where's the beef?

CALGARY, ALBERTA
October 7th, 2006

So here I sit at the end of two months in Cowtown, bracing myself for the giant email I owe you. Brace yourself, too. We'll get through this together.

I'm living in a week that includes eight shows over five days, many of them for evil callous teenagers, drinking too much with old friends, a Brazilian wax (the pain of which cannot be expressed in writing), a horrible lack of sleep, packing to go home......and if I can make it through all that...(OhPoorMeMyLifeIsHardIWishIWasInKazhakstan.)

You'll be happy to know I just took a moment to put some pants on. Love you as I may, it just felt too weird writing one of these letters without pants. You may take yours off if you like.

So....CALGARY THE UNKNOWABLE. Don't know if I've got any kind of a handle on the place. And I'm not sure who does. Locals seem to ask "What do you think of Calgary?" in a puzzled tone that suggests they're not quite sure what to make of it themselves. As if they're hoping that an outsider will be able to suddenly make it all clear to them. However, my experience of the place has been mostly the actor-hanging-with-lots-of-other-actors and working a lot and sleeping experience. I haven't had much time to mingle with the little people. Or the BIG people, I should say, what with their ten gallon hats and their high-heeled boots and their spurs and the raw meat hanging out of their mouths. (Just kidding, they apparently only dress that way during Stampede time.....and I think I dreamt the part about the meat.)

The theatre community is happily thriving. Seems new things are popping up all the time; new small companies, a good buzz in the air, a very supportive vibe in the community. I'm happy for them and hope it will continue. And that Ordinary Joe Calgary will put down his raw meat (and his Blackberry) for a minute and join in, so it's not just a self-contained thing with theatre people taking turns going around looking at each other. I fear that everywhere.

I do think it's an odd time to be here, what with the big BOOM and all. No one quite trusts it will last (and of course it can't, not the way it is now) and the town seems to be scrambling to get what it can, while it can. And to catch up with itself. It's great to have jobs flying around like confetti, sure, but if there's nowhere to house and school and take care of the sick among all these people...... There are folks with good jobs living in tents here. And winter's coming. Very strange days.

The cab drivers have no idea where anything is. If it stops pissing you off, it starts to become hilarious. They, of course, cleverly came to town from other cities and countries to cash in.....but they are so hopelessly lost out there that they seem slightly terrified all the time, poor buggers. The combination of a passenger new to town and a driver who got here last week can be ridiculous. And expensive. Luckily the meter rates are WAY lower than in T.O. On my birthday (September 15th - it rained and then snowed), which was also opening night, I decided to splurge and just take a cab everywhere while I ran all my opening night gift shopping errands and went to rehearsal. I felt so cosmpolitan actually getting a cabbie to wait for me as I ran in and out of places. But I can afford that here. Even when he got lost and we ended up in Jersey, it wasn't too bad. And New Jersey is quite the detour from Alberta. You'd think I would have noticed.

Yeah. Snow on my birthday. Unheard of. The weather in this place is out of its mind. Two days before the snow, it was thirty degrees celsius outside. And two days after, it was again. We're expecting locusts on Sunday, but it's so hard to predict, really. I've hired a dresser to follow me around in the streets with a suitcase. We stop and do quick-changes in phone booths whenever the weather shifts. Just another little luxury I've allowed myself - hell, I am in my thirties now.

Nobody jaywalks in this town. Not only that, but if you do, people look at you as if you're stabbing babies. Okay, so I did once jaywalk and stab a baby at the same time. But that was only once......and that kid was already dead. There are signs around saying "Caution. Do Not Jaywalk. TWO-WAY TRAFFIC." Well....in that case. I mean, I could make it across one lane, but if there are cars in both directions???! Wow, that's complicated.

White as Calgary is (by grew-up-in-Scarborough-live in-Toronto standards it's like some weird Caucasian planet), there is enough immigration to provide interesting places to eat. I've seen a few Ethiopian places, been to a Thai place or two, lots of Indian and Sushi around. It's taken being in Calgary to get me hooked on Lebanese takeout. And no, "Lebanese Takeout" is not a euphemism for "picking up chicks". Though there's always room for chicks.....like Jell-O!

As I write I am listening to a fantastic radio station called CKUA, somehow based in Calgary and Edmonton. Go to http://www.ckua.com/ and click "Live On Air" to listen to it right now. It's the country's oldest public broadcaster, founded in 1927 on the U of A campus. Hour by hour you never know what genre you're going to get, depending on who's hosting, but a lot of it is wonderful. Go there. I'm also hooked on CBC Radio 3 lately, which you can get on your itunes sattelite radio listings under "public". All Canadian indie stuff. Pretty great. But I digress...... You now have permission to skip a random paragraph. Or just read every other one from here on in. Though you may miss the bit that contains the meaning of life. And you'll just never know.

