{"id":12257,"date":"2016-08-02T09:00:32","date_gmt":"2016-08-02T16:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=12257"},"modified":"2016-08-09T09:26:46","modified_gmt":"2016-08-09T16:26:46","slug":"canadian-actressplaywright-kirsten-van-ritzen-looks-back-on-all-her-day-jobs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2016\/08\/02\/canadian-actressplaywright-kirsten-van-ritzen-looks-back-on-all-her-day-jobs\/","title":{"rendered":"Canadian actress\/playwright Kirsten Van Ritzen looks back on all her day jobs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kirsten Van Ritzen has had no shortage of dead-end and offbeat jobs. Her play All My Day Jobs<\/em> details, with a comedic twist, the experience of what it\u2019s like to work the jobs that no one wants to.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt least the first seven jobs in my play, I did while I was a student,\u201d says Van Ritzen, who studied at the University of Winnipeg. \u201cAs an actor you always have that down time between jobs. So I got very good at finding little jobs that could fit in between.\u201d<\/p>\n

Van Ritzen is careful to point out that although the play is based on what she has done in life, it is not autobiographical.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t talk about my acting career,\u201d she says. \u201cI leave all of that out and I just kind of let the jobs tell the story.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"All<\/a>
All My Day Jobs<\/em> plays for one night only in Victoria (photo provided).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Van Ritzen says she did that so the play would be relatable to people, regardless of if they\u2019ve spent time as a waitress, or worked in an office, or held any number of other jobs detailed in the play.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve had all the jobs,\u201d says Van Ritzen, who says the question is, \u201cHow do I condense a two-year job into one little, funny, hopefully amusing scene?\u201d<\/p>\n

And acting itself is also a job with struggles: part of being an actor or actress in Canada, says Van Ritzen, is that some years are going to be less lucrative than others.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn any economy, you\u2019re lucky to be employed,\u201d she says. \u201cBut even if you have a full-time job that you love, there are probably going to be moments where you feel under-appreciated or over-worked, or you just want to tell your boss to get lost.\u201d<\/p>\n

Van Ritzen says that when the play debuted in 2008 she was shocked to see how much the audience latched on to the day-to-day realities contained in the stories.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople in the audience would come up to me afterwards,\u201d she says. \u201cThey wanted to share their horrible jobs with me. So I thought \u2018Okay, that\u2019s really great.\u2019 I kind of had support.\u201d<\/p>\n

Van Ritzen also put on the play in Victoria in 2011, but \u201cdidn\u2019t get any attention for it at all,\u201d because of a last-minute venue change. Since then, All My Day Jobs<\/em> was selected to be in One for the Road: New Plays for One Actor<\/em>, a book of one-person plays; the play was also produced by another company.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was really exciting for me as a writer,\u201d says Van Ritzen, \u201cbecause being published and being produced elsewhere, they weren\u2019t basing it on having seen my performance. They were basing it on the actual words on the page.\u201d<\/p>\n

Van Ritzen says the most difficult part of her job is knowing where the writer in her ends and where the actress begins.<\/p>\n

\u2018When I first wrote it in 2008, I would have to say, \u2018Okay, I\u2019m done with the writing. I\u2019m not going to re-write it. I\u2019m going to learn it word for word as an actor would learn any script and give that performance to an audience without changing it all the time. I just have to fire the writer,\u2019\u201d she says with a laugh.<\/p>\n

And good news for Camosun students: the play has a special Camosun discount of two tickets for $15.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat will leave you beer money,\u201d she says. \u201cWe\u2019ve got the bar open for the show.\u201d<\/p>\n

All My Day Jobs
\n<\/em>Victoria Event Centre, 1415 Broad Street
\n8pm August 9
\n$15; Camosun student discount of two tickets for $15 (bring student ID)
\nbroadtheatrics.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kirsten Van Ritzen has had no shortage of dead-end and offbeat jobs. Her play All My Day Jobs details, with a comedic twist, the experience of what it\u2019s like to work the jobs that no one wants to. \u201cAt least the first seven jobs in my play, I did while I was a student,\u201d says […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12258,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts","category-webexclusive"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12257"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12257\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12263,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12257\/revisions\/12263"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12258"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}