Glacier Caper Scot Canuck

Home is Where the Tim's Is

2009-12-31T18:15:53Z

Our holiday travels are at an end. After 10 days in Edmonton, we drove with friends to Calgary, staying there with my cousins and spending time with my in-laws. This last leg of the trip was very restful; my cousins all celebrate their school break by lazing around and reading books all day, so we slipped right into that groove and did next to nothing. Although it was nice to see everyone in Edmonton, the social whirlwind (and leftover marking) kept us from completely relaxing. Now we can return to Nova Scotia refreshed, rejuvenated, ready for another term.

That relaxation almost dissolved on the flight home, though; our departure from Calgary was delayed, meaning we were likely to miss our connection in Halifax. But Air Canada held the connection for us, waiting at the gate with a golf cart so we could zip down to the puddle-jumper and get back to our own island. Our beloved Glacier friends waited the extra hour at the airport to pick us up. Before taking us home, they drove us to Timmy's and sat with us while I ate chili at 1am (my first real meal since breakfast).

Timmy's is open 24 hours here. It's shiny inside, but not too bright. The graveyard staff is cheerfully surprised to see you, as if you made their night just by showing up. They aren't sure if they have chili or chicken sandwiches in stock, but they're happy to check. While you wait, you read a simple, printed sign that congratulates Doug MacDonald, who won the Christmas sweepstakes contest. His prize was $500.00 worth of home heating oil.

You grin. You're home, and home is like nowhere else in Canada.

Another post soon, with my New Year's resolution. It involves books.

Christmas -- No Blueprints

2009-12-25T18:25:39Z

Puffin and I returned to Alberta for the holidays. Initially it seemed like an imposition, especially since we both had to haul marking along with us, cutting into our time with family & friends. There was also the insanely low temperatures to consider. But around the same time we wrapped up our marking, the local temperatures rose from -Stupid to a more standard -Bloody Cold. Not quite a Christmas miracle, but we were thankful all the same.

Now, having had a few days to relax and reflect, I find myself thinking about the stress and semi-depression I experienced before we left and wondering what all the fuss was about. I suppose, if homesickness was a factor, I was fortunate to get a dose of home at the right time. But a bit of travel puts a lot of things in perspective, too. My stress seemed to revolve around big, existential questions: now that I have a new life on the other side of the country, what am I supposed to do with it? Well, having a holiday reminded me that it's perfectly possible to feel content without burying oneself in obligations. Life generates enough responsiblities in due course; there's no need to manufacture extra ones, just to say you've got a purpose.

As an example, here are the lines of thought I've been pursuing vis a vis role-playing game writing. Before the move, I befriended someone who occasionally wrote RPG adventures for Paizo, a publisher whose work I've often enjoyed. I resolved to get onto the same bandwagon, and I have since submitted a couple of proposals to Paizo's open calls. Meanwhile, I also resolved to move forward on my big idea for a new RPG system based on Tarot cards -- an idea I've had back-burnered for years and years. I knew the Tarot project would require more time and labour, but I really liked the idea of building a game (rules system and world) from scratch.

Gradually, both plans hit minor roadblocks. Paizo rejected my initial proposals -- fine, nobody hits a home run the first time -- and I also started to get a disheartening vibe from the correspondence. Eventually I was able to put my finger on it: the tone of their emails suggested they were part of an exclusive club, and I somehow had to prove myself worthy if I was going to be allowed to play. In practical terms, this would mean buying all of their adventures and guidebooks, to become thoroughly versed in their game world. Fair enough; after all, it is their world, and they put the time and energy into building it from scratch.

Meanwhile, my own homegrown RPG was stalled because, well, it takes a lot of time and energy to build something like that from scratch. I knew I could do it, but I started to falter when I thought about the endgame. So, I pour months of work into designing and playtesting a new RPG system; what then? Play it once or twice, and then shove it in the closet? Or try to find investors and entrepeneurs willing to help me publish, distribute, and market the damned thing? I remembered all the independent game marketers at conventions I'd visited: traveling salesmen, pitching a product that only a tiny sliver of the population would even understand, let alone purchase. That didn't sound like fun. What I really wanted was to have others pick up my ideas and run with them, with very little effort on my part. An old, juvenile desire.

When I flew home, I was in the midst of establishing these two options -- playing in the Paizo sandbox, or building my own from scratch -- as the two horns of a major dilemma. I felt like, with New Year's approaching, I could choose one and resolve to commit myself to it for 2010. But even as I considered that, I knew that it was a false dilemma. I could do both. I could do neither. I could un-ask the question and frame it in entirely different terms.

Or -- and this is the relevation that seems obvious in retrospect -- I could stop worrying about it and just do what I feel like doing. If I see a Paizo open call and I want to submit something, I can. If I get up some morning and feel the urge to work on Tarot, I can. If I'd rather just stick with being a RPG player, I can do that too. It's the stress I put into planning it all out that makes it cease to be fun. Life doesn't come with blueprints, and I'm wasting my time trying to draw them up whenever I get the impulse to create.

So, I wish everyone happy holidays, and may your blueprints become reality in 2010. I'll be spending the year without blueprints, but feel free to give me a shout if you need any help with yours!

Turning It Around

2009-12-15T14:34:11Z

I'm happy to report I don't feel nearly as blue as I did last week. The empathetic posts were a bit help, and while I don't think I can totally ascribe the feeling I had to homesickness, it's still uplifting to see that people care. If homesickness is partly responsible, then I'm fortunate to have 2 weeks in Alberta coming up right away.

But then it's back to the island we are calling "home," even if no one here (or in Alberta) believes us yet. Apparently, the majority of folks who come "from away" (ie. anywhere that's not Cape Breton) don't stick around more than 3-5 years. According to some reports, it's the weather that wears them down; others imply it's the staunch insularity (even xenophobia) that comes naturally to a culture that (a) mostly arrived here from exile, and (b) has been systematically screwed over by industry and government ever since they landed. I didn't live through any of that -- I'm a child of privilege, hailing from a part of Canada that's been stealing CB's best and brightest, to put them to work in the black heart of our latest, greatest industrial clusterfuck (ie. the oilsands). If I represent that to these people, how are they ever going to accept me?

