Yup - it's all over.... what a trip it was.
Calgary, Alberta for the PlayRites Festival and ten shows of This Is Cancer.
I have just arrived back home (half an hour ago..) and am madly trying to prepare 2 audition pieces for “Dream in High Park” - you guessed it - my AGENT got me an audition for tomorrow. (I capitalize “agent” because I never thought I would have one – and now that I do, I see why they’re such a great idea). CanStage’s version of Shakespeare in the Park are having their last day of "callbacks" tomorrow, but are willing to squeeze me in. And now that I have an agent I have no excuse not to be working my ass off on audition pieces that will get me the part. No excuse, Horak – you wasted enough time in your 20's...
The stuff I picked is fun and shows me off – I just have to fight my nerves and not rush through… that’s accomplished by knowing my shit and being confident.
However, I'm feeling a bit drained from the Calgary experience, so it's hard to truly focus. I feel like I need to "come down" from the Cancer thing. That show kicked my ass, and I feel like I need a rest.
Time to process it all.
I’m taking a break from rehearsal to vent some of it and maybe slough off some of the angst and turmoil I’m feeling.
The whole Calgary experience was a roller-coaster ride. We arrived with most of the show completely rewritten, and half of it untested. Rebecca and I worked together in the rehearsal hall together, her: trying to act as director, stage manager, and audience, me: trying to remember my lines and concentrate on my physicality at the same time. Body was aching before we arrived, and hasn’t stopped since. Felt overloaded and unskilled.
Eventually, Rebecca left saying, “you need to run this by yourself”.
There I was running the show in costume for the rehearsal hall mirror, and Vicki Stroich opens the door to be confronted with “cancer” in all his glory. She seemed to roll with it very well. I was convinced that she had seen this sort of thing every day since coming to work at Alberta Theatre Projects.
Waylen arrived next day and we finished the closing number. Finally, we had a show.
Having the office staff of ATP come and watch was exhilarating. These people can really hit!
The run was incredible – every show seemed to jump a little higher than the last. Rebecca felt that Tuesday and the closing Sunday were the best. I agree, but I don’t believe there was a “bad” one in the bunch. I remember bits of every one – they were all so different. Every crowd had a different energy. Different voices shouting names – different people staying behind to chat and ask questions and even just say “thanks”. We started doing a “bow” at the end of the show, and that seemed to break some tension, which was a good release. I think the audience needed to see me as a real person, even if just for a second. It also seemed to encourage more people to stick around for the “second act” – the talkback. That’s a good sign. I loved every one of them.
But Sunday… well – that was a hell of a ride.
I was stretching in the alcove by the elevator outside the dressing-room of the Big Secret Theatre and trying to get focused on the final show. It had become a ritual. Get into the suit, finish my coffee, and stretch before putting my make-up on. Rebecca sits inside the propped-open door and gives me final notes. Marilyn Potts popped her head in. She was one of my Dad's best friends, has been a part of my family since I was a kid, and a huge supporter of theatre in Calgary. My brother went to school with her daughter. She taught drama in the same school-system as my father. She had seen the show on Saturday Night, and stopped by early Sunday to tell me; "Carl would be so proud. I kept thinking "he should be here" - but - " and here. for the first time in my life, I watched Marilyn Potts lose her words.
I felt like I had been hit in the stomach; that same feeling I had when I listened to the recording of my father dictating his obituary to me. My father's voice, which I had been listening to all week, suddenly held a different significance.
Watching the effect that the show had on Potts, who was always such a positive and moving force in my life really winded me. “We see a different show”, she said “because we know what all those little references mean.” That’s true, but since my father’s death I have come to appreciate the little references more and more and more.
And maybe even some bigger references as well. As Waylen pointed out early in the process: This show is, in a way, my father’s obituary. In the recording that I have of him telling me what to type, he finishes by saying that he loved the absurdities of life, and what could be more absurd than his youngest son performing as the disease that took his life? And all intended as a celebration of his life. I hope that’s what comes across – because that’s the intention.
There’s always the fear that perhaps it comes across as callous or disrespectful. That was never the intention. The opposite is true in this case.
Strange. Strange stuff.
Was there a bigger reason that I was home in June to record his obituary? Was there a bigger reason that he told me to go and do the Fringe circuit and not come rushing back in the coming months? Was there a bigger reason that the last thing he said to me, after he hugged me goodbye and right before I closed the door on the car to drive to the airport was, "Don't worry - I shall not go gently into that good night".
To me, he hasn’t. And that’s the bigger reason. Gently implies leaving no ripples. No marking of your passing. Gently implies ease and lack of suffering. He lived such a gentle life, he deserved to leave some ripples behind.
The creation of this show was not a gentle process. There were a lot of tears in the process, a lot of anger and frustration. It was hard to let go. I felt restrained at times, not wanting to give it all, because I was afraid of going there. But something happened in the run and I had to. Something slipped, and I had to let go, go where the audience wanted, because not doing so was a disservice. It was a lie. It was “stealing from the audience”, as Rebecca so fondly put it.
So I had to let go – and, as Potts said right before my closing show, “it’s good”.
There were a lot of amazing things said by a lot of amazing people while we were in Calgary, but that was one that kicked me in the stomach. That was all part of the ride, of course. Dad made an impression on people. He was a “healthy cynic”. He made people laugh, and continues to do so. The gentlest kind of ripple is a ripple of laughter.
