A Word or Two...

Two years after reading, "In Spite of Myself" for the first time, three months after reading it the second time, part way through my 3rd time, and six months after purchasing my ticket, I saw "A Word or Two" at Stratford.

I had a day alone in Stratford (nice change, but left alone with my thoughts, no one to bounce things off of). Thanks to excellent timing by a client (who had the baby a few days early - she was due the day of the play), I was able to take the whole day off. I saw Henry V for the 3rd time at their matinee. I am finally starting to believe that Henry does love Kate. It took me long enough.

I love Tom Rooney and Lucy Peacock. I mean, I truly do love and admire them. I first saw Lucy perform at Art of Time in Toronto (same production that introduced me to Cara Ricketts). She can ACT.  And, even though Andrew Borashko said that night he hired someone who wasn't primarily known for singing, she can SING (http://youtu.be/CbnmMB_LUwc).

These 2 are in Henry V - Pistol and Nell. They are divine in their roles. Perfect casting by Mr. McAnuff. This show also has a LOT of swords, and a few pretty dresses, and 1 naked lady (I guess that makes up for the Shirtless Wonders in Cymbeline?). Fair enough. The use of flags in this production is awesome. A funny thing happened at the end of this particular show during the curtain call. I won't give away the surprise, but it made for juvenile, inappropriate jokes that I had to share right away (thanks, Lisa).

After the show, I ate at York Street Kitchen (not on York Street). I saw Tom McCamus ride by on his bike, Julius Sermonia walk his bike past, and one of my favourites, John Vickery picking up his order - all in about 5 minutes. But, for the 1st time, no Kevin Yee was seen (I adore Kevin). The conversations at the tables around me were all related to the current plays, or the theatres themselves (everyone loves the Tom Patterson). Stratford is a great town (or city, depending with whom you are speaking).

I'd say it felt like home - but it was visitors to Stratford that made me feel that way: I was asked 3 times that day for directions to places. I guess I'm feeling more comfortable in the town and it shows?

I walked to the Stratford Exhibition. It was my 3rd time there. Traci recognized me from the Martha Henry presentation. Well, let's be honest - she asked me if I was "that girl in the pink dress - Cordelia's" mom. That's ok. She told me Cordelia was very well behaved. I enjoyed hearing that. All the staff at the Exhibition are wonderful - I learn new things from each one. I love the maquettes and hearing the stories about the designers. One day, I want to go and just listen to all the videos they have there. I think I've only seen Frank the Monkey the entire length. Great pictures of William Peterson (aka Grisholm from CSI) when he was in Streetcar Named Desire. Woohoo!

I walked through the Festival store a wee bit and talked to Bruce. Now, Bruce is my favourite Theatre Store employee. One day, when I brought Luke to see Charlie Brown at the Avon, Bruce practically gave Luke a private tour through the store. He was as excited as a kid in a toy store - let me say that I meant to have said BOTH of them were as excited as a kid in a toy store. Excellent service.

A dear friend had given us money in January with which we had to spoil ourselves - bill payments not allowed. Everyone in the family purchased their treats that month, but my treat was a ticket to A Word or Two for this August. I would like to say I was patient, but that would be a lie. Knowing Mr. Plummer's age (3 weeks older than my dad) I was getting nervous that ... well.. that the show might not go on. When I heard about his book signings being cancelled, I became more anxious.

But, alas, my night arrived. I had purchased a box seat (I fell in love with them when I saw Phantom as a girl). My seatmates were fantastic! They were a mom and daughter team. Mom lived in London. The daughter lived in Ajax. The daughter and I both did nothing with our history degrees and both got into the medical field. Me - midwifery and breastfeeding. She - EMS dispatch. She got her love of the theatre from her mom, too. They were perfect for me.

The set on stage was fantastic: simple, elegant, and refined. From our seats, we couldn`t see the birch trees on stage left, but no matter.

