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Actors given free rein to write know just what playwright wants

By: Morley Walker

14/01/2010 1:00 AM | Comments: 1

Steven Ratzlaff is half of Theatre Projects’ In the Chamber.

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Steven Ratzlaff is half of Theatre Projects’ In the Chamber. (TREVOR HAGAN / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS )

GIVE a performer free rein to write what he wants, and it's fascinating what he'll come up with.

Busy actors both, Winnipeggers Gordon Tanner and Steven Ratzlaff accepted the challenge from the local company Theatre Projects Manitoba to write one-act plays on whatever moved them.

Theatre Preview

In the Chamber 2010
Theatre Projects, 8 p.m. Jan. 14-16
Rachel Browne Theatre, 211 Bannatyne Ave.
$20 adults, $17 seniors, $15 students

Their separate commissions form the production called In the Chamber 2010, which Theatre Projects will present tonight through Saturday in the Winnipeg Contemporary Dancers' Rachel Browne Theatre, 211 Bannatyne Ave.

It marks the fifth year in a row in which Theatre Projects, a troupe mandated to produce made-in-Manitoba drama, has staged an In the Chamber piece.

"For a lot of our audience, it's their favourite thing we do," says company artistic director Ardith Boxall.

"It's very intense, very immediate, very topical work."

Ratzlaff and Tanner (who is Boxall's husband) met in August to come up with a workable theme. Based on an idea that had been rattling around in Ratzlaff's brain, they settled on the oddball notion of exploring catastrophic system failures through something called "human factor analysis."

Though it sounds a tad academic, Tanner notes that compelling drama often follows "from when things go wrong."

The two men then went home to work out their ideas. Ratzlaff came up with a story based on actual incidents in the Health Sciences Centre pediatric coronary surgery inquest of the 1990s.

"The transcripts from the inquest are available online," says Ratzlaff, who most recently appeared in Manitoba Theatre Centre's ensemble production of It's a Wonderful Life.

"Once I started reading, I was captivated by them."

Tanner, who also appeared in It's A Wonderful Life, as well as the MTC season opener, Strong Poison, invented a story about an engineer sent to investigate a horrible fire in an Alberta hog barn.

"He has a crisis of conscience," says Tanner, who left a master's program in agricultural engineering to take up acting.

"He's like me 20 years down the road if I'd gone the other way."

Both plays are essentially one-handers with their writers also doing the acting. Both are directed by Winnipeg writer-actor Sarah Constible. Both shows clock in at under an hour.

Tanner calls his Last Man in Krakendorf, which refers to the German town where his character has gone for training.

Ratzlaff calls his play Last Man in Puntarenas, a reference to the Costa Rican province where his character has an epiphany.

Both men say they find writing their scripts a satisfying departure from interpreting others' work.

"I know what's supposed to happen," Ratzlaff says. "If something's not working, you know you need to change the words."

morley.walker@freepress.mb.ca

 

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition January 14, 2010 D6

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Witness the 35 plus original works produced over 20 years, more annually than many other local professional companies. Add up all the bottom lines; the art; the employment multiplier; the number of works that have gone on to larger companies, and you have a primary resource that value adds itself. Like a restaurant that customers rate by how many repeat customers eat there, TPM audiences are full of industry people. They know the intrinsic value of seeing something new. And they understand that the quality of the experience includes the level of pure energy invested. Beyond the glitz, theatre needs theatrics to deliver its message, and that is what we get at a TPM performance.
This is the 20th year that this professional company has made its contribution to Winnipeg and the world. The 2010 In the Chamber runs January 14th to 16th and offers the same new plays each night. An Opening Night reception for all patrons on the 14th; on the 15th a Writer’s Saloon featuring a panel of writers that have contributed to past Chambers to share their ‘intimate tales of playwriting, the dark arts and what really goes on in the chamber’, and, on the 16th, a cocktail reception to honour artists that have been part of the past 2 decades. This 20th year will not be repeated, so make a point to join TPM and its supporters, ‘In the Chamber” at the Rachel Brown Theatre, 211 Bannatyne at Main Street.

Hart Mallin

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