Stephen Colella, LKTYP Dramaturg and dramaturg for EL NUMERO UNO

Today was the first preview of El Numero Uno. The villagers in Lopinot are out in the world, fabulously costumed, gorgeously lit, making their own music and telling the story of their town's predicament and how they deal with it... Big thanks to everyone, actors, creative team, administrative team, front of house, production, sales, marketing, volunteers, sponsors, the remarkable thespians, ahrdi zina mandiela, the director, and the artistic director, Allen MacIniss, who took a chance on a teenage pig. So many people have worked together to make El Numero Uno happen, one of them being LKTYP's dramaturg, Stephen Collela, whom we feature today.

Stephen, who hails from south of the border, down Philly way, is a graduate of the Masters of Philosophy (MPhil) Dramaturgy program at the University of Glasgow and has a BA in English with Minors in Theatre and German from Loyola College in Baltimore. Among his past projects at LKTYP: Co-adapter of Love You Forever…And More Munsch (Dora Award, Outstanding TYA Production/Canada Council Theatre for Young Audiences Prize), Dramaturgy for The Princess & the Handmaiden, Hana’s Suitcase, i think i can (Dora Award, Outstanding New Musical), and Touch the Sky.

Stephen kindly agreed to answer some of my questions. Here's our little chat.

Dramaturgs seem to do all kinds of things, according to which country or which theatre tradition, or indeed which company they work with. What is your job at LKTYP?

Well, as you said, dramaturgs do all kinds of things and that holds true not just for the position in general but for my work at LKTYP as well. The primary focus of my work is our new play development. For our purposes, this means not only working directly with the playwrights, in the workshops and on the scripts, but also casting and organizing the workshops, managing the play development budget, managing our unsolicited script submissions, reading previously produced scripts and working with Allen, our Artistic Director, on our long-term planning. In addition to this work, I also coordinate our auditions, see productions that we could potentially present at our theatre, occasionally work with Educational Services on the study guides and proof all of our external documents. I also get involved with mundane things like tech support and fixing photocopiers, but that's more by happenstance than design. I have probably left a few things out, but one of the best things about my job is that the requirements are diverse and that helps to keep things fresh and interesting.

Dramaturgs are sometimes playwrights. Have you written plays?

I, along with Sue Miner, adapted five short stories of Robert Munsch that were staged at LKTYP. The play was called Love You Forever...And More Munsch. It won the Dora Award for Outstanding TYA production that year and was produced at Carousel Theatre this past fall. It will also be running for a week at the Stirling Festival this summer. But, other than that one piece, no other playwriting for me yet.

Does dramaturgy differ from play to play?

Dramaturgy is always different play to play, even working with the same playwright. There isn't really a set process. It depends on the individual needs of the play as well as the individual needs of the playwright. There are similar features in that each dramaturgical relationship requires good communication and a healthy amount of respect for who you are working with and what you are working on, but every instance needs to be tailored to the project's needs.

You were involved with developing El Numero Uno over a number of years. Is this usually the case?

I think it's normal to expect a script to take at least a couple of years to develop. Plays come to us in very different states. Sometimes they are a kernel of an idea and other times they have already had a few drafts and been through a workshop process. Frequently they end up somewhere in between. What is important is not to allow a schedule to dictate the development of the play, but to work to the needs of the play and allow the development to run its course before deciding to program it. Giving the play (and the playwright) that time to breathe and take the proper amount of time with the development as they require is what leads me to say that normally a couple of years is to be expected.

Was there anything particular or peculiar about El Numero Uno?

Can I say the playwright and not have her upbraid me? Of course I am teasing, except to say that she was particularly lovely and peculiar in her indulgence of my occasional brattiness. I would say that the particularness of El Numero Uno is, as Allen has said previously, the Shakespearian nature of the language. And I take that not just to mean the poetry of it, but also that it uses an English that is at once both familiar and strange to the majority of North American speakers. That character and richness is what made the play both fascinating and challenging. For me it required extra special care to be sure that I understood everything I was responding to. Fortunately I had a lovely group comprised of the playwright, director and workshop actors to help illuminate that process for me and make that task as easy as possible.

