Casting About - Kitchener

Transcription

Casting About - Kitchener
/ CASTING ABOUT
CASTING
ABOUT
faceLIFT Series:Casting About…
John Greyson, Helen Lee, Guy Maddin, Gail Singer
January 28 - March 20, 2005
Organized by the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery
CASTING
/ CASTING ABOUT / 1
ABOUT
As part of the exhibition series faceLIFT ,
has commissioned 4 outstanding Canadian filmmakers to cast
the faces of Kitchener-Waterloo area residents in an imaginary film based on Oscar Wilde's "The Picture of
Dorian Gray". Photographed by Kitchener artist Andrew Wright, over one hundred forty faces were compiled to
create a casting pool, which was sent by CD to filmmakers John Greyson, Helen Lee, Guy Maddin and Gail Singer.
From this inventory of faces these four developed their own individual cast of characters to fit their conception
of the story. The exhibition includes the total inventory of faces, the filmmakers' casting decisions, character
descriptions and their highly eccentric rewrite of the classic nineteenth century novel that utilizes a Faustian motif
and portrait conceit to tell the story of human willingness to sell one’s soul for worldly vanity. This unconventional
component of the faceLIFT Series complements the other portrait exhibitions and calls upon these terrific imaginative talents and their artist /filmmaking practice to introduce us to their peculiar narration on the face.
"All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface
do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. It is the
spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors."
From Oscar Wilde's Preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray
Photo credits for photographs used in ‘Casting About’:
Oscar Wilde, H. Montgomery Hyde, first published by Eyre Methuen Ltd.,
London, 1976 Copyright 1975 by Harford Productions Ltd., Magnum Paper Back Edition
first 1977
Oscar Wilde, Richard Ellmann, first published by Hamish Hamilton 1987
Penguin Books 1988, Copyright Estate of Richard Ellmann
Filmmakers:
Greyson, Lee
Maddin, Singer
CASTING
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Summary
/ CASTING ABOUT / 2
ABOUT
The Picture of Dorian Gray was arch-aesthete
Oscar Wilde’s only novel, although he wrote a
number of poems and children’s stories before
it was published in 1890 in Lippincott’s Magazine.
Like much of his work and life, the Gothic melodrama of Dorian Gray was controversial. In his
preface to the book, Wilde famously wrote "There
is no such thing as a moral or immoral book.
Books are well written or badly written. That is
all."
The novel is a brilliant portrait of vanity and
depravity tinged with sadness. The title is
derived from a splendid work painted by Basil
Hallward of the orphaned boy Dorian Gray
who is heir to a great fortune. Lord Henry and
Hallward discuss the boy and the remarkable
painting. Dorian enters and declares that he
would give his soul if he could remain young
and the painting instead to grow old. As the
story progresses, Dorian leaves his fiancée,
the actress Sibyl Vane, because of a single bad
performance he claims has ‘killed’ his love.
As a result Sybil takes her own life; however,
Dorian is unaffected. So begins the tale of the
boy’s descent into London’s low society.
Dorian’s decline is provoked by two things:
the book Lord Henry sends him, which seems
to predict his own life in dissecting every virtue
and every sin from the past; and secondly the
picture of himself that grows steadily older and
more vicious looking compared to his own
appearance, which remains youthful. Fanatical
about the portrait, he is driven to murder and
deception. As others are drawn into this web
of evil, Dorian himself longs to return to
innocence, but his method is horrific and tragic.
Credit :The Picture of Dorian Gray: Summary: http://www.bibliomania.com
Photo credits for photographs used in ‘Casting About’:
Oscar Wilde, H. Montgomery Hyde, first published by Eyre Methuen Ltd.,
London, 1976 Copyright 1975 by Harford Productions Ltd., Magnum Paper Back
Edition first 1977
Oscar Wilde, Richard Ellmann, first published by Hamish Hamilton 1987
Penguin Books 1988, Copyright Estate of Richard Ellmann
/ CASTING ABOUT / 3
CASTING
About Casting
Casting About
by Robert Enright
ABOUT
aestheticism – sets his story on a Channel Island where a
lighthouse panopticon, experiments on orphans, and
motherly cannibalism don’t seem so out of the ordinary.
It’s as if Dorian Gray’s own artistic DNA got mixed in with
the sad tale of Tithonus and the nasty science from “The
Island of Dr. Moreau ”.
Each filmmaker accepts Wilde’s conviction in the Preface
to the novel that “the artist can express everything”. These
additions, transformations and violations are in keeping
Portrait of Robert Enright by Allan Harding MacKay
There is something appropriate in KWIAG’s invitation to
four prominent Canadian filmmakers to pick their casts
from citizens who offered themselves up as actors in films
that would never get made. As Helen Lee observes in her
“Casting Notes”, it’s “an exercise in vanity..., a metonym
for the whole Dorian Gray enterprise.” It is also an exercise in freedom, to the extent that the would-be actors will
never be actors (at least not in this film) and thus are
spared the hard work and humiliations that might ensue,
while the filmmakers are allowed a considerable degree of
flexibility, not only in who they choose to cast, but in how
they choose to tell the story.
with his own attitude towards the characters he wrote into
his most popular prose composition. In a letter to a friend,
Wilde addressed the connections between his creations
and his autobiographical associations: “Basil Hallward is
what I think I am; Lord Henry what the world thinks me;
Dorian what I would like to be...”, and then he adds, as if
parenthetically, “in other ages, perhaps”. What Lee,
Greyson, Singer and Maddin have done through the casting of their utopian films, is to add those “other ages.”
They are imagining, in their directorial capacities, The
Pictures of Dorian Gray; every one is different and, on the
evidence of the conjuring power of their words, not one of
them is ugly.
