BB Spotlight - Ellen Chorley
BB Spotlights feature Edmonton individuals that intrigue, inspire, and interest us and will be published once a month.
Ellen Chorley is a wonderful person. We just wanted to say that before we started reciting off her long list of accomplishments, skills, and talents. Although these things are important, we find Ellen’s magnetic appeal to go far beyond what she does (and does very well) to a realization that none of this would matter as much if she wasn’t so kind, humble, friendly, and possessed the down-to-earth-might-just-be-your-best-friend kind of quality she does.
Ellen is a local Edmonton playwright, producer, performer, and teacher, and was listed in Avenue Magazine’s Top 40 Under 40 in 2013. She is Artistic Associate for Northern Light Theatre, Artistic Producer of her very own children’s theatre company, Promise Productions, Co-Artistic Director of Send in the Girls Burlesque Theatre Company, is a commissioned playwright for theatre companies in Edmonton and Calgary, curates the high school program at NextFest, and teaches kid's drama programs all over the city. Oh, and of course performs occasionally in her own productions but has found her true passion behind-the-scenes. Recognizable titles she has written are Tudor Queens: A Burlesque, A Brontë Burlesque, The Fairy Catcher’s Companion, Princess Confidential, Murielle (Sterling Award winner for Outstanding Independent Production and Outstanding TYA Production), and Never, Never, which premiered at the Found Festival last summer in which the audience was immersed in the world of Peter Pan as they ran around the River Valley.
Even with all this on her plate, Ellen took the time to sit with us at The Tea Girl to discuss her upcoming show, her love of all things theatre, her inspirations, and her plans for the future. She also took us to one of her favorite places in the city that also makes an appearance in her play, Birdie on the Wrong Bus, which opens on January 20th at C103. Visit http://www.tixonthesquare.ca/event/run/detail/1055/ for tickets and more information!
What is your education background?
I went to Grant MacEwan for Theatre Arts and I did a lot of drama and acting classes all through junior high and high school. I went to the Foote Theatre School and Stage Polaris before that, which is now gone. I teacher assisted when I was in high school. That’s where I learned how to do it and then I just tried taking it on, so I don’t really have a ton of education. I’m a self taught kind of person.
So your writing skills came more from experience?
Foote Theatre School was offering an intensive playwriting program for teenagers when I was in high school called Teens at the Turn. It was run by Vern Thiessen who is now the Workshop West Artistic Director and is a great playwright and dramaturge. I did the intensive for the first 3 years of the program and that was really what taught me all the basics of being a playwright, really molded me into the writer I am today I think.
Did you know you liked to write before that program?
Yeah, I did. I remember there was this career day in grade 6, and it wasn’t like careers came in, it was that you got to dress up as the career you wanted to have. I don’t know who came up with that idea but I came as a writer on Broadway, because at the time I thought that you could just live on the Broadway street in apartments. So I thought, I’ll be a writer during the day and then I’ll go downstairs at night and I’ll dance in a show. I had a lot of dance training, especially in elementary school, and so that’s what I wanted to be: a writer on Broadway.
Not a writer for Broadway…
No! Just like living on Broadway writing novels…
And dancing by night…
Yeah, so I wore a blazer with pencils in the pocket. I had to explain to everybody! I’m not just a writer, I’m a writer on Broadway. So I guess it’s kind of funny that I sort of knew what I wanted to do when I was younger but l didn’t know how to say it. I didn’t know what the word playwright was really. I started writing plays when I was 15 and I was like, this is my jam, I love this.
And you grew up here?
Yes, I’m an Edmonton girl.
We know you mainly as doing burlesque shows and children’s shows, do you have things in between?
