Fringe Accompli!

Thank you Edmonton International Fringe! We could not have wished for a better 11 days. It was such a thrill experiencing 4 Sold Out houses for Pieces. We created it with love and we were overwhelmed by the response from our audiences. We lacked the hubris to hand out Kleenex before hand but we appreciated the number of people saying afterwards that they wished we had. I did not even mind watching 3 of the shows from the booth (it was always fun to hang with Kim!).

For those who did not make it - here is the lowdown on Pieces:

Playwright/Director - Kristen M. Finlay
Stage Manager - Kimberlee Stadelmann
Sound Designer - Erin Foster-O'Riordan

Cast:
Diane - Anne Marie Szucs
Joan - Francie Goodwin-Davies
Young Joan - Lindsey Walker
Doctor/Ben - Justin Deveau
Sharon/Grace/Young Diane - Janine Hodder

We had a great time together and hope that some or all of these wonderful artists join us for future projects.

- posted by Kristen

We Love This...

Thanks to word of mouth, reviews and wonderful friends and family we have had 2 Sold Out shows (Tuesday and Thursday). Saturday and Sunday are also well on their way to selling out. We are simply thrilled with the response to the play and are glad we get to show it to so many people.

If you are unable to get tickets, the Fringe holds back a small percentage of the house tickets until an hour before (I think 5-7 for our venue) so you can get a couple in that last hour if you time it right. We have two shows left - Saturday, August 20 at 4 p.m. and Sunday, August 21 at 2 p.m.

A Very Nice Way to Finish Up on Saturday...

We had our second show tonight. The wonderful Ops from Catalyst worked to rebuild all our lost lighting cues and we got them finessed before the show and then I got to see the show with near perfect tech and it was lovely. We had a nice sized house for a 10:30 p.m. drama and I was very pleased with the show. Then, on the way home, I received word that we were reviewed in the Edmonton Journal and we got FOUR AND A HALF STARS!!! Not only that, but the review is lovely, lovely, lovely in it's wording.

http://www.edmontonjournal.com/entertainment/festivals/fringe/Show+Pieces/5217492/story.html

Pieces

Review by Iain Ilich

4.5 stars out of 5

Stage 6, Catalyst Theatre

The descent into dementia isn’t a light topic.

Every day, dutiful daughter Diane makes the trek to the care home where her mother, Joan, has recently moved. Dementia has stripped Joan of much of her memory and of her ability to communicate in a way that makes sense to anyone but herself. She can no longer identify her visiting daughter. She holds onto and cherishes pictures as if they were people. She is sad and lonely and terrified.

The story is a collection of little fragments of memory woven together with Diane’s narration. We learn more about Ben, Joan’s beloved late husband whose death Joan is no longer aware of. We travel back to Joan’s childhood misadventures, cut into tiny fragments of thought expressed in half-formed sentences and emotional outbursts. Diane even learns things about her mother, and her mother’s impression of her, that she never knew before.

But the real highlight here is the brilliant use of the stage to allow multiple scenes to take place at the same time, linked by shared phrases. On one half of the stage, the present is played out with daughter visiting mother in a care facility. On the other half, actors play fragments of memory that dart through Joan’s head. It’s like a living footnote that explains and provides context to the action in the present. It sounds complicated, but it works perfectly. It captures the confusion of the person in the present with the lucidity of the thoughts before they’re filtered through dementia.

It’s a sad, moving play at a festival where comedies sell tickets. It deserves to be seen.

That's the Fringe! Anything can happen...

We opened the show yesterday to a respectable sized house for the first Friday noon at Fringe. It would be nice to say it went off without a hitch, but the best laid plans seldom come to fruition. While we were waiting to get into the venue, the LX Op for our show rushed out looking for the SM or Director. She seemed kind of panicky - never a good sign. Apparently the Lighting Board computer had crashed or something and all our light cues were gone and we needed to re-build the whole show. This was a task we took 2 hours to do at our tech. So, in the 15 minutes prior to opening the house we rebuilt as best we could all our light cues. They weren't perfect - they weren't the nuanced shifts that we worked on earlier but to the untrained eye they worked. Also, our phenomenal SM Kim made adjustments on the fly to 'fix' any cues that weren't quite right. I know I noticed every hiccup and not so smooth or perfect cue, but I am a bit of a perfectionist. The audience, however, seemed to be totally engaged and those I spoke to did not notice anything amiss (although I heard through the grapevine that one person loved the show, except for the lighting - but she hadn't realized those things she hated were not our choices). It will be smoother tonight - I hear the space got a new lighting Board and that should help.

We also got our first Review - THREE STARS from Vue and a FABULOUS write-up!

"Drawing more than just a few sniffles from the audience, Pieces is a moving portraiture of a family dealing with Alzheimer’s. Delightfully interwoven memories performed as tandem scenes paint an emotional picture of the ruthless degeneration of one woman’s mind, pulling serious heartstrings in the process. For such a poignant script, the acting at times falls somewhat flat, but nonetheless serves to guide a heartfelt unravelling of a family trying to hold on to the memories that define it. If you’ve ever dealt with Alzheimer’s in your family, be sure to take Kleenex." - Megan Dart, VUE Weekly, Aug 12, 2011

One Final Rehearsal...

Tonight was our final rehearsal before we open on Friday. It was much needed, but also very rewarding. It is nice as a director to be in the position I was in tonight. We had to take the first half of the rehearsal to basically Q2Q the show since we didn't get to do that at our tech on Saturday, but we did that and tweaked some of the sound cues in terms of timing and then we ran the show. It was clean, and well paced and connected and the sound created another level of happiness for me as a director. Since our set is pared down, the sound helps create the world of the play. Since the story bounces around in time this is very necessary. I just watched and was happy.

