Signing the Bard

Kennedy C. MacKinnon is the Artistic Director of Shakespeare Link Canada, a company that is working with LKTYP to create a version of Romeo and Juliet using both spoken and sign language.

I was at the end of my high school career back in the early 90’s and I vividly remember coming to LKTYP to see MacBeth directed by Maja Ardal and starring Rick Roberts as the Scottish King. I remember sitting in the theatre being swept away by the magic of the story. I remember thinking, “one day, I want to work at this theatre on Shakespeare. I want to be a part of that making that kind of magic”.

Two decades later I find myself at the end of what can only be called two of the most inspiring weeks I have ever spent in a studio. And guess what? I was working on Shakespeare, here at LKTYP in preparation for a bilingual production that I have a very good feeling will be magic.

Not long after I saw that production of MacBeth I graduated from theatre school and my passion for Shakespeare took me to the UK with my great friend and colleague Edward Daranyi. We had the privilege of working with our now sister company Shakespeare Link on their first hearing/deaf workshop of MacBeth (now isn’t that serendipity). Our job, as actors, was to help make the text clear so that the deaf actors could create the signs to translate the text into British Sign language (BSL). It was an incredible experience. We were both challenged and inspired as we fought to literally make new words in BSL. I have continued to work in the UK with Shakespeare Link translating into BSL and then shooting to DVD Shakespeare’s plays. To date they have four plays and a lot of the sonnets translated onto DVDs, which are in the school system allowing deaf students long overdue access to these plays.

During this time I couldn’t help but wonder…what if, we put both sign language and spoken text on the stage at the same time? I kept thinking that although deaf audiences have occasional access to these plays through the help of interpreters on the side of the stage, what if the story was simply spoken in their language. Hearing and deaf people fall in love all the time. Why couldn’t Romeo be deaf and Juliet hearing or vice versa? And why wouldn’t an audience be interested to see and hear that story told?

So, in 2006 I gathered a company of actors to explore this possibility. We looked at a variety of ways to tell the story in both languages; shadowing, double casting, one person signing while another spoke. In the end, I discovered that the idea not only worked but it was compelling, alive and deeply moving. It allowed the story to come to life in a whole new way.

As with many theatrical endeavors funding issues slowed our process down. But the dream of Signing the Bard (what the project was fondly referred to as) Romeo and Juliet continued to grow. I knew I needed to find a company that could work with us to develop this production. And then it hit me. LKTYP! I was so thrilled when Allen enthusiastically agreed. Not only had this theatre inspired me as a young audience member but I had spent my summers throughout my theatre school training here teaching for the Theatre School. I am incredibly grateful to now come full circle and be working my artistic chops inside these walls.

So, with three workshops now under our belt we have a core artistic company experienced in breaking down the text and developing new signs for the language, a cut version of the play (so that we can run the show at 90 minutes), an almost complete translation into ASL and an unstoppable passion to tell this story in a new way. And I can’t tell you how excited I am for next fall when we will spend three weeks developing a workshop production here at LKTYP. Magic!


KENNEDY C. MACKINNON is the Artistic Director of Shakespeare Link Canada and is affiliated with the Shakespeare Link in the UK. She is an actor, director, coach and teacher. Most recently she created and directed With Love, Will Shakespeare a commissioned play for the Sunnybrook Veteran’s Residence and co-directed/co-adapted the NAC/NEPA production of Death of the Chief. With SLC she created and directed Hamlet, Alone and Drowning Ophelia for the Shakespeare Link International Festival in Wales, and has co-directed three workshops of Signing the Bard – Romeo and Juliet. She spearheaded The Africa Project: Dance with Us, Not with AIDS and was co-creator/co-director of Romeo and Juliet, Medida Por Medida (Measure for Measure), A Tempestade and Sonho Nocturno – Dream at Night and is very excited about SLC’s continued partnership with Montes Namuli in Mozambique.
Kennedy has been Head of the Voice at the Humber College Theatre School for the past ten years where she also taught Shakespeare. She is the creator and coordinator of the Summer Shakespeare Intensive. She spent 3 seasons at the Stratford Festival of Canada as a Voice Coach where she had the privilege to apprentice under the guidance of Janine Pearson. She has taught for the Education Department in Stratford for 9 years. She is a graduate from the Stratford Conservatory for Classical Theatre Training where she also taught. She is joining the coaching team again this season. Kennedy has taught and given workshops for Native Earth Theatre, Centre for Indigenous Theatre, George Brown Theatre School, Equity Showcase Theatre/Player’s Academy, University of Windsor, York University, Randolph School for the Performing Arts, YPT and the National Voice Intensive.
She coaches for film, television, radio and at theatres around Toronto. In Denver, Colorado, Kennedy interned as assistant to Gary Logan (Head of Voice and Speech) at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts/ National Theater Conservatory. She holds an MFA in Acting, a Diploma in Voice Teacher Training (York University) and a BFA in Acting (University of Windsor).