I'd like to answer, "be yourself," because that's always worked before. But "myself" is changing daily here, so that doesn't feel like a stable anchor to drop in the midst of this storm. I might come out the other end of it thinking and acting more like a Caper; but, more likely, I will transform into an all-new, all-different brand of freak -- a member of the lunatic fringe no matter where I settle.

Well, maybe 3-5 years is as far ahead as I need to plan, anyway. In the past, I've tended to get antsy with whatever I was doing after 3-5 years -- running a theatre company, managing a video store, teaching at MacEwan. The trouble is, 3-5 years is about when the Puffin will qualify for tenure, at which point we'll have to decide: stay put and reap the benefits of a permanent academic position, or fire up the Uncertainty Bus and drive off into the sunset again.

I've always been inclined to think in the long term. Planning my activities in 6 months, or 1 year, has always been more fulfilling than making my daily to-do list. But I think, since I'm changing who I am anyway, I need to start turning that around. The life I've found in the present moment is so glorious, so perfectly suited to who we've always wanted to be, that it would be a sin to shove it aside in favour of the unguessable future.

Here's the mandate, then (and anyone who wishes to join me is free to do so): every day, look around, and remind myself of everything I have to celebrate right now.

You Can Take the Pessimist Out of the Dumps, but...

2009-12-12T15:04:10Z

"I have of late-—but wherefore I know not--lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises; and indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory, this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours."

Hamlet's ennui is ambiguous, because when he speaks it to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, he already knows that they are spies, sent by his enemy to determine his true intentions. Hamlet may be depressed--he certainly seemed so when he addressed the audience in Act One, but that was before he discovered the truth about his father's death. Now he is either more depressed, or else he's performing depression to throw his fair-weather friends off the trail. Or possibly both; he spends so much time performing, maybe even he doesn't know how he feels anymore.

Whenever I feel depressed, I end up in the same introspective conundrum as our boy in black. I want to feel things genuinely, honestly, because feelings are important, and life is too short to bury important things, or to lie about them, especially to oneself. But I'm so accustomed to performing, I can never be fully sure my emotions are genuine. When I say "performing," I don't mean acting, exactly. I mean the sort of performance a writer practices, taking his observations and feelings inside to be processed into something fictional, dramatic, artistic. Art comes from the heart, but the heart is a transformative organ; what comes into it does not always resemble what gets pumped out. Which one is true? If the feeling and the expression of the feeling are instrinsically different, then how can I ever fully trust either one?

This intellectual rambling is a cover story for the truth of the matter. I have lost much of my enthusiasm and joy; but, like Hamlet, I don't know the wherefore, or the reason. Maybe it's post-partum depression following R&J, although I don't normally feel that after shows (except sometimes the ones I wrote). Maybe it's the arrival of winter, long forecast by locals as the ultimate test of our resilience and longevity in Cape Breton. I've never been especially bummed by winter before, but something about last weekend's nor'easter really threw me off kilter. Maybe it was the nearby disappearance and death of James Delorey--a freak occurrence, yet a tragedy that strangely seems to typify the hardships suffered by most people in this part of the country. Maybe it was my own freak response to the blackouts caused by the storm--flashbacks to my tired, twelve-year-old Ice Storm trauma. How tedious.

No, it's more than shows or weather. It's the inevitable end of novelty--the transition between total, eye-popping newness and comfortable familiarity. I've been living my new life for over three months--and recently living busily, intensely, such that I scarcely had time to observe myself getting acclimatized. Now, with time to breathe, I feel strangely disappointed that I'm so complacent with my routines here.

In short, the honeymoon is over, and Cape Breton and I are now getting to know one another with the makeup off. I'm more despondent to see my own old warts than to see CB's. I knew the Island wasn't paradise; otherwise, why would it be so sparsely populated, despite 400 years of colonization? I can live with that. But I don't think I can live with the bad habits and bad thoughts I brought along with me from Edmonton. What joy, for the first three months, to be so distracted by my new surroundings that I didn't even notice all my old shit!

Well, New Year's is coming up, so maybe it's good timing to be reminded of those old habits. I've never been one for making resolutions, but maybe I can reframe the notion in a way that will allow me to embrace 2010 as a time when personal growth can really begin in earnest.

Winter Blows In

2009-12-06T20:55:29Z

It's been an oddly frenzied week. The last week of classes at CBU is the same as anywhere, I guess: thousands of students facing panic attacks as the consequences of their actions (or inactions) begin to make themselves clear. The Puffin is an empathetic teacher, and will make the time to counsel every one of her frightened, tearful lambs through the gauntlet (and, to be fair, many students here have every reason to be frightened; they come from poor and/or dysfunctional homes, and university is the only chance to pull themselves up and out).

I have, in the past, been more aloof, and therefore more immune to second-hand stress. But I found myself letting more of it inside this term, and I think it's going to keep going in that direction. It may be partly a result of my early forays into Buddhist meditation and mindfulness, which is already starting to make me feel more compassionate towards those around me.

But it may also be the flavour of the institution where I find myself teaching. As an institution, MacEwan and the U of A were largely indifferent about the fates of their individual students (AU even more so), because they would continue to exist regardless. They were not especially invested in local culture, and they kept themselves unaffiliated with local social events (U of A even had their own, separate Food Bank just for students). But CBU is stitched more tightly to the fabric of the island. If students and teachers don't make attempts to network with the greater community, then enrolments will drop...and if students stop coming, the university will close.

So maybe there's a nugget of self-preservation, since Puffin and I have bet our futures on employment at CBU. But it's altruism, too. Cape Breton's youth sees no reason to stay on the island; unless we can help them find good reasons, the island's shifting demographics will spell its doom more surely than the collapse of any industry has done. And there's too much magic here to lose.