Our first show is this Friday, August 12th at 12:00 noon. I hope we see you there!

- post by Kristen

Photo of the Day...

Well, tickets are selling briskly (yay!) and we are anxiously awaiting the start of the Fringe. Here is a photo from the show to cheer you up! Here Grace (Janine Hodder) and Young Joan (Lindsey Walker) discuss hemlines and lipstick and the tyranny of fathers! Photo by Francie Goodwin-Davies.

Pieces? What's the show about?

This will be the question we will be answering over the next few days as we go into the next phase of Fringe. We are quite proud of our show and we want people to come and see it. We want to tell them enough to get them into the theatre, but not too much so that they already know the whole story (or think they do). Pieces is, on the surface, about a woman (Diane) and her mother (Joan). Their relationship has changed dramatically because of Joan's dementia and Diane needs to figure out how to go forward. It is also a lot more than that. Because of what Joan sees, she actually is living in the past, the audience gets to see her story too. We see what those fragments of dialogue are all about... those little pieces. It's a challenging theatre piece. Joan and Young Joan live through things in parallel and Diane struggles to understand what is going on. It is also a full world created more with sound and action, than with set. We literally spend more than half the show inside Joan's mind. It's not just a lovely walk through the past either... when writing the play I thought... "What would we remember? What memories would be sharp and present?" It would be those moments that defined us - the ones that we had to fight through. At least, that's what I figured.

So you see, it's a complicated play to describe. More than just a play about Alzheimer's disease. More than just a coming of age play. It's both and even that isn't the whole picture, it's almost 2 1/2 plays in one!

Tech Rehearsal!

This morning - bright and early - we had our Technical Rehearsal at The Catalyst. We tried to go in like a machine and for the most part we were successful, but it is always challenging to be the first group to Tech. If you are later in the rotation, you can often use other people's specials (if they work for your show) and that can save you some time. We got everything built and it looks great and we have 2 great techs who seem nice to work with! We didn't get the run through we were optimistically hoping for in addition to building all the cues, but Kim (our fabulous SM) knows what we need and she is great at adjusting as required during a performance. Erin (our amazing Sound Designer) has given us some wonderful sound to fill out the world of the play and on Wednesday we will use the low-tech version (aka boom box) to get a better sense of it before we have OUR FIRST SHOW on Friday, August 12th at 12 noon!

Day off Amid the Chaos!

Today was well needed down-time. You would think after 2 weeks off we would all be rested, but everyone pretty much had other thing to be done during those 2 weeks, so it was not that kid of break. Tuesday night we regrouped for a fabulous rehearsal at The Citadel. We worked the tricky part and then had two solid runs of the show. If we took the best part of each of the runs and put them together it would probably be my 'dream' run of the play. So I am happy with where the show is at. It is nice to know that all the moments are achievable - and now it is just repetition and confidence to reinforce that.

Last night we had a little Preview Event at Accent European Lounge. We coordinated the evening and had a few other groups join us to show a snippet of the shows we are serving up. Accidental Humor presented Cowboy: A Cowboy Story. We also saw a bit from Going Viral, and we presented a segment from Pieces. We also had Sarah Van Tassel talk a bit about Guts n Guile's production of Gone. Accent was a great host and we also got a door prize donated by The Citadel Theatre. Much, Much love to these Arts-Loving businesses!

So today was a day of rest and tomorrow we do the Venue Tour. We have our Tech Rehearsal on Saturday morning so we want to be ready to walk in their like a military force so that we can get all our work done.

5, 4, 3, 2, 1 ---> LAUNCH!

Today was the official Fringe Media Launch! We were there in our fabulous t-shirts checking out the other shows and doing our thing to get the word out about ours. It went well. We chatted with most of the media people we wanted to hit and the scene between Anne Marie and Francie went over well. As well, in a sea of musicals and avant garde pieces, a little realistic theatre filled out the required components for a Fringe. We saw some great snippets of shows and I have started my long list for what I am going to see. Not surprisingly it is a mix - musicals, burlesque, drama, comedy... it's all on my list... and I have no idea how to make it to everything!

I missed out on the Frequent Fringer Pass. They are SOLD OUT already. That's great news for the Fringe, but not more me. Even if I had gotten one of them. I was planning to buy two. I guess I will be paying top dollar! Alas!

See you at the Fringe!

Putting the Pieces Together...

You knew I had to use that title just once...

We are back - after a 2 week hiatus while 1 actor was on holidays in PEI, another learning how to use quarter staff and M-16, while a third took a trip to Ontario and the remaining 2 rehearsed for their other Fringe show. Fortunately they did not all leave everything from our show behind and clearly from the runs we did tonight they kept up with their homework! As Director, the show was at a point where I could start to fine tune some of the choices. Prior to today I could work on the broad strokes, but until they 'knew' the story and their lines I couldn't really attack smaller details. That is a great place to be 2 weeks out to opening. Tomorrow we are back at it - with momentum from tonight, I am looking forward to it.

We also got to work with a bit of the sound design today. Erin crafted a collage to play under a key scene and it not only increases the intensity of the scene, but it times out perfectly! Yippee! That means that it doesn't have to be rebuilt... it also means those actors have to be clean on their lines, because if they rush or skip, the sound won't line up right...