Dear Diary: Infinity Rehearsal, Week 3

Every week, Infinity Assistant Director, Mariel Marshall writes us a diary entry of her experience in the rehearsal hall. If you haven't already, start at the beginning by scrolling down to Dear Diary: Preparing for Infinity Rehearsals

It’s been very busy in the rehearsal hall this week, so this post is a little behind schedule! But Mariel has treated us to something a little different:

I sat down with composer, Njo Kong Kie, who is the mastermind behind the score of Infinity, and asked him to tell us about the inspiration of the music.

NKK: When we first started, Ross asked if I could build a solo violin piece based on a passage contained in a track from Picnic in the cemetery, my album for violin, cello and piano. The piece is called Formula 1. I know this title suggests car races, but it is also a reference to using a mathematical formula, a recipe if you will, to compose a piece of music. In the context of Infinity, it makes sense that there are some suggestions of math in the musical score, however simple and subtle they may be. I suppose music is inherently mathematical anyway, but I did think about math a little bit more while working on this score and there are subtle references; but unless one goes looking for them, one likely won’t notice them. For the music detective audience out there though, see if you can break the code to uncover our thinking in the musical design.

The score has evolved gradually from one workshop of the script to another until it reaches its present form. And it is still evolving. I am a gregarious person. I enjoy a collaborative environment. I get ideas from whatever is in the room: a movement, a word, or in this case, the characters and the situations they find themselves in.  I reckon the process is similar for all collaborative artists.

If we compare composing to cooking, then musical ideas are the ingredients. Some ingredients you can find already in your kitchen, some you have to get from the market, some you discover by happenstance. Once you have the ingredients, you have to decide how to prepare them, what shapes you are going to cut them into, what to cook them in, how to cook them, what spices to use, what sides to serve them with and how to present them. I don’t know where I can go with all these, so feel free to expand on this analogy and see how far we can stretch it. Please do join us at the show. Let us show you what we have cooked up for you.

Dear Diary: Infinity Rehearsal, Week 2

Every week, Infinity Assistant Director, Mariel Marshall writes us a diary entry of her experience in the rehearsal hall. If you haven't already, start at the beginning by scrolling down to Dear Diary: Preparing for Infinity Rehearsals. 

Here's what Mariel has to say about the second week in the rehearsal hall:

We’ve just finished week two of rehearsals for Infinity.  This week we completed staging the piece: creating a basic structure for where actors are placed in scenes, where set pieces live, and how actors transition from one scene to the next.

The playwright, Hannah Moscovitch, continues to make changes to the script. It’s exciting to see what comes in from her on a day to day basis. At first, there were additions of an entirely new scene. At this point, the changes have become more subtle.

Haley McGee looks through her script

In rehearsals this week, the actors have been working with gesture and physical explorations. We used a movement exercise developed by Michael Chekov as a way for the actors to explore the psychological and physical world of their characters. For each character in the play, we brainstormed a number of known and popular archetypes, for example: the femme fatale, the wizard, the prodigal son, or the manic pixie dream girl.  The actors picked three of the archetypes that resonated with them, and developed a gesture for each archetype. It was a fun and compelling way to get to the heart of a character’s psychology. The archetypal movements that the actors created were also refined into much smaller and subtler gestures, and incorporated throughout the play. We have also introduced the gestures in the play’s dance/movement sequence, choreographed by Kate Alton.

We have also been doing a lot of intricate work with transforming a very minimal set into different locations, including a public washroom, a hospital room and a family home. In order for these set changes to happen smoothly, there is lot of challenging prop choreography for the actors to learn. As we move from scene to scene – and of course considering costume changes and the needs of the set and lighting design, each movement and transition must be carefully considered and planned.

Director, Ross Manson speaking with Amy Rutherford and Paul Braunstein.

In the design department, we've had our first costume fittings and the characters are taking shape very nicely. We are working with designer Teresa Przybylski on both set and costume design, and it's incredible to see how skilled she is with crafting a design that is minimal, functional and effective in conveying the world of the play. 

Next week, we’ll be going back through the piece and layering in more depth within the scenes, clarifying blocking and smoothing out any last changes.

Dear Diary: Infinity Rehearsal, Week 1

Every week, Infinity Assistant Director, Mariel Marshall writes us a diary entry of her experience in the rehearsal hall. If you haven't already, start at the beginning by scrolling down to Dear Diary: Preparing for Infinity Rehearsals. 

