Alain Platel’s mapping of “anotherness” in Out of Context - for Pina by Coman Poon

We are animals. Language is wild.


“Us” absorbs “them”, and “another” is in some way like us even while it is different.


Blindness is an essential element of knowledge.


The performer dies in order to give value to that which has been degraded and rendered profane.


The witness gives value to the sacred by co-creating a privileged moment of communal unity.


I was recently reminded of these elements of “anotherness” upon being introduced to Alain Platel’s les ballets C de la B, which launched both the National Arts Centre’s fall dance season in Ottawa and Harbourfront Centre’s World Stage 2010/11 season in Toronto with their ecstatic new work Out of Context - for Pina, aptly dedicated to the late German dancer/choreographer Pina Bausch.


In contrast to earlier works by this celebrated Belgian dance theatre troupe, Out of Context - for Pina opens with a minimally adorned stage: two lone microphones on stands and a wash of white light across an empty stage. Like a performance installation, we are left to stare into and contemplate this theatrical stillness in context of our expectations of performance. A lone woman emerges from amidst the audience, climbs up onto and crosses upstage and stands with her back to the audience. She methodically sheds her attire until she is standing in undergarments and, in a choreographic homage to Pina Bausch’s unveiling of the theatrical “fourth wall” in the seminal Kontakthof, turns around and walks downstage to present herself to our gaze. In overlapping sequence, each of the performers repeat this framing ritual, ending by seductively draping and shifting their disrobed bodies beneath the plush of a uni-form red blanket.

Tonight’s dance-theatrical contract is intimated: experiences, and not stories per se, will be staged on these performers’ bodies. Each performer turns around and looks directly out at us, the audience, inviting us to straddle this liminality. What is the experiential fine line between voyeurism ; exhibitionism, passion and pathology, poignancy and indictment, escapism and realism, fiction and biography? Out of Context - for Pina intentionally plays with these considerations by collapsing the boundaries between audience and performer, psyche and body, human nature and culture.

In looking to reveal what is hidden, and to inquire about our connections and differences as human animals, Alain Platel employs dramaturgical strategies to simultaneously implicate our bodies and personas as both object and subject. Through this self-conscious labyrinth of mirrors, we are invited to gaze inwardly and outwardly at the refractions between our individual and collective yearnings.

As individuals as well as part of a collective, we all bring our own experience -our thoughts, imaginations, feelings and responses- to what we see, hear and sense. Through a language of expressionistically vocal, writhing and gesticulating bodies, Out of Context - for Pina suggests that beneath the surface of difference, humans are self-aware animals uniquely united through tears, wounds and the transgression of boundaries. The canvas of our common humanity is sewn with communal experiences of loss, sacrifice, love and ecstasy. As Pina Bausch might say, this is the source of our greatest joy and trepidation.

Coman Poon  is an interdisciplinary artist-activist who integrates a multi-modal live art background, a long-time social and environmental justice activist practice, and training as an arts-informed coach and therapist to create a unique hybrid collaborative practice. With Erica Mott (Chicago, USA), he co-founded re[public] in/decency, an experiential think tank that explores the trans-national intersections between performance, social justice activism and arts-informed pedagogy. Read more!

A Note on New Writers From Harbourfront Centre

Over the next few months there will be some guest writers posting reviews on the site. The writers are members of the Embassy - an artist and audience development initiative offered as part of the World Stage series at Harbourfront Centre. Embassy members are Toronto-based artists and arts makers involved in local performing arts communities. As participants in the programme they have access to World Stage shows, they will be able to host Q&A discussions with visiting artists and the audience, and will also write reviews for the shows they see. The overarching goal of the Embassy is to generate healthy debate and critical discussion on the national and international work presented to audiences at World Stage. As stimulating discussion around performance is also a goal of Time and Space, it seemed a good fit to have the Embassy members post reviews here. From October 2010 to May 2011 you'll see a review for each of the 12 shows in the World Stage season, and we encourage you to jump right in and comment on what you read.

