The summer of 2010 has been kind to Canadian Stage’s TD Dream in High Park; the hot, dry weather has ensured fewer lost performances — there were 14 cancelled shows last year and 16 blow-outs in 2008 — which means that the current production of Romeo and Juliet is on track to re-coupe its costs.
“CanStage is the country’s largest not-for-profit theatre company,” says Director of Production, Alistair Hepburn, “so for us success is breaking even. Sure it would be glorious if we could end up with a record-breaking profit but success means making sure everyone gets paid and we don’t end up costing anyone else money.”
Now in its 28th year, the Dream in the Park is one of the city’s longest running theatrical traditions. The elaborate, multi-tiered set may not look like shoe-string theatre but it definitely is says Hepburn, whose job it is to make sure that the show’s small budget stretches as far as humanly possible.
“We take the everyday and the mundane and turn it into stuff that people don’t recognize,” he explains. “The background of the entire set is scrimmed with tack cloth, the material used to cover the undersides of box spring mattresses. We shop at Value Village and use other people’s cast offs, rehemmed or reinvented to turn them into something new.”
“With the Dream in High Park one of our goals is to be environmentally conscious,” stresses Hepburn, above. “Historically, theatre has not been kind to the environment and we’re trying to change that. The greening of the company falls largely onto the production team; out here at the site we only use 200 amps of power, that’s what’s installed in the average new home: to run an entire theatre on that amount of power is unheard of in a big house downtown.”
“Recycling,” adds Hepburn, “is another way we do more with less. A lot of materials you see are flats from old shows, bits of Glengarry Glen Ross, things from Tarragon, Soulpepper, Factory Theatre – before we do the Dream we canvas all those companies for bits and pieces that we can turn into something new.”
Hepburn describes himself as a “middleman” between the design and the artisan: “Myself and the technical director are the ones who take it off the page and put it on the stage. We’re not the craftspeople who hammer the nails but we create the construction drawings so that can happen. We source out the shops and find the low-VOC paint.”
The Director of Production often guides backstage tours for school children who inevitably want to know why he’s not an actor. “I try to impress upon them the idea that for every actor on stage there are four or five people backstage who have worked on the show. By the time they see a production like Romeo and Juliet with its cast of nine, there have been 50 to 60 people who have worked on the show. They’re not all full-time employees but there are at least that many who have touched the production, from the guys who hang the lights to the graphic artists who manipulate images in Photoshop to make the signs.”
Hepburn has done well for himself since graduating from York University’s theatre program in 1995. One of his first jobs out of school was Sound Operator at Camp Shakespeare, which is what the cast affectionately calls Dream in the Park. Hepburn worked three seasons on the Dream, then came back four years ago when he joined Canadian Stage full-time. In his current role he works on CanStage productions at Bluma Appel Theatre and Berkeley Street Theatre, as well as in High Park and on various co-productions mounted with Calgary’s Citadel Theatre, the Vancouver Playhouse and Montreal’s Centaur Theatre.
Working in the middle of Toronto’s largest public park presents unique challenges, says Hepburn. “Racoons wander across the stage from time to time and bats dive bomb us, sometimes a dog will charge down the hill and end up on stage with Romeo. It’s one of the joys and frustrations of doing outdoor theatre, you don’t have control over those things.”
Following are a few tips gleaned from my experience at the Dream in the Park last week.
1. Arrive early. The show starts promptly at 8 pm but the amphitheatre (above) is more or less full by 7 pm.
2. Bring a picnic.
3. Late summer evenings can be cool; bring a sweater.
4. Bring a blanket and a cushion for your back; the rock supports are handy but not exactly comfortable.
5. If you show up on a whim without any of the above, a concession stand on site rents blankets and you can purchase pizza slices and hot chocolate for when the sun goes down.
WHERE/WHEN: Romeo and Juliet runs until Sunday, September 5 at the High Park Amphitheatre, 8 pm. Tickets are pay-what-you-can (suggested donation $20), children under 14 free.
Stage photos by Chris Gallow; amphitheatre and portrait of Alistair Hepburn by Christopher Jones
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