Rehearsal Blog | Theatre Production Archive

The Art of Listening

Zac Gungl

There is a sense of familiarity to the process of Unity (1918) to On Love (2013) by Naila Keleta Mae, a production I performed in my first year of University. The familiarity comes from acting as a form of audience. In our case, in many situations, we watch the world unfold even if we are not necessarily part of the scene; nor does it mean we necessarily know what going on as our character (although it's possible that we do, considering the environment of Unity). It creates an extra layer of ambiguity and possibility. I noted this at our very first run of the show: the run for lights, a performance for sound and lighting designers to see the show, and create and/or enhance their design. Since this was our first run, I saw how much time is committed to watching and seeing the story unfold. This brought me back to a concept I first heard from Andreea Hluscu, an alumnus of our department, that "acting is listening." I cannot track the true origin of this concept, but for my process, it started from Andreea and developed further with conversations with my peers, especially Mollie Garrett and Alan Shonfield. I was able to understand the importance of this concept, especially in the structure we have created with this production. It's beyond necessary for us to truly listen with our current blocking because of how long we are present onstage. To just sit and hear the text means that while the words are spoken and heard, they aren't processed. THEY LOSE MEANING. When you listen, your mind to interprets, feels, and reacts to stimulii. It converts the actors as audience from a living prop onstage to an enhancement to the action put forth. This resonated as I watched this performance unfold within multiple contexts, in the realm of the living and of the dead. Certain nuances unfold when you let onstage stimuli affect you. Often, such discussions occur in my classes but to truly put it on its feet in production is different altogether. I think what we work with is a sense of community with the performers onstage, which forces you to listen. Listening helps make you present and makes it clear that intentions are motivated because of what is allowed in. In a way, this process has taken what I've learned at the University and has given me a chance to actually use it. That process, too, follows the concept of hearing versus listening. We can read about it, hear about it in our textbooks, in classes, even in activities we participated in, but this process has allowed me to understand more about what it takes to be an actor. I do not mean to suggest, by any stretch, that I am the best listener: I'd range myself from decent to good. It's a long process in life to learn how to truly listen. I think that is the greatest achievement of these processes. We may fail. However, what can we take away from this process? I can at least take something even now. I've learned that listening is difficult to grasp but is imperative for anything to be successful and for anything to have an impact.

Unity is a little Wilde

Abbi Longmire

When I first read Unity (1918) I fell in love with it. As someone who doesn’t have much experience in history other than the grade 10 requirement, I learn about past through theatre most. In a certain acknowledgement to the past, and so many present, cultures who relied solely on story telling to preserve history, I think theatre transcends history into a conversation. Rather than distancing ourselves from the past we not only bring history into the present but form relationships with it. Live theatre is a relationship between the audience and what is on stage, that is what made me fall in love with it. In plays about history, we laugh, we cry, we question with history rather than simply study and read about it. We start a conversation, and for the actors we truly get to experience it. What is so interesting about Unity is that the main action surrounds the Spanish Flu, something I had only heard the name of before. Rather than focusing on the World War during that time, Unity reveals the devastation that happened on Canada’s very own soil that so many people know so little about and don’t talk about.

Another thing that entices me about Unity is how relevant it is. Though it takes place in 1918, there are so many things happening in the world right now, or have happened in the very recent past, that correlate with what happens in this little town during the first world war. Women’s rights really got moving along during the first world war as men left for war and women needed to take over the jobs, and even today we are still trudging along the path towards equality. In many plays (and movies), the stories are dominated by male characters. But in Unity, like how the women took over men’s jobs, women dominate this play. And not only are there more female characters, but strong female characters. This is a big part as to why I fell in love with my character, Sissy Wilde.

Sissy defies gender roles, especially for the time period. She definitely reflects her last name, she can be completely wild. At each rehearsal I learn more and more about Sissy. I was first drawn to her not only because of her strength as a character, but also because Sissy seems to represent the future in the play. While Sissy is spouting about the apocalypse (something that people bring back around every few years still) and the world ending, Sissy also represents forward thinking. She questions the unquestionable. She is probably one of the most intelligent characters in the play, though other characters downplay it, something that I’ve recently been discovering in a deeper way in the past few rehearsals. Sissy is scoffed at for reading books, is told she is too smart for her own good, she really is oppressed and mostly likely because of her gender. The Wilde sisters show the two different sides of female oppression, Sissy fights and Beatrice folds. Sissy takes action, in whatever way she can or wants to, while Beatrice quietly does as she’s told and internalizes her oppression. Quite literally internalizes it, into her diary. These are ways women still face sexism and oppression. I would love to see how Sissy and Beatrice would fair in today’s society, but you almost don’t have to because you can see it in the play. And that is what is so wonderful about theatre bringing history to the present.

