PWAC Victoria: Sid Tafler, Writing Sample

The Reading Room

Fringe from the Inside

by Sid Tafler © 1998

This is a first-person account of writing and producing a play for the Victoria Fringe Festival. A version of this article was published in Monday Magazine, Aug. 27, 1998.

Actor: "I'd like your opinion of my play."
Critic: "It's worthless."
Actor: "I know, but I'd like it anyway."

The Fringe Festival. When: 10 frantic days every year, last few days of August, first week of September. Where: A half-dozen mostly cramped and noisy impromptu theatres in downtown Victoria. Why: Let's leave the tough questions for the end.

I've been on every side of the Fringe every year since the first festival back in 1986--editor, reporter, reviewer and sponsor, persistent audience member, both ticket-paying and "comped." Last year, I chose the one side I'd never tried--the inside. I wrote, produced and bit a hundred fingernails over Ghost on the Road, a three-scene, one-act play I coaxed through conception and birth in nine laborious months.

I'll admit right off the bat, when I got into this, I knew nothing about writing a play. I've seen over a hundred plays in my time, but that's like saying I've seen a hundred wrist watches--doesn't mean I can make one.

Unlike anything else I've written, a play is a collaboration. At least that's how it's fashioned in the playwright's workshop run by Charles Tidler, my long-time friend, fellow-sufferer of the inevitable indignities writers endure, and patient insightful teacher and guide to the intricacies of dramatic writing.

With 10 other writers as my critics and collaborators, I began writing a piece about a young man, lost and confused, trying to find his father and win back his wife and daughter at the same time. But even before I started writing Ghost on the Road, I'd given Intrepid Theatre, producers of the Fringe, $428 for my fee to enter the festival in mid-December, the unofficial deadline for Fringe entries. Not one word on paper, no actors, no theatre company--but I was committed to mounting a show. Typical Fringe production, I'm told.

My first stroke of luck fell out of the sky when Lesley Preston, another friend and an accomplished director and actor, offered to direct my play. This was a big leap forward. I now had someone competent who could bring my words to life on stage--something I knew even less about than writing a play.

We held an open audition and I took careful notes on all the actors--and walked out bewildered about who delivered their lines better or worse. In the parking lot, Lesley reeled off the names of the three actors she'd chosen: Pete Marlowe, a dark, brooding, linguini-thin writer and construction worker--who lived in one room with a hotplate behind a steel door in one of Victoria's infamous flophouses--would play bar-brawling fisherman Wills Rowlan, the lead role. Cliff Syringe, glass-bald, bearded, tattooed, silver-toothed punk rocker and liquor store employee, a self-professed male lesbian who performs his music in a dress, would play Doug Napier, Wills's purported father. And Liz Elves, red-headed, beautiful, tall, slender, an electrifying actor and a real sweetheart, would play Ellen Rowlan, Wills's estranged wife, tragically caught in an emotional vice between Wills and another man. (Now aren't you sorry you missed this play?)

So what did I think, Lesley asked. I stammered, cocked my head, thought for a moment--and then had to agree: she'd chosen the cast with straight-arrow perfection.

Lesley and the actors rehearsed. On hot summer Sundays when everyone else was at the beach or barbecue, they were in the sky-lit greenhouse of a community hall lent us by the Fairfield Community Association. ("Just one more time," I remember her saying more than one more time, while I served ice water and snacks, for lack of anything else to do.)

My role in the creative process at rehearsals unfolded as cheerleader and occasional word-tweaker, nothing much more. So I took to my off-stage duty as producer, trying to match the energy and commitment the actors and director were bringing to the play. And producer, with the Fringe organizers handling most of the venue details, I assumed, meant promoter.

I wrote and printed press releases, flyers, posters and programs, shot and processed publicity photos, and hounded the media outlets in this town at every turn. And then I sat back and harvested the crop of radio spots, previews, briefs, features, and reviews in the press. And once again, my long-held theory that the media can't get it right was confirmed.

The crop was, often as not, green, blemished, or overripe. Accuracy, that standard of old-fashioned journalism, apparently went out with the black Underwood typewriter. The Victoria News reported Lesley Preston would play Ellen Napier. No--that was Liz Elves. Island Parent invented their own spelling of Rowlan--Roland--and magically changed Wills's daughter into a son. The Times Colonist said I named the lead character after Prince William, son of Charles and Diana. The truth was as I told them--we discovered the connection to the future king, whose nickname is Wills, months after I wrote the play.

Why look a gift horse in the mouth, you ask? Well, for one thing, for all my promoting, I believe anyone who feeds material to the media is bearing the gift--not the other way around. And it's up to the writers and editors at the other end to get the details right.

