Theatre Freebies and Extraordinary Canadians!

I love freebies and generous people. THEY ROCK. So Tim and I have been very busy as of late rehearsing the shows we are directing called Of Their Reflection – An Evening of One Acts. And we’ve been quite the travelling gypsy group of actors, from rooms at the University, to Crichton Community Centre to Lawrence’s, or our living room to Nancy’s basement. You have to be creative when you do theatre, and this includes places that are cheap or FREE to rehearse and props to use (we’ve been known to substitute martini glass with Bridgehead take-out coffee cups or coke cans instead of Ensure).

That is what is kind of fun about low budget theatre. We still get the professional standards up there – hopefully – and yet we do it with little to no money, operating off freebies, what we have at home or generous supporters. Even the other day, there is a girl in my neighbourhood who goes to my gym. I know she’s a nurse, so I asked her about what our Nurse in our play would be doing with a Drip line. After the conversation she asked if we needed a bag filled with Saline and a real drip line….of course I said YES! Another freebie.

And Tototoo is great for getting connections for “freebies” or for borrowing. Trivoli is lending us plants, another sponser may lend us a bistro set, we are getting a Scrim and a VERY reasonable rental rate.

In life you have to go with your connections to get anything you want. If you don’t try or don’t ask you won't get. And isn’t free always better?

So Mr. Harper, I guess we are Extraordinary Artist since we use our creativity to save money – since we spent it all on those Galas, expensive designer dresses and Canapés you seem to think we Artists attend all the time – since we spend so much money on those things we can’t afford rehearsal space or props obviously! HMMMMMM, not being able to afford simple things sounds to me a lot like ORDINARY Canadians!

On another theatrical note, a bunch of us ladies met at my friend Riley’s house to start a collective theatre project called Virtue. Riley is writing the show on a smaller scene he did many years ago for the NAC Atelier. Based on our feedback and ideas about each character he’s assigned us, he will write scenes or we will improv them. It is going to be a very interesting and creative process. Hopefully by next year it will be good enough to do a staged reading and move on from there. If only Ordinary Canadians would do this...how much fun they would have instead of watching TV like Ordinary Canadians do every night.