March 12, 1981

Stella!

oops, wrong p]
Marc Cote interviews Dawn Moore and Bill Murdoch,
director and designer for Cap Theatre's production
of the production of the Tennessee Williams' play,
Ten Blocks on the Camino Real.
Dawn smiles and says, 'T don't know what's interesting anymore. I need an audience to gain perspective."
There are many things about the play that are
interesting. Unlike many directors with many plays.
Dawn hasn't become desenchanted with the play. It's a
young playwright's play, it has a certain wildness and
energy.
It's a really good vehicle for young actors—it has
exhuberance, but maintains the seriousness of the
underlying theme. A very theatrical script—not realistic
at all—not the standard Tennessee Williams.
It makes use of the theatre as a theatre. The play was
first produced when realism was most important, when
the fourth wall idea was still used. Williams broke with
that tradition. The play moves on and off the stage,
making use of the theatre's space.
The choice of Ten Blocks on the Camino Real had to
do with Williams being in Vancouver last fall. Both
Dawn and Bill had to read the play for their classes at
UBC.

Here are these characters, at the end of the line, in this
psuedo-Spanish South American town where there's
been no rain. Imagine us here in BC trying to imagine a
place where it doesn't rain. But this is a creative art and
so we must be creative.
One of the most attractive qualities of the play were
the variations in the scenes. There are public scene like
the fiestas, and private scenes like the ones between
Casanova and Camile.
The tone shifts sickly between comic and dramatic,
realistic and surrealistic.
The show is paricularly appropriate for the eighties.
The script, as well as the set, shows the economic
disparities between one side of the street and the other.
Characters either live in the grand hotel, or they live
under the public stairs.
There are characters who are afraid of moving on, of
taking chance.
Although the play is serious, it does have humor.
What is most remarkable is the huge sense of optimism
at the end. But, I don't want to give away the end...
This show depends on the actors. The tensions come
from their characterizations and inter-actions. It's
actor's theatre, not what would be called a well-crafted
play.
Over the past two years. Cap Theatre has presented
Under Milkwood, the Future is in Eggs, a Frugal
Repast, and Shakespeare Must Die. Last year the
shows were entered in the North Shore Drama festival
and were awarded a certificate for outstanding stage
management, which is funny because we really don't
have, any backstage facilities. But we expect professionalism and we generally get i t
Dawn diked the episodic structure of the p l a y something she hadn'f come across before. She also read
the later, full-length Camino Real, but felt that it was
toolong and without some of the energy of the earlier
one-act.
To expand thefirstplay. Dawn adapted it—making it
a little longer—which isn't unreasonable as Williams
himself still wants to change the play.
The production works together as a true ensemble.
They work in a kind of evolutionary process; things
change and go with new ideas, rather than going with
the pre-conceived notions and enforcing them on the
actors. Everyone works on the set as well as osme
aspect of production, as well as performing. It's a lot of
work, but we're enjoying it. This is the true ideal of an
ensemble and not a collection. It helps that most of the
actors have gone through Theatre 100 and 200 together.

We're all familiar with each other and the programme.
There's a lot of co-operation and everything's coming
along quickly. That's important: that the students learn
to work well as a company because When they get out of
the programme they should be ready to join other
companies. The course has a practical aim.
It's interesting that most of the cast is under 30. We
have young actors playing old characters who are
obsessed with a fear of death. We didn't want to dress
the actors up and put a lot of make-up on them in order
to make them look old. What we've done is interesting
and I think it works. The actors aren't playing an old
age, but an old attitude. This is in keeping with the
play—it's not about people becoming older, but their
attitudes about death and the later part of their lives.
Many of the characters are famous literary figures:
Camille, Casanova, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza.

This is the largest production we've ever mountedit's involving past students and people from the community, which we haven't done before. We're also
getting help on the choreography—that's something
we've never had in a show before: dancing. We have a
huge cast—20 people, that's twice the size of our first
production. Under Milkwood. We have students from
thefirstyear classes involved, which is again something
else we've never do-^e before.
Cap Theatre will be presenting, on March 26,27 and
28, its most ambitious project to date: the one-act play
by Tennessee Williams, Ten Blocks on the Camino
Real The play will be performed at Presentation
House 333 Chesterfield Avenue, at 8:30. Tickets are
available in advance from the Humanities Division for
$3.00. At the door They are $4.00. As the play has a
limited engagement it is suggested that tickets be
purchased well in advance.