The minute Craig Hall walks in, an Elderhostel visitor remarks how young he looks. “I’m not really that young,” he says, and proceeds to list all his accomplishments including the two theatre companies under his watch.

There are two intern directors here picked from over 80 applicants across Canada, and he’s one of them. Each year they learn more about the art of directing, and get the chance to direct a one-act play from the mandate at the end of the season.

In the meantime, Craig prepared a speech on that evening’s performance of Heartbreak House to give us a better understanding of what is happening in the fast paced dramedy.

The play that has such themes as love, death, politics, class structure and heartbreak (naturally) have been compared to Cherry Orchard and King Lear, and whether or not Shaw intended it to be, it’s funny in its absurdity, outrageousness and wit. Shaw wrote it as a protest against the culture that he thought permitted the First World War. As was Shaw’s habit, he wrote a long-winded preface to describe the politics and philosophy of Heartbreak House, as well as an extremely detailed set description that he felt was integral to the play. The set was described as a room that looked like the interior of a large ship.

In this poetic and mystical comedy there are apparent themes of sleeping and dreaming as a way to explore unconscious minds. As said by Craig, Shaw was against people sleepwalking their way through life and allowing great tragedies to occur around them.

All in all, I’ve had a great time taking part in all the Elderhostel functions. It allowed me to see a lot more of the Shaw Festival, meet and understand more of the people that make The Shaw tick, and settle myself in. I look forward to being here for the next six weeks.

Judy Farthing, Shaw’s Production Stage Manager, has to be the nicest person I have ever met. Or at least, the nicest I’ve ever heard speak. The Elderhostel audience was literally so amazed at her job description that they couldn’t stop fawning over her and exclaiming how irreplaceable she must be.

With the help of the director, Judy pulls everything together:

• She creates the paperwork for the crew to use during performances (the script).
• She checks for continuity including audience reaction, pace, energy, drifting and maintenance of vision.
• She trains two apprentice stage managers a year.
• She handles requests for fittings, wigs and special classes.
• And she calls her own show (that’s lights, sound, fly floor, trap doors etc.).

Her role is akin to a conductor but she claims it’s more about relationship management than the ability to organize and keep a tight schedule. She’s also extremely level headed and can’t lose her cool in a tough situation because the actors and crew are all looking at her to get them out of it. When it’s commented on that she must be really stressed out all the time, Judy casually shrugs it off: “Not really,” she says. Coolest cucumber I know.

An overhead shot of the Wardrobe section in the warehouse

We began Elderhostel Day Three at the Wardrobe and Prop warehouse in St. Davids for a fantastic guided tour. Though still in the process of cleaning and organizing, these locations are already a wonderful addition to tours at The Shaw for special groups like Elderhostel. The clothes in the wardrobe section are meticulously divided into eras and decades, tops and bottoms, and style and gender. There are also separate sections devoted to hats and shoes. Some actors that have been with The Shaw for several seasons have their own collection of costumes sectioned off, and since their sizes don’t fluctuate they can be used again.

Some Wardrobe selections

A handstitched dress on display

A unique and modern twist on a Victorian dress

A clothing aisle

The shoe wall

A wall in the hat loft

The other side of the warehouse holds all the props; literally anything you have in your house, and more, is in that warehouse. There are all manners of furniture, carpets, luggage, kitchenware, books and even a few skeletons. Oh, and a box labeled “rocks” which is probably very important. Most of the furniture is surprisingly sturdy and the only way to get them off of the enormous shelving units is a set of rolling stairs and some good old elbow grease.

Anna talks props

A skeleton!

More skeletons! And books!

The Elderhostel group checks out the never-ending halls of the props warehouse

Food props

Baskets piled high

These are all vases. ALL OF THEM.

Statues - this one's head fell off during a performance! Now you knowwww.

But seriously, words do it no justice. Any Harry Potter fans out there? It is like the ultimate room of requirement. Too cool.

Prop shelves in the warehouse

On Day Two of my Elderhostel experience, Ryan deSouza, Associate Conductor, gave a candid and informative discussion of music at The Shaw that centered on its importance in The Admirable Crichton.