I felt it performing Romeo & Juliet to schoolgroups. Overall, it wasn't that much different from school matinees in Edmonton, or anywhere else for that matter. But afterwards, hearing students' feedback second- or third-hand, I noticed how much of their praise was focused on the fact that the show was homegrown. Even the youngest viewers knew a few cast members (there were both teachers and high school students in the show). The show was special to them in a way that no touring show could ever be, because it was theirs. It was something that Capers had done themselves.

Well, except the director was from away...and the stage manager...and me, the guy in the funny pants. And of course the playwright, who is only an honorary Nova Scotian. But in a rare moment of solidarity, that didn't seem to matter. So that's what we're here to do, I think: create opportunities for Capers to achieve things on their own terms, to prove to themselves and each other that they can accomplish things that don't involve alcohol, drugs, or departures.

Two nights ago, I tried to do a bit more of that, by volunteering my services at a drag fashion show fundraiser. Alas, it turned out to be an alcohol-intensive event, but I think we did manage to raise some money for, uh, new cheerleaders' uniforms. But I'll tell that story another time. Right now, we're in the midst of a fierce nor'easter; outside, the wind is moaning and scratching at the walls, as thick, wet snow flies horizontally, bending back trees and evicting birds from their branches. Inside, however, it's cozy and warm, at least now that our power has come back on. It's a nice night to curl up with a book, or maybe an XBox, and treat ourselves to a bit of well-earned anti-social time.

Technical Difficulties

2009-12-02T18:25:26Z

Radio silence this week, as I wrap up the teaching term. Also, my laptop's monitor's inverter has died, making it generally more awkward to access the internet. So, no new posts until I can convert the inverter, or until the inverter reverts to its former, functional status. Or...yeah.

Shakespeare Come, Shakespeare Go

2009-12-01T16:30:37Z

As with all shows, Romeo & Juliet breezed by before I could blink. After the four school shows, we only had three public performances -- but I couldn't complain, since the 337-seat Boardmore space was packed for all three. The reception was positive; no reviews, but I continue to get stopped in the hallway at school and complimented by students, staff and faculty. I expect I'll be seen as "the guy who played Mercutio" for some time to come. There are worse ways to make one's entrance.

The experience taught me a few things. First, I took on more than I should have by acting and serving as text coach. It's not that the workload was too great; it's rather that forming an ensemble demands a sense of equanimity, which is difficult enough when the cast is half students and half teachers. By taking on the extra role of text coach (almost essentially sorta like an assistant director), I was adding another wrinkle to the power dynamic, and it was just enough to make the younger actors wary of me until quite late in the game. So, no more multitasking on shows; from now on, I'm either an actor or a director.

I also learned that community theatre is pretty much the same no matter where you go. There will be unreliable, perennially absent team members, and there will be fiercely dedicated workaholics, some of whom take on too much and then burn out. There will be newbies who rise to unexpected heights, and there will be veterans who get lackadaisical and dial it in for much of the process. I'm not naming names, of course, and I really don't mean to criticize anybody, because ultimately, I think everyone does the best they can. But community theatre is like commitment roulette; everyone bets different amounts of their energy and investment in the project, and regardless of the amount you've bet, some win (leaving more energized than they came) and some lose (feeling overlooked or overshadowed). The ones who win will come back next season to gamble again. The ones who lose may disappear, but they'll be replaced by each new wave of eager freshmen. Somewhere, in all of that, art gets made. It's not usually the best art, but it's art none the less, and taken in the right spirit, it can be even better than the "real thing."

The show did not do much to evoke in me any new love for Romeo and Juliet as a play; although I certainly learned a lot about modulating between comedy and tragedy, I think the best work there was done by our director, not by our playwright. R&J is an early, awkward tragicomedy -- not nearly as successful in its tonal shifts as, say, Winter's Tale or The Tempest. And speaking of Tempest, I've been inspired by my time on the Boardmore stage to start plotting out a production of that play sometime soon. And by "soon," I mean no sooner than 2011, since Shakespeare is a biannual event around here.

Why Tempest? Lots of reasons, all of which I'll save for some other time. But for the present, as I re-read the play, I'm amazed at how consistent and recurrent are our cultural narratives about enchanted islands. Here's Bill Shakespeare's pitch to ABC studios:

"So there's this mysterious island, and a group of castaways wash up on the beach, and they've all got dark secrets in their pasts, and eventually it'll turn out that most of them are somehow connected to the island's inhabitants. These others are ruled by a stern dictator who knows all the secrets of the island--even though he wasn't actually born there, he took it over from the original inhabitants, who have some sort of magical powers. And the leader has a daughter, too, and she falls in love with the wrong guy, although it might all be part of the leader's masterplan, we're not sure. Anyway, there are also lots of magical creatures on the island, some of which are invisible; and there are always strange sounds, music and whispering, sometimes visions of dead people..."

Mercutio Retires to the Green Room

2009-11-30T13:42:49Z

It's hard to tell from this photo just how awesome my pants were. Trust me; they were the pants of legend.

R&J Goes Public

2009-11-28T20:41:10Z

The public run of R&J is super-short -- only two evening shows and one matinee. The advantage of this is that the house was packed. I would guess at least 250 of the Boardmore's 337 seats were filled. Of course, the student matinee shows were mostly full houses too, but there the seats were occupied by mewling schoolboys, creeping unwillingly to the show. Last night's crowd clearly wanted to be there.

As can be expected, the response was warmer. They laughed in places the students never did (Shakespeare's jokes, not just lewd gestures or faux pot smoking), and their energy was warm, supportive and enthusiastic. Personally, I don't get a chance to read the crowd in the second half, once the play's tone has switched from comedy to tragedy, but all the other actors reported that they went right along with that 180 degree turn, especially once Capulet revealed his abusive side (they've added a beat where he twists the Nurse's arm around behind her, and apparently that extra bit of violence is so unexpected that it floors the crowd every time).

