A} EDITOR ANNE WATSON C Goatrepiece THE VOICE, THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2011 5} Fave a seat and enjoy the show Studio 58 promises to keep audiences guessing with its latest production, a murder mystery called The 13th Chair By DEVON MACKENZIE séance becomes the scene of a myste- rious murder in Studio 58’s latest pro- duction, The 18th Chair. The play, which is premiering today in Studio 58, is set in 1929 during an engagement party in a Vaudeville house near New York City. The hosts of the evening bring in Madame Ro- salie la Grange, a famous Irish medium, in order to entertain guests with a séance. As the lights fill the stage after the séance, one of the guests is revealed to be dead, leaving the remaining 13 as murder suspects. The production is the Western-Canadian pre- miere of the play and is directed by the award- winning Sarah Rodgers who says the genre of the play is unusual for Vancouver. “Funnily enough, in the professional world in Vancouver, we don’t get a chance to do whodun- its, I mean it’s very rare,” said Rodgers. “It’s a bit of a lost tradition, so it’s so exciting to do.” The cast features 16 Langara Studio 58 stu- dents and is rounded off by the return of Langara alumna, Joel Ballard who says he’s happy to be back on stage with Studio 58. “About two or three weeks before rehearsals for The 13th Chair started, I got a call from Kath- Step into Studic 0s Langara’s premier theatre school ts in its 46th season Actors bring ryn Shaw who’s the head of the program,” said Ballard. “She asked me what I was doing and she said that they had a spot open in The 13th Chair and that they’d love to have me back and of course I wanted to come back.” Ballard says he is excited for the play and the play’s setting in the 1920’s really transports view- ers to the era. “The show is set in a late 1920’s Vaudeville house and so basically there’s a show within a show,” said Ballard of the production. “The [Vaudeville] entertainers are sort of like the bookmarks of the show — you see them at the beginning and the end of each act.” Playwright Bayard Veiller wrote The 13th Chair in 1916, and since then the play has seen many stages on Broadway and on screen where it was turned into both silent and spoken films. “This was literally the very, very first whodun- it,” Rodgers said of the play.” “Tt was the very first play that put the stamp on these stock characters and these situations that we’ve all grown to know so well and love.” The play runs until Dec. 4 with both evening shows and matinees. Studio 58 also offers two free previews for stu- dents on the 17 and 18 of November. Tickets are available through www.ticketstonight.ca or at 604-684-2787. DAVID COOPER photos Knife in the back — From left to right: Sean McQuillan, Kazz Leskard (face down), Tim Carlson and Stephanie Moroz. The interrogation - from left to right - Kris Przednowek, Sean McQuillan, Tim Carlson, Kazz Leskard, Happy Couple - Stephanie Moroz and Tim Carlson DAVID COOPER photo Only the crystal ball knows - Cast members from left to right: Kazz Leskard, Kris Preednowek, Kayla Dunbar, Sean McQuillan, Stephanie Moroz, Tim Carlson. Madame La Grange entertains guests with a séance that results in ghastly consequences. set and costumes transport audiences to ancther time Production crew used art deco, film noir and even the popular HBO series, Boardwalk Empire, as inspiration for The 13th Chair By MATT HYNDMAN hen you step inside Studio 58 to see The 13th Chair, prepare to feel as though you’ve been transported back in time. “The audience are going to feel like they’ve walked into a 1920s experience,” said Carol Chrisjohn, production manager for the studio. It will begin as people file into the theatre, past an easel dressed up to look like it could have been pro- moting the play when it first premiered. Once inside, they'll be played in by a pianist who might have been plucked straight out of a fancy dinner club from the Roaring Twenties. Although the play was first performed in 1916, the Langara production will look and feel more like it came from the time the movie was released, in 1929. “It’s really a nod to the period,” explained Bruce Kennedy, the studio’s technical director. “There’s a very art deco look to the set.” He said the design, a vision of set designer David Roberts, was especially “elaborate and complex for the entry-level students.” “TThe design] is very specific to his own aesthetic,” Kennedy said. “From the finished surfaces to the texture of the paint. The walls, arches and posts are very deliberate in their design.” A low hanging ceiling will sit above the perform- ers, which led to difficulties for