For more information on World Stage click here .

For questions about the Embassy you can write to embassy@harbourfrontcentre.com.

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REVIEW: Homegrown, Review by Aurora Stewart de Peña

Homegrown

Written by Catherine Frid

Directed by Beatriz Pizano

Presented by The Homegrown Project

Set & Lighting Design: Trevor Schwellnus

Sound Design: Thomas Ryder Payne

Assistant Director: Navneet Rai

Featuring: Keith Barker, Lwam Ghebrehariat, Omar Hady, Shannon Perreault, Nabeel Salameh, Razi Shawah

Theatre Passe Muraille Mainspace

I could chastise Don Peat and the Toronto Sun for the great injustice they paid playwright Catherine Frid by condemning her play Homegrown before it even had a chance to open, but he’s a dingbat and the Sun is a dingbat paper that only dingbats read, and ultimately he was directly responsible for the show’s immense popularity and so far sold out run. He managed to endow Frid, an emerging writer who in her own words is “not well known” with a rebellious mystique that’s made her into a sort of Angela Davis / Bart Simpson type person.

And if it was Frid’s mission to make the story of Shareef Abdelhaleem, the convicted member of the Toronto 18 on whom the play is centred, heard, well then she did, and Don Peat really helped a lot.

Because you know that Shareef’s story is sympathetically rendered, and we as North Americans with a very exciting news media industry (sinkholes) had pretty much forgotten all about the Toronto 18, who did not actually manage to explode anything on their list.

It’s important to revisit the events that lead up to the arrests and subsequent imprisonment of these men. It’s important to ask questions. It’s important to discuss amongst ourselves the actions that our government takes in war and peace. It’s important to speak up against racism when we see it. Ideally, these are privileges afforded to us as Canadians. That’s probably why Frid felt safe writing this play.  

Today during leisure reading time, I absorbed the first chapter of Darren O’Donnell’s Social Acupuncture. He writes about theatre as a forum for discussion and social change; the feelings prompted by watching something with a community of people may lead to discussion within that community. I think that as artists we all hope for audiences engaged enough to carry on the discussion. We all hope that we’re creating something relevant. We want to change what’s wrong and we hope we can miraculously do this through art.

I’m certain that Frid was hoping to facilitate discussion within her community about the subject of her play. Her attention to detail is meticulous; she writes with the precision of a lawyer. It seems that her heart is gum-stuck on the idea of justice and accuracy.

What’s been largely ignored by those swept up in the controversy of the play’s subject matter is the play itself. Though it’s a good spot to start re-educating ourselves about the events that lead up to the conviction and sentencing of the Toronto 18, it’s more than an episode of CSI Toronto. There’s a love story that runs through the basement of this play. It gives the it and the playwright a self-awareness that deserves some credit. There is much tenderness for Abdelhaleem (played by Lwam Ghebrehariat) in Frid’s writing. He’s lonely, he’s brilliant, he loves his cats a lot. He tells Frid’s stage counterpart Cate (played by Shannon Perreault) that he’d like to marry a younger version of her. They touch hands through the bullet-proof plexi-glass that separates them. The play is as much about the relationship between playwright and prisoner as it is about the facts. In the end, Cate comes to the cold conclusion that Abdelhaleem might have known more about the terrorist plot than he’d led her to believe. The realization that she may have been duped is stinging, it’s a shock to the character, though not the audience.

If you sympathize with someone you understand them, or at least attempt to understand them. Frid’s play, now so infamously touted as a sympathetic portrayal, attempts to understand Shareef Abdelhaleem as a man rather than as a mug shot. She approached the enemy unafraid, and after all, if these men are truly our enemies, it’s best to know them.

