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May 24, 2013
Musical about summer camp
Babins siblings work behind the scenes of Awkward’s Bunked!
OLGA LIVSHIN
Vancouver’s Awkward Stage Productions – a theatre specifically for younger audiences, with all actors and crew barely in their twenties. This unique company’s latest project – the Canadian première of Bunked! The Musical by Alaina Kunin and Bradford Procter. The play was a sensation at the New York Fringe Festival in 2010 and, this year, for five days only, from May 29 to June 2, it will entertain local audiences at CBC Studio 700.
Bunked! is about five teenage counselors at a summer camp. Caught between youth and adulthood, the characters navigate the murky waters of transition while exploring their burgeoning sexuality and their growing responsibilities. Claire Rice, the producer of the show, said: “It’s the summer after high school, and these camp counselors need counselors of their own as they look towards and try to avoid adulthood.”
Siblings Erika and Nathan Babins are part of the production crew. Erika is the movement director, while Nathan is the stage manager. They talked to the Independent about their participation in Bunked! and about their plans for the future.
Like the characters of the show, Erika and Nathan are at a point of transition. Their stories are just beginning, both in life and in theatre.
Nathan is a recent graduate from Capilano University with a degree in technical theatre.
“I can do everything: light, sound, sets,” he said. “It’s rewarding: we work on a show, and then people get to see our work.... I like what I do. I like to make something with my hands and then stand back and look at it, and think: I built that.”
Nathan is working to add meaningful and relevant experience to his theatre resumé, and Awkward Stage Productions is giving him that opportunity, as it does for many other recent graduates of local theatre programs, including Erika.
Erika graduated from Capilano University with a degree in musical theatre several years ago, and her involvement with the city’s theatre scene is already extensive. In the past few years, she has performed as a dancer in several shows and has enjoyed being a choreographer, as well.
“I’m choreographing two others shows at the moment,” she noted. “One of them, Pippin, is for Arts Umbrella; it will be performed on Granville Island. Another is Once On This Island, where I’m an associate choreographer. It is for URP on the North Shore.”
Erika also teaches musical theatre to children at ArtSpace in Burnaby, and she writes her own plays. “I have always been interested in writing,” she said. “Some of my plays were produced, but not by professional theatres. One has to start somewhere.” Her new play, Net, will be part of the Victoria 2013 Fringe Festival.
Hungry to try her hands at any theatrical enterprise, Erika has chosen her next project as an experiment in Internet art – she is producing the web series The Autobiography of Jane Eyre. With this endeavor and her other theatre- and dance-related work, Erika noted proudly that, as of recently, she makes her living exclusively as an artist; no more day jobs at coffee shops for now, at least.
“The Vancouver theatrical world is a small one,” she said. “Finding work is all about networking, knowing people. I got many of my choreographing engagements through Awkward Stage, although, as a dancer, I still have to audition, like everyone else.”
Working on both sides of the stage can produce some interesting results. Erika, for example, auditioned her current director, Xavier de Salaberry, for one of her previous shows.
“Xavier auditioned as an actor,” she recalled. “He saw Nathan, who was our stage manager then, and he was very impressed. When Xavier started looking for crew members for Bunked!, he specifically requested Nathan as a stage manager.”
For Erika herself, Bunked! offered a new experience. “There are not many dances in the show,” she said. “My job as a movement director is not as much choreography as to make all the characters look as esthetically pleasing as possible.”
While Erika is responsible for the characters’ movements, Nathan’s job as a stage manager is to ensure that everything runs smoothly. “During rehearsals, I’m the connection between the director and the production team,” he explained. “During the shows, I’m responsible for everything: the props being in the right place at the right time, the actors appearing on stage at the right moment. I’m always backstage.”
Although the show was mounted in New York a few years ago, none of the performers and crew has seen it. “It is better this way,” Erika said. “When you work on an old show, you sometimes feel trapped by what’s been done before. But a new show, it is all fresh, our own. There are clips on YouTube but not good ones. Xavier forbade us to watch them.”
One of the innovative aspects of the upcoming production of Bunked! is the seating. “We offer some seating on sleeping bags on stage,” said Erika. “These tickets are cheaper, and the kids who sit there will feel part of the play. But there are normal chairs too.”
For more information about Awkward Stage Productions, visit out awkwardstageproductions.com. To buy tickets for Bunked!, visit bunked.brownpapertickets.com.
Olga Livshin is a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at [email protected].
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