All That Fall by Samuel Beckett, presented by Blackbird Theatre at East Vancouver’s The Cultch, on now until Jan. 24. Tickets and showtimes: thecultch.com.
Duncan Fraser is excited at the prospect.
Audience members taking in a performance of All That Fall, a Samuel Beckett radio play making its Canadian premiere by Blackbird Theatre at Vancouver’s The Cultch this month, will each be rewarded with an entirely unique experience.
“Because it’s radio, you get to come and paint your own play,” says Fraser, who is directing the production, on now through to Jan. 24 at the Vancouver venue, which is celebrating its 40th anniversary this season.
“There’s going to be several hundred people every evening go out of this theatre, each one with a different image of the characters and a different idea about what happened,” he says.
In today’s world where screen-focused entertainment reigns supreme and radio dramas are, for the most part, a medium of the past, chances to play a role in creating a work for oneself are all too rare.
“Now we are provided with someone else’s view of almost everything,” says Fraser, explaining film and television have made their own choices regarding aspects like a character’s appearance, leaving little to audience members’ imaginations.
“You’re not inventing anything visually for yourself anymore, it’s all given to you. It seems a shame. This is an opportunity for an audience to come and invent their own images through their own imagination and colour them from their own life experience, and prejudices, and quirks, and how their mother and father saw them, and so on. So a really personal way of viewing the world rather than being given everything from someone else,” he says.
All That Fall marks the Vancouver-based professional theatre company’s 12th major production since its 2005 launch. Fraser describes the work as a sort of comedic who-dunnit that differs greatly from the playwright’s well-known works.
“This is Beckett as you’ve never seen him before. It’s comical and easily digestible. It’s sort of Beckett-light,” he says.
All That Fall sat unperformed for approximately 50 years. The one-act radio play was initially written for the BBC in 1956. After it was broadcast a year later, Beckett received many requests from prominent theatre producers, Sir Laurence Olivier included, who were interested in producing the work as a stage play. All such requests were refused by the playwright.
“He absolutely refused anything but it to be a radio play. ‘Voices coming out of the dark’ is how he said it should be done,” says Fraser.
After Beckett’s passing, his estate maintained his stance and it wasn’t until 2012 that English theatre, film and television director Trevor Nunn’s request was approved. Beckett’s estate granted the script to be staged as a radio play and All That Fall was mounted in London in 2012, followed by New York in 2013.
“And now we are next, so terrific,” says Fraser.
Blackbird is no stranger to Beckett, having presented a successful run of Waiting for Godot in its 2011/2012 season.
“The estate of Samuel Beckett were so pleased with their previous production of Waiting for Godot that they allowed Blackbird to have the Canadian premiere of this, of All That Fall. They were very lucky to get it,” he says.
Fraser, a Vancouver resident, has long been attracted to Blackbird’s mission of producing classic theatre.
“People are hungry for this stuff. They are the greatest plays ever written. Once in a lifetime you might get a chance to see one of them,” he says.
Fraser has been previously involved with the company as an actor, serving as a cast member of The Birthday Party, Uncle Vanya and Mary Stuart.
Fraser is a veteran and award-winning actor of the stage and screen (big and small), and has performed across Canada, Britain and South America. He spent seven of the last eight summers at Vancouver’s Bard on the Beach, and has appeared in a host of feature films, including The Exorcism of Emily Rose and Seven Years in Tibet. He works consistently in television as well, and just shot an appearance on Supernatural, playing an alter ego of the Wizard of Oz. The episode is scheduled to air later this month.
In addition to acting, Fraser was founder and artistic director of LunchBucket Theatre, he spent three years as an artistic director of the Nanaimo Festival and served for two years as an associate artistic director of Fend Players. He has also directed a number of amateur productions in the Fraser Valley.
“I’ve directed I’d say about a dozen shows in my time and dramaturged and commissioned many of those shows mainly to try and encourage British Columbian writers to write about British Columbia history,” he says.
All That Fall is of particular interest to Fraser as he is also a seasoned radio actor, mainly for PEMC and the CBC.
“Until 15 to 20 years ago, you could earn a living doing radio drama here in town,” he says.
In those days, it was possible to get a radio drama gig a couple of times a month and productions ranged from fiction to historical drama, often steeped in Canadiana.
“It was great fun. I enjoyed it more than any other medium actually because it was like a playground going in there. You got to answer telephones and slam doors and run along gravel paths. . . . For an actor it was great exercise because you’ve only got one way to get across what you’re trying to convey,” he says.
Actors of the stage or screen have a number of tools at their disposal, like movement and facial expressions.
“On the radio of course you’re denied everything but the noises,” he says.
This makes the medium great practice for any actor, challenging them to get across how they’re feeling purely through the use of their voice alone.
“It’s a pity that many young actors don’t get to do that (today) because it’s useful and it sharpens you as an actor for the rest of your life,” says Fraser.
The Blackbird Theatre production of All That Fall features five veteran CBC radio artists: Leanna Brodie, Adam Henderson, Lee Van Paassen, Gerard Plunkett and William Samples, playing 11 roles.
To stay true to the work’s radio drama form, the actors are at microphones for the duration of the play, and lit in various dramatic ways.
Audiences will enjoy witnessing how the actors make various sound effects. “To find out how some of this stuff is generated is very curious,” says Fraser.
All That Fall will appeal to audiences whether they’re fans of Beckett or not. Fans will enjoy the work’s portrayal of the artist’s macabre sense of humour and his playfulness. It’s less “high-brow” and “serious” than what audiences are used to. All That Fall also offers insight into Beckett’s youth, as the content is largely a reminiscence of people he knew as a young boy.
“He was a very secretive man you know, he never let on, never talked to anybody about anything, wouldn’t discuss his work or anything, so we find out a little bit about him in this play and what his youth was like,” says Fraser.
Those unfamiliar with Beckett will enjoy themselves all the same due to the content as well as the form itself, says Fraser. “It’s this new medium that they’re not used to, so it’s going to be quite titillating,” he says.
