The curtain closes on Cloud 9 (photo: Cylla von Tiedemann)

While it’s hard to believe that we’ll never again hear David Jansen demanding “I WANT MY BEADS!!” in young Cathy’s suddenly husky baritone, CLOUD 9 has come to a close, with the Panasonic soon becoming home to a certain lesbian Jewish Wiccan wedding.

Meanwhile, the CLOUD 9 cast is already busy with new projects. Megan Follows has just begun a workshop of Necessary Angel’s Andromache with Scottish director Graham McLaren. Ben Carlson is off to Stratford where he’ll be appearing as Leontes in The Winter’s Tale and as Touchstone in As You Like It. Yanna McIntosh will be joining Ben in The Winter’s Tale as Hermione, as will be appearing in Dangerous Liaisons as well. And Evan Buliung is the third CLOUD 9 cast member setting up camp in Stratford for the summer; he’ll be portraying Mac in George F. Walker’s King of Thieves.

Director Alisa Palmer, on the other hand, will be spending her time down the road in Niagara-on-the-Lake. She’ll be directing The Women at the Shaw Festival.

Blair Williams is spending the next few months further west – he’s already in rehearsal for Theatre Calgary’s production of Harold Pinter’s Betrayal. And Ann-Marie MacDonald is busy at the CBC. Not only is she returning as host of Doc Zone, starting March 8^th her novel Fall on Your Knees will go mano-a-mano with four other Canadian classics as part of CBC Radio’s Canada Reads.

As for David Jansen’s Cathy… well she’s looking forward to starting Grade 1.

This embrace will ring a bell for our contest winners – and other fans of Cloud 9

A few weeks ago we asked everyone – our cast, folks on the street and eager theatre fans hoping to win tickets to Cloud 9 – to complete the sentence “I’m on Cloud 9 when….”

This past Tuesday the winners of our lucky draw enjoyed a dinner out, tickets to Cloud 9 and a backstage tour courtesy director Alisa Palmer. One of our winners, Steve Rudman, reported “I wasn’t sure what to expect, but it was as if I was in Paris at a theatre. I was greeted at the door by a person that took me and my guest directly to our seats. The whole evening was spectacular.” Michelle Threndye, another winner, wrote “This is a very witty, charming and sexy play. The cast is outstanding. And it was such a pleasure to meet Alisa – she’s such an insightful director. Thank you for the wonderful night out!”

We’re excited to report that we have another surprise contest winner. So many of the entries were heartfelt, sweet, even funny – we decided to ask cast member and celebrated author Ann-Marie MacDonald to read the more than 700 entries and choose her own personal favourite.

It was Sally Thomas’s submission that caught Ann-Marie’s attention: “I’m on Cloud 9 when I see my tattered life reflected back to me in all its glory!” In acknowledgement of her thoughtful entry, Sally receives a signed copy of Ann-Marie’s acclaimed second novel “The Way the Crow Flies”. As many of you know, Ann-Marie’s first novel “Fall on Your Knees” is currently in contention as part of CBC’s annual Canada Reads competition.

Thanks to everyone for participating.

Director Alisa Palmer

Now that CLOUD 9 is up and running, director extraordinaire Alisa Palmer is finally able to sit back and take a breath. So we took the opportunity to ask her a few questions about some of the more unconventional aspects of CLOUD 9 and her fondness for Caryl Churchill’s work.

A hundred years pass between Act 1 and Act 2, but the characters age only 25 years. Why do you think (playwright) Caryl Churchill wrote it that way?

In an essay about the play Churchill says that while creating the play, she and the actors turned to their own lives for inspiration and discovered that many of them were raised with social and sexual values that were so out of date they might have come from another century. Churchill shows how antiquated the values are that shape us, and she makes an old-fashioned Victorian comedy from the family dynamics in the play.

Why do the actors play different roles in each act?  For example, in Act 1 Betty is played by Evan Buliung. In Act 2, Betty is played by Ann-Marie MacDonald – who played Edward in Act 1. It’s fun, but it’s confusing too.

