#canon character: anna conroy

[sandybrett]

The Slings & Arrows timeline

[Reposted from my previous blog, which I'm going to deactivate soon.]

I’ve attempted to compile as much information as possible about the timeline of Slings & Arrows as a resource for myself and other fic writers. By “resource” I do not mean “definitive guide,” because, as I suspected going in, it does not hold together very well. There’s one obvious inconsistency—Richard has supposedly been at the festival for eight years, but doesn’t know Geoffrey. There’s a sense I get, which I’ve seen at least one other person agree with but I don’t know if anyone else does, that based on the way everyone talks about the famous Hamlet and how much Oliver and Ellen have aged since then, it must have been more than seven years ago.

Under a cut for length and spoilers.

S1E1 • The Toronto Maple Leafs were eliminated in the first round of the 2003 Stanley Cup playoffs, so the 2003 season at New Burbage has to have opened in mid-April. (Apparently the guy sitting behind the Minister of Culture during the show is a Philadelphia Fliers fan.) • Kate saw Geoffrey’s Hamlet when she was 12, which would put her at 19 now. • Oliver has directed the Dream 10 times. Ellen has played Titania 6 times. Stratford does the Dream roughly every five years. • Basil says “Here’s to another 25 years with the festival.” He doesn’t explicitly say Ellen’s already been with the festival for 25 years, but that seems to be the implication. If we assume she has a college degree, she must be at least 48, meaning she would have played Ophelia at 41. If we assume she arrived as a teenager, like Kate, she’s more like 44 and played Ophelia at 37. Either way, it would mean she had already been with the festival 18 years by the time of Geoffrey’s breakdown. • This is the festival’s 44th season, meaning the festival was founded in 1959. • Oliver saw Burton’s Hamlet in ’64, and it sounds like he was an adult. That would put him at least in his early 60s. • Oliver seems to claim that his sleeping with Ellen was responsible for Geoffrey’s great performance. Obviously this is a stretch, and Oliver later admits it wasn’t true. But I doubt he would be even making that claim if he had slept with Ellen between the second and third shows, as many fans have assumed. It sounds like they slept together before the show opened. • Ellen angrily whispers “Tell him!” to Oliver, confirming that they’ve already slept together by opening night. But Geoffrey doesn’t know. So Oliver is claiming that by sleeping with Ellen and not telling Geoffrey about it, he somehow made a major difference in Geoffrey’s performance. • Past!Ellen still seems to be of typical childbearing age—probably closer to 37 than 41. Although given that Geoffrey is extremely drunk and probably already not in the best mental health, he might be overestimating how easy it would be for Ellen to get pregnant.

S1E2 • Anna knows Geoffrey, but Richard doesn’t, even though Richard has supposedly been with the festival for eight years. • One of the speakers at the funeral met Oliver at the Manitoba Theatre Center in 1978. • Geoffrey says “There was a kind of electricity in this place I have not experienced anywhere else,” which I’m guessing means his professional theatre experience is not limited to New Burbage and Theatre Sans Argent.

S1E3 • Geoffrey’s other roles at New Burbage included Romeo, Mark Antony, and Prince Hal. It’s not specified whether he played Antony in Julius Caesar or Antony and Cleopatra. • Darren directed Titus Andronicus in ’97, one year after Geoffrey’s breakdown. Geoffrey seems to have seen it, implying he was out of the hospital by then. • Geoffrey stormed the stage in the middle of a college performance. Admittedly, it’s implied to have been an insensitive one, but still, this suggests to me that he already had some mental health issues. • Geoffrey and Ellen played “all the great love scenes” together—probably an exaggeration, but there was definitely more than just R+J and Hamlet.

S1E6

    •    The actor playing Laertes was named Brian, and seems to have been someone both Ellen and Geoffrey knew well. Is it the same Brian we meet in Season 2? He looks way too young. There could easily be two different Brians—after all, there are two different Barbaras. You’d think if there were multiple Brians Geoffrey might distinguish among them, but then again, Ellen probably remembers which Brian played her brother.

