Theatre at UBC Blog

In the first of a series of guest posts from the Romeo & Juliet company BFA Acting Candidate Barbara Kozicki talks about the rehearsal process:

I was quite simply thrilled when the role of Friar Lawrence was offered to me. Right from the start Catriona Leger, the director, decided I would not pretend to be a man for the part, so the concept of Sister Lawrence was born, and along with it the task of creating an entirely new “religion” for the world of Romeo & Juliet.

Actor: Barbara Kozicki Photo Credit: Tim Matheson

As a director Catriona constantly encourages us actors to make bold choices and try crazy new things.  As I work on the show I really feel like I have an opportunity to put forth ideas and contribute to the creative process.  I have to admit that with all this freedom, I felt a little overwhelmed in the first few weeks of rehearsal.

Actors L-R Foreground: Megs Chenosky and Jameson Parker Background: Barbara Kozicki Photo Credit: Tim Matheson

In the beginning I just didn’t know where to begin.  Slowly I started incorporating ideas from Wicca and Druidism with varying degrees of success.  During my research I went to a few church services, spent time with a shaman and watched videos of pagan rituals.  We are still a few weeks away from opening night and I finally feel like the foundation of our un-named order has been constructed and I am excited to watch it evolve.

— Barbara Kozicki

Actor: Barbara Kozicki Photo Credit: Tim Matheson

Note: Barbara is in her intermediate year of the BFA Acting Program and will be performing on the Telus Studio Theatre stage for the first time in Romeo & Juliet which opens January 21, 2010. Originally from Calgary, Alberta, Barbara is an accomplished fire dancer, poi performer and corporate entertainer. Previous credits include The Laramie Project (Theatre at UBC), Little House on the Prairie (Disney) and Comeback Season (Accent Entertainment). She can next be seen in Theatre at UBC’s production of Arms and the Man. http://www.firedancer.ca

As an novelist as well as an actor, I have always been fascinated by ‘the secrets that whisper in the blood’; by inheritance, what we have taken from those that have gone before us, our parents, grandparents, even further back. In our genes, of course, but also in how these people behaved, characteristics and even attitudes passed on that we have adopted, that rule some of our actions in ways we cannot tell.

The theme reoccurs in my books… and it is one of the many reasons why the production of this play, ‘The Master Builder’ by Henrik Ibsen has been such a fascinating journey. He was Norwegian, of course, wrote about his countrymen and women. And I am half Norwegian, have always felt viscerally connected to that land of fjords and myths. It features in a lot of my writing. But there is another connection of blood and legacy – my Grandparents, all of them, English and Norwegian, were actors too. And most of them played Ibsen.

L-R: Chris Humphries, Norman Young Photo Credit: Tim Matheson

I have a framed photo of Betsy Jordal, my grandmother, on stage in a rather obscure Ibsen, ‘Fru Inger’. Also one of Karl Holter, my grandfather, playing the better known ‘Peer Gynt’. I brought both of them out to UBC, have them sitting there on my dressing table. It seemed appropriate, in the week that included November 2nd, ‘the Day of the Dead’ when people, especially in the Latin countries, visit with their Dead, for me to visit with mine.

Chris Humphreys, Photo Credit: Tim Matheson

Karl, Betsy and Me. Eighty years apart, all playing ‘title’ roles’, all wrestling both with acting choices and personal demons, in the psychological maelstrom that are the plays of Henrik Ibsen. I wonder what from their lives they brought to the roles. How, perhaps, consciously and unconsciously, they used their grandparents. Wonder about the line that stretches back, the secrets hidden in time, held in blood.

Somehow, they are up there with me, Karl and Betsy, under the lights, in ways I cannot fathom. I am glad of it – and just a little bit scared.

Guest Post ~ C C Humphreys

While I may have taken the extreme liberty of adapting Georg Büchner’s timeless masterpiece, Woyzeck, I remain well aware that no words of mine could ever come close to expressing the anguished ruminations at the play’s core as well as those penned by the author himself in an oft-quoted letter to his fiancée:

“I felt as though utterly crushed by the hideous fatalism of history.  I find in human nature a terrible sameness, in human circumstances an ineluctable violence vouchsafed to all and to none.  Individuals but froth on the waves, greatness a mere coincidence, the mastery of geniuses a dance of puppets, a ridiculous struggle against an iron law that can at best be understood but never mastered… ’Must’ is one of those words by which mankind was damned from the very beginning.  The saying, ‘It must needs be that offences come, but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh’, is horrifying.  What is it in man that lies, murders, steals?”

Theatre at UBC's production of MK Woyzeck

It was over fifteen years ago that the inspired and inspiring teaching of UBC’s own distinguished Professor Emeritus of Theatre, Dr. Errol Durbach, first ignited in me a burning obsession with Büchner’s Woyzeck that has continued to smolder to this day.  It is to him that I dedicate my work on this production.

Tom Scholte
Assistant Professor
UBC Department of Theatre and Film

Note: MK Woyzeck runs in the Frederic Wood Theatre at 7:30 nightly until Saturday October 10th. Call 604.822.2678 for tickets.

Ready – set – and “go” book your tickets to our first Extra Event of the 2009/10 Season from Theatre at UBC. It’s the final week of production for the alumna founded company shameless hussy productions’ professional presentation of Frozen by Bryony Lavery at our Dorothy Somerset Studio Theatre.

The Somserset aka “The DSS” is cleverly disguised as an former engineering shed – but enter the doors to this newly renovated facility and discover the sexiest performance space in all of UBC. It’s the kind of venue Vancouver artists and patrons are continually crying out for, an intimate little black box theatre that features state of the art equipment and seating for up to 120.

