Category: Uncategorized

What I’ve Learned – The First 9 Months

by Christine, posted in Uncategorized

So, I’ve been bad with this  blog.

Like, really bad.  Like not updating since August bad.  But as it turns out, I’ve had a lot of very fun things to do since August, and I’m finally ready to process it all and get back on the blog-wagon.  In a tribute to Stephen Heatley’s famous ‘samplers’ (UBC kids will know what I mean here), here are a few of the valuable lessons I’ve learned in my first 9 months out of theatre school.

GOOD ISN’T GOOD ENOUGH – Vancouver Fringe Festival

I spent a lot of time running around the campus of the Vancouver International Fringe Festival this year, seeing as many shows as possible and flyering my tired butt off for Oh My God with Delinquent Theatre.  I had the pleasure of meeting a lot of artists, both local and visiting, national and international.  I saw a lot of amazing theatre, and a few disappointments.  The common thread between the best shows?  Attention to detail.  Without fail, the shows I enjoyed the most were created by artists who integrated storytelling, design, and atmosphere without sacrificing any quality due to lack of resources, or simply letting something be “good enough”.  From the international Fringe vets to the first-timers and wild Onsite shows, my favorite theatrical creations showed evidence of great care and vigilant creative standards in every aspect of the show. It reminded me to always look at my own work and think – could it be better?  What can I do to keep moving forward?

A CAREER IN THE THEATRE IS NOT LINEAR – Making a Scene Conference

In November I attended the Making A Scene Conference, presented by the GVPTA.  If you have never attended the conference before, I strongly, strongly recommend you do.  The short form explanation of MAS is a gathering of the best minds in the BC theatre scene gathered in a room to discuss, debate, and dissect the state of affairs in our local theatre scene, and what we can do to serve it better.  Check out the 2011 MAS report for some highlights – I left leaving, well… engaged and empowered, which was the title of the event.  One of the many things that have stayed with me was the remark made that “a career in theatre is not linear”.  This struck a chord with me and continues to do so.  Looking back on my time out of school so far, I can clearly see that every dream gig I didn’t land ended up freeing me to do something else different and exciting.  There’s no such thing as ‘lost time’, unless you make it so.  In this career, there’s no standard path to follow – it’s all up to you.  After 3 years of regimented theatre school where your time is not your own, it’s thrilling and terrifying to know you’re now holding the reins.  Talking with more established theatre artists helped me understand there’s no right or wrong path – just the one you choose for yourself.

THEATRE IS SUPPOSED TO BE FUN – Wizard of Oz at Carousel Theatre

It’s a simple lesson, but perhaps the easiest to forget.  After months of auditions, callbacks, anxiety and planning, I finally got to settle in and do my first post-school Equity contract.  And what a dream – The Wizard of Oz with Carole Higgins and Carousel Theatre!  With multiple character tracks, 10 costume changes, and wonderful choreography, Oz was one of the most personally challenging shows I’ve done to date, and I wouldn’t have survived it if it weren’t for the warm, fun and funny group at Carousel.  Whether it was through inventive and inspired choices on stage or MadLibs and fart machines backstage, they always kept me laughing and reminded me that – oh yeah, this is supposed to be fun. There is plenty to be anxious about in this career path, but it won’t be worth it if you can’t relax and enjoy the moment, and I am grateful to the wonderful folks I worked with on Oz who reminded me of that.

IT’S NEVER THE RIGHT TIME/IT’S ALWAYS THE RIGHT TIME – Delinquent Theatre

On January 9th, 2012, my friend and theatre partner Laura McLean and I got the news that our fledgling company Delinquent Theatre was officially incorporated as a non-profit society.  This brings us into a new and complicated era of AGMs, boards, grants, licenses and more.  It’s a little overwhelming, but it’s so very worth it.  We’re mounting 2 original musicals within the first 6 months of our incorporation, and doing everything on our own.  We’ve got ambitious plans for the next year and a bit for Delinquent Theatre, and you know what?  We’re ready for it.  There will never be a ‘right time’ to take a leap of faith – you can keep waiting for the time when you have a little more money, a little more time, and a little more experience – or you can jump in with both feet, open eyes, and an open heart and see what you learn.  We’ve opted for the latter, and I look forward to all the lessons I haven’t yet learned, but am about to.  Bring it on.

