One more show ...

... at 2:00 PM and I hope everyone got the memo on DST. And I hope our actors coming in from Toronto drive carefully. Wet flurries or rain showers. Local blowing snow early this afternoon.
Pictured above (L-R): Nicholas Cumming, Sherree Tams (set and costume design), Iva Zendelska, Daniella Forget, Majdi Bou-Matar (director), Gary Kirkham, and Frank Spezzano.
Photo by Dwight Storring.

Not in the picture: Andrew Laikin (the Angry White Man). Lighting: Kari Kokko. Dramaturg: Jasminka Klacar. Assistant Director/Stage Manager/Technical Director: Nicole Lee Quesnel. Original Music: Nick Storring. Sound Board: Richard Quesnel. Front of House: Linda Levesque. Volunteer Manager: Tony Yang.

Thank you.

As for myself, the playwright, I feel a little like I've been to party where I've talked too much and drank too much and was very entertaining until I puked and passed out, and woke up hours later to see the party still going full steam without me.

Three more performances ...

... counting tonight. It is a weird play, to use an adjective that occurs in the review in The Record. (Where you can also see a couple of video clips by Philip Bast -- I don't know how long before these go behind the subscriber wall.) You're not going to see this at Drayton. But Stratford? I don't know about that. "You will see."

(Another photo from Dwight Storring. Iva, Daniella, Gary.)

Yes or No!

Daniella Forget, Iva Zendelska
(photo by Dwight Storring)

Yes or No! at the Registry Theatre in Kitchener, Oct 25-29

Tickets through the Centre-In-The-Square box office

UPDATE: Iva's blog is here.

Yes or No!

Nicholas Cumming, Daniella Forget
Iva Zendelska, Gary Kirkham

(photo by Dwight Storring)

Yes or No! at the Registry Theatre in Kitchener, Oct 25-29

Tickets through the Centre-In-The-Square box office

Silky voice: check. Brain: oops...

On CKWR this evening. Majdi spoke words, sentences and whole paragraphs. He answered questions as if he had been waiting all his life for them to come.

Then it was my turn. Managed to answer "What got you interested in playwriting?" Then the question I had been expecting and preparing for all weekend. Where did I get the idea for the play? "Well, I have been thinking about that." I announced with a great deal of confidence -- and then Mary-Lou looked away from me to the monitor -- and this kicked off the "pause until I get eye-contact again" reflex -- but she didn't look back -- and I said "A dream ... ah ... dream ... ummmmmm" -- Majdi reached over to still my drumming fingers -- and at this point the "I'm an idiot" reflex kicked in. Anyway, got out of it somehow.

Afterwards, I complimented Majdi on his smoothness, and he said "But Douglas, this is what I studied in Lebanon: Radio and TV broadcasting. I've spent hours in radio studios. So it's not talent, just hard work."

So I didn't feel so bad. I'm just the writer, remember that.

Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony

Balzac: I shall never make a name.
Laure: Nonsense! with such books, any one could make a name.
Balzac: You are right, by Jove! . . . these books must live. . . . Besides, there is Chance. It can protect a Balzac as well as it can a fool. Indeed, one has only to invent this chance. Let some one of my millionaire friends (and I have a few), or a banker not knowing what to do with his money, come and say to me: ‘I am aware of your immense talent and your anxieties; you need such and such a sum to be free; accept it without scruple; you will pay it back some day or other; your pen is worth my millions!’ That’s all I require, my dear sister.

You don't have to be a millionaire to make a pledge, but if you are one, or better, a billionaire (and we have a few), then it would only take such and such a sum to set them free -- and you can say you saved ... a Balzac!

This and That

I have put up a new website for Isabella using Google Page Creator. It is not very sophisticated but it is less embarrassing for me (the supposed computer guy) than the one I had previously. I said, "Don't you have any designer friends?" Well, that didn't work, so this is what happens.

On the left one of Isabella's drawings which might possibly be in the show at Harbinger Gallery opening on Saturday. Sigh. I am in love. With my very talented painter wife, of course. The model is Ewa. Not to be confused with Iva, who is appearing in my play.

