It is a partly cloudy Wednesday in Halifax, Nova Scotia and after an epic trip to the grocery store, I sit on the couch in Haligonian actor Rhys Bevan-John’s living room surrounded by three adorable cats, one of which is poised on top of a gigantic fish tank. Bevan-John and I have known one another since he taught me the foundations of acting at Neptune Theatre School in 1997-98 and I, as a tree, threw apples at him, as a Scarecrow, in Elsinore Theatre’s production of The Wizard of Oz in 1999. His most recent venture is the founding of the Chaotic Good Physical Theatre Laboratory which uses the teachings of Tony Montanaro to explore the human body and how it can be used as a communicative vessel which can be adapted for theatrical means. A group of those interested in learning about (and practicing) physical theatre meet every Monday 7:00pm-9:30pm at either The Theatre Nova Scotia Space on Agricola Street or at the BusStop Theatre for their weekly workshop. This workshop is open to anyone on a drop-in basis! Bevan-John and I sat down and chatted about how Chaotic Good came about.

Amanda Campbell (AC): So, I’ll ask you the same question I ask people in Toronto. Who are you, where are you from and how did you get so talented?

Rhys Bevan-John (RBJ): Um, my name is Rhys Bevan-John, I’m from Dartmouth (Nova Scotia) and *sighs heartily and thinks about his answer* and I started as the loud kid in school. So, my mom put me in Neptune Theatre School classes. You know how kids have their ‘thing’? Like some kids are into soccer… I just always did theatre. I guess that’s how I’m talented. I was the loud kid in class.

AC: Do you remember what your favourite theatre games were as a kid?

RBJ: I remember really, really enjoying “This is a What,” like when I had gotten really, really good, it was really satisfying. … I really liked “Monarch”… I think like Kings and Queens. I’m trying to remember… you know, I don’t remember what my favourite ones were. I like doing shows the most, working with a script more than the gamey type stuff. When I was at the theatre school it wasn’t that far to get to Acting Youth IV, I think I did Acting Youth I, II and III in about a year and a half. And then in Youth IV we did The Terrible Fate of Humpty Dumpty. Gay Hauser directed. Gay Hauser was our teacher.

AC: I know that Tony Montanaro was a world famous mime, can you talk a little bit more about him and how you came to stay and study with him in Maine?  

RBJ: Mime was really central to Tony’s life, he had me come live- part of the reason… he had lots of apprentices who came to live and learn around him, I just happened to be the last one *laughs*, but Tony told me once that the reason that he had me come down was obviously to teach me, he wanted to make me understand the things he was saying, but it was also for him. Through working with me, he was getting a better understanding of these processes through the teaching. Which, of course, is true of anything. He, uh, I think he had seven kids… two of which he found at a bus station. Two little Korean kids. The rest he had with his first wife Pam. And he spent a lot of time in different philosophical outlooks. He went to an ashram to study the Indian mediation form and lived there, and he synthesized everything into mime. And he was a Jersey boy. He was Italian American, his mom came over to America and he was born in New Jersey, and my mom is from Jersey too… although my grandmother was Hungarian, not Italian, still it was always nice for me to hear stories of his childhood. I kind of had sentimental feelings to his nostalgic remembrances of his childhood. And when would that have been? He was in his seventies… so it would have been in the late (19)30s.

AC: How did you first come across Tony?