For myself, I tried to modulate my death scene a bit, switching quickly back and forth between funny Mercutio and terrified/dying Mercutio, just to see if the audience could keep up. It seemed to work, except for one laugh that I probably didn't earn (when I delivered "I'm hurt" as if I'd just given myself a paper cut). It's very nice to have a smart audience who's willing to follow along.

Finally...standing ovation! (Or, as the Nurse called it, "the big O").

Two shows left, and then I'm free, with a school term almost over, and a Christmas trip to plan!

4th Run: Cape Breton PoCo

2009-11-27T19:51:45Z

We're finished the school matinee half of our run. I didn't mind the school groups much; they were well-behaved and they laughed at all my dick jokes. Other cast members had more trouble coping with them, either because they laughed at inappropriate lines ("And it mis-sheathed in my daughter's bosom!"), or because cast members had friends or relatives in the audience (Juliet is still in high school, and another cast member is in junior high).

So, for their sakes, I'm glad we're moving on to public performances. Only three, though; I guess crowds aren't big enough 'round here to have lengthier runs. Perhaps that's something we can help to change.

Cast members are already asking me what Shakespeare I might want to direct next (in 2011/12, since next year they do a musical instead). Word has spread that I'm next in line. I certainly have some ideas, but it's all striking me a bit oddly, because before I moved here, I kept telling myself that I was sick of Shakespeare, and that it was a post-colonial distraction, especially in communities that need to find their own voices.

This latter argument may not be familiar to all, but I've had it levelled at me before. Basically, the idea is that producing Shakespeare, or anything from the British canon, in Canada is a subtle form of cultural repression, because it serves to remind us that our art (=culture, society) is not as good as the art of our former masters. In doing Shakespeare here, we're demonstrating our gratitude for all they've given us, but denying our own ability to speak for ourselves.

But post-colonial self-negation is a jaw-droppingly complex issue in a region like Cape Breton, where Gaelic is a living language; where French immersion schools don't fly Quebecois fleurs-de-lis, but rather Acadian flags (just like French tri-colours but with a star on top, like the gold star of an obedient pupil); and where the descendants of Irish and Scottish immigrants cling to their roots more fiercely than they cling to the "s" in "yous". Cape Breton is the most obvious manifestation of the Canadian Mosaic you're ever likely to see, and if you start discouraging cultural elements that smack of former colonizers, you're not going to have much left that's authentically local.

But maybe I'm looking at it from the wrong perspective. After all, Caper Gaelic and Acadian are just as all-Canadian as the Mi'kmaq aboriginals that also contribute to the island's culture; UK Gaelics disagree with Caper Gaelics about all sorts of language issues, and a European Frenchman might not even understand Acadian French. In this respect, the point is not where culture comes from; it's what happens to it once it's here.

So, maybe instead of shunning Shakespeare because of his British colonial implications, I should start thinking about how to make Shakespeare a local product--so particular to this cultural time & place, that a Brit wouldn't even recognize it. Now that's a challenge I can get excited about.

3rd Run: Comic Relief

2009-11-26T01:39:35Z

Surprisingly, we're nearly at the end of our student matinees; after tomorrow, we switch to evenings for two nights, and then a matinee, and then we're done!

But the feedback has been strong, both from the students and from teachers, chaperones, and various other grownups who sneak in. Lots of praise directed at the "funny guy" who dies halfway through. And now I realize what I didn't see before: Mercution is the comic relief in the first half of R&J. Essentially he exists to counter-balance Romeo's mopey love-sickness in Act One, to deliver an endless litany of dick jokes in Act Two, and then, at the top of Act Three, to bring the comedy to a screeching halt when he gets himself run through on Tybalt's sword (and yes, although he blames Romeo for interfering, it's definitely his own fault). There's the Nurse, too, of course, and a couple of goofy servants, but Mercutio acts as the life-affirming animus that gets expunged just when marriage and happy endings seem to be the order of the day.

In the course of the play, I also get to wear a monkey mask, smoke a "joint" of peppermint tea, and wank off Romeo's torch. So, really, I guess I should have noticed the comic relief thing a lot sooner.

Anyhoo, here's the front page of today's Cape Breton Post. Sadly, the photo gives away our natty blood effect; but it's still a great bit of ink. (I love the headline: "Romeo and Juliet being staged." Yup, that passes for news on this island.)

Tonight, we went to Shambala Meditation in Sydney. It was very nice, most refreshing. Tomorrow, we might buy an XBox (Puffin's idea).

2nd Run: Notes from the Green Room

2009-11-24T21:59:10Z

Another student matinee this morning. I was afraid our energy would drop after opening "night," but we managed to keep it fairly high, despite a lot of yawns backstage. Benvolio had a sore back, with which I could certainly sympathize. Myself, I was in good shape, but very tired. By the time I've finished adjusting to 10am performances, the matinees will be over, and we'll have to switch to evenings instead.

The hushed conversations in the green room have been the closest I've yet come to participating in real Cape Breton community. While most of the cast know that I'm from away, they have accepted me as one of them for the duration of the show, at least. For the students in the cast, my status as fellow actor has temporarily replaced my pedagogical position. I'm one of the gang--although this gang is a curious multi-generational hybrid -- oldsters and youths, students and teachers, acting veterans and newbies. Just the way I like it, really.

It's too early to draw many conclusions about Caper culture from these conversations, but one topic that has started to emerge is the strong conservatism that predominates on the island, especially in rural areas. For instance: one of the cast is pregnant, and she revealed that hospital staff in Cape Breton have a policy against disclosing the sex of a foetus. This is nominally for legal reasons (ie. not getting sued when they get it wrong), but several members of the discussion agreed that it is just as much about tradition and conservatism -- maybe even superstition.

But doesn't a woman have a right to know anything -- everything -- about her foetus? My feminist sense is tingling.

