What we’re up to

ITSAZOO is heading in to a very prolific period.  I thought I’d give you a bit of a look at what we’ve got coming up – whet your appetite for the sweet theatre ahead.

10×10 VOLUME 9

This Friday we have 10×10 volume 9 at Spectral Theatre.  It’s the Spring Break edition

 of 10×10.  We’ve got a really unique and wicked line up.  Here are the most recent additions:

-Glen Callender presenting an educational guerilla theatre piece on behalf of CAN-FAP (Canadian Foreskin Awareness Project). I’m not making this up. It’s actually happening.
- Meaghan Chenosky performing a multi-charactered one woman show.
- A solo performance piece inspired by “crap from my mother’s basement”.
- Chris Cochrane as a janitor with an over-active imagination.
- New excerpts from Sebastien Archibald’s one man show “This Narrative Is Unsustainable”

There will of course also be lots of cheap beer and wine.

BRIDGE MIX

Our next big production is Bridge Mix (Co-produced with Enlightenment Theatre) happening June 8-25 at the Metro Parkade in the heart of the business district.

After the success of last years show we decided we had to do a second bigger and better incarnation. This year features two new companies, all new short plays, music every Saturday night on the rooftop presented by Wachu, and as always the magical roving bar.  Participating companies this year include ITSAZOO, Enlightenment Theatre, Monster Creative, Slam Ink, Genus, Tigermilk Collective, Spectral Theatre and 411.

Tickets are already on sale and available at Brown Paper Tickets.

CHAIRS: A PARABLE AT THE NEANDERTHAL FESTIVAL

In July ITSAZOO will be remounting a new an improved version of Chairs: A Parable as a part of  the Neanderthal Festival at the Cultch.  Neanderthal Arts is a curated, developmental arts festival in its second year.  ITSAZOO will be performing from July 20-31, 2011.  For more information about the festival you can visit the Neanderthal Website.

VANCOUVER FRINGE FESTIVAL – ONSITE

We’re taking part in a new program offered by the Vancouver Fringe Festival called Onsite.  Onsite is a project that allows artists and companies to develop site-specific pieces of theatre under the mentorship of The Only Animal.  The resulting show will be performed as a part of the Vancouver Fringe Festival in September.  We have  a long way to go but so far we’re thinking a post-apocalyptic comedy on the water in boats.  More to come on this project as it takes shape…

AND ONE BY ONE – A New Promenade play by Mack Gordon

The interior of the Roedde House

This Halloween we will be presenting a new show two years in the making. The play is currently titled And One by One.  It is a site-specific promenade play based on the stories and poems of Edgar Allan Poe by the awesome emerging playwright Mack Gordon.  Think Poe meets 80s slasher flick meets haunted house.  We’ve booked the Roedde House Heritage Museum in the Westend the we’re going to bring it to life with Poe’s tales of macabre.  This is going to be a good one that is not to be missed.

So that’s what’s keeping us busy…very very busy – in a good way.  For more info on any of these shows you can check out our website http://www.itsazoo.org.

10×10 in the words of Mr Anderson

Cameron Anderson is one of the artistic associates with ITSAZOO.  He’s a super talented performing and just all around creative guy.  He’s been in a number of ITSAZOO Productions, most recently Man 2 in Chairs: A Parable. Cam came up with the idea for 10×10 and has been the one making it all happen for the past 3 years.  We have another one coming up on April 29 at Spectral Theatre so in anticipation of that here’s a post about 10×10 by the one and only Mr Cameron Anderson:

You know you’re at a unique theatrical event when the co-host takes his dick out.  Well, not that unique.  I’m pretty sure I saw JeffGladstone’s dick at the last Here Be Monsters event.  Also, I know I saw at least the side of one of the Cross Eyed Bear’s package a couple 10×10′s ago.  So, I guess we don’t have the market corned in that area.  HOWEVER, 10×10 is still quite a unique theatrical event.

People are always asking me to describe 10×10, and so far, the best I
can come up with is, ‘a talent show for grown-ups’, although I’m also
partial to, ‘a garage sale of theatrical insanity’.  So, what is
10×10, really?  Well, it’s an easy way to exploit up and coming
performers.  No, wait!  It’s a showcase for some of the best young
talent Vancouver has to offer.  Actually, more than anything, it’s a
time constraint.  See, the thing about 10×10 is that we have very few
rules.  Anything you can squeeze into a ten minute limit, you can
perform, so long as it’s original.  I don’t care if you’re the zombie
Shakespeare, if you start busting out that soliloquy from The Tempest
that you’ve just been dying to show off, we’re not for you.  On the
other hand, if you’ve got a home-made puppet show based on repressed
childhood emotions featuring over the top violence and swearing, well,
hop aboard the crazy train to awesome town, we’d love to take you for
a ride!  Things get a little nuts at 10×10.  That puppet show you
think I just made up?  Volume 7.