RBJ: Jest in Time (Theatre), they brought Tony and Karen, his wife, in for a three day workshop and a performance. I was rehearsing for a dinner theatre show at the time at Halifax Feast. I had heard about (Jest in Time Theatre) as a kid because Christian Murray had worked with YPCo (Neptune’s Youth Performance Company) and my mother- well our next door neighbor- was friends with Christian… like he taught me how to juggle when I was a kid... So I knew Jest in Time and I knew of Tony that way. And I was really interested in physical theatre. And I remember it was one night at the Improv Knights, Gord Gammie said that, like, his girlfriend at the time had registered for this workshop, which was full up, but she had to cancel, but she hadn’t called to do it yet. And I had really wanted to do the workshop, except it was full. So I called Theatre Nova Scotia, or Jest in Time, whoever it was at the time, and I said “I know this girl is cancelling and I want her spot.” And I ended up calling before she did, and when she called she was like “Rhys Bevan John wants my spot.” And Tony and I really got along. I mean, I say we got along, here’s a man in his late sixties, and I was nineteen. I think that he appreciated my exuberance and thought that I would take well to what he did. So, he invited me to Maine for a three week advanced workshop, and usually these students who did this workshop were older and more advanced, but he had given me the green light. And that was really exciting for a nineteen year old. And so I went down there and spent my time with all these neo-Vaudevillians. There was this professional American storyteller, who made her living telling stories on the American storytelling circuit. And Takeo (Fujikura), the man who translated Tony’s book into Japanese, he has his doctorate in theatre and he’s a professor, but he’s also a professional mime. These were all people who made their livings being neo-style Vaudevillian performers. I was down there for three weeks and then Tony invited me to stay with him for six months and that’s when I lived with him at his home. The three week workshop had been at the barn, it used to be an old horse barn, and then it became home to a theatre company that toured internationally called The Celebrated Barn Theatre. Look, *gestures to his shirt* I’m wearing the t-shirt! When I lived with him at his home, he had a studio with a living dorm style living accommodations.

AC: When was this?

RBJ: That was in 2002.

AC: Right, so you’ve been home for quite awhile. What made you decide that now this was the time for you to start your own physical theatre workshop? Why is the Chaotic Good Physical Theatre Laboratory emerging now?

RBJ: Um, once I was down there I coerced a number of my friends to come down and stay with me too. My friend Mike McPhee lived there for four months and worked with Tony and he put it best when he said, “I feel like there’s work I should be doing that we’re not doing.” All I know is that before I started doing Chaotic Good Laboratory I was fundamentally unhappy, I was sad. Something was telling me that I need to do this work, and it’s not really something that you can do by yourself. I mean, you can do it in the corner of your living room, but that’s hard. I needed to start something to make it accessible to myself. And then I got a hold of some (theatre) spaces and now I’m happy. I dunno what it is that I’m doing or to what point it is that I’m going to take it; all I know is I just know that it satisfies me inside to be doing this work and it’s fun and exciting. And it took me awhile to reach this point. I looked around and I was thinking about going to school. I Assistant Directed a number of Sarah Stanley’s plays because I thought I wanted to be a director and I had a mind to maybe apply to the National Theatre School of Canada. After we worked together I asked the inevitable, “So I’m thinking of applying, what kind of fit do you think I am?” And she said “actually, I don’t think you are fit. I don’t think that you want to be a director, I think you want to be an actor and an acting teaching.” And she had such insight and was so astute, I am really grateful to her for that, because she was right. I didn’t have the vision to necessarily direct, I wanted to create things in ensembles. Then I was looking into York (University) because I have a friend who just finished the program there and there is someone who teaches a “Teach Physical Theatre Workshop” and she was underwhelmed with my experience, and not at all impressed that I had studied with Tony Montanaro for six months. And her name was Erika Batdorf, and she told me that I shouldn’t take the York MA, that I should just do physical theatre, and get people together and to just do it. She mentioned that having a group where you can get people to go away and learn things and then come back and share was really important. She said that I needed to engineer my life so that I was doing physical theatre as much as I could do it. Because she said that that is what she had done. She didn’t have a degree or anything. She had just done it. I am always finding myself considering going to school, but there is always something that holds me back. And I don’t know, I mean… I am impressed with, well, I’m impressed with you, Amanda, because you know so much about what is going on in theatre in Canada, and theatre in the world. And I find it hard enough keeping up with what’s going on in the theatre in Halifax! And that’s when I got sad. This work was missing in my life. When I wasn’t doing it, I was sad. Now that I am doing it, I am happy. I just don’t necessarily know the direction or the output of it yet.