Of course, I'm from redneck central, so I'm quite accustomed to being part of a liberal minority. But I guess conservatism comes in many different guises. Right now I'm just observing, taking mental notes, trying to suss out where I fit in. Maybe after a year or two, I'll start rocking boats.

R&J: First Student Matinee

2009-11-23T16:55:45Z

We finished up a long, hard tech week with some strong tech dress runs over the weekend. Sunday night, our final run wrapped up around 10pm -- nice and early, although we've still got about a "two hours and ten minutes' traffic" on our stage. But it was straight home to sleep for good actors and SMs, because our first performance was a mere 12 hours later.

Our first student matinee (of four) was well attended, and the crowd was mostly well behaved; there were only a handful of embarrassed titters when words like "nipple" or "bosom" were uttered. That's not so good when Juliet is trying to kill herself, but it's great when you're playing the clown. And Mercutio is about as close as this play gets to having a bona fide comic relief. The kids loved all of my explicit sexual references and monkey antics (I wear a monkey mask during the Capulet ball).

Better still, the rest of the cast was clearly rejuvenated by the presence of an audience. The youngsters playing the leads were stronger and louder than ever before. It bodes well for the remainder of our short run.

My second mid-run injury (following a sword smack to the thigh a few nights back): after I got stabbed by Tybalt, I spun around and fell onto the stage, and my right hand struck the pommel of the sword I'd just dropped a moment ago. The sword flipped up and smacked me on the forehead, leaving a nice little mark. Even the swords that no one's wielding are a hazard!

I'll keep you up to date on all my injuries as they occur. :)

Autumn and Dawn

2009-11-20T16:18:12Z

Things have gotten better, as they tend to do. Much of the tech week stress arose from a sense of dissonance caused by the cultural gaps between western and eastern Canadian theatre production. I was willing to accept the absence of a production manager, and even the lack of production meetings, right up till tech week; at that point, the results of those differences came upon us like an avalanche, and I spent the first part of the week silently screaming, "I wanna go home!" Well, that, and, "Oh, god, my back!"

But now my back is better, and the show is looking pretty good (apart from the blood effect, which is well on its way to being dropped), and I have come to the recognition that this IS home, and if I don't like the way things are done here, then I either need to campaign for changes, or suck it up and play with the home team.

A few bits of good fortune came along at the end of this week, to help perk me up. First, I got my new frames and lenses! They are larger and a bit more rectangular than the last pair, but not egregiously different (Puffin didn't notice till I pointed out the change). Mostly, I'm pleased that they are lighter, and no longer hurting my nose and ears.

Next, I found out what I will be teaching in the 2010/11 year. In the fall term, I'm teaching Playwriting. In winter, I'm teaching...Playwriting! But they're two different courses (I and II), so I will need to develop some sort of progression or evolution for my wee bairns. I haven't even begun to consider possibilities (I still need to finalize by Directing course next term), but I'd welcome any suggestions.

Play Production, Directing, Playwriting...these are the sorts of courses I should have been teaching all along. I've found my niche here, no question. And while I find it tempting, even now, to flounder towards teaching topics that fall outside my sphere of expertise (sure, I can teach a Commedia Dell'Arte class! I was in a Moliere play once...), I know I'm much better off sticking to what I know, at least until I'm fully settled here.

I wonder how long that will take? How long before Cape Breton is old hat for this prairie boy? A year? Five? Ten? I'm in for the long haul.

Ugh

2009-11-18T16:46:57Z

I wouldn't characterize this as the worst week of my life, but I am certainly in no hurry to repeat it. The fact that it's only Wednesday fills me with dread.

Mostly, the source of the difficulties is tech week for R&J. It's like any other tech week, really: a snafu-ridden crucible of tension in which actors (from Venus) and techs (from Mars) must somehow learn to communicate and work together. The only reason this one feels worse than usual is that the Puffin is stage managing, and I'm acting, so we've got equal doses of stress to lob at each other at the end of the day.

Puffin's stress is compounded by her schoolwork, mostly her marking. Again, this is nothing new, but maybe the fact that all this is happening here, in a completely new setting, makes it more acute. In any case, Monday had its share of meltdowns, and Tuesday felt like the teeth-gritting calm before the next storm.

Then, just before last night's tech run, I did something inexplicable to my back, and so I got to do the run in agony. (And, after notes, I got called up on deck to die again...and again...) The most worrisome part of this is that I'm not sure what I did; one minute I was putting on my costume and all was well; the next, I could barely stand up. It's still sore today, so much so that I had to spend the morning in bed, pumped up on Robaxacet. I dreamed of Hawaii, but in my dreams, the islands were full of bears, dinosaurs, and bee-coloured crabs. Even in the dream, I knew it was an illusion, an escape, and that when I woke up, the real world would be waiting.

Funny how the ivory tower and the playhouse have become "the real world." Sad how that makes them so much more stressful.

Not So Deep As A Well, Nor So Wide As A Church Door

2009-11-13T19:05:27Z

A week and a half until R&J opens. Lots of school matinees; I've produced a million of this type of show, but I've never actually acted in one. It may be a harsh lesson, to discover what I've been subjecting other actors to all these years.

The cast is pretty thoroughly bonded now, although the youth/student crowd and the older actors still spend much of their time in cliques. Not surprising, and not a big deal, as long as we all pitch in when needed. I'm trying not to think of myself as an instructor or role model, even though I'm acting alongside several of my students. I'm just a cast member who sets high standards for himself; hopefully others can take inspiration from that; if not, that's their choice. I'm certainly not going to delude myself into thinking that I'm responsible for anyone else's performances.

Except...I find myself easily distracted backstage, and I have to keep reminding myself to listen for my cues, and not to rely upon other (mostly younger) actors to keep track of the play's progress. During Tuesday night's run, I was late on one entrance; then I overcompensated on Thursday, and entered a whole scene early! I know better than that.

