planting the seeds…

For more than 35 years, TNB’s Young Company has been traveling to communities of all sizes across New Brunswick.   Every year as many as 30,000 young New Brunswickers have the opportunity to experience the magic of live theatre in their very own school – some for the very first time.

In January 2012, TNB’s Young Company hits the road with two classic children’s stories:  Robert Louis Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses and Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden, newly adapted by TNB’s own Tania Breen and Michael Doherty.

Bookings are already coming in and we can’t wait to share this year’s performances with kids across New Brunswick.  Stay tuned to this blog in early 2012 for updates from the road from our Young Company!

Thanks awfully….

After three weeks of rehearsing in an empty studio theatre at Whiting Road, we were thrilled to be able to finally share The 39 Steps with an audience this weekend.  We hoped they would find it as funny as we did and did they ever!  It was a terrific start to our Main Stage season.

First a huge thank you goes out to our cast; an amazing quartet of comedic actors – Gordon Gammie, Rachel Jones, Rhys Bevan John and Alan Norman  - who every day found new ways to make this show even more hilarious.

Our designers Patrick Clark (Set & Costumes), Michael Doherty (Sound) and Leigh Ann Vardy (Lighting) invested great ingenuity and a few old school tricks to help us create epic theatre magic.  And thanks so much to our production team who turned all of these ideas into reality.  (Not to mention transforming the 1960s Playhouse into a 1930s music hall!)

A special mention has to go to Rick Merrill, the playwright behind our Opening Act, The Smokey Mokes whose script provided a concise and bittersweet look at a surprising piece of Fredericton theatre history.

Thanks to our production partner Jim Gilbert’s Wheels and Deals, the Canada Council, the Province of New Brunswick and the City of Fredericton.

And, of course, a huge thank you to our audiences.  We loved sharing this madcap adventure with you!  And we’d love to hear what you thought of the show – share your thoughts on the comments, on Facebook or Twitter or pop us an email.

Next up at TNB: The Gifts of the Magi, a musical from the beloved stories of O. Henry. A holiday love story the New York Times calls “a singing and dancing Christmas card.”  December 1-3, at the Fredericton Playhouse.

Meet our Artists: Send in the Clowns

Alan Norman and Rhys Bevan John don dozens of hats as the Clowns in TNB's The 39 Steps, Oct 13-16 at the Fredericton Playhouse

Fueled in part by coffee from the Cedar Tree Café (which he calls “one of the best cups  on the continent”) Rhys Bevan John is a non-stop physical force as a Clown in TNB’s production of The 39 Steps opening on October 13 at The Fredericton Playhouse.  The role seems a natural fit for a self-confessed class clown.

“I was the loud kid in my elementary school so my mother put me in theatre classes at the Neptune Theatre where I met Jennette White who I studied with for about eight years,” says Bevan John.  “After graduating from the Neptune pre-professional training program, I worked professionally for a year or two and then I met Tony Montanaro, a globally acclaimed mime.  I went and lived with him as his apprentice for six months  in Maine and studied mime.  I also taught physical theatre workshops on my own called The Chaotic Good Physical Theatre Laboratory.  ”

“Most recently my wife and I toured with Mermaid Theatre over the past three years.   It took us to Singapore and Taiwan, most of the United States and a good portion of Canada.”

In this farcical take on the film noir genre, the two Clowns fill literally dozens of roles, often changing characters before the audiences’ eyes.  Bevan John is joined in the madness by Riverview native Alan Norman.

“Alan is really great to work with,” says Bevan John. “I have to say he is a large man.  I’m around 6’2” and usually I’m the big guy but he’s like 6’5” and  If I try to move him I cannot. I’ve genuinely never experienced that, where I am working with someone where they are just so much bigger than I am.  It shocked me.  I’m thinking, ‘is this what I’m like to the rest of the smaller-than-me world?”

Norman says the key to making the comedy work is staying connected during the onstage madness.

“It’s a lot of fun because it’s so fast you really have to be in tune with the other guy.  There’s no real time where you can let your guard down because by the time you catch back up it’s way too late.  Rhys is a really funny guy who is very high energy so we just kind of check in with each other through eye contact and we’re developing a relationship where I can see what he’s thinking. It’s great to have someone who is more or less like my twin in the play.”

Norman made his TNB debut with the 2010 TNB Young Company, an experience he says prepared him well for The 39 Steps.

“TNB Young Company was awesome.  I loved it.  One of the shows we did was The Complete Works of William Shakespeare Abridged.  That was directed by Caleb and Tania Breen directed The Sword in the Stone.  It was a blast,” says Norman.

