{"id":9189,"date":"2014-12-03T17:24:11","date_gmt":"2014-12-03T22:24:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=9189"},"modified":"2014-12-17T15:57:30","modified_gmt":"2014-12-17T20:57:30","slug":"veteran-director-focuses-on-the-characters-in-theatre-auroras-next-to-normal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/veteran-director-focuses-on-the-characters-in-theatre-auroras-next-to-normal\/","title":{"rendered":"Veteran director focuses on the characters in Theatre Aurora\u2019s \u201cNext to Normal\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n

Long-time theatre director Michael Jones has always had a fascination with musical theatre, but that fascination never delved too deeply in what he describes as \u201cRodgers and Hammerstein we\u2019re-so-happy-all-the-time-that-we-break-into-song\u201d shows.<\/p>\n

There will be none of that when Theatre Aurora opens their latest production, Next to Normal, this week.<\/p>\n

Next to Normal, a Tony-winning musical by Brian Yorkey and Tom Kitt, centres on Diana, a mother dealing with a recent diagnosis of bipolar disorder, and how her family reacts to her struggle.<\/p>\n

While Mr. Jones is making his Theatre Aurora debut, he is a veteran of many productions and saw the opportunity to direct Next to Normal as a particular challenge.<\/p>\n

Having seen the original production on Broadway, Mr. Jones says he was struck by the complexity of the piece and what could and could not be done with it.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is a really unusual musical,\u201d he explains. \u201cIt is certainly not light in its subject matter, but I have always been interested in how contemporary musicals, in particular, can take that art form and turn it into something that tells a real story, a dramatic story with integrity, and that tells a story about the relationships between people. <\/p>\n

\u201cBoth times I saw it, I came out with a feeling something was missing in that production. It was a well-written piece, and the performances were extraordinary in this special piece of theatre, but it didn\u2019t quite speak to me in the way I wanted it to. I always thought it was a show I would have liked to do differently.\u201d<\/p>\n

His approach, he says, is to focus on characters. Whereas big Broadway productions often focus on spectacle, relationships between characters can often get lost in a big production or a \u201cgreat big cavernous set.\u201d In that environment, the production became the story of a woman rather a story about a family.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs spectacular as Alice Ripley was in that production, it became about her and I was just as interested in the husband, I was just as interested in the son and daughter, and I wanted to see more about how those people interacted with each other and the impact that what this one person is going through has on those relationships. If those people had the ability to do it in a smaller scale, you would see and understand those relationships more.\u201d<\/p>\n

A prime example of this, he says, is a recent production of Next to Normal at the Stratford Festival, which was more of a concert with little more than actors standing behind music stands and delivering the message. Although he did not have a chance to see it first hand, friends told him it was the best production they had seen of the show. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you took away all the trappings, that\u2019s what was left: the relationships.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI always hope the audience is intrigued by, understands, and is interested in the story that we tell. I believe first and foremost that theatre is a storytelling medium, but I also hope an audience gets a sense of a collective experience. It is a sense of sharing something with the people on stage, the people who are watching something around them, that it is a shared experience.<\/p>\n

\u201cTypically on the night a show opens I speak to the cast about the fact that the whole process to that point has been to help share with each other and discover things together, and the point about performing a show is about sharing those same things with a wider audience now. I hope the audience feels that they were engaged in that type of sharing.\u201d<\/p>\n

To share this experience, Theatre Aurora\u2019s production of Next To Normal opens this Thursday, December 4, at 8 p.m. at Henderson Drive\u2019s Factory Theatre. It runs on select dates through Saturday, December 13. For tickets, and further information call 905-727-3669 or visit www.theatreaurora.com.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Long-time theatre director Michael Jones has always had a fascination with musical theatre, but that fascination never delved too deeply in what he describes as \u201cRodgers and Hammerstein we\u2019re-so-happy-all-the-time-that-we-break-into-song\u201d shows.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":9163,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archive"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-2od","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-09-07 02:42:51","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/2014-12-04-08.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9189"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9189\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}