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News: You were one of the founders of the
local theatre group, Fut in the Hat. What were your hopes and
dreams for the theatre company and have they been fulfilled?
Cunningham: We started out not so much
having hopes and dreams as just trying to do a couple of plays a
year. After we did a couple of plays we sat down and kind of
formalized ourselves and we looked at a mandate, and the mandate
was to do straight theatre, Canadian theatre for the most part, and
we have stuck to that. We hope to do two a year. We haven't always
done that because we just run out of people ... but yeah, I think
for the most part we've done well, given that we are so small. I
would like to see us grow and get more people involved, then that
way of course, we can do more things and we can expand our mandate
hopefully.
News: I know that recently, before the
Back to Beulah production, Mary Tulip was trying to cast Goodbye
Cruel World with an all-male cast. Has it been a problem casting
males in Medicine Hat?
Cunningham: Yeah, it's hard to find guys
of the right age and so twice now we've had to switch our shows.
That's how the Vagina Monologues happened, we just didn't get
enough men for the show we had planned to do in those two time
slots. So you go with what you got.
News: So it's not raining men in Medicine
Hat?
Cunningham: No (laughing).
News: Looking back over the years, what
were some of your favourite moments with Fut in the Hat?
Cunningham: Personally for myself, Marion
Bridge was a show I was very proud of. Mesa, Suburban Motel was one
of my all-time favourites ... that was George F. Walker and it's
not to everybody’s taste because he has a lot of language,
but it's excellent theatre, excellent characters, dramatic, funny
and combines everything I like about theatre. I really enjoyed
that. That's probably the highlight for me.
News: What were some of the worst moments
of Fut in the Hat?
Cunningham: Having to change shows
mid-stream, when you couldn't cast them. Personnel, just finding
people ... finding people is the hardest thing and the worst thing.
Finding people who will stay and fulfill their commitment —
that's one of the hardest things and consequently the worst
thing.
News: So where did your love of theatre
and the arts come from? Where and when did you start your
training?
Cunningham: I've always performed even as
a little girl. My dad used to make me get up and sing in front of
his friends and they'd give me money and I'd put it in my
piggybank ... and I thought, "hey this is a good deal." (laughs).
Then of course, I was always on stage in elementary school and in
high school and I thought, well maybe I should try this out and go
and learn something about it. So I went and got my degree in
theatre, with a specialization in directing and I knew I didn't
want to do it professionally, so I thought education would be a
good place to go with it ... and I've been teaching drama ever
since, until 2000 and of course you just don't give up, you keep
going, because it's a passion and you don't quit on your
passions.
News: Where did you get your degree
from?
Cunningham: University of Saskatchewan ...
I'm from Quill Lake (Sask.) originally. Really tiny town. Every
small school in every town have their little drama nights and
Christmas concerts and those kinds of things and I always had a
lead ... what can I say?
News: We know you were a drama teacher at
the Medicine Hat High School. High school drama classes are
notorious for their disorganization and chaos ... how did you deal
with that?
Cunningham: What disorganization and
chaos? I differ with you ... it may look like that, but there
isn't. There should be an underlying organizational structure that
comes from the teacher and the kids know what it is, and they know
what those limitations are ... no, that was never a problem.
You've got to give kids a certain amount of leeway so they can be
creative too. You can't be rigid. But I was pretty tough.
News: What advice do you give drama
teachers now about your experiences?
Cunningham: Now what I'm doing is I'm
mentoring drama teachers from the University of Lethbridge, to
practise teaching. One of the most important things that they can
do is to develop their discipline skills and how they want to
discipline and be consistent with it. As soon as you've done that,
students know that and they will come to respect your discipline
plans and it makes it easier for you to teach and get across to
them, provided you've got that understanding with them. These are
the rules, this is what I'll put up with ... so I think that's
key, a discipline plan. I haven't always been really good at it,
and sometimes I'm not always consistent, but that's part of being
human.
News: When your students went through
drama in high school and stuck with it, how does that make you
feel?
Cunningham: Great, great. Even if . . .
it's not that they've gone on professionally. Some of the kids
who've come back and are part of Fut in the Hat and it's their
passion now too . . . it's not maybe how they make their living,
but it's certainly how they spend their free time. They wanted to
stick with it. I've got some students who have gone on and are
working professionally, I've got a student who has his own
lighting company in Europe, a fellow who's building sets out in
Vancouver, and Jeremy Crittendon is out in Vancouver just opening a
new show last week. It's good to see, because you know you've
touched lives.
News: Did any of them stay in contact with
you?
