Guest
blogger Kathy Storring
(Second in a series)
You’ve tuned in for the scandal, right?
You’ve tuned in for the scandal, right?
You can already see it: with two
playwrights working head-to-head on a long creative project, there must be
angry tears, slamming doors, scorching arguments. (High drama, so to speak.)
But come on. We’re talking about the
gentle Lea Daniel and the gregarious Gary Kirkham here. These longtime friends
aren’t the combative type — quite the opposite. Gary, who lives in Cambridge,
and Lea, from Kitchener, even collaborate in an interview, tossing ideas back
and forth, nodding as the other speaks:
“It was so easy,” Lea says with a
warm smile when asked about their writing process for their play Pocket
Rocket. “We just talked and talked and talked and talked. And I feel like Gary
knows many of my deepest secrets because you tell things that happened, your
relationship with your parents, your friends, your kids.… We were telling
stories, that’s what we did.”
Gary: “ It wasn’t about how to get
ideas from your head onto the page. It was already out there. So we would just
be transcribing what we just did, what we said. We would actually kind of act
it out, or talk it out.
Gary adds: “Dialogue is such an easy
thing for both of us. So that’s never an issue. We are both oral in that sense.
People say, ‘How do you write dialogue?’ And I say, ‘How do you not?’ ”
Lea: “ We would read it to each
other as we wrote it. And, as you always do, we did a lot of clunky stuff. We
would think, well, we have to get here…. So we would write five times as much
as we needed.”
Gary: “We both have done so much
writing that we know a re-write is always in the park. So you just get it out
there.”
Exploring the ‘middle ground’
It took a few years to finish this
play. Both were busy with their own projects so they had to carve out bits of
time here and there. But when they sat down to write, it just worked — much
like the lasting friendships depicted in Pocket Rocket, which Lost
& Found Theatre premieres April 20.
It helps that they both write with a
similar voice, exploring what Gary describes as “the middle ground of drama and
comedy.”
Pocket Rocket definitely
leans more to the comic side, but its themes are big — the resilience of deep
friendship and the changing Canadian identity. We will talk more about those
themes in the next blog post. For now, let’s find out more about how the play
developed.
The play is set in three time
periods, roughly 14 years apart, starting in 1967, and Lea and Gary were
determined to reflect historical accuracy as much as possible. They invested
many hours of research into subjects like Canada’s Centennial Year, the
galvanizing power of the Terry Fox run for cancer research and, of course,
hockey because the play does revolve around road hockey.
They build this historical
perspective into their extensive backstories for each of their five characters.
The plot possibilities emerged from there.
Through it all — the writing, the
rewriting, the workshops, the tweaks, the rehearsals, more tweaks — one basic
idea carried the day: “You have to trust the play,” Lea says.
Extensive experience
Lea and Gary bring a deep well of
writing talents to the project. Here are just a few of their accomplishments:
Lea Daniel: Lea is the
author of several books and stories for children. For many years, she has also enjoyed
a creative collaboration with partner Alan Daniel, writing and co-illustrating
children's books and magazines and working on a variety of other projects
ranging from advertising to sports posters. Their various honours include a 2004
Mr. Christie’s Book Award for Under a
Prairie Sky; they were also short-listed for a Governor-General Award for Sody
Salleratus. On the theatre side, Lea’s dramatic comedy Naked was produced
by Lost & Found Theatre in 2013. Her play The Heretic has had four
workshops / public readings, including juried selections in Toronto by Foundry
Theatre (2010) and Equity Showcase (Off-The-Page Series, 2003). Lea is also a
member of the Playwrights Guild of Canada and was a founding member of Pat the
Dog Playwrights’ Collective.
Gary Kirkham: This Cambridge
resident is an actor and filmmaker as well as a playwright. His plays include Falling:
A Wake, Pearl Gidley, Queen Milli of Galt, and Rage Against Violence (with Dwight
Storring). He is an artistic associate with the MT Space and has worked in
collaboration with the company on several shows, including Seasons
of Immigration, Body 13, Occupy Spring, and the critically acclaimed The
Last 15 Seconds. He has written several adaptations, including Radio
Leacock, Easter, and Bottom and The Mechanicals. His plays
have been produced by more than 50 theatres and have been translated into
French, Italian and Arabic.
He has worked as a video designer
for My Name Is Dakhel Faraj, Black Spring and The Ashley Smith Project. He is a
member of the local film collective 12 Angry Filmmakers. And he co-runs a
theatre program for ESL high school students in collaboration with MT Space and
the YMCA.
Creative crossovers
As might be expected, there have
been creative crossovers since Lea and Gary’s initial meeting in Writers’ Bloc
in 1998.
Lea says Gary has supported her in
various projects, including being dramaturge for Naked, directing an
Asphalt Jungle Shorts production of her play In the East a Glass of
Water and acting in a workshop for Heretic.
“And,” Lea adds, laughing, “I’ve mostly
supported Gary by going to everything he’s done.”
Next blog April
14: What’s it all about? Tune in next time for the inside
scoop on Pocket Rocket.
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