Wednesday night I had the opportunity to check out GraveYard Shift Theatre’s production of Frank McGuinnness’ play Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me. The production was directed by Wendi Smallwood and features performances by Ryan Patrick Walsh, George Robertson and Ross Moore.

I was very excited to see this show as I’m a huge a fan of McGuiness’ work, having read much of it and had the opportunity to perform in a play or two written by this Irish writer. McGuinness ‘ name belongs in the same breath as Stoppard, Churchill, LaBute and others. His work is thoughtful, intelligent and incredibly well penned.

The History

The play surrounds the capture of an American (Moore), an Irishman (Walsh) and an Englishman (Robertson) in Lebanon. Lebanon first broke into the consciousness of the world in 1958 during what’s known as the 1958 Lebanon Crisis.  The threat of civil war between Maronite Christians and Muslims prompted countries like the United States to place 17,000 troops on the ground in the region to try and still tensions. British troops were also among those with feet on the ground inside Lebanon to oversee the withdrawal of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO).

These events in 1958 shaped the attitudes people in Lebanon had towards foreign involvement in political matters in the region. These troops were not welcome, for the most part. In fact, Russia threatened the use of nuclear weapons if there was even a hint of American involvement. The region has long been a flashpoint of political and military unrest. Another civil war erupted in 1975, and tensions escalated further in the mid eighties when Israel invaded to seek the removal of the PLO.

The PLO are the captors in this play. We never see them. They are hidden. Nameless. Faceless. But ever present.

Let’s Get Technical

The play opens with lights up in a room lined with bombed out cinder blocks and mortar. This may be the most elaborate set I’ve seen in the basement theatre, however, that’s not a hard thing to do for those who have any experience in that space. The set, designed by Liam Small, works well. In my mind, I would have liked to see things a little more cramped and confined, however, that’s just being nit picky.

Two little niggly bits stuck out to me regarding the set and the props. The beds and sheets were perfectly dirtied. They looked disgusting in fact. However, the chains were shiny and glimmered in the light. Because it is such a sparsely staged show, it really stood out to me. Also, plastic water bottles? Canteens may have been more appropriate.

The sound, designed by Ed Tanasychuk, was great. The sliding of metal doors, dripping of water, mumblings of captors – it all worked very well and really set the appropriate tone for the show. I will say that the dance recital going on upstairs threw me off from time to time. But, that’s not Ed’s fault, that’s the fault of the centre. Sound proofing, people: it’s the way of the future.

The lighting design, by Lawrence Glover, worked very well. There were some lovely tableau’s established through the use of the light. The light is used to show mood, emotion and in one particular instance – the passage of time.

The Captured

George Robertson’s portrayal of Michael Watters is intelligent, informed and at times effortless. There are points in the more emotionally driven moments of the story where Robertson seems less sure of himself, however they are brief and few and far between. His dry wit and often times soft delivery are a stark contrast to his Irish counterpart. There is a lovely scene whereby Robertson and Walsh are flying in an imaginary car over their homeland in the cell, Robertson acting almost as a tour guide or flight attendant. It was quite lovely.

Ryan Patrick Walsh as Edward Sherridan provides the comedic relief in this darkened cell. The humour is at times jarring and makes the audience wonder if it’s genuine or if he’s teetering into madness. Walsh shows moments of tremendous range. However, at times he appears to “o’erstep the modesty of nature” in his delivery and it ventures into the arena of the overdone. An Irish accent is tough to pull off; at points during this production, Walsh does quite well. The accent fades in and out periodically, but in a play this long, it’s tough sledding to maintain its consistency. All in all, Walsh fulfilled his role admirably as the comedic foil in the concrete cell.

Ross Moore delivered, in my mind, his best performance to date. Informed, grounded and beautifully thought out, Moore’s portrayal of Adam Canning is quite lovely. We never, for a minute, thought he was somewhere other than at the hands of captors in Lebanon. I’ve seen Moore perform several times and the growth and maturity he showed during this production is a testament to the work he’s put in over the years. There is a scene where he is lying in the fetal position consoling himself that is just heartbreaking. Kudos.

So, what’s the problem Dave? God, you’re picky.

