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Dramaturg Heidi Taylor takes notes alongside Set/Lighting designer John Webber

Whenever I hear a new draft of Re:Union, I am struck anew by the relevance of the questions it asks. The intersection between war, peace, and family, resonates. For a few days at the end of June, the design team, director John Langs, playwright Sean Devine and actors Alexa Devine, Robert Olguin, and Kevin McNulty, gathered around a table to imagine the play in three dimensions on stage at Pacific Theatre. The personal and political converged around the table, as we engaged with the question: how do we choose to act when our conscience prods us to do so?

When I was fifteen, I saw a Fringe play in small town Alberta. I don’t remember the title of the play, but I do remember that it was performed by South African theatre company. It was about apartheid. It changed my life. It made me politically active: I joined Amnesty International, and I started marching in anti-apartheid rallies at the legislature in Edmonton. The end of apartheid, (coincidentally) happened soon after. It made me feel like political change was linked to individuals all over the world acting in concert with their consciences. But what of the activists who lived and died in the long years of struggle before the change?

Norman Morrison self-immolated on the lawn of the Pentagon in 1965 to protest the Vietnam war. As the character Emily Morrison states in the play, the war went on for another ten years. Did his death impact the course of the war? Who can say which actions motivated towards justice have an effect? What is a reasonable time signature to gauge the real link between action and reaction?

My experience with encountering the injustices of the world through theatre convinced me the medium has power, and that the stories we tell have an import beyond creative satisfaction. One of our tasks on the way to production will be to engage with the complexity of these stories, the better to stir a questioning spirit in the creative team, and in our audiences.

Heidi Taylor

Dramaturg

PTC

As Horseshoes & Hand Grenades and Pacific Theatre  continue our development and pre-production work on our upcoming Fall 2011 project, Re:Union, we’re going to be blogging throughout our creation and development process.

For our second entry, HHG co-artistic director Sean Devine talks about recent trips to Washington, DC and Ottawa.

From one nation’s capital to  another…

Who knew the life of a playwright-producer could be so jet-setting. Fresh from an amazing research and promotion trip to Washington, DC, I’ve just parked the car with a satchel bag full of promo materials as I prepare to amble my way through the 2011 Magnetic North Theatre Festival.

Washington DC was a great trip on so many levels. The amount of otherwise unobtainable materials that we collected at the National Archives and the Library of Congress was worth the trip alone, although it felt like a race against time downloading it all to our multiple hard drives, simply because there was so much of it. You know the scene in the caper / thriller movie where the hero tries to hack into the enemy’s top-secret computer files to copy the top-secret document that will expose the Crime of the Century? And as the “File Transfer in Progress” bar slowly makes its way across the screen while the Bad Guy or Bad Guy’s Head of Security is hot on the trail? Well, that was us, except without the Bad Guy. I was the Bald Guy.

Video projection designer Jason Thompson and I captured so many files, photos, movie clips, sound recordings, all of it offering wonderful conceptual possibilities for the Fall production, although who knows where the material will lead us. As the researcher / writer of the piece, it’s exciting to see tangible examples of historical events that I’ve only yet imagined, as well as actual films and photographs described in the original source texts the play was generated from. Maybe it’s not exciting and I’m just a research nerd.

Washington DC also turned out to be a great opportunity to meet with Woolly Mammoth Theatre and Literary Manager John M. Baker. Woolly Mammoth (www.woollymammoth.net) is a charter member of the US National New Play Network, the US alliance of new play development theatres. In other words, we were glad to get the meeting and are excited for their support.

Other highlights from DC:

• Venturing illegally onto the Pentagon parking lot to shoot film footage, only to be asked by an off-duty guard “Should I call for an armed escort?”
• Capturing other illegal footage at the Pentagon the next day and not getting detected; then deleting the footage cause I got scared from the previous experience
• Eating my first Krispy Kreme doughnut ever and not having to pay for it because it was National Doughnut Day
• Hearing more cheers than boos in a DC sports bar as Raffi Torres scored the winning goal in Game 1

Here’s a few pictures highlighting our experience in DC as well as a sampling of the types of materials we were collecting. Understandably, we’re holding onto the best stuff for the show itself.

The only pictures you’re allowed taking inside the Pentagon while on the Pentagon tour is of the tour guide itself. The podium and official seal make it look very real. It’s not. There’s a bubble gum machine immediately to my left.

Our high-tech setup at National Archives. Hours and hours and hours of sitting and watching old footage.

Still image captured from a US Air Force bomber of target post-strike.

The USAF-supplied description of said bombing.

View of Pentagon immediately post-9/11

Next blog: An account of our amazing Full Company development workshop that took place June 21 – 22, from guest blogger and production dramaturg Heidi Taylor of Playwrights Theatre Centre.

As Horseshoes & Hand Grenades and Pacific Theatre  continue our development and pre-production work on our upcoming Fall 2011 project, Re:Union, we’re going to be blogging throughout our creation process.

For our first entry, playwright (and HHG co-artistic director) Sean Devine and production video projection designer Jason H. Thompson (based out of Los Angeles) are down in Washington DC on a research trip. Sean sent in this blog:

We’ve come to DC to collect archival records that we plan to incorporate into both the production design of Re:Union as well as any exhibits that might be a part of our outreach events for Vancouver: The Activist City. Understandably there’s a wealth of information to be had here, what with the National Archives,  the Library of Congress, and just everything you can see driving around the city. We’re doing a considerable amount of video shoots to help capture the scope and architectural grandeur of Washington DC. It helps in trying to imagine just how small Norman Morrison must have felt as he drove himself past these empire-sized monuments on the way to the Pentagon to offer up his one little life in the cause of peace.

All in all, this trip is an incredible opportunity in the ongoing script development process, as we’re now able to incorporate so much more realism and detail into the project. Much thanks to Arts Partners in Creative Development for making it possible.

Most of our first day has been spent at the National Archives in nearby Maryland, which boasts the largest collection of government records in the country. The security requirements of getting in and out of the building are several times more exacting than even the most nervous of airports. Not only are you physically  screened, but every single piece of equipment and paper that you bring in and out of the building is carefully monitored. And no pens allowed! White gloves and pencils only.

But you quickly realize why they’re so strict. The size, diversity, and impossible-to-estimate value of this collection is unmatchable. It might even help to justify the large number of armed employees.

Jason Thompson and I are focusing our research on video and photographic records from the mid-1960s, in the era of Norman Morrison’s death. As we know, this was a period of escalating militarism as well as activist protests.

In October 1967, a massive sit-in action was held on the grounds of the Pentagon. This protest was one of the larger events in the years-long wave of anti-war activism that Norman Morrison’s death helped to ignite. Included are some of many photos that we found to help imagine what it might have been like.

Pacific Theatre opened The Great Divorce last night. This was  Kyle Rideout‘s theatre directorial debut, showing us all that he has mastered yet another medium. Congrats to Kyle, the solid ensemble cast and the stunning, stunning, stunning design.

HHG's Sean Devine, Florence Barrett (Costume Designer), Ron Reed (Artistic Director)

The Great Divorce

Last night also marked the official announcement of PT’s 2011-2012 season and the unveiling of their season program by the talented Emily Cooper.

Re:Union a new play by Sean Devine

Audience member seat D16 reading up on Re:Union