Ryan started playing piano as a church musician in a choir operated by his parents, and though he was classically trained in piano, he went to school for human resources. He began accompanying community theatre performances and still prefers to accompany other people instead of be center stage himself. From the beginning, he had a very Shavian attitude towards breaking musical rules, and when it sounded good he was allowed to keep doing it.

Ryan deSouza speaking to the Elderhostel group

The orchestra under Ryan’s direction consists of eight musicians and included the clarinet, saxophone, trumpet, trombone, bass, drums, ukulele, violin and cello. Ryan said that working with director Morris Panych gave him a strong sense of ownership and collaboration that allowed him to have a strong voice in the creation of the music and underscoring.

Crichton was not always a musical, or as close to a musical as you can get without being a musical, Ryan had the difficult job of picking music to fit this fantastical story. They picked a number of obscure songs from the 1920s, likely unknown to today’s audience. Some songs were so obscure that they couldn’t even find the original owners to access the rights to the song, paying a flat fee to use it instead. Once the rights to a song are bought the buyer can pretty much do whatever they want with it. In this case, Ryan changed them, combined them with other songs and used parts of them in the underscoring.

They also decided to go with a twist on the 1920s big band sound. Typical military bands or big bands have over 20 musicians; Ryan had to whittle that enormous sound down to his eight band members. They used the typical horn instruments but added a violin and cello for a more melancholy sound since the play centers on love and losing. The cello and violin were also used for a more appropriate underscoring. The musicians used the plucking style of playing for the underscoring which has a more acoustic sound and can easily fade into the background.

Some of the Elderhostel visitors had questions for Ryan like: why is there a live band and why don’t you record the music? Ryan had the perfect answer: “You can base your music better on audience reactions. This allows for more fluidity and originality in each performance.” An example of this is the Friday night performances. These performances are notoriously quieter than other nights because people are tired from the working week, therefore Ryan picks up the tempo to encourage more audience reaction. A live band also allows the actor more freedom in terms of tempo and delivery, and in case accidents in timing occur on stage. On top of which, recording is still very expensive and doesn’t allow for any changes after the fact. It also doesn’t encourage audiences to notice the music. In The Admirable Crichton, the band also has the ability to improvise during certain parts, which they appreciate.

Ryan was also asked why the band wasn’t on stage or seen during the performance, to which he replied:

• It’s too distracting to the audience if the band had to change instruments or fix an equipment problem while the show was going on (like strings breaking, programs malfunctioning etc.).
• Most plays don’t build the band into the story, stage or performance.
• Their visibility takes away from the play and actors.
• Most musicians prefer not to be seen so that they don’t have to dress up or stay still during scenes where they aren’t playing.

At the end of Elderhostel Day Two, the overarching themes I noticed are the encouragement to break the rules, adapt to anything possible and collaborating for creativity.

After the history lesson, our guides, Guy Bannerman and Sharry Flett, invited some of the Elderhostel visitors to try on some period piece costumes! They gave a fantastic historical background to each piece of clothing. Guy explained that his vest, striped black and grey, was a servants vest and the stripes represented the colours of their employer’s coat of arms.

Guy and Sharry assist Elderhostel volunteers into costumes

While wrangling a volunteer into a corset, Sharry explained the different uses of women’s clothing and accessories. Hats, gloves, parasols and fans were considered tools of power to frame beauty and mystery. They allowed women the ability to conceal and reveal as much or as little as they desired. The confining or restricting clothes made an exposed earlobe or slope of the neck more sensual. Clothing restriction also required women to be enticing through the use of language; they used beauty, manners, money and wit to get what they wanted.

One visitor asked if all the accessories were liberating or confining to young actors, and Guy replied: “We teach the rules [of the time] because a lot of [Shaw’s] plays are about getting around the rules.” It encourages actors to use their brain and emphasize words and language. It also helps them find the strength in their conviction.

From there, we took a backstage tour of the Festival Theatre, care of the Docents, which included the dressing rooms, Wardrobe department, backstage set storage and under the stage. I learned a lot of interesting and unexpected facts:

• Once fitted for wigs, actors aren’t allowed to have different haircuts or hairstyles for the entire season and have their current haircut maintained by Shaw stylists. This is because there are painstaking measurements taken of each actor’s head, and the wig-making process can take over 24 hours in total, one real piece of hair at a time. Changing a hairstyle midway through the season can compromise the exact fit of the wig that the wigmakers worked so hard to achieve.
• Facial hairpieces aren’t taken from unruly British mountain men, but from the coarse and curly yak! Yes, yaks! (It wasn’t explained how their hair was obtained.)
• Though actors have helpers to assist them with wigs each performance, they do all their own makeup for allergic and hygienic reasons. Ensemble members are given the opportunity to learn how to do their makeup from professionals beforehand.
• In the Shavian manner, there is no star power here at The Shaw; Ensemble members share group dressing rooms.

