The month of January was a four week long break from shows for me, and I spent most of it looking for something to do. Isn’t that always the way these things go? Knowing that February would be crazy, I chose to relax and enjoy my time off and bemoan my lack of “something to do” instead of getting a head start on all that awaited me. Even though I’m totally swamped now, it was fun to take some down time. And when it rains, it pours…
On January 31st we started rehearsals for our last show at UBC, Michael Frayne’s Wild Honey directed by MFA Candidate Brian Cochrane. We’ve only done table work so far, but already it’s been a blast. Wild Honey is a play adapted from a huge, unfinished manuscript written by Chekhov in his younger days – it has the woeful, emotional transparency of Chekhov but with the pace and wit of a Frayne farce. It’s a brilliant show, and I for one do a lot of ‘weeping’, ‘sobbing’ and ‘fleeing’. It’s so much fun to go to rehearsal every day.
Solo shows are coming up this Friday and Saturday – after blogging about it three weeks ago I completely scrapped the almost-finished show I had written by that time in favor of a new, more challenging piece. I’m doing a sort of bouffon-inspired clown piece that I find extremely scary to perform, which will hopefully pay off – I figure we have so few chances once we emerge from school to try and completely fail, so I thought I’d take this opportunity to either sink or swim… I’ll let you know how it goes!
Finally, my show Our Time opens in just over a week at the Dorothy Somerset Studio. I am so, so excited for people to see my writing and the work that director Brendan Albano, stage manager Hersie-Nina Init, and performer Pippa Mackie (who I’m quite certain will soon take over the world) have done. I sure hope you will come out to see it! Pop over to the Delinquent Theatre website for more information. I will have more to say about Our Time next week, but please do mark your calendars!
So much for “nothing to do…”
Christine Quintana 