We’ve got another one coming up at the end of the month, and it’s
already looking like a blast.  I can’t promise any frontal nudity, but
I wont rule it out, either.  So come on down!  I guarantee you’ll see
something you’ve never seen before.  And you’ll have fun.  And you’ll
meet people.  And you’ll be supporting some brilliant young artists
with your hand clapping and hushed awe.

Show at 9pm, $5 at the door and loads of cheap beer and wine. Hope to see you at Spectral on April 29!

Rigour vs Gut

There is a question I have been struggling with for a while now.  It is the question of rigour vs. gut.  I am a very instinctual and intuitive person.  I do what feels right to me. Ever since I was very young I have made plays.  When I was a child if you were at my house playing with me we were making a play.  My parents sat through hundreds of hours of basement plays.  This demonstrates that I am drawn to create theatre – to bring people together with the goal of making something for an audience. I can’t help it.  I have to.  I am more fascinated and excited by this than anything else and it has always been that way for me.

Seb and Colby are the same way.  They are people who really excel at theatre.  Who they are fits perfectly with what they do.  All three of us have no desire to do anything else. This is where we fit and it’s what we have to do.

All of this to say that ITSAZOO is a company built on guts.  From a young age we found each other, knew what we wanted to do and just fucking did it.  We didn’t wait for permission, we didn’t wait for money, we didn’t wait for time – we just made it happen.  And we still do.  What this means is that we often haven’t had the liberty of a long development process or a lot of time to really pay the greatest attention to every little detail.  This hasn’t been that important to us.  What has been important and exciting is creating a lot of shows that interest us, asking big questions, and entertaining an audience. We create shows that we feel compelled to do.  Our instincts guide us.

This has worked well for us. We’re very prolific.  We take risks and we create unique theatre.   Our shows also have a real sense of being alive.  ITSAZOO’s productions have genuine energy and risk in them.  This is because we haven’t struggled too hard with intellectualizing every detail  - we’ve let the show, the cast and the environment tell us what to do.

Here’s the problem – saying ‘it just feels right’ doesn’t work when you are writing a grant. It also doesn’t work when you are pitching your show to a presenter or a festival.  These are things we are doing more and more these days as they are the gateway to our future.  This is where RIGOUR comes in to play.

After many years of struggling to get money from the Canada Council I finally had an officer tell me that what we lack is an ability to demonstrate rigour in our work.  Rigour was defined as a real ability to explain every artistic decision and to demonstrate that nothing is by accident, that every detail is a conscious artistic choice.  That often just hasn’t been the case with us.

Since this conversation rigour has been the focus.  For about a year now it has been all about rigour.  And now, possibly because of this, we have more money and more outside interest in our work. But, to be honest, it normally goes backwards. My gut tells me something and then I struggle to define why my gut’s right. I know it’s right because I feel it but more importantly I need to be able to explain why.  It’s frustrating. It asks that we do fewer productions and pay a whole lot more attention to every one.

I’m going to be attending UBC in the fall to do a masters in directing and my hope is that this helps me to better understand and breakdown what I do naturally.   I know that once I come to peace with the idea of rigour and learn to reconcile my gut and rigour  that they will work together to make me a stronger artist than I could have imagined.  I think that gut and rigour can and should be best friends.  I’ll let you know once we’ve found a balance. Or maybe you’ll just see it in our art.

The last days of the tour

We’re home now. We got home on Monday.  But I haven’t yet told you about the best part of the tour so here it is …..drum roll please……. NELSON!  So it turns out that Nelson is A) Really super far from Tofino and that making that trip in one day makes for a long day in the car and B) really awesome.

People in Nelson smile at each other on the street, they are generous and kind, everyone knows everyone else and there are so many young people.  They even have a store where every item has an expensive price and a cheap price and you can choose which one you want to pay.  Most of the time people pay more.  All of the food is organic or homemade or local  or gluten-free and so damn tasty. It is a community where people seem to trust each other and because of that they do the right thing.  Granted I was only there for 4 days but this was my general impression.

ITSAZOO’s designer in residence, Mere, recently moved to Nelson and her and her partner showed us an amazing time while we were there.  Snowboarding, gorgeous restaurants, fancy wines, a wicked jam session and scallops wrapped in awesome things – basically it was a great time.

