GAP Atelier #1 Post 2
I’m old enough and ugly enough to expect the first day of anything that involves people, locations and technology to work flawlessly. The cafe we were meant to meet at was supposed to open at 9. It didn’t. The booking time had been mixed up in the process of an email thread where I had moved the times more than once. Alex and Carly of the Comedy Bar Danforth (great rehearsal spaces - who knew!?) were super helpful and unflustered and hustled around earlier than expected to let us in. The Wi-Fi didn’t work and it took Mike Riot’s tech preparedness to bring Warren in online from BC. A few years ago I would have been annoyed, self blaming, and embarrassed. Instead, I noted a recognition that sometimes these things happen - the mocap rig that has been working all week crashes on the first shoot day; the sound recording is challenged by the commencement of home renos next door… Instead I clocked those things that were in my control to improve and change and just looked forward to getting on with it.
The main thing to share with these bold actors was that we must hold on to the idea that we are in a process. That even if we show our work to an invited audience in April, it will be showing something that is in process. Marketing and Audiences must be reassured they will have a finished product - as finished as possible. To my mind that isn’t helpful - as when it comes to acting you are always in a process of iteration and discovery - at least that it a better aim. Even when it comes to TV and film, maintaining that sense of live discovery, even within all the constraints, makes for a living performance.
We started with the basics of the technique, as some had completed a course recently and others came across my online course during lockdown. I had decided to unpack these steps in a slightly different order as we have more time to digest between sessions and we have 12 weeks. I have yet to decide whether this is an improvement. The Psychophysical is something that seems complex when unfamiliar but reveals itself to be the nature of our own behavior once understood.
Our aim is to build a community of actors who enjoy making work this way to show to a curated audience who will financially support something they enjoy. The Glasgow Citizen’s theatre in Scotland was one of the most progressive theatres in Europe. It was located in the Gorbals district which at the time was notorious for it’s gangs and violence. The Artisitc Directors (there were three of them) would take turns to welcome the audience who they would get to know by name - most of whom were local. This was the backbone of the community that supported a theatre that broke barriers and pushed boundaries that we take for granted now.
The theatre industry in Toronto is challenged. The Atelier is my test to find out if a different more community curated business model is possible. Even if it doesn’t work out - what we learn along this journey will be quite unique and groundbreaking in it’s way.
Today we got to enjoy that feeling. Every endeavor has it’s bad days so I am glad we will be able to remember this one.
