Click on the link above to see a clip from this interview.

P: This is our second interview with Sharon Pollock and I'm pleased to welcome the two female cast members, Kelly and Candice, to join us this afternoon. Unfortunately, Jan Selman isn't able to be here because of a faculty meeting commitment. It's close to the end of the run for Moving Pictures and I think this is an appropriate time to speak to Sharon and the other cast members about the experience, about the set, about what they've learned in the process of working together. First of all, about the set, Sharon. A few days ago when you were speaking at the Symposium you mentioned that a set tells us something about the play, that it is a three-dimensional piece of visual art, a metaphor for the meaning of the play. What does this set tell you about the metaphorical meaning of your play? I'm really asking you to assess the set.

S: (Laughs) Yes and I recognize that. (Laughter) Really it would be the director or the designer who would be best able, perhaps, to put that in words. I think you also heard me say probably at some time or another how much I dislike moving parts. I think that to me the internal action is what's interesting and how without moving anything you can transform time and place theatrically, without having to move things around. Now this is a revolve, of course, and it moves maybe three or four times - I actually am not even sure.

P: I'm forgetting, myself.

S: I think it's three, maybe. I don't know.

K: I think it's four.

S: It's four? I suppose - I don't know what their idea is as to why it does that - and when I look at it sometimes I think, "oh, this is a revolve because the title of the play is Moving Pictures and it's moving". (Laughter)

K: Otherwise it would be "Stationary Pictures". (Laughter)

S: I don't think of that as a metaphor, actually. I always think every decision you make has some rationalization and the mark of the rational person is that they can find an explanation for anything if they try hard enough. Perhaps it has something to do with why people always think of us as "the girl from somewhere away." I think, "oh, well maybe it's moving because Kelly/Helen says, "I'm turning the earth with my moving under a kaleidoscope sky" and somehow that's the meaning of everything - the ego, if you want to think of it, of the artist or the centrality of the person who has an artistic vision. I don't actually find either one of those explanations sufficient for me because I've also said that everything in a play should serve more than one purpose and both of those seem too literal for me. However, it may be my play, and if I were the playwright sitting out there, as opposed to being on the stage, and if this were a first production I would expect I would have more input into what was happening. And if I said, "explain it to me" - I don't have to like it - but if you can explain it to me so I understand the concept behind it I can live with it because you never know, it might turn out to be brilliant. But I'm not totally sure that I understand, although I'm sure that the director and the designer had many meetings together and have a much firmer idea of what it means to them.

P: I take it that your initial set in Calgary in 1999 wasn't a revolve?

S: No, it wasn't. It really was a reproduced theatre. It was a multi-level with a stage at the back and -

P: Scenes of it are reproduced here in the Playwrights Canada edition.

S: That's right. There was a desk on a lower level but on that stage - it was like an old vaudeville house - it had flats, it had the wind machine, at which you saw somebody working, it had the gramophone (I think), it had a microphone, which somebody spoke through when they were . . .

K: Edison, maybe?

S: The kid, I think, or Edison - one of the two, I can't really remember. So it was quite different from this set and quite theatrical, in its own way. It was a very crisp, clean production but they got into moving the furniture!

P: Which you don't like. (Laughter)

S: No, I don't like moving the furniture. I don't mind something like moving the chair when I move it in this particular production downstage to get away from people and I put it some place; there's a reason for me to do that. I'm not doing it to set up a scene. And when somebody else uses it in another scene, to me that's a different kind of movement of furniture. And, in fact, I love that, when stuff that seems to be one thing becomes another thing during the course of the play. But at the same time I have to admit that I probably was in a minority when actors were moving furniture - and they did it in a wonderfully efficient and theatrical way - but I didn't really see. In my mind I think, "how does moving a desk upstage maybe 12 inches or a foot and a half - and that might be all they'd move it - now it's Ernie's office?! And now if they move it down over this way 2 feet it's Sam Goldwin's office?" I don't see the necessity for that, but nevertheless, it created a very seamless and interestingly choreographed movement in the play. As I say, I was probably in the minority sitting there thinking . . .

P: I think it actually worked - from the audience's point of view I can vouch for it.

