>>PREVIEW
MY NARRATOR
Starts September 11
Lunchbox Theatre
As show time approaches, the cast of Lunchbox Theatre’s new play My Narrator are concerned with the details of production and making sure they give none of their secrets away.
"It’s a love story," says director Rona Waddington slyly.
Written specifically for Lunchbox Theatre by the notable Norm Foster, My Narrator centres around two people named Miles and Lacy, played by Jaime Konchak and Curt McKinstry, who are trapped by the imaginary boundaries they have set for themselves.
Never truly alone, they are accompanied by the ever-present voices or narrators inside their heads, Barb and Bob, played by Karen Johnson-Diamond and David Trimble. "The narrators guide according to the criteria that the humans need," says Johnson-Diamond.
"I don’t want to give it away either, but there’s the challenge of finding out when the narrator is speaking for the character, for the human and when the narrator is speaking for themselves," she says.
While for the most part, the majority of us do not need to worry about the voices inside our head taking on solid form, Waddington says the themes within the play are universal.
"The spikes and the valleys of trying to have a meaningful relationship with another human being we’ve all been there," she says. "It’s exhilarating and it’s scary and sometimes sad. I wanted to open the season with something that I felt people could really relate to in a genuine way. It would resonate with their daily lives. I would like them to take away that sense of saying yes to life; which, is what this play ultimately does," she says.
Although the focus of the play is on the relationship building between the two characters, Trimble feels that Foster has hidden a deeper message within the dialogue.
"What’s really neat is that layered within all of the love there’s this political agenda that is put in there. There is this debate about what is art and what isn’t art. There’s a real intellectual battle between the two characters. It doesn’t whack the audience over the head it’s just slid in, " he says.
Waddington agrees. "All of the substance here is dealt with in a really humorous way. It’s a real pleasure to direct because it’s not just goofy fun. It’s something genuinely substantial but it’s presented in a way that is fun to digest," she says.
And combined with the introduction of Happy Hour Thursday presentations, it’s not just the material that has Waddington pleased to be directing My Narrator.
"The great thing about working on a première is that you are not aware of any precedent of what has come before, or how somebody else had done it even though you wouldn’t really consider that. Sometimes you are aware of it if you are playing a famous character. In this case, it’s very enjoyable because you know, while obviously the writer has delineated something for you, you have more freedom in a sense. I feel that it is more free." |
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