Party… At My House?

by Christine, posted in Uncategorized

The call came last Wednesday.  Party This Weekend, a site specific theatre production set at a house party, needed a new location.  Party This Weekend is the brainchild of my Delinquent Theatre partner Laura McLean and Scarlet Satin Productions’ Diana Squires.  Written by Arlen Kristian Tom, Taylor Basso, Josephine Mitchell and Diana, the play takes place at a private residence.  Audience members are assigned a party guest to follow throughout the night, and friends are encouraged to split up and watch different sides of the story.  There are acoustic guitar ballads, drinking games, dance parties and tearful revelations.  It’s a fun night at the theatre and an astonishing accomplishment in terms of logistics and stage management, and I had been a big fan of it.  And now the time came that Party This Weekend needed our help, a new and bigger house – and my roomies and I stepped up to the challenge.

This is what our fridge looks like right now. Not pictured: Anyone who actually lives here.

It’s sure easy to say you love and believe in site-specific theatre – it’s a whole other thing to make it happen.  In your own living space.  With 40+ people.  The stage management team arrived hours after we agreed to host, and we began cleaning and clearing the space – family photos and identifying details were taken down and stashed away.  After all, the house needs to appear to be the family home of Gen, Brij and Carmindy, not Christine, Arlen, Megs and Kim.  We quickly determined my bedroom needed to host a few scenes – instantly it became trashy teenage menace Carmindy’s room.  Down came my show posters and scripts, and up went posters of shirtless men and lingerie hanging off every piece of furniture. Before we knew it, it was Friday night and we welcomed almost 50 audience members and actors to our home. The show must go on!

This is clearly not what I normally put up in my room. No, seriously...

If I may digress and use my fancy BFA academic skills here, I just want to say what an interesting experience this has been in understanding how site specific theatre works.  I have always thought a major aspect of the form was re-contextualizing familiar spaces.  Bridge Mix, for example, took place in a parking lot, but the audience was opened to so many possibilities for story and setting within a mundane urban habitat.  In that same way, acting as an audience member on the first night, I got to see my house in a whole different way.  Entering my room with the audience with the understanding that it was Carmindy’s room allowed me to see it as the audience did – my personal items that have their own context to me took on whole new meanings in the setting of Party This Weekend.  It was really fascinating to see how our home, with some set decoration, became part of the story, and how I along with 30 audience members came to understand it in a whole new way.

This is for Gen's surprise birthday party on Friday and Saturday. The rest of the week I am pretending its an early Happy Birthday for me?

It’s been a blast having the talented cast and ninja-like stage management team of Party This Weekend in our house.   Hosting a theatre event has been crazy, and at times alarming (at one point the hostess is looking for something important in my/Carmindy’s room – “check the drawers!”  BOOM, my underwear drawer is opened) but it’s been a real honor to be part of such an ambitious and wildly fun theatrical experience.  PTW runs tonight and tomorrow night at 8PM -I hear they are sold out, but are taking a waiting list.  Check their website for more details.  Party at my house!

the 5 stages of audition anxiety – part 1

by Christine, posted in Uncategorized

1. Submitting for an Audition

Dear (Artistic Director),

My name is Christine Quintana and we may have already met but I am terrified to assume you know who I am already or remember me from the one or two times we’ve spoken but then on the other hand I might end up looking like an idiot introducing myself again, but here it is, my name!  on this letter! whether we’ve met or not I’m just going to provide my name, dammit, and I am a recent graduate of the UBC BFA Acting Program, and I really really want an audition am so in love with this script that I can’t stop thinking about it will do your dishes for a month just to get in the room and audition for you am worried I will never get to meet you am a really nice person!  really! would very much like to be considered for an audition for your upcoming production, (Fabulous Show that I’ve Loved for Years).  I am especially interested in any role at all, really! I love ensemble and would never turn my nose up at anything you’d like to offer me!  I’ll even accept the role of box office attendant!  If I’m not already working in your box office anyway, ha-ha! HA! just kidding I am an actor and I’m on the market, fresh and shiny and ready to be an artist in any role you are willing to cast me in the role of (Ingenue or Troubled Teen). 