All these choices are quite provocative and I think they’re meant to make you aware of your own assumptions. A man plays Betty in Act 1 as a way to put her ultra-patriarchal behaviour in relief. It also trades on the tradition of men playing women in British theatre. In Act 2 Betty is played by a woman, because now the character is more in touch with herself and her own gender. A woman plays a boy in Act 1 to highlight his effeminacy – and how behavior that is so appropriate in one body is not at all acceptable in another.

Talk a bit about your cast and how you chose them. These are challenging roles and some of these actors are playing parts unlike anything they’ve done before.

I chose these actors quite simply because I love their work and their talents. I’ve worked with almost all of them before, and those I haven’t worked with I’ve admired and had on my list to cast as soon as I had a project to put them in.

When I cast them, I was very aware of putting them in roles that would really stretch them, in roles they may never have another opportunity to play.

You’ve directed quite a few Caryl Churchill plays. What do you find so appealing about her work?

I like her insights into how people communicate. People in her plays always say what they mean, but they rarely know that what they mean isn’t always clear in their words. There’s always a deep hidden river of emotions running beneath what seems at first to be pedestrian language. And I love the way she jettisons the viewer into very intense moments of people’s lives with little warning.

She also cares about how power and abuse are passed from one person to another and she is perceptive about what the chain or power is in society. She is one of the only writers of theatre who sees how women and children are caught in a society that is working against them, but she never sees them as powerless.

And she seems to love theatre as passionately as I do. I could go on….

Why, in your opinion, is the play is called CLOUD 9?

Cloud 9 refers to a state of utopia, a kind of nirvana or heavenly feeling. And everyone in the play is looking for that feeling. But clouds are quite elusive and illusory… just like happiness.

Complete the sentence “I’m on Cloud 9 when…”

I’m on Cloud 9 when I’m watching the show with an audience. I’m on Cloud 9 when I’m eating supper with my children. And I also do like a nice full-bodied red. That can put me on Cloud 9 too.

David Jansen as 5-year-old Cathy (photo by Cylla von Tiedemann)

The reviews – from old school critics, new school bloggers and from people who go see theatre to, well, go see theatre – are in. And they’re outstanding.

The Globe’s R. Kelly Nestruk says CLOUD 9 is “a parade of pleasurable performances.” The Sun’s John Colbourn describes it as a “brilliant and witty commentary on the enduring nature of human passion and compassion.” On CBC Radio One, resident theatre critic Lynn Slotkin raves that CLOUD 9 is “directed with style by Alisa Palmer” and “there are seven actors at the top of their game, and the result is a production that will have theatre-goers on cloud nine when they see it.”

In the blogosphere, mooneyontheatre is “fascinated by how well Ann-Marie MacDonald and David Jansen captured the mannerisms of their child characters”, while blogTO calls it a “raucous mash-up of age and gender, race and sexuality.”

But the most rewarding feedback is coming in from our audience: the people who are buying the tickets, braving the cold, and filling the Panasonic night after night. Sandy (a self-described late 40’s feminist engineer), writes on her blog that a “great script, excellent actors and fabulous costumes make for a fun night out.” Perry T. calls CLOUD 9 a “fantastic, daring show.” Patti S. “loved Churchill’s flip on gender, age and race.” And Barrie W. tells us: “I saw it in about 1982 or so, and don’t remember it being this funny.… The deliberate mixing up of genders is a brilliant theatrical conceit and takes the play out of the ordinary – now no less than 30 years ago. The cast is uniformly splendid.”

If you’ve seen CLOUD 9, tell us what you think – enter our “Was It Good For You?” contest here. And if you haven’t… well you should believe everything you read (just this once!) and come experience CLOUD 9 yourself.

Here are David’s feelings about being on Cloud 9. To hear from the rest of the cast, and to win tickets, dinner and a backstage tour, just head to our contest page.

For those of you who don’t yet have Cloud 9 tickets (and for those of you who do, but know you’ll want to go again), you now have a chance to win a pair of tickets to the show, dinner for two, and a backstage tour. Basically a perfect night out! So pencil Tuesday February 2nd into your calendar and enter by completing the phrase “I’m on Cloud 9 when….”

For inspiration, check out Evan’s take on what Cloud 9 means to him. Then head to our contest page to watch all the videos.