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their own lives for inspiration and discovered that many of them were raised with social and sexual values that were so out of date they might have come from another century.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.

Cloud 9 costume design

Before the holidays I had a chance to talk to Dora Award-winning costume designer Judith Bowden. Cloud 9 is a challenging piece to mount and the whip smart Bowden is definitely up to the task.

How did you get into costume design?
I did an undergrad in Clothing and Textile Design and one of my teachers said that my work was inappropriate for manufacture. I took that as a sign and did a masters in Set, Costume and Lighting Design.

What keeps you going?
I’ve been really lucky. I graduated in 1992 and have been working full time as a designer ever since.

What keeps me going is that there is an element that is collaborative. My design ideas are augmented by the people I work with: the directors, actors, set designers.

What inspires you?
In theatre design, you are trying to tell a story. It’s a plastic medium. Like all design it comes from a human base — in this case, the characters. You make style choices and conceptual choices, but the costume you create is in constant movement. Ultimately the design is driven by the actors.

What were the challenges of designing for Cloud 9?
Cloud 9 is highly theatrical for sure. It has a kind of Brechtian feel. The challenge was how to have the costumes in Act 1 [which is set in Victorian times and has a Magic Realism to it] relate to Act 2 [which is set in a grittier 1979]. How do you make it seem like they are in the same play?

Cloud 9 was first performed in 1979. Like many of the playwright’s early works, the play is an exploration of gender, class and sexuality. To keep the balance between the two acts, Bowden clothes for the first act are not totally period, but instead suggest the corsets, padding and stiffening of the Victorian era to illustrate the constraints of that age (see the drawings above). She also mixed in some 1970s-era pieces to “cross pollinate”.

As for Act Two, she scoured the second-hand shops for street clothing that was true to the ’70s, as opposed to shiny disco gear that has become shorthand for that decade.

Why did you choose real clothes for the second half?
By using street clothes, I’m trying to work against stereotypes. Not just in clothing but in behaviour. I didn’t want to be obvious so that the audience can react to or against the stereotypes that are explored n the play.

In Cloud 9, there is colour-blind casting as well as men playing the parts of women. How do you help the guys inhabit the clothes?
It’s funny, the guys are going to want to know how to walk in a long dress and high heels, but look around you. How many women walk around in a long dress and high heels? Yanna [McIntosh] wants to know how to sit in bustle too.

Another theme of Cloud 9 is Colonialism. Churchill originally linked Britain’s history of empire to sexual equality. The effects of Colonialism have been much parsed in the 30 years since the play débuted. What was raw and immediate in 1979 has itself become a period piece.

How did the creative team address this?
There’s no point in modernizing the play. The real question is: What is the point of the play? Sometimes [the passage of time] can add layers. For example, it’s interesting doing the play in Canada, itself a former colony. And sometimes the play is just supposed to wash over you.

Rhonda Riche is a Toronto-based writer, artist and gal-about-town. Her blog is Gracious, Good.