To measure the degree of these freedoms, you need only
Did I mention pictures that would never get made? It turns
look at questions of number, gender and narrative tech-
out that Guy Maddin has a film in the attic of his future. In
nique. Gail Singer diarizes her refusal to choose (she lists
January, 2005 he will go to Seattle to shoot a feature-
between three and six choices for the characters in a
length film that is an extension of the treatment he devel-
telling of Wilde’s tale that could combine paint and DNA in
oped for Casting About. For him, it’s now a matter of going
a “kind of polemic on plastic surgery”); John Greyson slips
to the lighthouse. The good citizens of Kitchener-Waterloo
his operatic feature-film back and forth between Oscar’s
and environs may be in wild straits after all.
England and Berlin, Ontario (and is there a more delicious
Wildean touch than having Basil Hallward paint a naked,
Robert Enright is the Editor-at-Large for Border Crossings
Mennonite farm boy?); Helen Lee changes the gender of
magazine and the University Research Professor of Art
two of the book’s major characters; and Guy Maddin –
Criticism in the Department of Fine Art and Music at the
who already knows something about filmy.
University of Guelph.
/ CASTING ABOUT / 4
THE
FILMMAKERS
CASTING
ABOUT
FOR
John Greyson
John Greyson is a Toronto awardwinning filmmaker and videoartist.
Since 1984, his experimental tapes,
video installations and features have
boldly explored socially relevant
themes, especially those related to
queer theory, gay rights and AIDS
activism. Titles include "Urinal" (1989),
"Zero Patience" (1993), "Lilies" (1996),
"Un©ut" (1997), and "Fig Trees"(2004).
His work has been awarded Genie,
Gemini and Best Film Awards at
festivals in Berlin, Montreal, CapeTown,
San Francisco and Toronto, as well as
receiving the Arts Toronto Film & Video
Award for 2000.
Helen Lee
Helen Lee is a Toronto-based filmmaker
whose films include "The Art of Woo",
"Subrosa", "Prey”,"My Niagara" and
"Sally's Beauty Spot." She attended the
University of Western Ontario and is a
graduate of the University of Toronto,
New York University, Whitney Independent Study Program, and the Canadian
Film Centre. Lee received a Chalmers
Award for a series of videotapes about
Korea, to be completed this fall. She
is currently writing a road movie entitled
"Ventura", and is also working on an
adaptation of Kerri Sakamoto's awardwinning novel, "The Electrical Field",
with the author.
Guy Maddin
Guy Maddin has been described as "the Canadian David Lynch" for
his surreal, visceral films. His unique vision has gained both critical
admiration and an impressive cult following for his many shorts and
feature-length films including "The Saddest Music in the World" (2003),
featured in Cannes and released in the Canadian and U.S. theatres,
"Dracula, Tales From A Virgin's Diary" (2002) and "Tales From the
Gimli Hospital" (1988).
Gail Singer
Gail Singer has produced, directed and written nearly two dozen films of various genres,
feature length fiction and documentary, television and IMAX, on topics ranging from comedy
to social issues, music and art. She has directed and lectured in Japan, Russia, Thailand,
South Africa, Nepal, Israel, the U.K. and South America. Singer's most recent documentary
"Watching Movies" was featured at the 2004 Toronto Film Festival.
/ CASTING ABOUT / 5
THE
CAST
OF
ORIGINALS
Row 1
Row 5
Row 9
Row 13
Row 17
Row 21
Alison Burkett
Carole Lindsay
Erin Schreiter
Frances Tse
Mary Voisin
Podi Lawrence
Andrea Witzel
Chizuru Takahashi
Fenella Laband
Gary James
Michael Ambedian
Rick Vandermey
April Tremblay
Coralie Faucheux
John Fear
Hayley Backewich
Mike Doughty
Robert Denton
Baldev Raj
Desiree Ward
Kate Holt
Irene Sage
Moulshree Opal
Robert Shipley
Barbara Campbell Don Druick
Kathy Winter
James MacCallum
Oonagh Fitzpatrick
Sara Kelly
Bobbie Raj
Doug Jones
Kerr Banduk
Jennifer Rudder
Paul Eichhorn
Sheila McMath
Row 2
Row 6
Row 10
Row 14
Row 18
Row 22
Allan MacKay II
Caroline Oliver
Kevin Casey
Gabriel Tse
Matthew Carver
Simon Chudley
Andrew Wright
Chuck Erion
Kristine Schumacher
Gaye Males
Michael Duschenes
Stuart Cybulskie
Arnold Fleming
David Brock
Linda Perez
Heidi Rees
Mike McNulty
Theresa Miloni
Barb Reidl
Devi Patel
Lynnette Torok
Isabella Stefanescu
Nicholas Rees
Tracy Rowan
Bette DaRosa
Don Voisin
Marion Marr
Janet Dawson Brock
Pame Walia
Trish McKegg Vandermey
Brian Brown
Doug Kirton
Marlene Kennedy
Jessica Talars
Peter Hatch
Will Kernohan
Row 3
Row 7
Row 11
Row 15
Row 19
Row 23
Allan MacKay
Ed Schleimer
Kevin Strain
Gary Dann
Philip Bast
Siobhan Fitzpatrick
Ann Roberts
Ernest Daetwyler
Lesley Doughty
Gerry Bissett
Renata Rehor
Sue Trotter
Art Green
Joan Coutou
Linda Reinstein
Ian Newton
Rob Waldeck
Thomas Bruggmann
Barbara Bast
Joy Roberts
Maggie Fioravanti
Jackie Strain
Robert Fitzpatrick
Tricia McLeod
Bill Poole
Katherine von Cardinal
Marios Matsias
Janice Matsias
Robert Stix
Vince Raznik
Bryan Izzard
Katrina Cove-Shannon
Mary Ann Fleming
Jim Tubb
Shanta Gopal
Yvonne Ip
Row 4
Row 8
Row 12
Row 16
Row 20
Row 24
Carl Simpson
Erika Tubb
Kim Nadeau
Jim Wilken
Phyllis MacLeod
Stephen Smart
Cathy Pershonke
Farouk Ahamed
