I was sitting on the toilet. Yeah, well, sorry for putting that image in your head but that’s the way this story begins. As is usually the case when responding to nature’s call, one’s mind wanders. So do one’s eyes. This time, they happened to rest upon the label on the back of my Joe Boxer underwear now stretched across my knees. It struck me how some little Chinese lady in a factory thousands of miles away from where I now sat had been bent over her sewing machine attaching this little white rectangle covered with, to her, the undecipherable English language characters. One after another, mindlessly, she positioned the label, pressed the foot pedal and, in a matter of seconds, had added another eighth of a cent to her meager paycheque. I began to read the upside down words on the label: the washing instructions lines, the “Made in China” line at the bottom, and another line I had never noticed before – not that I’d spent that much time reading the labels on the back of my underwear. The line consisted of two words all in caps: CHANGE DAILY. On the surface, it was an acceptable enough instruction considering the garment to which it was attached. I was being given an order to be unquestioningly obeyed. All it missed was an exclamation point. The meaning of the words began to morph, as if I was looking at one of those picture puzzles where, if you concentrated on one part of it, it was the image of a witch, but if you altered your focus by a millimeter it was a beautiful lady looking in a mirror. “CHANGE DAILY”. What did that actually mean?

            A number of months earlier I had been called in to meet with MTC’s A.D. Rick McNair to talk about my potential involvement in possible upcoming productions. The final playbill STILL hadn’t been decided for the season and it was driving people crazy, especially those in the Publicity Department. For some reason, Rick had got it in his head that maybe it was time to squeeze Shakespeare’s two massive “Henry IV” plays into a single evening. The “new” play was to be called “Falstaff” and he’d enlisted University of Manitoba English Professor Vic Cowie to do the adaptation. With no script yet in existence, he gave me some generic Shakespeare to read, asked for a few alterations in my delivery to which I acquiesced and then we started chatting. “You know what Directors say about you, right?” Now what the hell was this?? “You get a performance very fast and don’t progress in a role”, he said. I was completely blindsided by this rather glib “assessment” of my work at MTC over the previous year – a total of two shows in each of which I’d had a total of five or six lines! But I went with it. I listened to him pontificate about how actors should “take time” to develop a role and allow a character to “live” in you. The more he talked the more I fumed internally. I considered the wisdom of bringing up his directorial inadequacies but held my tongue and we left it with him saying that he’d be in touch with casting in the next few weeks. It was the middle of September and rehearsals were to begin in two months. There was still no script.

            There is an inherent fragility to Process and Performing, a delicate balance between relinquishing the rehearsal world of learning lines and blocking, and entering into performance mode. There is a continual intellectual assessment of “what’s the next line/where am I supposed to go” which, hopefully, transitions into releasing the emotional state of being within the character. Sometimes that magical crossover comes fast, sometimes it doesn’t. But there’s always the persistent question of “when will it happen?”, “when will I release the script confident that I know the character’s words?” “You get a performance too fast” echoed in my head for weeks after my McNair meeting. I found myself revisiting all my work and asking myself how fast I achieved my goals. It was maddening and depressing and I tended to make excuses to myself for not being “slower”. When one is responsible for lines like “Good morning”, “Indeed it is” and “I’ll be back soon” there didn’t seem to be a whole lot to slow down for. I started to blame the directors (actually, aside from McNair, there hadn’t been any others I’d worked for) for not giving me guidance if I’d not been giving them what they wanted. I was determined to CHANGE DAILY, hell bent that in this next project I was going to “go slow” … that is, if there was anything to “go slow” for. It turned out that there was.