Looking back on the show (today is August 30, show was August 22), I wonder if I had built it up to some grandiose heights. I thought I would cry more. I thought he`d cry more.

It`s not that I didn`t cry, but the show (even after me obsessing about it and reading practically every review) was not what I envisioned it to be, thank goodness. It was better.

Maybe it was his candour. Perhaps it was the language. Perhaps it was my seatmates. I don`t know what it was....but I felt, from the beginning, that I was being enveloped in a favourite blanket by a fire and being told stories by ... well, my dad, or a favourite uncle.  Give my uncles some beer and they could go on for hours! I miss those uncles. I miss being surrounded by French and not knowing what they were saying. I just felt loved.

There were direct quotes from his book (I`ve read parts enough to recognize, I guess). He was very easy-going - no conceit seen. He even seemed to not like the clapping which continued when he walked on stage.

When he began, I found myself easily leaning onto the railing of our box to sink into his words and stories. I didn`t feel like I had to act stiff, or stay still, or sit pretty. I leaned on the railing, and just relaxed.  I can honestly say that was the only show in which I felt that particular feeling of relaxation. I loved it.

One of my favourite moments was a French song (if you have been reading me for a while, you would know that my dad is French Canadian). That song, of which I will write phonetically, `fe doe doe` blah blah blah blah doe. Fe doe doe..blah blaheee`. My dad sang me that song. My dad sang that song to my cousin we fostered when I was 8. My dad sang that to all my babies (well, maybe not Luke since we were in BC for most of his infancy). Now, Mr. Plummer was singing it to us...my blanket wrapped around me tighter...but I didn`t cry. Why was that? I saw myself in baby pictures, all the babies he sang that to...and yet I didn't cry. Misty-eyed, maybe...

Isn't it funny that what I got out of the play most was the memory of my dad...

[To skip ahead in this story's vein - I told my dad about the song when they were visiting this week. I said that Mr. P sang the same song - and I sang it to him just as I wrote it up above - and my dad sang it back to me, in perfect French. Yep - same wonderful French song.]

It is sad, I must say, that it took me seeing this play to understand exactly how much of a talented actor he really is. I know - weird.  I feel so full, knowing that I have seen him in person play Cyrano (I love that play - thank you Ms. Coady - my OAC English teacher who also helped me love A Midsummer Night's Dream)  We saw him play many wonderful roles that night. I had never heard him in such a New York or southern accent before. It was thrilling!

Intermission was so funny - about 3 seconds long.

Just like Shakespeare, I learned more about the authors Mr. P wrote about in his book. Mr P's intonation, his accents, his joie de vivre (I had to put some actual French in here), made the language, the words, seem alive - like the Festival Theatre stage Ms. Henry spoke of)! Leacock's writings are still as funny today. Shaw (my first playwright at Stratford which I saw - how ironic) became real.


By my rules, during the school year, we turn off all electronics (tv, video games, ipods, phones - well, I keep mine in case a client texts me) between 6 and 8. This year, if the padawans and younglings (padawans are 17 and almost 15; younglings are 8 & 11) have no homework, we will work on the Kids4Bard, or read...read MORE.  All the children would love Leacock!! Why did it take me so long to discover him?

Like I've said many times in my blogs, that I read Mr. P's book because it has expanded MY mind and my literary purchases. On Monday, I bought a collection of Ibsen plays, Thoreau writings, and The Life of Pi. I guess this shows how far behind and shallow my reading has been - maybe. I still read Shakespeare for fun.

When I walked out of the Avon that night, I couldn't go straight home. The play is short (honestly, my only complaint). I drove to the Festival Theatre, parked and sat by the River.

To say I felt emotionally drained would be inaccurate. To say the play perked me up, again, would be inaccurate. I wasn't 'full' of emotions, either. Full of thoughts, yes. I thought about how far I have come in the last year...the past couple of years. I was in counselling for part of those years. Therapy should be a starting point, not the end result. The end result is .... I'm not sure...feeling safe in yourself, your decisions, your place in life...but there really is no end. Good counselling will keep you progressing throughout  your life. I am of the opinion that everyone should have a mental health check in with a counsellor once a year. Wouldn't that be great?