Linda Bruggmann
Melissa Doherty
Richard Folkerts
Susan Cranston
Cody James
Joan Euler
Lorne Looker
Michelle Tessaro
Robert Achtemichuk
Thomas Mennill
Dawn Ahamed
Karen McRae
Malcolm Lobban
Mike Peng
Robert Linsley
Tricia Siemens
Diane Jones
Kathleen Bissett
Mark Schumacher
Norm Trotter
Ryan McLeod
Virginia Eichhorn
Donnita Deen
Kenneth Friesen
Mary Longpre
Patrick Winter
Shehnaz Banduk
Zhe Gu
/ CASTING ABOUT / 6
ROW 1
ROW 2
ROW 3
ROW 4
ROW 5
ROW 6
/ CASTING ABOUT / 7
ROW 7
ROW 8
ROW 9
ROW 10
ROW 11
ROW 12
/ CASTING ABOUT / 8
ROW 13
ROW 14
ROW 15
ROW 16
ROW 17
ROW 18
/ CASTING ABOUT / 9
ROW 19
ROW 20
ROW 21
ROW 22
ROW 23
ROW 24
JOHN GREYSON continued
/ CASTING ABOUT / 10
CASTING
JOHN
GREYSON
The Picture of Dorian Grey
Outline for an Operatic Feature Film
1890, London: At a glittering society ball, the euphonious hostess Lady Foxmuff (Jennifer Rudder) duets
fetchingly with the epicenious playwright Oscar Wilde
(David Brock) and the excrementious gadabout Lord
Alfred Douglas (Richard Folkerts). They note the
arrival of the extraordinarily handsome Lord Kitchener
(Ryan McLeod), fresh from his triumphs in Khartoum,
attended by a sopranic bevy of besotted duchesses
(Alison Burkett, Ann Roberts, Barb Reidl, Bobbie Raj,
Chizuru Takahashi). Oscar comments on the freshness of his youthful good looks, blond of hair and
blue of eye – but Foxmuff informs the astonished
dandy that in fact the esteemed ‘K’ celebrated his
fortieth birthday only the week before.
At dinner, the conversation is as garrulous as the
guest list: Virginia Woolf (Coralie Faucheux), Henry
James (Chuck Erion), and a veritable cattle-call of
society’s most loquacious lords and ladies (Desiree
Ward, Erin Schreiter, Hayley Backewich, Jackie
Strain, Jessica Talars, Karen McRae, Kathy Winter,
Kim Nadeau, Linda Perez, Lynnette Torok, Mary Ann
Fleming, Mary Voisin, Michelle Tessaro, Pame Walia,
Phyllis MacLeod, Renata Rehor, Shanta Gopal,
Siobhan Fitzpatrick, Susan Cranston, Tracy Rowan,
Tricia McLeod, Virginia Eichhorn, Zhe Gu). Oscar
finds himself seated opposite Kitchener, and asks him
the secret of his miraculously youthful appearance.
Kitchener tries to change the subject, but Oscar persists, declaring that it must be a blessing of heredity,
and demands his mother’s maiden name. Kitchener
allows that she is a Dorian, of the Dorians of
Dorsetshire. “Do all Dorians then traffic in such defiance of Father Time?” Kitchener blushes deeply and
excuses himself from the table. As Oscar watches the
retreating figure, his eyes sparkle dangerously as he
imagines a story…
In the bucolic Mennonite town of Berlin, Ontario, the
noted local artist Basil Hallward (Peter Hatch), is
completing his masterpiece, a wondrous portrait of a
local farm lad named Dorian (Kenneth Friesen). The
pose is arresting, the naked youth pointing decisively
at the viewer with a thrusting finger that seems to say
"Your Culture Needs You!” Beer baron Lord Henry
Wotton (Baldev Raj) drops by, and is entranced by
the exquisite beauty and innocence of the youth. On
the spot, Lord Henry offers Dorian the much-soughtafter position of Oktoberfest King, with attendant
duties, and suggests that Dorian move into rooms
above the brewery, the better to prepare for his new
job. Overwhelmed and yet guileless, Dorian accepts
charmingly. Despite the covert warnings of Basil,
he becomes Lord Henry’s protégée and constant
companion, hanging Basil’s portrait on his new bedroom’s north wall. At Oktoberfest, haloed by a crown
of hops, he seems to glow with the aura of a saint,
and is the talk of the town. Yet when he returns home
late that night, he notices that the portrait seems to
have changed slightly. Have his elegant painted
brows acquired an arrogant tilt? Have his ruby lips
twisted subtly into the commencement of a sneer?
The painting comes to life: three tenors (Ian Newton,
Michael Ambedian, Stuart Cybulskie) morph into
successive reflections of the lad, singing to Dorian of
the narcissistic dangers that can accompany easy
fame… Reclining amidst velvet cushions in an
infamous Soho boy-brothel, Oscar outlines his
fanciful plot-in-progress to devoted confidant Robbie
Ross (Robert Stix), and three Irish rent lads (Cody
James, Vince Raznik and Simon Chudley, who
somewhat naively plan to make their fortunes selling
their fair tresses to a Mayfair wigmaker). Down the
hall, a bedroom door opens, and a nude and inebriated Kitchener appears, riding the shoulders of three
soldiers (Andrew Wright, Carl Simpson, Farouk
Ahamed), in search of brandy. On seeing Oscar, K
retreats in a panic down the back stairs and into the
JOHN GREYSON continued
clouds of steam and convention of befurred bodies
(Ed Schleimer, Arnold Fleming, Brian Izzard, Gabriel
Tse, Gary James, Gerry Bissett, Jim Tubb, Kerr
Banduk, Marios Matsias, Mike Peng, Patrick Winter,
Paul Eichhorn, Philip Bast, Rick Vandermey, Robert
Fitzpatrick, Robert Shipley) that crowd the dim
reaches. In a fit of pique, Oscar declares to this motley
assembly of longshoremen, civil servants and Harley
Street specialists, his intention to write a novel forthwith, concerning the illicit preservation of youth and
the costs therein. “The name of my ill-fated hero?
