Friday, November 18, 2011

The Rise and Fall (and Rise!) of UNIT 102 (PART 2)

Well this is it. We signed the papers, stripped the old space and we are about to take possession of the new Unit 102. Our new location is at 736 Dufferin , just South of Dufferin and Queen. I was walking through the dusty place the other day and it’s going to need a lot of work to get it ready our November 3rd opening. Cleaning, painting , moving , bitching, sanding, sweating, lifting, wiring and a whole slew of other verbs will be taking place this week. I’m ready for it personally, I’ve been sitting on a milky way of anxiety these last few months and want to sink my teeth into some work.

I say all this while sipping on my third glass of Red Cross pinot Grigio that I picked up with a friend at the grocery store. Which is to say I’m feeling rather comfortable right now. I’m sure if I was writing this tomorrow morning after my third coffee I would have the stench of panic all over these words. But for now, it’s feeling good.

*****

Ok this is me after three coffees and panicking. We have three days to get this studio up and running. I haven’t slept, the money I'm giving the electrician is the last $20 that I have. I am covered in paint, my fingers bleeding and I can’t find the fucking hammer anywhere. It seems absurd to me that my last posting was so positive, this time frame we are working on is ludicrous. Luckily we have so many eager hands to paint or we’d be screwed. Tracy, one of my favorite servers at the Rustic Cosmo, has been rolling black paint onto the ceiling for almost an hour now, by far the worst job in a sea of unsightly jobs. Watching her labor, I wonder what possesses her to help out so intensely. The place is a shithole, just like the original Unit 102 used to be,and it's hard to imagine that a play will be performed here in just TWO days, especially with all this garbage laying around. The last tenant was a tattoo artist and left a container with a biohazard label sitting in the back. The thing was full of used needles. It sat next to a copy of DVD entitled “Young Cummers”, I don’t think the films content needs explanation. This is where we begin. Now where the fuck is that hammer….

*****

I am now sitting among the 40 seats lined up for tonights performance of THE DUMB WAITER. The lights of the stage illuminate two cot beds sitting on Stratical Theatre’s impressive set. The New 102 Theatre sits all around me, a product of two weeks of intense physical work. As you can see from the last two entries, my feeling throughout the process have been all over the place. But now, looking around me, I have to admit to a certain feeling of pride. It was fuckin' hell but we created a new theatre in under a week and we're already in the midst of our second production with two more coming directly afterwards. There is something comforting about these surrounding black walls, a feeling that I am exactly where I belong. That’s a rare feeling for me. My whole life has been a series of uncomforts it would seem, constantly wondering where I am headed, what I’m doing, who I am. Sitting in this box theatre, I get all three of those questions answered simulataneously. This is where I’m headed, this is what I’m doing and most definitely, this is who I am. I would pick up a thousand used needles for such a feeling. ( And I did.) As I finish my second viewing of ‘Young Cummers’ (terrible acting but a great script), I feel inclined to finish my little tale on how UNIT 102 rose, fell and rose again. Join me won’t you?

So when last I left you, oh so many months ago, I was living with Liz and we had decided to go for broke and turn our studio loft into a full out theatrical venue. A stage was built, seats were plundered and we needed some content to officially kick start our adventure.

Our first interested party happened to be one of the most important. Mark Andrada and Julie Dumais, two very talented improvisers, were shopping around to do a show entitled “Manifesto”,a night of experimental improvised work. Due to the nature of their proposed idea, they needed a quirky off-the cuff venue that wouldn’t be financially motivated as experimental work generally has a hard time finding an audience. When they saw the space they immediately were taken by it. Before we knew it, Manifesto was doing a monthly show at our space, and with it came a large swath of the comedy community. Their early endorsement and plugging of Unit 102 was probably the single most significant creative contribution to our space, as it opened us up to Toronto’s young comedy community who at the time was desperate for a venue. Soon many other comedy acts would follow. PROJECTproject (also with Dumais and Andrada), quite possibly Toronto’s greatest improve troupe (in my opinion) would call Unit 102 their home and for nearly a year did a weekly Wednesday night show. They were waiting for the opening of Gary Rideout Jrs. Comedy Bar, now Toronto’s premier venue for new comedy. I often worked on Wednesday nights, and regretfully did not get out to see the show as much as I would have liked . But Liz, being the sole representative for our “company”,would always be on hand to help run it. The amount of joy and excitement she took from being a part of that show was evident every time we talked about it. It brought her, who was always a tad shy, totally out of her shell. I’d imagine she would not disagree with that statement.

