ON STAGE
What: A Christmas Carol
Where: bluebridgetheatre.ca
When: Dec. 3-20
Tickets: $25 from bluebridgetheatre.ca or 250-382-3370
Directing theatre for in-person and online audiences is not two sides of the same coin, Jacob Richmond has come to find out. They are entirely different beasts.
Starting Thursday, he’ll fully grasp the difference. Blue Bridge Repertory Theatre has 13 livestream performances of A Christmas Carol on tap at the Roxy Theatre this month, including four matinees. Toronto actor Sanjay Talwar — the only stage performer in the one-man show — will be doing much of the heavy lifting each night. Richmond will oversee a team that includes Hans Saefkow (set design), Pauline Stynes (costumes), Rebekah Johnson (lights) and Alex Wlasenko (sound) as they endeavour to make Blue Bridge’s presentation of the Charles Dickens classic work exclusively as a livestream, rather than an in-person performance.
Blue Bridge was forced to change direction last week as a result of new provincial health protocols, which prompted the cancellation of all live events. “If it wasn’t during this horrific pandemic, this would be a really fun experiment,” Richmond said. “But it has been thrust upon us.”
The changes came into effect Nov. 19, so a decision was made to move the in-person run, for which the company had sold roughly 150 tickets, exclusively online.
Talwar, a veteran of several acclaimed productions with Ontario’s Shaw and Stratford festivals, is ready to go, Richmond said. The Toronto-based actor was quarantined prior to the start of rehearsal two weeks ago, and has been rolling with the changes since last week. Richmond admits he has it easy as a director compared to Talwar, who is playing roughly 50 characters, from Ebenezer Scrooge to Tiny Tim.
“It’s a challenging piece, on the level of him having to play every single character. I’m really just there to make sure he doesn’t fall off the stage, basically.”
It helps all involved that the A Christmas Carol translates well to the broadcast format. Richmond has employed three cameras for the livestream, and has added for Talwar a much-needed intermission, which was not part of the stage version Blue Bridge originally had planned. The biggest learning curve for Richmond was in the areas of lighting and sound.
“There are so many different rules with the medium, as opposed to theatre, where the sound is live. We have to mix the sound as we’re watching the actor in front of us. It’s weird, as a theatre person, to be listening to a a performance through headphones. But we have to hear how it is going to be mixed for the livestream.”