When the Stratford season began, I fell into it heart first - it is my other form of therapy. I have friends, acquaintances, who do not understand that.

I'll say this: throughout the winter, I listened incessantly to Kevin Spacey's Nancy Hanks Lecture over and over again ( http://community.ovationtv.com/_Kevin-Spacey-Speaking-at-the-Nancy-Hanks-Lecture/video/1559613/16878.html). It brings me peace. He describes the power of the arts in ways I felt, but could not explain (especially in regards to the Presidents Kennedy and Lincoln).

In these past few weeks with my trips to Stratford, I haven't needed to listen to him as often. The Stratford Festival plays have helped me purge negativity, increase my patience, enlarge my thoughts, helped me be a more patient mother, a more grateful daughter, a fuller human being. I don't have the eloquence of Kevin Spacey, nor the wordsmithing of Shakespeare...but what I speak and write come from my heart.

My thoughts and language will catch up..in a word or two.

17 Days until A Word or Two

What I've learned about Mr P on a personal level? He was (is?) shy, yet over confident. Loved his drink. Seems to always have held the Stratford Festival in highest regard, even if he was blacklisted for 3 seasons from it. He doesn't think velvet (or the over-use of velvet) should be used as costumes or for large hats. And, dressing rooms should always be above water level.

He had a respect for early tv; relatively none for it now. Listen to this:

        pp 121 Those were the early warning signs that this explosive new invention was about to get out of hand and go too far, that one day soon it would tell us how to eat [I have to say it - formula and other junk food], how to dress, how to live. Drunk with power it could dictate policy, bring down corporations, swings elections, toppel governments. Newscasters were turned into opinionated superstars. Nothing would be sacred anymore, neither the dignityof high office nore the sanctity of the ruling classes. All would become an open book - what was caviar to the general was not popcorn for the masses. Today we have become quite accustomed to being fed intravenously with thirdrate dogma; like some insidious germ warfare it all seems painstakingly planned, carefully calculated. Oh, sometiems something fine comes along to momentarily redeem it, but not enough.
                     In the early fifties, however, television promised everything. There was nowhere it couldnèt go; its horizons were limitless. It was also wonderfully brave, young, fresh, even innocent.

Profound.  Mr. P is a seer! Or at his age, 20/20 vision is in perfect focus.

Reading this book for the 3rd time, it astounds me what I missed my first rounds. First - the word "lugubrious" is a delicious-sounding word.

Christopher Plummer writes in the Queen's English. Yes, the "u's" make a difference!

There doesn't seem to be many Old Hollywood types with whom he did not act. The names are familiar to me because my dad would tell me about them, too. He'd tell me about the movies he would see when he was young. Seeing as my dad is only 3 weeks younger than Mr. P, it only makes sense. Perhaps that is why I find some refuge reading this book? If you're a new reader, you should also know that my dad is also French Canadian, but raised in a French neighbourhood, outside of Windsor, Ontario. He had school and church in French. I miss hearing him speak the language to his sisters. I miss him trying to help me read it. I was always a good French student because I wanted to make my dad proud. I sorely regret not keeping it. I can read it ok - which is helpful in this book because I can understand the bits of French Mr. P sneaks in.

Some of, well actually, a lot of Mr. P's break out came from him acting for a year down in Bermuda. He met people who would change his life: Edward Everett Horton and Ruth Chatterton. Mr. Horton gave him a job touring after Bermuda finished, and Ms. Chatterton connected him with the who's who in New York and, most importantly, Jane Broder - his first agent.