    •    This is kind of a tangent, but does anyone else get the sense our heroes have more of a history with Basil than we’re being told about?

    •    At this point Claudius is not being played by Brian Cabot, but by a guy named Alan.

    •    The end credits distinguish the past and present actors by listing Jack’s castmates as “Horatio” and Geoffrey’s as “Horatio (1996)”, confirming that the show does take place in 2003.

S2E1 • Kate receives and accepts a marriage proposal from a well-established actor, which makes me doubt that she’s really supposed to be 19 or 20. • When Ellen asks whether Geoffrey really hasn’t slept with anyone in 8 years, Geoffrey says “You have to remember I was in an asylum.” I think this implies he was hospitalized for a fairly long time.

S2E2 • Veronica Tennant is a real person; I don’t think she’s supposed to be related to Geoffrey. • Geoffrey says he’s known Ellen for ten years. Does that include the seven-year gap? If so, they only knew each other for two years pre-Hamlet; if not, it’s more like nine years. Two is highly unlikely given the number of times they’re implied to have acted together, but possible given the structure of the New Burbage season (see S2E6). Nine seems a little too long but is plausible, although presumably they weren’t dating for that entire time. • Henry refers to New Burbage as “home”, implying he spent a substantial chunk of his early career there. It’s not clear how much he overlapped with Geoffrey and Ellen.

S2E3 • Henry and Brian played Hal and Falstaff opposite each other. It was probably since the disastrous Hamlet if Brian is indeed the same Brian who played Laertes. Henry has also played Hamlet, and Macbeth three times.

S2E5 • Oliver directed Geoffrey in R+J twice, and the first one was 20 years ago—12 years before Hamlet. He was upstaging Mercutio during the Queen Mab speech, so he was either Romeo or Benvolio. • Ellen played Paulina in The Winter’s Tale at some point.

S2E6 • Darren and Geoffrey were in college together in 1980. If they were freshmen, that would mean Geoffrey was about 34 at the time of his breakdown and 41 when he returned to the festival. • Sarah says that Romeo and Juliet is going to run for twelve weeks. This implies that New Burbage productions don’t run for the entire season the way Stratford productions do, which would also explain why, in Season 1, Hamlet starts later in the season than the Dream despite being the flagship production. If we assume that this season, like the previous season, opens in mid-April, Romeo and Juliet would only run until mid-July. Then, if the next set of plays opens immediately afterward and runs for twelve weeks, the season ends in mid-October.

S3E2 • Ellen says “We’re not in the Young Company anymore” implying that she and Geoffrey were both in the New Burbage Young Company. • Ellen was in Three Sisters with Charles at the National Arts Center—she played Masha, Barbara played Olga, and I’m guessing from their relative ages that Charles played Chebutykin. This seems to be the only time they’ve worked together, so presumably he hasn’t worked at New Burbage much during Ellen and Geoffrey’s adult lives, unless Ellen and Charles just happened to never be cast in the same play. • Geoffrey and Charles, however, have obviously worked together quite a bit, but we never learn where or when. • Barbara has been cast as Ellen’s older sister twice, so I’m guessing either they’re very close in age or Barbara’s a bit older. Barbara is getting hot flashes earlier than expected, which would imply that Ellen is not yet getting hot flashes.

S3E3 • Oliver directed Geoffrey in seven plays at New Burbage. This does not eliminate the possibility that he could have directed Geoffrey in more plays elsewhere, or that Geoffrey was in other plays at New Burbage with other directors.

S3E5 • Ellen says that she and Barbara were “roommates on tour,” implying that’s how they met. I don’t know whether this was for Three Sisters or something else. Judging from the fact that Geoffrey already knows Barbara, this seems to have been before Ellen and Geoffrey got together. Ellen was apparently “crazy about” a guy named Mike Greenfield, whom she found having sex with a girl named Mary in the green room. • When Barbara says she and Ellen are “bitter and menopausal,” Ellen starts to say “I’m not—” and then breaks off. She’s admitted to being “bitter” in the past, and “I’m not menopausal!” would be the funnier response, so this is further evidence that Ellen is not yet menopausal. • Barbara says that Ellen’s been at New Burbage “her whole life,” although clearly there’s been at least one short break.

