Thought Residencies

TRANSCRIPT: This is Ashlie with fourteenth thought. This morning we started rehearsals for "Into the Woods" here at the Playhouse. A piece that I first fell in love with as a 10-year old when a friend brought over a VHS recording of the PBS Broadcast of the original Broadway production. It's a piece that has been part of my life ever since then, and its one that I dearly love. Now as a director lo...

TRANSCRIPT: This is Ashlie and my thirteenth thought. On Monday evening I was at the Dora Mavor Moore awards. And this has led me to think a lot about community. Even though I now live in Gananoque, 3 hours up the 401, I no longer reside full time in Toronto, I still very much part of that community and feel very, very grateful for that.

TRANSCRIPT: This is Ashlie and my twelfth thought. Today I am thinking about patience. Out of all the virtues this is the one that I have tried the most to cultivate in my life both personally and professionally. I really actually also mean how to develop patience for myself. It is obviously easy to be patient when things are going well but when things are tougher where does this patience come fro...

TRANSCRIPT: This is Ashlie with my eleventh thought. I spent this morning driving from Gananoque to Toronto to attend a workshop of our final production of the season: You Are Here. And in the car with me was my dear friend and colleague, Jason Hall, who is a playwright and director, and we talked about everything from art to politics to our personal lives. It made me realize how lucky I am to hav...

TRANSCRIPT: This is Ashlie and my tenth thought. This morning I am thinking a lot about artistic focus. And that is because last night at our studio S concert - which is our classical music series here at the playhouse - We had the amazing young Italian pianist Luca Buratto come and play for us. Last night there was also a huge thunder and lightning storm and at one point during the concert we los...

TRANSCRIPT: This is Ashlie with my ninth thought. This morning I am thinking about and being grateful for all of the people in my life who support me and take care of me especially at such busy times like tech week. A couple of nights ago I came home and my roommate who is one of the actresses in the show had harvested some rhubarb from my back yard and had made two pies. I am proud to announce th...

TRANSCRIPT: This is Ashlie Corcoran's eighth thought. What I am learning about today is that during tech I am bad about being preoccupied with thoughts. We are in tech for Blithe Spirit so it's all about making a lot of decisions in the timeliest of manners because our tech week is so tight at the Thousands Islands Playhouse. And as such I forgot to do my thought This morning and so I apologize.

TRANSCRIPT: This is Ashlie and my seventh thought. This morning I am thinking about what happened in Orlando and while I don't believe that I have a unique perspective to add in this 30 second thought I did want to say how deeply saddened and angered I am by the entire situation.

TRANSCRIPT: This is Ashlie Corcoran with my sixth thought. My thought this morning is simply if you haven't watched the James Corden's Broadway Karaoke I encourage you to do that. I just watched it this morning and I have to say it is so delightful and even though there are 5 big stars in that car driving around downtown New York City, you also see 5 goofy, talented, very funny theatre people. And...

TRANSCRIPT: This is Ashlie with my fifth thought. This morning I am waking up thinking about our incredible production team at the 1000 islands playhouse. We had a production meeting over lunch yesterday and I was looking at each member of the team, thinking about how diligent, patient talented and hardworking they all are. I feel really lucky to be working with this group of people and it really...

TRANSCRIPT: This is Ashlie with my fourth thought. One of my favourite parts of my job is how many decisions I both have to make and also get to make. This is right from the many detailed decisions that we're making together in our rehearsal hall to the larger macro decisions about season programming and planning and artistic vision. I am so far into 2017 season planning that sometimes I am not ev...

TRANSCRIPT: This is Ashlie Corcoran and my third thought. When I'm directing I notice I am often obsessing about and thinking about the themes of the piece I'm directing, the ideas behind it, maybe the history. Sometimes that is an overt obsession and sometimes it's more – um – subconscious. What I am noticing with Noel Coward's Blithe Spirit is that my vocabulary has vastly improved. I am calling...

