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iPhoto caption: Headshots of Sophie Gee, Ray Hogg, Margot Greve, Leora Morris, and Jessica Carmichael.
Five theatre directors offer advice to the next generation — and the programs training it
The artists on this call were candid and vulnerable. They spoke openly about their professional frustrations and challenges — and they weren’t shy about pinpointing the ways that mainstream anglophone Canadian theatre practices fail directors and artists more broadly. That said, I didn’t leave our chat feeling hopeless or cynical.
iPhoto caption: Headshots of Sophie Gee, Ray Hogg, Margot Greve, Leora Morris, and Jessica Carmichael.
How can theatre directors forge a sustainable career in Canada?
It’s increasingly unlikely that directors will hone their craft through formal training. Relatively few post-secondary programs devoted to directing exist, and it seems to me that directing-specific mentorship programs are less common than similar initiatives for actors or playwrights. To convene a roundtable about director training, I reached out to five very different artists on a continuum of early- to mid-career.
iPhoto caption: Portrait of Eric Woolfe. Photo by Dahlia Katz.
Eric Woolfe’s inventive horror theatre is a monster mash of artistic influences
For the past 26 years, Eldritch Theatre’s director of the uncanny has given ghoulies, ghosties, and long-legged beasties of all kinds a spot in the limelight, in productions that serve up puppets, magic, and a crumbling castle’s-worth of uncanny influences, including schlock-horror B-movies, Shakespeare at his bloodiest, and the fiction of H.P. Lovecraft.
iPhoto caption: Photos of Shalon T. Webber-Heffernan, Paul Couillard, and James Knott courtesy of 7a*11d.
The organizers of the 7a*11d festival want you to know that performance art is still ‘punk as hell’
"There’s something about being live, with a sweaty, stinking, gross, dirty body, that’s just — you’re in it," says collective member Shalon T. Webber-Heffernan. "There’s some kind of alchemy going on that’s addictive to me. I think 7a*11d is sort of the dealer, if you will! It’s keeping us all hooked onto this weird obsession."