>>PREVIEW
SWIMMING WITH GOLDFISH
Jagged North Productions and One Yellow Rabbit
Runs until September 17
Motel (Epcor Centre)
Swimming with Goldfish is poetry, wrapped in a mystery, shrouded in a comedy (you should pardon the mild thievery). A monologue with a dozen characters all played by a single actor, Swimming with Goldfish focuses on the ADD-fuelled, tangential musings of 17-year-old Cecil on the themes of responsibility, love and loss, as he talks to his goldfish.
Playwright Allan Boss first heard Cecil’s voice in 1998. "I was doing an MA in screenwriting in Montreal, I was alone in my apartment in the winter, writing, and the character of Cecil began to talk. I knew it was a young voice, a rambling stream-of-consciousness voice, and it was all I could do to keep up with him, recording his voice as it spoke to me. Within a day and a half, I had a first draft of the play, 26 pages long."
In his day job, Boss is the entertainment and drama producer for CBC Radio in Calgary, and although he heard and recorded Cecil’s voice in 1998, and he liked the story very much, "the reality is that there aren’t really any venues for plays that short," he says. "So it sat on a shelf for a few years."
Last year, the Walterdale Theatre put out a call for one-act plays dealing with the family, and since Cecil seemed to fit the description, Boss sent him out to try his luck. Vern Thiessen at the Walterdale wanted Cecil, and after some editing, Swimming with Goldfish was workshopped and produced for the first time in May of this year.
"It was the first time I’d seen it onstage, and so for this performance I’ve been able to clean it up – alter those places where it dragged, tighten up the language, things like that."
"Things" brings on a discussion about the difference between a novel and a play. Is a play the same as any other written work, or is it qualitatively different in its fluidity?
"Well, there’s that quote, ‘A good script is never finished, it’s just abandoned,’" says Boss. "Every time a play is performed, changes occur. For whatever reasons – perhaps the actors or the director want a slightly different interpretation, perhaps the characters deepen and new insight is attained. So yes, a play has a different life than a novel, which is what it is once it’s been published."
Swimming with Goldfish has a sad, surprising ending that I won’t give away, but suffice it to say that the play uses a wide emotional spectrum.
"Cecil makes leaps of logic that are funny, and has a physicality that’s funny," says Boss. "This character could never just tell a straight story. Because of him, the story has a kind of circular structure. It’s funny, but it’s also been described as sad, touching, spellbinding. It was inspired in the beginning by a poem by Margaret Atwood and a poem by Seamus Heaney, and the language becomes very poetic later in the play.
Although Boss only discovered the world of theatre at the age of 27, his work isn’t lacking in critical acclaim. His CBC Ideas program Updrafts, the dramatized examination of a person's recovery from a brain injury, was nominated for a 2004 Peabody Award, a New York Festivals Award, a Gabriel Award and a Prix Italia. But he has no illusions about jumping into playwriting full-time.
"I’ve only recently begun to try and sell my plays to other people," he admits. "Playwriting is different from novel-writing in this regard as well. Once you write a book and sell it to an agent, it’s their job to sell it to the public, to publishing houses. A playwright has to sell his play by himself. It’s a lot of work. I’ve had a few works produced at Fringe festivals and one-act festivals.
"But this production is special for a few reasons. The director Grisell Amano is also my wife – having her direct my play is exciting because she’s an ultra-talented director, and also because she knows me and my work so well, I feel very comfortable that she understands the character. Patt Quinn is a very talented young actor, and this is another opportunity to see the play produced. In Edmonton audiences loved it, but they raised questions that I wanted to address. I’ve been able to do that for this production." |
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