AC: Where did the name Chaotic Good come from?

RBJ: Do you know the answer to this?

AC: Nooo….

RBJ: … Well- well, actually- basically the answer is Andrea Lee Norwood, she came up with it. But beyond that, it is a pop culture reference that some people will get and enjoy and the people who don’t get it will still get the sense of it. And I enjoy the sense either way… if someone gets my quirky, obscure reference than….

AC: Can you talk a bit about what the workshop is like?

RBJ: Yep! Um, over the past couple of months, few months, we have worked out what the beginning of each class is going to look like. At first we are silent for about five minutes, and then we do “Physical Choreography” for five minutes, then five minutes of “Spiritual Choreography”, than about five minutes of “Spiritual Choreography with the Oblique”, but sometimes we do less than five minutes of that because it gets really tiring. Then we do “Verbal Choreography” and we do this all en masse so that no one is watching anyone. Then we do rolls across the floor in various styles. All of these are Montanaro style. We have different ideas of shapes that will carry you across the floor. And then we do Open Rounds. So depending on if everyone there has been to the Lab before, or if there are new people and I have to talk everyone through it, this can take 45 minutes. It’s a very personal time, the first 45 minutes. And then after that it really becomes more of a laboratory. People will ask if we can do certain favourite exercises to explore things. It also depends on how many people are there too. Sometimes people say, “let’s try this!” and it’s interesting, and then we say “okay, let’s try this again, but do this part differently.” This Monday Courtney Siebring is going to do some exercises that she learned at her Comedia Dell’Arte school. And that’s going to be great! Because I dunno what it is she is running, but I know that she has a wealth of knowledge that I don’t have. That’s like this morning, with Gina Thornhill, she has been working with Double Edge Theatre in Massachusetts for the past four months and so she was giving us a taste of what she had been doing down there. Generally Montanaro style exercises lend themselves to an open-ended laboratory atmosphere. We say, “let’s try this out”, “let’s see what this is.” There’s one thing that I’m a little bit upset with myself with, because I haven’t been focused on physical technique. We’ve been doing a lot of the froufrou elements of the work which is akin to excavating the geology and the layers of your ego. This doesn’t necessarily sculpt bodies in any particular way and I think that technique is important to shaping bodies. I have been remiss in not adding that. We have been doing things that would appear abstract as opposed to technical.

AC: When I went to your Open Class Presentation I noticed that for almost every sketch, there was one person who seemed to be acting as the “outside eye” or even the director of the work—

RBJ: Yeah, I wanted for that to give everyone an opportunity, who wanted to, to take the director’s role. There’s one thing that I felt really bad about that night, the Evolution sketch that you said you liked so much, Mike McPhee directed that. I meant to say it on the night because Mike does this work really, really well. I wanted to give everyone the chance to be that outside eye, if they had a vision they wanted to realize because I didn’t want it to just be a workshop where I stood up all the time and was like “Okay, guys, I’m going to do lots of stuff!”

AC: I also noticed that the work that was presented in the Open Class was very sketch based, like physical sketches as opposed to verbal ones. You met with great success in 2004 with your sketch comedy troupe The HenMen where you, Chris Kelly, Colin Cowan and Bill Wood did shows in Halifax, at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and other venues in Europe, so I was wondering if you see yourself creating this different type of sketch show and presenting it to an audience in the future?