PROJECTproject led to a huge comedy explosion at 102. For almost a full year, we were running two to three comedy shows a week. Two of my personal favorites were Tal Zimmerman and Jared Sale’s NSFW, a night of curated viral videos and PB&J (Pat Thorton, Bob Banks and Jason DeRosse respectfully) who would do shows where everyone including themselves would be smoking pot throughout. How they even performed in that state was beyond me but they always managed to be hilarious. Once, I did a special guest spot on their show. When my set was done, I partook in the festivities happening in the audience. Needless to say, I got ripped. Little did I know, the troupe was going to invite all the nights guests on the stage for an improvised jam session. When I got up on stage, I had no idea what was going on. At one point I was in a scene and not knowing what to do, “died” on stage and lay there for the duration of the scene. (possibly the worst “offer” ever made in the history of improve). When that was done, I hid in the back and hugged the wall, hoping to God that it would soon end. It didn’t. I was lost somewhere in my own head when Julie Dumais (who was also a special guest) grabbed me by the hand and through me into the scene with the line, “Doctor, Doctor, tell us what’s wrong with him.” I hadn’t been watching the scene, so I had no idea what the context was but there was Pat Thorton, acting like a retarded child, pretending to jerk off his penis. I stood there, perplexed as to exactly what was going on and proceeded to talk Doctor Jargon for a few seconds before walking off stage and promptly passing out unconscious. I would wake up later to Liz putting a damp cloth on my head. When I asked where everyone had gone, she told me the show was over and everyone left. Not my finest day and it would take a number of years before I would attempt improv again.

And so things were popping fresh over at our little studio, so much so that Eye Magazine called us “best place to see a comedy show” that year. Crazy considering we were just an empty room full of cats. But it was happening before our eyes. Comedy was a great fit for the space but there were attempts to use 102 for other artistic purposes. A few groups did gallery showings, another did a concert. The concert was Toronto’s own Run With The Kittens. It was a crazy good performance. We couldn’t do drums in our spot, so the band’s drummer brought a single kick drum with a pillow stuffed in it and used the lip of the stage to pound out the beat. Even with these modifications, the band was too loud, their sonic output blasting out onto Noble street. After a quick visit from the local authorities, we decided that music wasn’t a possibility in our space. But man, what a show.

Then there was our first “serious” theatre piece. It was a Montreal company doing “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolfe?” Now we had been a theatre for awhile at that point but never before had we tried to create the illusion that we’re in another time and place. It’s one thing if you’re doing improv and a cat jumps on stage, its another when you are in the middle of reciting a monologue from Hamlet. We needed to make the place a bit more legit. We turned our living room into a back stage space, hung up curtain and for each performance we had to lock ourselves into a room with our three cats so they wouldn’t interfere with the performance. It was weird being stuck in a loft bed with three cats while the words of Albert Albee were coming from the other room.

Then there was the time our lights died in the middle of The Skecherson’s show. At the time we didn’t have a lighting grid and I was using work lamps, those ones used in construction with the grated bulbs, as stage lights. Well during a particularly packed performance, the main stage light burned out so I had to grab a ladder and climb up and replace it DURING the show. When I finished and got the light up, the audience cheered and the show resumed. Then it died again. This time, I didn’t have a replacement, so I took two flashlights and lay on the floor in front of the stage and directed light on whatever was taking place. Pretty ghetto.