S: Well I know many people liked it. In other words, you have a multitude of free actions whenever you do anything and something that I may love other people may not care for, but that's just my own personal taste. I understood the concept behind it, although I didn't think it was necessary. But it certainly worked and was successful. If you really wanted to impose your vision on everything the play would get smaller and smaller, it seems to me. It's when other people feed into it that it becomes interesting. And you discover maybe the revolve might have worked in a fantastic way. I don't know how well it works because I'm not out there. I'd prefer people like it, whether I do or not, than not like it, right?

P: Yes. Kelly and Candice, let's bring you into the conversation. You're playing younger versions of Nell Shipman in this play. Kelly you play the ingenue Helen and Candice you play the middle aged, professional filmmaker Shipman. What understanding did you bring to the role before you started rehearsal? How did you see your role before rehearsal? Then, of course you know what the other question is going to be - during and after rehearsal - but before rehearsal? (Laughter)

K: I think for myself, before I came into the process, I didn't read Helen as young as she ended up becoming through the process.

P: She's very girlish at the beginning isn't she?

K: Very, very. I mean, she's playing herself when she was 13. I think because I'm not 13 - I'm a few years older than that (Laughter) - I didn't have that sort of approach to the character. But once I came into the process I found it necessary to adopt it, if I was going to explore that hope, the hope of a 13 year-old and being so wide-eyed about life. It's much different than being 18 or 25. Although I'm 25 and I'm not cynical and I have hope for myself, but it is much different from what it's like to be 13 and to think you can take on the world. And that's very much where Helen is coming from; she believes she's capable of anything and she is a star and she hasn't been jaded by too much disappointment, whereas Nell has, and then of course, Shipman really has. (Laughter) So, I think to balance out where the other two Nells were playing from, I think that's where I came from.

P: So you started with absolute exuberance?

K: Well, I think part of that came out during the process. Certainly, Heather brought out more and more; she really wanted Helen to be quite big. That's something that she brought out through the process, for her to be running around and yelling, to then motivate Shipman to say, "you don't have to yell." She has that much energy and excitement about life and the auditions and the bad plays she's working for; they're all brilliant and wonderful to her. In her eyes everything's wonderful. So that definitely got amplified; Helen became amplified during the process.

P: And Candice, with what understanding did you come to your role?

C: Well, reading the play before we started and reading Nell's autobiography, I saw her as very hard-nosed. When I laid out everything she'd done and then in the play how she goes through and ultimately what happens to her at the end with Burt, I saw her as kind of deserving of that fight sequence, in my preliminary thoughts about her. I saw her as very pushy, very un-likeable, very driven and focused, and then once we got in to the process - because they all have to link, right? - there was so much joy coming from Helen and passion that I think that fed into Nell quite a bit.

P: Did it temper your view of Nell?

C: Yes. I think the direction of it, too, tempered it quite a bit. I still believe she was quite hard-nosed and driven in her quest for her art, but I think she did need that joy that I didn't see initially.

P: Sherrill Grace suggests in her introduction to the Playwright's Canada Press edition of Moving Pictures that the Nells in this play - "Helen," "Nell" and "Shipman" - "jockey for control of the story-telling process." They engage, she contends, in "an emotional tug-of-war." Sharon what kind of a contribution to the dramatic tension do you think "Shipman" makes?

S: Well, she has a journey. I think at the beginning as she looks back she feels guilt and remorse and a lot of other things. So I think that she is aware of all of that and part of that is what makes her say, "I have nothing to say. It's all been for nothing. It was worthless - all of those things I did". And she is aware of that and that has made her, in a way, impotent. But by theatrically reliving the moments - because she too has within her the optimism of her young self and she still has the drive and the hard-nosed aspect of her most successful self, you could say -- near the end, now, she's chosen to take a very dark view of it all and feels she's entering a void. She's nothing, she can't do anything.

P: She can't "play."

S: Well, and "play" to me means writing and creating. There's a sort of play on the word "play".