I guess Edmonton really knows me as those two separate things. I worked for a theatre company in Calgary in my early 20s called Mob Hit Productions, as their playwright in residence. I wrote a number of shows for them when I was there between 2006 and 2010. When I came back to Edmonton, I wrote a lot of children’s theatre and I get commissioned to write children’s theatre quite often. So I think Edmonton knows me as a children’s theatre writer and also this burlesque thing which a lot of people don’t understand. They wonder why I’m doing both ends of the spectrum, but I guess I just like storytelling and so I like different ways of trying to do that. I also think that burlesque is very performative. It’s very much about the interaction with the audience, which I think is also really important in children’s theatre. There’s also a sort of clown element to burlesque, so there is that commonality that supports both of them.
What is your favorite book?
I collect copies of Wuthering Heights. I have about 21 copies now. It’s my favorite book. Every time I find one in a second hand shop, I’ll buy it.
What draws you to certain things to write about?
Someone once asked me a while ago what I write about and I think I ultimately write about love because I think it’s quite universal and I think as I get older, love gets more and more complicated. So, I’m often drawn to stories about love and unconventional love. I like stories that have whimsy and magic in them and that kind of stuff. That’s what really draws me to doing children’s theatre. I’m a pretty big history nerd, all the burlesque shows so far have been based on historical events and people. Often my children’s work is fairy tale based or has a magical element to it.
You also started the children’s theatre festival, Snow Globe, and have done it for the past 3 years. It was normally in December, and you’ve decided to move it to January.
Snow Globe took a bit of a hiatus this year. We’re just doing Birdie on the Wrong Bus, and then hopefully will bring Snow Globe back again next year but moving it to January.
Why did you start the festival?
I wanted something that was affordable for kids and for families during Christmas. It sort of felt like if you wanted to see The Nutcracker or The Singing Christmas Tree, you’d have to spend around $80 a ticket. I really wanted something that was children’s theatre but not super holiday based, that could be slightly winter based but not all Christmas Christmas Christmas or Holiday Holiday Holiday. I also wanted to start producing work that I hadn’t written. Before Snow Globe, it had just been all children’s plays that I had written so I wanted the challenge of that. I also wanted the challenge of producing more than one thing at once. That was important to me. I wanted to create a whole evening of different types of children’s theatre that people could come see and try to employ as many emerging artists as I could at the same time. I also originally tried to do it at the Avenue Theatre on 118th because I wanted to try to do something for that community, but I found that it was easier to get the support when I took it to Old Strathcona. So after the first year, we took it to C103 and it’s been there ever since. But I did want it to be a community based sort of thing.
So this year, you’re producing Birdie on the Wrong Bus with your company, Promise Productions. When can people check it out?
Birdie will be playing at C103. It opens on January 20th and it runs until the 24th. There’s a 7:30pm performance every night and a 2pm matinee on Saturday, the 24th.
This is the second time we have produced the show. The first time was at the Snow Globe Festival in 2012. It’s a show that adults are really on board with because it has a lot of adult sense of humor in it and it’s about Edmonton, so it’s a very personal show for me. It’s about all the secret places that I love in Edmonton and the traffic circle we’re going to is actually in the play. In the summertime, it’s beautiful because there’s a fountain in the middle and there are big, beautiful houses all around. I just think that it’s so magical. Another favorite book of mine is The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and there is something sort of Narnia about that place. It feels like a bit of a magic world in the middle of the city. It’s really green and lush in the summertime and even in the fall, it’s just so peaceful for being a block off of a main thoroughfare.
Can you give us a synopsis of Birdie on the Wrong Bus?
A little girl named Birdie is a perfectionist, A type personality, and she gets 52% on her ‘Why I Love Edmonton’ assignment because she just did a history report of Edmonton, she didn’t put her opinion of Edmonton in it. She’s so upset that she gets in a fight with her older sister and gets on the wrong bus that takes her on a tour all over Edmonton. She meets all these people throughout and she asks them what their favorite part of Edmonton is. One of the people she meets is this woman named Ruth, who says her favorite part is this traffic circle, it’s where her husband proposed to her. She says, ‘Sometimes you don’t even know where special places are for people until you look for them.’
Who is involved?