Cunningham: Well I've been on Facebook
and I'm having so much fun. I've found a lot of them and I
haven't seen them for years and of course they've had time to
think about their years in school now. I used to tell them when
they'd come in Grade 9 and they'd be sitting on the floor and
I'd say, "This is going to be the class you are going to remember
for the rest of your life, long after you've forgotten your
quadratic equations and all of your chemistry formulas ... you are
going to remember your drama class." And that's what is coming
back to me on Facebook and it's very touching. Sometimes I cry
when I read it, sometimes I laugh, it's great. Some of them are
doing fun things and some of them are saying "Remember when . . ."
and I say, "Oh yeah." It's great.
News: Did you ever want to wring your MHHS
students' necks? Or was there a production that just didn't pan
out like you had hoped?
Cunningham: Of course I wanted to wring
their necks and they wanted to wring mine as well. It's human
nature. I think most, well, I have a thing about when I do a show,
whether I'm directing or whatever I'm doing ... I always look to
where I want it to be, and it never meets, because it can't meet
your highest expectations. And then I like to sit back afterwards
and think, 'What did we not do that we could have done better?' I
think it's important we do that, that we don't think we've
reached the pinnacle of success in everything we do, because we
haven't, nobody does. And so that's always been one of my key
things ... keep looking at your short-comings and try to improve on
them. I used to have a big sign at the back of the theatre that
said, "Love the art in yourself, not yourself in the art." That was
a (Konstantin) Stanislavsky quote and that was very important for
me for the kids to understand that. It's the work that was
important, not the fact they were doing the work. It wasn't about
them, it was about the play.
News: Did you ever wish you had moved to
New York, etc., to act or any other lofty dreams you've had?
Cunningham: No, it's not my personality.
I'm not the kind of person that thrusts themselves forward ... you
have to be able to push yourself forward in theatre. You have to
have a lot of chutzpah ... I think I've got a lot of chutzpah,
just not to push me forward. To push somebody else forward, yeah,
but not me. I'll stay in the background and give you a shove. I
guess that's why I went into education, it fit me really well.
News: If you could pick any
actor's/actress's/writer's life, living or dead, who would you
pick and why?
Cunningham: Right now I’ve very
taken with Paul Gross, I quite like the stuff he's doing (long
pause). He's moving more into producing, writing and directing ...
he's also got a good sense of humour. I also like the classic
American actors like Dustin Hoffman and Al Pacino, all those guys
who practise that naturalistic style of acting ... I like to watch
their minds work. One of the most interesting performances that
I've seen lately was Gordon Pinsent in Away From Her and he
didn't even get a nomination ... Julie Christie got all the
attention. I was watching that the other day and I thought, my
goodness, that man has said so much without opening his mouth. His
inner monologues was just brilliant.
News: What is your favourite play/piece
and how does that differ from when you first started?
Cunningham: When I first started, I was
into the American classics because that was in the early 60s and
some of the British modern classics. As the Canadian theatre scene
grew, my taste grew with it. It makes sense, because it's our
stories, it's about us. We are not Americans, we are not British,
and if we want to tell a story that we can tell well, we need to
tell our own stories that relate to us and the country and our
particular problems. Canadian theatre, I like to read it, I like to
do it, I like to go and see it. It's definitely my favourite
stuff.
News: What playwright's work do you think
is underrated?
Cunningham: All the Canadian playwrights.
Unless you are in theatre, you don't even know who these people
are. We don't honour our own artists in Canada as well as we
should. We are getting better over the years but it still has a
long, long way to go to have the appreciation we should have for
our people.
News: What would you tell upcoming artists
to keep their eyes on the prize, so to speak?
Cunningham: Be honest with yourself, you
have to know your limitations and work to overcome them. You can't
think you're wonderful and make it, you have to know where the
holes are, the flaws are, in order to fix them. You can never learn
too much. It doesn't necessarily have to be at the university
level, you can self-teach. Learning is crucial, practising your
craft is crucial. Humility.
News: What is your dream for the Medicine
Hat theatre scene?
Cunningham: I'd like to see a bigger
audience for non-musical productions. I'm sure it's out there.
That's one of Fut in the Hat's problems is we are not very good
salesmen. I think down the road, some day, there might be a market
for a small professional company here, some day ... provided we can
build up an audience for it. So yeah, a professional company
somewhere down the road. I'm sure it will be long after I'm
pushing up daisies. The appetite is here and there is a good base
for it here.
News: I hear you can do quite a good
impression of Principal Seymour Skinner's mom (Agnes Skinner) from
the Simpsons?
Cunningham: (Laughs loudly) I thought her
name was sphincter. Actually I didn't do her voice in the play
particularly, it was more of a facial expression. No, I wasn't a
fan of the Simpsons and David (Kelly) stuck me in there and I
couldn't remember her name, so I kept calling her Mrs. Sphincter,
Mrs. Sphincter and they'd all laugh. Yeah, it was a hoot. Not
something I ever thought I would do. |
