Bitef

the corporate world became apparent because it is the recognized medium for ambition in our society. But what was the story to be? Who would be the characters and was I going to write the script? None of the more practical concerns of the theatre had any ready answers for me. In fact, I felt that in a sense I had to invent a whole new way of creating a play, and I looked to modem dance and the process of collective creation as examples. I also realized that I wanted to do a piece of theatre in which the physical, the verbal, and the visual were completely integrated, in which a gesture could carry as much meaning as a word and the staging in general could further the plot. Macbeth seemed the next logical step. Drawing on this classic tale of ambition as well as Jan Kott’s insights into Shakespeare’s contemporary value, I developed an everyman story of ambition. From this story a series of images, emotional states, dreams, actions, and situations were given to the actors as a pretext for improvisations. The work soon came to be about all of us, including the designer and choreographer. Unlike

other collective creations in which the actors go out into the field to research the topic, our research took place within ourselves as we explored what happened to our minds, our hearts, and our bodies when ambition became the predominant factor in our lives. Much of the material was generated by a very simple children’s game called “Go, go, stop”, the objective of which is to get to the wall without being seen by the person leading. The game was played for 3 hours one night. Voices were hoarse, bodies were exhausted, and the anger level was high. The pleasure and spontaneity of the game were reduced to the objective of reaching the wall, of winning. As the improvisations progressed, they focused more and more on the voices inside us that prod or warn us about our ambition, our desires, and our dreams. What was once a game became machiavellian, became murder, became fear and guilt and ultimately self-destruction. What was important was not a particular story being told but rather the inner reality that occurs as the story unfolds. In this way the project became a play set in the mind of one per-

son. The actual story is outside the walls of the set which are the limits of the mind. I, as the character came to be known and who is played by five different actors, wrestles with whether to fire his friend, to betray his boss, and eventually with whether to destroy his company in order to save himself. The story is very simple, but what is addressed is the complexity of ambition and what we sacrifice in ourselves in order to succeed D Richard Rose, Toronto Free Press, Vol. 1, No. 2 January 1985

Necessary Angel Founded in 1978, Necessary Angel has produced various plays at the Theatre Centre and other locales, including the highly succesful Tamara and Passchendaele, both directed by Richard Rose. In 1982, the company merged with Theatre Antumn Leaf

to create Autumn Angel Repertory which produced both stage and workshop productions during its two years of existence. Among Autumn Angel’s better known shows are: Sid’s Kids, Strange Manuscripts and Yankees at York (directed by Thom Sokoloski); and The Seagull, Censored and Mein (directed by Richard Rose) □

Director’s notes Mein is a collective creation by members of the Necessary Angel Theatre Company. The play is an assembly of our personal images and stories of ambition, of Shakespeare’s Macbeth and Richard II and Earl Storris’ Scenes from Corporate Life. Also utilized were sources such as Winning through Intimidation, The Success Factor and Jung’s work on the collective unconscious. Rehearsals began with the dreams