All the Way to Eleven

Sean's Citadel

Jeff suggested that I should use Photoshop to erase the light standard marring the view of this photo of the Citadel Theatre. He also suggested that I add some pedestrians. So I've dropped in some lolSeans. 

The Citadel Theatre

I shot this on my way to the wedding of my friends Nicole and Jim back in...1994? 1995? There's nothing special about the image, aside from its service as a reminder of some good memories, but I do like the vibrance of the colour and the lone pedestrian. It's too bad the traffic control is in the way. 

The Raft: Scene 1

The Raft

A Play in One Act

by

Earl J. Woods

Cast of Characters

Fuad Azzameen - A man in his late 40s
Champion Fortnight - A man in his early 20s
Lake Suspiria - A woman in her early 20s
Heather Bullseye - A woman in her late 30s

Scene

A meandering river.

Time

The near future. 

Scene 1

SETTING: A large, well-made log raft, complete with railings, boat hook, two paddles and a small bamboo shelter floats lazily down a meandering river.  Upon the raft sit two Coleman coolers, one orange, one red; a Coleman lantern, two sleeping bags; a lawn chair; a fishing rod and net; some scattered pillows; a pair of binoculars; and a small safe with a combination lock. The shoreline is overgrown with tropical foliage; the water is very clear. It is a hot summer's day, shortly before noon. During this scene, the light gradually changes from natural yellow sunlight to a dangerous, foreboding red. 

AT RISE: The raft is empty. There is a splash; then, the sounds of someone swimming. After a moment, FUAD AZZAMEEN clambers onto the raft, soaking wet. He sits down heavily in the lawn chair. He peels off the wet suit he was wearing, stripping down to his underwear and undershirt. He's clearly exhausted by the swim; catching the raft in this current took speed and endurance. He hangs his clothing on one of the raft's bamboo railings, then examines the raft. He notes the boat hook, the paddles, the fishing rod. He opens one cooler, rummages through it: 

FUAD

Coors...Coke...Orange Crush...orange juice...7-Up...water...water!

FUAD takes a bottle of water and closes the cooler. He drinks as he continues to survey the raft. He notices the safe and tries to open it; it's locked. He spins the combination lock a couple of times, tries to open it again; no luck. He shrugs and moves toward the shelter that sits near the bow of the raft. As he looks through the doorway, there is a sudden crashing cacophony of howls, loud enough to shake the stage. FUAD's eyes lock on the doorway for an instant, and then he turns away as if he had heard nothing and had no interest in the shelter. He picks up the binoculars and scans the shoreline with them. Seeing nothing, he sits down in the lawn chair again and sips his water. He looks around, bored; he has the air of a man who desperately wishes he had something to read. 

CHAMPION

Hey! Hey you! Slow down! Wait!

FUAD leaps to his feet, startled. He looks all around, trying to locate the source of the voice - he's looking out into the audience. But CHAMPION FORTNIGHT pushes aside thick foliage on the opposite shore and waves desperately. 

CHAMPION

Over here! 

FUAD sees CHAMPION and uses the boat hook to snatch a low-hanging branch, muscles straining to stop the raft. It works, but FUAD can't hold on for long. 

FUAD

Hurry! The current's too strong!

CHAMPION dives into the water and swims for it, reaching the raft just as FUAD is forced to unhook the boat hook from the branch. He drops the boat hook onto the deck and helps CHAMPION board. 

CHAMPION (gasping)

Thanks! I didn't think there was anyone else...(he trails off.)

FUAD

No. Me either. 

CHAMPION (extending a hand to shake)

Well, I'm glad I found you. I'm Champion Fortnight. Most people just call me Champ. 

FUAD (shaking hands after a reluctant moment)

Fuad Azzameen. 

The two men regard each other for a second with some wariness. Then CHAMPION claps his hands onto his thighs and stands up. 

CHAMPION

So - a raft, huh? Not a bad idea. I tried for a glider; it didn't work out. 

FUAD

It's not mine. I found it just a few minutes ago. 

CHAMPION

Really? Huh. What are the odds? 

FUAD shrugs as CHAMPION takes a look around the raft, performing the same mental inventory that FUAD did moments ago. He opens one of the coolers and retrieves a beer, cracking it open. 

CHAMPION

So what's in the safe? And who puts a safe on a raft, anyway? And hey, where's...where's whoever built this? 

