Director welcomes challenge of difficult play
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This is a digitised version of an article from The Cayman Compass's print archive. Occasionally, the digitisation process introduces transcription errors, or other problems.
See the article in its original context from September 2002.
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At recent rehearsals, Pat talked about the problems to be overcome and the people who helped her deal with them. It helped that she "absolutely loved" the 1998 film Little Voice, which was based on a play in which the main character is a reclusive young woman who finds it hard to talk to people but easy to emulate the sounds of singers popular a generation or two earlier.
When Pat decided after five years involvement with CDS that she wanted to direct, this play was her natural choice. Submitting her proposal to the group's selection committee could have been a sobering experience. Pat remembers that veteran member Penny Phillips told her Little Voice would be a difficult play, requiring a lot of work. "I thought, Oh, all plays are a lot of work," she acknowledges.
The problems quickly manifested themselves. For one thing, the script calls for a revolving stage. The Prospect Playhouse has undergone extensive renovations, but a revolving stage was not among them. Pat's challenge was to come up with a set that could be transformed quickly enough to reflect the dramatic change required in the latter part of the show.
Her next challenge was "the musical bits" she thought it would be no problem to find instrumental versions of big hit songs by the likes of Judy Garland, Billie Holiday, Shirley Bassey. Not so. Then she and her husband tried using the original recording and dubbing out the vocal. "It's not easy," she soon discovered, especially when the recording wasn't done in stereo.
The next problem took Pat by surprise. "I didn't realise how hard it would be to make an apartment look terrible," she says of the set. The apartment is home, after all, to Little Voice and her domineering mother. Pat describes the latter character as "borderline alcoholic - What would she have in her kitchen?" Pat pondered while searching out the furnishings.
Her first solution was inspired: she CONT'D FROM PAGE A5 asked Regina Oliver to be co-director. Regina has worked on lights, make-up, sound - "She knows where every microphone is" and was willing to share her technical expertise. That enabled Pat to concentrate her attention on the actors.
Plus, Regina and Alan Hall designed the problematic set, which John Elliot then built singlehandedly.
Pat's husband, Wil, persevered and eventually either located the essential music in instrumental version or else knitted it together from orchestra portions of the vocal. To head a "fantastic" production team, Pat and Regina were able to persuade Rick Glass to serve as stage manager. Finally, the aspect that has Pat beaming brightest is the fact that "I got who I wanted for the cast."
Vanessa Hansen, of CITN fame, is Little Voice. Wendy Bewley plays her mother. The mother's opportunistic boyfriend is Alan Hall. David Godfrey, Bill Bewley, Helen Godfrey and Roland Stacey appear in supporting roles. How well it all comes together can be seen on weekends starting next Thursday, 26 September. Originally scheduled to open last night, the play was put back a week by the imminence of Tropical Storm Isidore. Phone the box office at 949-5054 for details.
