Yesterday, while walking the streets of Winnipeg, it was hard to keep my feelings in check. One of the things I have observed about myself is that I’ve become very good at putting on a shrug-and-nod go-with-the-flow demeanour. Everything is cool, everything is easy. I want things, but don’t need them right now. I want whatever you want me to want, because that’s easier than telling you about the terrifying and difficult thing that I really DO want. I feel things, but don’t need to feel them right now.
Today, I am deeply questioning this strategy.
Four and a half months ago, as the National Arts Centre’s first resident acting company in 25 years began rehearsals, the end of the contract felt like a lifetime away. When we opened A Christmas Carol in December, March felt like it would never come. When our first dress rehearsal for Mother Courage in January ran over four hours in length, March felt like it could never come. Yesterday, the abrupt finality of our final two performances struck like an earthquake: we knew it could and would happen; we thought we were prepared. The 4.5-month contract felt like it would last forever, and we acknowledged that it would actually be over in what felt like a moment. But the truth is that when the earth starts to move, you just can’t predict the magnitude of the shock.
The gravity of the last 4.5 months of work is keenly felt now that it is suddenly absent. Yesterday I told one of my colleagues that I have realized near-perfection of a well-nurtured prairie-boy coping technique: packaging up pain, angst, and ecstasy — Sinclair-Ross-style — into little bundles that I shove off into a corner to Deal With Later. And the painful truth (though obvious to any outsider, I’ll warrant) is that this is a ridiculous way to function. If nothing else, this is the lesson I should be taking from my NAC acting company experience.
Today, everything feels new again. I am full of pain as much as I am full of immense pride, hope and optimism. It’s beautiful.
We might end up blaming George, the house ghost at the Manitoba Theatre Centre (MTC). We were all warned about his presence when we arrived at the theatre in Winnipeg. Some people mocked; some people balked; some took him very seriously.
In any case, there have been some shenanigans. During the first week of our run of Mother Courage and Her Children, the iconic wagon — whose chassis is the same one used in the wagon from the NAC production more than 20 years ago — continued to vex us. Twice, something peculiarly and uniquely theatrical happened; twice, the crew at MTC saved the day.
The first instance took place late last week, on stage between scenes three and four. I entered from the stage right side to move a piano downstage and spotted an actor plucking the wagon’s yoke — the long wooden arm that is used to pull and steer the massive beast — up off the floor. The yoke had just snapped off, you see, making it impossible to steer the cart or move it easily. Most theatre companies would have stopped the show, but the MTC crew was so on top of things that I’ll bet nobody in the audience noticed more than a few hiccups. While the play barreled ahead on stage and the acting company tried to stay focused on the task at hand, the backstage team looked at the yoke, realized it wasn’t an immediate fix, and then spontaneously rigged up a rope so that the cart could still be pulled around the stage. Then, during the intermission, they did a quick repair on it and by the top of the second act, the wagon was functioning again as advertised. The performance didn’t miss a beat, and I wonder if anyone even noticed that the cart was pulled around the stage by way of a rope instead of a wooden arm for three whole scenes.
The second instance took place during our Saturday matinee. In the middle of the transition from scene eight to scene nine (in the second act), the front left cart wheel completely seized up. All attempts to pull the cart offstage were met with frustration; the cart bumped into a lighting boom while the cast gamely tried to continue as if nothing had gone horribly wrong. Within a few moments it was clear that the show had to be stopped, and our stage manager used the PA system to tell everyone we’d be pausing for a moment to look at the situation. Ultimately it appears as though the bearings around the axle had seized; a problem severe enough that the show would have to have been stopped altogether, or else continued in a seriously crippled fashion. The audience demonstrated extreme patience and support as we waited to see what could be done. The crew might have been stymied, but they reported a few lucky coincidences: tools that they needed for this kind of fix, but would never have kept on-hand normally, just happened to be out and available backstage right when they were needed. The theatre’s master carpenter just happened to be in the building working on a personal project, and came up to help. And another carpenter just happened to be in the audience; he came backstage as soon as the show was paused and offered his assistance. It took a couple of announcements and then a ten-minute ’second intermission’, but in about 20 minutes the crew had actually managed to get the seized wheel rotating again, and the show was able to continue, with supportive applause from the stalwart crowd.
Did George have anything to do with any of this? We may never know. But after the cart wheel seized, one of our cast members left him an offering of tobacco and other things, and we’ve had smooth sailing with the cart and with the show ever since. You can believe in George or not, but in any case, the company owes a massive debt of gratitude to an incredible crew here in Winnipeg, without whom we may have been unable to finish two of our performances so far.
