Toronto-based director and choreographer Dayna Tekatch’s adaptation of the play The Drowsy Chaperone is hitting the Canadian College of Performing Arts’ stage this month. And according to Tekatch, the original play had a very interesting journey in getting produced.
“This play began as a wedding gift from a group of friends who were broke in Toronto to their friends who were getting married,” says Tekatch. “Their friends got together to do a show in a bar to make their friends laugh and it was so successful that it become a Fringe show and then it was so successful that it got picked up by Mirvish, which is the largest commercial theatre producer in Canada, and then it went to Broadway, and then it went all over the world.”
Tekatch says that The Drowsy Chaperone pays tribute to the golden age of entertainment.
“It’s an homage to a form of musical theatre that harkens back to the 1920s and ’30s,” says Tekatch. “So it’s very much golden age in terms of style and glamour and ridiculous comedy. It’s a very vaudeville-influenced story.”
The Drowsy Chaperone deals with easily relatable themes such as the importance of connecting with your friends and family and the value of finding ways to make you happy when life gets too rough to handle.
“At the very centre of the whole story is a man who is sitting alone in his apartment,” says Tekatch, “and coming out of COVID, it makes sense to everybody, the idea of needing to connect with something that brings you joy. At the end of the day, that’s what our whole entire show is about: it’s finding something that brings you joy.”
The theme of the play, says Tekatch, is about “searching for light when you’re feeling blue” and trying to find something to make you laugh and feel happy when life is hard.
“We do that in the most old-school, 1920s vaudeville sort of way,” says Tekatch. “It’s comedy and tap dancing and juggling and really funny acts and a lot of ensemble work where everybody is working together to tell a story and the theme is to try and bring joy, full stop.”
Tekatch says that the legacy of the piece, as well as the opportunity to work in her hometown, drew her to the project.
“I grew up on the Gulf Islands and in Vancouver… This happens to be one of my favourite shows, it’s a piece of Canadian history,” she says. “It’s the second-most successful show that a Canadian has ever created. I’ve done it many times before; it’s been a really influential show in my life. Right away, the idea of getting to come home and work with a bunch of people who are really truly using every resource and every trick in their arsenal to create a work of art… It just all lined up. I have a lot of family out in BC as well. So it’s just an opportunity for me to be creating in the place where I grew up.”
The biggest challenge with this play, says Tekatch, came with making the show’s small ensemble look larger than life.
“What’s incredibly challenging for the actors is that we have an ensemble of 10, but one of them has to be the stage manger for the entire production” she says. “There are only nine actors on stage at any given time and the show should have more like 16. Many of the actors are cast in multiple roles with not a lot of time because the show is not built that way. They have to transition from one character to another in, most of the time, less than 20 seconds. So it’s a huge challenge—how do I make nine people look like 16? How do we fill up all the edges of this and the detail in the work when we have only a few people doing that? So that’s the biggest challenge, but, luckily, I have a group of people who are totally game to try, so we’re in good shape.”
The Drowsy Chaperone
Various times and dates,
Friday, February 9 to Saturday, February 17
$30 (under 30)/$35 (adult),
Canadian College of Performing Arts
ccpacanada.com