Here's what Mariel has to say about the first week in the rehearsal hall:

We are into our first week of rehearsals for Infinity and it’s been a fascinating start to the process. On the first day, we did a read through of the script for the entire team, which includes Volcano and Tarragon Theatre staff, interns, production crew, and creative team. It really does take a village. After the read-through, we jumped right into character and movement work with the actors.

By day two, director Ross Manson was already staging the piece: deciding where the actors are placed in scenes, how we integrate movement and music in transitions and how to coordinate a complex set of props. In many ways, this week has felt like putting together a really complex jigsaw puzzle; you need to match pieces together, one by one, and trust that with time and focus the completed image will take shape.

This week we have also been working with movement director, Kate Alton. Kate has been working with the actors on a frenetic and complex movement piece that takes place near the end of the first act. The sequence was originally developed in an earlier workshop and now Kate is building upon the foundation with more intricacy and specificity.

It’s also incredible to have music composer Njo Kong Kie and violinist Andréa Tyniec in the room with us. Having them collaborate on the process from such an early stage has been incredible because it allows the music to be woven into the script seamlessly.

The playwright, Hannah Moscovitch, continues to make script changes on a daily basis, and it’s both exciting and challenging to see how these new developments affect the piece. We’ve also been in touch with Lee Smolin, who continues to guide us in all of our questions regarding theoretical physics (the main character Elliot plays a theoretical physicist). As you can imagine, the technicalities of the science are incredibly difficult, so Smolin’s input has been crucial in getting the facts right. He’s even helped us to make character choices such as “what kind of laptop would Elliot have used in the mid 1990’s?” It is this kind of specificity and articulation that can really deepen the work.

We finished staging the entire first act this week, which is a huge jump in the right direction. Next week, we’ll start on ACT II. The jigsaw puzzle is starting to take shape!

Mariel Marshall

Koffler Q&A with Hannah Moscovitch

In December of 2015 Volcano held a reading of Infinity at the Koffler Centre of the Arts. They were tickled pink with the show, so they followed up with Infinity playwright, Hannah Moscovitch to find out a bit more about her and her work.

Koffler: What is your “work ritual”?

HM: I get up and go to a coffee shop and I sit there and write until I have some momentum. Then I go home and work in my home office. Later in the day, when I can’t write anymore, I try and answer emails (I am terrible at answering emails).

What do you hope to live to see in the world?

I’d like equal rights for the gay community to be the orthodoxy. Slavery is unthinkably wrong to us now and I’d like to see denying marriage to gay people become as morally unconscionable as slavery.

What would you tell your younger self? 

I’d tell myself to calm down about life.

What do you feel is worth fighting for?

It’s worth fighting for the lives of others.

What is your favourite simple pleasure?

Coffee. It’s how I get myself to put my clothes on and go and write my projects. I tell myself there’ll be coffee in it for me.

How do you change the world?

I think you do it incrementally. Gently if possible. Seductively. Democratically.

Where do good ideas come from?

I don’t know! It’s mysterious, isn’t it? From nothing and nowhere? From the subconscious? From the work of others?

At the end of the day, what really matters?

I got diagnosed with a chronic degenerative illness once (which I didn’t have) and it was more frightening than anything. Your health matters.  And I miscarried last year. I was sad in a pure way about it, a way that wasn’t familiar to me. So I get the sense your children (if you have them) really matter. My work matters to me a lot. My life has meaning because of it. My husband matters to me a lot, and knowing that if everything collapses, I love him and he loves me, and that’s a solid thing.

What is your favourite thing about words?

Their opacity.

What is your favourite thing about pictures?

I like that I don’t understand them, because I work with them less. (I work with images but that’s a little different I think?) When I see art that is pictures I admire in a more open-mouthed way. Art made of words and/or story I admire because I know what it took to make it, but it means I am deconstructing it rather than just letting it work on me.

What is your favourite city and why?

I live in two of them and they are both my favorites: Halifax and Toronto. Halifax is beautiful and quiet (and inhabited by very kind people). Toronto is full of art, glamour and culture.  And it’s multicultural so I feel less weird about being Jewish in TO. 

What does success mean to you?

Success is making work that’s meaningful to me. And collaborating with talented artists. And having a functional family life.