Now on to the theatre part of the trip.  We performed at the TNT Playhouse. This is a great little space in the hall of a church.  Upon our arrival we realized that the TNT Playhouse would soon be closing down and that we were the last show be play in the space.  Richard has successfully run this theatre for three years but with the loss of his Gaming Funding is no longer able to afford the rent.  It’s a sad story that exists all over this province.  Here are some photos of the space:

 

The 60 seat audience

Cue to cue on the TNT stage

We had extremely supportive audiences both nights and were able to make some contacts that will hopefully lead to us returning to Nelson in the coming year.

Now the tour is done and I want to be sure to say some thank yous. Thanks to everyone who hosted us, to everyone who presented us, to the small towns that showed us city folk such kindness and generosity, to Enterprise for not getting too mad about the scrape on the truck, to all of the companies and individuals that lent us things we couldn’t afford,  to the Canada Council, the McLean Foundation and the BC Arts Council for seeing that what we do is worth investing in, to the amazing cast, to Shawn – the most patient stage manager anyone could ask for, to the designers who begged, borrowed and imagined their way to a fantastic show and most importantly to everyone who saw Chairs: A Parable because without an audience there’d be no reason to do a show.

Now on to the next one.  As Colby says “Another day another play”.

 

From Bust to Bliss

And the tour continues.  Since I last posted we went to Nanaimo and we are now in Tofino.  To be honest Nanaimo just wasn’t great.  We were pretty unsure about performing in Nanaimo – the word was that there wasn’t much of an audience for theatre.  One of our board members lives just outside of Nanaimo and really encouraged us to give it a try so we thought we’d go for it.  We found someone who offered to help us market the show and find a free venue and we were on our way. Our board member offered to let us stay with her and it was a quick stop off on the way to Tofino so all in all it was a completely risk free experiment.  Unfortunately it was a somewhat failed one. Despite posters and flyers, eblasts, word of mouth from our presenter and an article in the Nanaimo and Parksville papers we still only managed to draw an audience of 13.  Seriously.  Just not that great.  A bit of a spirit crusher. Luckily we were staying in a gorgeous home in Nanoose Bay.  Check out the property:

 

Gorgeous!

a waterfall just off their property

 

And they even had a BBQ for us!

 

Jealous?

 

Leaving Nanaimo far behind we drove the long windy road to Tofino. It has been heaven ever since we arrived. Here is the view from our amazing house

The actors did an interview with Long Beach Radio yesterday and they gave us free surfing gear rental passes so today we went surfing.  It was a dream come true, especially for Sebastien. Look how excited he is!

 

Chelsea (Me!), Cam, Seb and Chris about to hit the waves

 

We rode the big kahunas and bagged some gnarly waves Dude.

Tofino is home to one of the greatest little theatre gems in BC – The Clayoquot Sound Community Theatre.

I discovered this theatre while hunting around online trying to find a venue in Tofino for our tour last year.  I took a chance and booked it and turns out it’s remarkable.  This 72 seat venue used to house a bustling little community theatre company back in the 80s and 90s.

 

The house in the Clayoquot Sound Community Theatre

 

The hallway in the theatre is lined with posters from past productions.  Apparently the whole community supported it and it was a great centre of culture and art in Tofino.  In 1997 the company collapsed and since then Tofino has seen little to no live theatre.  Tonight I was shown a room full of old costumes, lights and equipment that is totally unused.  They are now a city hungry for live theatre.  The shows were nearly sold out  both times we were there and the audience was super excited and enthusiastic.  Plus the rental is dirt cheap.  Here’s the crazy part, they have not seen one piece of live theatre in that venue since we performed there last year.  What?!  That’s nuts.  I have made it my personal goal to encourage other indie theatre companies to bring small-scale shows to this venue.  For contact info send us a message (info@itsazoo.org) and I’ll hook you up.

Tomorrow bright and early we make the super long drive from Tofino to Nelson.  We’ve got podcasts and snacks ready to go.  Stay tuned for more tour adventures from Nelson…

Our last day in Victoria

We’re nearing the end of our time in Victoria.  It’s been a great few days.  The show has really grown and we’ve had an awesome time in our home away from home.

Here’s a bit of a photo diary of what we’ve been up to in Victoria (photos taken by Stage Manager Extraordinaire Shawn Sorensen):

 

Tech at the Metro

 

 

 

The great land of Catan. Sooo much of this has been happening.

 

 

 

The free continental breakfast at the Admiral Inn

Whenever we’re in Victoria we have to visit the Solstice Cafe. This is where we performed our very first show, The Zoo Story, and where we had out launch party back in 2006.

The Mint. Enough said.

Shawn’s view of the world

 

 

Thanks for a great week Victoria. Tonight is our last show at the Metro before we head off to Nanaimo so if you’re in Victoria and haven’t seen the show yet this is your last chance!