Memo to File, re: Oprah

Note: this originally appeared on the Blogger’s previous blog a few years ago, and is re-published on the eve of Oprah’s farewell episode.

It was a conversation I’ve had with many lawyer friends of mine. They continue to be inundated with work, the partners they work with are sadist taskmasters, and their Machiavellian colleagues continually prey on their clients. People do not take vacations for fear that their files will have magically alighted onto the desks of the lawyer next door. My dear friends are ignoring their health and have begun to forgo family obligations, and return from work later at night. Despite our best efforts, it is becoming more difficult to “let go”.

There is, however, a simple solution that, while it may not make the nightmare files or the fear go away, can help alleviate just a little pressure. The solution is simple that no one has ever thought of it. Every day, for one hour a day, all business must shut down so that everyone in the office can … watch Oprah. Together. In the conference room.

Don’t look at me like that. I’m deadly serious.

Everyone who has stayed home from work can attest that Oprah has a hypnotic hold over her audience. On her show, you see ordinary people, sports figures, celebrities and politicians bare their souls. People discuss social issues, from racism and sexism to homophobia and ageism, to everyone’s great cathartic release. Recent topics include her revisit with Neo-Nazis who walked out on her in the late 80s during a taping, and Chaz Bono’s transition to a biological male. Oprah’s show is like a shining beacon, one to where celebrities tearfully go to address and atone for public embarrassment and sins, or just to promote their new line of handbags. The reason why Oprah is one of the most powerful cultural figures of our time is that she empathizes with everyone and welcomes them on her show, no matter how famous or ordinary they are. Although some (still) attribute the show’s lasting success female bonding at its most powerful, but the power of The Big O is not localized to women. When she speaks, people listen. Not just women: everyone. Oprah matters.

Comedy Tonight!

Everyone, it seems, loves Stephen Sondheim: even lawyers.

Here in Vancouver, the legal profession gathers once a year to stage a charity event show for two local non-profit arts groups, the Carousel Theatre for Young People and the Touchstone Theatre. This is the annual Lawyer Show. While productions in the past had a legal slant, such as Witness for the Prosecution and Inherit the Wind, the lawyers have expanded their repertoire in the last few years: in fact, they performed Shakespeare for the last two years and by all accounts, the lawyers have a good deal of fun staging it, whether they were reciting soliloquies or merely carrying spears. 

This year’s play will prove to be the most high-risk yet, as the lawyer are staging their first musical. Based on Sondheim’s musical, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum shall continue to satisfy every lawyer’s need to unshackle the more stringent conventions attached to the profession and give them a chance to burst into song. There’s an old joke that all lawyers are at some level really failed actors with a need to command a stage, so the leap for litigators to tread the boards has somehow always been natural and organic.

The illustrious cast includes a number of leading practitioners and up-and-coming legal superstars. It also includes at least two trained theatre professionals. The feisty redhead in the picture above is the writer’s good friend Amanda Kemshaw, a litigator and former dancer trained in the style of Martha Graham. Also look out for Danielle Lemon, a sole practitioner in intellectual property law whose vocal stylistics can be heard on her MySpace page.

The show opens with the now-immortal “Comedy Tonight”, and indeed comedy is what one will get in this show. Forum boasts all the elements of classic force including mistaken identity, improbably situations, and a good deal of door-slamming. Since farce actively encourages transgressive behaviour, it may be one of the few times when the lawyers let loose with a few double entendres in mixed company and get away with it. Needless to say, from the writer has heard from former cast members of previous shows, everyone has a grand time performing, even if the lawyers are opposing counsel who have faced off in court before! There’s also the required elaborate chase scene at the end, where everyone is somehow resolved through bizarre plot machinations, deus ex machine, or as Shakespeare himself once wrote, “I don’t know; it’s a mystery”.

This year’s Lawyer Show plays nightly from May 4 to May 7 at the Waterfront Theatre on Granville Island. Click here for ticket information. Take note that the $75 ticket also includes a $45 tax receipt, since it’s a charity event. Thursday's performance even has an oyster bar after the show!


Bring everyone to the Forum, including and especially opposing counsel and actors who may one day wonder if they too could suffer the fate of leaving the theatre to become lawyers.

Hypersmash