Any final comments?

When all is said and done I'll miss being able to work with Pam, but I'm glad that her little wiggly pig has finally made it to the stage.

Many thanks for answering my questions, and for helping to make El Numero Uno happen, Stephen!

EL NUMERO UNO opens 4 Feb 2010 at the Lorraine Kimsa Theatre for Young People in Toronto

Ras Onelove, El Numero Uno and Compere Lapin, three characters from El Numero Uno

computer glitch... please forgive absence of accents in text

My children's play, El Numero Uno, is an original Caribbean tale about a little pig captured by greedy twin monsters who threaten his island with starvation. If he is to save the day, the Number One Pig will need big-big help from his neighbours – and a magical soup! Directed by b current's ahdri zina mandiela, with design and music in the hands of Astrid Janson and Cathy Nosaty respectively, and featuring a cast of Canadian/Caribbean actors, the play opens on Thursday February 4, with previews on Jan 31 (2:00 p.m.), February 1 (10:15 a.m.), February 2 (10:15 a.m.) and February 3 (1:00 p.m.). There's a Teacher Preview at 7:00 p.m. on February 3 as well.

The play has been some time gestating! The story was first hatched for the 25th IBBY Conference, held in Groningen, Netherlands, in August 1995. Dutch author and illustrator, Max Velthuijs, created a series of illustrations and four storytellers from various parts of the world were invited to create tales to go along with Max's images. These were projected on screen when the stories were being told to the audience at the conference. Thus was El Numero Uno, aka Le Premier Cochon, aka the Number One Pig, born.

I'm pleased to say that the original story about El Numero Uno was a big hit in Holland. (Max Velthuijs, I only just learned, died in 2005. RIP, Max.) In his comments at the conference, he said he was surprised that, though the story took place at Christmastime (it was originally set at that time, and the first song was a Christmas lullaby that I'll append to this post), Uno was frolicking outside, enjoying sunshine and seasonal flowers, red poinsettias and white euphorbia. I think he was quite serious too...

Uno went underground for the next few years, re-emerging in or around 2001 in answer to a call for treatments from LKTYP. The play was chosen for funding and by 2002, a script was in LKTYP's artistic director's hands. (Pierre Tetrault was the AD at the time.) It had a reading not long after the incoming artistic director, Allen MacInnis, came to LKTYP, and has been in workshop over the years since, intensively so in the last three years. It's been shaped and reshaped in that time under the nurturing eyes of dramaturg Stephen Colella, as well as those of the artistic director.

Some amazing people have taken part in the readings, and I thank them all, enormously. The development process was constructive, instructive, and on occasion hilariously disruptive – all in all, immensely satisfying in itself. I'll have more to say about LKTYP's wonderful staff, the play's director, designer, music director, and the cast members in my posts between now and the opening. And of course, there will be more about the play itself.

Meantime, please encourage everyone you know, especially folks in Toronto, especially teachers with classes in the 8 to 18 age group, to come to see Uno. (It's really suitable for anyone from eight to eighty!) Teachers should make their bookings now, for February fast approaches! The play is enormously funny, and though it's a fantasy, it addresses issues faced not only by children and adolescents, but by communities everywhere that are put to the test by forces over which they have no control. So though it's amusing, it's serious too. It's got songs, raps, and is a great mashup of creoles and French and Spanish and Dread Talk. It has a band of Jonkanoo masqueraders, original and traditional music, and great costumes.