Right: Dorothy Somsetset Studio Theatre

shameless hussy company members, including myself, have taken time out from saying the same things over, and over, and over (aka rehearsing) to pitch the opening of Frozen for Simon Ogden’s The Next Stage Magazine on YouTube.

The Dorothy Somerset Studio was first opened in a location below the Frederic Wood Theatre to honor Theatre at UBC’s first and founding department head Dorothy Somerset. Generations of theatre artists cut their teeth in the Somerset including Brent Carver, Goldie Semple, Nicola Cavendish, Eric Peterson and many others – along with our current department head Jerry Wasserman.

It’s a great privilege to return to perform in this historic venue for the first time since it’s been relocated, and to open this play that I love so much under the banner of the Department of Theatre’s very beloved founder, Miss Dorothy Somerset.

Speed Dating: Imagine your Theatre & Film Major!

Ask not for whom the bell tolls – it tolls for you at the Department of Theatre & Film’s Speed Dating advising event!

On behalf of the UBC Department of Theatre & Film I dreamed up an Imagine Day event called “SPEED DATING: Imagine your Theatre and Film Major”. A lot can, and did happen in 5 minutes.

Students signed up for 4 rounds of 5 minute “speed dating” style mini advising sessions, held with 6 different representatives of the UBC Department of Theatre and Film. Theatre at UBC’s Player’s Club representatives Brendan Albano and Amanda Konkin were on hand posting auditions for their upcoming show and spreading the Player’s Club love. Established by UBC students along with Professor Frederic Wood in 1915, the club is UBC’s very first student club and it’s open to all students at UBC.

Huge kudos for bringing the day “Imagined” to life, particularly to Jenn Suratos our hostess with the mostest, 4th year MFA Design candidate Maria Fumano who rang our bell and finally our magnificent faculty, staff and students. UBC’s Imagine Day is a new Student Services initiative designed to help students understand all the opportunities for learning within each department.

Everyone knows the Department of Theatre & Film host the best parties and here’s documented proof – see more photos on our Flickr site.

Welcome back everybody, I look forward to all the exciting work that will unfold during our new 2009/10 theatre season!

Forgive me interwebz for I have sinned.

It’s been six months since my last blog post.

Ironically Ian’s last post was to crow about our attendance at Northern Voice 2009 a personal blogging and social media conference. The conference was tremendously inspiring around the topic of social media.

Rob Cottingham at Northern Voice: Teh Funny

It was exciting to understand more fully what the social media accounts we’d established on [find us here] Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Flickr could do for theatre artists. Not just in terms of self promotion but also for gathering ideas from and forming relationships with people around the globe.

Darren Barefoot at Northern Voice: Where is the Art in Social Media

But blogging?
Not so much on the inspiration front.

In a workshop entitled Help! I’m Sick and Tired of Blogs! it was pointed out that blogger burnout is epidemic. Bonus I thought, once again I’ve proven to be ahead of the curve – I only just started blogging and I’m fed up with it already. Wired Magazine suggests that blogs are dead and that some of the medium’s strongest voices are starting to go quiet.

Well never mind, I’m back at it in preparation for the new school year and hope to find some guest bloggers to jump into the flames with me to blog about our theatre season. One of my other dependable traits is to fly in face of conventional wisdom, a perpetual underdog. Blogging is dead? Long live the Blog! I’m determined to rise above my publicist’s catch phrase mentality and 140 character expertise. Wish me luck?

Here’s a presentation at Northern Voice that I should have gone to. It provides some great pointers on the nuts and bolts of bringing your blog to life: Bring Your Blog to Life from Bruce Sharpe

See more photos of our weekend on Flickr.

This Friday and Saturday we’ll be at Northern Voice 2009, a conference on “social media.”

Recent PuSh Festival performer and monologist Mike Daisy continues a lively discussion of the value of MFA programs in theatre. He questions the choice that large institutions make to charge tuitions that are far out of alignment with what sort of income graduates can expect after their training. His focus seems to be MFA Acting programs (Theatre at UBC only offers MFAs in Directing and Design for the Theatre) and tuition at American colleges and universities far outstrips Canadian costs, but the various posts and replies from those who disagree with Mr. Daisey make for interesting reading, especially in the context of a recently released report on the dire situation of incomes for artists in Canada.

An update on the “Save the York Theatre campaign”. Consider it officially “saved”. Wall Financial rescued the York from the wrecking ball this past Friday for a purchase price of $2 million and the architect, Henriquez Partners, will begin the 12 million dollar renovation this afternoon. Wall purchased the theatre for the City of Vancouver and will foot the bill for it’s makeover in exchange for a density allotment (which Wall will use on one of their future projects – subject to City approval). The City will own the historic 1912 venue on Commercial Drive, with a longterm lease going to the VECC. At this morning’s press conference it was revealed that Tom Durrie has been working on the “Save the York” campaign for 27 years! He presented original “Save the York” brochures circa 1982 to Mayor Gregor Robertson, Heather Redfern, Bruno Wall, Gregory Henriquez and Jim Green, who along with Durrie were the partners involved in brokering the deal to save this historical landmark. In his remarks the Mayor thanked Councilwoman Heather Deal for her part in garnering a “yes” from City Council when they were requested to grant an almost unprecedented 100% transfer of the density of the venue to Wall Financial. Mayor Robertson remarked that Deal has said, “the City of Vancouver has a new “art-titude”. I’m so excited to know this east side venue will be restored, particularly in light of the connection to Theatre at UBC, with Dorothy Somerset, Joy Coghill along with many other of Vancouver’s theatrical pioneers having performed there. From the artist’s renderings it looks like they are going back to the name “Vancouver Little Theatre”. More at http://www.thecultch.com