            Since there was no sign of the adaptation, I decided to get into the weeds of the original “Henry IV: Parts One and Two”. Finally, I was been given the role of “Worcester”, a substantial part and one of the “bad guys” who gets executed at the end. He has a lot to say and I slogged through both plays trying to intuit what might be cut or rewritten. I started focusing on “Worcester’s” through-line. I was apparently to have one more role but who it would be was still (and would be until just before rehearsals began) up in the air. I read commentaries and analyses of the plays and how my character fit in. I read different editions searching for differences. I even bought a new (then) Cecily Berry book called “The Actor and His Text” (yeah “His” which back then was considered “acceptable”) and plumbed the depths of her approach to speaking Shakespeare. I immersed myself determined to seek out every nuance. It was a fool’s errand.

            The cast names started to circulate. The major roles were being played by Toronto/Stratford “big boys” – Stephen Russell, Danny Buccos, Jerry Etienne, Eric McCormack, Paul Jollicoeur and Barry McGregor (who was playing ‘Falstaff’ and was not hired until three weeks before rehearsals began!) – and the remainder going to locals. I discovered that I was also playing the small role of ‘Mowbray’ who appears for a line here and there in the second half of the piece.

Once we received the edited script, all my preparations went out the window. The combining of the two massive plays had reduced the history to its nubbins and any depth in our characters (except the main three – ‘Hotspur’, ‘Prince Hal’ and ‘Falstaff’) had bit the dust. Making a coherent arc for ‘Worcester’ was shunted to the side and I bore down attempting to find something to hang on to. Along with a lot of stage fights, I managed to eke out a semblance of the original dimension to my role and with the constant mantra of CHANGE DAILY echoing in my head, progressed, albeit very slowly, toward something that was satisfying to me, and, seemingly, to McNair. I watched the intricacies of my “play-mate’s” approaches with new eyes and, while I found the lack of a cohesive performance style to be somewhat off-putting, we ploughed through and things felt into place.

During rehearsals, I’d arranged for an additional day off so I could head out to Toronto for the first meeting of the newly elected Equity Council. This was my third term on Council. It was a bit of a jolt to be back into the “business” of the Theatre, but seeing old friends who had been re-elected was a bonus. On the second day of the meeting (during which I caught a massive cold), elections were held to determine who would be the Executive. My demonstrated passion for the organization along with a bit of lobbying resulted in my being awarded the job of Internal Vice-President, a position that dealt with the inner workings and National membership of Equity. I was elated at being entrusted with the responsibility and already had a lot of ideas to put into action. I returned to Winnipeg (suffering from decompression and blocked ears in the process) to find that word had already circulated about my new position in the Association’s hierarchy. I was now being referred to as “the Dan Quayle of Canadian Equity” much to everyone’s delight.

(Oh, and just to keep you up to date … not to be left out in the cold, Jack Shapira had managed to insert himself into the upcoming holiday festivities by making another headline in the daily news! This time he’d managed to secret a couple of knives into his cell “for protection” and was now being moved to another prison for further observation! Ironically, at the same time, he was granted day parole having served a third of his sentence. I couldn’t figure that one out, but he was on the streets again – at least during the day – and, as it turned out, was hatching another plan that would initiate the climax of this saga! More to come!)

Unfortunately, I had arranged for another few hours off to accommodate a rehearsal for a Christmas concert I was doing with the Winnipeg Symphony. I say “unfortunately” because the cold had dug in and my clogged ears still hadn’t popped from the flight home. Now I was to sing in front of the orchestra feeling like hell. The headliner for this concert was Frank Mills, he of “Music Box Dancer” fame (and little … actually nothing, else) under the musical direction of the affable Erik Friedenberg, a band director from Calgary. He had little experience conducting Symphony Orchestras (one doesn’t “count in” – “a-1, a-2, a-1, 2, 3” – a symphony orchestra. He did!) . The somewhat cynical musicians spared no effort in an attempt to show who was “boss”, but Erik soldiered on, much to everyone’s surprise. The arrangements had been written for a higher baritone, and the keys were at my breaking point. Combined with my persistent cold the rehearsals were frightening experiences. “O Holy Night” seemed to be my nemesis. In the rehearsals I sang the first half of the song easily enough but with a key change in this arrangement I was now in my vocal stratosphere, especially the second to last line – “oh night de-VINE” – where I had to hit and hold a high ‘G’, the note that everyone was waiting for. First time in rehearsal – big fail! For the next run-throughs I didn’t go for the money note. I had no idea what I was going to happen in performance!

