Page 8 - 2018 Festival Edition

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The challenge of a new way of working
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CORIOLANUS
ABILITY CHOICE FREEWILL OPPORTUNITY LIBERTY RELEASE REDEMPTION ABILITY CHOICE FREEWILL OPPORTUNITY LIBERTY RELEASE REDEMPTION
TERRY BRIDGE
Sta Reporter
André Sills spent months poring over scripts of Coriolanus, both the original Shakespeare play and the two-and-a- half-hour condensed version that will be performed on one of the Stratford Festival’s stages this season.
Only one word evoked a terrifying response from the Dora Award-winning actor, and it wasn’t anywhere on those pages. That word? Hiatus.
After spending the entire month
of March rehearsing as the lead, and studying the intricacies of Shake- speare’s complex character in his
spare time, Sills said it “was terrifying” knowing their intensive four-week run, concluding with an invited dress, was to be followed by a two-month hiatus.
The pause in the production was due to celebrated Canadian director Robert Lepage, at the helm of a Stratford
Festival production for the first time, leaving for other previously scheduled engagements. He was to return by June to lead the charge towards previews and openings, but Sills was scared to lose momentum or forget vital lessons he learned about the character along the way.
As he attempted to explain how he overcame this challenge, the interview itself was put on a brief hiatus – janito- rial sta politely asked us to relocate from a pair of couches inside the Fes- tival Theatre lobby in order to vacuum the area. After relocating to the more secluded Playwright’s Circle members’ lounge Sills continued, noting the key was to keep active during the break and frequently check back in on his work. He brought a copy of the play with him that cold early April day, covered with hand-written keywords such as “hate of the common,” “warrior,” and “love of the nobility.”
There’s another word Sills recently learned has a di erent meaning to some people: workshop. An initial two-week ground-breaking session was held with some cast and crew in Quebec City
back in March 2017. Sills missed that gathering, as he wasn’t cast by Lepage as the titular character until later that summer, but he was part of a second two-week workshop in La Belle Prov- ince later that fall.
Day one was an eye-opener.
“That one was interesting, because he has his whole Ex Machina team and I guess the way he likes to work is hav- ing all the design pieces present from the beginning so that he can see the thing,” Sills recalled as a vacuum softly hummed in the background.
After reading through the play and having a bit of a discussion, the cast took a break. Then, Lepage and his sta stepped on the gas.
“We come back and all of a sudden people were putting microphones
on me, their crew is putting di erent scenes on their stage and putting me into costume at the same time,” he continued. “I was like, ‘Wait a second, what does this workshop mean?’” He soon realized to Lepage it meant stag- ing, even though they were four months out from rehearsals. Sills admitted he wasn’t quite ready for that at the time – it took him that first week to battle and claw through the script and essentially learn a new way of working.
“It was my own actor beast feeling like you get put on a stage with lights and projections and suits and a micro- phone and you feel like you have to have a finished product already,” he said. “I had to let that go pretty quickly.”
continued on page 9
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THE BEACON HERALD | 2018 FESTIVAL EDITION