RBJ: When I was studying with Tony one of his fundamental things was communicating using the body. And I learned that even if I wrote down verbatim everything he said, and I often took notes, it didn’t communicate the underline explosion of what he was saying. It was more about the emphasis than the words that he was saying. He could communicate so much just with emphasis. He said to me once *speaks very meticulously and slowly* “when you’re onstage you really have to listen to the other person onstage.” Which doesn’t translate to the page, it’s not just that he’s speaking in italics, but utter explosion. You have to turn on everything and make your body a vessel to the other person. What was your question? Oh yeah, well-- the answer is, maybe. I don’t know what we’re planning. I would like to work on something, but we all have different ideas on how it should manifest itself into a Chaotic Good Show. I would like to get Evan Brown to write something, and it looks like we would get Jennette White to direct, but each of the three of us have different ideas on who we would like to have involved. I would like to have it open to all the members of the lab who would like to participate. We haven’t really talked about it a lot yet. But it’s a good idea. The style (of sketch) really lends itself to this type of theatre. We could create a physical sketch show and tour it around and make money, maybe we could even take it to schools. That would be a fun, physical sketchy thing. Maybe. I could be talked into it.

AC: You’ve also done a lot of “mainstream” theatre including productions of Oliver and The Miracle Worker at Neptune Theatre. Do you find that you can adapt your physical theatre training to suit the needs of these shows? Or do you have to approach them differently?

 RBJ: All the work I’ve done with Tony completely supports the more “conventional” work that I’ve done. Especially film. I had no idea how to work in film until I worked with Tony because it’s a lot about subtext. If you watch people that you enjoy in films, people that you get engrossed in- if you were able to notice what was happening to you as you watch them, I think that it would be like there was an inner typewriter going on in their body and then there is an inner typewriter going on in your body and you are reading people’s facial expressions to sort out what is actually going on. It’s like I was saying at the Open Class, as children we are completely transparent, and we walk around showing exactly how we are feeling and what we are thinking and what we want. We learn to become less transparent as we get older so that people can’t eff with us. So Tony was teaching us to become more transparent, because that’s what mime and physical theatre is. One element of doing that is developing your perceptic senses, the body’s sixth sense, which is the body’s ability to sense itself. It is habitual and not conscious. If you don’t have awareness in a certain part of your body than you can’t invest part of yourself in that body part and so it becomes more opaque for the conduit of your “humanity.” It’s like a batter swinging five bats, once you’ve done it a whole lot and had a lot of practice you can start to use it to a small degree. The most profound example I had of this was working on a film called Crossing Over which was a wonderful experience. The script had no lines, it was all silent. Because it was a Film 5 project the journey of the character was only suggested, but nothing was actually given to me as an actor. It was all in the directions of “shoot him doing this or that.” I wrote a second script that had all my inner dialogue in it, and the first time I did all the facial expressions ten out of ten- really big. Like, *says with hugely animated face* “What’s that over there!?” and that’s when my film acting really started to make sense to me. I kept doing it at 10 with my imaginary body but I didn’t do anything with my actual body so all my reactions were really supported, and my intentions were strong and yet there was very little on my face. And there was this great moment when the First AD asked the Director which lens he wanted to use, and Cam (the director) was like, “Get the, like, A353 or whatever, lens, I think we need to get in close because it’s so subtle what he’s doing.” And I had this moment of like looking up at the sky and screaming, “DID YOU HEAR THAT WORLD? SUBTLE! ME!” *laughs* Because usually I’m so exuberant. It was really gratifying at the time. It’s the same thing for theatre. It’s all- the goal of the work is to learn to use the body as a communicative tool. And that’s what you’re doing up onstage.

AC: What was one of the most impressive pieces of theatre that you have seen recently?

RBJ: Can I say a number of them?

AC: Sure!

RBJ: Ubuntu was really good, I don’t know what to say about it. Did you see it?

AC: Yeah, I did, in Toronto.

RBJ: Yeah, of course you saw it. Yeah. It was just impressive. So impressive. But also Homage, 2b theatre’s last show, that was impressive all around. It was impressive dramaturgically, and of course the set… the set was impressive… and the acting was impressive and the writing… I dunno what to say. It was really impressive. And then there was Grandma Noda’s Tigers which Chris Little did at the BusStop. I wept. It was the most satisfying thing that I’ve seen in a long time. It was so simple, honest, genuine, and it really sucked me in and like I said, it made me weep. It was beautiful.