Dorian Grey!” A stifled gasp is heard from the dank
shadows.
Oscar sets to work in earnest, sketching out the risible
rise of the eternally youthful Mr. Grey. His reign as
Oktoberfest King is soon eclipsed by further triumphs:
Harvest Prince at London’s Western Fair, Grand
Vizier of Guelph’s Pumpkin Carnival, Parade Captain
of Berlin’s Princess Ephigenia’s Marching Band.
Basil tries to preserve their friendship, but finds that
his one-time muse’s social calendar no longer allows
for intimate dinners with mere portrait painters. In the
throes of despair and fatal infatuation, he finally
confronts Dorian, demanding an explanation for the
cynical changes he has seen in the farm lad’s behaviour. Dorian denies all, and coldly asks Basil to leave.
Alone, he fearfully studies his portrait. Again, it seems
to have changed, and for the worse. Again it comes
to life, and a series of increasingly debauched and
aging Dorians, rendered in vivid oils (Ernest
Daetwyler, Gary Dann, Kevin Casey, Kevin Strain,
Malcolm Lobban, Mark Schumacher, Matthew Carver,
Mike Doughty, Thomas Bruggman) sing of his true
identity as a lager-addled, ruthless wastrel,reminding
their pure-faced inspiration of the importance of maintaining a pure visage when betraying those closest to
the heart
Inspired by his success with the marching band (and
perhaps tempted by the prospect of communal
showers in the barracks), Dorian pursues a career in
the military, and his rise in the ranks is impressive.
Lord Henry advises him that bachelors rarely exceed
the title of Field Marshall, and recommends a wife for
advancement’s sake. He casts around town, and
/ CASTING ABOUT / 11
soon becomes enamoured of former Oktoberfest
Queen Sybil Vane (Moulshree Opal). He woos her
with roses and regional drinking songs, and she falls
hard for him. Touched by her genuine devotion, he
suffers a rare crisis of conscience, realizing he has no
reciprocal attraction for her. He breaks off the engagment, only to learn the next day that she has drowned
herself in the Grand River, unable to live without him.
When he next looks at the painting, he is horrified by
the sinister evil that now seems to lurk in the increasingly lined face, crooked fingers and malevolent eyes.
He is serenaded by a procession of shifting, monstrous Dorians (Bill Poole, Don Voison, Doug Jones,
Doug Kirton, James MacCallum, John Fear, Robert
Achtemichuk, Robert Denton, Robert Linsley,
Stephen Smart, Thomas Mennill, Will Kernohan). In a
fit of terror, he hides the painting in the attic.
A party at the Barbican celebrates the publication of
Oscar’s much-anticipated novel, ‘The Picture of
Dorian Grey.’ All of fashionable London is in attendance, including a flock of opium-inflected grandes
dames (Andrea Witzel, April Tremblay, Barbara Bast,
Barbara Campbell, Bette DaRosa, Carole Lindsay,
Caroline Oliver, Cathy Pershonke, Dawn Ahamed,
Devi Patel, Diane Jones, Donnita Dean, Erika Tubb,
Fenella Laband, Frances Tse, Gaye Males, Heidi
Rees, Irene Sage, Isabella Stefanescu, Janet
Dawson Brock, Janice Matsias, Joan Coutou, Joan
Euler, Joy Roberts, Kate Holt, Katherine von
Cardinal, Kathleen Bissett, Katrina Cove-Shannon,
Kristine Schumacher, Lesley Doughty, Linda
Bruggman, Linda Reinstein, Maggie Fioravanti,
Marion Marr, Marlene Kennedy, Mary Longpre,
Melissa Doherty, Oonagh Fitzpatrick, Shenaz
Banduk, Podi Lawrence, Sara Kelly, Sheila McMath,
Sue Trotter, Theresa Miloni, Tricia Siemens, Trish
McKegg-Vandermey, Yvonne Ip). As they raise their
champagne flutes in a toast, the ever youthful
Kitchener pushes his way through the crowd, his
manservant and ‘constant companion’ Frank Maxwell
(Mike McNulty) in tow. He pulls a sealed envelope
from his breast pocket, and presents it to the
bemused author, declaring: “Sir: I hereby serve you
with notice of libel, for defamation of my person,
character and likeness!”
JOHN GREYSON continued
Oscar laughs merrily in his face. “But my dear K,
whatever can you mean? My novel is a fiction, like all
portraits must inevitably be”. Kitchener hisses back:
“I’ll be recognized! Ruined, discharged, driven from
polite society!” Oscar rejoins: “It is perhaps true that
you, like my Dorian, seem to maintain an eerie youthfulness. It is perhaps relevant that you and Dorian
share the terror that certain secret desires might be
revealed to all. Yet my portrait seems to be a veritable
Proteus, shape-shifting in the imaginations of every
reader. Some are convinced I’m sketching Burton or
Swinburne – some detect shades of Beardsley!
Others feel that Dorian is my tentative metaphor for
Empire herself, the rot and carnage hidden within the
soul of Englands ever-youthful visage. Yet do I anticipate a lawsuit from Number Ten? My dear Field
Marshall, your secrets are eminently safe – that is,
they were, until you chose to come here and deny
their existence to all of London! The courts are
treacherous places, my dear, and known to paint the
most unflattering portraits of both accused and accuser.” Kitchener blushes brick-red, realizing the truth of
Oscar’s words. Furious, he turns abruptly and marches back out through the astonished crowd – to be followed after a moment by the Marquis of Queensbury,
who has been listening with great interest to the
exchange…
Over the decades, Dorian’s inexorable climb up the
steep stairs of Berlin society seems unstoppable.