P: That was my next question anyway, so go ahead! (Laughter)

S: By engaging with her younger selves and reliving, perhaps, the worst moments of her life - confronting herself with the things she feels most terrible about - those other aspects of her personality come through. I think she wants to, in a way, try as the older self to warn, particularly Nell, about things that are coming up. Try to do them differently. But, of course, you can't. You lived it, it unfolded a certain way, no matter what you wanted. But it also engenders feelings - even if she says of Ernie, the first husband, "he was an asshole," she has a moment when she sees him and remembers how she fell in love with his blue eyes and his blond curly hair and the jokes he told. She has a moment for me as Shipman with Burt, who when she says, "loved me", or when she goes over to him when he walks across the stage, she remembers for a moment that she loved Burt, that Burt loved her, and that moment when he would get up and say, "come on, let's make motion pictures, let's go!" It's immediately countered with his saying, "everything is terrible," but that's part of the story. You have to tell all the parts of the story if the story is complete - if a story can ever be complete - in confronting all of those things, I think. That's what happens with her awareness of the men and the roles they play, which are separate from Burt and Ernie; there were other factors working against her and maybe she was pig-headed and tunnel-visioned and didn't realize it, but it wasn't all her fault. So I believe at the end of the play she accepts the journey she's taken and recognizes in it the wonderful optimism and hopefulness of that younger self and the struggle that Nell had to remain true to her vision. You'd think that if that terrible situation at Priest Lake was going to drive anybody mad it should have driven her mad, instead of Burt, but it didn't. She had the courage to go on and understanding that renders her, in a way, potent again. She can accept all of those other parts. So I don't know if Sherrill actually does believe that Shipman never recognizes what was happening. The real Shipman I'm not sure did, but my Shipman does and I don't care about the real Shipman, actually. (Laughter)

P: If we can talk about your Shipman getting it, and the connection between your role, Sharon, and the roles played by Kelly and Candice. Again, Sherrill Grace used the term "emotional tug-of-war." Is it possible to see the younger versions of Shipman as vying with one another in this play? Then I'm going to ask the two actors as well if they see their role as anything like a competition for attention?

S: From the older Shipman?

P: Yes!

S: I probably wouldn't use either one of those words, although I can't think of another word at the moment, but I would see them as working collectively to try and engage Shipman and not in competition with each other.

P: Almost to lead her out.

S: That's right. They're supporting each other, most particularly Kelly. And then in a way after the how-mummy-died-for-Nell bit, in fact, Kelly's job then becomes to engage Nell because Shipman has managed to actually wound both herself and Nell. In winning the argument she has killed a certain part of herself that is very vital. So now Helen has a two-fold job, although she manages to bring Shipman around, who gradually becomes more and more engaged.

P: That makes real sense to me - that both Kelly and Candice, or Helen and Nell, are involved in bringing you out, in prompting, encouraging you to play.

Kelly Spilchak and Candice Woloshyn

K: I would disagree that it's a competition at all. I think from the beginning of the play, Helen and Nell are in cahoots to try and get Shipman to play. Up until, really, I think, we realize just prior to your introducing the idea of, "we can play at Bonner's Ferry for money", that's the first time where Shipman comes in with the idea because Helen and Nell almost seem to have given up once we realize there's not enough supplies, there's not enough food to actually make this winter. There's not enough of anything. That's the first time Shipman, then, sort of takes it by the reins and says, "well wait, we can play". Because every other time prior to that it's been Helen breaking the void of whatever's just happened by saying, "well we can talk about the good times when we were here, when we were in New York, when we saw our funny face up on a billboard". After we realize there's not enough, that's the first time Shipman really comes forward and says, "no wait, I have the solution. We can still play and this is how we can make it work for us". But up until that moment, I'd say it was mostly Nell and Helen trying to get Shipman.

C: Yes, yes.

S: I think so too. And I think from that moment on, too, that Shipman is more engaged, and I think "driving" may be too strong a word . . .

K: Definitely more active.

S: But she's accepting - there's an inevitability to everything that follows. "Time," she says, which I think is different from your, "it's time", she says, and she says, "yes, ok." And all of us are engaged but I think Shipman knows where it's going.

P: And Nell, or Candice, how do you think you enter into this process of bringing Shipman out?

C: I think Helen definitely starts it off, the process of trying to pull her out, in the way of reliving - like, "let's play, let's go back and relive." But I think Nell is key because she comes from the best part of Shipman's life. So she tries to pull Shipman in by making her relive those great moments and Shipman keeps pushing her to relive the mistakes and the bad moments. I think that's part of the beautiful conflict. There is this argument between them, "yes it was worth it/no - what is it?" and it will jump back and forth. But I think that relationship between Helen and Nell is key to keep Shipman on board, to pull her back in and not to give up. I think if the two of us were vying or arguing amongst ourselves then you've just got three desperate people in their own little -

P: Separate hot pools.