Dear Diary: Preparing for Infinity Rehearsals

Rehearsals for Infinity, a co-production between Volcano Theatre and Tarragon Theatre have just begun.  Our Assistant Director, Mariel Marshall, has offered to keep us in the loop with a few diary entries throughout the process. 

Here is Mariel's first entry in preparation for rehearsals this week:

We are less than a week away from the first day of rehearsals for Infinity at the Tarragon Theatre. I just finished another read through of the script and was thinking back to the workshop reading last month, which marked the beginning of my work with the project – a creative launch you might say.

The staged reading of Infinity at the Koffler Centre of the Arts happened on December 11th, after two days of workshop. It stands out in my mind as an incredible “next chapter” for this piece, which has seen a series of development stages over the last four years. Ross Manson has assembled a spectacular creative team for the project and we jumped into the work with relish. Throughout the three-day workshop, playwright Hannah Moscovitch did re-writes, shaping and sculpting the script with incredible precision; we worked with composer Njo Kong Kie on the integration of music, and also collaborated with movement choreographer Kate Alton.

Another exciting aspect of the project is our close collaboration with internationally renowned physicist, Lee Smolin. Not only has Lee been integral to the development of the script (he even wrote an 8 page biography detailing the lead character’s scientific life), but he has also been an incredible creative supporter throughout the process. I look forward to seeing him lecture at the Perimeter Institute in Waterloo, where some of the greatest minds of our time debate issues outside the realm of normal human comprehension (aka. cutting-edge research in foundational theoretical physics).

The workshop reading was the first time we got to see how an audience reacted to the piece, and I feel like it was an overwhelmingly positive response. When you work closely with a piece over a time, it’s hard to step outside and see it with any objectivity. That’s why it’s so important to bring in fresh eyes, to try out the piece and see what works and what does not. People loved the live violin music and the incredible depth of the script and its characters. At its essence, it’s a piece about love, and how love and time collide. It asks us to question our own lives, and our understanding of time itself. And in consequence, how we know and understand love.

I can’t wait to dive into our first official rehearsals next week. Now, I’ve got to get back to reading Lee Smolin’s novel Time Reborn which gets to the heart of it by asking the question: “what is time?” Physics – here I come!

Next time, we’ll talk love and parabolas. Don’t worry, I’ll explain later…

Tune in next week to see how the first week of rehearsal went. And of course, to talk love and parabolas!

Volcano's biggest FlashbackFriday

December marks the 20 year anniversary for Volcano Theatre. Volcano began as a group of theatre artists who first worked together on Ross's translation of Woyzeck for Equity Showcase Theatre in 1993.  In December 1994 Volcano opened it's very first show, The Third Land, at Factory extra space. It was a haunting show about migrants and uprootedness.   

The Third Land
Written by: Susanne Fritz

Starring: Waneta Storms, Nigel Shawn Williams

Featuring: Christine Brubaker and James O'Reilly

Written and translated by: Ross Manson

Set (made of paper): Jan Komarek

Lighting: Bonnie Beecher

Choreography: Laura Taler

Projected Animation: Bruce Alcock 

Waneta Storms and Nigel Shawn Williams. Photo by Tonia Miovska.

Waneta Storms and Nigel Shawn Williams. Photo by Tonia Miovska

Where are they now?

Susanne Fritz - still living in Germany, Susanne is a successful novelist, short fiction writer and essayist. She is also a composer and pianist, and has melded her music and writing in a series of "WordMusic" pieces. Here is a link to her most recent work with New York trombonist Steve Swell. 

Waneta Storms - as an actor, Waneta went on to work in stage and screen, and was nominated for a Gemini Award in each of her three seasons on The Eleventh Hour, as well as for her guest role on Blue Murder in 2001. More recently, Waneta has been working on the writing side of the camera as a screenwriter and story editor for television (most recently for Saving Hope). There's a great interview with her here.

Nigel Shawn Williams - Nigel is a multiple Dora award winner (as both a director and actor), and the Artistic Co-Director of Factory Theatre. He has worked for companies large and small across Canada - including Stratford, Shaw and Canadian Stage. Nigel is also the actor with the record number of roles with volcano (The Third Land, Two Words for Snow, Variété and Hedda Gabler).

Christine Brubaker -  Christine is an actor who has won two Dora awards (and has been nominated for seven!), has been part of the NAC ensemble, and the faculty at Humber College. She began directing three years ago, and this year won the Gina Wilkinson prize.