The “Silent Night” presented me with another problem that had been on my mind for a long time – years, in fact. I was to lead the audience in this one and had been prone to do it the traditional way. But I kept thinking about the CHANGE DAILY admonition that had crept into most of my thinking of late. Everyone knows the words to the carol but rarely, if ever, actually thinks about what they are singing: “Silent night (breath), Holy night (breath), All is calm (breath), All is bright (breath), Round yon Virgin (breath), Mother and child (breath), etc. The first three phrases can stand alone but once you get to “all is bright’ the meaning of the line gets completely lost because of the breaths everyone is used to taken. The line is a complete thought -“all is bright ‘round yon Virgin Mother and child” – with NO breaths. In rehearsal I decided I to try this new phrasing. A big breath and I launched in and got through it, breathing before the parenthetical observation “holy infant so tender and mild”. The orchestra obliviously sawed away but I could feel Eric looking over at me. I caught his eye and he smiled and nodded. He’d heard what I did. Small victory! What would happen on the night?

I was somewhat nervous. The cold had opened up a bit and I warmed up in the dressing room not wanting to push things too hard. “We Three Kings” with the audience was a warm up for me and then into “Silent Night”. Made it! I felt fully self-satisfied for allowing myself to make the change. After a few more carols and readings, it was into “O Holy Night” as the second to last number of the evening. With the Symphony, the huge choir and the energy of the audience I was pumped. “Oh, Night, de-VINE”! The high G soared beyond anything I could have imagined. It was pure and clear and solid and emotional and when I finished the audience went bananas! There’s no other way to describe it. They wouldn’t stop applauding. I took a couple of bows and stepped behind the music stand getting ready to lead them in “Hark, The Herald Angels Sing” but they kept going! Frank Mills, about to thank the audience for coming, was applauding with them and motioned me out to take another bow. I was slightly embarrassed by now but took a quick one and it was into the last carol. Not staying safely in one’s lane and throwing caution to the wind seemed to have paid off.

The following day, there was a review in the paper. While the compliments were piled high for my work by Free Press critic Neil Harris, I was surprised and pleased with one of his comments “…he has a true baritone voice and sings with great understanding and musicality. Without distorting the fine old carols and using some rather unorthodox breathing pauses, he really did make them sound new”. It was that “unorthodox breathing pauses” line that let me know that, at least for Neil, my phrasing changes were noticed and appreciated! I was determined to continue experimenting if only for my own satisfaction.

My sojourn in symphonyland was short lived. I did two more performances of the Christmas Concert and it was back to the blood and gore of Shakespeare. I took some time to corner our “playwright”, Vic Cowie, to get more insight into his adaptation, specifically with respect to my character. It had been relatively easy to get the words off the page. Shakespeare is great for that because, simply put, he makes plain his intentions through the rhythm – iambic pentameter – that confines you to ten syllables per line (in verse plays) with stresses on every other syllable. You know you’ve made a mistake if it doesn’t “scan” exactly. But I was still concerned about the humanity of my villain character. I wasn’t getting any help from our director and Vic was very accommodating, telling me that rather than go for the obvious bad-guy approach, to think of him as desperate for his own survival, “desperate” being the operative word. It opened up a huge vista beyond the words-on-the-page approach I’d been mired in and just added to the CHANGE DAILY regimen I’d adopted. There are a number of large hell-bent battles in the play and they became the fall-back rehearsal position when McNair needed time to deal with the tech problems or couldn’t think of anything else to do with us. It was miraculous that there weren’t more injuries than there were (Stephen Russell getting the point of a spear in the roof of his mouth and me getting a broadsword whack on the knuckle of my right thumb which hurt and bled like hell  – I still bear the scar) but it only served to bring the cast closer together.

