PL AYBILL JITTERS
JITTERS DAVID FRENCH }{
A pproxi m at e ru n ni ng t i m e: 2 hou rs & 30 m i nu t es T her e w ill be t wo 15 m i nu t e i n t er m ission
ARTIST NOTE: OLIVER DENNIS
I was going to write about “corpsing” but apparently I already have. Type “The Fine Art of Corpsing - Oliver Dennis” into your browser to read all about it. While you’re at it, read some of the other posts in the Soulpepper blog. You can read about staff members and cast experiences and design stuff and the academy... posts go all the way back to “The Fine Art of Corpsing” from 2010. Which was, funnily enough, about this very show. We had our first read through today. It was bittersweet. We were all delighted to come back to this play but the last time we had our first read, David French, our dear playwright, was in the room. He died in December of that year. This time we had Glenda and Mary, David’s wife and daughter and Mary’s BFF (Ted Dykstra’s daughter) Rosie come in to hear the first read. Continuity carries meaning for us. Ted retold a very funny story of life imitating art: as we were nearing our first audience of the first production, David
was very anxious and Ted was telling him forcefully to “Go home!” Just like George tells Robert in our play. But that’s one of the things about this play: it is very close to our life. Of course, we don’t smoke in the dressing rooms and our shows don’t start at 8:30 anymore, but virtually every other thing you hear about our insecurities, our panics, our devilries, our pride, whininess, frailties, ignorance of our frailties, desperations, hopes, is true to our lives. David wrote a love letter to the theatre, a very funny love letter. I hope it brings you as much joy as it does us. And, ok, if you see me corpsing, please forgive. I’m having too much fun.
p roduc t ion s p on sor
OLIVER DENNIS, Phil in Jitters