I am the playwright, producer, and costume designer. Andrew Ritchie is directing it. Mari Chartier plays Birdie, Ben Stevens plays all the males, from a 7 year old boy to a 50 year old bus driver, and Lana Michelle Hughes plays all the females, from a 9 year old girl all the way up to an 89 year old woman. They play a whole bunch of different characters and they’re constantly changing costumes and coming on and off the bus. I’m really excited to keep working on it. We really loved doing it back in 2012. It was a really great group of people to work together with, so I think we’re just really excited to get back to it.
How can people find out more information and get tickets?
They can get tickets at tixonthesquare.ca! Also if children’s theatre isn’t your jam, we’re doing a cool fundraiser on January 23rd, at C103, called Back of the Bus: An Adult Fundraiser for Children’s Theatre. I’m getting a whole bunch of my artist friends together for a big variety show of children’s themed adult stuff. Success 5000 is coming and they wrote a song called Swearing Through the Alphabet. It’s going to be a very Avenue Q, Robot Chicken, sort of a night. There’s a children’s rap! If you appreciate and want to support children’s theatre but don’t really like it, come have fun with us at the Fundraiser! Tickets are $15. Adults only. Cash only at the door.
Do you have upcoming plans for the year that you can share with us?
This is actually a really quiet year for me. It’s a big year for writing for me. I just got commissioned by Evergreen Theatre in Calgary to write them a new show, this will be my third show for them. They do a science based musical theatre show that travels to elementary schools. I’ve really had a great time writing for Evergreen Theatre. They really put a lot of energy and support into the development of the show which is so cool. I’m also writing Princess Confidential 2, which will be at Fringe this year, and I can just say that Send in the Girls Burlesque have a really big project coming up for the 2015/16 season, but I can’t say any more than that. I’m writing the first draft of that right now.
Do you have long term goals for yourself when you look far into the future?
I think I would just like to sustain an artistic career. It’s hard! It’s hard to do and it’s hard to pay the bills. I can’t believe how hard it is to pay the bills with an artistic career. I’d like for Promise Productions to become my main job and be able to make it into a job that pays me a salary. I’d like to have office space for that and to be able to do a touring show every year, have a full season of work. If I had a big lofty goal, I’d love to have the Edmonton version of Carousel Theatre in Vancouver. They have their own space, they have a big theatre, and they do a season of plays, a summer camp, and have rehearsal studios that they can rent out. Everyone wishes they could have a theatre with rehearsal space. I wish something would just pop up that I could have for free, but that’s obviously not going to happen!
In the small amount of spare time you have, is there something that is the farthest away from theatre that you love to do?
I’m a big crime nut. I binge crime shows. Broadchurch, Scott and Bailey, the British do detective shows the best. I love them. I can watch anything crime. Someone said to me once, you have to have 10 things that you do that isn’t involved with work. That’s a hard list for me to make! When I hang out with my friends, we love to go out to eat. I like to shop and go to antique stores. Even just going to the antique mall and walking around is the best fuel for imagination. What is the story with this typewriter? What is the story with this? What even is this? Who has this? What is this for?
What do you like about Edmonton most?
I love Edmonton, I really do and I’ve really noticed that in the past couple of years. I think that the people in Edmonton are really cool people. I feel like people in Edmonton that I meet are really into finding their passion. Whether it’s The Oilers, or making something, or going to the Farmer’s Market, or whatever it is, they’re really big fans of finding it and having a fervor of that passion. They like their things and like to spread it. I also find that especially in the artistic community, there’s a real sort of ‘I see what you’re doing, I like what you’re doing and how can I help you do what you do?’ I think that’s really cool.
I was walking around Old Strathcona and the River Valley working on Never, Never, and I kept seeing these signs for ‘found bike’. Someone had found a bike and was trying to give it back to rightful person. To me, that is so Edmonton. There are so many lost bikes, or lost dogs, but I feel like only in Edmonton would someone try to get the bike back to the rightful owner. It made me so happy. This is Edmonton to me: found bike posters. I hope the person found their bike.
