KEEPING THE MOMENTUM

By Christopher DiRaddo

The group that received this year’s Cultural and Artistic Leadership Program (CALP) grant is One Reed Theatre, an ensemble of four 2005 Acting graduates who have, for over a year and half now, slowly been working on a collective collaboration entitled Nor The Cavaliers Who Come With Us, a meditation on the conquest of Mexico. With the help of CALP, the troupe was finally able to realize this project and found themselves with full-time work in their chosen profession directly out of school.

Marc Tellez, Evan Webber, Megan Flynn and Frank Cox-O’Connell – © Daniel Mroz

“I was very inspired by doing the show with director Ker Wells (Acting, 1988) in second year,” says Frank Cox O’Connell. “We did a workshop of devised theatre and it was a real eye-opener for me to see that you could create work in this kind of way. It was liberating to find out that you don’t need to be confined to being an actor if you also write and have a good sense of dramaturgy. You can combine all of these things and tell a real story.”

Several of O’Connell’s classmates felt the same way, wondering when they too could sink their teeth into these types of creations again. “We fell in love with the process that was involved in telling that kind of story, building separate module pieces and putting them together under a topic or theme, crafting the story as we were telling it,” says Megan Flynn.

Classmates Evan Webber and Marc Tellez are also members of the troupe. Together, they decided to do something based on their love of strange, forgotten history and identity stories. Out of their discussions came the genesis for Nor The Cavaliers Who Come With Us, a collective creation about a tourist visiting Mexico who begins to explore his own relationship with a significant moment in history.

The four worked with director Daniel Mroz, whom they had met through Wells. O’Connell and Tellez found themselves discussing the project with Mroz last summer at The Catskills Festival of New Theatre, an international festival and conference of ensemble theatre in upstate New York. They decided to work on this project together and the troupe began the arduous task of looking for funding.

CALP TO THE RESCUE

They applied to the Canada Council for the Arts for a development grant last September and although their proposal was recommended, the troupe did not receive any funds. Coincidently, the NTS had just initiated the Cultural and Artistic Leadership Program at that time. The troupe applied and their proposal was accepted.

“I feel as though theatre artists are on the verge of a big transformation in this country. I think more companies are choosing to work in this kind of way. People are looking to create truly theatrical and dramatically satisfying experiences for their audiences.” – Evan Webber

“We absolutely couldn’t have done this without the grant,” says Flynn, emphasizing how great the School was in accommodating them. “The CALP is a huge step in the way that funding structures are organized. It is very important to me that we are paid a living wage while we are doing this work because it gives us dignity. It says to us that the work we do is a job that is valued by society.”

With the grant, the group was able to workshop the project for nine weeks, watching it develop and take shape. “We all brought something different to the table and each person’s writing complemented the others’,” says O’Connell. “That, in tandem with our performance dynamic, really helped us in putting together a story that was not only compelling but also had a real narrative drive.”

“We came in with a bunch of really rough and exciting pieces,” says Webber, “threw them on the floor and tried to combine them in different ways to see what would develop. We created an outline of the plot and boiled it down, making it clearer for ourselves, and then assembled the different pieces to tell the story.”

Megan Flynn and Marc Tellez – © Daniel Mroz

With so much material, the troupe realized they would need to separate the work into two parts. They performed the first part this past summer at the NTS. Subsequently, the troupe received invitations to perform at the Catskills Festival of New Theatre in August and at the University of Ottawa in October. One Reed Theatre plans to eventually present the first part in Toronto and once again in Montreal before they begin working on the conclusion.

MAKE YOUR OWN WORK

For these young artists, finding work upon graduation was indeed a priority. Demonstrating leadership, they decided to make work for themselves instead of passively waiting for it to find them.

“In second year, Tomson Highway won the Gascon-Thomas Award,” says O’Connell, “and one of the things he said to us that totally stuck with me, was: ‘You’re going to sit around and wait for the phone to ring until the phone gets cut off... You have to make your own work to do anything in Canada.’... I think one way we all realized we could avoid the whole post-school slump was to summon up our ambition and do it ourselves.”

“It was important for me to maintain the momentum that had developed during the three years in school,” Tellez agrees, “taking that energy and applying it to something that was totally self-motivating.”

“There is definitely more work to be had when we are creating it ourselves, rather than waiting for someone to offer it to us,” says Webber.

Many people have inspired them on this project. Teachers Ker Wells and Karin Randoja (Acting 1988) are mentioned several times for the impact they have made on the troupe and on this type of work. Support from people like Director General Simon Brault and Artistic Director Sherry Bie do not go unrecognized either.

“If it weren’t for the encouragement and support of the people we know who are doing work that we respect,” says Webber, “it would really have been impossible.”

CATCHING THEIR BREATH

As for the future, One Reed Theatre hasn’t reached the point yet where they can stop and make any long-term plans. Working on this show required as much long-term planning as any of them could muster. For now, the quartet is simply happy to roll with the momentum that the project has generated and is excited by the interest in this exceptional form of theatre.

“I feel as though theatre artists are on the verge of a big transformation in this country,” says Webber. “I think more companies are choosing to work in this kind of way. People are looking to create truly theatrical and dramatically satisfying experiences for their audiences. That is how I would like this work to be recognized: if it encourages growth, then I will be very happy.”

“I really think the CALP is supporting projects that I want to see,” says Tellez, “bringing something new to audiences, revaluating what you need in a rehearsal or creation process in order to create a product that is extraordinary... Audiences deserve to be told interesting stories. I hope to be able to continue doing that in the future and I encourage people to do the same.”

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