C: Exactly! When I was a kid we had these pet mice that had babies and they all would clump together. My sister and I would have fun pulling them apart and they'd just spiral in circles. I see that if we weren't together - what we're trying to do is get the baby mice back together here, making one pile here - using that analogy. (Laughter) But if we were fighting or opposing each other than we'd be all these little separate things spinning on our own. We're trying to unify.

S: And even in the scenes in which bad things happen, there is still something that I think Shipman has to find, that she has to recognize, that this is a strong woman. She wishes it were otherwise, you know, and tries to - the story is incomplete. Yes, you wanted to do all those wonderful things and make movies like that but we have to look at the whole thing that happened. In a way, I think at that time we're moving into less competitiveness, in terms of what seems to be an antagonistic situation, much more into saying, "no, you've got to confront those other things that happened if we really want to move forward."

P: You move towards recognition with all of that jostling about.

S: That's right.

C: But I think, as much as we go at each other, we're never actually fighting because we dislike each other. We're trying to get on the same page.

S: Yes, and I think that's really important in the piece.

P: I would agree. Can we talk for a minute about the slight differences, or maybe you would call them major differences, between the published version of the ending of the play and the version that is being performed now on the Timms stage? How did this change come about? Did it emerge naturally through rehearsal?

K: I think a lot of the script changes that happened just happened because we had a really open dialogue with Sharon about, "you know, Sharon, I'm really not getting this one part" or, "I can't find whatever in this moment." Or vice versa, Sharon would come to us and say, "Is this moment working for you guys because we're not seeming to get on board and find something that works." It just happened organically that way.

S: Yes.

K: And then Sharon came in with a new insert for certain pages and we just continued on from there.

P: But do you think this performed version of the play, at least the one that we're seeing now in Edmonton, changes the meaning of the end of the play in any sense, Sharon?

S: I don't think it does. Really, the only lines that are actually gone are two lines in which Shipman refers to the fictional news, which is a letter we've seen her receive at the beginning, which may in fact have something - I don't believe it says, "oh dear, you're going to die - you've got some kind of cancer and you're dying in a month" - I believe it says "come in for further tests." But what I discovered, first of all, as the actor playing the role, is that to me, a reference to a letter that has been set up at the beginning as having perhaps bad medical news and perhaps being part of the motivating factor for this day for her to confront those parts of herself and the past, that when it comes back about four lines before the end of the play at which she says, "ok, you got me, let's play" and the fictional news "GO TO BLACK" - we know what black means. Black means death. She's saying "that's all very well for you two to be very cheerful and say you've got no choice about creating but here's a letter that says I'm gonna die" - GO TO BLACK. And for me playing the character there was no way I had any lines that took me into saying "play." I couldn't make that transition. And on two levels - it was that I couldn't make the transition as the character and even if I could, I didn't believe it would be credible for the audience. I thought "it's kind of hokey, isn't it?" GO TO BLACK - the lights come down, never the lights go up. That's kind of hokey. And then the other thing I thought was that at one time that "go to fictional news" cutting back at the end wasn't in a manuscript, an earlier draft.

P: Oh, it wasn't in there at all?

S: No. And the reason I put it in was because, in the first production, it seemed as if everybody wanted to know - everybody being the people who were working on the play - "what was in the letter? Did the letter say she was dying? Is this why this happens?" So I felt as if I had to - so that letter wouldn't be a red herring in a bad way - that I needed to somehow tap it again and finish it off, in a way, which is what that line does. I thought about that some more and I thought, "why do I feel I have to do that?" As long as I don't do that a production can look at that letter at the beginning and say all of this play is really nothing more, in a way, than an old woman with a writer's block and the way that she goes through it is this. The ambiguity of what the letter means needn't be a negative; it can be something I rather like in a play. I don't have to tie it all up and put a bow on it. So all of those things became factors, although I must say that the most compelling factor for me was, as the character, I couldn't go there. It didn't work for me. And since I wrote it, I could say what happens if we take out these two lines and move it around a little bit. But there's other much simpler moments. I mean, simply the moment when you say, "everyone says I'm the girl from God's country, they say I'm the girl, or we're the girl from somewhere away." Changing that from "you" to "we" was something -

K: "Everyone thinks we're the girl from somewhere away."