And what about the other old saw, that any publicity is good publicity? Well, judge for yourself. Waiting in line to see a satirical show from Toronto, I bumped into Adrian Chamberlain, chief reviewer for the TC and therefore chief arbiter of theatre in this town. He feigned interest in Ghost ("How's the play going?")--I was a fellow journalist testing my mettle in a new arena. But then he gave his indifference away--said he didn't think he had enough time to see it. Not enough time, I thought. This guy's time is his own! Sure enough, Ghost was never reviewed in the TC. "Maybe he did you a favour," a friend said, suggesting there really can be bad publicity.

Perhaps. The reviews we did get, in the Victoria News and Monday, were generally fair--critical, tough-minded, occasionally charitable. The News's Cindy E. Harnett liked everything about the play but me--the script needed editing, she said. Fair enough. She gave the play three stars out of five. Monday's Ross Crockford gave us two and a half, sort of a neither-here-nor-there kind of review. I tried to read his message in code, picking out key words in the order they appeared: "interesting, intriguing, sweet . . . backfire, inconsistencies, out of gas." Well, I guess he liked the beginning of the play, but not the ending.

But the beating we took at the hands of the ink-rats was a flick of the finger compared with the actual thumping my two male actors suffered on opening night. We had a great night--a near full house, half the seats taken by giddily enthusiastic friends and supporters. Then a ripping party after the show, hosted by Café Mexico.

Then half our crew went off to the Fringe Club, to continue the celebrations. My wife Jen and I and the other half hopped over to Kaleidoscope Theatre, wings on our heels, to catch one of our favourite troupes, Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie.

On the other side of town, after the Fringe Club closed, Cliff and Pete and a few friends were wandering up View Street, headed home. Pete broke a cardinal rule of downtown Victoria after dark: if you see a man shouting angrily in the street, don't stop--walk away, fast. But Pete sidled over to see if he could help. Sure. He was immediately attacked by the man and his partner, a couple of thugs looking for fresh meat to pound.

Cliff handed off his glasses and waded in to help Pete. The two brutes, well-schooled in martial arts, turned on Cliff, knocked him down and began punching and kicking him. The cops pulled up in minutes and broke it up. By this time Cliff was thoroughly battered on the head, chest and neck. This is such routine fare in downtown Victoria, the police didn't even take down names. The aggressors babbled about being outnumbered and the cops just told everyone to go home.

In the play, as you lucky folks who saw it know, Pete's character shows up in Scene One with an eye-patch, fresh from a brawl. Cliff's character chides him and insists you can always talk your way out of a fight. So now we have living proof of life imitating art--with its own morbid twist on events just to keep us confused. Next time I write a play, I vowed, my characters will have lots of wild sex and win the lottery.

I visit Cliff to see if he's okay and then--ever the promoter--ask him if I can call the Times Colonist. He's bruised, shaken, black-eyed, but still in one piece, ready to do the next show. He okays the TC story, as does Pete, who's hardly hurt at all--he's so thin the thugs probably missed him.

It's a Saturday, so it takes me five calls to get through to a TC reporter, despite their extensive phone list in the paper: no answer at Tip Line, no answer at Local News, voice mail--nobody home. Finally, I reach summer reporter Fiona McCaw, her last weekend on the job. She takes notes and writes up the story (accurately, I should add)--the life and art angle is irresistible. Of course, just our luck, that night a famous blonde dies in a car crash in Paris, so our story is bumped to the back of the Sunday paper. On following nights, Cliff's line about backing down from a fight gets a few snickers.

This is more than any actor should have to sacrifice for a play. The show must go on, but the nasty attack just adds to the anxiety level we're all trying to keep under control. That's what theatre is all about, long hours of work and stress running up and down your spine like a mouse trapped under your skin.

As the music for Dave Preston's haunting title song comes up and the audience files in, I can't bear to face them in the house seats. I sit alone in darkness on the steps at the back of the theatre, counting the audience members by ones and twos. Then, when the lights dim and the play begins, I slip down to take my seat next to Jen. I follow every word, every gesture from the actors, every murmur and chuckle from the audience.

Those are my words spoken by those actors, but they've added the human qualities of texture, shape and tone, under the guidance of Lesley's persistent, precise directing. At the end of the final show, Liz tells me she and Pete became the characters on stage--a husband and wife battling over the very soul of their marriage. Writing is lonely work, but this is collaboration, a heady stew of collective cookery that makes your blood run faster, your heart beat in time with these brave and dedicated people who give life to your words on stage. And that's my best answer to the question "Why?"

Sid Tafler
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Last updated: April 23, 2001 http://www.islandnet.com/pwacvic/tafler01.html