I am so excited to continue to learn more about Sissy and Unity over the next month, and also to share it with the audience. There are so many layers that this play brings up in it’s conversation, and I can’t wait to experience the past.

Imagining Unity

Nivan ElSeweify

During one of our rehearsals, my scene partner Emma Mann and I strained our necks to hear sounds that weren't there, wrote each other imaginary notes on a surface that wasn't there, while she impersonated a crow and I channeled a cat.

In any other context, this might sound like a ridiculous way to spend an afternoon.

Ridiculous. Because it's only cute when a 5-year-old does it. Why would non-5-year-olds foster an imagination? Or play? Or explore how their bodies can move? We don't have social scripts for that, so it gets branded silly.

But, in rehearsal it's not. If the goal is to establish a safe and open space to explore the story and how we can tell it, then there's no place for ridiculous.

I remember a moment when Andy asked me to shake my head. In the most exaggerated, bizarre way. And it was so much harder than I thought it would be. Shake your head, or wag your finger, or lift your eyebrow long enough and it'll probably freak you out a bit. Bodies just do things, all the time. Implicit, tiny movements that I never notice. And they get attached to feelings and thoughts and situations. And they make up a body index of physical cues that can signal a state of mind, or a feeling, or a sound.

I discovered that this is true for me when I found that the choices I made for my character's body; how I walked, how I arranged my face to speak, how I sat—all the things that make me feel like a grumpy resident of a small town—actually evoked tangible memories of a small town I grew up in: Tabuk, Saudi Arabia.

Unity is in many ways the freezing farm town counterpart to Tabuk's sweltering military base. Farms and bases may have as much in common as a fish and a tomato. But they are both small communities where people just do their jobs. Because they have to. Because they need to survive. Whether the threat is ongoing war, war that might happen, or the Spanish flu—shaking my head can connect me to fear. And there's nothing ridiculous about that.

Devising in Rehearsal

Zac Gungl

I was curious about the idea of devising a character within an already established play. Spooner is not someone who necessarily exists in physical form in other productions (except for...well you'll have to see the show and see what I mean by except). As far as text allots, the specific Spooner boy is Alfred Spooner, the last son of the Spooner family who dies in the show by way of acknowledgment in the text rather than being shown. He had two elder brothers who went to war, the eldest likely fought in battle but it is alluded that the middle brother, Rufus, was likely killed due to the influenza virus and never made it to war. Again, many of these concepts are assumptions. Alfred could likely be the eldest because the line "He's their last boy" could have many interpretations. Is he the last born or the last one that was alive? It then begs the question, why wasn't he at war with his other brothers? Was he incapable of going to war because of age or due to conditions that he may possess, if that is even a factor? Would it not be a duty for him to go or is there duty to be done on his family farm? I'm not sure. That's the beauty of it. There are no concrete answers and our direction will go where it feels authentic and material. If anything, we have worked to conceive him as a representation of youth in death. There is an image of a family. A mother, father, and a son. A bare bones concept of what could constitute as family as we construct our own idea of what family is, what it is, why it is, and what it represents. Upon placing Spooner on his feet, I feel an ethereal presence in the character which is funny because he is out of the world of the living but he's light, he's strong, he's malleable, he's combustible because there is many possibilities in death because it is a concept that has not true established meaning. What is the afterlife? As I deconstruct what it means to play the dead and establish a new world that possesses life without life, I find myself exploring morality in a new light. Do I expect this to fully be visible onstage? Likely, my discoveries may go unnoticed but I feel affected by the devised structure we've created in Spooner, especially his relation to Thorson, Ardell, and the living, especially Sunna.

Fred (Man 2) is somewhat a juxtaposition of Spooner in that he is alive, he is commentary of life in Unity, yet he is closer to death than what we may conceive. In fact, it may be the idea of death as a reflection of living and vice versa. Fred's life is based on wheat, a dog he does not possess, theories of the German's involvement in the pandemic, social views on women, his relationship with his friend, Ted, who may be his only friend, and a reflection of life being suddenly over...all in one scene. Again, it is subjective when you pull apart and dissect the approach that we take on his role and Spooner.

