Dundas theatre back with ‘Winter Tales’ on Zoom
Dundas Little Theatre, house dark, goes to stories, caprices and germs of future plays on Zoom to keep hand in
Dundas Little Theatre is back, thank goodness, and right in the middle of an emergency COVID lockdown, just when we needed it most — with “Winter Tales,” but don’t go calling the snitch line.
No, they haven’t gone Shakespeare on us — it’s “Winter Tales,” not “A Winter’s Tale,” (a play incidentally that gave us the immortal stage direction “exit, pursued by bear,” which is how we feel these days, out of it and stalked by a grizzly virus).
They’re not even staging a play per se, but rather safely showing the city an ultrasound, so to speak, of possible new plays in the future, and, hey, if the short stories, star turns and caprices that you see on Zoom this weekend don’t one day make it on to the boards or even into full scripts, at least we’ll have had fun and/or feeling.
“Winter Tales” is the “isolation” brainchild of DLT stalwart Tamara Kamermans, an actress and dramaturge in her own right aside from being a Mohawk College professor.
She, like so many in theatre, is deeply missing “performance,” before an audience. But, she asks herself, where does theatre really begin, and the answer is — with writing, germs of stories, short riffs of performance that can be built into something larger.
“I just think we’re always focusing on performance before a live audience and that’s a big part of it to take out but a lot goes on in the background, including the writing,” says Tamara. “There must be many closeted, frustrated writers out there using the time stuck at home during lockdowns to pour forth. We can tap into that. It’s a safe way to keep creative ideas flowing and to keep people connected to each other and to the (DLT) website.”
While the DLT house is dark, the bills go on, and “Winter Tales,” she says, is a way to generate revenue, when there are no gates. There’s a $5 charge to join the Zoom.
The format is simple. People interested prepare something (short story, vignette, theatrical fragment) to read, act, sing or some combination thereof — seven to eight minutes in duration — and then register for a spot in the lineup, first come first served, by emailing dundaslittletheatre1960@gmail.com.
The first “Winter Tales” Zoom session (“Blue Monday” is the theme) happens this Saturday (Jan. 23), 7 p.m., repeated Sunday at the same time, with about six stories — the whole thing should last a little over an hour. There’ll be another weekend in February (13/14, 7 p.m. both) with the theme “Love Stories”; in March (13/14, 7 p.m. both) with theme “Talent Show”; and in April (17/18, 7 p.m. both) with theme “Rebirth, Regeneration.”
Daryl MacTavish, a program coordinator with Hamilton museums and a costumed tour guide/interpreter at Dundurn Castle and Whitehern, heard about the “Winter Tales” and jumped at the chance to work on his chops. He’ll be doing something called “Henrietta’s Narrow Escape.”
The story is based on a photograph (Daryl collects antique photographs), from around 1910, of a young curly blond-haired boy sitting in a photo studio, with a large chicken beside him, and, incongruously, the little boy is smoking a cigarette.
“It is a challenge, to be liberated from facts,” says Daryl, who tells colourful stories in his museum tour work, bringing the past to life but with scrupulous historical accuracy. (These days, he tells me, museums being closed, his job involves calling brides to tell them their weddings have to be rescheduled — they take it surprisingly well, because, well, they’re not surprised.)
In the case of “Henrietta’s Narrow Escape,” he let his imagination fly, creating a narrative scenario that would explain the curious photograph, as there is nothing known about it now.
“It’s set in Canada, there’s a trip to the Eaton’s Centre, a grandmother,” says Daryl. “But for some reason I slip into a southern accent when I’m reading it. Maybe it’s the Foghorn Leghorn effect; all chickens trigger southern accents. Or maybe the Tennessee Williams family dynamic?”
No, Daryl thinks it might be that he’s been trying to channel some of Mark Twain’s touch around comedic depictions of sometimes difficult people — Twain’s and Lucy Maude Montgomery’s. Daryl’s originally from the Maritimes.
So, if you want to hear a story a boy smoking a cigarette beabout side a big chicken in a photo studio, told possibly with a southern accent and an east coast undertone, there’s only one place to go. His is one of several.