AC: Halifax audiences really love watching you, and I know you and I have talked about your future ideas and plans, but I wondered if there was anything that you have in the works as an actor that you can disclose to the public?

RBJ: I plan to do a one man story telling of The Happy Prince by Oscar Wilde and it’s 99% sure going to be directed by Jennette White.

AC: So, if there are people reading this who are interested in Physical Theatre, but maybe feel like they don’t have enough experience, or they’re slow to commit to coming out and trying something that is unknown to them, what would you say? Why should Haligonians come to Chaotic Good Physical Theatre Laboratory instead of staying home and playing Mario Kart?

RBJ: To quote- no, better make that, to paraphrase Lorna Marshall’s The Body Speaks “the goal of this work is not to be interesting but to be interested in the experience that you have.” I spent a lot of time not being aware of my mind or body and this work forces you to be really present, which is very satisfying on a fundamentally human level. And it’s a lot of fun! And you feel really good after you’ve done it. The hardest part is just getting there. When my friend Bill Wood and I were living in one room in England while doing The HenMen we would feel terrible and miserable at the thought of getting up and doing this physical work. We wouldn’t want to do it. But then every time, afterward, it would brighten us. I will say this, there have been many occasions where if I wasn’t the guy with the keys, I wouldn’t have gone to Lab, just because I was too tired or wasn’t in the mood or whatnot. But I have never gone in feeling like that and not come out feeling great. Secondly, I know for myself, when I was younger, the reason that I did things like drinking, was because I felt this energy and it had no release. There was all this physical tension inside of me with no socially acceptable release. This work gives you that release, it is a valve for the release of that steam, and that is so satisfying and gratifying to do.

You can join “Chaotic Good Physical Theatre Laboratory” on Facebook for more information and everyone is highly encouraged to show up Monday Nights at 7:00pm (email rhysbevanjohn@gmail.com to double check if the meeting is at the Space or the BusStop). The drop-in fee is a remarkable $5.00 and you’re guaranteed to have a unique, challenging, and utterly fulfilling experience!

I am looking forward to 2009 for a plethora of different reasons, and as President Obama is inaugurated in the United States, I am hopeful for the dawn of a bright future of potential for all of us. At the same time, here in the Halifax theatre scene, change is also afoot as George Pothitos takes the reins as Neptune Theatre’s new Artistic Director. I must stress that I am deeply grateful to Ron Ulrich, who became AD in 2000, as I owe some of my favourite theatrical experiences to him. His production of Cabaret starring Pamela Gordon and Christian Goutsis still haunts and awes me eight years later. That said, I think Artistic Directors are like Presidents (or Prime Ministers), it’s [usually] good to appoint new ones to keep things dynamic, fresh and exciting. In the spirit of the holiday season, I would like to share with you my dream wish list for the future of Neptune Theatre. I hope that the future Artistic Director will work toward these goals so that Neptune can thrive in exciting new ways with unyielding support from its community.

1. I would like Neptune to employ more local actors. I think this is absolutely essential for our theatre community. First of all, our most talented actors and artists are fleeing by the busload toward Toronto in search of job opportunities. This is absurd. There is no reason why there should be jobs for Haligonian actors in the largest city and theatre community in the country, but no jobs for them in Halifax. We need to support the talented people who call Nova Scotia home, and to appreciate them. Nova Scotians have strong hometown pride, and if Neptune’s audience were encouraged to ‘get to know’ the actors in their community, by having interviews and articles about them in The Chronicle Herald, they would feel a sense of connection to them, which I know would persuade them to follow their careers by attending every show that they were in. I think that shows should be cast primarily from the best talent available in Nova Scotia, and then, if there are roles left over, the Director should be encouraged to hold auditions elsewhere. Young theatre artists learn by doing, by ‘acting,’ they need to be given every opportunity to learn, to act, to try, and to work with other artists who will inspire and teach them. In the end, this is how we build a strong, happy, vibrant, positive theatre community that produces shows that rival those in the rest of the country.
    
