From Belles
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“When I was a kid, my mother used to say the phone was my favourite toy, so we had a good laugh about my taking this role where I’m on the phone the whole time,” laughs Ella May, playing Rosanne in Workshop Theatre’s latest, Belles. “I think the phone is an imperative to every one of the characters.”
Belles, by Mark Gunn, is the story of six sisters who, over the course of the play, communicate exclusively by telephone. When the play opens, their mother is in the hospital after eating some bad tuna, and the incident forces the sequestered sisters to reunite. The stage is divided into six sections for the performance, each section being the room in which one of the sisters talks on the phone.
“My character, Rosanne, is in her kitchen,” says May. “Page, the youngest sister, is in her dorm room. Peggy, the one who is the contact, the one who starts the phone tree, she’s in her living room, next to a lamp on a rocking chair. Dust is sitting on her floor with a yoga mat. Everyone has their own little set, and we don’t actually interact with each other — we have our own little section of the stage. The sisters’ relationships are also represented by the set. Those who have a closer relationship have closer proximity on the stage.”
The division between characters might seem to be a handicap for an actor, but May insists this isn’t the case. Like blind men who report a nearly supernatural sense of smell, Belles’ removal of interaction between actors encourages them to emphasize other areas of the performance.
“Rather than reaching out and touching them, you have to reach out and touch them with your voice,” says May. “I guess you could say one of the tools has been removed, so you have to heighten everything else, like voice, spatial awareness, emotional connectivity — it all has to be heightened in order to have that believability and that connection with your scene partner. At the start of the rehearsal, I have to gauge exactly what I’m trying to do when I’m talking on the phone with someone. If it’s with someone that’s really far away, when you're trying to talk to them, you have to figure out if you're talking to them like they’re in the room with you. What’s the physicality of what you’re doing?”
Besides the central symbol of the telephone, Belles still isn’t a generic family drama. In an Atom Egoyan-esque fashion, the technology both physically and metaphorically stands between the family members, but the important part of the story, says May, is the plural perspectives it offers through the sisters’ journey.
“There isn’t one particular focal point for the journey they’re going through,” she says. “I wouldn’t say there’s any particular protagonist. It’s a journey through the lives of these six sisters, and I think a lot of people will be able to relate to this — whether they have a family they’re close to or not. That’s what this show is about.”
