Today marks World Theatre Day, and it also marks exactly one year since I started this blog. Despite being here a year, I still feel like a newbie who desires to write more frequently, and explore more (hopefully that feeling will last forever).
In the meantime, I would like to wish you all a very Happy World Theatre Day. I wish this day had the same buzz as the Olympics, but, unfortunately we live in a world where sport accomplishments seem to rise to the top, long before artistic ones. I guess it’s a number game.
However, I didn’t show up to my blog today to rant. I came here to celebrate theatre, and honour the spectacle, the liveness, the unexpected, the truth, the mistakes, the improvisation, the courage of the story, of the actors, and of the support behind the scenes.
Theatre has been in my life since I was 17 when I first got involved with costumes at the Charlottetown Festival in Prince Edward Island. I eventually became a dresser and the joke was always that “one of the performers had fallen” and “Trilby had to go on”. In my imagination, I would burst out of my dowdy pinafore and conveniently have a sequined outfit underneath. I was READY!
That scenario didn’t happen, but I did end up taking the place of one of the clowns in the children’s clown show where I was also doing the lights and audio. And, I loved it. The performing seed was planted.
My journey was seriously launched at Le Conservatoire d’Art Dramatique, in Quebec City, where I studied acting, en Francais, for three years.
Since graduation (many moons ago), I have played with lots of actors, told lots of stories in both languages, had funny things happen (remember your mustache drifting off your face, Dan?), had scary moments (oh..it’s awful to have a blank on opening night!), and had a lot of fun.
Earlier this year I was fortunate to have directed “The Memory of Water” by Shelagh Stephenson and I truly enjoyed the creative adventure. This evening, appropriately, the cast and crew are celebrating our journey together.
So, today, I dedicate World Theatre Day to them, our experience, and to all those who continue to dare to write plays, mount plays, act in plays, tour with plays, renovate old theatres, and to the audiences who continue to appreciate witnessing live theatre.
Merci, et, célébrons… keep celebrating theatre! Vive Le Théâtre!
Trilby Jeeves ~ Bouffon Droppings... 
Thanks so much for your messages earlier. I have just got back from the theatre after my final performance as Mary in The Memory of Water and have just read this post… I am still in my coat and boots and the tears are again streaming down my face. I can’t believe how the part has quite literally taken me over – it unleashed a rollercoaster of emotions from day one. How fitting that our paths crossed today, on World Theatre Day, and whilst The Memory of Water was so prominent in our creative journeys. Hope you are enjoying your celebrations tonight – we have just had an almost identical photo of cast and crew taken on set tonight! I echo wholeheartedly your sentiments about the power of theatre and those involved in it – looking forward reading about your next project.
Tracy
Tracy, like you said… how fitting we meet on World Theatre Day with the merging, across the nations, of our experiences of “The Memory of Water”. Thank you for your comments…. Keep creating!