Friday Five: CAT Awards

Not that I want to bang on about Blithe Spirit (okay, so I do), but it has taken up a huge amount of my time and thoughts over the past few months. And we have been nominated for five CAT (Canberra Area Theatre Awards), which is nice.

5 Award Nominations for Blithe Spirit:

1. Best Designer for a play (Andrew Kay)
2. Best Costume Designer for a play (Anna Senior)
3. Technical Achievement (Russell Brown, "ghostly manifestations")
4. Best Actress in a leading role in a play (Emma Wood: Ruth Condomine)
5. Best Production of a play (Canberra Repertory Theatre)

Friday Five: The Name Game

Liz de Totth, Front of House and Paddington Bear

On the day after final night of Blithe Spirit, we hosted a get-together for all cast and crew involved in the production. It was relaxed and casual. I made martinis, tzatziki rolls, and citrus-chicken skewers. We ate, drank, talked, laughed, and played animal charades and the name game, as I know it, or 'celebrity heads' as I also heard it called. Here are some of the people who showed up:

5 Celebrity Heads:

1. Paddington Bear
2. Richard Dawkins
3. Christopher Marlowe
4. Genghis Khan
5. Xena Warrior Princess

Andrew Kay, Set Design and Construction, and Xena Warrior Princess

Friday Five: Opening Night

Edith (Yanina Clifton) and Elvira (Anita Davenport) on our beautiful Blithe Spirit set (Andrew Kay)

Tonight is opening night of Blithe Spirit and there are so many people to thank for helping me bring this fantastic show to the stage. Naturally I am thrilled that Noel Coward wrote this play in the first place, and that Canberra Repertory accepted my submission to direct it. When the curtains open tonight, I'll be thinking of all these folk:

5 things that make our Blithe Spirit great:

1. The set - the team who designed and built this set are phenomenal. What we do looks great on it; and then we wreck it every night and do it all over again the next. Special thanks to Andrew Kay, Russell Brown and everyone involved.
2. The costumes - Anna Senior has designed a range of sublime and ridiculous outfits to bring our characters to life (or death, as it were), more than ably assisted by a team including Jeanette Brown, Anne Kay and a whole band of others. As someone who can barely sew a button back onto a shirt, I am enormously grateful.
3. The technical crew - Jon Pearson on sound and Stephen Still on lights have been brilliant to work with. I said 'Can I have this?' and they said 'How loud/bright do you want it?'. Their designs are subtle and superb, allowing a perfect background to the action without ever threatening to overwhelm it.
4. The stage crew - they're very busy; they have a lot to do, and they do it efficiently, quietly and seamlessly. From putting books in and out of bookcases to making cucumber sandwiches, they do jobs every night, which make the front of stage look as good as it does. And they are overseen by our stage manager Dot Russell, who is one of the calmest, most thorough and delightful people I have ever had the pleasure of knowing.
5. The actors - The best part of being a director is dealing with this wonderful production without ever having to learn the words. The worst is never being able to perform the play myself. I am honoured to have such fabulous people to do it instead, that I don't regret not being up there for an instant. We have all worked so hard to bring this vision to the stage and I know these actors will ensure it is executed exactly as we wanted.

Friday Five: Furniture

A Welsh dresser

For our current production of Blithe Spirit, I have been rootling around in the props department for the necessary furniture. The stage set requires a several tables, desks, chairs, a sofa and a piano. I'm not sure that a piano counts as furniture, but we've got one anyway. 

In attempting to describe exact requirements I have learned that there is a standard size for a writing table, as opposed to an escritoire or a spinnet desk. It has caused me to reflect upon the specifics of furniture in a way that has hitherto passed me by.

5 Favourite Furniture Items:

1. Tallboys and lowboys - chests of drawers to some, but it seems odd to keep a tall boy (or a low boy, or indeed, any kind of boy) in the corner of the room for the purpose of holding one's clothes.
2. Whatnot - a delightful name for a stand used to hold ornamental pieces of china and other 'trifles' (also known as dust-collectors).
3. Welsh Dresser - traditionally a utilitarian wooden piece of furniture with shelves and cupboards used to store and display crockery, but it also puts me in mind of Rhys Ifans' character Spike going out in his 'goddamned underwear' in Notting Hill. 
4. Chabudai - a short-legged table from Japan which has given rise to the term 'flip the chabudai' as in having a strop and flipping over the table.
5. Occasional tables - this is all very well but as a child I used to wonder if they were only occasionally tables, what did they do when they weren't? I liked to imagine them living entirely separate secret lives - much like part-time traffic lights.

Friday Five: Coward Quotes

Lauren Bacall and Noel Coward in Blithe Spirit

As I am directing Blithe Spirit, my mind is currently full of Cowardisms. Here are five of my favourite.

5 Quotes from Blithe Spirit:

1. "You're awfully irritating when you're determined to be witty at all costs." 
2. "It's discouraging to think how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit."
3. "I do think it's interesting how easily people allow themselves to be deceived."
4. "Anybody can write books, but it takes an artist to make a dry martini that's dry enough."
5. "I long ago came to the conclusion that nothing has ever been proved about anything."