No stranger to clowning around for TNB, Alan Norman (centre) was a member of the 2010 TNB Young Company.

“It was a lot like this show actually because it was just non-stop and you play a million different characters.  You’re changing costumes lightening quick and you’re pretty much onstage the whole time running around. “

“We toured for three months.  We went everywhere in New Brunswick, like,  everywhere.   It was a really rewarding experience.  Growing up here, having the Young Company come to my school, you remember that.  To be a part of that and give back to the province and to the company that got me interested in theatre in the first place was a lot of fun.”

Norman says when he realized The 39 Steps was on the TNB 2011-2012 Main Stage line-up, there was no question he would audition.

“I immediately was laughing because I know what Caleb is like from doing Complete Works with him.   When I read the play I thought, ‘I really have to be one of those clowns.’  So to be a part of this is a really, really great opportunity.”

The 39 Steps runs from October 13-16 at The Fredericton Playhouse with performances at 7:30 p.m. Thursday –Saturday and 2:00 p.m. Sunday.

Tickets are available at The Fredericton Playhouse box office (506)458-8344, or online at tnb.nb.ca

Meet our Artists: The 39 Steps marks a home-coming for Rachel Jones

Joining The Bricklin’s Tania Breen and Katie Swift of A Doll’s House, comedienne Rachel Jones rounds out a trio of TNB leading ladies with New Brunswick roots.   The STU and UNB alum talks timing and trust in comedy and why she loves being back in the Maritimes.

Rachel Jones stars in TNB's The 39 Steps, Oct. 13-16 at the Fredericton Playhouse

Welcome back to New Brunswick! You have strong New Brunswick connections with both Saint John and Fredericton, right?

I lived in Fredericton between 1990 and 1996.  I went to St. Thomas University for four years and then I went to UNB for two years to do my Masters and before that I lived in Saint John for a few years and before that I lived in PEI.

Your co-star Gordon Gammie told us that he came to theatre after some time in a different career.  How about you?  Did you always know you wanted a career on the stage?

I went to school for English literature and I just kept going to school for English literature because it turned out I was interested in it and I was good at it.  I’d wanted to go to theatre school as soon as I graduated high school but my parents said, “you better try to get yourself a back-up career. “ So I did the back-up career first and I kept going until my fourth year of a PhD in English literature. I did all the course work and wrote all the exams and was in the process of writing my thesis. Then I had my daughter and just around that time I started thinking, “I’m not getting any younger.  If I want to do this I should give it a try.”  I’d always been an amateur actor and doing lots and lots of it at certain points. So I auditioned for a professional show at The Grand Theatre in London and got into that and immediately became full Equity. From then on I just did professional shows.  So my training has all been essentially through doing.

You’re pulling triple duty in this show playing three very different women. Tell us a little about them.

The first character is Annabella who is a very mysterious secret agent.  She comes on, basically gets the main character (Richard Hannay) involved in the whole intrigue and then she’s off the scene and it’s up to Richard to carry on.   Then he’s off on his mission that Annabella has given him.  He’s in Scotland and he has to stay the night at a crofter’s cottage so my character is the young wife of this crusty old Scottish crofter.  She’s supposed to be very shy and innocent but also very taken with Richard because he shows up in the middle of the night so to her he’s the mysterious stranger.  She becomes very taken with him and sort of helps him out when he gets in a jam.  Then the third character I play is Pamela.  She’s a young English woman, she plays by the rules; a very upright, old-school kind of girl.  When she comes on the scene it doesn’t go very well at first.  It’s a love-hate thing.  She tries to turn him in to the police, they get into a lot of scrapes together but they sort of run the rest of the play together.

This is such a madcap and zany comedy.  Do you work in primarily comedy?

I do love drama.   In recent years I’ve done much more comedy than drama because I’ve been working a lot at summer theatre and you don’t get a lot of heavy drama in the summer.  I’ve been doing pretty much a farce a year as well as some other comedic things.   It’s been awhile since I’ve had a good hefty drama to sink my teeth into and I’d love to do that soon but comedy is so much fun.

The timing is so incredibly important.  I think the audience would be amazed to know how much work it is just to get the exact timing of a simple head take.  If you don’t do it with exactly the right timing it can just fall flat. It really is the difference between funny and not funny.

I asked Gordon a similar question because the two of you have so much physical comedy together in some pretty confined spaces.  What do you need in an on-stage partner to make that work?