2. I would like Neptune to lower their prices. I know that the cost of running a theatre is high, but I think the prices at Neptune are a little ridiculous. It is the biggest obstacle in getting audiences in to see the show. I have seen dozens of shows at Neptune since 1994 and I very rarely have seen the theatre at maximum capacity. There are very few shows that sell-out. I bet if the theatre lowered its prices, attendance would rise substantially and the costs would even out. I think it’s important to break the socio-economic trends that are tied to the theatre currently. Neptune is our regional theatre. It is for the people of Halifax. It needs to be accessible to all people. I bet if Neptune’s prices were similar to a movie ticket, hundreds of people who have never set foot in there before, would come in to see their first show. There are also creative ways to make tickets more accessible. The Canadian Stage Company, for example, offers a pass to people under the age of 30, where they pay $15.00 for a membership card and then they get tickets to all the shows that season for $5.00 each. The first two rows in the house are also always $20.00, so people know that they have the opportunity to see any show at that theatre for 20 bucks. Theatre Passe Muraille has Pay What You Cans every Sunday. It would also reduce Neptune’s costs to employ local actors, as the director wouldn’t have to fly them in or pay to house them.
3. I would like Neptune to adjust its choice of plays slightly. There is no reason for shows like  Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and Proof and The Goat to be done in the studio. These are mainstage shows. If we brought the mainstream plays currently being done in the Studio into Fountain Hall, got rid of some of the airy, light, comedies (maybe offer one, and maybe in the summer), Neptune could produce some really riveting, contemporary, exciting, new works in the Studio. There could be collaborations, and collective creations, and works by local playwrights, and intense plays like The Pillowman or Festen. I think there is an audience in Halifax for these types of works as well. I would also like to see some Stephen Sondheim musicals in Fountain Hall, maybe starting with Into the Woods. I know Neptune has to please its sponsors, but I think if other Canadian regional theatres are brave enough to produce edgier material than that which was considered racy in the 1960s, Halifax’s audiences are ready for it too.  
4. I would like Neptune to produce more Canadian plays. We tend to grow up thinking that Canadian literature is boring. The playwrights that we have in this country are unbelievable. Canadian plays are my favourite of all the plays I have read, and they are plenty. Neptune needs to produce them. It is integral for our audiences to be aware of people like Daniel MacIvor and Stewart Lemoine and even Judith Thompson and Sharon Pollock (who I wouldn't have known about if I hadn't done a BA in theatre). I would like Neptune to develop a dramaturgy program within the theatre to foster indigenous Nova Scotian plays. Neptune should have resident playwrights. Why isn’t Josh MacDonald’s work being done at the Studio? I recently heard Daniel MacIvor speak in Toronto and he said that he wanted to come home and work in Nova Scotia, and he tried, but he had to move back to Toronto because Halifax was utterly not conducive to playwriting. Daniel MacIvor is from Sydney, Cape Breton. He was just awarded the $100,000.00 dollar Siminovitch Prize for excellence in playwriting. Why are we driving him away? We should be trying to do everything in our power to make Halifax the most advantageous place for him to work and play!!!
5. I would like Neptune to give programmes to students attending Student Matinees with their schools. I support an eco-friendly world, and I think that encouraging students who don’t want to keep their programmes to return them to be recycled is wonderful, but I think that students should have the option of getting a programme. Almost everything I learned about Canadian theatre, I learned from the programmes that I have acquired. They can be so beneficial, as you develop a knowledge of who the actors are who are working in your community, where they have studied, what other opportunities they’ve had to perform in various places, and a list of other shows that you might be interested in, and other theatres where you might like to go. I saw Ted Dykstra and Richard Greenblatt perform in Two Pianos, Four Hands when I was twelve at a student matinee, but we didn’t get programmes, so I didn’t realize that I saw Dykstra and Greenblatt until this year (when people said: "wow! You saw theatre history and didn’t even know it!") And that’s the point. If children get these programmes the same as everyone else, they will be able to look back someday and know when they saw something really important.
