Blind Date

Festival Players brings interactive play to the Regent Theatre

Christy Bruce is just about as busy as an actor can be. Bruce just finished up a five-week run at The Thousand Islands Playhouse in Gananoque for the world premiere of a farce called The Canadian. Then it’s only one day off in her home of Toronto before hopping on a train to her next gig. It’s a crazy, livin’-out of-your-suitcase kind of life, but it’s one that is necessary for anyone who is serious about acting as a career.

Bruce moved to Toronto from her hometown of Calgary in the summer of 1999. She came to Toronto armed with solid improv background at The Loose Moose Theatre in Calgary where she studied with Keith Johnstone (author of Impro, and Impro for Storytellers). In 2000 she joined the Second City National Touring Company and has been working and performing with Second City for over 15 years. Along with an array of film and theatre credits, Bruce has also been starring in Rebecca Northan’s Blind Date for five out of the seven years the play has been around, including a four-year run in London’s West End. Bruce’s character for Blind Date is Mimi, who is looking for someone she feels she could talk to, or someone who sparks an interest in her. The play revolves around Mimi going on a blind date with someone who is chosen from the audience that evening. It may seem like a random choice, but rest assured the play organizers are much more calculated than that. No one gets picked without their prior notice. No one gets railroaded. Bruce explains that they pick one person to come up and do the whole show with Mimi and get full consent from the audience member chosen before moving ahead.

Christy Bruce, centre, portraying Mimi in Blind Date.

“The show essentially starts in the lobby where Mimi and the scouts from the play look for potential candidates by meeting as many people possible. Then we get full consent from the gentleman we are interested in and their significant other (if applicable) to go on the maybe list. We usually end up six or seven maybes and the choice is made from there. No one needs to be afraid that we are going to randomly pull people out of the audience. We do not do that,” says Bruce.

As for the genesis of Blind Date and its unique take on audience participation, Bruce recalls that it started with creator Rebecca Northan getting a spot to perform in the Stiegl tent, which was a clown burlesque tent that the Harbourfront put on. Northan got the spot at the tent and didn’t know what to do. While brainstorming she thought to herself “What would it be like to randomly pick someone and do a 10-minute clown piece with them like they were on a date?” Then ideas started to spike from that and Northan thought “…what would happen if we got to know the gentleman and a few things about his life?” That’s how the concept was born. The term that Bruce uses in describing the ideal candidate for Blind Date is “reluctantly playful,” which is described as not too eager, and not terrified to death.

When asked if, after five years of performing the same character, the experience was still fun for her, Bruce’s response was a resounding yes.

“I love it because you get to meet the most amazing people that I wouldn’t meet in my everyday life, and the audience gets to meet them too. Sometimes the shows are light and fun and amazing and sometimes these men are open enough and able to talk about real things that have happened in their life that are not superlight and fun. When I was doing the Blind Date in Gananoque three years ago I picked a gentleman who turned out to be a soldier in Afghanistan. We talked about that for a bit and it made for a totally different show. It’s fascinating to me,” says Bruce.

For the character of Mimi, Bruce says that she’s able to be much more comfortable with the character now that she’s played it so many times.

“I’m able to sit in it more and be really present without the nervousness related to a playing a new part. The big skills for this show are conversational and asking great, open-ended questions. It has really built up my conversational skills,” says Bruce.

The interactive nature of this play and the possibility of catching a friend or neighbour onstage as the star for the night will make for a fun-lighthearted evening of theatre. Any patrons worried about being chosen to come onstage that night should put their minds at ease with the promise that no one is chosen for this without the patron’s prior consent to do so.

The Festival Players presentation of Blind Date starring Bruce runs from August 23 to September 2 at the Regent Theatre in Picton and it will be Bruce’s first time visiting the County. The showtime runs around 70-80 minutes with no intermission. After the Regent Theatre show, Blind Date will head to Vancouver, then to Montreal where creator Northan herself will perform the role of Mimi, completely in French.

LAST PERFORMANCES OF DRAWER BOY
If you haven’t done so already, make plans to see The Drawer Boy before it closes on Saturday. The highly acclaimed work features exceptional performances by Benedict Campbell, John Dolan and Marcel Stewart in a story about the effects of loneliness and isolation in rural life.

Playwright Michael Healey and director Graham Abbey have conspired to use the intimate setting of the Festival Players theatre in Wellington to pull the audience into the lives of these three men while slowly revealing the secrets that propel the plot forward. The atmosphere and storytelling is complemented beautifully by the music accompaniment of George Meanwell.

It is powerful theatre, professionally performed and staged. See it before it’s gone.

For tickets and more information, visit festivalplayers.ca