Following a distinguished military career, he is elected Member of Parliament, plays the stock market,
poses for a World War One recruitment poster,* and
dabbles in soy bean cultivation. Through a series of
backroom deals, he succeeds in bankrupting the nonplussed Lord Henry, gaining full control of the brewery and renaming ‘Loutish Lager’ by the new
best-selling brand ‘Dorian’s Bitter’. However, his rise
to absolute power is strewn with a mounting body
count: his former Lieutenant-at-Arms (Brian Brown)
commits suicide, his business partner (Michael
Duschenes) is institutionalized in the London asylum,
and his devoted former polo partner (Rob Waldeck)
dies of addiction to Bright’s Baby Duck.
/ CASTING ABOUT / 12
Dorian becomes consumed by mounting guilt and
self-loathing. Yet outwardly, his face remains unblemished, untroubled, his figure as trim as when he herded cows in Middlesex county as an innocent
youth.Basil comes to see him at his mansion. Now
sixty, the painter is still bitterly obsessed with the boy
who inspired his masterpiece. He demands to see
the portrait. Dorian refuses repeatedly, but Basil
begs, and in a fit of drunken despair, Dorian finally
accedes. “You think I ruined your life? Let me show
you how you destroyed mine!” He takes Basil upstairs
and shows him the painting. Basil recoils in utter
horror – the painting depicts a monstrous Lucifer, an
imbroglio of desiccation and pestilence. Basil
declares that he will reveal Dorian’s secret to the
good citizens of Berlin. In a fit of terror, Dorian strangles him. It takes him until dawn to dispose of the
body. He returns to the attic, dreading what he will
find. The portrait mercilessly taunts him, a chorus of
ever-morphing depravity (Art Green, Don Druick, Jim
Wilkin, Lorne Looker, Nicholas Rees, Norm Trotter).
The desperate subject of the portrait can stand no
more. Seizing a knife, he thrusts it into the heart of
the canvas. Yet as the blade penetrates the paint,his
own body contorts in a spasm of agony, and he emits
a shriek that rings out into the cold dawn. The
groundskeeper (Allan MacKay) is drawn to the open
mansion door and up the stairs, worrying at what
misfortune he might find. When he opens the attic
door, he finds himself staring at a portrait of his
master, as always captured in the first blush of his
breathtaking manhood, indeed a seeming facsimile
of the recruitment poster that graces every Berlin
lamppost and hoarding. And on the floor? The body
of a nameless beggar, a face so ruined by a life of
wickedness as to be unrecognizable, twisted on the
floor in a pool of his own blood.
* This should replicate both the original portrait by
Basil, and also, the famous recruitment poster that
Lord Kitchener posed for in 1914, with the slogan
“Your country needs you!”
JOHN GREYSON continued
/ CASTING ABOUT / 13
Casting Notes
All actors will sing their roles – classical training
and sight reading a must. The London characters
must utilize upper-class Mayfair accents (excepting
the Irish Rent Lads), while the Berlin characters will
use the laconic modulations and flattened vowels of
South-Western Ontario.
Lord Henry Wotton: Counter-tenor. Berlin’s most
celebrated dandy, a raconteur of the first tier, owner
of the Wotton's brewery (known for ‘Loutish Lager’
and ‘Arva Ale’). Capricious, alternately generous and
spiteful in fits, with a carnivorous smile and frankly
lecherous eyes.
Lady Foxmuff: Mezzo. Buxom, ringletted, tri-lingual,
and an avid practitioner of ouija, her ruthlessness of
ambition is mediated somewhat by a charming
stammer.
Rent Lads: Three Irish basses, variously naïve and
vengeful, rough-hewn and simpering, slothful and
perspicacious, woefully lacking an eye for the main
chance. Long blond hair a definite plus.
Oscar Wilde: Baritone. Must capture the flamboyant
affectations of this legendary society wit (in camp
terms, there is no such thing as ‘too big’). A mellifluous voice that effortlessly dominates every parlour
and snooker den. Beneath the bravado, allow us to
see glimpses of a Labrador puppy’s sensitive soul.
Sybil Vane: Soprano. Winsome, sloe-eyed, vivacious,
this former Oktoberfest Queen has resigned herself
to a career teaching home economics at the Waterloo
Academy for Wayward Girls. That is, until she meets
Dorian… (Note: suicide scene will involve real-time
immersion in the Grand River)
Lord Kitchener: Tenor. A breathtakingly handsome
lifelong bachelor, of fixed opinions and imperial
values, his rigid masculinity must be over-whelmed
by the wonder of his delicate, ever-youthful features.
Definitely not a ladies’ man, most comfortable playing
whist with his favourite subalterns in the barracks.
Horseback riding, some nudity.
Frank ‘the brat’ Maxwell: Bass. Kitchener’s plucky
and long-suffering manservant, prone to fits of
jealousy whenever ‘K’ goes on overnight ‘foraging’
expeditions with new favourites. Truly the Patroclus
to Kitchener’s Achilles, he will be awarded the VC
and die a general on the Western Front.
Basil Hallward: Bass. A tender-hearted romantic
with obsessive tendencies, he lives for his easel.
Yet the lack of a thriving Berlin portrait market means
he must earn his rent painting market vegetables on
the sides of local barns. Fluency in harpsichord a
plus.
Dorian Grey: Tenor. A nineteen-year-old Adonis of
classical proportions and heart-stopping beauty,
whose sensual innocence (this can include the
slightest hint of imbecility) must transform over the
course of the film into a brooding, paranoid
melancholia with homicidal tendencies.
Groundskeeper: Tenor. Adept at decorative borders,
begonia propagation, and beekeeping. Both bemused
and terrified by his moody master’s tantrums.
Dorian’s Portrait: Played by thirty voices, ranging
from counter-tenor to bass, and in age from nineteen
to ninety. These actors will portray the successive
stages of Dorian’s decay, from breathtaking Adonis to
hideously decrepit, pus-encrusted, vermin-ridden
demon. Should be open to hours of prosthetic make-up.