LILY HU is a student who had a co-op placement with LKTYP.

Alas, my co-op placement has come to an end. After 4 months of a cozy snuggle with the greatest children’s theatre ever, I have no choice but to crawl out of its comforting arms. I had some really memorable moments at the LKTYP theatre.

I remember the first week, where I actually cried reading the Hana’s Suitcase script. One of the reasons why I love theatre is because of the talented playwrights that can tell stories so effectively and leave the reader feeling like something suddenly clicked inside of them.

As a coop student, I had the pleasure of being able to roam around the theatre and poke my head into interesting workspaces. Watching the process of bringing plays to life was really awesome. To be able to see a theatre space go from dull and lifeless, to a stunning visual work of art was quite exciting. The artists at LKTYP are really amazing at what they do. It seems to be that everyone at the theatre is hand selected from the most elite pool of talent or something. They all play such vital roles to making the theatre so worthwhile.

I really do believe that my purpose in life is to be involved in the arts. I may not know exactly what my focus in life will be, but I have a general idea of the things that make me happy, and will continue to seek opportunities that fulfill that desire. As long as I am exposed to creativity, I think I’m going to be just fine.

I wouldn’t change my decision for one second to have done coop at LKTYP. I learned so much about myself, and what I need to do in order to be the greatest me that I can be.

I LOVE LKTYP.

Lily

PS. Dead Mao Five is pretty cool too.

El Numero Uno: How this little piggie came to the stage

EL NUMERO UNO is a community affair, a play of other people’s doing. It’s been an international undertaking from the start, for the people who have made it happen come from all over the world. In both these respects, it’s like DE MAN, a verse play I wrote many years ago, so first I’ll say a bit about DE MAN: A PERFORMANCE POEM.

One Good Friday after church, Fr. Ollie Nickerson, my parish priest and a Jesuit from New England, said to me, “Why don’t you write something for Good Friday?” DE MAN was the thing that I hurried to write when Lent had already begun the next year. I finished a first draft in time for Good Friday and the play was performed as part of the service that day. But if Fr. Ollie hadn’t asked, I’d never have written it, so it was truly a Jah-meri-can creation.

EL NUMERO UNO took a bit longer to come about, but happened in much the same ‘lots-of-people-crossing-borders-to-come-together’ way. Some time in 1994-5, IBBY (the International Board of Books for Young People) asked a gentleman from Holland, a Dutch author and illustrator, Max Velthuijs, to draw a series of illustrations. IBBY sent them to me, (I’d recently moved to Canada), as well as two other storytellers, one Chinese and one African.

“Shuffle these around, put them in any order, and make up your own story,” the organizers said, “then come to our conference and tell that tale to everyone. We’ll show Max’s pictures on the wide screen as you narrate.”

So the three of us did. I named the hero of my story El Numero Uno, and he was a huge hit at the Conference, at which were gathered people from all over the world.

Then some time in about 2001, Vivienne James (originally from Grenada), who succeeded Dr Rita Cox, (originally from Trinidad), as head of the Parkdale branch of the TPL, sent around word that the Young People’s Theatre were looking for treatments. Playwrights would receive funding, if their treatments were selected. I thought of Uno’s story and wrote it up, the treatment was one of those selected, and by 2002, I had written and presented the first draft of EL NUMERO UNO to Pierre Tetrault, a French Canadian who was then Artistic Director.

