My Story @ Tarragon

Rick Roberts

I would have to say that the Tarragon Theatre is the main repository of my theatre memories.

I have great ones in all of the rehearsal halls. I love that lounge-y area (upstairs) on breaks — it feels like a main theatre intersection because it seems you can run into any actor in town (auditioning, rehearsing) if you hang around long enough. I love that the door to Andy’s (now Andrea’s) office was (is) always open. I love reading and re-reading the quotes on the walls in the dressing rooms. Of being nervous and opening gifts before shows. How welcomed and well-cared for I felt when I self-produced shows in the Extra Space. Sitting in that playwriting office deciding whether to plug in the laptop or the heat. Procrastinating alone, flipping through old plays that were stored there. Eavesdropping on someone else’s rehearsal. I have many memories associated with the writing of Mimi in that office. Melody and Allen and I had our eureka moment in there. Meetings with Richard in his office over crazy, early, non-sensical drafts. I really liked the feeling though, when the play was in tech rehearsals. I was doing a show in Stratford and could only come in periodically to sit in on rehearsals. I’d slip in. The theatre was dark, and no one would know I was there. We were blessed with the perfect cast, the perfect director, the perfect everything. Everyone got along really well, and I kind of felt outside everything, in a good way. At this point, there wasn’t much to do in the way of rewrites (the mother-load came later, during previews) and it was kind of magical to be invisible and watch all these incredible talents working so hard to bring to life a thing that Melody and Allen and I had chipped away at for years. You kind of get this feeling of falling in love with everyone.

Mimi, or A Poisoner’s Comedy by Allen Cole, Melody A. Johnson and Rick Roberts, featuring Martin Julien and Trish Lindström. Photo by Cylla von Tiedemann.