New in town

New theatre gang Freestanding Productions
gets out of the gate with Women of Manhattan

LIVES OF NEW YORK WOMEN:
Craig Thomas and Miranda Handford

By NEIL BOYCE

New Montreal theatre companies are sprouting like tulips this spring. The latest and biggest to hit the streets is Freestanding Productions, a restless group of Montreal-based actors, directors, writers, musicians and producers who’ve assembled to generate theatre and film projects of their own.

Actor Nicole Braber describes how it began. “Several of us met through Jock MacDonald at Carter Thor Studios. Many of us have worked with him for a while; others are people in the industry, working in film and theatre.”

An acting coach, MacDonald is one of the founding members of the Los Angeles-based acting studio with chapters all along the East Coast, including Montreal.

Collective member Miranda Handford, also publicist for their first show—John Patrick Shanley’s Women of Manhattan—is typical of this 30s-to-early-40s bunch who have been in the business for years.

Fellow actors Johanna Nutter and Craig Thomas started the group, says Handford, inspired by Barack Obama’s “Yes we can!” message as they gathered members—people with experience on TV, in film, and who have worked in theatres from Halifax to Vancouver.

“It’s a great opportunity, and a great thing as an actor, to make your own work,” Nutter says. “Whether it’s producing plays written by someone else or starting up your own stuff, for anybody in the arts, you have to get out there and create. It doesn’t always come to you.”

Since their beginnings last December, the 15-actor collective found a home above the old Playwright’s Workshop space on the Main. It will be used for rehearsals, writing, production meetings, readings, workshops—anything to advance the work.

“It’s just a little black box,” says Braber. “We wanted to be able to come together and inspire each other. Lots of us have made films and theatre of our own, but having your own space changes everything—it’s one less thing standing in the way.”

“We have great ideas,” she adds. “Everyone involved is an actor first, but all have secondary strengths or talents, something else to contribute to the projects.”

Their inaugural production also marks MacDonald’s Montreal directorial debut, co-directed by Brazilian import Isabel Farias, founding member of the repertoire company Teatro Grupo Graxa. Braber, Handford, Nutter, Thomas and Carlo Mestroni are featured cast members.

Shanley’s 1986 play revolves around the lives of three New York women whose careers flourish while their emotional lives head south. Written some 12 years before the appearance of Sex and the City and its fanatic following, it’s a precursor with remarkable parallels but a darker tone. The play follows Manhattanites Rhonda Louise, who has split up with her boyfriend but not his sneakers, which sit in the hallway as a museum piece to their relationship; Billie, married to the “perfect man” who bores her to death and inspires her to wet the bed one night just to liven things up; and Judy, who is finished with relationships, having dated a slew of men who were all great, but gay.

But back to the collective.

“Montreal can get slow in terms of work so it’s good for us to stay active,” says Handford. “We want to make things happen. The arts are important here to most people—and you can’t say that about very many cities.”

WOMEN OF MANHATTAN TO MAY 2 AT
FREESTANDING PRODUCTIONS
STUDIO (4324 ST-LAURENT, 3RD
FLOOR). INFO: (514) 807-8810