I’m really enjoying working with Gord.  You have to be able to trust the other person because you do a lot of things in theatre that you would never do in real life.  You have to be on the same page with it.    Now we’re so used to each other that it’s not an issue in any way to have to do any of the quite physical stuff we have to do.  It makes it much more fun and you can come up with much funnier stuff when you don’t mind rolling around on top of each other and going “alright how was that? What if I get the leg over now?”  It’s fun.

This is your Theatre New Brunswick debut.  How is it being back in New Brunswick?

I love it! This is the first time I’ve been back in the Maritimes doing theatre professionally and it’s so exciting to me because you grow up watching theatre here.  I graduated from high school and got the drama prize when I graduated from St. Vincent’s in Saint John. For a year I had a pass to come see all the shows at TNB and I remember sitting there thinking, “I love this and I want to be up there doing that.”  So for me to have the chance to come back here to do this, it’s really exciting to me.  And even just the environment of being in Fredericton… I was walking around at the market on Saturday and I thought, “This really feels like home to me.”  If there was work for me here, I could easily come back here and live here and be perfectly happy because this is part of me.  It’s a big part of me, the Maritimes.  People are different and when I come back here I think, “oh yes, this is how I remember people being when I grew up.”  So I love being back here. My daughter’s out here with me and she’s staying with my parents so on my day off I drive down to Saint John and hang out with everybody so it’s perfect!

The 39 Steps runs from October 13-16 at The Fredericton Playhouse with performances at 7:30 p.m. Thursday –Saturday and 2:00 p.m. Sunday.

Tickets are available at The Fredericton Playhouse box office (506)458-8344, or online at tnb.nb.ca

Adults $40 | McCain Student Tickets only $10

Meet our Artists: Gordon Gammie

Gordon Gammie stars as Richard Hannay in TNB's production of The 39 Steps, October 13-16 at The Fredericton Playhouse

The upcoming TNB production Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps  marks Gordon Gammie’s third production with Theatre New Brunswick.  We sat down to chat with him and found the Dartmouth native as charming and comic as his onstage alter-ego Richard Hannay.

I came to theatre later than most people.  As a teenager my friends and I always used to joke around, always used to re-do Monty Python skits.  We had an air band which we toured around to different gas stations, in the back of a van.  And we’d open up the van and people would come and watch us air band and later on we thought  “We should have really learned instruments.  That might have been really cool.”

Then I went on and did “normal” work.  I was a draftsman out in Calgary, Montreal and Halifax for a good eight or nine years and then started doing some community theatre in Halifax with some really, really good people.  I got laid off and decided to pursue theatre.  I was really lucky that the first professional theatre gig I had was with Two Planks and a Passion in Nova Scotia.  I was the first person to ever audition for them because I was the only one who could find their audition hall in the Valley.  No one else showed up for auditions that day.   I eventually worked with them for about eight years.  I love the small theatre companies, the independence.  TNB has that feel too.

You play leading man Richard Hannay, what can you tell us about this character?

It’s really the fish-out-of-water story of someone who is so comfortable in their life that it’s become completely boring to the degree that “I’ve had a good life, might as well end it.”   It’s sort of “why doesn’t anything happen to me?” And I think people can relate to that, you know, my life is just going on, why can’t anything happen?  So be careful what you wish for…

Once Annabella shows up in that theatre box his world is completely changed.  And I don’t think he knows it’s completely changed.  And later he talks about human qualities especially love… I don’t think he has really felt love so I think he’s trying to find something and someone he can relate to and that connection but on top of all that he has to save the world… or at least his country.

This show has an incredible amount of physical comedy between you and Rachel Jones – sometimes in very confined spaces. How have you and Rachel approached this?

On the first day, I said to Rachel, “What do you think?  I’m the kind of guy who likes to dive right in.” and she said “That’s good by me.” It’s a very physical play and Rachel is very good too. She loves the physicality, she comes from that kind of comedy and she is the perfect person to play off.

How are you feeling about being back in Fredericton for your third Theatre New Brunswick production?

I got here in 2007 when Leigh (Rivenbark) was here for A Christmas Carol and Narnia  the year after and I enjoy coming back here and staying with Marjorie (Aitken).  I always enjoy myself immensely.  I met Caleb back in 2007 when he was directing Christmas @ the Playhouse so he would hang out with us and I got to know him a little bit.  Knowing his background and his history and seeing what shows he had put on here, I thought, “Gosh, it would be great to come back and work with Caleb” and hip-hip-hooray it happened.  And it’s great!   To get to do this show in conjunction with TNB and working with Caleb, I love it.