I also know better than to injure myself, but sometimes I can't seem to help it. Last night I dropped to my knees after getting "stabbed," and my knees are still killing me. I will wear kneepads from now on, but my knees are merely one small part of my increasingly fragile machine, and I need to take care of the whole thing. I'm certainly glad to have had the chance to play Mercutio now, because I expect in five years' time, I won't be able to keep up with all the dancing, cavorting, and swordfighting. Ask for me tomorrow, and you shall find me a grave man...

Itching for Space

2009-11-10T21:26:37Z

I finally got my writing space cleaned up, and most importantly, I banished the internet from its walls. If I want to procrastinate endlessly, I'll have to get up, open my curtains, and walk all the way upstairs.

I haven't had much of a chance to test it out, but so far it seems to be making the writing process somewhat easier. Non-writers frequently underestimate the importance of space. It would be great if all you really need to write is time and a pen, but you need an atmosphere that can offer inspiration without tipping over into constant distraction. Striking a balance in one's own home is especially tricky, because home carries a whole bevy of associations that don't necessarily connect to the writerly part of the brain (like: this is the place where I sleep).

I've traditionally done some of my best (or at least most enjoyable) writing in coffee shops, and while pickings are slim hereabouts, I've already found a comfortable niche at the Bean Bank in Sydney. It's not feasible to go there every day, though, partly because I need to keep the house functioning too, but mostly because we're a one-car family, and our schedules haven't settled in a way that facilitates that sort of routine. Hence the home-nook, which has the added benefit of bottomless coffee.

How typical, then, that just as I start to get comfortable (complacent?) in my patterns, something comes along to shake them up. I have a CBU colleague/friend, also recently arrived from the west, and also a playwright in search of some sort of purpose/support out here in the theatrical highlands. She lives in Sydney, I live in Glace Bay; unless we schedule a supper together, we see each other once or twice a week on campus. Last week, she burst into my office showing all the signs of a writer's crisis.

"How would you like to go in with me on office space?" She asked, not one to beat around the bush.

Turns out Nuttella (as she would likely hate to be called) has been having the same difficulties carving out a writing space in her house, and is now turning her sights to Sydney proper, and looking for a carving partner. As we brainstormed options, it became clear there were other considerations beyond mere writing space: Sydney has few places for youth to gather; CBU doesn't have an artistic presence in the city; Nuttella has a friend looking for space for yoga classes; etc. etc.

Nothing was decided, although I resolved to inquire after another new friend, who recently bought a sprawling, three-storey house in Sydney and doesn't know what to do with the top two floors. But the ball has begun to roll. Today, as I was leaving the Bean Bank, I stopped and peered into the windows of a vacant bank building right next door. Big open room; ceiling too low for a grid, but maybe with some light trees... and, of course, plenty of office space, though it would need to be de-corporatized...maybe some nice celtic wall hangings...

This is probably just another elaborate stalling tactic. I probably won't write a thing till 2011. But there's a certain bent appeal in this age-old process of space-hunting. At least, now that I'm out of Edmonton, the costs are halfway feasible.

They Rose Again

2009-11-09T13:16:40Z

We got a hefty dose of Caper culture last night at the Savoy Theatre (lovely post-Victorian Victorian show house): "We Rise Again," an evening of music organized and headlined by the Cape Breton Chorusmen. The Chorusmen are a loose affiliation of two dozen or so middle-aged white guys who like to sing a cappella. They're not a choir, though, apparently; they do mostly barbershop and show tunes. There was also a bona fide barbershop quartet (composed of some of the best voices of the Chorusmen), a piano and organ trio, and a lot of hoary jokes in between sets.

The Caper cultural experience manifested itself in several ways. First, whenever the audience recognized a tune, they showed their appreciation by starting to clap along, regardless of whether the song was designed for that sort of participation. That means you have to be on the ball, because if you're a bit slower than others at identifying a tune, it's going to get drowned out by clapping, at which point you'll lose your chance. The final number (which was reprised in the encore, oddly) was a medley of Cape Breton tunes, but I missed about half of them for all the clapping.

(The two ladies sitting behind us didn't help much either: they arrived late, and once seated, they launched into a lively conversation whilst manipulating a seemingly endless supply of individually wrapped candies. Rather than seeing this as a reflection of Caper culture, I'm going to chalk it up to good old-fashioned rudeness.)

The other moment of cultural dissonance occurred midway through the second act, when the stage was abruptly flooded with veterans. As the host explained, it's getting close to Remembrance Day, and so the Chorusmen offered members of the local Legion some stage time. They made the most of it: there was a sentry demonstration and a parade of colours; then we all sang O Canada, followed by four pages of popular tunes from World War I and II, followed by God Save the Queen. Finally, the colours and the sentries marched out, and I said a silent prayer of thanks that there were no bagpipes involved.

In all seriousness: I know there are Legion-led Remembrance Day ceremonies throughout Canada, so it shouldn't feel like culture shock to encounter one here. But I don't think any Albertan music revue would surrender almost 30 minutes of its programme to the uniformed. In Alberta, culture and community are usually kept separate; or, if they do overlap, it's usually done with some degree of irony. I might expect a World War II singalong, for instance, but it would be led by twenty-something Grant Mac grads dressed like field nurses, or something.

The point is, Remembrance Day means something different here because far more Nova Scotia men enlisted than did Albertan men. There were simply more of them to enlist, especially in World War I; plus they probably had less to lose, if they came from impoverished families. I was able to set aside my irony (although I blanked on half the words to God Save the Queen), and to see the proceedings as a patriotic Caper might; but then I remembered stopping for lunch in Oromocto, near the Gagetown Army base, and seeing 18-year-old cadets eating with their sweethearts, trying not to think about how soon they're liable to get shipped out to Afghanistan.

What does Remembrance Day mean when you're at war? Is having a cheerful singalong of "It's a Long Way to Tipperary" harmless nostalgia? Or tender tribute? Or hypocritical naivete?

