Hungover in the Holy Land

Posted on December 11, 2011 by Kenneth Williams

I think we all remember our very first experience. The pain, choking down the urge to vomit and the pleas to God to make it end because we’ll never, ever do it again. You know what I’m talking about: your very first hangover. I broke my hangover cherry in Jerusalem. The one in Israel… or the occupied territories… or Jordan, depending on your politics.

But I’m not about to talk about politics. I’m talking beer. Which, let’s face it, often leads to politics. And if this the beer of Israel, you can see why things are the way they are over there.

Let me set the scene: I was 16. I was in grade 11. It was 1982. It was the first time the Edmonton public school board sanctioned a school trip to the Middle East. Our destination: Israel. The holy land.

I was pretty clean-living kid then. No booze, no drugs. I was a competitive swimmer, which meant training five hours a day. No time for parties or much of a social life. I had sipped a beer and maybe drank one full glass of wine at that point in my life. Booze and me just didn’t mix.

My dad, in his official capacity as a communications officer for the government, gave me a couple hundred Canada flag pins to give away – to spread a little Canadian goodwill.

I don’t know if Israel has a minimum drinking age or not. But as soon as my fellow students found out that they wouldn’t get kicked out of the bar, it became our first stop after a day of touring. Trying to fit in, I hung out at the bar.

I’d never ordered a drink in my life, so I followed the leader and ordered a draft beer. I was about to pay for it when the bartender noticed my Canada flag pin.

The ID badge of the bland and polite.

“I’ll trade you the beer for your pin,” he said.

“Okay,” I said, and I bought my first ever beer with the Canadian flag.

My fellow pilgrims gave me a look. They knew I had hundreds of these pins in my luggage – I had tried to pawn them off on them. I couldn’t give them away. Until now. My roommates pawed through my luggage and returned to the bar with a handful of pins.Several Canadian flag s later and we were hammered – on Maccabee beer.

Aaaaah Maccabee beer… how can I describe the taste? I haven’t actually tasted formaldehyde, but Maccabee is what I imaged it would taste like… only colder and with bubbles.

I think the bottle turns green after they fill it with the beer.

The root word for Maccabee is Aramaic for hammer, which is entirely appropriate, because after a few of these, you feel like you’ve been hit with a bag of them. But Maccabees are better known as ancient Judean fighters with a reputation for circumcising children.

No, this is not an army bringing democracy, or liberating a repressed people, or just out to loot and pillage – they’re out to circumcise the boys! Those must’ve been some strange recruiting posters. And imagine the panic they caused when they showed up at the city gates? Any man who’s had his junk caught in his zipper knows how sensitive that region is. A forced circumcision would be… I just don’t want to think about it…

I know, I keep saying “forced circumcision”… but is there any other kind? Who willingly gets circumcised? It’s done to infants because they can’t fight back.

Here’s the twist – in the bible, these were the “good” guys! The Maccabeean martyrs are celebrated in both Christianity and Judaism. But no one feels the least bit sorry for the poor bastards who had the tips of their johnnies lopped off. The only way I can imagine anyone surrendering to these maniacs is if they didn’t know what a circumcision was. And don’t expect any kind of anaesthesia. Unless it was beer. Maccabee beer. If you could handle drinking Maccabee beer, then you could handle a forced circumcision.

Maccabee soldier: Just drink the beer.

Prisoner: Ewww!… that burns the nostrils man. Why would I drink that?

Maccabee soldier: Well, you’re gonna want to be really numb for what’s gonna happen next.

Prisoner: What’s gonna happen next?

Maccabee soldier: You’re getting circumcised.

Prisoner: What’s that? Like a piercing or something?

Maccabee soldier: Yeeeaaah, something like that. And you’ll wanna sleep on your back for the next couple of weeks.

Remember, they didn’t have surgical scalpels. I know they had sharp knives and swords but, according to the bible anyway, they mostly used a “sharp stone.” Yeah… that’s totally reasonable. No chance of anything going wrong there.