The 39 Steps runs from October 13-16 at The Fredericton Playhouse with performances at 7:30 p.m. Thursday –Saturday and 2:00 p.m. Sunday.

Tickets are available at The Fredericton Playhouse box office (506)458-8344, or online at tnb.nb.ca

Adults $40 | McCain Student Tickets only $10

All aboard for Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps

On October 13, Theatre New Brunswick will open their 2011-2012 Main Stage season with Broadway’s longest running comedy thriller, Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps.

When a man bored with life meets a mysterious woman with a thick accent and a big secret,  murder, mayhem and hilarity ensue.   A nationwide manhunt, an onstage plane crash and some good old-fashioned romance climax in a death-defying finale.  Based on the 1915 novel by former Canadian Governor-General John Buchan and the subsequent 1935 film by Alfred Hitchcock, Patrick Barlow’s 2005 adaptation became one of Broadway’s most popular and longest running hits in recent years.

“The 39 Steps takes all of the thrilling elements of Hitchcock’s early film masterpiece, gives it a hilarious twist and vamps it up into farce with wonderful theatrical trickery,” says TNB Artistic Producer Caleb Marshall. “It’s a real comic and physical tour de force and our exceptional quartet of actors are going to take our audience on a wild ride.”

TNB's The 39 Steps stars Gordon Gammie and Rachel Jones (centre) with Rhys Bevan John (left) and Alan Norman.

Gordon Gammie (TNB’s Narnia, A Christmas Carol) returns for his third TNB production as leading man Richard Hannay. 

“It’s always great to return to Theatre New Brunswick and to Fredericton,” says Gammie.  “I’m having a terrific time working with this talented cast and company and look forward to sharing the show with our audiences.”

The 39 Steps also marks the TNB debut of New Brunswick  actress Rachel Jones.  A St. Thomas University alumnus, Jones will show off her skills as a comedienne in a triple role as the mysterious spy Annabella, the Scottish country wife Margaret and the British heroine Pamela.

“I won season tickets to TNB when I graduated from high school in Saint John and remember sitting in the audience imagining the day I’d be on the Playhouse stage,” says Jones.  “I’m delighted to have that dream come true while playing one of the funniest roles any actress could hope for.”

Gammie and Jones are joined by TNB newcomer Maritimer Rhys Bevan John and New Brunswick actor and TNB Young Company alumnus Alan Norman.  As the clowns, Bevan John and Norman each take on literally dozens of roles throughout the performance.

The production will showcase designs from nationally-renowned TNB veteran and resident set and costume designer Patrick Clark, sound design by TNB resident sound designer and ECMA winner Michael Doherty and lighting design by Leigh Ann Vardy (The Bricklin, Treasure Island), a four-time Merritt Award winner.

“The fast-paced, farcical elements go beyond performance into every element of the production: sets, costumes, sound and lights,” says Marshall. “But our exceptional and amazing creative team has been more than up to the challenge creating numerous tricks and rarely attempted locations.”

Theatre New Brunswick would like to thank their Production Partner Jim Gilbert’s Wheels and Deals.

The 39 Steps runs from October 13-16 at The Fredericton Playhouse with performances at 7:30 p.m. Thursday –Saturday and 2:00 p.m. Sunday.

Tickets are available at The Fredericton Playhouse box office (506)458-8344, or online at tnb.nb.ca

Adults $40 | McCain Student Tickets only $10

TNB Tours & Contest during Doors Open Fredericton

Think you know TNB?  Come visit us this Sunday for a peek behind the scenes and a chance to win tickets to the upcoming production of The 39 Steps.

On September 25 as part of Doors Open Fredericton, we’ll be taking visitors behind the scenes of one of Canada’s oldest regional theatre companies.  As they tour the space visitors will have the chance to identify key items from past TNB shows.  Those who correctly match the piece to the production will be entered for a chance to win tickets to the upcoming TNB production of The 39 Steps.

The centerpiece of TNB’s home is the 2000 square-foot studio theatre.  This black box theatre serves as a rehearsal theatre for Main and Next Stage productions as well as home to TNB’s popular Theatre School programs.  At the production end of the Whiting Road building, you’ll find TNB’s shops. Whether it’s a pirate ship, a hockey rink or a doll’s house, the worlds TNB creates begin here.

Tours will be offered at 55 Whiting Road every 30 minutes starting at 1pm, with the last tour leaving at 3:30pm.  Tours will include offices, studio theatre and shop space. And don’t forget the wardrobe –  it may just be Fredericton’s largest walk-in closet!