Twelve Wide Nights

I haven't written in a long while, and that's not because I've had nothing to write about. Quite the opposite. In fact, I've been very busy.

I returned from my vacation to Winnipeg in June and jumped right into rehearsals for This Wide Night. This Wide Night was written by Chloe Moss, and is the winner of the 2009 Susan Smith Blackburn Award.
Our production was produced by the CAEA approved co-op, Mermaid Parade. MP was formed of myself, Jon Michaelson, Astrid Van Wieren, Claire Burns, and Lindsay Anne Black.

It's a British play about two lower class women who were cellmates together in HMP Cookham-Wood — one for manslaughter, the other for theft and drugs.

They formed a tight bond in prison — partly friendship, partly a maternal relationship. Lorraine, who is approaching 50, has the longer prison sentence, and when she is released her first instinct is to head straight to Marie's flat. Marie, who is 30, has been out for a few years. She is past her probation period, and might be slipping back into bad habits. Her casual alcohol abuse is definitely worrisome, especially to Lorraine, who associates alcohol with her own bad temper that led directly to her manslaughter charge.

When Lorraine arrives at Marie's flat in scene one, Marie is hesitant to have her there. Over the course of the eleven scenes, Marie plays the role of generous hostess, petulant child, party girl, caregiver, lost soul, and more. She careens from one emotion to the next, occasionally at complete opposites. Marie was played by the very talented Claire Burns, who tackled an incredibly difficult role with talent and style. She made really interesting choices, and brought a delicate balance to Marie's tenderness and fierceness.

Lorraine was played by Astrid Van Wieren, who is one of the most kind hearted women I've ever met. This play was a bit of a pet project for Astrid and her longtime friend, Jon Michaelson, who directed This Wide Night. Astrid's love for the play was evident in every rehearsal, and I also believe she truly loved the characters. She loved the woman she was portraying, as well as feeling Lorraine's love for Marie. Lorraine's arc is a bit more straightforward than Marie's. Lorraine is stressed, anxious, and slightly shell shocked to be on the outside after twelve years in prison. She has an estranged son who was taken away by social services long before she committed her crime. Her son, Ben, and her surrogate daughter, Marie, are the two most important people in her life. She has fond memories of her son, although she hasn't seen or heard from him in twenty-four years. At the urging of a social worker, Lorraine writes a letter to Ben before leaving the prison. She receives his response around the midpoint of the play. She enjoys a reunion with him, and looks forward to many more dates with him. She takes pride in his success as a teacher, though she may feel that he succeeded in spite of her, and certainly not because of her. There is a sense, perhaps, that he was remarkably unscathed by his childhood with an alcoholic mother, his removal from her care and adoption at age seven, and later learning that his birth mother was imprisoned for stabbing a man. Despite Lorraine's infractions, it is obvious that she always loved Ben very much. However, during her second meeting with Ben, he tells her that he sees no need to have a relationship with her, and he just wanted to meet her once to sort through his emotions and perhaps experience some closure. Lorraine accepts this, perhaps because she doesn't believe that she deserves his forgiveness or love, but also because she has grown a lot from the extremely anxious woman she was at the top of the play. And, hey — she got to meet him once. She'll carry her pride for her son and her gratitude that after all, he will be okay.

In essence, this play is about the relationship between two very different women. A relationship that was forged on the inside; that might not be able to survive on the outside. Their freedom is so tentative and delicate. Marie feels the need to protect her freedom, and Lorraine is terrified of her own. 

Lindsay Anne Black's awesome set captured the claustrophobia of the play. The play was performed in Theatre Passe Muraille's Backspace, and the already small stage was turned into a studio apartment no larger than a prison cell. 

David DeGrow's lighting set many different moods, and established a large range of times of day. 

Mike Conley and Emily Derr were our pair of sound designers who wrote gorgeous and haunting scene transitions, predominantly on guitar.

And what can I say about Jon Michaelson? He was a generous and dedicated director, and his love and passion for the play was evident on stage in every scene. He also attended ten out of twelve performances.
My buddy in the booth was one Colin Harris, who attended the University of Guelph with me. He was a great guy to work with, especially when you have to spend so much time with the people you're working with.

As the stage manager on this show, I had the joy of being in rehearsal with these lovely people. It's also the longest run of a show I've done to date, at twelve performances long, from July 20th to 31st. I drove a big van full of props and set pieces from our rehearsal space to our performance space. (This might not have been the best idea, and there were a few scary moments when I unexpectedly wound up on the DVP.) I coordinated with front of house staff as to when we would open the house, close the house, and allow late comers to enter. I preset the props and stage at the top of every performance, and ran the sound while calling the light cues. 

It was a great experience... and if you missed it this time around, keep your fingers crossed. We're all hoping for a remount.