The Opening Act is Published
Welcome to My Website
I am a bit late to the game of putting up a website but I am here now and happy that you are too. I want to welcome anyone who has come to find out more about my books or even about me. I hope you enjoy the site which will be ever-changing so please make this only the first of your many visits.
My biggest news at the moment is that I recently published The Opening Act: Canadian Theatre History, 1945 – 1953, an important contribution to Canadian history that BC Studies: The British Columbian Quarterly calls “an indispensable, highly readable compendium.”
From the day I decided to write The Opening Act, or it decided I was going to write it, this book took thirty-four years to be published. How the book came to be written is a story in itself. My father, Floyd Caza, was a professional actor from 1946 to 1952, ironically almost the exact time frame of my book. Only days after dad’s death at 55, I was sitting on the floor of their living room going through his papers when five yellowed newspaper clippings dropped out onto the floor. It is still a marvel to me that those few pieces of paper actually evolved into this book. There was a small bio on dad and four reviews from plays he appeared in with the Everyman Theatre and the Ottawa Stage Society, circa 1946-48. I thought perhaps they were amateur productions but I looked at the names from the reviews and was stunned to see actors that I recognized well – Christopher Plummer, Arthur Hill, Ted Follows and Murray Westgate. I was immediately intrigued because I knew they were all professional actors. Dad had never talked much about his time in the theatre. He did not seem to think it was a big deal. It took his death for me to find out that it actually was. It happened in a split second as I sat there on the floor with the clippings in my hand. All these fireworks went off in my head and I KNEW instantly not only was there a book in there somewhere, I was going to be the one to do it. That is how The Opening Act was born.