Mr. Broder bailed him out of trouble more times than I think even he admits in this book. He not only found him jobs. She paid debts, found him a place to stay - was a Mother Hen to him. It didn't seem she ever made a bad choice for him. My favourite quote of her by him is, "If Jane had ever looked Sin straight in the eye, Sin would have just wilted away, riddled with remorse."  The times I have read this book, I always cry when she passes away. His writing makes us love her, too.

He meets lifelong friend, Roddy McDowall, who Mr. P grew up admiring as a child. At the inaugural season of the American Shakespeare Festival with Jerry Stiller, Jack Palance, and Raymond Massey. Jerry Stiller doing Shakespeare. With my generation growing up with him on Seinfeld, who woulda thunk it?

Pages 161 - 169 is the beginning of our mecca of Canadian Theatre - the Stratford Shakespeare Festival. The town truly rallied behind the dream of Tom Patterson's, "The little maker of miracles."  We are also introduced to Tanya Moiseiwitsch, who left a mark on Stratford (set and costume design). Her stage was set under a circus tent (yes, even built by Skip Manley from Barnum and Bailey Circus) who even kept working to finish the tent when they ran out of money, as did other construction crew members. The Chicago Tribune said, "The Stratford Festival of Canada has been born with a silver spoon in its mouth. The New York Times said, "This is the sort of stage that lovers of Shakespeare have often dreamed about and seldom seen." Not bad for a first season!

For me, Mr. Patterson' vision is what brought me hear, on a magic carpet. If my mom hadn't seen Mr. P in Romeo & Juliet at Stratford while she was in high school, would I be searching out literature for my heart now? Would I be introducing my little ones (8-17) to Shakespeare? Kids4Bard is a success so far. Why? Because most of my children can explain A Midsummer Night's Dream in just a few minutes, longer if you let them use their paper dolls. They can explain Athenian clothes, why Lysander has brighter clothes than Demetrius, why Puck is a silly goofball, and steals the show. Not too bad. Thank you to Lisa and Christi at Stratford for forwarding our questions to Stratford cast members who do Q&A's on facebook. They are helping us immensely!

I decided after we 'finish' a Shakespeare play, we will pull out a book from A Word or Two to read, starting with Steven Leacock. My kids, especially the older ones, will love that!

The question is, I guess, how will this section get me ready for A Word or Two? It is the first time that I heard of Ibsen, Medea. He mentions authors I know (qu'elle suprise - TS Eliot, Tennessee Williams) and many I don't (list too long lol). It goes to prove my original thought for using this book as a text for books to read. My mom filled my heads with Brontes, Montgomery, a respect of Shakespeare  of course, but never read it to/with me.

School gave me Shakespeare, Richler, Rostand, and Atwood. But never an Ibsen, nor the many playwrites still to be named. I feel so out of place, like my life is on another place where, though my imagination is good, my love of language was blocked. Can you love language if you only read Rostand or Shakespeare? Yes, but it's also like loving chocolate after only eating an Aero Bar - when there's double chocolate cheesecake to savour. Mr. Plummer is giving me, and my kids - some other plane of thoughts. I'm so excited for us!

Thanks, Mr. P!

I'm ba-ack

Long time, no write.  To say life got in the way, would be true, but also a cop-out. This blog is cathartic for me, even if I haven't opened my soul much in the lists of authors, actors, and anything else from Mr. P's book.

I have started reading one of the books from the long list. For my birthday (plus 2 weeks for shipping), I was given, "Nonsense Novels." by Stephen Leacock. I'm almost done (it reminds me of the small-size books I read as a child).

What have I been doing the past month? My oldest son was in The Music Man at his high school. He was in the chorus and had a great time. There were many rehearsals, on the opposite nights of the younglings' Willy Wonka rehearsals. Mondays through Thursdays were gone.