A couple of weeks ago, at one of our (ten million) student matinees, a teenager tried to get up at intermission and felt something in his back go terribly, terribly wrong. He couldn't move and paramedics were called, who eventually put him on a morphine drip, right in the house, to try and loosen up his seized muscles so that they could move him. I imagine that may be the trippiest theatre experience you can have: being high on an Opiate in an audience while seven hundred people stare at you and whisper. Our intermission lasted an hour and thirteen minutes, during which we sat in the green room and placed bets as to whether the show would continue. It did, but only for about fifty students -the others all had to catch their buses back to school - and of course the kid with the back problem, who remains in the house to this day, and holds the record for most consecutive performances attended at the Max Bell Theatre. He is covered head-to-toe with gum and urine (mostly his), but still seems to be enjoying the production. He is considering a career as a theatre critic when he graduates. (By correspondence.) Poor kid. I hope he is okay. The back thing, I mean, not as a critic.

I spent my first month here billeting with a family up north of Kensington. I was meant to stay in an apartment hotel, but the place I chose (from the Theatre Calgary list) turned out to be a disaster. A rude, bitchy, falsely advertised disaster. $1750 a month for a one-bedroom with no phone, no internet access, no maid service, broken sauna...... Culminated in a conversation that ended thus:

ME: And you know the carpet in there stinks.
HOTEL BROAD: Yeah, well, a wet carpet will do that.
ME: You know, maybe you shouldn't move somebody into a room with a wet carpet. That's just bad service.
HOTEL BITCH: It's not bad service - it's called same-day turnover.
ME: Haven't you ever thought you shouldn't have same-day turnover into a room with a smelly wet carpet?:
WHOREY AWFUL HOTEL WOMAN: Well, I guess we've learned.
ME (trying to be tough and play hardball when they wouldn't give me back my FIVE HUNDRED DOLLAR SECURITY DEPOSIT AFTER I HAD SPENT FIFTEEN MINUTES THERE): I'll tell you this - Theatre Calgary isn't going to be happy. They won't be sending any more business your way.
SKANKY HOTEL TROLL: I don't care about Theatre Calgary. I'll call them right now and tell them not to send me anybody else.
ME: Uh........

After much cajoling and badgering ("I know it's not you, but boy is your boss's policy unfair"...) they agreed to give me part of the deposit back ( I had to go back the next day to get it, and brought big tough Ashley Wright with me as goon backup.) I basically paid two hundred dollars to get out of there. Turns out Dennis Garnhum (TC Artistic Director) once had a strikingly similar experience there. I believe The Birkenshaw has since been removed from the housing list.

Anywaaay.....I ended up living with Tim and Alyson Culbert, this fantastic couple with whom I have become friends, and their three beautiful shy little girls, and their dog and cat and daycare. Became the sort of person who takes little kids to the Zoo on her day off, and thinks putting silly things on her head is the funniest joke in the world. Which it is, of course. I was also, though, the type of person who crawls in at two a.m., and spends mornings during tech week with a pillow on her head moaning "Shuuuuuut uuuuuup" as the dayhome kids arrive for a day of screaming and jumping. The Culbert kids (Sonya, Abigail, and Mikka - named after, no word of a lie, hockey fans, Miikka Kiprusoff, Calgary Flames goalie) were fantastic. At first they were very shy and suspicious of me, but I knew I was in when Sonya (the eldest and most painfully, sweetly shy) took me to her room to show me her glass collection. Her favourite is a unicorn. Glass Menagerie, anyone? Abigail is four, and wild, and Tim is sure it's only a matter of time 'til she is riding off with rough guys on motorcycles. I told him it was surely sweet shy Sonya who would go that way. He is terrified.

Day before opening I left my double life and moved into The Regency Suites, the place where every visiting artist in his right mind stays. Incidentally, Shanna Miller is here while she runs Ronnie Burkett's latest show at ATP; Chris Newton, David Boechler, Maria Vacratsis and Dixie Seatle the next TC show; Randy Hughson, Colombe Demers, probably Chris Abraham and Daniel Brooks, who are doing Insomnia ...... It's conveniently next to hooker Mac's, though I've only had one hooker encounter at the Regency, and that was with a very nice crack whore who thought her umbrella was attacking her. Unfortunately this did take place on the elevator, which is rather close quarters for an actor, a crack ho, a dealer or pimp or john or pal or whatever he was, and an active, flying umbrella. As the umbrella victim got off the elevator, she did warn me, while nearly poking me in the eye, "You gotta be careful.....the spokes'll getcha." One of the lonely maids seems to be slightly obsessed with me, but other from that the good ol' Reege is just peachy.

