Collaboration Propels Play In the Air By Linda Mikolayenko
“You can’t make it on your own. No, you can’t make it all alone. You can fuss and fight. You can try as you might, but you can’t make it on your own.”
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his refrain, sung by characters Sandy, Karl and Tiff, closes the first act of the musical play, In the Air, staged last fall by Dancing Sky Theatre. It is also a testament to the power of collaboration for the play’s co-creators, R.P. (Rod) MacIntyre and Gareth L. Cook, and for the Wild Rice Writers’ Group of La Ronge. As well, this particular journey from concept to production is a celebration of grant funding in nurturing the arts, and benefiting the larger community. In the spring of 2009, CBC Radio commissioned Gareth Cook to create a musical composition to accompany that year’s Poetry Slam theme of “Flight”. The result was a bluesy melody, “In the Air”. Serendipitously, around the same time, Dancing Sky Theatre’s Angus and Louisa Ferguson were tossing around the idea of a play about the bush pilots of Saskatchewan’s north. Could Rod MacIntyre be enticed back into writing for theatre with this project? And why not make it a musical play? Could Rod and Gareth, both La Ronge residents, be the perfect combination?
reth would bring the right mix of skill and inspiration to ensure the success of the project, but we also recognized that, if we could somehow be involved, this could be a unique opportunity for us to learn more about playwriting. In 2008, Angus Ferguson, Dancing Sky’s artistic director, presented a workshop for the group on “Creating a Play Collaboratively”. This served the dual purpose of whetting our appetites and providing a foundation for such a venture. In addition, we were intimately connected with the northern aviation community, and our experiences might contribute a valued perspective.
Rod and Gareth are both members of our La Ronge Wild Rice Writers’ Group, and when they shared these musings with the rest of us, well, response was “Yes!”, “Right on!”, “About time!”, and, most significantly, “How can we get a piece of the action?”
How could we help make this idea a reality? For years, the Wild Rice Writers have enjoyed financial support from the Saskatchewan Writers’ Guild and the Saskatchewan Lotteries’ community grants administered through the Town of La Ronge. However, this project seemed tailor-made for a Saskatchewan Arts Board Project ArtConnect Grant and we were delighted when our application was successful. This combined funding allowed the group to commission Rod and Gareth to create a musical play on the theme of bush pilots with the understanding that they would not only collaborate with each other, but would involve the writers’ group in the creative process. “In the Air” became the working title.
We, the members of the writers’ group, believed that Rod and Ga-
Beginning early in 2010, and over the course of the year, Rod
JUNE-JULY 2012
and Gareth provided ten drafts of the work in progress to meetings of the Wild Rice Writers’ Group. Typically, the members would read the various parts and provide feedback on the script as presented. Whenever a piano was available Gareth would play the songs he had composed. In addition, members of the writers’ group who no longer lived in La Ronge had the opportunity to comment on the draft when they visited La Ronge in the summer. In November, 2010, the writers’ group engaged Angus Ferguson and professional actor Skye Brandon to lead an all-day “workshop” of the most up-to-date version of the script. This included the songs, as well as incidental music. Parts of the day were video-recorded and made into a DVD for the benefit of those who were not able to attend, and to allow a review of the learnings at a later date. The members viewed portions of the DVD at a subsequent meeting in December. Rod and Gareth benefited from all this interaction in revising their work, and other members of the Wild Rice Writers’ Group enhanced their playwriting knowledge and skills as we discussed elements such as number and choice of characters, the time of telling, theatrical conventions, and appropriate dialogue. Who knows if this will lead to one of us writing a play of our own one day? The group’s formal association with the play ended with the
FREELANCE
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