How do you rehearse a play where the script changes every single night?
That’s the dilemma facing Calgary actor and director Karen Johnson-Diamond, who is starring in a production of Every Brilliant Thing, a solo show by British playwright Duncan MacMillan where the second character is the audience.
Every Brilliant Thing tells the story of a seven-year-old with a depressed mom who doesn’t think life is worth living.
Her depression prompts her child to start writing down all the brilliant things that do make it worth living -- not-so-glamorous things like ice cream, or water fights, or riding on roller-coasters, or the smell of old books.
As the woman’s child grows up, the list grows longer and takes on meaning of its own in their own life.
What makes the script different every night is that each night’s audience helps compile the list with a few of their own brilliant things.
If anyone can figure out how to rehearse a play where the script changes from performance to performance, it’s Johnson-Diamond, who was one of the mainstays behind the live, improvised Calgary soap opera Dirty Laundry for years, and for Every Brilliant Thing, she has a plan.
“You do it for test audiences,” she said.
And while Every Brilliant Thing is a play that addresses mental health and depression, it’s also ultimately kind of a feel-good piece of theatre about life.
“It’s pure joy (to perform),” said Johnson-Diamond.
“Mental health is not a taboo subject anymore,” she added. “I’m a huge crier. It’s more acceptable to talk about therapy and mental health now (than it used to be). It (the play) touches people in so many ways.”
Every Brilliant Thing has been running in various productions around the world (including one at the 2017 High Performance Rodeo in Calgary performed by co-creator Jonny Donahoe) since it premiered in 2014 at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and also became an HBO comedy special.
It’s only one of the projects Johnson-Diamond has going. The other one is Silent Sky, a drama about Henrietta Leavitt, an astronomer born in the 19th century who worked as a “human computer” at the Harvard College Observatory cataloging the position and brightness of stars.
Johnson-Diamond directed Silent Sky, which runs through the weekend at the Engineered Air Theatre in Arts Commons, for Fire Exit Theatre, and says it’s an extraordinary story about a woman trying to reconcile the science of the stars with the realities of being an American woman at the turn of the 20th century.
“It asks the question, ‘What is your heaven?‘” said Johnson-Diamond.
As far as improvising, whether in life or on stage, Johnson-Diamond says there’s no better guidance than that provided by Rebecca Northan, the former Calgarian who created Blind Date, another improvised play that became a global smash.
“Just take care of the person you’re on stage with, as Rebecca Northan says,” Johnson-Diamond said. “It’s all about honouring your guest/partner.”
“The audience is my partner in this show,” she adds. “I just hope the audience comes again and again and again to see this show.”
Every Brilliant Thing opens April 11 at the Pumphouse Theatre. For more information, go here.
Silent Sky runs through March 30 at the Engineered Air Theatre. For more information, go here.
