Inside

David Ferry received his MFA in directing from UVIC in 2004. Since then he has been very successful in his directing career as well as his ongoing acting career (2009 DORA best actor award and Victoria Critic’s Choice Spotlight Best performance award for his Willy Loman in Blue Bridge’s acclaimed Death of a Salesman in 2008). He most recently directed the hit Shakespeare: If Music Be…, a multidisciplinary performance piece for Art of Time Ensemble in Toronto. He directed Where’s My Money? by John Patrick Shanley at the Pia Bauman dance theatre in the spring of 2010. In 2009 he directed Missing by Florence Gibson for Factory Theatre as well as a stunning remount of his 2006 award winning production The Last Days of Judas Iscariot. He also directed and dramaturged six plays by six authors for part one of his own project – Cellular – a site specific series of plays utilizing cellular devices as delivery systems. He also directed the acclaimed production of The Pillowman for CanStage and Birdland. He directed 36 Views for ARC (2006 DORA nomination Best Production) as well as the world premiere of Brendan Gall’s Alias Godot at Teatro della Limonaia’s Festival Intercity in 2006 (and invited back in 2007 to remount it). He won two 2006 DORA awards (Toronto’s theatre awards) for direction and lighting design for his production of The Last Days of Judas Iscariot (a site specific production) for Toronto’s Birdland Theatre Company (which also won best production). David is currently also directing the workshop and reading of Fine Arts Writing Department Chair Bill Gaston’s adaptation (with Dede Gaston) of Gaston’s short story Mount Appetite as part of the Belfry Theatre’s Spark Festival.

Daniel MacIvor’s new play is a superb example of his evolving theatrical aesthetic. His ever maturing grasp of the craft of playmaking is evident in the multi-layered structure that his gripping story hangs on… it moves along at a brisk pace and the sense of people hurtling towards a fate that they are powerless to control is accentuated by the alternating choral formality and minimalist two hander scenes that live closer to a naturalistic theatre mode. Every now and then the familiar bell of the patented MacIvor direct address monologue reminds us of his fierce humanity in the face of

a world run amuck. Daniel’s themes are almost always related to death and in recent works, more and more address the hereafter (or lack thereof? … you decide).

Having the extreme good fortune to be the first to direct one of Mr. MacIvor’s new plays (or at least one he himself does not act in) I have been bowled over by his generosity in letting me take my own path through the process of unveiling his text… it is not a little intimidating to be sitting next to an author of a new work who is in his own right a super director. He knows every intention of the author, of course, and pretty much every inflection of all the characters in the play. I saw him biting his tongue more than once in rehearsals. But we did find the right balance, I think, in the delicate trick of hat wearing, and he was also fantastically helpful in offering insight to me and the other artists when the timing was absolutely perfect. I would be remiss in not thanking the rest of the fine creative team for making this production come to life in such a creative way… I pushed the actors hard, they did not bend; Allan Stichbury brought insight into how Daniel sees the stage; Kendra Terpenning has been a revelation with her costume ideas; Bryan Kenney designed beautiful illumination and the rest of the creative team and stage management could not have been better in support of the vision. Finally Sandi Barrett, my assistant director, was essential in the work you see on stage.

I am equally thankful to the UVic theatre department for providing such a supportive environment and for having the vision and good common sense to grasp this opportunity to premiere Daniel’s play. The other “teams” across the country will be green with envy.

I found myself on a daily basis sitting in envy of these students as they wrestled with such sexy, smart and funny material. If only I had had such good fortune as a theatre school student to premiere the work of a fabulous living playwright… an icon to the young theatre artists across the country, and one who sits so modestly in his talent and reputation… my career would have started, as these actors’ will, with such a fantastic liftoff.