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REVIEW: Foster Child Play, Review by Aurora Stewart de Peña

Foster Child Play

Written by Alex Napier

Directed by Philip McKee

Presented by Island School

Composer: Katie Stelmanis

Featuring: Nika Mistruzzi, Jackie Rowland, Vanessa Dunn

Presented at Hub 14

Playing:

August 11th 8:00 PM

August 12th 8:00 PM

August 13th 8:00 PM

August 14th 8:00 PM

August 15th 2:00 PM

Of course this play features my beloved lady love Nika Mistruzzi. It was also assembled by treasured acquaintances Alex Napier (writer) and Philip McKee (director). The highly regarded Vanessa Dunn plays opposite the Neek-ster and Exciting New Young Person Jackie Rowland plays opposite everybody.

So I lean on an extreme bias. It’s okay; one of the reasons I’m friends with these people is because I think they’re smart and talented.

Alex Napier has written a play that my mother would say an actor could “lean up against”. It’s strong and layered, funny and sad. Two young room mates living in a stylishly beige world fall in friend-love over the irreparable damage caused to them by their mothers. In an attempt to create a new and functional unit, Alice (played by Mistruzzi in a pink dress) invites a 17 year old foster child named Tallulah (played by Rowland in hightop sneakers) to come and live in their downtown apartment. Sheila (played by Dunn in pleated shorts) is cautious about the whole situation.

Family damage is at the heart of Foster Child Play. It’s something that most of us have. We can generally look up and find cracks in the ceilings of our childhood homes. These days many of us opt to start over, leaving our families and making new ones out of friends, people we choose for ourselves.To overwrite the past and create a shining present is the challenge Napier gives her characters. Alice goes about rearing Tallulah (mostly already reared as a hair swishing 17 year old) in the most loving, graceful and unintentionally absurd way she knows how, idealizing her brokenness while showering her with immature affection.

Alice, as characterized by Mistruzzi, is a haphazard optimist. She is volatile and excitable, but her foil, Dunn’s Sheila, seems to me to be not so much a pessimist as a realist.* Sheila sees that Tallulah, who seethes with animosity for her but glows inwardly for Alice, is not the innocent country girl with invisible flowers in her hair, but is instead a sexually deviant attention seeking teenager in need of a lot more help than either one of them can give.

Under McKee’s direction, Napier’s carefully chosen words are endowed with the complexity and thoughtfulness with which they were written. Indeed, both writer and director are very good listeners. The very specific, halting, think-while-you-talk pattern of Toronto Girl dialect is perfectly captured and honoured, so much so that conversation over drinks afterwards was a bit self conscious. McKee has made a world that’s tense and vibrant, the lives of the characters unravel with a stately and mysterious progress; a crack, and then another crack, and then another, and then the roof caves in. The audience can see it coming, but that makes it all the more gripping.

Watching these women fall apart together, watching them break and then pick themselves up without successfully dusting off is both upsetting and hilarious. What makes Foster Child Play. so engaging to watch is seeing how hard everyone is trying. Though I’ll bet people will think this is absurdist, it’s very relatable. We’re all working through something, sorting through our pasts. Sometimes it’s extreme, funny and heartbreaking all at the same time.

*It’s been recently brought to my attention that I might be a nihilistic pessimist.

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Response to Don Peat's Article on Catherine Frid's Homegrown

I’ve never written for the Toronto Sun, but it must be fun coming up with all those flashy covers. Words like “Perv”, “Killer”, and “Terrorist”, (especially when spelled with exclamation points!!!) are great for grabbing people’s attention and keep the paper flying off the stands. Photos of scantily clad women also do the trick. My personal favourite is when they combine a photo of a partially nude woman with some word like “Murder!”, which actually references a completely different story. Way to sell papers! These folks really are geniuses.

In his story in the July 30th issue writer Don Peat took on the Summerworks Festival, and specifically the new play Homegrown by writer Catherine Frid. The piece is an autobiographical work which tells the story of Frid’s experience meeting and interviewing Shareef Abdelhaleem, one of the convicted members of the Toronto 18; the group which hatched an unsuccessful plot to blow up targets in Toronto. Peat tells his readers that the play is a “sympathetic portrayal” of a terrorist and insinuates that Frid is anti-Canadian. He points out (in the headline no less) that taxpayer dollars are supporting the play, and then lists in the body of the article the support that Summerworks gets from various levels of government.

