoming a member of the hoo-boy fan club!")

So there we were mid-October no topic to be found. We brainstormed and then brain tornadoed but still nothing. Then it hit us. Right under our creative noses we had two amazing stories unfolding in front of us...

(cue dramatic music)

DUN-DUN-DAAAAA!

(cue charming announcer)

Tune in next post to find out the thrilling conclusion to our theatrical heroes' story. Will they finish their play? What were these mysterious stories? How do you make an ornamental shoe box using only ornaments and a shoebox? For the answers to these questions and more tune in next time for Our Project: Blog installment...#2!