I started reading "Nonsense Novels" during Willy Wonka practises, but I found out I need a book in my hands - to smell the paper, to smell the ink, to underline and dog ear (Sharon would be so mad at me!). I stopped reading until the book came in. I've read half the book twice now. I cannot wait to share it with my children. Seeing as Youth Arts Week begins tomorrow, the 'something new' I challenged people to do with youth everyday for the next 7 days, will be reading "Q" to them. It's quite a funny story about phantasms and brokering a deal between the 2 worlds.

I also (finally), made it to an Art of Time Ensemble performance, "Russia in Exile." I have been volunteering with them for 3 seasons now. It's the other 'cultural' thing I do outside Stratford Festival. Andrew Burashko is the genius behind this musical vision. His plan was to make classical music accessible to those who wouldn't usually attend such things. It was here where I was first introduced to Lucy Peacock (of Stratford fame), the music of Bernard Herrman, as part of their incredible, "War of the Worlds" evening - where they portrayed the play as a radio show, complete with a foley artist. All my kids saw that. I do believe that was the first 'cultural' even they have seen, on that scale (they went to Stratford last year, but that's on a much larger scale).

The first half of the show, my mind wandered. The film by Tess Girard was splendid, but still my mind wandered. I spent the rest of the first half thinking about why I like theatre better - it forces you to not think about yourself, to be involved with the emotions of the characters on stage. When 'just' listening to music, my mind wandered. Until the 2nd half.

It was very hard to hear the first of the two shows I volunteered for that weekend. There was one particular composer, Glinka that actually hurt to hear. Andrew, the first night, warned us that it was haunting.  That was an understatement. The chords sounded like nails on a chalkboard to me.

I wondered why, not in a mind-wandering way, but in a search the soul-of-the-music way. It really didn't take me long to discover, but I didn't want to agree. The music, the waltz that weaved itself in and out of that piece, kept me in check. That piece had 4 violins, piano, and clarinet. The clarinet was wistful, constant, and drove the piece.

The violins - there seemed to be no 'first' violin. They each took turns starting a phrase, with the others following suit, finishing, and bringing it back to the start. The piano's part was pushy, pushing, and angry at times. The whole piece seemed disjointed, but it was beautiful, but I fought hard to not let myself notice.

You see, in September we had a house fire. Then our car died. Then we separated. Then a flood at the new house. Then Jeff's dad died. Then another flood the day before the funeral. Our lives were disjointed - but we journeyed on.

I guess you could say I felt like the clarinet - springy, constant, the driving lines/force in the family. The violins were defintely the children - fighting each other, fighting me, fighting Jeff. Our community, the children's schools, our church, our larger community (including the Stratford Festival) were like the piano. It was their support that gave us our base, our hope when we had, literally, nothing but the clothes on our backs.

The song ended with a soulful melody, a hopeful melody, by the piano.

I wished I had a tissue. I was crying because of that ending; crying because I don't know if I'm there, sad because I don't know if I'll ever really get there; sad that we might be there and I not know it.

When I think of that composition, it is the clarinet's melody that stays with me, and the memory of hope at the end.

If we don't have hope, then what are we fighting for?

The second night, I brought Braeden (14) with me help with the merchandise table and listen to the magic of the music. Amy, another volunteer, told Braeden she knows someone who makes swords for a living...but that is a story for another time.

What does this have to do with, "In Spite of Myself?" Everything. The book is about the art around him - the art of words, the art of music, how the arts stir the soul, and make life worth living.

So, inspite of MY reading, my blog tonight is about the power of music. How, that even if you fight it, despite you fighting it, you can always get a message written just for you, by a composer decades ago.

I will get back to regular posting. There are stories from Mr. P's book I still need to discuss. There are hundreds of books I still need to read.

But tonight, I started with my heart. It has been disjointed. It has felt like I was the nail scratching down the chalkboard, or that I was the chalkboard being scratched. Does it matter? No. What matters is that we are still here. We are strong.

And, we have hope. I have hope of a life worth living - a life with culture because it is, as Kevin Spacey says, "culture is the magic of our experience." It's magical but you do the soulsearching to find their meaning.