FUAD

I don't know. It was empty when I arrived. The safe is locked. But they haven't been gone long. There's still ice in the coolers. Hardly any has melted. 

CHAMPION

Did you look in here? 

CHAMPION moves toward the shelter. FUAD suddenly freezes as if transfixed. CHAMPION sticks his head into the doorway and screams as the same sounds we heard before drown out everything. 

(BLACKOUT)

(END OF SCENE)

Paths Not Taken

When I was small, I couldn't decide what I wanted to be when I grew up. Astronaut was my number one pick, followed closely by actor. Writer came in third.

You pretty much have to be a genius to be an astronaut, so that career was ruled out early on. I did make a go of acting, performing in school plays from grade school right on up to high school, staying active in the drama club and, encouraged by my Grade Nine drama teacher, auditioning for a television role in 1984. I didn't get the role, but I did become one of the show's two co-hosts.

One failed pilot later spelled the end of my media career. Sometimes I wonder what might have been different had the pilot been picked up, or had I pursued an offer to work on other projects for the network. Instead I went back to school and found that I enjoyed writing more and more. By the time I went back to the CBC, arts degree in hand, the recession of the 90s had hit and they weren't hiring anyone, least of all a rookie with barely any experience.

I no longer dream of being an astronaut (except literally every couple of months), but I still feel the acting bug from time to time. I don't claim to be good, but I wasn't terrible - at the very least, I was good enough to make it through a round of professional auditions and claim a closely-related job.

At the very least, it would be fun to gather some friends again, as I used to do during my university years, and gently coerce them into playing roles in my terrible home movies.

I'm the first to admit that I've been very fortunate; since the mid-to-late 90s I've enjoyed a wealth of rare experiences, and I can actually make a living doing something I love. But one can't help but wonder how things might have gone otherwise.

A Night at the Improv

Last night Tanara, Kim and Andrew (seen here next to Sylvia) insisted that we accompany them to see a night of improv at the Varscona Theatre, just off Edmonton's Whyte Avenue. I'm glad they did, because not only are Sylvia and I struggling against our natural tendencies to become homebodies, it also happened to be a really fun show.

Improvisation is a hit-or-miss art form. Depending on the nature of the necessary audience interaction and the talent of the performers, the results can range from brilliant to painful. There was a little of each last night, but the best moment happened when one performers managed to construct a hilarious rap song about his dead mother.

The nature of improv leads to absurd situations that would never occur in real life, so naturally I'm a fan of the form. In fact, Sylvia and I have even talked about pursuing improv as a hobby in the past, and the director's announcement that Rapid Fire Theatre holds improv workshops is certainly tempting. I used to be pretty good at it in junior high school...

The Conscience of the King of Playwrights

Back in 1998, I sold this article about the 100th anniversary of Bertolt Brecht's birth to The Peak. I'm still pretty happy with it.

This year, Germans and lovers of the theatre all over the world are celebrating the 100^th anniversary of the birth of Bertolt Brecht, author of Galileo, The Caucasian Chalk Circle, The Threepenny Opera (origin of “Mack the Knife), and a score of other plays. Born 10 February 1898 in Augsburg, Bavaria, Brecht went on to become one of the most celebrated and controversial of the modern dramatists, earning the monikers “the German Shakespeare”  and “the poet of the Communist revolution,” this last nickname being applied to him because of his fervently Marxist outlook. In fact, so identified was he with the Communist cause that his plays were not performed in capitalist West Germany until after his death in 1956. His exposure in North America has been limited even today; the internationally renowned theatre company he formed in East Berlin, the Berliner Ensemble, did not perform on that continent until a 1986 performance in Toronto.

Indeed, Brecht was always something of an exile. He wrote in Germany during World War I, later fled the Nazis to work in Scandinavia, spent time in Hollywood writing screenplays (only to be forced to testify before the infamous House Un-American Activities Committee), and finished his life in East Germany. Along the way, he fathered three children by three different women and made a good deal of devoted friends and bitter enemies. His was not a life of moderation.

