Steven Brown's blog

Friday afternoon. A quick break for lunch before pressing on to the Revue Stage for Event #44. I repair to a cozy little eatery not terribly far from the venue called Chez Nous for an excellent bowl of chili and an incomparable square of Torta Rustica. Love that Fontina cheese.

Having absorbed the lesson of the morning I elect to leave the car and walk back to the island. It’s solid rain now in October town. Johnston Street is like a tableau out of the Floating World–land of a thousand umbrellas. People seem in a hurry to get where they’re going.

I shake out my umbrella and enter the theatre. Haven’t been in here before. It’s a fine, small, intimate setting, a stage and a semi-circle of seating up shallow risers. It’s not quite a sell out but a good crowd is on hand at show time.

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Friday morning.  I rise at the unconscionable hour of nine a.m. for a return engagement at the Waterfront Theatre.  Running late as usual so decide to drive even though it’s just a ten minute walk to the island.  I think, oh yeah, bound to be pretty quiet down there this time of day, parking, which often is, won’t be a problem.  Maybe a few tumbleweeds of rain blowing down Cartwright Street but yeah, we got this whole thing under control.  Wrong.  The joint is crawling with traffic.  Now I’m thinking, a bit frantically, “What did you expect?  What did you expect?”  I circle round in a crush of cars and pedestrians and veer off to check out my secret parking place.  Luck is with me and it’s empty.  I snug in and get to the theatre.  Things are in fact running a bit late.  It’s not a sell-out, but close.

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     Thursday night at the Waterfront Theatre.  I’m twenty minutes early but the place is already nearly full.  You encounter very few people who have any interest in literature but that’s not going to be a problem tonight or this week on Granville Island.  I overhear someone say, “One of my daughter’s friends, she’s fifteen.  She’s going to five events.”  I think, good for you, daughter’s friend.  I overhear someone else.  “Wayne Johnston.  Wayne Johnston.  I love him!”  And someone else:  “I’m not a mystery reader, but I was intrigued!”

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Laughter is the best medicine.  I was reminded of this old Reader’s Digest homily at Saturday afternoon’s event at the PTC (Playwrights Theatre Centre) Studio.  Laugh until it hurts.  Laugh because it hurts.  Laugh and maybe you’ll feel better.  Laugh because one person’s misery can be another person’s mirth.   Laugh (because it’s probably a good idea) at the bittersweet nature of existence. 

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During the question period at the end of Tuesday night’s “Three Views of Vietnam” event at the Waterfront Theatre a gentleman in the audience asked the three authors on stage when they thought interest in Vietnam would die down or end.  It was an odd question to which there really was no answer and the audience seemed as perplexed by it as the people sitting on the stage.

One thing the strange question did seem to emphasize is that interest in Vietnam is indeed strong, a fact one could also gather by the size of the audience that showed up here when there was serious competition coming from three other events happening at the same time, including the star-studded Grand Openings.

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I remember the expression “the mysterious east”, a cliché not much in circulation these days.  The author of this large and ambitious novel flirts with cliché using his title but the story he unfolds is reassuringly original.  “East” turns out to be specifically south-east Asia, more specifically Vietnam and Laos as they were constituted in what used to be called French Indo-China.  This is a period piece all right, complete with white suits and pith helmets under the scorching sun.  In truth in some ways it’s vaguely reminiscent of Conrad with maybe even a dash of Jules Verne.  For one thing there’s a long trip up a river, a mission deep into the sweating, choleric jungle. Mekong! The name alone is enough to make a fabulist swoon  This is a mystery story, a search epic and a fantasy camp for anyone drawn to the exotic, the lurid, the unlikely and the seemingly impossible.  It’s a tale of obsession and of love. “East” is a kind of addiction, a dependency, an inevitability and a tiger infested myth.

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Waiting for Peter to appear on stage Sunday night I couldn't help overhear a conversation between the ladies to my right.  One said to the other:  "I told my mother I was going to see Peter Mansbridge tonight.  She looked at me and said, ‘I wouldn't cross the street to see him!'"  Crotchety matters notwithstanding, a large number of people had crossed the street to see Peter Mansbridge and stood patiently in the cold rain for the Stanley Theatre's doors to open too.  Now we were all seated, waiting expectantly. A short intro by Hal Wake and another by Trudy Hofley from Scotia (Bank) Private Client Group, the sponsor of the event—and voilà!  The man himself.  My first thought of course was:  he looks and sounds exactly as he does on television.

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7:50 p.m.  Ten minutes to show time.  I haven't spotted a single person I know.  Significance?  ( - ).  Spot Elizabeth Bachinsky.  Know her less than slightly from a brief period where we shared a common employer.  Notice she's in a dress, and has changed her hair.

Have never been to a Poetry Bash.  Haven't been to a poetry reading in what feels like a very long time, excepting two days ago.  I think that counts, bro.  Poetry=Poetry.  Bash=Party.  The bar is open and I do have a drink in hand.

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Friday afternoon and back at the Granville Island Stage to catch up with four novelists — make that five including Merilyn Simonds, the show's moderator, to find out about the writing process, the creative spark that gets a writer writing, where it comes from and where it leads.  I'd heard a theatre staff member advise a couple of patrons entering the theatre to fill up "gaps" or empty seats rather than, supposedly, make new ones, as audiences tend to do, because the show was sold out.  Sold out!  I was impressed.  I couldn't help

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Thursday afternoon and I'm thinking I must be nuts.  I've walked into a theatre full of high school students.  The swarming hoards.  I'm immediately drop-kicked into a nightmarish flashback of burning hormones, lost timetables and sadistic math teachers.  I hope I'm going to be okay.  The show hasn't even started and the kids are climbing over the seats already.  A courageous usher is endeavoring to corral.

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