But after drinking Maccabee, you’d want anything to take your mind off the taste. Well, almost anything…  Now, I’ve done some crazy things when I’m drunk, but never that crazy. It would beat any morning after claim to craziness. The ones that usually begin with, “I’m never getting that drunk again” and end with strange tattoos, cop chases, and waking up with ugly women. Well that’s nothing fellas. I drank this rank Israeli beer and I got circumcised! Had to sleep on my back for two weeks.

Naaaah. I don’t think I’d ever admit that. Even if it happened twice.

Just stay away from Maccabee beer. That’s all I can say.

It made me toss a lot of hummus.

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Colourblind Consternation

Posted on November 12, 2011 by Kenneth Williams

Factory Theatre, in Toronto, remounted Tomson Highway’s play, The Rez Sisters, to kick off their season this year. It’s been causing quite a stir for two reasons: one, it’s the 25th anniversary of this classic, and; two, the director, Ken Gass, publically announced that he cast the play “colourblind.” In other words, the roles, which require six First Nations women and one First Nations man, won’t necessarily go to Aboriginal actors.

It’s this second point that’s raising a ruckus. The Globe and Mail and NOW magazine both printed preview articles that were nearly breathless with excitement about the casting. And why shouldn’t they be: Highway has long accused politically correct casting with killing his playwriting career in Canada. He stated the case most strongly in 2001 when he wrote an essay, “Should Only Native Actors Have the Right to Play Native Roles?” for Prairie Fire (vol.22, no.3), the magazine of new Canadian writing.

The problem Highway kept running into was that his cast sizes were relatively large, seven each for The Rez Sisters and Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing and 15 for Rose, and the available number of Aboriginal actors is quite small. Canadian theatres can rarely afford to fly in an entire cast. Highway’s solution was to tell the artistic directors to cast his plays “in any way you want, in whatever way you can afford it budget-wise (plane tickets are a waste of time, trust me), let the show be born.”

Despite his wishes, few theatres had the stones to do that because of the backlash from Aboriginal groups or individuals. It all started with the world premiere of The Rez Sisters, which Highway co-produced. Two non-Native actors were needed for the show to survive, and people got bent out of shape because of it. Canadian theatres didn’t want the hassle, so they wouldn’t touch his plays. Highway felt like he was being driven out of his own country.

“The working situation in Canada, for someone like me? Well, it has simply become unworkable. I find it stultifying, asphyxiating. I CAN’T work under such artificial constraints.”

The Rez Sisters has gone on to have a successful international run, with Scottish, Japanese, Arabic actors playing the women from Wasey.

Though I wouldn’t classify it as a backlash, there was some passionate debate concerning Gass’s casting of this production. The biggest concern is that mainstream theatres aren’t casting Aboriginal actors in non-Aboriginal roles.

That is changing. When I worked for aptn national news, I did a story about how Herbie Barnes and Lorne Cardinal got the two major roles in Toronto’s Young People Theatre’s production of The Hobbit. Recently, Persephone Theatre in Saskatoon cast Carol Greyeyes as a Uyghur woman in Mansel Robinson’s play, Two Rooms, as well as casting Kim Harvey in my play, Gordon Winter, as a Jewish judge, a racist social worker and Queen Elizabeth II.  More and more Aboriginal young people are choosing a life in theatre, and that will only mean those barriers will be broken down.

For me, as a playwright, I think no one has the right to tell me or another playwright how their casts should be constructed. Highway wants actors from all cultures and walks of life to inhabit his plays. It’s his wish. That for me is the end of the argument.

Highway though believes something greater can be accomplished with colourblind casting, especially if “white” actors are cast. He writes there “is no better healing agent for bringing two only-too-frequently disparate, disharmonious communities together. And, in the process, making our country an even better, richer, healthier country that it is already.”

And to that, I say, amen.

 

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2011 Carol Bolt Award short list announced

Posted on October 13, 2011 by Kenneth Williams

Playwrights Guild of Canada is pleased to announce the finalists for the 2011 Carol Bolt Award for Playwrights. They are:

Catherine Banks, It Is Solved By Walking
Marie Clements, Tombs of the Vanishing Indian
Mieko Ouchi, Nisei Blue
Anusree Roy, Brothel #9
David Yee, paper SERIES

The jury included award-winning New Brunswick playwright Don Hannah; director Estelle Shook; and Jodi Armstrong, Production Editor at Playwrights Canada Press. The jury was chaired by Florence Gibson MacDonald.