Thank you very much for your consideration and I totally understand if I never hear from you, I mean I’m sure it’s hard to choose who to see among the hundreds of talented young women in this city and I can totally see how you might be full and not able to fit me in, but maybe I’ll meekly try to crash your auditions if I don’t get a slot but actually end up sitting outside the building working up the courage to approach the audition monitor and then going home after an hour of deliberation but maybe you’ll have time for me and that would be great! and I look forward to hearing from you. 

Enclosed is my headshot and resume and I wondered if I should give you my smiley ingenue headshot or the somewhat more seductive ones because I look like I’m 17 in the one I sent you and I can look older, really, if that’s what you want but of course I don’t know what you want so I just sent this one but if you need me to look older I can totally wear eyeliner or something just tell me what to do but here’s a picture of me looking hopeful and youthful in the meantime.

Thank you,

Christine Quintana

PS. I am just new at all this and I hope this cover letter is okay – should I have given more details?  Less?  Do I sound needy or presumptuous? I proofread it like 50 times, I swear, and if there’s any typos or incorrect information I will die of shame so I hope it’s all good and does anyone even read cover letters?  I am fresh out of school and just doing my best and I hope my cover letter conveys my youthful enthusiasm because I really do love your company and the work you do and would love to be part of it and how do I possibly express that in a cover letter?  I am going to now dump this into a mailbox like it’s on fire and then try to forget about everything I’ve just painstakingly written but please know that all this anxiety just comes from wanting to be a part of your show!  I am totally normal, professional and well-adjusted, I promise!

Voter Turnout and the Olympic Legacy

by Christine, posted in Uncategorized

I have been waiting to write this for over a year.

I remember the Olympics.  I remember opposing the original bid, opposing the constant mismanagement, the sacrifices made in budget cut after budget cuts to things I felt were more lasting than an international 10 day party.  But they came, and what’s done is done.  I remember the smiles, the sunshine, and the spirit of it all.  I remember high-fiving police officers and hugging strangers, I remember street parties.  I remember Canadians surprising themselves and the world with their sudden, positive, infectious nationalism.  We bragged about our mountains and water, our liberal ways, and our ‘free health care’.  We made Americans wish they were us.  I remember the pride in our humble nation bubbling off the lips of every drunken young person wearing a Canadian flag as a cape.  “This is the best place on Earth!  I love Canada!”  It was amazing.

I hope they wear these outfits to the polls. (Photo by Matthew Little for the Epoch Times)

And I remember then thinking, I hope it sticks.  I hope they take that newfound love for their country and they go volunteer.  Or clean up their neighborhoods after the party is over.  Just get out there and contribute to the nation they love so much.  And frankly, I doubt they did.  I doubt the nationalist fervour lasted beyond the last drunken street party.  But I hope I’m wrong.  And of course it’s easy to love your country when the world is watching, when the miraculous weather made our lovely city shine like a West Coast paradise.  When magical political Photoshop made the Downtown East Side all but disappear from consciousness.  When we forgot the cost, literally and figuratively of the whole ordeal.  But now, more than ever, we need to remember that feeling.

Something is happening here.  On May 2nd we have the chance to show our country how much we really love it.  The world has watched as the young people of Libya and Egypt stood up for their rights.  Consider Tunisia, where the whole movement began – where 20% of adults are illiterate, where citizens receive an average of 6.5 years of education (compared to our 11.5), where 14.2% of the population is unemployed despite their best efforts to seek employment.  Where Muhammad Bouazizi chose to light himself on fire after government officials violated his human rights and refused to listen to him, sparking a massive anti-government uprising.