Another odd downtown Hot Dog Stand name: The Yodelling Sausage. I don't know about you, but if my sausage yodels at me, I'm suing. Or at least I want my money back.

Accidentally discovered Devonian Gardens the other day......This is a huge greenhouse that takes up the top floor of one of the malls downtown (TD Centre, I think). A great and relaxing way to spend a lunch hour, and a lovely surprise when you're not expecting it. Fish pools, fountains. Greeeeen-ness, which is fairly rare out here. Ahhhh. Of course I am spending far too much time at the mall, feeding my addictions (Shoppers Drug Mart, HMV, et cetera.)

Incidentally, don't you think when a skin care line is billed as "Non-Comedogenic", it should mean that it doesn't make you laugh? I want to put out a Comedogenic line. Active ingredient: Peyote.

I've had odd luck with objects here in Calgary. With interesting results. Allan Stichbury, our cavern-voiced designer (dogs can't hear him) refusing to carry home my pink gift bag that I left at the Auburn. Tough ol' John Wright happily wearing my lost feather boa back to the theatre after it dropped off me at the Opening Night party. Leaving a photo and resume that I promised to forward for someone in the cast at a corner store. Going back and getting it and then meeting the gang for dinner, after which I realize that I don't know where my bank card is (and that I have no cash). Returning home at three a.m. to a steamy tropical hotel room, made thus by a dishwasher that has been running for fifteen hours (and melting plastic things inside) since the cleaning staff turned it on that day. Dropping my cell phone (a replacement for the phone that I poured water all over in Toronto) in the street, where it gets run over by a (or several) cars. My subletter at home has broken my toaster, a wine glass and two tumblers. Somehow, he says my plants are still alive. Okay, most of those weren't technically due to bad luck - mostly they were me being stupid or forgetful. But the dishwasher? I mean, come on!

Two new glorious objects in my life, to make up for all the lost and broken ones. I gave in and bought a stupid cowgirl hat (orange straw, and I look fucking hot in it), and the most wonderful pair of cowboy boots I have ever seen, or touched, or smelled, in my life. Not that I go around smelling cowboy boots. Okay.......you got me!

Of course, I didn't buy the boots and hat until after I'd been horseback riding. Went to Rafter Six Ranch in Exshaw (Kananaskis country, halfway between here and Banff) with a few cast and crewmates for a trail ride in the woods. If Exshaw sounds familiar, it's where holocaust denier Ernst Zundel lived before he got deported. But this was not, I repeat NOT, a Nazi Ranch. My horse was named Himmler, but I think that's a very common name for mares. The ride was great, though it was a cold and misty day, so the backround view of mountains was not happenin'. Lovely though, and we hit the Banff hot springs after. Just like sitting in a big pool with a bunch of strangers. But it's a hot pool. Outdoors. With an amazing view. Pretty perfect after freezing cold horseriding.

So, yeah, I've become a social convenor in this cast. Yes, I, Lisa Norton, (happily) confessed LAZIEST PERSON YOU KNOW (c) have been arranging horseback rides, hiring the band for opening night, planning future potlucks..... Which tells you one of two things: A) Even the laziest woman you know is more industrious than your average nine males. Or, B) That I am super-industrious when I am out of town: witness all the soup kitchens I've started and all the Habitat for Humanity projects I've worked on. Okay, screw you all for knowing that I've only drunk booze and hung around flirting with strangers. But I did invent pomegranate raspberry pancakes....and how many of you can say that for yourselves? Hmmm? Thank you. Let's move on.

What else? Seen some plays, some movies (cultural highlight: Snakes on a Plane. Shudder), some old friends......Had an amazing time out with old George Brown pal Jacqueline Day the other night, who sends her love and hopes to see the gang at Christmas......breakfast tomorrow, I think, with Dean Carter, also from GB, who is now a teacher and married to Luka, with a seventeen-month old daughter, Eliza.

Guess I'm afraid of winter coming. And a long gig coming to an eventual end, leaving me high and dry again, waiting for the phone to ring. I had a dream the other night in which I found out that my friends Jeff and Rachel were storing nuts in their house. I broke in while they were out, searching frantically for their hoard so I could steal their nuts and hide them for myself.

Off on Sunday for my first trip ever to B.C., where I am lucky enough to be able to attend my pals Mike Wasko and Jenny Paterson's nuptials, and jet around Vancouver a little bit. And then back to Toronto to do Of Mice and Men at Canstage like crazy. Two or three nine-show weeks, designed to help Canstage out of financial trouble. If it works out, this will be the second time I've bailed out Canstage, since it's all the money I made them as a telemarketer back in the day that has kept them afloat until now. I was a disturbingly persuasive telemarketer, definitely a dubious distinction. Dread the day I turn my powers to real evil.

Hope you are grand and that I hear from you soon. Now for God's sake, put your pants back on.

Leese