The winner of the 2011 Carol Bolt Award for Playwrights will be announced in Toronto at the end of October.

The Playwrights

CATHERINE BANKS was born in Nova Scotia in 1957. Her interest in writing began early. Her love of drama and her understanding of its power comes from time spent in her grandmother’s kitchen, listening to her stories/ravings of real-life dramas. But it was the work of Michel Tremblay that inspired her to begin writing plays. Catherine’s plays include Bitter Rose, Bone Cage, The Summer of the Piping Plover, and Three Storey, Ocean View.

MARIE CLEMENTS is an award-winning performer, playwright, screenwriter, director, and producer who has worked extensively in and across a variety of mediums
including theatre, performance, film, new media, radio, and television.

Her twelve plays, including The Edward Curtis Project, Copper Thunderbird, Burning Vision, and The Unnatural and Accidental Women, have been presented on some of the most prestigious stages for Canadian and international work, including the Festival de Théàtre des Amériques (Urban Tattoo, 2001 and Burning Vision, 2003) in Montreal, the National Arts Centre/Magnetic North Festival (Burning Vision, 2003 and Copper Thunderbird, 2007) in Ottawa, and the Cultural Olympiad/Push Festival (The Edward Curtis Project, 2010) in Vancouver.

Her play Tombs of the Vanishing Indian premiered in Toronto (March 2011) and will be published by Talon Books (spring 2012). A translation of her script Burning Vision was given a staged reading at La Mousson d’été in France (2011), and will be produced by Santa Clara University (spring 2012).

MIEKO OUCHI works as an actor, writer, and director in theatre, film, and TV and is based out of Edmonton, Alberta. Her first full-length play, The Red Priest (Eight Ways To Say Goodbye), has been produced at Alberta Theatre Projects (ATP), Workshop WestTheatre, the Globe Theatre, Tarragon Theatre, and the Thousand Islands Playhouse. Her second play, The Blue Light, has been produced at Alberta Theatre Projects (Betty Mitchell Award—Outstanding New Play), Workshop West Theatre, Firehall Theatre Centre in Vancouver, Keyano Theatre in Fort McMurray, and at DMV Productions in Halifax.

Mieko’s newest play, Nisei Blue, premiered at ATP’s Enbridge playRites Festival in 2011. In 2012 it will be published by Playwrights Canada Press and translated into
Japanese by Toyoshi Yoshihara.

Mieko is a co-founder and a current artistic co-director of Concrete Theatre and the president of the board of Playwrights Canada Press Ltd.

ANUSREE ROY’s playwright and performance credits include: Brothel # 9 (Factory Theatre), Roshni (Theatre Passe Muraille), Letters to my Grandma (Theatre Passe Muraille), Pyaasa (Theatre Passe Muraille). Roy was a performer in the Dora-nominated 9 Parts of Desire and Necessary Angel’s Tout Comme Elle. Her operas Noor over Afghanand The Golden Boy premiered at Opera Briefs in Toronto in 2011.

Anusree has also been a playwright-in-residence at the Canadian Stage Company (2008–2009), Theatre Passe Muraille (2009–2010), and the Blyth Festival (2010–2011). She won the RBC Emerging Artist Award in 2009 and the K.M. Hunter Artist Award for 2011. She holds an M.A from the University of Toronto and is the co-artistic director of Theatre Jones Roy.

DAVID YEE was born and raised in Toronto. He is currently the artistic director of fu-GEN Theatre Company. A Dora Mavor Moore Award nominated actor and playwright, his work has been produced internationally and at home. His play, lady in the red dress, was nominated for the 2010 Governor General’s Literary Award and is published by Playwrights Canada Press.

Playwrights Guild of Canada is a national arts service organization mandated to advance the creative rights and interests of professional Canadian playwrights, promote Canadian plays nationally and internationally, and foster an active, evolving community of writers for the stage.

