The Vancouver Plank Panel gaze up at the 21st Floor
Your Extended Plank Panel:
Michael John Unger; Rachel Scott; Alan Bartolic; Bryan Coffey and
Stacey Lynn Mitchell have all seen at some point seen Raymond Burr murder his wife.
They take in The 21st Floor, Written and Staged by Michele Lonsdale-Smith
Michael: First off, as this is the premier production of a new play by a new company, it really feels fresh. I mean that in the most positive way. It's a relevant play about Vancouver and everything from the set to the actors is vibrant. It's really the kind of play I enjoy going to. The play is set on the 21st Floor of an apartment building in Vancouver and was produced in the new PAL theatre which itself is on the 8th Floor of an apartment building in Coal Harbour. The set consisted of nine apartments that we could look into, and behind the set, open curtains revealed Coal Harbour apartment buildings. It was the perfect setting for the play, making the environment an ideal one for us to watch a day in the life of Residents of the 21st Floor.
Rachel: In the program notes, director Michele Lonsdale-Smith encourages the audience to move around the set and look into the apartments in order to see elements in the character’s lives that they relate to. Were you able to do that?
Michael: Well, I actually live in an apartment building just around the corner from the theatre, so I was able to relate to it right away without even walking around. I knew these characters because I've watched them through my own window. It's a bit of a voyeuristic society down there, although ironically it's the people that live on the floor of your own building that you see everyday who are the real strangers.
Alan: It was quite something to see the curtains drawn back in the theatre and see TVs in apartments in the background – it was a complete extension of what was happening on-stage. The security camera on and off stage, monitoring different areas in the building were really striking [Is the security camera on stage?].
Rachel: Yeah, it really captured the mix of public and private space.
Alan: It blows my mind that this is the first collaborative effort for this company. They seemed very comfortable together, as if they’ve been doing this for a long time. While there didn’t seem to be any major arc for any of the characters, it didn’t seem to matter. It was a very interesting effort. I don’t mean that to be pejorative, it’s very difficult to create really interesting work and I think they definitely achieved that.
Bryan: I’m an actor from New York, so I’m a bit jaded and cynical. I’m not a big fan of collaborative theatre because I think it tends to dilute the story. I thought the acting was generally really polished, but for me, story without structure simply becomes an improvisational exercise. The characters were more like archetypes, which tends to push the audience away rather than bring them in. I didn’t care enough about the characters. But it was an interesting effort and I’d be curious to see how they continue on.
Michael: I think the impetus for the creation of this project was to take a floor in an apartment building and put the audience right there on their level for a sort of “day in the life.” When I first walked in, I regretted that it was actually a full audience because the seats weren’t on risers and the sightlines were obscured. Then I realized that that was the point. We’re not given an omniscient point of view. We don’t know everything about these characters and are never allowed to. If this play were staged in a more traditional theatre, the effect would totally change into one where we would have to see the characters more broadly. Then we wouldn’t be seeing them in the context of the confined view of an apartment floor.
Rachel: It felt like an environmental piece in that way. When we walk in, it’s like looking at our own apartment building without the walls there. The word that kept coming up for me was “alienation;” every character was separated from each other. I really appreciated the actors’ bravery in their work, to be in a very private space publicly for the audience. We only get snapshots of their lives. Their personal story arcs are internal, and it can feel very risky to be so exposed without a fuller narrative context. I thought it was a great first effort; the production values alone blew me away. I’ll be excited to see what else they can create as they evolve and move from actor-based exercises to more overall structure.
Bryan: Watching acting efforts like that is a very laudable thing and I commend it. However, the lack of structure weighed everything down for me. If I don’t care about the characters, I don’t care about their actions and the meaning behind them. If the Kenny character (Graem Beddoes) were stronger, then we might have cared when he hangs himself. I mean, anyone can tell a story but if there’s no point behind it why do we care to watch?
Stacey: I think the point is that we don’t care. That Kenny kept going on about how nobody knew each other and nobody cared. He kept his door open all the time, but everyone wants to just stay isolated. Which is why “alienation” seems to be the theme of the play.
Rachel: I wanted there to be some sort of resolution. I wanted to see all the characters come together, but they never do. They just continue on in their isolation.
Alan: Even in the earthquake scene. There are two movies that I enjoy - Magnolia and Grand Canyon- that have natural phenomena bring people together, but on the 21st Floor not even an earthquake can do that. You’d think that in Vancouver since everyone is waiting for the Big One that it would be a big deal, but not for these characters.
Stacey: In Vancouver, there are lots of pockets of communities like Actors, Writers, Business Men, whatever, but in an apartment building it’s very rare to have a common sense of connection. It’s like what the character Marty (Anthony Vic) says, “Everyone wants to be left alone, people don’t want to be bothered.” That’s when it really starts to get heavy, because they’re talking about Vancouver, they’re talking about all of us. You can talk about all the issues you want - like the Craig John character (Stephen Park) does with his podcasts about homelessness, the 2010 Olympics and the housing crisis in “Soggy City,” but you get the sense that nobody is listening. Nobody cares. It is pretty bleak.
Alan: One of those bleak moments is shown when the Rachel Scott (Nadine Wright) character tears off her clothes and goes ballistic. I felt a little off-put. I feel if you put something like that in a production you really have to earn it. I felt assaulted in a way.
Michael: That was one of the few moments that didn’t really work. There were other moments of nudity that really did work like the Alex Gold character (Anna Williams) who stumbles around in a coked out stupor with her boob half hanging out of her tank top. That moment was earned because it felt real. That moment with Rachel Scott didn’t.
Bryan: It probably came out of an actor improvisation that worked in the moment of creation. But to recreate it in the play seems contrived. But it’s a very brave thing for an actor to do.
Rachel: I think that those moments are the result of the narrative structure not being visible to us. So we have these peak moments that don’t feel earned because we haven’t seen the rest of what’s going on. If it had just been Rachel Scott’s play, it would have felt earned, but they play was about ten people. I would have loved to have just seen three or four of those characters, but the nature of this play is to just see glimpses.
Alan: There was the character played by Matt Ward who flipped very acrobatically through everyone’s apartment. How did you interpret that character as part of the story?
Michael: I felt like it was a spirit character, but I wasn’t really thinking too much about it. His athleticism was nice to watch as sort of way of moving through time. His physicality captured some of the emotional tensions in the building. It felt more like a device to tell the story rather opposed to a character.
Bryan: A personalisation of alienation perhaps? His athleticism was fantastic, and fun to watch mainly because I can’t do it. But then I’m old and fat.
Rachel: So Michael, are you going to go home and knock on all your neighbours’ doors and hang out with them now?
Michael: Well we already do that. We have a very intimate relationship with all our neighbours, it’s kind of a big swingers party. You guys wanna come over?
(Various nervous chuckles that turn to an awkward silence and hasty exits.)