Nor'easter

2009-11-06T14:42:39Z

Ugh, long week. Lots of marking to catch up on, plus R&J rehearsals moving into a higher gear. We open in two weeks, and while the cast has made a lot of important strides, this is always the stage where it feels like nothing is moving fast enough, and there's no way we'll be ready. The fact that it feels like that every time I do a show reassures me, however.

Philip Henslowe: Mr. Fennyman, allow me to explain about the theatre business. The natural condition is one of insurmountable obstacles on the road to imminent disaster.
Hugh Fennyman: So what do we do?
Philip Henslowe: Nothing. Strangely enough, it all turns out well.
Hugh Fennyman: How?
Philip Henslowe: I don't know. It's a mystery.

(--Marc Norman & Tom Stoppard, Shakespeare in Love)

Anyway, yesterday's bull rush through marking, fight rehearsals, and teaching just about put me out of the game, so I'm taking it easy today and catching up on household chores. I picked a good day to stay indoors, too; it's building up to a full-blown nor'easter out there, which means wind, rain, and snow, all at the same time. The plum trees are down to their last leaves.

We're completely unprepared for winter: no snow tires, no boots, no shovel. I shall pray to the Sweet Mother of Monkeys to be spared a full-on seasonal incursion until after R&J has come and gone. Then I'll have some time to deal with it all.

P.S. Finished Fall on Your Knees, finally. Strong and enjoyable stuff, though some of the disastrous convergences strained credibility. I also felt a bit removed from the four sisters, never having had nor been a sister myself. But I enjoyed the subtle hymn to miscegenation that seemed to rise like a refrain through each section of the novel. And Dad, you were right; there was sexual abuse, and incest, and lesbianism; I just had to wait for all the pay-offs.

Dear Science-Fiction

2009-11-03T18:38:18Z

Dear Science-Fiction,

This is going to be hard to say. We’ve been pals for as long as I can remember. Before I made friends with your little sis, Fantasy, or your delinquent teenage brother, Horror, it was just you and me, in the womblike warmth of the cinema house, bathed in the warm glow of exploding Death Stars. We’ve been so close for so long, I can barely imagine life without you.

But I think it’s time we took a break.

This is not goodbye forever; please don’t think for a nanosecond that I’m calling you exhausted or extinct. I’m not like those pundits who maintain that the future is here, and so we should therefore drop the “science” and go back to plain old fiction. I like your science. It’s one of my favourite things about you. But there’s more to you than that. You have a heart, and I think it’s worn out. It needs time to mend, and I’m willing to be patient.

I realize this might be confusing to those who don’t know you as well as I do. So I’m going to provide a bit of context by describing how I’m come to see you recently. Maybe this will be helpful for you, too, Sci-Fi (can I still call you by that nickname?). Maybe, once you’ve seen yourself from all angles, you’ll have a better idea of where you can go from here.

People who don’t know you think you look funny. They sometimes only see the lurching, unbalanced way that you move—like that big, bolt-necked monster in the movie version of Grandma Shelley’s old bedtime story. But you only walk that way because you’re out of balance. Right from the start, you had too much to carry, and it made you stumble and careen between extremes.

I blame your two daddies for pulling you in such different directions (it’s okay that you have two daddies, though; if anybody ever teases you about that, you have my permission to vapourize them). Daddy Verne was so celebratory about your new toys, and he just loved to speculate about what you were going to do next. Daddy Wells was more cautious—cautionary, even, because he thought all your toys could turn around and hurt you if you weren’t careful.

You’ve continued to play with toys, and you’ve even settled into a routine of playing with the same ones over and over again: spaceships, time machines, robots, VR, and your newest one, the Cyberspace-Posthumanism Playnet (although even that one is almost 30 years old, and starting to show its age). A lot of people think you’re still a kid because you play with toys, but I know better. I know you’ve grown up to the point where you can use those toys to make important points. You use them to show us ourselves.

But even then, you’re so unbalanced. Sometimes your stories end with happy, perfect worlds, because you believe that, even though humans aren’t perfect, we have the potential to get there, and our tech can help us to evolve. Your optimism can be progressive, like Star Trek’s multi-cultural space crew, or Torchwood’s bisexual counter-terrorists; or it can be conservative, like the elitist, aristocratic Jedi who save the galaxy (after ruining it themselves). Either way, I love it when you’re humanist, because it means you’re willing to embrace us, warts and all. Even when we’re terrible to each other, you take our good natures on faith.

But lately, that hasn’t been the way you’re most inclined to lean. Lately, you’re leaning the other direction, the one that Daddy Wells taught you, though he got it from Grampa Darwin. When you lean this way, you end up showing us that we’re really just a bunch of beasts—and if you give animals a toy, whether it’s a bone or a space station, they’ll use it to smash each other over the heads. Wells saw the beast in how we colonize and oppress each other, but he couldn’t come right out and say that (being one of the colonizers), so he made the colonizers Martians or Morlocks instead.

It’s not that I don’t value your determinism. I can learn a lot from it, and some of my favourite stories depend upon its core assumptions. For instance, if we weren’t fundamentally animals, we wouldn’t fear death, so we wouldn’t try to invent ways to cheat death. And it’s the need to cheat death—combined with our clumsy inability to control our toys in the long run—that has given us Robot-Marias, HALs, replicants, terminators, matrices, cyclons, and actives. In fact, I’d be willing to admit that a majority of your best moments have leaned heavily upon determinism.

I have a theory about that, by the way. I think most of the guys who write your stories (and they are mostly guys, even today) have very scientific outlooks. I think they feel embarrassed or stupid if they don’t embrace science 100% in their outlooks and their writing. And since evolution is still considered controversial, they feel they have to rally around it—witness all the resentment and sarcasm that gave birth to the Flying Spaghetti Monster. It gets into their blood, until every story they write rests on the foundation that humans are soulless animals, incapable of accomplishing anything truly miraculous, because there’s no place for miracles in science.

