One Actor - Another Show

Tickets for the Saturday, March 11 Benefit performance by actor Paul Rapsey and fiddler Steve Klein are now available at the Bainton's Mad Hatter Bookstore in Annapolis Royal. Tickets are also available for purchase by e-transfer to PortRoyalLighthouseAssociation@gmail.com . Tickets are non-refundable and cost only $20.00 for an evening of live music and theatre. The show will be at the Lower Granville Hall on Granville Road in Port Royal. Doors open at 6:30 for the 7:00 show. Help save an historic lighthouse and have fun doing it.

Save the date! On Saturday, March 11, 2023, local Granville Ferry performers, Steve Klein (fiddler) and Paul Rapsey (actor) will be providing an evening of music and theatre at the Lower Granville Hall.  This will be a benefit for the Schafner Point Lighthouse restoration project (AKA the Port Royal Lighthouse). Help save this important local and historic landmark and have an enjoyable time doing it. Steve will play an assortment of Irish, Scottish and Cape Breton tunes, and Paul will perform his new monologue “ What’s in a Name ”. The 45 minute play is a whimsical but poignant bus trip down the character’s Memory Lane. Tickets ($20) will go on sale later in February.  Stay tuned for further announcements with more details, once tickets are available. (Painting by Kennedy.)

The film version of Paul Rapsey's " Desperately Seeking Samuel " script has recently been jury selected (December 2022) for the 2023   Butterfly International Film Festival   in Marseille, France. Although it does not mean the film will win any award, it is an honour for this "no budget" film to have been selected for the festival. The film was also selected (November 2022) for the  LGBTQ Unbordered Internation Film Festival  (January 2023) in the USA.  The stage version was performed by Paul this past summer and fall in Ontario and Nova Scotia.

Desperately Seeking Samuel , the film version, has been selected for the LGBTQ Unbordered International Film Festival in early 2023. The film version does not contain the epilogue, which was written for the stage version. I have come to realize that most independent film festivals are not geared to my type of film. So I am being more selective in which festivals I submit my films to even when the festival reaches out to me. The LGBTQ Unbordered International Film Festival is unique. It judges films on their own merit, not in comparison to other films.  As my films are made very simply and with no budget, I cannot compete with those that have even small budgets. As I have mentioned before, even a "No Budget" film category is for films that have a budget of under $25,000 USD. I am not planning on making my most recent play into a film. Films were something I ventured into more or less by accident when Covid-19 precluded live performances or the certainty of them going ahead.

I have just finished writing a new monologue titled " What's in a Name ". This one is shorter than my other recent monologues. It would likely run little more than 30 or possibly 40 minutes. After my last production, I have been feeling that 80 or 90 minute monologues are getting to be a bit much for me to both produce and to perform.  The play is about an older man who takes a bus trip to the east coast after his husband of 41 years has died. I am sure this one, like my others, will be amended over time as I start to learn it. That seems to be my process.  The first reader of the script called it a whimsical piece. I was pleased with that description. One problem with shorter monologues, however, is that they cannot make an evening's entertainment, at least one that will justify a worthwhile ticket price.  When I performed a 45 minute monologue in 2016 at the Astor Theatre in Liverpool, Nova Scotia, part of the evening was taken up with a musical performance by a loc...

Two aspiring actors, who attended a production of my most recent play, obviously enjoyed the performance. Shortly after they had left, they walked back in and confronted me. “How did I memorize a 90 minute script? What method did I have? How long did it take me?” “Was it easier because I’d written the script?” I was taken aback. I’d never really thought about this. After stumbling through an inadequate response, one of them said: “Oh, you just have a good memory.” Well, yes and no. Memory is a muscle of sorts. One has to exercise it regularly. In some respects, a person of my vintage is very fortunate. At public school and into high school, we had to memorize lengthy poems such as “The Cremation of Sam McGee”, the mathematical times-tables, scientific formulae, and numerous class presentations. But when one is presented with a lengthy script, there are some useful tools, even if one has not had this early experience. One has to break the script down into segments. One has to get ...

The sold out performance of Desperately Seeking Samuel was a success. The production raised $800 for the Champlain Elementary School breakfast and lunch programme. The cheque will be presented to the school at the end of month at the school assembly by request of the principal, Jan Ross.  Paul Rapsey performed both the role of Samuel in the main play and of Marianna in the Epilogue. The powerful Epilogue was not in the film version. Audience members who had already seen the film, repeatedly said how different the play was from the film version. It had more energy and less darkness. Paul says that is because an actor feeds off an audience. An actor cannot do that in a film. In his brief introduction, Paul said the play was not a linear one. He described it as like a slow paced road trip of discovery. It starts off in the early morning darkness. Sometimes the road is smooth and straight. Sometimes one is dodging potholes. There are curves and bends. Sometimes the scenery is stunning...