Folks from all kinds of backgrounds took part in the workshops over the next few years and make up the current cast: First nations, Jamaican heritage, Barbadian heritage, Trinidadian heritage, British born, Asian heritage, along with Canadian folks who hail from Northern, Eastern, Western and mid-Western Canada. Our director was born in Jamaica; our dramaturg is a German/Italian/Polish/British heritage American from Philly.

The playwright is herself of Asian, African, British, Scottish, Haitian and Jewish heritages. (Those are the ones she knows about!)

It’s a big mix-up mix-up, just like the play itself, which uses all kinds of languages – French, Spanish, English, Jamaican creole, Trinidadian creole, Rasta talk – and ‘tiefs’ from many cultural traditions to create the play. It’s “A multifarious mash-up! A cultural conglomeration! A pepperpot of peoples!” as Uno would say. And it’s a fantasy that’s very, very funny.

So do come along and mingle wid de masqueraders between January 31 and February 25, at LKTYP at 165 Front Street. We’re expecting you…


Pam Mordecai’s poems and stories for children have appeared in textbooks and anthologies in Africa, North America, the UK and the Caribbean. Author of five books for children, four collections of poetry – Journey Poem, de man, Certifiable and The True Blue of Islands – a collection of short fiction, Pink Icing, and (with her husband, Martin) a reference work, Culture and Customs of Jamaica, Pam was born in Jamaica, and educated there and in the USA. A former teacher with a PhD in English, she has edited groundbreaking anthologies of Caribbean writing, compiled numerous language arts textbooks and written critical articles on Caribbean literature. She immigrated to Canada in 1994 and is, most famously, Zoey Rita’s grandma.

Once Upon a Time...

From Leslie Arden, composer/playwright of The Princess & the Handmaiden:

It was opening night of LKTYP’s production of The Princess & the Handmaiden, and I was sitting in the audience beside two of the original cast members from…oh my…over twenty-five years ago. It’s been a long journey. I first wrote the musical in 1982, but it was originally a three-hander, with one performer (me) stuck playing the piano most of the time. We toured Ontario schools from January until April for over two decades with my own Children’s Theatre Company, and we survived to tell the tale. Ah, the memories…

I remember one school in which they had to move the piano to the performing area from a classroom far, far away, so, to ease its journey, they greased the wheels. Literally. Throughout the show, every time I depressed the sustain pedal, the piano slipped out from under me and silently rolled away. I constantly had to stop playing and grab it to keep it from rolling across the stage.

In another school they provided an electronic keyboard which boasted a handy transposition button, but every time I played the keyboard louder than mezzo piano the keyboard would launch into a new key. This happened so frequently and so unpredictably throughout the show that eventually we all resorted to simply shouting our lyrics instead of singing, as we never knew when the accompaniment would fly off into unknown territory.

Then there was the school that provided a piano that had a couple of keys that wouldn’t play. No problem, I thought, I can work around those notes. As the show progressed, however, more and more keys disappeared until, by halfway through the show, it sounded like I was playing some sort of percussion instrument, with nothing but wooden clicking and clacking emerging from the piano.

One school provided a tiny, two-octave mini Casio keyboard, upon which they expected me to accompany the show. They couldn’t understand my hesitancy. After all, it came with the added attraction of a pre-programmed rhythm section. Evidently, with just a push of a button, one could effortlessly begin the beguine.

We drove to Ottawa during the infamous ice storm to perform at the Children’s Festival. We had full houses because the theatre was one of the only buildings that still had electricity, and families came to stay warm. I like to think that they also enjoyed the show.

We performed in gyms with no heat, we tap danced on carpets (yes, I’ve been known to tap dance). We were interrupted by school bells, fire drills and p.a. announcements. Kids threw up. They peed themselves, and not necessarily in the humorous scenes. Entire classes arose and left just before the end, so they wouldn’t miss their bus. We drove to venues in snow storms, ice storms and thunderstorms, only to arrive and find no one else there and the show cancelled (yes, it was back in the days before cell phones). And I loved every minute of it.