JOHN GREYSON continued
Lady Foxmuff
Oscar Wilde
Lord Kitchener
/ CASTING ABOUT / 14
The
Three
Tenors
DORIAN’S
PORTRAIT
Aging Dorians
Monstrous
Dorians
Basil Hallward
Dorian Grey
Lord Henry Wotton
Rent Lad
Rent Lad
Rent Lad
Frank “the brat”
Maxwell
Groundskeeper
Sybil Vane
Debauched Dorians
/ CASTING ABOUT / 15
JOHN GREYSON continued
Besotted
Duchesses
Lord Alfred
Douglas
Three
Soldiers
Grandes Dames
JOHN GREYSON continued
/ CASTING ABOUT / 16
Lieutenantat-Arms
Befurred Bodies
Robbie Ross
Henry James
Virginia Wolfe
Polo
Partner
Loquacious Ladies
Business
Partner
/ CASTING ABOUT / 17
HELEN
LEE
CASTING
CASTING NOTES
There’s something about “The Portrait of Dorian
Gray” that is rather nasty, I’m not sure why it’s recommend-ed reading for high school students (which is
how I first encountered it). And there’s something
about casting for a film that will never be made; aptly,
an exercise in vanity, a metonym for the whole Dorian
Gray enterprise perhaps.
I wish to cast a film worth seeing, not solely as the
British blue-blood society of Wilde’s fiction, but more
as a movie of the mind, playing with our prejudices,
preconceived notions and expectations of the story,
alternately satire and morality tale. The casting of
oddball choices was tempting. Working from a set list
is like being handed a deck of cards and asked to
play gin rummy when all you know is blackjack. Or
you’d rather just throw dice. In any case, you can’t
run away from the game. In the end, I opted for
something that could make dramatic sense.
Ultimately, the casting of Dorian acted as a pivot from
where the rest of the characters would fall into place.
In a sense, anyone could be Dorian and from there,
a universe created around him (in this case, her) in
which men, women and children (Sibyl is, indeed,
child-like in Wilde’s rendering) are seduced and, after
the useful juices are wrung out, unceremoniously
discarded. Despite the social implications of a contemporary revisioning of the Dorian Gray story (imbrica-tions of gender, race and our rampant suppression
of the unglamorous face in a celebrity-based culture),
whoever said that if the eyes don’t sparkle they ain’t
gonna light up the screen is absolutely right. But a
window into the soul? I wouldn’t go that far. And
neither, I dare venture, would Wilde.
A
DORIAN GRAY / Lynnette Torok
“Youth is the only thing worth having. When I find that
I am growing old, I shall kill myself.” Dorian’s selfdramatizing narcissism and ethos in a nutshell. I chose
extreme beauty of the conventional sort (aquiline
features, haughty demeanour – she does look rather
mean), lacking any distinguishing character, but a clear
signifier of cultural norms, where artifice and the art of
showing – overly groomed eyebrows, perfectly
streaked hair – can take precedence over notions of
interiority or substance. A beautiful woman is always
more interesting than a beautiful man, at least on the
surface, and certainly on screen. She can be absorbing
in her gorgeous monstrosity, but with it comes the
knowledge that once her beauty fades, so will our
interest.
LORD HENRY WOTTON / Doug Kirton
“It is a sad thing to think of, but there is no doubt that
genius lasts longer than beauty.” Oddly, the most
difficult character to cast, possibly because of Lord
Henry’s complete amorality. In the end, the “banality
of evil” wins out and he outlasts all the characters
partly through aristocratic privilege, free to indulge his
endless appetite for amusement and distraction. Does
he really never suspect Dorian’s ways? Or is he, like
everyone else, in love with him and even more so
because his illusions are never broken. Once again,
the cocoon of class protects him. Here, our Lord sits
perched on the corporate ladder, oblivious to ethics
and anything awry of his interests, which is of course
none other than himself.
BASIL HALLWARD / Katherine von Cardinal
“An artist should create beautiful things, but should
put nothing of his [sic] own life into them.” Wilde’s
notorious facetiousness is at work here, Basil’s
jealousy, desire and thirst for transcendence coming
into powerful play as a projectile of the author’s own
ego. Basil simply adores Dorian. Here, the artist’s
pathos can be read in the eyes, her introspection, but
ultimate fallibility for her subject, which gives the artist
her power, yet paradoxically is also her greatest weakness. Basil’s murder is, I believe, truly shocking, as is
the way Dorian “disappears” the body. I was a sucker
for her hunched pose, and a gaze that seems to look
just beyond.
HELEN LEE continued
A
/ CASTING ABOUT / 18
SIBYL VANE / Chizuru Takahashi
B
Sibyl’s innocence and sweet nature, that which was evacuated
from Dorian, become like a forbidden fruit. Because she is so
sharply caricatured by Wilde, she is a cipher, not really a character at all. Someone slyer, more mischievous perhaps to counter
the simpleton version of the fresh-faced starlet. This Sibyl wants
for more than martyrdom, so a little sass won’t hurt.
MRS. VANE / Janet Dawson Brock
She is all stage mother, meaning wanting to be the star herself. A
voluminous personality (can you hear the cackle?), the haze of
self-enchantment and the oh-ain’t-life-just-fabulous quality – you
want to run away from her at the same time as gawk.There is a
faded disappointment, too, in all that life couldn’t deliver.
B
JAMES VANE / Michael Ambedian
The fact that James becomes a wandering sailor with a monosyllabic slur seems apt. But he hasn’t given up. Too slow-witted for
vengeance, his brutish anger is dulled by an essential aimlessness and hapless circumstance (getting shot and killed like a wild
animal, much to Dorian’s joy). Plain bad luck haunts him.
ALAN CAMPBELL / Chuck Erion
Duped by Dorian to commit horrible deeds and later unable to live
with the fact, Alan is more victim than perpetrator. With a hand at
chemistry, he is brainy, to be sure. But his will is weak. Already
once corrupted, his lack of a moral compass is Dorian’s salvation.
Alan wants for redemption but it’s far too late.
