The Commandment

The Commandment

Look what opens this week!

I am so pleased to be a part of this team: The Commandment is opening this Friday at the Hamilton Fringe Festival and I can’t wait!

This solo-show has been a long time coming for my dear friend Phil Rickaby, who has poured his heart and soul into this piece – which I totally admire as a fellow creator. When I wrote Everything But the Cat… he was a great support and resource for me. And now is mixing fact and fiction, past and imaginary in his own one-man show.

When he asked me to be a part of the creative team as AD and help him do social media I jumped at the chance. Here’s the trailer I created for him:

I hope to see you there! Here you can RSVP on the Facebook event and let me know what you thought of it.

Directing?! ME?!

Meet Cute poster for Fringe Festival in TorontoSo a few months back I get a message from Erin Norah Thompson on Facebook: “I have a project I’m interested in having you as a collaborator…” turned out she wanted me to direct one of her scenes in this really neat concept of a show called Meet Cute. The 15 minute script would repeat 3 times but each time it would have a different edge to it: 1. Girl Meets Boy (and stalks him) 2. Boy Meets Girl (and stalks her) and 3. Boy and Girl Meet (and it’s all consensual/romantic).

I got 3! And I played up the awkwardness of meeting someone for the first time complete with muppet arms of excitement and bumbling over what to say (did I just rhyme, omg, they hate me for sure!).

Now you have to remember, I haven’t directed something since Grade 11 Sears Festival! It was God by Woody Allen and I had no idea what I was doing – I just knew I wanted to make the show happen and there was no director so I stepped off the stage to be that person. We ended up winning for Production Design and my days of directing were pretty much over. Granted I have collaborated on projects like my one-woman show and a few things at the museums where I was directing a lot of choices but still an outside eye was needed/had. So you can see why I was nervous to jump into directing. But I’m so glad I did! After sitting with the opening night audience I said “oh yay! no one left!” and I relaxed a little into this new experience of being a part of the stage without being on it. And now I may have a new love and addiction…

So I hope you can check it out! Here are some reviews that may encourage you to see it!

The Mind Reels reviews Meet Cute “Short, sweet, and just about the most perfect little rom-com scene I’ve ever seen presented” (oh hey that’s the scene I directed!)

Mooney on Theatre reviews Meet Cute “A standing ovation later, I heard a couple in the front row exclaim, “That is theatre!” I couldn’t agree more. This show is simply a joy to watch. Meet Cute is a must-see!”

A special thanks to Ada, Erin, Jesse and Ria who welcomed this newb with open muppet arms of excitement. Thanks for making this an amazing experience.

Where have you been?

smashing stigma blanket fort image for mental health event may 29-30

Under a rock. Yup. The month of May has been a rock to which I have been stuck underneath. But I see the light at the end of the the tunnel (please oh please let it not be a train) and I hope to have more awesome things to post about like the WWII epic theatre piece I’m in as a factory worker or the fact that Cranium Cookie just reached 100+ subscribers (I hope you’re one of them!) or that my mental health event Blanket Forts for Mental Health on May 29-30th is JUST about to happen (and it would be awesome if you wanted to join in on the fun from wherever you are in the world or to support and donate to my team!

smashing stigma blanket fort image for mental health event may 29-30

 

So I hope this finds you smiling, I know I am even though I’m still under this rock. I’m also trying my hand at directing a short Fringe show this summer – so I will tell you more about that when I can 😉

 

 

Fringe keeps on giving

I have participated in many Fringe Festivals. I can’t exactly say how many (I think 6? More than five, less than ten…?) But it’s not the shows that I particularly remember, it’s the awesome people that I meet.

Every time I participate in the Fringe Festival I walk away knowing some amazingly talented people. Sometimes I make a friend, sometimes I make a best friend. And a rare time I met a boyfriend 😛 The Fringe Festival is a community – a gathering of like minds – a place where people are passionate about theatre, communication, entertainment, and storytelling. Actors, playwrights, directors, producers, dancers, audience members; everyone gathers to have the best two weeks that summer can provide. It’s tradition! But not only that, all of these people want everyone to do their best to have the best time (at least in my experience) and that’s such a great feeling to be around. It recharges your creative battery. It inspires and it pushes you as an artist, and as an audience member it just makes you feel proud to be a part of this in your hometown.

I have been in shows that got one N rating. I have been in shows that sold out and ones that we had to give tickets away just to have bums in seats. I have been in the Best of Fringe. I have been in the Alley Plays Shed and main stage space at Tarragon. All of this seems to matter and not matter at the same time – because at the end of the Fringe it’s always the people that last.

I would like to take the time to thank those Fringe artists that went beyond the festival and stayed in my life to make it that much richer, that much better for having known them. Some I can say I have known for years, some even a decade! Those artists that met me by chance, by audition, by the whims of The Tent – those that I am happy to call friend – I stop to think “what if” from time to time and think how awful it would be had I not been in that show or not been in that audience. It seems silly to think, but truly, The Fringe has made me some life long friends. It amazes me.