Today, people ask me why I still choose to work in Children’s Theatre. The answer is simple. It’s the most rewarding work I can do. I cannot count the number of children for whom we were their first theatrical experience. How many behaviorally challenged kids were riveted by our troupe? How many deaf children “heard” our musicals through interpreters signing off to the sides? How many teachers considered our company an inconvenience when we first arrived, and were then utterly charmed and entertained for an hour (after which they would beg us to join them in the teachers’ lounge so they could regale us with stories about their wonderful school and their beloved students)?

I’ve spent twenty-five years entertaining children and young adults with stories set to music. Frankly, it doesn’t get any better than that.

Leslie Arden has written over a dozen musicals, including the critically acclaimed and multi-award winning The House of Martin Guerre and the Chalmers Award winning The Happy Prince. Leslie’s musical adaptation of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, The Boys Are Coming Home, was produced by Chicago’s American Musical Theatre Project in Chicago in August, 2006, and this musical was chosen to be showcased by The National Alliance of Musical Theater in New York City later that same year. Leslie composed the music for Toronto’s Canadian Stage Company’s productions of The Beard of Avon and It’s a Wonderful Life (in which she was also a performer), as well as the Stratford Shakespeare Festival’s 2009 production of Cyrano de Bergerac starring Colm Feore. Leslie’s currently at work on musical adaptations of Moll Flanders and Somewhere in Time.

An Unexpected Experience

From April 25th to April 30th I was in Ankara, Turkey for the 5th annual “Little Ladies, Little Gentlemen International Children’s Theatre Festival.” When I received the notice that the festival was looking to host a Canadian to observe the festival I was so excited. My parents are Turkish and I used to go to Turkey to visit my grandparents, aunt, uncle, and cousin but I haven’t been back in almost 10 years. For a while now I have wanted to go back and couldn’t believe that it would be my work as an arts educator that would eventually take me back to Turkey. I spent a few days in Istanbul before the festival with my family and learning more about my grandparents and great grandparents. I was surprised at how emotional this was for me. I felt very much at home.

Leaving for Ankara was a huge shift from that feeling. I was heading to the unknown. I was suddenly very aware that I hadn’t even spoken to members of the festival committee. I had made all of these plans via email and now here I was on a bus on my way to Ankara for the first time and not entirely sure of what I would find there. Of course, upon my arrival I met people from the festival, checked into the hotel etc. and everything was fine.

My role in the festival was to be an observer which meant seeing the shows and participating in all of the festival events. I had also been asked to give a workshop for children ages 9-11. It was an exciting opportunity but I was nervous; my Turkish is pretty rusty and although I had a translator, so much of how a teacher develops a rapport with their students is in the way we communicate with one another. The morning of my workshop I met a woman, Fatma who is a professor at a university in Istanbul. After chatting with her for a while we discovered that the work we do is very similar. She asked if she could attend my workshop. My response was: “of course. But, if you come, you have to participate and play along with the kids.” She said she was relieved because she always prefers to be an active participant rather than just an observer.

The workshop went really well. Even though there was a language barrier, I felt that the kids and I were able to establish a connection. The workshop showed me that kids are kids. The dynamic was the same as any other workshop. I felt right at home as if I were doing a workshop at LKTYP.

The evening after the workshop, Ahmet from the festival committee approached me to let me know that there were some teachers from Van (Kurdish part of Turkey) that wanted to meet and speak with me. They had come to the festival with a group of teenagers and had performed a play. When I met with them, they asked me (through Ahmet who translated): “how do you teach drama”? I wasn’t sure where to begin. We talked some more about their goals for the students and then with trepidation they asked if I would do another workshop for their students. I was happy to do the workshop and realized that this would be a great opportunity to collaborate with Fatma. I agreed to teach the workshop with Fatma and hoped that she would participate! Fatma was really excited about the idea and the next day we planned our workshop.
At 7:30pm we started the workshop in one of the hotel meeting rooms. It was supposed to be an hour and a half long from 7:30- 9:00pm but 9:00pm came and went. We wrapped up the workshop at 11:00pm. I have never seen a group of teenagers so motivated and excited. They wanted to do another workshop the next night and Fatma and I thought, “why not try and offer them a different kind of experience?” We asked the director/choreographer from a Dutch company attending the festival if he would do a movement workshop for the students the next night. He agreed and luckily I was able to attend that workshop as well.