ADRIAN SINGLETON / Ian Newton
Something of the nave but also a survivor,because he cruises the
same plane of hedonism as Dorian (albeit without a core, even an
evil one), dispensing with such trifles as responsibility and human
caring. A touch of English arrogance, too, in the high forehead
and shock of hair. A gentleman and a dog.
LADY MARGARET DEVEREAUX (Dorian’s Mother) / Shehnaz Banduk
I prefer a version of the story where Dorian’s mother lives on and
he has to answer to her, more interesting than the abandoned
poor little rich boy scenario of Wilde’s novel. He’ll be reminded of
the decency that accompanies true beauty. Lady Margaret’s
demise is tragic because she also dies for a romantic ideal, for
love. Truth and everyday life soil her dreams.
LORD KELSO (Dorian’s Grandfather) / Don Druick
To complicate the notion of evil empire, this Lord Kelso conjoins
stereotypical English eccentricity with the potential for hi-jinks and
individual lunacy. He drove his daughter crazy and punished his
grandson, blessed with the physical gifts that he himself did not
possess. Bad seed, indeed.
/ CASTING ABOUT / 19
GUY
MADDIN
CASTING
THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY
Twelve-year-old Dorian Gray lives on a Channel
Island with his seventeen-year-old sister Janet, and
his parents, Dr. Augustus and Odetta Gray, who operate an orphanage out of the lighthouse
in which they live. Dorian plays with the orphan boys
and girls, but his best friend is the island itself, and all
its friendly stones, mosses and wavelets, for he is ill
at ease with children his own age, except for twelveyear-old beauty Wendy, whom he loves from
afar. Mother Odetta has the appearance of a seventeen-year-old, which none of the little orphans finds
odd, since she is simply one of that amorphous
demographic of grown-ups. She is kept young
with the help of a serum created by, and for the
pleasure of, her scientist husband, an elderly man
who works up near the top of the lighthouse and
extracts, during regular visits from his young charges,
a nectar essential to his potion from their still-growing
skulls.
Two famous teenaged boy detectives, Zack and
Chance Hale, better known as the Light Bulb Kids,
visit the island in the guise of lighthouse inspectors, in
order to investigate complaints from adoptive parents
of faulty children recently acquired at this remote
refuge. Dorian idolizes the handsome sleuths.
Chance, for his part, falls in love with young Janet,
and commences a regime of ardent trysting with the
island girl, secreting her and her compliance from
both the jealous gaze of his brother and the wrathful
vigilance of disapproving Odetta, who surveys the
atoll constantly from atop the lighthouse, swiveling in
a marlin-fishing chair while training the beam of the
edifice’s searchlight into all the known hiding places
of the water-girt grounds, determined to enforce the
virginities of her two children.
But young Dorian sees what Zack and Odetta don’t –
his feral sister squalling beneath the bestial Chance.
A quickly sobered Janet kisses Dorian on the mouth
to seal an oath of secrecy on the matter, then metamorphoses back into the condition necessary for her
sudorific endeavors. Dazed Dorian is left with no
handy romantic outlet for all the outraged and electrified feelings derived from this sibling smooch, so he
is left with no choice but to eroticize his beloved
island by completely disrobing and revisiting in this
original state all of his beloved turfy nooks and
crannies. This is not easily done with Odetta at her
all-seeing watchpost, and the young nudist must
negotiate a difficult path between the sweeping lightspots cast down by his angry goddess of a mother.
Just as Zack tracks down his fellow investigator
brother in the latter’s lovenest – a cubbyhole of
teeming teen nudity too much for the envious sibling
to bear – little Dorian wanders ever more deeply and
deliriously, for he has been in bed with a fever recently, into the night landscape, half hoping for and half
fearing an encounter with the lovely Wendy. Instead,
he discovers – and did he really see it or was this an
artifact of his fever ? – his mother Odetta, bent over
a prostrate orphan, a young boy it seems, whom his
mother is devouring, actually tearing away flesh from
his body with her teeth in order to chew and swallow,
and bearing upon her nearly unrecognizable face the
crazed grimaces of a starving hyena! Dorian faints
away.
Thirty years later, when Dorian revisits this island of
his youth, long after he has been orphaned himself,
he encounters a young girl named Wendy. It is the
same Wendy he once loved; she has been kept
young all these decades by Dr. Gray’s serum, which
was seized by the orphans in a bloody revolt. Now,
Dorian beholds his own portrait – wretched, asexual
and old. It is the young face of this girl he once loved,
and could easily love again, rippling in her horrified
features and reflected back to him in the clarity of her
wide, wide eyes.
GUY MADDIN continued
Subject: RE: cast
odetta: jessica:
Ur-beauty, fearsome,
loving and hungry.
dr. gray: art green; When Art stoops over into position,
he conquers; he gives great absence!
young dorian: kim nadeau: Kim has the greatest face in
the world for the reflection of memory; it is a screen that
remains virginal,unmarked by thoughts that continually
buffet its lineaments, orby thoughts that write upon her
visage their tempestuous histories, or by thoughts which
move her, nay, catapult her into raptures!
old dorian: kevin strain: With the aid of make-up,
Kevin will be positively tumescent with stale-dated
urges, a fetid film of distilled frustration poisoning
his mug.
janet: hayley: Hayley has a
sweetness quivering
on the thinnest
membrane of resistance.
wendy: chizuru: Chizuru is both Peter Pan
and his Wendy; and Pandora and
her box!
zack: kenneth friesen and
chance: brian brown:
Sometimes one just casts
with his crotch!
/ CASTING ABOUT / 20
/ CASTING ABOUT / 21
C
ASTING
GAIL
SINGER
October 1, 2004
I am really troubled by this production, partly because I
can muster no sympathy for ANY of the characters.
It must be something wrong with me and I wonder if I
shouldn't have a quick go-around with my ex-psychiatrist before I plunge in ... or maybe a dose of Prozac ...
still I have read and reread and at some veiled level, I
am fascinated by a kind of elusive seductiveness ...