The Communist East appreciated the devotion of a famous and influential figure to their cause, but were uncomfortable with his unflinching devotion to art and to his own version of the truth. Plays like The Measures Taken (1926), in which an evangelical Communist shows her loyalty to the Party by meekly submitting to an unjust execution, even though the young Comrade knows herself to be in the right, anticipated the Stalinist fervor that would make life in the Soviet Union such a nightmare for hundreds of millions of its citizens. This kind of criticism made Soviet authorities distinctly uncomfortable; Brecht was never popular in the USSR, though Communist Party propagandists made much use of Brecht’s celebrity status. And while Brecht was profoundly influential in the West, affecting the careers of important English directors like Peter Brook and playwrights like John Arden and John Osborne, his politics were often thought to interfere with his art, making his plays just a little less effective than they could have been. Indeed, at the close of The Caucasian Chalk Circle (1945), the conclusion is so obviously a not-too-subtle rephrasing of “from each according to their abilities, to each according to his needs” that even the least astute reader feels like he’s been somewhat beaten over the head with the point. But then, Brecht was convinced that the theatre had to be a way to promote social change; he would not apologize for appearing to belabour his points. 

Brecht’s mode of storytelling, what has been termed “epic theatre,” has had more impact on drama than the plays themselves. Brecht took pains to point out that his method was really a rebellion against the relatively new phenomenon of the naturalistic theatre, wherein the audience is made to feel that they are merely eavesdropping on real events. He felt that the relatively new naturalist method of direction encouraged audiences to leave the theatre entertained and sated, but uninstructed in any way. It was too easy to enjoy; the audience was not required to think. In contrast, epic theatre uses older dramatic traditions like the aside, the monologue, or the chorus, devices that make a play less “realistic” but more intellectually engaging. In any play using the Brechtian mode, the audience cannot help but realize that they are watching a play - they cannot for one second believe that they are simply peering into a realistic world. For example, Brecht once painted the faces of a group of soldiers chalk-white to symbolize their fear of charging into battle - much more likely to provoke thought than a simple expression of fear on an actor’s face.  

In the early 20^th century, most plays used the naturalist method; it was almost like watching a movie. Today, more and more stage plays are using the traditional devices that Brecht brought back into the spotlight. Brecht’s influence can be seen in the works of Canadian playwright and director Brad Fraser, author of Unidentified Human Remains and the True Nature of Love and Poor Superman. In Poor Superman, the stage is very much an artifice; surreal forms take the place of furniture and the walls are made into a slideshow of rampaging comic-book characters. Critic Martin Esslin called epic theatre “a production naively sophisticated yet highly stylized.” Naïve, perhaps, but the evidence of Brecht’s impact is all around us.

To celebrate the centenary of Brecht’s death, a number of special events are happening all over the world through 1998. His childhood home in Augsburg was renovated and turned into a German national monument on February 10; a Brecht postage stamp was also produced. Several television specials on his life have already aired, and no less than three different CD packages have been released featuring Brecht’s songs and readings of his works. The Korean Brecht Society will be holding a conference in Seoul to celebrate the centenary during the final week of September this year, on the theme “Brecht in the Post-Socialist, Post-Modernist World.” Four films on Brecht’s life and work are currently in production. Canadian pop singer Jane Siberry participated in a celebration in Toronto in April. Perhaps most exciting is the planned publication of Bertolt Brecht’s War Primer, a controversial look at the Cold War that was originally released in 1955. Consisting of Brecht’s thoughts on the madness and futility of war, it was too frank for Cold War audiences on either side of the Iron Curtain to take; the 90s may be a more receptive era for this important, eloquent testimonial. The works of Bertolt Brecht may not have received the attention that they have deserved in recent decades, but it looks as though the long Brecht-fast is over at last.

With a Twinkle in My I

Earl's last experience on the stage, circa December 1984.

Kevin had an extra ticket to see Ronnie Burkett's Billy Twinkle, Requiem for a Golden Boy and graciously invited me along. It's been too long since I headed out to the Citadel to see a play, and I'm very glad I did.

Believe it or not, I remember Ronnie Burkett from Harriet's Magic Hats, an educational show that used to play on Access Network in the 80s. He's come a long way since then. Twinkle is a funny, sad, pathetic, brilliant, subversive, multilayered one-man/many-marionettes show that isn't afraid to make its audience uncomfortable in the pursuit of emotional truth. Well worth seeing.

I'm very glad Kevin invited me, because it's been way too long since I set work and home life aside to take just a small slice of time to appreciate art. Driving home at night on a warm fall evening with the window rolled down, I reflected on my old adolescent dreams of becoming an actor, shot down at that one audition at CBC, where it was decided I'd make a far better host than dramatic player.

And so it goes. Since tonight's show drew heavily on Shakespeare, I feel no irony whatsoever in recalling that life's but a stage, and we are merely poor players...