Tear the Curtain!

By Kevin Kerr, Jonathon Young and Kim Collier

In this psychological thriller set in a fictionalized 1930s Vancouver, Alex Braithewaite, a troubled but passionate theatre critic, believes he has found the legendary Stanley Lee, director of the infamous avant-garde theatre The Empty Space. Alex becomes convinced that this man’s radically subversive ideas are what the city’s arts community needs to shatter audience complacency. In his pursuit of the truth behind Stanley Lee’s mysterious disappearance and his artistic ideas, Alex becomes caught between the warring factions of two prominent mob families – one controlling the city’s playhouses, the other its cinemas, but both ensnared by the Empty Space Society. At the dawn of the Talkies, can Alex tear through the artifice of these art forms in time to save the city’s art community from ripping itself apart?

The play’s collaborators found inspiration within the walls of Vancouver’s Stanley Theatre, a space that has a dual history as a cinema and vaudeville house. Fittingly, this gritty film-noir production became an exploration of the two kinds of art and how they affect the audience. Tear the Curtain! explores global issues that consider what we want from art: to be shocked and surprised or for order to be restored.

Cast of 2 women and 8 men.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Talonbooks
• Release date: Dec 18, 2014
• ISBN: 9780889229051

Kevin Kerr

Kevin Kerr is playwright and founding member of Vancouver’s Electric Company Theatre, with whom he’s co-written numerous plays including The Wake, The Score, Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands, Flop, The Fall, and Brilliant! The Blinding Enlightenment of Nikola Tesla. In 2002 he received the Governor General’s Literary Award for his play Unity (1918), which has been produced across Canada as well as in the United States and Australia. In 2005 he co-wrote the feature-length screen adaptation of Electric Company’s The Score for Screen Siren Pictures and CBC Television. Other works include Studies in Motion (Electric Company Theatre) and Skydive (Realwheels). At present he is writing a stage adaptation of Pierre Berton’s children’s classic “The Secret World of Og” for Vancouver’s Carousel Theatre. For Electric Company he’s co-directed Brilliant!, The Wake, and Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands, and in 2008 he directed Jonathon Young’s Palace Grand, presented at the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival. Kevin was Lee Playwright in Residence at the University of Alberta in Edmonton from 2007 to 2010. He returned to Electric Company Theatre in 2011 as Artistic Director.

Book preview

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Tear the Curtain!

A Film/Theatre Hybrid

Written by Jonathon Young and Kevin Kerr

Created with Kim Collier

Talonbooks

Contents

PRODUCTION HISTORY

PLAYWRIGHTS’ NOTE

CAST OF CHARACTERS

SETTING

PRODUCTION NOTES

Tear the Curtain!

ACT ONE

ACT TWO

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ABOUT THE IMAGES

JONATHON YOUNG

KEVIN KERR

KIM COLLIER

ALSO BY ELECTRIC COMPANY THEATRE

Only the medium can make an event – whatever the contents, whether they are conformist or subversive.

– Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation

PRODUCTION HISTORY

Tear the Curtain! was first performed at the Stanley Theatre in Vancouver, produced by the Arts Club Theatre Company in association with Electric Company Theatre from September 9 to October 10, 2010, with the following cast and crew:

ALEX BRAITHEWAITE Jonathon Young

MAVIS Dawn Petten

MILA BROOK Laura Mennell

STANLEY LEE James Fagan Tait

PATRICK DUGAN / REPORTER / MOBSTER Gerard Plunkett

MAX PAMPLONI / TYPESETTER / REPORTER Tom McBeath

SENDER / SCOOTER / MOBSTER Hiro Kanagawa

EDITOR / KORN / MOBSTER David Adams

QUINCY / BARNEY / LOGIE Scott Bellis

NIPKOW / CLIVE / PHOTOGRAPHER Craig Erickson

LADY BEATRICE Patti Allan

FATHER HYACINTH Duncan Fraser

Directed by Kim Collier

Produced by Nathan Medd and Oliver Linsley

Stage managed by Jan Hodgson

Cinematography by Brian Johnson

Production designed by David Roberts

Costumes designed by Nancy Bryant

Music composed by Peter Allen

Stage lighting designed by Alan Brodie

Sound designed by Miguel Nunes

Video edited by Alex Craig

Props by Michael Gall and Robin Volk

Assistant stage managed by Jennifer Swan

Video management by Michael Sider

Early story development with David Hudgins

Some additional text by Hakim Bey

An Electric Company Theatre production of Tear the Curtain! in association with Vancouver’s Arts Club Theatre Company was presented by Canadian Stage in Toronto from October 7 to October 20, 2012, featuring the original cast and artistic personnel.