It seems I will be on Mary Lou Schagena's Monday Night with the Arts, on CKWR 7:30 to 8:30, with Majdi Bou-Matar, to discuss Yes or No! I must practice my silky radio voice.

Gestures

I have been so self-involved with Yes or No! coming up (and you would think I'd be involved with my collaborators but no, it's with my self) that I didn't realized what Isabella was up to until after she'd done it. She spoke at a symposium on drawing at the University of Waterloo Fine Arts Department. (Not that she would have wanted me in the audience. Maybe that's why I missed it.) Next week she opens a show, Gestures at Harbinger Gallery with Noriko Maeda, her shodo sensei. I will try to remember.

Yes or No!

On the night of the 1995 Quebec referendum, a newcomer from Yugoslavia draws a Canadian concert cellist into her own crisis of identity.

Don't miss the newest production from The MT Space (The Multicultural Theatre Space)


Performances Wednesday to Saturday at 8 pm and Matinee Sunday at 2 pm
Adults: $18 in advance / $20 at the door / Students & Seniors: $15

For tickets call 1-800-265-8977
or order online at www.centre-square.com

Group Bookings available at 519.585.7763 or email info@mtspace.ca

The Hon. Peter MacKay writes me

Yesterday I received an email from the Honourable Peter MacKay, Minister of Foreign Affairs. It was in response to an email I sent on the 17th of July (of this year) just after our Prime Minister so memorably referred to Israel's bombing of Lebanon as "measured". I objected that this was (at the very least) an abuse of the English language. I sent it to our M.P., Andrew Telegdi; to the Foreign Affairs critics for the Liberals, N.D.P. and Bloc Quebecois; and to Peter MacKay, and (of course) the Prime Minister. I did not receive a reply -- and usually they are so eager to respond! (In fairness, the B.Q. critic could hardly be expected to care about an abuse of the English language.)

But in my inbox, yesterday, this:

A18627-2006 IN REPLY TO YOUR EMAIL OF JULY 17, 2006

Thank you for your email of July 17, 2006, co-addressed to the Right Honourable Stephen Harper, Prime Minister, and to other members of Parliament, in which you express your concerns regarding the upsurge of violence in the Middle East. I regret the delay in replying to you.

I have taken good note of the issues raised in your correspondence and I understand your concerns in this respect.

Etc. etc. Everything you might expect. Thank you, Peter! Just a wee bit late. Curious you should remember me. My play "Yes or No!" will be running at the Registry Theatre in Kitchener, Oct 25-29th if you happen to be in town. Perhaps we can arrange a discussion of the events in the Middle East with members of the company.

The words of a courtier

In the Guardian. I am reminded of the scene in the Last Emperor where a doctor sniffs a bowl of the infant emperor's shit.

Desert Island Discs

Desert Island Discs

Young should be concentrating her efforts on exposing guests who implausibly pick classical music for their desert-island listening. While senior politicians and pop are hard to swallow, it's just as difficult to believe claims by people in their 30s or 40s that they would be listening to Shostakovich, et al, while on the island.

If you'd asked me at the age of, say, twenty, what discs I would take to a desert island, I wouldn't have said Shostakovich because I hadn't listened to him, but I would have said: Hindemith, Stravinsky, Debussy, Moussorgsky, Mahler ... and maybe some Gilbert & Sullivan.

I didn't buy anything of what could be called pop or rock until I was ... oh, let's check Wikipedia ... until 1983, when I bought Synchronicity, by The Police. I took it home and closed all the windows.

In the 90s, a German friend of ours played us some heavy-metal. He was embarrassed that we listened to it so attentively. I wrote (drunkenly) lyrics for his band "Hellwar" just so they would have an original song that wasn't in broken English. I don't know if it was included on the album they recorded and which was voted as one of Germany's worst heavy-metal albums of some year or other in some obscure fanzine.

One year (1993 if Wikipedia is to be believed) I bought (on the recommendation of the New York Times) P.J. Harvey's Dry. I used to astound friends and co-workers with it. I could probably have run for office in the U.K.

