A to Z Blog Challenge -- U is for my Ushering Staff Days at the Performing Arts Theatre

Welcome to Day 21 of this year's A to Z Blog Challenge where --
   

  

U is for my Ushering Staff Days at the Performing Arts Theatre

A lot of change happened to me in 1991, the year I left a full time retail position to embark on my film degree at Ryerson University.

For the first few months as a student, I wasn't working at a job, which felt both strange and liberating at the same time. However, I'd applied for several part time positions, knowing that my student loans, as well as my fiance's income, would be stretched to the max by my film projects (unlike handing in university papers, when handing in a completed film -- even a short film -- you're looking at many hundreds of dollars later.)

When I got the call from the O'Keefe Centre (now the Sony Centre) to come in for an interview, I couldn't believe what was happening to me. At that time, the O'Keefe was the home theatre for The National Ballet of Canada, and I'd been a passionate devotee of the company since watching several televised performances on CBC when I was growing up in Nova Scotia.

So, not only was I studying at my dream university for my dream degree, but I was working at the very theatre where Mikhail Baryshnikov had made his dash for artistic freedom and the West. I was actually being paid to watch live performances by one of Canada's premiere dance companies.

photo by SimonP

During the eight years I worked there, the theatre went through an initial name change to the Hummingbird Centre, and after I'd left, once again it changed to the Sony Centre. For simplicity's sake, I'll refer to it as the O'Keefe Centre, since that's what it was called for the longest amount of time (for over 30 years.)

Besides the obvious delirium of joy in having the equivalent of an all-access pass to the spring, fall and winter seasons of the ballet, it quickly dawned on me -- as I stood at my post near the exits, yet watching performance after performance following my days of classes at Ryerson -- that all of the design concepts I was learning in university were playing out before my eyes onstage.

Sure, we were learning how to fill the frames of a film -- yet the landscape ratio of the stage was basically the same as the film frame, and all of the spatial design concepts, as well as how to move actors within the frame, how to light them, how to use music to create mood within the soundtrack -- all of it was there in real time during my evening and weekend shifts at the theatre.

Not only was it the home theatre for the ballet, but also for the Canadian Opera Company, as well as many touring musical theatre productions. I inhaled the design concepts of every production, most notably Robert Lepage's 1993 double-bill of one-act operas Bluebeard's Castle and Erwartung, which utilized the same basic design for both stories, yet literally tipping the set usage on its head.

Of course, not every single performance was as important as perhaps working on university papers (still had those) and later on the rough drafts of my first novel manuscripts. Many of that work was done while working the pass door position, where I could hear the live music from onstage, piped into the backstage area (just to the top left of the picture.) This is where we held all the people who were cleared to visit the dressing rooms following the performance, until we received the all-clear from the stage manager (such as Ernie Abugov, shown with me below on my last night at the theatre.)

Besides the ringmaster duties of overseeing each performance, the stage manager's is the voice you hear before the curtain that announces changes to the program, such as, "In tonight's performance, the role of Albrecht will be performed by ..." 

The years I spent at the theatre were amongst my happiest. That's me reading the paper in the green room (oddly, it looks green out in the backstage area to the right, but that's just the florescent lighting.)  My friend Alan was checking out the green room TV while waiting for a group of us to assemble and head out for dinner between shows (when we had a matinee and evening show.)

Not surprisingly, many of the ushers who worked front-of-house at the theatre were pursuing some sort of artistic career, whether in acting, music, dance, film, broadcasting, writing or illustrating. Many of my co-workers from the theatre appeared in my student films as well as worked as crew. You can check out their amazing efforts in my post for R, which was for Ryerson University.

Having spent many hours in the lobby taking tickets over the years, and working the load-ins for the Ballet Boutique which raised money for new productions, when I was telling one of the women who volunteered there that I was working my last week, she arranged for the ballet company dancers to sign my favorite poster for me, along with my friend Jacquie's help.

That's the poster behind me in an early attempt at a selfie (I have short arms. Not really great with the selfies.)

I've remained friends with many of my fellow ushers from theatre days, including the Jacquie I mentioned, who wrote me several letters a week when I first moved from Toronto to Yarmouth, NS to help my mom keep an eye out for my grandma, who was beginning to need that in 1999. Those letters were like water for a desert-island survivor, which is what I felt like in that first year away from my beloved city of Toronto. Thank you, Jacquie!

That's me doing a kick line with Jacquie (in pink) along with my former House Manager Charlene at left and usher Marg Goodwin at right. This was on one of my trips back to Toronto from Nova Scotia, and lo and behold -- who should be performing at my old theatre than The Rockettes! They were on my bucket list, big time. I could not believe my luck. Thanks, Jacquie, for the comp ticket to the dress rehearsal.

My friend Alan and his wife Marianne (also a former usher with us) met up with my husband Brad and me on one of their trips Down East -- this one was days before 2003's Hurricane Juan hit Halifax. Good timing!

In the small-world category, Brad also worked at the theatre for several years, during the day in the mail room.

This shot was taken during a Christmas-in-Toronto trip in 2010.

So many wonderful years together. So many fabulous conversations during our breaks at the theatre -- often deeply discussing the art we were watching / working on / trying to figure out. So much laughter during after-the-show get-togethers at each other's apartments, or at the nearby restaurants where my friends went instead of bars or pubs because I couldn't stand the smoke. Eternally grateful for that, guys!

Thanks to Facebook, I'm in contact with quite a few of my theatre peeps these days. I believe Marg is trying to organize a reunion this summer. If anyone is interested, look her up on Facebook. I won't be able to make it to Toronto this summer, but hopefully, next time! 