Once Comedy Bar launched, all the comedy acts followed. At the time I was a bit bitter but the move made sense. The comedy Toronto's up and coming community was doing was stellar work and they needed to bring it to a legitimate mainstream venue. And they have, Comedy Bar is a thriving place full of extremely talented individuals. Considering our cats and flashlights, it was a big step up for them.

It was around this time that Liz grew tired of living in a theatre space. It was tough having random people open your door at 9am and start screaming and jumping around. We needed a change. The problem was that if we were to move, I couldn’t afford 102’s rent AND rent for an apartment.

So that was when the Unit 102 Co-op was created. The idea was simple. Create an online schedule with a number of artists, split the rent down the middle and do a time share. I assembled a number of people and off we went. But simple it wasn’t. Trying to co-ordinate the time was a hassle, as most people wanted similar times. And many would join the co-op for a month or two, put up their show and then leave. Trying to organize a studio clean up was nearly impossible. There was no singular purpose or vision for the space, it was every man for himself.

So that only lasted about a year before it dissolved. A new formula had to be worked out.

So that’s when Jesse Ryder Hughes, Scott Walker, Jenny Westoby, Dave Lafontaine and I created UNIT 102 Theatre and Actors company. In an attempt to take it to the next level, we painted the space in black, put up an actual lighting grid and decided to start doing this for real. We were all actors working together on shows and decided to take things a bit more seriously.

We opened up last year with a season of three shows: Sam Sheppard’s True West (Which I directed), David Mamet’s SPEED THE PLOW and Patrick Marber’s CLOSER. We devised an actual booking system and opened our doors for rental and performance. Over the last year, we grew rather successful and by August of this year, the studio was finally paying for itself. All and all, it was the best of times.

However…

From the moment we began doing this something changed with our neighbors. When we started, as I mentioned in my previous post, we had the community on our side. People from within the building would routinely come down and join us. But when we began to do actual shows, we started an inadvertent war with the upstairs tenenant. His mission? The absolute eradication of our little theatre space.

I am not being overly dramatic by saying that. From the get go, he began banging down at us, screaming profanities, blasting techno music and threatening to use his chainsaw on us (!) For a while we managed to make nice but soon a number of other tenants began to join in the hating. By the end of it, I was scared shitless to put up a show of my own. Everytime we had a renter, I would freak out at any bang or bump that happened on stage. This went on for months, and reached its fever pitch when during one our shows for TRUE WEST, he came down and threatened to kill my actors DURING their performance. It became clear that something had to change. On August 10th 2011, we were served an eviction notice.

And so it is. We found a new spot, we created a new spot and I write this in a new spot. The NEW UNIT 102 is located at 376 Dufferin Street, just below Queen Street West. It comfortably seat 50, has a working grid, soundsystem, a large playing space, a lobby and front windows. Soon we will have a nice sign announcing us to the busy street. We have three shows this month, two of them still running (Stratical Theatre’s THE DUMB WAITER running November 10th-20th and Pandemic Theatres MISS TORONTO ACTS BACK which runs November 25th-27th and December 1st-4th). We have tons available space starting in December , rehearsals running at $15/hour and shows starting at $175/show. You can follow us on Twitter at @unit102theatre.

Let this be a lesson:. All it takes to make something happen is to actually set out and do it. All I had was a half-assed plan, some extremely good friends and a drive to do some work. That’s it. Let me be perfectly clear: I am an unorganized, lazy and foolish person. And yet, I run a legitimate theatre venue in Toronto. If I can pull that off, then anything is possible my friends. Anything.

Everything but putting together a blog in a reasonable amount of time apparently. Guess I’ve still got a lot of work to do. But before I do that, I’m curious to revisit scene 3 of Young Cummers. There was this one position I just couldn’t quite figure out….

Living the Dream.

That Blogging Bastard