We have something here people would die for, and it’s not a mountain view.  It’s a vote, and a voice.  The chance to influence the future of our dear nation.  And if voter turnout remains as low as it has in the past, it will prove to me that the Olympic legacy is as shallow as I always feared it would be.  If you were old enough to be drunk and wearing a flag as a cape a year ago, you are old enough to vote.  And if you love your country now as much as we all did during those 10 incredible days, you will get yourself to the polls on Monday.

Check out these links for more information:

Elections Canada – for information on how and where to vote

UN Human Development Index – where the statistics from this post came from, and where you can find more startling information on the state of education, health care, and equality across the globe

Reporters Without Borders – an organization that collects data on freedom of press internationally (note the downward trend in Canada’s ranking since the Harper government took over)

Wild Honey Opening Night!

by Christine, posted in Uncategorized

After a fun and playful rehearsal period, a blissfully easy tech and a great preview run, Wild Honey opened last night. Wild Honey is a Chekhovian farce – the play is Michael Frayne’s adaptation of a Chekhov manuscript discovered from his earliest works. Originally Wild Honey was six hours in length, a sprawling epic with too many characters and stories. Frayne took the meat of it and trimmed it down to a funny and poignant farce. Rehearsing this show and then opening it up to an audience has probably presented the greatest change I’ve ever experienced on a show from dress to preview. In true Chekhov style, the stakes are high, the drama is tense, and characters spout lines like “is this ruin, or is this happiness?” And then Frayne takes over – doors slam, identities are mistaken, and the show runs at breakneck speed! Now with an audience, the moment when they’re laughing the hardest is usually the moment when someone’s life just got ruined. It takes a lot of focus and control to negotiate emotional honesty and comic timing all at once, but our company is more than up to it. I’m so proud of my castmates, and I know it’s gonna be a great run.

Did I mention we love our director, Brian Cochrane? Here’s an outtake from our photo shoot with Tim Matheson.

So, are you sold yet? Please come see Wild Honey! Tickets and details can be found here.

Wild Honey – Tech Weekend!

by Christine, posted in Uncategorized

As I write this I am scurrying around my kitchen packing my bag for tech weekend for Wild Honey – it’s been a fun few weeks of rehearsal, and now we put all the pieces together to see what we’ve got. We had our photo shoot with Tim Matheson this week, as you can see by the fabulous photo to the right, we’ve seen the brilliant set by Amanda Larder coming together in the Freddy, and now it’s time to tech, dress, preview and off we go! I’ll be updating this page throughout the day (10AM-10PM baby!) so check back to see what the Wild Honey cast and crew are up to. Here goes!

11:14 AM: First thing up was the safety talk: our Stage Manager extraordinaire Emily
Griffiths told us what not to walk on, fall off of, break, or play with. ASM Hayley Peterson
brought us a buffet of snacks so the green room is full of chocolate, candy, chips, bread,
cheese and peanut butter. They may need to let out our costumes after this weekend!
Now we’re running through the scene changes – one includes two moving trucks, all the fly rails, and the entire cast.

12:35 AM: Cue to cue begins! As an actor, this means time to be quiet and stay out of trouble.
Clearly we have our work cut out for us. The girls are pleased because we got the big dressing room
at the Freddy Wood, and we’ve started to set up our makeup stations.

1:39 PM: Many of us have long breaks in the play, and cue to cue makes this even more evident – so we’ve developed a bit of a card game obsession. You can count on seeing us going nuts, yelling and pounding the
table playing Slap-Jack, Speed, Nerts and Solitaire. It keeps us entertained and out of trouble, even if we’re shouting and bruising each other as we do it!

4:35 PM: Still cue-to-cueing. Food is almost gone. Many rounds of cards have been played. I have my slippers on!

Being good little actors and staying nice and quiet.

6:17 PM: The costumes have arrived in the dressing rooms. I can’t wait for the dress rehearsal tomorrow. I am not on for about an hours worth of stage time which translates to many hours in tech time. More card games for me!