S: Yeah. There were little moments where I felt endorsing for the audience the fact that we were really one person was a good thing to do. Some people sit in the audience and for a while at the beginning think, "oh, I don't understand it, who is she?" You know, they sort of don't get it.

P: Well I don't think their eyes were open, really, if they didn't get it.

S: Well, people come with different expectations and I think people "get it" at different times, you know?

P: Exactly.

K: And that's okay.

S: Some people get it immediately and other people take a little bit longer. So I just wanted to have those little reminders in every once and a while that were subtle, but I thought helped the coin to drop. And also, glues us together. Whenever you can find an opportunity for us to interact with each other with our lines is a good thing, even when sometimes, the lines could be directed to another person in the scene creates a bond, which I think is an asset.

C: Which we do try and do. I know, just thinking off the top of my head, the first Carl scene where as I come around the desk I'm talking about, "everyone wants to see the girl from God's country," and I take it to Shipman, although the scene is happening with Carl because it's about her, getting her on board, and we're doing a scene for her, although Carl is not aware.

P: You're directing it to her. You're almost ventriloquizing it for her, aren't you, so that she'll get it.

C: Yes, and going, "come on, this is great! We were wonderful, we were fantastic!" (Laughter)

P: It's just donned on me too how really important it was that you used the quotation marks around fictional to describe news at the end. The "fictional" news. That keeps the ambiguity alive too, doesn't it?

S: Yes, it does.

P: You spoke a second ago about the glue among you. What kind of glue existed among the three of you as women acting in this performance in December, 2004, in Edmonton? What was it like? Let's start with the younger actors.

C: I think the glue for me, really, is that relationship between us offstage that feeds the relationship onstage. There's friendship, there's communication, there's an understanding of each other and of our lives. As we went through the rehearsal process there became little inside jokes about things that become funny and they all just kind of bond us together and then you take that relationship together on stage. I think, especially working with Kelly - we've known each other for three years now - there's such a safety with her that I know her, she knows me and she will be there to save me, no matter what happens - to the best of her ability, right? Whether it's mopping up the tea that I just spilled on the desk . . . (Laughter)

K: I'll catch you. Yep, I was on it, I was on it. (Laughter)

C: There's that safety net.

Click on the link above to see a clip of Candice and Kelly talking about what it was like working with Sharon.

P: What was it like working with the playwright herself?

C: Such a cool opportunity. Intimidating before we met her, for sure, because we knew nothing of her.

K: Absolutely. (Laughter)

C: But just a mind-boggling opportunity, for sure. Having the person there that has the ability to cut a line and change a line whenever, but to offer you that insight, at the same time. When I was struggling with something to be able to talk to her and bounce off of her, "this is my idea," and to have her counter that or agree with it and for us to be able to create together and go from there - what an amazing opportunity.

P: And for you, Kelly?

K: I forget the actual question, but it's been -

P: It was glue. (Laughter)

K: We've had a lot of fun, as Candice said, offstage together. I mean, we're cracking jokes right up until we're walking on the stage. (Laughter) You know, we're back there being a bunch of idiots together. And we have fun playing together. "Play" - whatever that means in our lives as actors together - going out for a beer after the show together. I think when you have that kind of chemistry between actors, absolutely the moment you step on stage together that's going to read, you're going to connect. As opposed to having to play across from someone whom maybe you really dislike. For sure that's when the technical skills come in but when you're lucky enough to have that sort of relationship with the people you're working with, it absolutely reads. It's been great getting to work with Sharon. I can't remember what interview I mentioned it in but I said, "who can actually say that when they were in theatre school they got to work, not with Sharon as an instructor, but I got to act alongside of Sharon Pollock in theatre school". It's bizarre to me - it is! (Laughter) I studied you in theatre history in my BA - it's bizarre to me!