Darren Boquist, the lighting designer. Rather than being able to project light from above, Boquist was forced to arrange the lights so they could shine in from the sides. But Kennedy says that rather than being a hin- drance, the unusual lighting adds to the film noir look of the production. “It has a 1920’s coarseness to it, a blockiness of lighting,” he said, referring to the way the films of that time made prominent use of shadows on the sets and actors. Mara Gottler, the costume designer, also had her work cut out for her as she tried to acquire clothing to match the period on the studio’s relatively small bud- get. Chrisjohn said Gottler made use of eBay and Value Village in finding clothes to match the time period. “The men are very formal, and the women’s dress- es are low-waisted and beaded.” She said Gottler did a lot of altering to the outfits, adding decorations to make them fit into the flapper era. All of the hard work is done to realize the vision of the play’s director, Sarah Rodgers. Chrisjohn said Rodgers watched two movies of the play as well as other films set in that era to get a sense of the period. She even borrowed ideas from the HBO series Board- walk Empire. And while they wouldn’t elaborate, Chrisjohn and Kennedy grinned as they suggested there may be some “old-school special effects” on display. the roaring 20s to life Research and plenty of hard work let the large ensemble cast immerse themselves in the various characters By ALEXANDRA GRANT e 13th Chair will have audi- ences on the edge of their seats with the energetic performanc- es of its 17 member ensemble. The play, which is premiering today in Studio 58, features acting that is “a more natural style of melodrama,” according to Sarah Rodgers, the director at the helm of the production. Rodgers said she relishes the opportu- nity to give a classic whodunit plot a more theatrical spin. “It’s a really delicious piece because we have very real characters in a real situation acting naturally with each oth- er and then there’s a style that’s put on top of it,” she said. Some of the stylistic touches that Rod- gers is including in the play are musical punctuations by a live pianist and tab- leaus, which are when the cast freezes onstage in order to create a “picture” for the audience. The play, which was written in 1916 by Bayard Veiller, has been adapted several times into movies. The 1919 movie adap- tation was written by Veiller himself, who was a popular screenwriter at the time. “It was played for total naturalism in the movie, and I am obviously having a lot more fun with this and making it a lot more theatrical,” said Rodgers of the 1919 film. Second year student Cheyenne Mab- berley, who plays the role of medium Ma- dame Rosalie la Grange, said the energy of her fellow cast-members and director helped her channel the exuberant, come- dic style Rodgers wanted. “The style of the piece is something that I’ve never done before, and [Sarah’s] really hammering this very heightened style,” she said. “T's not naturalistic at all...if some- thing big happens we have a big head turn and an inhale, like in the old mov- ies.” Mabberley likened the choreographed movements of the large ensemble piece to dance. “It’s a lot of negotiation, so you have to treat it like a dance...we have to stay ex- tremely focused,” she said. “[Sarah’s] been very good at making sure that we’re all listening and all in the moment and dancing the dance.” In preparation for the production, Rodgers said she encouraged the cast to thoroughly research their characters in order to immerse themselves in their roles. Mabberley, for example, visited a local medium. In an effort to educate her cast about the era, Rodgers also shared stories from the 1920s at rehearsals. Joel Ballard, who graduated from Lan- gara’s theatre program in April 2010, is returning to the Studio 58 stage for The 13th Chair. The program often brings back experi- enced actors to allow other students to learn from them. “Td always hoped that would happen with me, I just didn’t think it would be so soon,” said a laughing Ballard. The production of The 13th Chair will run from November 17 to December 4. FACTS Studio 58 1 Studio 58 has been at Langara College for 41 years 2 It offers a three year acting program and a two year production program 3 The program is named after the room number of it's theatre space 4 Studio 58 has four full-length and two indie-style produc- tions every year 5 Graduates have done everything from theatre and film to screenplays and television shows DAVID COOPER photo Kayla Dunbar in the role of Madame La Grange, the famous Trish medium who thrills guests with a séance