Theatre students collaborate, learn new skills for ensemble performances

Upper years look back on their degrees in capstone project

For theatre students at U of G, the fourth year ensemble course is like a rocky mountain summit. “You would always hear the upper years talk about ensemble and it always sounded like it was impossible, like, ‘how are we going to get to the end?’” said Beth Jorgensen, a fourth year theatre student and president of the Drama Student Federation, a few minutes before the doors opened for this Saturday’s ensemble performances. “And now here we are.”

“The cool thing about this project in particular is it’s the first time that the students do everything,” said Louise Enns, another member of this semester’s ensemble class, who is graduating after this semester. “Every light, every sound, everything has been entirely conceptualized and executed by the students.”

This year’s ensemble featured two groups of upper year theatre students. Enns’ group chose to perform Jonathan Rand’s Check Please, a series of short scenes about blind dates gone wrong. Jorgensen’s group decided to produce 7 Stories, a longer, more heady philosophical comedy by Canadian Morris Panych. Both groups found themselves pushed to take on new roles in the process of producing. “Last semester was my first time doing lighting, and then from that I was able to be the designer for the lighting for both shows this year,” said Enns. Her group also shared directing responsibilities, directing some scenes collectively, some individually.

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Jorgensen also took on some lighting work in addition to performing the lead role in 7 Stories. “Especially before this course you had some people who were like, ‘I’m only backstage,’ or ‘I’m only an actor.’ But everyone’s on stage, and everyone helped out backstage,” said Jorgensen.

“Acting is such a desperately futile profession,” muses a character, memorably played by Kenny Grenier, in a scene from 7 Stories. The ensemble groups felt some of that futility as opening night approached. “A week before opening night we were still like, ‘Are we really going to pull this off?’” said Enns.

“Then the magic kicks in,” said Jorgensen.

Check Please — Jonathan Rand

The first of the 2018 ensemble groups performed Check Please by American playwright Jonathan Rand, a series of vignettes based on blind dates gone terribly wrong. In one scene, a woman (Caleigh Cargo-Froom) can’t stop screaming about her favourite football team. In another, a man (Seb Hutton) can barely get through a dinner conversation because he is afraid of the water on the table, the food on the menu, and small talk itself.

The costumes and set were full of bright, bold colours and compositions, with compelling atmospheric lighting provided by lights dangling over the tables. The performers clearly enjoyed the hammy roles and goofy sight-gags, and created some strong moments: Samantha Chasty demonstrated great focus as a woman toggling between many personalities (including a goat), and Anne-Marie Walters got lots of laughs as a baby-blue-suited old-timer doddering gradually across a restaurant to meet her much younger date. The tech and performances, however, couldn’t totally compensate for the fact that the play itself was awful, laden with clichés. The group therefore demonstrated capability — I only wish they had chosen a better script.

7 Stories — Morris Panych

The second group performed 7 Stories by Canadian playwright Morris Panych, a quippy philosophical comedy in which a woman (Jorgensen) teeters on a seventh story ledge, working up the courage to jump, and in the meantime discussing various issues with her eccentric neighbours, who keep sticking their heads out of their apartment windows.

The production featured a somewhat more subdued colour palette than Check Please, with a nifty apartment building facade built for the show and costumes adding bright splashes of colour. The significantly more sophisticated script gave the actors something to chew on, and for the most part the cast rose to the challenge. Kenny Grenier, in particular, demonstrated a great sense of subtlety in his line delivery, gestures, and facial expressions, lending his characters a sense of wry, wistful melancholy that suited the script. Adam Newton, Sarah Okello, Hunter Hamilton, and Christina Molenaar all shone in various parts, while Jorgensen, as the woman on the ledge, did an admirable job of holding the whole thing together.