Holiday season approaches and CharPo has much to celebrate, after a mere three weeks. Barbara Ford's column is a huge success, becoming the third most popular feature at the site...on its first day. After Steve Galluccio's hilarious piece, Keir Cutler's fascinating article last week, we got Kate Bligh to share her story on her work. Meanwhile the page view count for the whole site, so early in its life, is phenomenal (even compared with the last hugely successful site with which I was involved, canadiantheatre.com). Best of all, people are talking.
It's party time!
And it's also the time we gather and share stories - in keeping with the season, mostly funny ones. The fact is anyone who has worked in theatre for any length of time has a good story to tell and it often involves embarrassment and self-deprecation.
Let me share one of mine.
A new play of mine was workshopped in English by a bunch of theatre friends who then presented it to the public and press. It wasn't a good play and the critics, notably the late Myron Galloway (who became a friend), tore me various new orifii. Flop-o-rama. However a prominent French-language theatre picked up the rights to the work, got it translated it and mounted it. It might be important to mention the play was a psycho-sexual drama and a good deal of it was performed in the nude by very attractive young actors (in both French and English versions). When it opened in French La Presse destroyed it and the review finished with something like, "The sets were nice, the lighting too and we'd like to review the costumes but there weren't any."
The Christmassy happy ending? The play was sold out for its entire run. (Critics, eh?)
Now it's your turn. Share your theatre story here - the one you tell over turkey to fill the silence following your creepy uncles's racist comment.
Happy holidays!
Sorry I missed that one! :)
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