The whole trip was amazing. Reflecting back over the last few weeks I have realized how special the experience was. I should conclude by thanking my colleagues at LKTYP for being so supportive and filling in for me while I was away. A special thank you to Alexandra Parravano our intern from OISE. She stepped into a leadership role and managed some of our educational events that took place while I was away.

Photo of festival program if interested:http://www.devtiyatro.gov.tr/23nisan/program/oyunlar/atolye_tiyatroileegitim.htm

Karen Gilodo - Education Services Coordinator

My name is...

My name is Caitie Drewery and I have a love affair with theatre. I am a recent grad from Dalhousie University’s Theatre Honors program. Having acquired years of new skills and goals I found myself going back to the place where, as a student, I was first inspired to follow my dream. My volunteer experience at LKTYP has been very positive. It has allowed me to get back to my roots, and re-connect with all the reasons I fell in love with theatre in the first place. It has also helped me become immersed with people who are interested in changing children’s lives through theatre, just like me. I have met some fantastic people, who I look forward to seeing every time I come into the office. I have been given the opportunity to see the shows, and then learn about the sheer complexity of putting the piece on the stage. The curtain, so to speak, has been drawn back for me, and I am given a glimpse of all the inner-workings of the productions. As a volunteer, your work is not only appreciated, but has an impact on you as a person. Working as a volunteer for March Break camp, I realized that my campers came to class to everyday to “hang out” with me and my instructor. They got up early in the morning, and instead of watching t.v., or playing video games, they wanted to hang out with me, because I made their day so much fun. My actions as a volunteer resulted in a week long experience that those kids will take with them into adulthood; and really who could ask for more then that? Those experiences have solidified my interest in children’s education, and I will be applying to teacher’s college in 2010. I know the relationships and knowledge I take from these walls will help me achieve my future career goals. This experience is worth every penny I’m not getting paid!

-Caitie

Magic & Excitement

Connecting with others who share the enjoyment of working with children and the love of theatre, led me to volunteer at Lorraine Kimsa Theatre for Young People. As a child, growing up in Toronto, my family had visited the Young People’s Theatre many times and I remember how much I had valued those experiences. Having returned to Toronto after more than 20 years my sister, who has always been involved in theatre, suggested volunteering. Taking a leave from my job as a kindergarten teacher of 18 years in Hamilton, I was keen to keep myself busy with something I enjoyed. Volunteering this year has meant meeting teachers and students during the week for school shows and on weekends meeting families who have come to enjoy the shows. I have had the opportunity to lead some of the Question and Answer sessions. This is a favourite part after the show where children and educators get a chance to ask the actors questions.
In the spring the Open Doors Toronto event helped me learn more about the building and the history of the neighbourhood. During the summer months assisting with the drama school camps whether with the young enthusiastic professional teachers, in the office working with the creative administrators or helping supervise children during lunch was a lot of fun. It has been a privilege to meet all the professionals at the theatre including production crews, actors, directors, musicians, box office managers, and educators, and to work closely with the front of house manager, Margaret. I have met many volunteers, some who are new to Canada, from Taiwan, Hong Kong, Sri Lanka, and Germany. The theatre has an active Co-op student program and the students who come here are eager young people who are thinking of future careers in theatre. Volunteering has meant having a chance to watch the performances. Whether in the Main Stage theatre or the Studio theatre the shows have been varied and excellent.Each child and adult who attends comes away with a unique experience. Teachers leaving the current show, The Forbidden Phoenix, have marveled at every aspect of the performance. Children leave wanting to learn more about Chinese history in Canada, Peking opera and martial arts. Everyone who comes to the theatre is looking for the magic and the excitement of live theatre. I know I find something magical and exciting every time I am here.

-Marcia