The Docents and Elderhostel visitors in the Wardrobe department

We took a quick tour through the Wardrobe department where visitors oohed and aahed at dresses on display, but what I found most interesting was that sometimes the Set Designer and Wardrobe Designer are one in the same person to promote overall design continuity.

The Wardrobe department

Afterwards backstage, we met up with Festival Changeover Hand Jeff Robertson, who explained to us that 1/6^th of the floorboards weighs 2300 lbs and that they use compressed air systems (hydraulics) to move large set pieces around during changeovers. They keep three full sets backstage at the Festival Theatre during the season, in a practically impossible space, so everything is moved around and stored very precisely.

Jeff Robertson backstage

Our last stop was under the stage, which is built so that pretty much any part of it can open into a trap door. That area is used for storage, and has a few extra dressing rooms for the first time ever. During shows, actors and crew can only navigate down there using a faint blue light and reflective floor tape.

I met back up with the Elderhostel group for a matinee performance of Candida at The Royal George. I thoroughly enjoyed how witty and playful it was, but am confused by Shaw’s actual opinion of women because apparently Candida is supposed to be a sarcastic portrayal of Shaw’s actual opinion of women and feminism. He is against the idea that men should idealize women and was under the impression that women already have most of the power in a relationship. This was echoed in the Manners Mandate lecture when Sharry and Guy said that women were considered socially superior to men by nature. I am beginning to see a theme in Shaw’s plays where the man controls the house, but the woman controls the man.

As the new public relations intern for the Shaw Festival Theatre I was encouraged to attend a three day event, Elderhostel, to learn more about the people and plays of Shaw. I gladly agreed.

My adventure into Shaw started with the Manners Mandate lecture led by Guy Bannerman and Sharry Flett, two seasoned actors in The Shaw’s acting Ensemble. They discussed various topics found in Candida and My Fair Lady about manners, rules, hierarchy and their influence on Bernard Shaw’s playwriting style.

They began by asking: “what are manners?” The Elderhostel group replied: civility, codes of conduct and public displays of behaviour. After some prodding by Sharry and Guy the answer they were looking for became clearer; manners were an evolutionary process of rigidity and rules, different for every class, without which there is chaos.

Simply put, manners were an invented code of behaviours to protect the hierarchal aristocracy from the threat of the burgeoning middle class. Nobility and wealth were once obtained through strict hereditary lines. Homes, wealth and titles were passed down from family to family. However, in the 1800s the middle class was formed; they obtained wealth and land and “married up” into higher society.

The lines between the aristocrats and the lower classes were blurring and this frightened the aristocracy. The only way to maintain their position as morally superior, since wealth and ownership were no longer class distinguishers, was to invent strict rules of behaviour, resulting in the creation of manners. By observing manners, such as who offers their hand first, who eats first, what chairs are used for what occasion, one could determine if the person they were interacting with was of high or middle class.

If someone didn’t follow the rules of behaviour and manners they ran the risk of social embarrassment. In an extreme case, such as adultery, they ran the risk of divorce, loss of children and property and even banishment. In My Fair Lady one of the biggest worries is that Eliza, a lower class street urchin posing as lady of high class, will be discovered as a fraud through her language and mannerisms. If discovered, she would be socially disgraced and shunned from high society. Even Professor Higgins would lose credibility for trying to trick the higher classes.

Sharry Flett and an Elderhostel visitor

This was an interesting history lesson, but I wondered what it had to do with Shaw. Well, Shaw was a follower of Karl Marx and a devout Socialist, who strongly advocated the removal of unequal class structures in society. His personal beliefs strongly influenced his plays, which went against the social mores of his time and broke the rules of a hierarchal society. In turn, this has influenced the mandate of the Shaw Festival by pushing boundaries to educate and entertain audiences every year.