P: They're going to call it "fictional" news, is that it? (Laughter)

K: So now that I know Sharon as a person and we've had a really good time working together . . . what an opportunity - I've learned a lot. And I think also because you didn't put the play on some sort of strange pedestal; for sure I was intimidated about that before I had met you. Before the first read I thought, "oh God, please be a nice woman!" (Laughter) All my prayers were answered there, but because we could treat the play like it was this working thing that we were all creating together and it wasn't, "I wrote this thing and we're going to do it my way," it became a very collective kind of process of how the actors need to work through these words on the page and turn them into something that is alive and 3D. Certainly in the last couple of weeks we've really banded together and brought out a lot of moments that weren't there earlier in the process and because of our working relationship we've been able to kick the show up a notch. So it's been very positive.

C: And we all really want the best, right? There's nobody who's kind of skating in, still smoking, walking in . . . (Laughter)

K: I'm ready for my scene. (Laughter)

C: We all want it to be brilliant. So when you have a group of people that are willing to put in the extra time and go the extra mile and want it to succeed - it just creates such a harmonious relationship.

S: And allows you to continue to find things as the run continues.

P: That's precisely what I wanted to ask you, Sharon. What have you found in your own work in the process of this production?

S: I think, in a way, a greater appreciation of, I would say, all three characters. I mean, you do look at a play when you write it from the outside. You're looking at all of it and it's not exactly like a puzzle, but on some aspects of it you're putting pieces together, in a way.

P: Almost assembling a mosaic.

S: Yeah, and it has to have a unified thing and you're tracking the characters through it. But it's different when you're in that play, or in any play. You become aware of aspects of a character that you didn't necessarily think of or you didn't see manifesting themselves in that particular way.

P: As you said the other day in the Symposium about your use of the word "play," you really hadn't thought of the Beckett connection until Sherrill delivered her paper, and then it really kind of bubbled up for you.

S: I feel that although it was a very successful production, all of us are quite different from in fact the roles as they were played in the original production. Obviously certain things happen and there's a certain similarity because we're dealing with the same raw material. But I think if I was outside looking at it, my Shipman is much older, and I think, in a way, has more at stake than in the original production. I think that Helen, her exuberance and youthfulness and optimism and her journey, to me - maybe it's because I'm the recipient of it in a different way - to me is . . . you know there's a line in the play that Edison says that talks about the characters in bright relief of the subjects and I feel as if all three characters are in brighter relief than they were in the original production that I saw, that Nell struggled to create, and her strength, to me, is more evident in this production. And the interaction between Shipman, which is for me clearer - the journey of each of them is clearer to me.

P: The focus is a bit sharper, even, when you're inside it.

S: Yes. And I don't think that's just from being inside it. I think it's because different people are bringing different things to it that reflect their own creative interpretation of this raw material. And what they've made out of the raw material - you know, it's still a figure of Helen and it's still made out of what the play gives you but you can manipulate it in subtly different ways and when you put all three of them together the picture can be quite different than three absolutely different combinations of people wearing different costumes and working on a different set - and then we're not even bringing in the men and how they impact on us. Our performances are conditioned somewhat by what they give us in any one scene. So they play a really important role in how we interact. And I just think it's so important - maybe not all playwrights want to or their background is different - but for me it's really important to play a role either in my own work because it gives me a certain insight into it, or in any play, because what it is we're talking about - the relationship between people when you're offstage - really does have a tremendous impact on how you feel about them onstage. It adds a richness, I think, that is missing.

P: That you can't get otherwise.

S: Yes.

K: And that's an opportunity that we've had as classmates to form the ensemble. That's very much what the BA acting program is about, the ensemble. So of course with those people in our class, as Candice said, you have a certain trust with everyone. But the fact that we only met Sharon, what, seven weeks ago? It feels that we've gotten to the same level where I can play; I can jostle her chair this way on a certain night because I feel like it and she'll play off of that. (Laughter)

P: And you can even spill tea! (Laughter)

C: Yes, I can throw tea recklessly!

K: Yeah, whatever goes!

S: Or break beads in the middle of a conversation. (Laughter) "Give them to me, I'll put them in my pocket" - and not have that really crack the scene that's happening. You can kind of -

P: Work around it.

S: Yeah.

K: Yes, we've been really fortunate.

P: I really want to thank you for your candour and your presence this afternoon, and for the wonderful performance that you've given us as an audience in Edmonton. Thanks very much.

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