There are a lot of good things happening here. However, at times I really felt that the actors were not gelling. Particularly when there were three on stage at the same time. When there were two, it seemed to be fine. But once another character is introduced it seemed like they weren’t all in the same play. At times it appeared actors weren’t listening to one another. A character would speak, and the intended person on the other end would be staring off into space. I’m not sure why. Or what that served – but in a play this long, that’s focus is on the communication between three men in a cell, it pays to listen.

Conclusion

Bottom line. Nothing is perfect. There are some great elements to this production. There are some not-so-great elements. But all in all the cast and crew found a way to tell a story worth telling. The show came in at two hours and fifteen minutes without an interval on opening night. The show is at the Barbara Barrett Theatre at the Arts and Culture Centre. Showtime is at 8pm and runs until Sunday April 21^st. Tickets are $25 and are available at the door or on the Arts and Culture Centre’s website.

It looks like Cinema Politica now has a St. John’s chapter.

Cool.

Cinema Politica is Montreal-based organization with chapters all over the world that host free screenings of independent political documentaries. Cinema Politica St. John’s, in collaboration with MUN’s Department of Sociology, is screening “Surviving Progress,” a doc inspired by Ronald Wright’s best-selling book, “A Short History of Progress.” The film looks at our current perception of “progress” and how it impacts of our economic system, overconsumption and wealth distributions. Here is the trailer:

“Surviving Progress” was directed by Mathieu Roy and Harold Crooks and produced by Daniel Louis, Denise Robert, and Gerry Flahive.

You can catch it on Tuesday, April 16th, at MUN, in Arts A1046. Here’s the Cinema Politica St. John’s Facebok page and a blog post about the screening. And here’s to many more screenings.

If you’re a film lover in St. John’s*, you have no doubt bemoaned the lack of cinema options here. For a while, it looked like the old CBC building on Duckworth might be restored to be the theatre it once was, but it’s now being rebuilt as a condominium complex.

Your options aren’t limited to Jack Reacher, though. And it looks like they’re getting better.

First, there’s always the MUN Cinema Series. Every Thursday, you can head to da mall to catch indie films like Amour, Moonrise Kingdom and Stories We Tell.

But lately…. well, is it just me or is Empire Theatres showing better movies?

Hear me out: Cloud Atlas and The Master (for better of for worse) were here. Beat Down screened there, and so did People of a Feather.

And now The Disappeared is coming.

The Disappeared is a Canadian indie film written and directed by Nova Scotia-based author Shandi Mitchell. It’s about six men stranded in two dories who have to paddle hundreds of miles to get back to shore. It screened to a capacity crowd at the Hall during last year’s St. John’s International Women’s Film Festival and won a bunch of awards since. Shawn Doyle, the film’s Newfoundland and Labrador-born star, even won an ACTRA Award for Outstanding Male Performance for his role in the film.

The Disappeared opens at Empire on April 19th for a two-week run. Doyle will be at the Opening Night screening and Angela Antle will host a question and answer session with him after the film is over. Here is the Facebook event.

I’ve tried a few times to get someone from Empire Theatres on the phone to talk about whether or not there’s a conscious decision to show more independent films, but to no avail.

What do you guys think? Is Empire Theatres stepping it up?

*If you’re a film lover outside of St. John’s, Films On The Go will be bringing you some of the best short films from last year’s festival once again this year. Corner Brook, Norris Point, Gander and Twillingate are first on the list and they’ll be graced with films like Elsa Morena’s Winners, Jordan Canning’s Seconds, and Stephen Dunn’s Life Doesn’t Frighten Me.

Don’t believe me? Ask Jana Gillis. Actually, let me ask her for you.

Last spring, Jana did the first-ever FRAMED West filmmaking camp at Grenfell, where she was a theatre student. FRAMED is a film education program that offers filmmaking camps and workshops to youth. FRAMED West was a six-day, learn-it-all crash course in making a short film, led by Jackie Hynes, open to Grenfell students. Jana wrote a script for a film called Must Be A Zombie Apocalypse and the students brought that script to life (so to speak), from
workshops in make-up and set protocol to hands-on editing.

Well, Must be A Zombie Apocalypse was so good, it screened at a few film festivals including Hal-Con. It’s even screening at the Halifax Independent Filmmakers Festival next week.