S3E6 • Frank says he’s been with New Burbage “ever since it was a tent,” even though, according to S1E3, he wasn’t there for Geoffrey’s breakdown.

Other notes • In 2003, Paul Gross and Mark McKinney both turned 44, Martha Burns turned 46, Stephen Ouimette turned 49,  Don McKellar turned 40, Susan Coyne turned 45, and Rachel McAdams and Luke Kirby both turned 25. (Of course, Rachel McAdams played a high school student in Mean Girls that same year.) Paul Gross would have been 41 when he played Hamlet at Stratford. Martha Burns played Ophelia at some point before that, but I wasn’t able to find any indication of when. • It’s never explained what differentiates the apprentices from the Young Company, except that the Young Company get large roles instead of playing “maids and fairies.” If we accept that Kate really is supposed to be 19 when we meet her, perhaps apprenticeships are for college students on vacations or actors starting their careers directly out of high school, whereas the Young Company is for people who’ve just finished their acting degrees. However, that seems not to have been how it was for the Stratford Young Company, on which the New Burbage one is presumably modeled: Susan Coyne was in several Young Company productions when she was nearly thirty and had already performed in a regular production at Stratford.

Additions, theories, input from people who know more about theatre than I do all welcome!

[ifeelbetterer]

Spider-Man. Spike. Anna Conroy.

Spiderman.

Realistic headcanon: His first thought after being dubbed an Avenger was, “oh shit and there’s not even vine anymore” but he will never admit it.

Not realistic but hilarious:  Is more than 50% confused about who is fighting whom all the time. Has latched onto Tony more as like a baseline of superherodom than because he’s firmly got a grip on the ethos of that side. He has flashcards of superheroes faces and he’s studying, really he is, but damn. There’s a lot of them. And there are already two bird dudes. And that’s not even counting the evil bird dude he himself has already fought. He is CONFUSED.

Heartcrushing headcanon: Aunt May survived and she’ll spend weeks trying to find out what happened to Peter because only one person knew he left the bus and that’s who didn’t survive. She’ll patiently interview survivors, but there are no answers.

Fuck canon: Everyone who disintegrated is having a party on some other level of existence. Peter is currently having a dance-off with Peter Quill. Quill doesn’t know about dabbing.

Spike.

Realistic headcanon: Once a poet, always a poet. He’s been writing poetry all along. There are reams of it hidden away in secret places all around the world.

Not realistic but hilarious: Spike buys his nail polish at Hot Topic. The same one every time. There is a bored high schooler who mans the cash register on the evening shift and they are deeply impressed by Spike’s Look (TM). Spike preens.

Heartcrushing headcanon: Having died ignobly and nobly and had neither stick, Spike begins to develop the obsession with death he once attributed to slayers. At least once, it’s only the fact that he thought of Dawn at the last minute that has saved him.

Fuck canon: Oddly, I always wished he HADN’T been brought back on Angel. He had a great death and it was what he chose and I hate that they screwed him on that to make him roll back a few levels of character development for Angel.

Anna Conroy (Slings and Arrows).

Realistic headcanon: Was a burgeoning theatre kid in her teens when a cruel comment from a drama teacher devastated her. Her being who she is, she repressed the shit out of the pain and developed a thicker skin as she redirected towards math class.

Not realistic but hilarious: Has been giving everyone decaf coffee when they make her fetch their coffee for them.

Heartcrushing headcanon: She’s actually asexual but very romantic. She has never heard of the term or the school of thought and has always believed that she’s broken somehow.

Fuck canon: At some point, Richard has to crawl through a mud puddle in the rain crying and apologizing to her. She leaves him there.