I recently met with Lois Dawson, stage manager extraordinaire, event coordinator, and social media aficionado. Lois is a very cool, calm and collected person with a signature laugh – warm and almost musical in nature.
Lois provides us Ottawa residents a glimpse into the national theatre scene since, a) she actually lives in Vancouver and b) she travels across the country for work all the time! Lois genuinely enjoys the travel and getting to spend weeks or even months at a time in a different city.
“One of the things I love is that I don’t have to stay in the same city to work. There’s so many places making theatre,” she said.
Lois provides us Ottawa residents a glimpse into the national theatre scene since, a) she actually lives in Vancouver and b) she travels across the country for work all the time! Lois genuinely enjoys the travel and getting to spend weeks or even months at a time in a different city.
“One of the things I love is that I don’t have to stay in the same city to work. There’s so many places making theatre,” she said.
Fast Facts
- Lois once stage-managed a 98-performance run of Guys and Dolls. There was a time where she didn’t feel any overwhelming desire to listen to the music from that particular show.
- One of the very first plays Lois saw was The Christmas Mouse and it involved mouse finger puppets. If that doesn’t get you hooked on theatre, then I don’t know what will.
- Despite not being an OCD, everything-must-be-in-it’s-place type of SM, she does own a label maker and has a love for post it notes. As she puts it, “You cannot let me loose in Staples because I will spend 75 dollars. It’s trouble.”
Projects
Lois is currently in town stage managing the re-mount of RE:UNION, which is part of the Magnetic North Theatre Festival and runs from June 5th to the 9th.
RE:UNION is a Horseshoes & Hand Grenades production, a company that is based in both Vancouver and Ottawa. The company was born in Vancouver, but when co-artistic directors Alexa and Sean Devine moved to Ottawa last summer, the company became a dual-city operation.
Lois has done four shows with HHG in the last four years and worked on the original production of RE:UNION back in 2011.
“It’s been four years since we last did the show. It’s a little bit weird to come back to something, but it’s also nice because often you don’t get to revisit something, let alone with that much time in between,” said Lois.
This particular play was written by Sean Devine and happens to be the first one he ever had produced.
The backdrop to RE:UNION is the story of Norman Morrison. Morrison was a Baltimore Quaker who, in 1965, doused himself in kerosene and set himself on fire below the office of the secretary of defence at the time, Robert McNamara. This self-immolation was in protest of the State’s involvement in the Vietnam War.
The play takes place post 9/11 and follows Morrison’s daughter Emily, who was only a child when her father carried out his final act.
“It’s her experience,” explained Lois. “It’s her being pulled between her memories of her father and what he did and her questions of what happens now? Will my children be forced into the same type of war that my father gave his life to stop?”
Clearly, the show is political in nature and is pretty heavy. Lois said this is not unusual for Sean’s work.
“A lot of it comes from his interest in the political and where the political and the personal intersect and a lot of the questions around that. It makes for something definitely different and fun to work on in a challenging way,” she said.
While the subject matter may be a challenge, this production also has a huge technical side, which contributes to the difficulty as well. There are three projectors and three live camera feeds, among other technical goodies peppered throughout.
But Lois said part of the fun of this remount is being able to come back to these challenges four years later only to find that technology has advanced so much in that small window of time that things are easier, better, bigger, badder, and stronger.
“It’s a really visually stunning show but the story is also really human,” said Lois.
Here’s a trailer cut from the original 2011 version of RE:UNION to give you a taste of what’s to come here in Ottawa:
Travelling with Rubber Ducks
Towards the end of our conversation, Lois casually mentioned to me that she has a rubber duck she tours with that looks like a stage manager. I asked how in the world could a rubber duck look like a stage manager?
Here’s how:
Lois busted out her phone to show me pictures of her duck while she told me the story behind it.
She found the duck at a little store in downtown Victoria while she was doing a show there.
“I think they said they had 125 different kinds of rubber ducks,” she said scrolling through her Instagram to find pictures. “They don’t anymore. I think they have way less now. I ended up going back and buying 10 of them to give as gifts to people.”
Lois blogged about her rubber duck and kept getting emails from people asking her where she got it. She shared the link and before she knew it, the store sold out of SM rubber ducks and they never replenished their stock.
A couple of weeks ago, Lois heard from a stage manger in Vienna via Facebook.
“She had teamed up with a group of stage managers around Austria and Germany to do a bulk order of 100 of them from a supplier in the States,” said Lois with a laugh.
Highlights
During our conversation I asked Lois if she would ever consider directing. She gave me the best answer:
“I don’t feel like I have a story I need to tell,” she said. “What I’m really good at is taking someone else’s vision and helping them make the most of it. So this is kind of the perfect job for me. It’s about helping them find the solution for the vision they already have rather than my own interpretation or idea.”
She found the duck at a little store in downtown Victoria while she was doing a show there.
“I think they said they had 125 different kinds of rubber ducks,” she said scrolling through her Instagram to find pictures. “They don’t anymore. I think they have way less now. I ended up going back and buying 10 of them to give as gifts to people.”
Lois blogged about her rubber duck and kept getting emails from people asking her where she got it. She shared the link and before she knew it, the store sold out of SM rubber ducks and they never replenished their stock.
A couple of weeks ago, Lois heard from a stage manger in Vienna via Facebook.
“She had teamed up with a group of stage managers around Austria and Germany to do a bulk order of 100 of them from a supplier in the States,” said Lois with a laugh.
Highlights
During our conversation I asked Lois if she would ever consider directing. She gave me the best answer:
“I don’t feel like I have a story I need to tell,” she said. “What I’m really good at is taking someone else’s vision and helping them make the most of it. So this is kind of the perfect job for me. It’s about helping them find the solution for the vision they already have rather than my own interpretation or idea.”