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Celebration of Aboriginal Writers

Posted on October 12, 2011 by Kenneth Williams

The Anskohk Aboriginal Writers festival returns to Saskatoon, October 19-22. The highlight of the festival will feature an intimate evening with Tomson Highway on October 21st. Some of the featured writers and presenters include Louise Halfe, Dawn Dumont, Harold Johnson, Marcel Petit, Curtis Peetuce and Maria Campbell. Visit the Anskohk website if you want more information. This will be an exciting opportunity for both established and beginning writers.

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Gina Wilkinson Prize

Posted on September 22, 2011 by Kenneth Williams

Annual Gina Wilkinson Prize established to benefit emerging female theatre directors

Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, September 21, 2011…Members of The Gina Wilkinson Prize jury are proud to announce the creation of an annual award benefiting emerging female directors and theatre artists looking to transition into the area of direction. The prize pays tribute to Canadian actor, playwright and director Gina Wilkinson and her unyielding dedication, vision and indomitable spirit that imbued her work and her life. The recipient will be chosen from nominations brought forward by members of the Canadian theatre community. This year’s nomination deadline for the inaugural award is December 1st, 2011; with the first award recipient announced onMarch 10, 2012.

An actor for over twenty years, Ms. Wilkinson began turning her attention to both writing and directing and, in the last few years of her too short life, established herself as a daring, strong, inventive and important director and collaborator in the Canadian theatre community.

Shortly after Gina Wilkinson died in December 2010, a fund was established to benefit emerging female theatre directors. The Gina Wilkinson Prize was made possible by the generous support of over 200 people from all across Canada. In the spirit of Ms. Wilkinson’s generosity and appetite for life, this prize is a gift to be used in any way that the recipient chooses.

Award Details:

Eligibility: Nominees must be members of the Canadian professional theatre community and Canadian citizens or have permanent resident status, as defined by Citizenship and Immigration Canada.

A $1000.00 prize will be awarded annually. The first recipient will be announced on March 10, 2012.

The nomination should consist of: 1) A nomination letter in support of the nominee by a recognized theatre professional; 2)  An acknowledgement of the nomination by the nominee, and; 3) The nominee’s resume.

All nominations must be submitted electronically to the following email: ginasprize@gmail.com. Nomination deadline: December 1st, 2011. The recipient will be announced on March 10, 2012. The nomination will be reviewed by the Gina Wilkinson Prize Jury: Micheline Chevrier, Bonnie Green, Eda Holmes, Jackie Maxwell, Tom Rooney and Bob White.

Gina Wilkinson – Bio

Born March 10th, 1960, in Victoria, B.C. to visual artist, Jack Wilkinson, and ballet teacher, Marie Wilkinson, Gina Clare Wilkinson graduated from the National Theatre School in Montreal and spent the first 20 years of her career as an actor working in theatres across Canada. Her innate understanding of storytelling in the theatre was an invaluable asset when working on new plays and made her transition from actor to director a natural one.

Her first directing job was at The Belfry Theatre where she directed a workshop production of Michael Lewis MacLennan’s Grace.  She went on to direct several new plays at Alberta Theatre Projects, including the world premieres of Stephen Massicotte’s Mary’s Wedding and Greg Nelson’s Mick Unplugged.

Ms. Wilkinson attracted the attention of the Toronto theatre scene when she directed the critically acclaimed Summer Works Production of Fish Shack by Bonnie Green. She then began to work more and more exclusively as a director at such theatres as The Blyth Festival (world premiere of Beverley Cooper’s Eyes of Heaven), The Grand Theatre, The Belfry Theatre, Theatre Aquarius, The Shaw Festival and Soulpepper. Her inspired production ofBorn Yesterday at the Shaw Festival was one of the hits of the 2009 season. The last play she directed, Wide Awake Hearts by Brendan Gall, which was produced at the Tarragon Theatre, garnered the inaugural Toronto Theatre Critics Award for Best Direction and a Dora Nomination for Outstanding Direction.

Her incredible ability to communicate with everyone involved in the making of a play – actors, designers, technicians – made her a successful director and theatre collaborator. Ms. Wilkinson’s dedication, her imagination, humour and unique visual sensibility were some of her many strengths.  But it was her understanding and compassion for all things human – both the beautiful and the ugly – that made her a true artist.

