Direction helps expand artistic tool kit
Experience made me a better actor, Johnson- Diamond says
During one of the first rehearsals of Men in Bondage, director Glenda Stirling had a task for Karen JohnsonDiamond.
Johnson- Diamond was the assistant director, part of her season as the RBC Emerging Director’s Program, spent assisting directors on every show produced at Lunchbox Theatre.
Basically, the RBC Director’s Program is an apprenticeship that’s a little bit look and learn, although for Dads in Bondage, a musical about new dads, Stirling was asking a bit more.
“She’s like OK Karen, you’re the assistant director,” says JohnsonDiamond. “Choreograph that number!
“And,” she says, “I’ve never choreographed a musical number before ( in my life).
“So ( what do you say? I said) — OK!”
Johnson- Diamond went ahead and choreographed the scene — and in the process, added to her directorial tool kit.
Now, Johnson- Diamond — one of Calgary’s busiest actors as a longtime cast member of the improvised comedy soap, Dirty Laundry, among many other roles — has taken as many of those tools as she can and put them to use on Ted Atherton’s Time Present, which runs Thursday through Saturday at Lunchbox.
This director’s showcase comes with a bonus: the drama also happens to be a world premiere.
Time Present is a romantic drama about an atomic scientist named David, who devises an unusual game to play with his lover Serena.
“I am so not a science person,” Johnson- Diamond says, “but I am completely a romance person, and Ted Atherton has written this beautiful romantic science play for non- science people.
“I don’t get it,” she says, “but I love it.”
As far as learning the rudiments of stage directing — or, for that matter, stage writing — there is a convincing case, demonstrated by both Johnson- Diamond and Atherton, that the best apprenticeship of them all is to act.
“I feel like some things ( about directing) have come easier than I thought they would,” JohnsonDiamond says.
“( There are times when I think), I don’t know about this part ( of directing),” she says, “and then I realize, yeah, of course I do — I just have to flip it around and think about myself on the boards instead of behind ( them) and I know exactly what has to happen ( next).”
For Atherton, a busy and popular TV and film actor based out of Toronto ( Theatre Calgary audiences may remember him from The Sum of Us, way back in 1991- 92), he’s learned dramatic structure by channelling so much of it over the years.
“I’ve had a lot of dramatic writing go through my mouth I guess,” he says. “And I’ve come to the conclusion that I like plays that are happening in time and space.
“Plays are made up not of words,” he says, “but of actions.
“So it’s about actions,” he adds, “hopefully in conflict, that tell some kind of story.”
As far as whether or not directing will ever take over from acting? Johnson- Diamond says the jury is still out.
“Someone said ( to me), you’re transitioning!” she says, “And I said, no I’m not! I’m expanding! I’m spreading!
“You know what?” she says. “I would have said before I did this project that acting will still be my first love, but it’s looking neck and neck right now.
“It’s a week before this thing is over,” she says, “and I’m already so sad that it’s over.
“And,” she adds, “I’m learning so much by directing. I think the reverse happens too — I can make myself a better actor by being on this side of the table.
“I would never give up acting,” she says. “You couldn’t poke me with a hot stick — but the fact I can have something else in the theatre world that I can do just makes my ( theatrical) life immensely better.”