I am dealing with a scenario based on “The Picture of
Dorian Gray”. Here we have a prime example of a
novel/script in which the parts are greater than the sum
of the parts; some of those parts being the decaying
Victorian atmosphere into which this novel was thrust,
the homosexuality of the author, the author's Irish
immigrant status in a homophobic English society, the
ambiguity of the novel, the philosophical preface with
regard to the author's own aestheticism, the Faustian
rather than demonic portrayal of Dorian, and some
transparent (Sybil Vane's name) and some cryptic
(Allan Campbell's misdeeds?) references.
I have been struggling for weeks to choose, if I had
unlimited opportunity to decide, who shall play the
lead, the secondary roles, the minor roles and how I
want this film played; it would seem foolish to reconstruct the1940s production in black and white and
occasional colour. And yet it almost begs for murky,
black and white sets ... if we shoot in 35mm we could
achieve a remarkable richness, if we shoot digitally, I
think we should proceed in colour ...
October 18, 2004
Oh God, the time is passing and I still don't have the
images. I will need to spend time with the photos.
October 24, 2004
Ahhhh. At last. I did receive the CD a few days ago,
but I was too frightened to look at it, in case there was
NO ONE suitable for any of the roles. I remember the
first time I cast a little drama, and sifted through
dozens of (real life) individuals (couldn't afford actors)
over and over again and began to wonder if I would
have to modify my criteria, or NEVER find anyone
suitable.
When I was a girl my mother warned me that I would
never get married if I didn't lower my expectations.
She was right.
Is that what is going to happen to "Dorian"? I'll never
cast it in order not to make a mistake ...?
November 1
Hurray! I allowed myself a glimpse. Not a full examination, but a look-over, and I think there are possibilities! It is strange to see nary a familiar face, but,
anyway, I am philosophically against the Hollywood
"star" system, since the way it usually plays out in
Canada, is we get a "B" player who has no "box
office" anyway, in order to get a US distribution deal,
and the role is compromised by this imposition on us.
So let's be Mike Leigh and play with people with
great faces, let us improvise our way into this film.
November 7
I just wish there were someone in "The Picture of
Dorian Gray" whom I liked. Then I could go to this
character for inspiration, and take off from there to
the other characters. But no, I really don't like anyone. (I do have a fantastic idea for the ending of the
film though ... we have the technology to create a
truly monstrous transformation of the painting from
the aging Dorian, to the grotesque Dorian.)
November 8
If I were to treat the film as a kind of polemic on
plastic surgery, it would certainly bring it up to date.
Any chance there is a Michael Jackson or Joan
Rivers
living in the Kitchener-Waterloo area?
November 8
It's very late but I've had an idea for the plot, after
looking at the Kitchener-Waterloo cast options. A plot
point: When Basil Hallward is painting Dorian Gray,
Dorian has a nosebleed and some of his blood, i.e.,
his DNA gets mixed into Basil Hallward's paint
palette. It is through this accidental alchemy that the
painting of Dorian Gray ages. As for Dorian himself,
GAIL SINGER continued
some clever minimal plastic surgery, some makeup,
some Botox, (why would you inject something into your
body that has "tox" as part of the word?) and secret meetings with a stage makeup artist render his face forever,
well, almost forever, youthful.
November 9
And now to cast.
November 10
And now!
November 15
I think this is the deadline. As usual, I will be just a
little bit late.
November 16
Yup. I'm a little bit late.
November 23
I HAVE to send this off today, even if I am still unsettled
about my choices. I can always change my mind.
I see Dorian as very good looking, with a non-gender
specific sexuality, sort of like Trudeau (different
character in all other respects).
/ CASTING ABOUT / 22
November 24
I am definitely late.
November 30
Back from California. This is how late I am. At least now
that I am so late I will go with gut instinct. No more
vacillating. So why am I overwhelmed by the feeling of
betrayal by my "casting director", the person who
has presented me with all these options? Is it because
he has sent me some fraudulent photos, i.e.,the same
person, with wigs and props to disguise them? What
treachery.
December I
My choices… I'd better get some sleep before I make this
final decision… I'll deal with the casting director
another time.
December 9 Short list:
GAIL SINGER continued
/ CASTING ABOUT / 23
Lord Henry Wotton
Rob Waldeck
Patrick Winter
Andrew Wright (but NOT Vince Raznik)
Kevin Casey
Mike Doughty
Ian Newton
Basil Hallward
Cody James
Robert Stix
Brian Brown
Paul Eichhorn
Dorian Gray
Stuart Cybulskie
Katherine von Cardinal (change the hair)
Richard Folkerts
Duchess of Harley
April Tremblay
Theresa Miloni
Virginia Eichhorn
Janet Dawson Brock
(Geoffrey James's sibling!?) Joan Euler
Kathleen Bissett
Lady Agatha
Alison Burkett
Barbara Campbell
Diane Jones
Tricia Siemens
Gaye Males (does she have a stage name?)
Mary Voisin
Sybil Vane
Hayley Backewich
Kim Nadeau
Jessica Talars (a young Catherine O'Hara?)
Lynnette Torok
Siobhan Fitzpatrick
Sheila McMath
James Vane
Michael Ambedian
Mother of Sybil Vane
Barb Reidl
Betty da Rosa
Heidi Rees
Isabella Stefanescu
Kristine Schumacher
I'll just stop now.
/ CASTING ABOUT / 24
CASTING
ABOUT
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
faceLIFT Series: Casting About…
John Greyson, Helen Lee, Guy Maddin, Gail Singer
January 28 - March 20, 2005
Organized by the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery
Portraits photographed by Andrew Wright
Exhibition design by Susan Coolen
Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery
101 Queen Street North, Kitchener, Ontario Canada N2H 6P7
T > 519.579.5860 F > 519.578.0740
E > mail@kwag.on.ca W > www.kwag.on.ca
KW|AG is pleased to acknowledge the financial support of
the City of Kitchener, the City of Waterloo, the Ontario Arts Council,
and Season Sponsor Sun Life Financial.