{"id":9463,"date":"2015-01-07T22:15:55","date_gmt":"2015-01-08T03:15:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=9463"},"modified":"2015-01-28T18:11:10","modified_gmt":"2015-01-28T23:11:10","slug":"follies-is-100th-time-in-the-director-chair-for-auroras-sarah-langford","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/follies-is-100th-time-in-the-director-chair-for-auroras-sarah-langford\/","title":{"rendered":"Follies is 100th time in the director chair for Aurora\u2019s Sarah Langford"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Sally Durant Plummer is not necessarily a woman who lives in the present. A theatrical woman both by nature and career, she and her former cohorts have gathered to wax sentimental about making their mark in a venerable old theatre that is soon fated to meet a wrecking ball.<\/p>\n

In many ways, it is the end of a theatrical journey, but for Sarah Langford, who is slated to bring Sally to life this month in Wavestage Theatre\u2019s production of \u201cFollies\u201d, it marks a new step in the upward trajectory of the Aurora-based group, as well as a personal milestone. <\/p>\n

Adding to the challenge of bringing Sally to life, is Ms. Langford\u2019s doing so while seated in the director\u2019s chair for the entire production. This is one of the final productions in Wavestage\u2019s 20th season and, as fate would have it, the 100th show she has produced for the group she founded.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is kind of reflecting on a lifetime\u2019s body of work and seeing all these different performers that have come and gone on your stage, where they have ended up and what they are doing,\u201d says Ms. Langford. \u201cFollies is a reflection of the past and it just fit so perfectly in my life as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

This idea of reflection is one that can be applied to just about every character in Follies, but Sally Durant Plummer is a person all her own. According to Ms. Langford, she \u201censnares people\u201d with her nostalgic view of the world, all the while maintaining a fragility that is common in everyone. <\/p>\n

\u201cShe just gets to play it on the outside and people get to see that,\u201d says Sarah. \u201cIt almost like a stark warning against the distorting dangers of nostalgia. In a brief, fleeting moment she thinks her dreams come true but they vanish through the cracks of her memories.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlthough she is delusional in her belief that her husband really looks at her and only her, as if she has never changed, it is a wonderful moment for people to hope and dream that the partner they have chosen will always look at you as if you were forever the princess and the prize. She loves someone so deeply and believes they love her, but she wonders if it is real \u2013 and I wonder how many people just have those moments where they just want to believe in something so badly they lose their sense of reality. I think it is more common than not, but it is neat to play both sides of that in one character.\u201d<\/p>\n

These character studies through song is key to Ms. Langford\u2019s \u2013 and Wavestage\u2019s \u2013 attraction to the works of Stephen Sondheim. It is the latest in a long line of Sondheim works the group has tackled over the last two decades and two more \u2013 Into the Woods and Gypsy \u2013 are in store for their 21st season.<\/p>\n

Although Ms. Langford says she once believed Rodgers and Hammerstein to be the epitome of musical theatre, Sondheim has since replaced them in her affections due to the \u201cgenius\u201d of his music. <\/p>\n

\u201cYou can find a little bit of Mozart, a little bit of this and a little bit of that, but here it is Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Rodgers and Hammerstein and all these fabulous composers, and you can feel the history of a great composition and it is a gift to sing,\u201d she says. \u201cThere are so many things that are written out there that are bland to the voice and Sondheim just understands human voices so well that with the rises and falls and the harmonies he has chosen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some theatrical companies shy away from tackling the works of Sondheim, she says, due to the complexity of the songs, but with the talent Wavestage has on hand for the upcoming production, there should be no problem. On the flipside, the idea of tackling Sondheim draws out a lot of talent to audition to take on the challenge, a particular bonus for this director.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think in life there are not a lot of opportunities to make changes in the world,\u201d says Ms. Langford of the evolution of Wavestage. \u201cWhen you do good, maybe you donate to charity, do a drive, or change something that is easily tangible, but theatre changes emotion; it changes the audience for a fleeting moment or maybe for longer. You don\u2019t know the tiny little drop you give as a performer can become an epic tidal wave in somebody else\u2019s life. <\/p>\n

\u201cBeing in this chair in the 100th production for the 20th season, it has been a gift to be able to make a little wave in somebody else\u2019s life, and just make a difference from a performer\u2019s side or the audience\u2019s perspective.\u201d<\/p>\n

Follies runs at Newmarket Theatre from January 30 \u2013 February 1. For more information, visit wavestagetheatre.com.<\/p>\n

\u201cI really think in York Region there won\u2019t be anything like this for quite a while and it would be a shame to miss this,\u201d she concludes. \u201cIt is the middle of winter, nothing else is going on. Take the opportunity to get out of the snow and slime and come into a beautifully changing, epic night.\u201d<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sally Durant Plummer is not necessarily a woman who lives in the present. A theatrical woman both by nature and career, she and her former cohorts have gathered to wax sentimental about making their mark in a venerable old theatre that is soon fated to meet a wrecking ball.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":9415,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_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}},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archive"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/2015-01-08-01.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-2sD","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-09 23:11:20","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9463","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=9463"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9463\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}