El Numero Uno isn't entirely why I've been absent here on Jahworld. I was away visiting the marvelous Zoey, spent some time in Orlando collecting some sun, and was on retreat at Eastern Point Retreat House in Gloucester-on-Sea, MA, for a week, where one morning I watched mesmerized as huge gray green waves were herded ashore under the lash of Hurricane Ida – not fifty yards from where I was sitting eating lunch. (One wall of the lunchroom is a long, uninterrupted glass window.) Earlier in the week, we'd had great weather, and enjoyed birdwatching and seal gazing. The seals drape themselves over the rocks and take sun, vanishing with the incoming tide, re-emerging when it's out.

Back in Toronto, I've been catching up, or trying to, and I've been giving the Number One Pig some attention. More on him in due course, as I've promised. And now, also as I've promised, two verses of the Christmas song, "Little Brown Jesus".

"Little Brown Jesus"

Little brown Jesus
Born in the cold
Quick Jesus’ Mommy –
Cover up him mole.

Cover up him mole quick
Before him start to sneeze
Cover him quick from
The chilly Christmas breeze.

© Pamela Mordecai 2002

EL NUMERO UNO; runnings in Toronto and Calgary

El Numero Uno or the Pig from Lopinot is a play (for children, sort of, I guess) that I’ve been working on for the last few years, during which time it’s been through several workshops at the Lorraine Kimsa Theatre for Young People. LKTYP commissioned the script when Pierre Tétrault was Artistic Director, and current AD, Allen MacInnes and his crew have nurtured it since. The most recent workshop was in January when Lisa Codrington, Sham Downer, Jujube Mandiela, Billy Merasty, Karim Morgan, Karen Robinson and Rhoma Spencer gave it a workout, under the direction of ahdri zina mandiela and with dramaturg (that’s with a hard ‘g’), Stephen Colella keeping tabs, and apprentice director Joan Kivanda looking in and on. Allen MacInnis, LKTYP’s Artistic Director, visited with us from time to time. Allen has enriched the offerings at LKTYP, the current production, The Forbidden Phoenix, being a good example of the diverse fare that LKTYP now has on the boards. (See below for further info on The Forbidden Phoenix.)

So this here is a big, public thank-you to all these folks! Merçi, gracias, tanx, thank-you. I can’t say it often enough because it’s a real privilege to have something you’ve written taken through its paces in this rigorous, attentive, whole-hearted way. It’s also enormously useful. The script has evolved over time, and, what with changes from the last workshop, we may now have something with which to go forward to production. Whether we do get that far or not, I couldn’t have hoped for a better experience than I’ve had working on the play with these, as well as other actors like d’bi young and Alison Sealey-Smith. So nuff respec and big ups, all! “Irie, amen, and seen!” as Ras Onelove, one of the characters in the play, would say.

The Forbidden Phoenix
The current production at LKTYP, The Forbidden Phoenix, has its world première tonight. A musical, the play is loosely based on the experience of Chinese immigrants brought to Canada to work on the railroad in the 1800s, and explores themes of freedom, diversity, family, community and environmentalism. It fuses martial arts, acrobatics, stunning costumes, and contemporary musical theatre and cleverly weaves the comic antics of traditional Monkey King stories with the powerful tale of a father’s sacrifice to provide for his family. Check http://www.lktyp.ca/en/current/forbidden.cfm

Pamela Mordecai Reads in Calgary
I go to Calgary on 2 March at the invitation of the University of Calgary for a class visit with Aruna Srivastava’s class on 3 March and a public reading on 4 March. Details for these events forthcoming, but just wanted to give you an early heads up.

There will also be a reading of my Good Friday performance poem, de Man, at St Stephen’s Anglican Church, 1121 14th Avenue SW, Calgary. Calgary resident, Howard Gallimore will join me in the reading. Howard reads the part of Samuel and I read Naomi.

Toronto Launch of Half World by Hiromi Goto
On Friday February 13th at 7:00 p.m., Canadian author, Hiromi Goto, launches her novel, Half World, at the Toronto Women’s Bookstore at 7:00 p.m. For more n this crossover/YA novel, visit http://www.halfworld.ca/