EDMONTON THEATRE DOGGOS!
They’re natural performers who crave attention. They have great instincts. They can improvise at the drop of a ball. They hardly ever poop, pee, puke, or bark on stage. And they work cheap.
Yes, Theatre Dogs are a breed apart – and there’s a surprising number of good bois who have graced Edmonton stages in recent times, in the company of their fellow actor-people.
Actor Belinda Cornish’s four-year-old schitzu Alice “almost ran away with the Shakespeare,” according to our theatre critic Colin MacLean in his review of the Freewill Shakespeare Festival production of Two Gentlemen of Verona in Hawrelak Park.
Shakespeare wrote the dog into the script of his 1589 comedy, in scenes where Belinda’s loopy character Launce talks to her dog “Crab.”
Alice (right) was a hit. At one point in the play she had to dash across the stage – off leash – to meet a sad man (named Valentine, and whose actor had a hidden treat). Cornish also did a three-minute monologue – which Alice got to know so well she expected another treat near the end. “She’d start to get impatient.” And without any reward, “she also figured out to do certain things deliberately to derail me, and she’d react to audience laughing, look at the audience – and do it again!” Alice loved the attention. She even added her own dialogue – one sharp bark – when confronted by a bad man (named Proteus). Dogs sense evil, even in fiction. Yes, Alice stole the show.
Drop it! Leave it, leave it …
“I was so proud of her,” Cornish says. “She was brilliant, and I was more than happy to give up the spotlight.”
There may be more roles for Alice in the future.
None of the humans interviewed for this story would dream of subjecting an anxious dog to the stresses of the live theatre stage – with the lights, the sound, the audience, or squirrels and birds outside, depending.
Aside from shedding, there have been incidents. One Theatre Human recalls a time a dog got sick on stage. No one in the audience saw it, though there was a distinct aroma of dog-vom for some time afterwards. Other dogs were stricken with stage fright, too shy to perform. It takes a calm and friendly temperament to be a Theatre Dog.
For this reason, many area dog roles are brief ones, canine cameos, on leash – but two Theatre Dogs recently played meatier roles in the latest Die-Nasty season: an improvised parody of Game of Thrones called Lord of Thrones. Dogs are always improvising, so it works out. Playing the baby dragon, costume and all, was a one-and-a-half-year-old Pug-Japanese Chin mix named Potluck, who weighs all of 19 pounds.
“We left it up to him,” says owner-actor Matt Alden Dykes. “He’s really friendly and just wanted to meet the people in the front row. We all just improvised around him.”
Playing the role of the fearsome adult dragon “Ziggy Stardust,” meanwhile, was Rome (right) – a full-grown standard pedigree poodle with papers and everything. Owner-actor Chantel Peron says the dog’s previous owners are actually miffed that she hasn’t entered Rome in dog shows.
As an actor, he’s a natural.
“He followed all the instructions: sit, lie down, right spin and left spin, and he did a ‘leave it’ – and the more reaction he got from the audience, the more he loved it,” says Peron. “When he got applause he knew it was for him.”
“At the curtain call he pushed out in front of all of us, and took his applause,” she adds. “He didn’t know he was acting, but he definitely adored the adoration.”
Edmonton has a rich untold (until now) history of Theatre Dogs. It would be hard to name a theatre in Edmonton that didn’t have a dog on stage at some point in its history. The Citadel Theatre recently did Shakespeare in Love (which also has a dog in the script); the Mayfield Dinner Theatre and other companies have mounted productions of Wizard of Oz – which of course stars everyone’s favourite canine character, Toto.
“Never work with kids or dogs” is a show biz adage for a reason. They’re both unpredictable, and usually adorable – so you will be upstaged. One also runs the risk of derailing the narrative due to an unwanted chorus of “awws” from the audience. A production of Wizard of Oz in Calgary was reportedly spoiled because they kept Toto on stage while Dorothy sang Somewhere Over the Rainbow. The audience gave all its attention to the lovable hound instead of the human. At least he didn’t start howling.
Not all doggos are cut out for theatre – like Stephanie Wolfe’s current dog ‘Kane.’
Locals still remember actor Stephanie Wolfe’s dog Jake – a “exceptionally cute” blue heeler-lab cross – in his role as “Floating Dog Head” in an improvised ‘90s show called The Jonny and Poki Variety Hour. Wolfe would lift the dog up, poke his head through the curtain and move him around in response to questions on psychic matters.
Jake was game for anything. Wolfe says, “He was like, ‘OK, I guess I’m going here now. Oh, mom, are you lifting me up now? Oh, OK. What’s all those people out there?’ He loved it. As long as you have treats and lots of love they’ll do whatever you want.”
Sadly, Jake is no longer with us.
The unfairness of our beloved canine family members dying after 15 years brings us to a recent poignant play specifically written about a dog: Jezebel, at the Still Point, a Theatre Network “dance-theatre” production in which an astronaut – playwright-actor Ainsley Hillyard – and her loyal canine co-pilot search for the secret of time travel. The six-year-old French bulldog named Jezebel played herself (top photo).
“When she realized there was an audience in the darkness she just wanted to go and say hi to everyone. I didn’t stop her,” Hillyard says. “I let her dictate where she went, and I would improvise around her.”
She adds, “I think it deepens the work. The whole play is about our relationship we have with our pets, and the idea that Jezebel and I are traveling through outer space to figure out time travel – so she never has to die.
“Whatever she does as a dog makes it more poignant. She’s not acting. She’s just being a dog.”
What do the dogs think of all this? They don’t.
Dog brains are not wired to store memories of experiences like human brains are. Not only are Theatre Dogs unaware they’re acting, they also don’t remember it afterwards. Yet dogs make powerful associations – like months later Jezebel still knowing the exact location of the theatre where she had such a good time, and dragging her owner there on walks without exactly knowing why.
Or maybe Alice starts salivating for a treat every time her human starts reciting lines of Shakespeare.
Nature teaches beasts to know their friends!
