Man of many talents - theater artist Charles Follini

Performing Arts & Entertainment in Canada, Spring, 1998 by Edith Hoisington Miller

Although he is only 25, Charles Follini has already had quite a bit of theatre experience. He will be performing with the Atlantic Theatre Festival in Wolfville, Nova Scotia this summer - and it's not his first time with this company. In 1995 he appeared in The Tempest and A Flea in Her Ear.

Having started with piano lessons at six and then music festivals in Sackville, New Brunswick and Halifax, Follini played trumpet in youth orchestras and soon began composing music. Playing the role of Schroeder in a high school production of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown so inspired him that it was a toss-up, he says, as to whether to major in music or theatre at university. He solved the dilemma by attending Acadia University in Wolfville where he studied theatre under Michael Bawtree and Colin Bernhardt, and music composition under Christoph Both and Owen Stevens.

Follini performed at Acadia in The Merchant of Venice, The Brothers Karamazov, Our Town, and Spring Awakening; did lighting for Murder in the Cathedral; sound and music for Long Day's Journey Into Night; and composed music for Medea.

Of seven plays mounted at Acadia Theatre Company's 1994 Mini-Fest of original one-act plays, Anne Chodowski and John Muise at Acadia wrote that, "The most enthusiastically received was Charles Follini's Soul of the Lonely Child".

Summers were used for appearances with Ship's Company Theatre in Parrsboro, Nova Scotia in Catlover; and with Tantramar Theatre Festival in Amherst, Nova Scotia in A Little Bird Told Me, In Our Own Backyard, and An Evening With George Bernard Shaw. Of the two Shaw one-act plays, Tom McCoag of the Chronicle Herald stated, "His performance is superb...Follini catches the audience right from the start of Village Wooing," adding, "He puts in a stunning, powerful performance as the young lover in How He Lied to Her Husband."

After Acadia, Follini alternated between Toronto and Amherst. In Toronto he was involved with the Really Little Theatre Company and the Medieval and Renaissance Players, singing in the Amadeus Choir, and surviving on part-time jobs.

His contributions to Tantramar Theatre Society in Amherst have been multifaceted - writing, acting, arranging music and directing. Televisions For Sale! (in 1995) is a good example of Follini's effective directing and approachable script for young actors, who performed with panache. For the first production of The Late Show, his play about teenage life in a small town, he directed around town in different outdoor locations. In early 1998, the play toured Amherst high schools.

Follini directed adaptations for elementary schools of Shakespearean plays, Macbeth and Midsummer Night's Dream, which also toured the schools. For these school productions, he devised simple, basic sets and was aided by a clever costume designer, Karen Neary.

"The Tantramar Young Company is now a group of children who will approach Shakespeare, when they meet his own poetry in high school, without trepidation," said Marjorie Gann in the Amherst Daily News. "They have grasped Shakespeare...under the able direction of Charles Follini."

When arranging music, Follini uses live and taped music as well as computer recording programmes. In his plays Pogie and A Tantramar Tale, the actors sang a number of traditional songs he had arranged for them and the accompanying musicians.

Tantramar Theatre Society's artistic director Bette Douglas exclaims, "The pupils love Charles!" Douglas says Follini is, "One of the most brilliant people in the Atlantic region - writer, composer, actor, organizer, teacher! Charles is a jewel," she enthuses, "A precious resource."

An all-round person, Follini enjoys camping and horseback riding. Easygoing, he seems able to interrupt thoughts about his next creative project with friendly conversation.

In November 1997, he directed The Wild Guys by Rebecca Shaw and Andrew Wreggitt for Tantramar. A satire on Robert Bly's Iron John, four guys go on a male initiation/escape weekend in the woods. The dinner theatre production was held in a grand old Amherst building, a former post office, with the audience seated in theatre-in-the-round fashion.

There's a similarity in music composition and theatre; there is counterpoint, or dialogue among players, be they musicians or characters in a play. Follini noted that in Wild Guys, "The rehearsal process was very interesting. Each character has a moment where he reveals something about himself."

"It's the actors who really create the play and the director helps shape it. It's an exciting play because there's a delicate interplay among the four characters. There's a balance, and all the characters are equally important. Together they contribute to the whole idea...the complete spectrum of humanity."

A sequel to this play by the same playwrights, Two-step, was directed by Follini in March 1998, also in dinner theatre format in the same venue. It was again a big success.

Charles Follini would like to perform in other theatres, and work with different directors. He enjoys writing and directing, but, "It seems that sometimes, whatever I've done most recently, I don't want to do for a while. As a director, you have to have ten different things on your mind. In acting, you just do it. You can throw it out?