-30-

For more information, members of the media may contact:

Odette Yazbeck
Public Relations Director
905-468-2153 or
1-800-657-1106 ext. 2222
odette@shawfest.com

Tom Rooney
519-305-0082
tadrooney@yahoo.ca

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Drinking Mustard

Posted on September 20, 2011 by Kenneth Williams
About 20 years ago, Brad Fraser did me an enormous favor.  He told me I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing.  I added the “fuck.”  He added 30-40 minutes of intense dislike for my play, The Harvest. I was in my second year of the MFA in playwriting program at the University of Alberta. Fraser was brought in to provide an outside, professional opinion for the benefit of us in the program. What kind of benefit? The “real world is a stabby bitch” kind. It was not a pleasant experience. It was like drinking a jar of mustard. The only way I got through it was by imagining Fraser witnessing his own dick getting eaten by a honey badger.

But he was right to say I did not know what I was doing. There was much about dramatic writing that I needed to learn.

Which leads me to a newer scribe we have in Saskatoon who’s been tasked with reviewing plays for the Star Phoenix, Stephanie McKay.  She needs to drink a jar of mustard. She’s reviewed a couple of Fringe shows but, from my quick online search of Star Phoenix archives, this is her first review of a professional play. Her victim: Geoffrey Ursell’s new play, Dead Midnight, which is currently on the main stage of Persephone Theatre.

This is not a screed about critics loving or hating a production. I just expect someone who criticizes writing should themselves be a decent writer. I don’t want to get too stabby stabby on this, since the writing will speak (horribly) for itself. However, I must show a couple of examples. It goes horribly wrong in the first paragraph.

“Four warning signs greet the audience upon entering Persephone’s production of the new thriller Dead Midnight. Everything from gunshots to cooking smells are listed, as foreshadowing to what should be an exciting night in theatre.”

How the hell do gunshots and, fuck me, cooking smells foreshadow exciting theatre? Unless Gordon Ramsay is waving a loaded gun in a live version of Hell’s Kitchen, cooking smells and gunshots do not foreshadow exciting theatre.

“The new play by Geoffrey Ursell is eerie, disturbing and exciting — well, this is a perfect example of a clear and thoughtful sentence… oh wait, there’s more — but the audience didn’t seem to get that memo, instead laughing at moments that should have been thrillingly dark.”

What is it you’re trying to say here, Stephanie? Is the play “eerie, disturbing and exciting” or not? I’ve never known an audience to get a memo before a play, so what are you talking about? Maybe she’ll clarify this in the following paragraph.

“It was hard to know how much of this was the fault of the production and how much was the audience just not getting it. Either way, people seemed to enjoy themselves, so perhaps it doesn’t matter.”

Nope, because it doesn’t fucking matter.

Dearest Stephanie, the dead horse has been thoroughly flogged, so I won’t continue picking apart your prose. I will, however, leave you with one, simple suggestion for becoming a better writer: stick to one thought per sentence. You’re welcome.

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Saskatoon and Area Theatre Awards

Posted on September 2, 2011 by Kenneth Williams

The nominees for the SATAwards were just posted in today’s Saskatoon StarPhoenix. My play, Gordon Winter, was nominated for outstanding playwriting and Gordon Tootoosis was nominated for outstanding performance (male.)

Up until three years ago, there were no awards for professional theatre productions in Saskatoon and area. The “and Area” was added to recognize the fine productions coming from Dancing Sky Theatre in the town of Meacham. The Saskatoon theatre companies and collectives that received nominations were Persephone Theatre, La troupe de jour and Live Five.

The hardware will be handed out on September 26 at La troupe’s theatre.

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Giant Invisible Imagination

Posted on August 19, 2011 by Kenneth Williams
Do you want to see a pic of a waterfall? Sure, you do! Here. This is the Athabasca Falls in Jasper National Park.

It's like I'm there!

Despite the crappy lighting and the limitations of the iPhone camera, it’s pretty impressive to look at. Not convinced? Well, here’s a video: Athabasca Falls.
The Athabasca Falls are not the biggest, longest or oldest falls in the world but  it’s clearly evident that the Athabasca Falls are an amazing sight even with the video’s crappy sound and visuals. There’s just something powerful about them, a culmination of the sound, the spray and the infinite movement of the water. It’s something that must be experienced, in person.That’s how I feel about the difference between live performance, like theatre, and movies. Movies are great. I love them. But no Imax 3D film about the Athabasca Falls is going to come close to seeing them up close and in person.

