First Person: Anna Papadakos - Working Title

Hello, 

Today, I want to discuss “working title” simply because I am fascinated by the term and I think you should be too!

We often see a draft of a piece with a title and nestled quietly next to it usually in parenthesis is - (working title). We live in a universe of “working titles”. Try sitting on an Art’s Council jury and you will know what I mean. And to all and any of us who have written or created a piece of theatre “WORKING TITLE” is an all too familiar expression. How does one characterize this term? 

My questions are plentiful, my answers are few. Does it mean that the title is working itself out or that you have absolutely no clue what your final product will be therefore you cannot name it until you see it? Hence, “working title”. Why don’t we approach the unborn children in the same manner? Generally speaking, outside of certain cultures where grandparent’s names are passed on to children, people do not wait until their baby is born to name it. On the contrary they diligently, at times, select a name and unquestionably slap it on the infant once it comes into the world. The baby then begins to look like its name. Osmosis! Identity is born. 

Sunday Feature: A Space Odyssey

4449 blvd. St-Laurent (Fox Shoes)

photo: Michel Villeneuve

By Anna Papadakos

A semi-fictionalized account of an interview with myself on the eve before New Year’s eve 2010 – 2011

ENTITLED:

SPACE ODYSSEY: Confessions of a Montreal theatre artist (who could have been a rich Real Estate agent in NY) with a proclivity toward both site-specific and site generic theatre

My attraction to site-specific theatre is not an incidental act. I have been enthralled by the beauty and uniqueness of spaces from the time I was a child. While growing up in New York with my father and brother, I remember regularly going through the free weekly “The Pennysaver”, looking for homes, run down farmhouses and industrial buildings to fix up and live in. I was particularly attracted to structures in remote areas of town. I was lucky in that my father, a man with the bug to be constantly on the move didn’t need any coaxing from his little daughter and that we had rather similar tastes…up to a certain point. 

First Person: Anna Papadakos

Dear Montreal Theatre,

The year is coming to a close.  This is the time to reflect, to make promises for what we will both do and will never do again in 2011. Today, I would like to take a pause in the hectic life of a Montreal artist to write about all the English Montreal plays I have not seen.  

Obviously, I would not have made a good critic in 2010 since one has to see the work to critique the work, right? Although, I must admit that at times I have read critiques, of works that I did indeed attend and the reviewer appears to have seen a very different play.