Costume racks - note the Justin Bieber poster on the left.

8:11 PM: The boys have rigged up a massive projector screen to play the Canucks game while we wait for our cues. Awesome!

9:31 PM: Cue to cue is almost done – we’re just putting together a complicated special effects sequence. Curious? You’ll have to come see the show to find out. But it’s pretty much badass.

Towards a Humane Theatre

by Christine, posted in Uncategorized

Animal welfare and rights have always been an important topic to me.  I grew up volunteering at the BC SPCA with my mom and have had many pets over the years.  I have always questioned our society’s relationship with animals – are they friends, or food? Are they a resource and commodity, or living creatures deserving of rights?  I feel strongly that our current way of doing things – our pracitices with pets, livestock, and animals raised for the meat industry is largely exploitative and deeply troubling.  That being said, these feelings come with built in hypocracy – I would never wear fur, but I do own leather shoes (mostly second hand).  I don’t eat meat of any kind but I’m not vegan.  I am concerned about the treatment of animals in our society but I struggle with breaking free from the consumer cycle that is the main reason animals suffer for our convenience.

I find with these kind of issues, like the ‘greenwash’ movement, people tend to sieze upon the uncomfortable dualities of these things.  There are those who don’t pay any attention to their consumer habits and scoff at those who do; there are animal rights groups that believe strongly that vegetarianism is not enough, and that folks like me who aren’t absolute in our practices aren’t doing enough.  It’s a tough discussion to face –  I for one believe that the all or nothing approach will leave people (like the aforementioned naysayers) unwilling to try at all.  I believe that if we begin to shift our habits bit by bit as a society we can make great change.  And we must.

I’ve been thinking about how to make my passion for animal welfare and theatre work together and was inspired to give my makeup kit a cruelty-free makeover.  I thought it would be hard, given that I am working on a limited budget, but I was surprised to see how many companies have made the switch to cruelty free production. There are also a wealth of resources available to help locate affordable cruelty free products – I signed up to receive a free Cruelty Free Shopping Guide from Peta.  Their website is fantastic and comprehensive, and it’s easy to look up your favorite brands and see if they make the cut.  Through Peta I found My Beauty Bunny, a website/blog dedicated to finding fabulous products of all kinds that haven’t been tested on animals. Skeptics should visit My Beauty Bunny for proof that cruelty free cosmetics don’t have to be all hemp chapstick and vegetable dyes!

So who did make the cut?  I was so relieved to find Cover FX on the list – I’ve sworn by their kick-ass water based high pigment foundation for years and will proudly keep buying their products.  Revlon and Wet ‘N Wild both make drugstore-price cosmetics in great colors for the stage, and both are certified by My Beauty Bunny as cruelty free.  M.A.C, Sephora and Stila have also made the switch (UPDATE MARCH 2012: It seems that M.A.C. has backslid on its commitments – please check for up to date info from M.A.C. before deciding).    It didn’t take a ton of money or even a special trip to a different store to make my products cruelty free – just a little research and a commitment to changing my consumer habits. While I’m not always on board with Peta’s tactics in other areas regarding animal rights, I applaud their resources on cruelty-free consumerism.  By shifting our habits and ways of thinking,  we can send a message to companies still using barbaric animal testing that we prefer to stand behind those that have left those practices behind.  I plan to put my money where my mouth is and keep my art cruelty free.

When It Rains, It Pours

by Christine, posted in Uncategorized

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…”


Ignite Youth Week Reading

by Christine, posted in Uncategorized

Last night I had the pleasure of joining Heidi Taylor of Playwrights Theatre Center and Corbin Murdoch of the Cultch for a reading of the winning plays from last year’s Ignite Youth Week Festival Young Playwrights competition.  Corbin meets with a panel of young artists every Monday through the year to put together a weeklong festival of theatre, dance, drag, visual art, music and film – the Ignite Youth Week Festival!  Every year the panel holds a Young Playwrights competition and select 3 new scripts, which are produced the follow year as part of Ignite.  It’s extremely exciting to be part of Ignite as an audience member or participant – for a week, the Cultch’s beautiful facilities teem with youth artists who put together a stellar week of programming.  If you’ve never been to Ignite, I hope you’ll make an effort this year – the vibe is like Hive, Fringe, and PuSh rolled into one and bounding on a sugar high.  The energy is invigorating, the work is great, and it’s so inspiring to see kids as young as 13 working their butts off to make this festival sing. 