PLAYWRIGHTS’ NOTE

In 2006, with a commission from the Arts Club, we began to write a new play for Vancouver’s historic Stanley Theatre. The Stanley was originally conceived as a vaudeville theatre, but, perhaps as a response to the growing popularity of the cinema and the advent of the talkies, plans changed before construction even began. In 1930, the Stanley opened as a motion picture house with Lillian Gish’s first talking picture, a film adaptation of Ferenc Molnár’s stage play The Swan. In 1998 the venue was transformed yet again and it reopened as a live theatre.

Inspired by these events and by the venue’s dual identity as live theatre and cinema, we set out to create a piece that would live equally in both forms, with the narrative flowing seamlessly between stage and screen.

As we began to imagine a story set at the time of the Stanley’s opening, we were drawn to the surrealist movement in the 1920s that had challenged both the accepted conventions of artistic practice at the same time that it questioned the very function of art. The cinema was a popular medium of expression for many artists in the avant-garde, who believed this entirely modern form of art production was the perfect vehicle for transmitting radical new ideas.

As a film/theatre hybrid, Tear the Curtain! has an identity crisis, but for us the real internal conflict of the piece isn’t a battle of stage versus screen, it’s between the forces of the avant-garde and those of the conventional mainstream. Inside the play there’s both the impulse to dismantle the linear narrative and the need for order to be restored; it relies heavily on tradition while attempting to make something new.

Early on in the process we decided to write the script as a screenplay, giving our cinematic imagination free rein. The decision as to which scenes would be played live or on film happened late in the process – as we were nearing a final draft. In some cases it was clear when a particular scene was better suited to one medium or the other, but often it came down to a question of overall rhythm and a desire for a more or less equal share between the two.

In February 2010, a three-week film shoot resulted in the footage for approximately half the production, all of which was edited, mixed, and colour-corrected several months before any stage rehearsals began. Thus, our subsequent work on the live scenes was always in response to what had already been shot and locked down.

The script herein retains the screenplay format revealing its hybrid nature.

– Jonathon Young, Kevin Kerr, Kim Collier

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Alex Braithewaite, a Vancouver theatre critic

Mavis, Alex’s secretary and confidante

Mila Brook, a well-known actress with a hidden past

Stanley Lee, a phantom

Patrick Dugan, an Irish businessman who controls the live theatres

Max Pamploni, an Italian businessman who controls the cinemas

Sender, leader of the Empty Space Society (ESS)

Logie, Nipkow, and Korn, agents of the ESS

Editor, Alex’s boss at the local newspaper

Quincy, Scooter, and Clive, reporters

Barney, Max’s real estate agent

Photographer

Lady Beatrice, Father Hyacinth, Princess Alexandra, and Tutor, characters from Molnár’s The Swan

Various mobsters, henchmen, and members of the press

SETTING

Tear the Curtain! is set in a fictionalized 1930s Vancouver at a time when the increasing popularity of cinema and the advent of sound film, the talkies, are threatening the existence of live theatre.

PRODUCTION NOTES

In the original production, the main onstage set piece was the exterior facade of Alex’s apartment building. This two-storey structure was neutral enough in surface and colour to serve as a projection surface, fragmenting the image without distorting it completely.

The only other projection surface was a high-quality white scrim: when flown in downstage, the scrim filled the proscenium and provided the spectator with a fairly complete cinematic experience. Scrim, of course, is semi-transparent and the projection loses much of its clarity as it passes through the material; however, with the use of a black drop flown in just upstage, we significantly increased its reflective capacity, and by raising the black drop during film sequences, we had the option to reveal live action within the projected image.

Action taking place in projection is indicated with a screenplay slug line that ends in (Film), the action performed onstage is indicated as (Live), and, when live performers are working in sync with film projection, the action slug line reads (Film/Live). The transitions between stage and screen should be as smooth and seamless as possible.

Tear the Curtain!

ACT ONE

The red act curtain opens revealing the movie screen.

INT. MAVIS’S CAR – NIGHT (FILM)

Rain on a car windshield. On the passenger side, ALEX Braithewaite is looking emotionally fatigued. Something’s gnawing at him. MAVIS, his secretary and confidante, is at the wheel.

Mavis

You know what your trouble is?

ALEX

I’m a hack writer living in a hick town.

MAVIS

No.

ALEX

A hick border town where we’re raised on foreign ideas and foreign stories that we imitate, pretending they’re our own ... I should have left when I was twenty and gone where the action is.

MAVIS

You just don’t know what you want, Alex. I’m sure we may be hicks compared with