I know that Peat and the rest of the Sun editorial team have a difficult task selling papers in today’s dwindling media market and that putting a photo and headline like this on the front page is a surefire way to get people to pick up the paper. But seriously, don’t you want to have a least a little bit of journalistic integrity?

Peat has written an opinion piece (disguised as a news story) about a play he has not seen or read. He also obviously didn’t do any research into the financial workings of the Summerworks festival if he thinks that the operating funding they get somehow gets passed on to the artists for the purposes of producing their work. A quick phone call to the festival would have told him that artists pay a fee to participate in the festival and then take home the box office. Maybe he should consider becoming a Canadian correspondent for Fox News. They love this kind of under-researched, poorly written, shock journalism.

Is this actually what our cultural discourse is coming to in Toronto? I understand and appreciate freedom of speech and I think Peat is perfectly entitled to his opinion. He is not, however, entitled to his own facts. Journalists have a responsibility to research the subjects they are writing about and regardless of whether or not they want to present an argument designed to swing the reader’s mind one way or another, they absolutely cannot just make things up because they want them to be true, even if it sells papers.

Oh course this article is likely to fuel ticket sales for Frid’s play, as well as the entire festival and we all have Peat to thank for that. But the larger question of whether or not tax dollars should be spent funding the arts has reared its head again and, judging by the comments on the Sun website, there is still a huge amount of work that the arts community needs to do in terms of educating the general public on this issue.

Funding culture in Canada (including all art forms, publishing, television, and radio) is not about lining the pockets of lazy artists who make work that is not successful enough to be financially viable. It is about protecting and promoting Canadian culture. Funding culture in Canada is an act of patriotism. It is about loving our country and wanting to see our stories, our ideas, and our viewpoints both represented and challenged.

Perhaps Mr. Peat thinks that Canadian culture should only be NHL hockey and American television? If so, then I would say that he is one who is anti-Canadian.
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Nina Arsenault goes from Dungeons and Dragons to playing Barbie

Though it’s unlikely you’ll ever find yourself in a game of Dungeons and Dragons with Nina Arsenault, if you do, make sure you don’t break character.

“I’ve always taken performance very seriously,” laughs Arsenault. “Even during my brief flirtation with DnD in high school, I always insisted people stay in character for the whole game.”

Arsenault always played high-priestess characters.

“The evil priestess was my favourite,” she says. “She was shockingly beautiful, dressed always in black robes and had very powerful spells. But she also had a healing quality and was worthy of redemption in the end.”

Our discussion of the ultimate nerd pastime has come up in talking about Arsenault’s SummerWorks show I W@s B*rbie, which is based on the transsexual writer/performer’s real-life experience of being asked to play Barbie at the Mattel Corporation’s 50th birthday party for the much loved (and hated) doll.

When she talks in the script about arriving at Fashion Week, Arsenault delivers the poignant line, “I am on a pilgrimage into the pink plastic temple of patriarchy, and like it or not, I am its highest priestess,” which has led us to a discussion of her previous roles as “Priestess,” as well as the subject of patriarchy.

Not surprisingly, Arsenault has even more to say about the latter subject.  

Read the rest at Xtra.ca

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American Expat Tells Queer Tales Of The American South

If a Canadian and an American get into a conversation that lasts more than five minutes, inevitably the topic of healthcare is going to come up.

I’m having coffee with American ex-pat author Thom Vernon, now a Toronto resident, to talk about his new novel, The Drifts, which was launched by Coach House Books earlier this month. But in predictable fashion, we’ve started our discussion with the differences in how our two nations treat the sick.

“In America, we have this demonization of sickness,” he says. “It’s like if you get sick it’s your fault and you deserve the consequences. Canada’s totally different. Here, there is a social safety net, and the dominant cultural value is that when people get sick, the state should be responsible for helping them.”

Read the rest at Xtra.ca

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