Kholby and Pippa, actors extraodinare

Last year my play Our Time was mounted at the Vancity Culture Lab as part of Ignite – this year I had the chance to help the current batch of young playwrights develop their work.  Under the guidance of Heidi and Corbin and the playwright’s mentors Ami Gladstone, Michele Riml and Dave Deveau, we read the three plays for this years festival.  I was joined by Pippa Mackie, Sebastien Archibald and Kholby Wardell to read Onomatopoeia by Sigal Samuel, The Living Situation by James Elliot, and Hide and Go Sell by Chris Nyarady who attended the reading all the way from Halifax via Skype!  I was so impressed with these fantastic scripts by emerging young playwrights. I love love love play readings and we all had a grand old time reading these funny and very smart new shows.  The playwrights will work with their mentors to further develop these scripts having heard them read by actors, and then they’ll turn them over to the directors.  If you’re interested in directing or acting in this festival, head on over to the Ignite Mentorship Blog and check out the details – it’s a great opportunity to work in a beautiful venue.  I had a blast reading with Sebastien, Pippa and Kholby and can’t wait to see how these shows take shape!

The Loneliest Number

by Christine, posted in Anxiety, Inspiration, Solo Show, Uncategorized

Even though I’ve known about this assignment since before I started the BFA Acting program, I’m still losing sleep over it; Like as in many conservatory-style acting programs, UBC’s final year class is instructed to create and perform a solo show to be presented in the final term. Normally they are presented in April – this year we’ll be performing them in mid-February. No pressure.

I’ve seen so many solo shows over the years and have fallen in and out of love with the form over and over. I remember being absolutely floored by Caroline Cave in The Syringa Tree at the Playhouse. After a few Fringe seasons I swore up and down this year that I would avoid solo shows at all costs, then had my mind absolutely changed by Jeff McMahan of Asylum Theatre in The Boy Who Had a Mother and Chris Craddock in Moving Along. I’ve had the chance to perform in one (Spunk’d by Ella Simon in the Walking Fish Festival) and write one (Our Time at the Ignite Youth Week Festival) but I’ve never done both at once. Scary stuff.

In trying to write my own solo show I am haunted by two beautiful performances that have stayed with me long after I left the theatre. I had the pleasure of seeing Daniel MacIvor perform Cul-de-Sac at the Vancouver East Cultural Center. It was such a tour-de-force performance with rapid-fire conversations between characters, gorgeous synthesis of design and delivery and a compelling story. The audience brought him out for two encores at curtain call and remained in their seats afterwards, totally floored. Years later back at the Cultch I was lucky enough to catch Joey Tremblay’s Elephant Wake. I’ve never been to a show like that before, one that made me laugh out loud as if I were in the company of a good friend and sob like a child in the space of an evening. Tender, funny and extraordinarily beautiful, I left wondering if I’d ever see a show that moving again.

So with these experiences behind me and a 15 minute long self-penned solo show in front of me, I’m wondering what elements of those memorable shows I can find in my own work. Ultimately all the performer has is the audience, and all they have is the performer – there’s no room for indulgence on the part of the performer or lack of clarity in the storytelling. The most successful solo shows I’ve seen had a generous, charismatic performer (like Cave, MacIvor, and Tremblay) reaching out to the audience to share a story worth telling. Which is, ultimately, the name of the game if you’ve got a cast of 100 or just 1. The 15 of us have the task of taking our own story and heading out there alone to tell it (and fill the rather formidable Telus Studio Theatre while we do so).

So I’d like to know: what elements do you think are key to a great solo show? Have you seen a show that made the most of the form and if so, what made it great?