TRANSCRIPT: This is Ashlie Corcoran with my second thought. Today we a started staging Noel Coward's Blithe Spirit here at the Thousand Islands Playhouse. This is the first Noel Coward piece that I have directed and I am finding myself thinking about the usual suspects like action, and events and objectives, and I am also thinking a lot about style and etiquette, this is something I am really curi...

TRANSCRIPT: What I am thinking about this morning is how difficult it is to find space to have deep thoughts sometimes. As an artistic director, our jobs are so multi-faceted and so busy. On Sunday night I got home late from the PACT conference, Monday morning I started rehearsals for Blithe Spirit, but before that, I had an interview on CBC, at lunch time I had meetings , after rehearsals I had a...

TRANSCRIPT: Final Thought. The theatre could be an enormously influential vehicle for positive progressive change. For me it all starts with good story telling. Begin with a good story and work your way outward. If you can smack people on the heart, if you can make their guts churn, if you can make them make them erupt with laughter, if you can make then collapse into tears, if you can open them u...

TRANSCRIPT: Thought number 12. After watching Nyle DiMarco win dancing with the stars. One thought filled my head: If we use our imaginations we can communicate anything to anyone. Through the language of dance, DiMArco communicated to the world the beauty of Deaf experience. We live in a world where there are so many resources available to us. If we are not communicating we are being either ignor...

TRANSCRIPT: Thought number 11. the world is a noisy place. Silence comes at a premium. Silence can often be quite discomforting for many people. The world is so noisy that people are often suspicious of silence. Silence is often understood to be the calm before the storm. But silence can be active it's not necessarily synonymous with peace or menace or suspense. So much happens in a quiet room. Th...

TRANSCRIPT: Thought number 10. The key source of difficulty for Deaf and disabled people is the way normalcy is conceived. Currently, normalcy is restrictive and encourages exclusion and discrimination. But if we can reconceive normalcy as open and fluid, rather than restrictive, then everyone becomes a part of normalcy, everyone is welcome. Now while such a re-conception may be difficult, it is n...

TRANSCRIPT Thought number 9. Just because one is Deaf or disabled doesn't mean that one can't be sexy. Now when I say sexy I don't mean freaky or kinky or exotic, I mean attractive. If you carry yourself with strength and confidence, you are sexy. And after the act of lovemaking, you can look into each other's eyes and enjoy the connections you've made over the physical, intellectual, spiritual or...

TRANSCRIPT: Thought number 8. We are only beginning to realize the potential of using sign language on stage. Its animated nature and robust expressiveness lends itself naturally to the theatre. IT is perhaps the best language for expressing profound emotions whether its anger, love, frustration, jealousy or outrage. We simply need to see more of it.

TRANSCRIPT: Thought number 7. As I become more involved in the theatre I have noticed that there is little overlap between the literary community and the theatre community. I seldom see poets and novelists attend plays and I don't often see playwrights at book launches or public readings. I find this situation strange. Have these artists become ensconced in echo chambers that reflect their own val...

TRANSCRIPT Thought number 6: It is imperative that deaf, hard of hearing and disabled actors be given the chance to represent themselves on stage on film and on television. I understand that is is an attractive artistic challenge for a hearing and able bodied actor to play such roles and that studios and producers want well-known actors to fill such roles. But, at the same time, if you are a direc...

TRANSCRIPT: Thought number 5: Just because a piece of art is politically progressive doesn't mean that it's good. A politically charged play must balance aesthetics with politics. It must tell the story honestly, not didactically. If one wants to be merely political one can hand out pamphlets or write manifestos instead of plays.

TRANSCRIPT: Thought number 4 "ADAM!" "Yessss?" "We advertised you as a deaf writer, you prick! Why did you take the deaf off the sign!" "Because, you twat, a writer is a writer is a writer" "But we need the full marketing and shit!" Stifle your labels you malodorous beast! When you label me you put me in a pen. My work is for everyone"

TRANSCRIPT: Thought Number 3. Deafness and disability are often thought of as novelties, as gimmicks and unfortunately are often treated as such in the theatre, film and on television. But Deafness and disability are multifarious subjects as complex as love, death, war, anger and any other subject that you can think of. Artist need to treat Deafness and disability that way. We need to realize the...