5 on Friday - Set 79

Travis at Trav's Thoughts invites everyone to lay down a short set of music that takes their fancies for his 5 on Friday meme.

Anyone for a Night at the Opera?

Many of you will recall that I once worked at a performing arts theatre in Toronto for nearly a decade, mainly because I'm a ballet freak and it was a way to watch all the ballet I could stand - which is A LOT.

But the theatre was also home to The Canadian Opera Company, and over the years I had the intense pleasure of experiencing 24 opera seasons over an 8-year period.

These pieces are some of the ones I've enjoyed most - although we never had a Mozart opera performed at our theatre, because the late conductor and artistic director Richard Bradshaw wouldn't stage Mozart in our not-intimate-enough theatre.


1 - Quando m'en vo / Musetta's Waltz from Puccini's La Boheme - Anna Netrebko

Musetta, the secondary female character, saucily antagonizes a potential love interest.





2 - Queen of the Night from Mozart's The Magic Flute - Rita Streich

The Queen of the Night threatens her daughter with disownment if she does not kill her enemy.

CLICK HERE to listen to the aria



3 - Les tringles des sistres tintaient / Gypsy song from Bizet's Carmen - Agnes Baltsa

Carmen and the other gypsies celebrate their untamed culture at Lillas Pastia's inn, in the presence of military officers.



4 - E lucevan le stelle / How the stars shine from Puccini's Tosca - Plácido Domingo

Painter Mario Cavaradossi contemplates the heightened sweetness of life as he is about to lose it, living through his final night before execution.



5 - Nessun dorma / None shall sleep from Puccini's Turandot - Luciano Pavarotti

This is the Prince's secret confidence that he alone will be the only man who will win - not only the unyielding Princess's hand in marriage - but her heart, as well.

Wordless Wednesday - 14

Photo by Michael Cooper

Richard Bradshaw 1944 - 2007

"I never allowed myself to disbelieve," Richard Bradshaw remarked on the eve of the opening of the Opera House in Toronto last September.

He called his relentless ambition to move the Canadian Opera Company out of its prior home venue at the Hummingbird Centre to its proper home in the new Four Seasons Centre his 'Thirty Years' War'. Colleagues and friends describe him as 'a genuine titan, 'fiercely proud', 'tenacious and passionate'. Elaine Calder, President of the Oregon Symphony in Portland, Oregon describes Bradshaw as 'avid for life. He was funny. He was hugely intelligent. He was interested in a range of things beyond music.'

As an usher at the former O'Keefe Centre, now the Hummingbird Centre in Toronto for eight years, I was privileged to work with Mr. Bradshaw whenever the Canadian Opera Company performed at our theatre. Opera performers, management and patrons lived up to their diva status on many and numerous occasions. But the conductor/artistic director never displayed any of that sort of behaviour. Not even to Front of House staff like myself, who was obliged to ask him to show his pass over and over again.

He often stopped to chat with me, and was the epitome of erudite urbanity. He always, always had a twinkle in his eye, regardless of what financial and artistic burdens he carried on his shoulders. He dressed in hip, casual style that never reflected his age, since he plunged forward into life with the gusto of the truly young-at-heart.

"Most companies rely on a regular diet of popular operas to bring in the crowds," writes John Terauds for the Toronto Star. "But Bradshaw was convinced that, if they were presented well and performed convincingly, a general audience would come to appreciate even the most challenging works in the repertoire.

Even that bold undertaking proved true.

A couple of years before he was officially named the company's artistic director, Bradshaw conducted while Robert Lepage directed a 20th-century double bill of Bela Bartok's Bluebeard's Castle and Arnold Schoenberg's Erwartung in 1993. Torontonians loved it, as did audiences in New York, Australia and Scotland, where the touring COC won the Edinburgh Festival's top prize."

I worked those shows during this production, and it had a huge effect on me as far as understanding the role of design in a production, how it serves the story/performance.

"Bradshaw was hailed for both his accomplishment in bringing Wagner's Ring Cycle to the stage and his conducting.

'I've never heard such a range of hues and intensities from this orchestra, or a more deeply grounded bass. The famous 163-bar opening elaboration on an E-flat major chord felt like the tuning of the building itself,' Globe and Mail critic Robert Everett-Green wrote." - CBC.ca Arts

"He always treated me with tremendous, wonderful kindness and respect," says Canadian Baritone John Fanning.

This piece was published in the Globe and Mail Thursday, December 28, 2006:

"June 16, 2006. Baton in hand, Richard Bradshaw stands on the podium. Before him sit the 70-odd members of the Canadian Opera Company orchestra, playing the death scene from Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov. Behind him, in the auditorium, an invited audience of COC friends and patrons come to celebrate an evening many thought would never arrive: the imminent opening of Toronto's $181-million Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts.

For Mr. Bradshaw, the COC's general director, this is the consummate moment. Rendered all the more meaningful by the power of the music, it's the culmination of an impossible decade. Of lobbying, schmoozing, fundraising, pleading, cajoling, squeezing, begging and, yes, praying -- what Mr. Bradshaw has famously referred to as the Thirty Years War.

When the piece concludes, he rushes off stage, overcome, brushing past well-wishers, tears welling in his eyes.

That was a pretty amazing experience," he says now. "You really had to hold on."

But one must be careful of such emotional surrenders, he adds. Armed with an amusing quip or anecdote for every occasion, Mr. Bradshaw remembers what the British director John Dexter once said: "If you weep, they won't." They, as in the audience.

No worries on that score. Far from weeping, it's been a ringing chorus of bravo, bravissimo, maestro." - Michael Posner