The piece took for EVER to perform! Our first run through lasted four hours (memories of “Nicholas Nickleby” years earlier)! What did one expect? Lashing two major history plays together was bound to result in a very long evening in the theatre. Cuts were made in profusion and I was just glad that most of what I had to do was plot-based and couldn’t be done away with. There was a bit of mayhem the following day in the run-through when Eric (playing Hal pictured at left with Vic Cowie and me) had stood waiting for a line which, unbeknownst to him, had been axed. The tension rose as he went off on McNair about the “kamikaze cutting” at the note session. As each rehearsal passed so did huge sections of the play. The cuts were merciless and depressing and, not surprisingly, did nothing for the cast’s enthusiasm and energy. It is at one’s peril that a “Slashing-The-Bard” approach is undertaken … as Keanu Reeves discovered in our production of “Hamlet” a few years later. But that’s a saga for another time.

It was now a shrugged-shoulder attitude that permeated the show. Our first Preview audience applauded politely at the end of the now three-hour-long slog and silently filed out. This did not bode well, especially for the matinee audiences which were usually made up of little blue-haired ladies and unruly bussed-in school kids. Three hours of dry Shakespeare in the middle of a Manitoba winter was something not a lot of people were up for. We found out later that almost a hundred people had left at intermission! And that was to be the norm for the run.

We opened well enough. A frenetic kind of energy got us through. Our ‘Falstaff’ went up a few times, but Barry (McGregor) seemed to cover those moments with such aplomb and bravado that an audience would never notice. We, however, were sometimes taken aback at what came out of his mouth. It sounded good, but made no sense whatsoever. At the party afterward, folks were complimentary enough but subdued. As I was leaving, McNair came up and latched on to me with a big hug and we walked for a few steps. “So, did I get a performance too fast?’ I asked him in my most affable voice. I think this took him by surprise. I decided I had nothing to lose by telling him about the hell his comment had put me through, how it had taken me weeks to get on an even keel with regard to my confidence. That was when he started to get uncomfortable and began to hem and haw, switching his weight back and forth, so I let it go, feeling a bit embarrassed for embarrassing him like that. At least I got my point across.

The production ambled along. Small houses continued with droves of people leaving at intermission. We kept ourselves naughtily amused on-stage by playing subtle little jokes on each other. Stephen Russell was a master at them. In one of our scenes, he would, an inch at a time, gradually move himself up stage of me so that I would have to turn my back to the audience in order to talk to him. There was nothing I could do about it and he knew it. It was always a challenge to play that scene with him never knowing what he was going to do to me. But there were other times when, just by coming up with a new inflection or unexpected approach, he inspired and provoked me to “meet” him on stage. In those moments performing transcends merely saying the lines and becomes creation through joyous energy. CHANGE DAILY! I loved working with him!

But as time went on I could feel the tugging-at-the-bit by the out-of-towners. There was a speeding up of lines that made itself apparent in the running times for the show and at the bows, when we intuitively made them as quick as possible in order to spare the remaining audience members the ordeal of keeping the tepid applause going until we all left the stage. But by now, my mind was on other things. I was about to go into a production of “I Do, I Do” at Chimes Dinner Theatre, Timlock’s new venture at the Westin Hotel and was getting my head into a better mindset. Doing a smaller role in a large cast show fosters a degree of complacency. Being one of two people in a show puts a major pressure on the time leading up to rehearsals. My confidence quotient was about to be put to a major test. Amid teaching Musical Theatre Performance classes about town, continuing with commercial recording sessions and spending endless hours on Equity Council Conference Calls, I hunkered down and threw myself into learning a huge number of lines and songs. Surprisingly, began to feel better about myself, that I could overcome the self-doubt that had plagued me for the previous months.

            My mother’s advice to “Be a good boy and act intelligently” had been my fundamental approach to life for many years. I now had another one. CHANGE DAILY was the silent affirmation that became my bedrock. One never knows what you’ll find in your underwear!