I am happy and proud to be a part of this year’s Fringe as it was the 25th Anniversary but even better, I once again made connections with amazingly talented people at Shakespeare MD through Spur-of-the-moment Theatre Collective. I’m excited for them to continue and to toast them soon, even if it’s a year from now at The Tent and we can say “Remember that time we did Shakespeare in a shed?!” and laugh and reconnect then and there.

This is a long winded post about how wonderful it is to have a community gather and share like this can be. Thanks everyone. I had a blast (again) and I’m burnt out (again!) but once again I’m even excited now for next year.

Cheers, thank you, and all the best to you and yours,

-Adrianna

Fringe Fest: The Doctor Is In

And the Fringe Festival is off and running – and we had a great opening! A “waiting room” full of “patients” for Shakespeare M.D. with Spur-of-the-Moment Shakespeare. Oh, and apparently I’m a badass…

tweetShakespeareMD

Here is our “treatment room” (otherwise known as The Shed for the Alley Plays) and the “prescriptions” our audience members get. Treatments/the show lasts anywhere from 1 minute to 10, it all depends on your diagnosis from our “doctors”. So fun!

Nurse Adri Treatment Room - The Shed Shakespeare M.D. "prescriptions" See you at the Fringe!

Shaking my Speare

After two rehearsals with Spur of the Moment Shakespeare Collective I am happily back on the Bardolator bus – and by that I mean, I’m spouting Shakespeare again!!! (Yes three exclamations for that!)

The last time I did Shakespeare was… yeesh… that long ago. I think at least two years? Really? Huh. See why I used 3 exclamation points? I missed the Bard. Missed him dearly. Sure I got to write a play for Humber River Shakespeare Co. Sonnet Show (which goes up May 24th) but writing and being inspired by Billy Wiggle Stick is much different than acting him out.

Spur (for short) is doing a couple different things with the teams they have collected from auditions. They have us not only doing the Shed Shows @ Fringe Fest, but traveling around doing shows at hospitals, nursing homes, and whomever else wants to have an immersive Shakespearean show. I really dig the Shakespeare-in-Hospitals part – it is kinda the coolest thing. Even cooler than that I got to pick some monologues that I am very excited to explore:

First is Richard III Act 1 Scene 1

Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York;
And all the clouds that lour’d upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;
Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;
Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings,
Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.
Grim-visaged war hath smooth’d his wrinkled front;
And now, instead of mounting barded steeds
To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,
He capers nimbly in a lady’s chamber
To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.
But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks,
Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass;
I, that am rudely stamp’d, and want love’s majesty
To strut before a wanton ambling nymph;
I, that am curtail’d of this fair proportion,
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
Deformed, unfinish’d, sent before my time
Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,
And that so lamely and unfashionable
That dogs bark at me as I halt by them;
Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,
Have no delight to pass away the time,
Unless to spy my shadow in the sun
And descant on mine own deformity:
And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover,
To entertain these fair well-spoken days,
I am determined to prove a villain
And hate the idle pleasures of these days.
Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous,
By drunken prophecies, libels and dreams,
To set my brother Clarence and the king
In deadly hate the one against the other:
And if King Edward be as true and just
As I am subtle, false and treacherous,
This day should Clarence closely be mew’d up,
About a prophecy, which says that ‘G’
Of Edward’s heirs the murderer shall be.
Dive, thoughts, down to my soul: here
Clarence comes.

 

CHILLS. I love that speech! And the allowance to explore it is a gift. So excited!

Next is Queen Margaret when she has to say good-bye to her lover, Suffolk, because King/husband is starting to figure things out so Suffolk needs to leave now or lose his head!

 O, let me entreat thee cease. Give me thy hand,
That I may dew it with my mournful tears;
Nor let the rain of heaven wet this place,
To wash away my woful monuments.
O, could this kiss be printed in thy hand,
That thou mightst think upon these by the seal,
Through whom a thousand sighs are breathed for thee!
So, get thee gone, that I may know my grief;
‘Tis but surmised whiles thou art standing by,
As one that surfeits thinking on a want.
I will repeal thee, or, be well assured,
Adventure to be banished myself:
And banished I am, if but from thee.
Go; speak not to me; even now be gone.
O, go not yet! Even thus two friends condemn’d
Embrace and kiss and take ten thousand leaves,
Loather a hundred times to part than die.
Yet now farewell; and farewell life with thee!

So vulnerable. So honest. She is so much better at her goodbyes than Juliet any day! Speaking of… I have to play Juliet (gasp/shudder/horrors upon horrors/no really) in the balcony scene no less! I know right? But still – Shakes is good times, even if you’re a whiney snively teenager. My other scene ROCKS MY SOCKS. It’s the Iago and Othello scene where Iago says “beware the green-eyed monster” and plants the seed of jealousy in Othello’s mind. *insert maniacal laugh here* I get to play the baddy and I can’t wait.

So in short – I’m excited to be barding it up this summer. I hope you can catch some of this at Fringe or maybe around town. Watch the calendar for where and when. Until then, I’m perfecting my spear wiggling 😉

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