Chaperone has recently been put on his feet and his presence is intriguing within the context of the scene. He's a representation of the disease. He is a representation of a conflicted intimacy. I found a new presence to a character that has two lines and no description. That is the interesting discovery I recently found. It was never about the amount of lines. The number times you speak means nothing because you're always speak in some methodology. It was lovely to actually explore that concept instead of just knowing it.

Rehearsal has been an intimate process of exploration in the context of understanding characters and Unity as a whole. Andrew has put faith in his cast on discovering new moments along with him.

Performing History

Jackie Mahoney

Why do we perform plays about history? What makes a story about Unity, Saskatchewan in the fall of 1918 interesting and relevant to us in Waterloo, Ontario 2015? When I first read Unity I was expecting a quaint prairie story about the life and death of a small town in the time of war and influenza. On the surface it indeed seems like it is that, minus the ‘quaint’ part. Unity is dark but wickedly funny and really shows how the problems that our grandparents and great grandparents lived through at the end of the Great War are similar to the ones that we are going through today. As we worry about making enough money to support ourselves and the ones we love, they worried too. As many of us alienate ‘the other’ for fear of that which is unknown, so did they. As we are cautious (or should be) about what we post online and share with others, they had to be wary of what they said over the phone because anyone could be listening in. As we anxiously wait for that special someone to text us back, they waited to hear back from their loved ones overseas. It should be noted that I’m not trying to equate these problems as they were and are unique in their struggle, I’m simply trying to draw similarities between time periods.

Unity is especially relevant right now with the recent outbreak of viruses like Ebola and the Swine Flu and SARS. Imagine Canada, for a moment, as a small town, which in a sense it sort of is. Small towns in Canada are characterized by small clusters of people surrounded by vast areas of land. Isn’t that what Canada is as a whole? Anyways, so if Canada is what Unity was, what would we have done had say Ebola breached the boarders of our small town? I think we would have reacted much how Unity did when the Spanish Flu came to them: with fear of this unknown, suspicion of each other as ‘carriers’, by closing ourselves in away from outsiders, making our own assumptions about how the virus is spread, etc. None of these are great ways to respond to a deadly virus, but it is human nature to respond to threats like the flu with somewhat irrational behaviour. Kerr’s writing perfectly captures what it is to be a human in the midst of a crisis; both the good and the bad. He creates moments of utter devastation, but makes those bearable by finding glimpses of beauty and human kindness. Unity (1918) could very well be Waterloo or Milton or Kitchener 2015. Beatrice’s diary could be her blog. Sissy’s proclamations of the ‘end of the world’ would have been just as scary around December 2012. Speaking from my own character’s perspective, Mary’s hope for her fiancée to return safely to her is a feeling that I’m sure all of us have felt at some point in our lives, and her grief is no stranger to many of us who have lost a loved one. Unity takes a crisis that defined a generation and makes the struggle they encountered seem relatable to anyone.

Acting like a Dramaturg

Mollie Garrett

Rehearsals are now underway for UWaterloo Theatre and Performance's production of Kevin Kerr's Canadian epic Unity (1918). I have the incredible fortune of both playing the role of Beatrice, and assisting the production as a student Dramaturg. It's really exciting to be apart of this years fall production, Andy's vision paired with Maddy and Mark's designs, ensure that this production will be unlike anything our department has tackled in my 3 years here. I am incredibly proud to be a part of the first production to have student designers, the first production to have a class for the student Dramaturgs, and to be a part of an incredible ensemble.

Starting this project was, admittedly, a bit daunting at first.I have never been a dramaturg before, until last year I couldn't have given you an accurate definition of the role. But I do have experience as an actor, I've researched what words mean in Shakespeare, I've researched the social and political implications of a time period, I've read articles written about plays and playwrights, I have been to shows where I have seen how a concept didn't match a director's vision. I realized that as an actor, all the research the dramaturg's compile, all the readings they provide is work that an actor should ideally be doing as prep work. This opportunity to work on both sides gives me a reason to fully immerse myself in the world of the play, it gives me the opportunity to support the production from two places.

I am most looking forward to working with my dramaturg classmates to create the engagement space in the Gallery, and to have an opportunity to talk with students and audiences about our work as both a dramaturg and an actor.

The next few months promise to be busy, exciting, and meaningful months of collaboration, research, and creation.