For me, all of this came to a head in Battlestar Galactica, which was one of your finest stories to date. It somehow managed to situate itself right in the middle of both your tech-people axis and your humanist-determinist spectrum. BSG liked to play with its tech, and its favourite game was hide-and-seek. But it never got distracted by its tech when there were real human issues at stake, and it used its people and politics to reflect the real world, just like Daddy Wells taught us. It was deterministic (“all this has happened before and will happen again”) and humanistic (people can become angels, and angels can show us the way home). It started with apocalypse and ended with a leap of faith into the Garden of Eden. It wasn’t a perfect balance, but I could see how hard you was trying, Sci-Fi, and I loved you for that. No other genre would ever even attempt that kind of balancing act.

I know what you’re saying: if you love me so much, why leave me? It’s not because I’ve seen you at your best, though it’s still hard for me to imagine how you could get much better. And it’s not because the Sci-Fi tide has now receded into a fallow period of BSG wanna-bes (and formulaic Hollywood technophobia. It’s because, now that you’ve done your level best to show me a clear, balanced reflection of humanity, right now, at this cultural moment…I need to spend a bit of time living in it.

I understand your warnings. It’s like you said in Dollhouse’s “Epitaph One” (the episode that tipped that series over into bleak determinism): “They were playing with matches…and they burned the house down.” It’s what you’ve been shouting about ever since Grandma Shelley—or earlier, in fact, since Pandora and Prometheus and Adam. Knowledge can be deadly if you’re curious/greedy/inherently flawed. But I also understand your inherent promise: if you’re equipped with knowledge and faith in humanity, you don’t have to make the mistakes of your dystopian forefathers. Now that I’m equipped, I’m going to see what’s out there.

I’ve already started my search by cozying up to some of your genre-less fellow stories. They’re just as fictional as you are, Sci-Fi, but they’re based on real systems in the present day. Instead of learning the protocols of Starfleet, I’ve been learning about the drug trade and the justice system courtesy of The Wire, and about psychiatry through In Treatment. These stories still struggle with the moral balance between humanism and determinism, but they aren’t distracted with world-building or tech toys; they’re about what they’re about.

Will I miss the mental gymnastics that your various technological permutations performed for my imagination? Probably, a bit. But your articulations of social and moral conscience have gone as far as I think they can go, for now. When you call me back to make another leap of faith, I’ll be ready. Until then, have fun with your toys.

Love,

P.S. Can I still come see Tron 2?

November, Huh?

2009-11-02T00:33:57Z

The Capers have continued to set off their lawn-fireworks -- perhaps they're meant to brighten up the long stretch between Halloween and Guy Fawkes Day.

I'm not sure what November will bring for us, here; the weather is a continually unfolding mystery. Romeo & Juliet goes up in a few weeks, and while it's pretty much the same process as any play I've ever done, I have no doubt that I'll encounter cultural curiosities that make the process feel new. Otherwise, my time is likely going to be spent tentatively and mindfully observing my own patterns. That, and taking care of my wife, seem to be my full time jobs.

My best wishes to all those on livejournal who are doing National Novel Writing Month. I admire your resolve, and while I think you're all crazy, it's a good kind of crazy. Maybe I'll do something like that next year; for now, having been here still less than 2 months, I couldn't imagine writing an Alberta novel, but think it's too early to write a Cape Breton novel. I'll write a role-laying game instead.

Beauty and the Beast

2009-10-31T21:24:00Z

We just barely got our friend put together in time for the trick-or-treaters to arrive. For the geek-challenged, the cutie (on the right) is a Beholder. You can't tell from the photo, but some of his eyestalks light up.

(Caper trivia: in Cape Breton, they set off homemade fireworks for Hallowe'en.)

Off-book, On-stage

2009-10-29T20:06:12Z

Romeo & Juliet rehearsals are clipping along. Yesterday was the official off-book date, although as always, some are more off-book than others. Kudos to Stephen and Breagh, the youngsters playing the two leads; they have the lion's share of verbiage, but they've managed to make tremendous strides towards memorization. (I've been 98% off-book for over a week, but I've done this before. Plus I'm dead before intermission).

We're back in the theatre after a brief exile during another show's run. The set is being assembled as we watch; I pitched in for a few hours earlier this week, with only very minor injuries. Once the set is complete, and the props have all rolled in (still waiting on swords--they're being shipped from Illinois!), I predict acting will take a great leap forward, as everyone realizes that we do, in fact, inhabit a specific, visible world.

But at this stage, even more important than acting is bonding. And I felt the cast dynamic starting to click last night, as we ran through the first half of the play twice in a row at breakneck speed. Cast members are starting to listen to each other, help each other, and give each other kudos after exits. When somebody screws up, instead of internalizing their insecurities, they are able to laugh about it, and the others laugh with them, not at them. It is, in short, an ensemble, and for that to happen with three weeks left to go before showtime suggests that great things lie in store.

Bloody Irony

2009-10-28T16:49:45Z

Excited to receive a package from Paizo this morning, I tore open the outer box and poured the individually wrapped D&D miniatures out across the kitchen table. Then I used a knife to cut open the first item: a Young Gold Dragon! Cool! Mini #2 was a hippogriff -- almost as cool. Then I sliced my finger while trying to open miniature package #3. After a good deal of fussing with water, polysporin, and bandages, I brought my damaged hand back to the kitchen table to see what I'd suffered so much to obtain.

It was a Blood Scarab.

Kijiji, Why Hast Thou Forsaken Me?

2009-10-27T22:31:36Z

Grumble...bought a used iPod Nano through kijiji. Plugged it in when iTunes was open. "USB device not recognized. Driver needed."

Usually, when you plug an iPod into a computer armed with iTunes, it pops right up. I think I may have been swindled.

[grumbles, maintains faith in the fundamental decency of human beings]

UPDATE: I had to buy a new USB connector cable and re-install iTunes, but eventually I got the darn thing working. Now I have mobile tunage again -- for only slightly less than the price of a new iPod, in the end, but at least I was able to stick to my environmentalist guns by buying used whenever possible.