Thinking big apples
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Leah Vineberg brings her powers of persuasion to documentary theatre
by MIREILLE SILCOTT
Leah Vineberg is one of THOSE. The type who can strike up a lengthy and seemingly scintillating conversation with a bus driver. "People person" doesn't quite describe it. This woman chats up alternative rabbis. And they come to her house for dinner.
So who better than Ms. Vineberg--with her head-top bun the size of a small car turbine, her wry I-see-you smile, her vixen eyes and her little frame that just won't quit--to pick up the dusty, usually pretentious, hanging-on-by-a-hangnail genre of documentary theatre (where the real words of real people are spouted by actors onstage) for a project? Nobody I know, but then, I don't know too many people like her.
Her venture is called Telegraph from Departure Bay, and is slated to run at the Monument-National this March 6-17. "It will feature the words of 25 men who have lived a turning point that forever changed them," says Leah, who went to prisons and beyond to find these dudes. "These men have shared their secrets and skeletons with me. I reached my arms out and within my immediate vicinity I found 25 of the most amazing people I could imagine."
It's not her first production. As the general director of the Mochin de Gadlut Theatre Project, she has already written and directed a couple of doc-y pieces, what she calls "living collages on stage," at places like the Monument and the Cinquième Salle. And if the words "living" plus "collage" plus "stage" sound like a recipe for words like "box" plus "office" plus "disaster," then consider that she sold out all of them. And through nothing but--you guessed it--word of mouth.
This one is going to be her biggest so far. Godspeed! have just said nay (the reason was "burn out") to doing the score, but she's on the horn with Mac McCaughan of Superchunk/Portastatic to fill their shoes. And if that isn't enough to rock the Monument down to its greystone foundations, then the very real possibility of William Hurt as a narrator just might.
"I met him at a play in Montreal and we started speaking, and then spoke again, and William said he loved the writing and thought I was working with some really interesting ideas. He said the whole thing really resonated with him."
She's now waiting to hear from his agent for the final word. "He's shooting another film in Montreal in January. This is a very real possibility. I have his voice in my ear. He is the man for this thing."
So here's to the power of positive thinking. But, still casting the rest of the piece now, Leah knows she's got a hottie on her hands with or without Hurt. "If he says no, so be it, but I am not thinking small apples this time. Only big apples. And when you think big apples you get them. You just have to open your heart and your ears and they come."
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