Last year, or the year before, Isabella developed a passion for the music of Bob Dylan, and so I am reasonably familiar with his voluminous output, and know many cheerful facts about Bob. I might even be convinced to go to his upcoming concert in Toronto which would be a first for me (i.e. any kind of what could be considered a "rock concert.")

But if I were to go to a desert island today (and you might suppose I am already living on one), probably most of the disks I'd take would be considered "classical".

Of course, I have just this year turned fifty.

Asphalt Jungle Shorts

Asphalt Jungle Shorts is ... well, let me quote from the email:

ASPHALT JUNGLE SHORTS is an exciting evening of several short, site-specific plays to be performed in various unexpected locations in Downtown Kitchener.

• Plays by eleven playwrights from Kitchener to California, including Gary Kirkham’s Beth at Fifty & Live Nude Mannequin, Linda Eisenstein’s Balancing Act & Justice of the Peace, and Donna Spector’s award winning Short Term Affairs.
• Six directors including Kathleen Sheehy, Darlene Spencer and David Antscherl,
• Thirteen actors from here to Toronto, including Heather Gurd, Shelagh Ranalli and Brendan Schaefer.
• Produced by Paddy Gillard-Bentley with Nicole Lee Quesnel as Stage Manager, generous sponsors and partners like The City of Kitchener and Jump Logistics, various downtown businesses and a wonderful heap of talent.
This will be theatre like Kitchener has never seen it.

TICKETS are $15.00 general admission, and as we are registered with eyeGO.org students can purchase $5 tickets.

SHOW TIMES: Thursday Friday & Saturday – September 14, 15, 16 & 21, 22, 23, 2006, 8pm. For TICKETS call (519) 744-9708 or email flush-ink@skyedragon.com
Reserved tickets can be picked up at the Duke St. Parking Garage (between Queen and Ontario streets), at the Ontario St. entrance. This is the starting point for the event. Audience sizes are limited so act quickly. For tickets, please be there at least fifteen minutes before show time (7:45 pm), to pick up your tickets.

Bio

I was asked to write a bio for the Theatre & Company website and came up with the following:

Douglas Campbell joined Theatre & Company's Writer's Bloc in 2001 and found writing for the theatre to be exhilarating and addictive. A fragment of his play Pamphilia was produced as part of the New Works Festival in 2003, and Little Crickets was given a workshop and public reading as part of the NU2U program in 2005. He is also involved with MTSpace Multicultural Theatre who are developing his play Yes or No! for performance in October. In his forties Douglas was seized by the dance bug, and took every kind of dance class imaginable, including Flamenco, Tap, and Highland Dancing. He has appeared on stage several times, notably in a ballet recital, where he was the only male creature within a league of the theatre. (Not all pictures have been destroyed.) He has also studied Aikido for several years and knows how to disarm an assailant wielding a sword (in theory).

This will be appearing somewhere in here soon. I hope they are able to find something for me to do, a man of my parts.

Tickets for "Yes or No!' on sale now ..

Tickets are now available through the Centre in the Square box office. Just go to the Registry Theatre and click on Buy Tickets (the direct URL is so ugly I refuse to permit it on my blog)

Tickets are $18, Students & Seniors $15.

Cilla Vee

One more show, tomorrow night at Clay & Glass Gallery, 7:30pm. Movement and video. There were moments when my mind was overloaded with the projected images, the dancer and her shadow and could no longer make out what was what. Dancer, Claire Elizabeth Barratt and musician, Lee Garbutt.

Outdoors on the deck at the Huether a horner or wasp alighted on our table and with deliberation set down a pupae and flew away. Much speculation as to the significance of this event.

Cilla Vee

The MTSpace presents New York's Cilla Vee Movement Projects performing at Clay & Glass, August 16th 5:30 & 17th 7:30. The show is a half-hour long and tickets are $10. (The idea of the 5:30 start time is that people can catch it on the way home from work -- this is an experiment.) And you can hang-out with the artists afterwards; look at the picture above to decide if you think that's worthwhile. Full details on the show on the MTSpace page, and scroll down for a movement workshop conducted by Cilla Vee. Oh, and scroll up, way up, for a note on Yes or No!, playwright me, and I wish there were pictures of our wonderful cast, who are already busy at work developing.

