Thursday, January 29, 2009

An Excerpt from Holy Mo Director's Notes


Pacific Theatre's Artistic Director Ron Reed has thrown a first draft of his program notes for Holy Mo up on his blog, so I decided that it was only fair for me to throw a section from the director's notes up on mine.

(Left: Katharine Venour, Erla Faye Forsyth, Julia Mackey; photo by Kevin Clark. )

"Plays that deal with big fat questions, ancient heroes and mystical unseen beings are tricky. It’s hard to make someone invisible. It’s hard to be a hero when you’re just an actor making a living in a city like Vancouver. But then, maybe that’s exactly what makes it possible to be an actor and a hero - the fact that making a living is secondary to that great dance these strange people-performers do with an invisible muse whose presence is so often felt in curious buildings where the lights go out on the hour - matinee and evening after matinee and evening - when people take the time to sit down together to listen and watch. I wonder whether those listening and watching people feel and hear the sign of that muse too, rustling behind a stage curtain, shimmering somehow in the sound around them, pin-pricking their imagination with a catchy tune or an unusual turn of phrase. If you do, let us know."

Morris Ertman, Director

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I like that...it's kind of sweet. Director's notes are hard. I never know what to say in them

SMLois said...

The actual notes in the program are longer, but this is my favorite part. It's certainly one thing I appreciate about being the stage manager: no need to condense a two hour show and a multi-week process into a couple hundred words.