6. I would like Neptune to have a summer season. I was in Halifax last summer and the theatre scene was dismal. You had to go to Antigonish, Parsboro, or Chester in order to see any theatre until the Fringe Festival came in September. Summer is when Halifax is the prettiest, there are tourists coming to see the Tall Ships, they’re coming on Cruise Liners, they’re coming to see the Busker Festival, I think Neptune could capitalize on these things- and have at least one show running in July and August, or rent the space (at a reasonable  affordable rate) to one of the other theatre companies in the city. Maybe even bring in a touring show… there is no reason for that theatre to sit dark all summer collecting dust. There is no reason for Halifax to be utterly devoid of theatre for an entire season.
7.  I would like to see Neptune working with the smaller theatre companies in Halifax to help them develop our theatre community. I know that Neptune has done this in the past, with producing 2b’s show and this year, there is a show being produced by Zuppa Circus. This is wonderful, and I think there needs to be more of it. I think Neptune should offer affordable rehearsal space, and that the powerful members of Neptune’s artistic and business staff should lend their voice to the needs of the smaller companies and the issues they encounter. There should be another theatre space downtown where independent theatre companies can produce their shows, so that Neptune doesn’t have to sacrifice its studio season because another company has borrowed its space. There needs to be more funding, and more advertising for the smaller shows, and I think Neptune is a prime position to help the other companies out. They may seem like competition, but by lending a helping hand, Neptune will secure loyalty from all the artists whose lives it touches. I also wish there were mentorship programs and internship programs set up within Neptune so that emerging artists could learn from those more established than themselves, and that young people could help shape the future of Neptune as a company and as a theatre. If young people feel connected to Neptune, they will always support it. Neptune needs to become as rooted in the community as possible, so that the thought of Halifax without it seems utterly unbearable.
8. I would like to see Neptune bringing in more world-class theatre artists from across the country and around the world to work with the local actors in collaborations. This way, everyone gets a chance to learn from one another, and Halifax audiences get the opportunity to see the great giants of Canadian and world theatre here at home. There is such a notion that audiences here seem to have that they need to go elsewhere to see something really spectacular. And that shouldn’t be true. We should feel proud in our regional theatre to know that our local actors are just as good as the local actors elsewhere, that they would be in high demand elsewhere if they chose to leave, and that Neptune is legitimate enough to be able to bring in the same stars that come to Toronto.
9. I would like to see Neptune collaborating with other theatres across Canada. The Arts Club in Vancouver and the Canadian Stage Company in Toronto, for example, have two joint shows this season, Frost/Nixon and Miss Jule: Freedom Summer. I think it would be great for Neptune to establish strong ties with other theatres, so that we could bring in some stuff from elsewhere, and also bring some of our shows to other provinces. Ron Jenkins’ new play Extinction Song is opening at the Citadel Theatre in Edmonton in March, and there are rumours that it may tour “across the country.” The country that is spoken of, however, goes no farther East than Ontario. We can’t wait to be invited to join the rest of the country; we have to be assertive and ask to be considered. We have to act interested in what is going on outside Nova Scotia, in hopes that the rest of Canada will take an interest in us. If we invite Extinction Song to play a stint at Neptune for a month in the summer, perhaps Neptune could take one of its shows to the Citadel for a month next year. Think of all the network connections that could be made if the Artistic Directors spoke to one another and shared and built bridges. We’d have double the opportunities and experiences to draw from!
10. I would like to see Neptune grow to be such a gem in Halifax that it is the pride of everyone who walks by it. I would like the Nova Scotians who have left to seek opportunities elsewhere to hasten to come home because there is so much exciting work for them, and all sorts of fantastic opportunities to learn from incredible artists and to be a part of something vital and vibrant and beloved.

 That is my Christmas wish. And I am filled with faith and hope and dreams.