(New York -- that oughta get them over from the Perimeter Institute.)

August 16th 5:30pm, 6pm 2006 — CityScape— at Canadian Clay and Glass Gallery, Waterloo

Cilla Vee Movement Projects "Percussion, projection, sound and dance evoke moments of New York City life"

This hCalendar event brought to you by the hCalendar Creator.

Woman in the Dunes

Went to the Princess to see Woman in the Dunes by Teshigahara. Madame wanted to see it too but thought it would be next week, so she left for a weekend at a cottage in the far north with women friends (as they are wont to do). And I would have missed it too out of solidarity, and inertia, but it was so hot that the idea of a couple of hours in air conditioning was very appealing. Had a glass of water before the five-minute walk to the Princess and an iced tea on arrival in a pronounced sweat. Sparse audience consisting mostly of lone men -- hoped the promise of eroticism hadn't attracted the wrong type -- hoped I didn't look the wrong type -- took consolation from the T-shirt I wore, Isabella's, which said "Festival of Art & Spirit" and "St. Jerome's University" on the other -- obviously I was there for the spiritual aspects of the film.
Not long into the film realized my mistake in watering myself so generously. But I will say this -- nothing makes you concentrate on plot points so much as the urgent need to piss -- it was an education, calculating how much it could reasonably go on, and with all those shots of sand blowing in the wind, collapsing, sifting, the answer was -- I just had to make a trip. And when I came back, I realized I'd just missing the third act turning point -- something had happened, the woman was in pain, the villagers were moving her -- anyway, that was it.
It made me think of Beckett's Act without Words I which I watched a few weeks ago -- sand, confinement, scarcity of water, false hopes, even the scissors. I wonder if there is a relation. Some fellow on Amazon dismisses the Kobe Abe novel that was the basis of the film as "derivative" of Kafka's The Castle. This is like saying I am derivative of my parents. Or that I look like somebody else. Of course I am. And I do. Everything has a genealogy, even if it is accidental.

Yes or No!

Just noticed an article in the UW Student Newspaper, Imprint, on MTSpace Theatre, and its artistic director, Majdi Bou-Matar. Of particular interest (to me, anyway) is the reference to this fall's production of Yes or No! with script by playwright Douglas Campbell, that is to say, myself, and not the famous Canadian actor of the same name. (There is a mistake in the article -- the writer has doubled the size of the cast -- there is one Canadian couple and one Yugoslav couple.) We have a cast. Rehearsals start next week -- I should say development, because Majdi uses a lot of improvisation in his process, and my script will be a kind of rough guide. When he said this after the final audition, I gave a laugh which came out like a whimper, which earned me a hug from the actor next to me. And Iva said "Then you'll have two plays!". Iva is recently from Macedonia, so we have one speaker of the language formerly known as Serbo-Croatian, when we'd wanted two, but there are Serbian language tapes at the KPL, so I'm sure Gary will be okay. Performances will be at the Registry Theatre.

October 25 - 30, 2006 Yes or No! - at the Registry Theatre, Kitchener, Ontario

On the night of the Quebec referendum, two couples are drawn into a crisis of their own Yes or No! A comedy about sex, politics, identity and… Halloween!

Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition

Isabella will be at TOAE this weekend, purple section, booth 209. Be sure to visit her and bring lots of money. A deposed emir living in Nigeria has already expressed an interest in the picture at left (as well he might); unfortunately he does not have ready access to his considerable fortune, and Isabella politely declined the complicated financial arrangements he proposed. Nevertheless it's quite possible he and his retinue might fly in to Toronto for a short visit, so if you want to buy this piece (or indeed any of the pieces in the show; it's rumoured he has made offers to every artist exhibiting) then you'd better get down to Nathan Phillips Square bright and early. That's Isabella Stefanescu, booth 209, purple section (her booth is hard to miss. Her sister refers to it as "the castle". It is designed to withstand hurricanes. I believe it could survive a collision with a fully loaded 707.)