James O’Reilly - as a playwright, James went on to write many plays, often acting in them. He was one of the writers and subjects of Jennifer Baichwal's documentary Act of God, about the effects of being struck by lightening. There's a great short film here with James leading the viewer around Parkdale - in 1998 - before it became what it is today.

Ross Manson - Artistic Director of Volcano Theatre. He's still doing that. Still directing and making things. He wishes he could act a bit more again...

Jan Komarek - Jan is a Czech lighting and scenic designer and theatre maker. He studied painting and design in then Czechoslovakia, worked extensively in Puppet Theatre, lived in France, then moved to Canada, where he founded Sound Image Theatre with composer Rainer Wiens. In 2001, he returned to Prague where he became known on the alternative scene for his design work and performance making. He was voted ‛Theatre Personality of the Year 2009’ by the New Wave Festival and was awarded first prize for Lighting Design by an international jury at the 2010 Czech Dance Platform Festival.

Bonnie Beecher - as a lighting designer Bonnie works regularly across Canada and around the world, designing lights for the Shaw and Stratford Festivals, the National Ballet, the Mannheim Ballet, the COC and many others - including Volcano (where she designed The Third Land, Building Jerusalem, The Africa Trilogy, Hedda Gabler, Mortality and Two Words for Snow - the latter for which she won a Dora award).

Laura Taler - Laura was a choreographer and the founder of Dances for a Small Stage. She went on to make dance films and then branched into visual art. She is now working across a range of media including dance, film, sound, sculpture and installation. This has taken her around the world, with residencies in Buenos Aires, Ottawa, and Berlin, and she has collected film awards in Chicago (Chicago International Film Festival), Toronto (Hot Docs) and New York (Dance on Camera Festival).

Bruce Alcock - Bruce is a proud Newfoundlander and founder of the animation studios Cuppa Coffee (in Toronto) and Global Mechanic (in Vancouver). Bruce was the animation director on Volcano's international award-winning The Four Horsemen Project, and has made a mountain of innovative animation - his 6 min film Vive la Rose is viewable here.

Andrew R. Miller - a composer and double bassist Andrew now lives in Saint John, NB. He is the founder of the Motion Ensemble, and the principle bassist in Symphony New Brunswick. He has lately been focusing on contemporary and experimental music, developing original compositions, audio installations and media art exploring interactive electronics, extended instrumental techniques and psychedelic dissonance. 

Behind the scenes with Graham McKelvie

With one week left in the run of The Four Horsemen Project at Soulpepper Theatre, we touched base with the fabulous Graham McKelvie, one of our Four Horsemen performers. We wanted to see what it was like to prepare for this insanely demanding role. 

Did you know anything about the Four Horsemen poets before beginning to work on The Four Horsemen Project?

GM: No, I knew nothing of the Four Horsemen before the project. What an interesting and pleasant surprise it was for me!

What was the very first rehearsal like? 

GM: The very first rehearsal we started working on "Allegro 108" and I thought I was going to go insane and pulled big diva moments where I was all "I NEED A BREAK CUZ I'M GOING CRAZY!!!" ...... lol.... the work of the Four Horsemen is often not easy to learn as it purposefully deconstructs syntax. The journey was bewildering but really engaging.

When Ross called you to say he was remounting the show, what was your initial reaction?

GM: Of course I was quite filled with joy when presented with the possibility of a remount. It's a great time for a performer to go nuts in a way one rarely gets. And the piece is by now such a familiar thing, that it's like reconnecting with an old friend.

What did you do to prepare for this remount?

GM: Initially I freaked out when I thought of preparing for the remount, but then I realized it was all still there in my brain and body and not too far from the surface. Funny thing how a brain works.

What’s your favourite “pome” in the show?

GM: My fav pome is probably, Aleph Beth. It's a lovely play on words, and the recycling of them. But in addition it is dramatically layered in a way. At one glance, it is like a serious instructional told to listeners. And on the other hand it's almost like a soliloquy, the thoughts inside the head of someone who has thought long and hard on the subject matter,  the nature of poetry always dancing around him, which is what is happening choreographically.

Be sure to ride with Graham and our other three incredible horsemen in The Four Horsemen Project playing at Soulpepper before it closes on November 22. For tickets, purchase here.