I recently saw Rise of the Planet of the Apes just after I saw a one-man show by Jayson McDonald called Giant Invisible Robot. Apes cost nearly a 100 million bucks to make and you can see it in the CGI apes and the carnage on the Golden Gate Bridge. It’s not bad to look at, though putting a CGI chimpanzee face next to a real human one was a huge mistake. If you’re going to CGI, then CGI everyone. It was also very boring. To me, anyway. But the 200+ million it’s raking in so far means that the throw-away and stock back story has served its purpose, a sequel is all but guaranteed. You will get a chance to see this movie over and over again. It’s on digitial tape and soon to be on Blu-ray discs.

I’m not sure how much Giant Invisible Robot cost to make. The set consists of a single chair. The actor, Jayson, plays all the roles, including a homicidal giant invisible robot. Yet, through voice, action and occasional costume change, Jayson brings to life the story of a lonely man who will not let go of his childhood friend, who may or may not be imaginary. It also rocks. It’s an amazing play and shows the power of the actor and audience’s imagination. One hundred million bucks of CGI cannot compete with that. It’s also in authentic 3D, without the need of those migraine inducing glasses.

The play had such an impact on me that I jumped at the chance to see it again when he recently remounted it for this year’s Fringe tour. You see, that’s the only way we can “replay” theatre. It only exists in our memory. A video recording of the performance wouldn’t be the same. That’s the power of theatre: it engages the power of our own imaginations.

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Not just Chinese

Posted on July 18, 2011 by Kenneth Williams

This is a wonderful but brief video biography of the woman who inspired my play, Cafe Daughter, Dr. Lillian Eva Quan Dyck.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R26FmjsY2sk

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Saluting the sunset

Posted on July 6, 2011 by Kenneth Williams

G-Tizzle making us laugh - always up to some mischief, him

It was on a friend’s twitter post that I first learned that Gordon Tootoosis had passed away. I was stunned. I hoped it was only a rumor but I knew my friend and she wouldn’t have posted it if she didn’t know it to be true. But I still hoped. I called another friend, Curtis, and asked if he heard anything. He said yes but was also waiting to confirm the information from others. Soon, Facebook lit up with tributes to Gordon. It was true. Gordon Tootoosis was dead. I was crushed. I wasn’t alone.

He had just starred in my play, Gordon Winter, which marked his return to the stage after a 16 year absence. He told us he felt a little rusty. Movie acting, he said, was much easier than theatre, you just had to remember your lines once. He had a great sense of humour and the cast and crew easily bonded with him. They were all equally devastated when they got the news.

He was one of the founders of the Saskatchewan Native Theatre Company in Saskatoon. Back in 2003, I was commissioned by SNTC to create a play for their Circle of Voices program. It was called AWOL. After the opening night performance, Gordon came up to me, introduced himself – as if he had to – and said, “that was pretty good. You know, I’ve been thinking of returning to the stage and could you write a play for me.”

I was shocked, in a good way. “Yeah, for sure, of course,” I sputtered. When Gordon Tootoosis asks you to write a play for him, you better damn well write that play!

The funny thing is, the play that I started writing for Gordon ended up being Three Little Birds, which was written for Tantoo Cardinal! Don’t ask. It’s a long confusing story.

But he would get his play. When Del Surjik decided to produce Gordon Winter, he only had eyes for Gordon Tootoosis in the lead role. Thankfully, Gordon’s schedule would work out for us. The man was gifted, generous, humble and hilarious. He was quick with a joke and his laugh was infectious.

The last time I saw him was in Ottawa, when the play was presented in May as part of Prairie Scene. I gave him a present of mint tea, a small token of my appreciation for his hard work and professionalism. We shook hands, we hugged, he beamed me that wonderful smile of his and said he couldn’t wait to do it again.

Yesterday, I huddled with some of my friends for comfort. We watched the sun go down and saluted Gordon Tootoosis.

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