Jana has since moved to St. John’s and taken the film community here by storm: if there was a film shot here this year, she was probably on the crew.

Since we’re about to bring FRAMED West back to Grenfell and offer a clutch of lucky students the opportunity to learn how to make a film (something I’ve just recently learned how to do, and it isn’t easy. Pro tip: when film people talk about “sinking” audio, they’re actually saying “synching.”) I caught up with Jana to talk about her experiences with FRAMED West and how they helped get her career off to an impressive start.

So, you participated in last year’s FRAMED West camp. How was it?
It was amazing. I come from theatre background so I hadn’t done a lot of film before and it just seemed like a fun thing to do. That was the first screenplay I ever wrote – I had written a lot of plays before but actually getting to see my script turned into a short film and be involved in the process every step of the way was pretty awesome.

What kind of film background did you have going into the camp?
At Grenfell we did an acting for camera class. Peter Buckle, who worked on the FRAMED West camp with us, is also kind of a production teacher — he and Nancy Beatty were teaching the acting and how to audition and things like that, and Peter would teach us a bit of the production. So we would take turns being in the scene and also be camera assistant and lighting assistant.

Do you think someone without any experience at all could do it?
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah!

How did you feel about film before you went into FRAMED West?
It was something that I always wanted to try. In theatre school, people always try to tell you the differences between theatre and film but you don’t really understand it until you actually get in there and try acting for film. I watched a lot of TV and a lot of movies, but once you get in there and are doing it, you can never watch something like a normal person ever again, which is awesome, because you get to see how much work goes into every single frame and how many people have to come together to make it happen.

You’ve since moved to St. Johns and you’re really involved in the community here now — you’re working with TEDx, right?
Yep!

What else are you working on here?
I just finished stage managing, but in regards to film, I was a production assistant a pilot called “Slattery Street Crockers.” I also did some script supervising on a First Time Filmmaker film at NIFCO, and I took the intro courses at NIFCO as well. Everyone that I met in the workshop and that I met when I came here and started volunteering with the St. John’s International Women’s Film Festival, I’ve worked on various different projects with them. The film industry here is very willing to take on people and train them, but I definitely would not have even really thought about being able to anything like this before I did that FRAMED workshop, though.

Here’s the zombie FRAMED West crew from last year. Want to get yourself in a similar state? FRAMED West is offering a six-day filmmaking camp to any and all Grenfell students from April 28 to May 3. No film experience necessary. Students will learn how to break down a script, operate a camera, light a scene, act for camera, and edit a film. And then some. Registration deadline is April 15th. Email Jackie Hynes at jackie@womensfilmfestival.com for more information or to sign up. There is a $25 fee.

FRAMED West is presented by The St. John’s International Women’s Film Festival, the Newfoundland and Labrador Film Development Corporation, CONA and Sir Wilfred Grenfelj College. For more information, click here.

Here a few of the great things going on in the Happy Land of Interwebzia today in celebration of International Women’s Day.

- Easily my most favourite thing so far, The Herat International Women’s Film Festival is Afghanistan’s first-ever women’s film festival, and they lit up their screens for the first time yesterday. Amazing. Read more here.

- The NFB has all kinds of great stuff up on their site. First, you can watch Status Quo? The Unfinished Business of Feminism in Canada, a great doc that made one of the final cuts for programming in last year’s Festival. Then you can read this great blog post about some of the NFB’s Canadian female film pioneers. And then be sure to check out two animated shorts from Andrea Dormfan (OMG, we love her), Big Mouth, and Flawed.

- The #SheDocs Online Film Festival, running from March 1 to March 31, is screening docs online about women and girls taking names.

- The Tribeca Film Festival announced their program and it is full of films that were written or directed by women. Melissa Silverstein over at Women and Hollywood gives Beat Down gets big ups from the Portland news outlet, Oregon Live, after its screening at the Portland Oregon Women’s Film Festival.

- This infographic about women in Canadian politics and media is super interesting.

- Oh, and the film community of St. John’s got a fist bump re: its awesome support of the SJIWFF and Midnight’s Children last time at Prime Time in Ottawa. Thanks, Elsa, for the heads up via Twitter, and thanks to you all for all the top-notch support.