Irondale Theatre, Brooklyn, New York May 1st-9th, 2009 How Soon is Now? cast: Cass Buggé, Stacie Morgain Lewis, Stephen O’Connell, Daniel Pettrow, Lucy Simic, Omar Zubair
How Soon is Now? collaborators (2004-2009)—Associate Artists: Ciara Adams, Cass Buggé, Cameron Davis, Jeff Douglas, Chris Dupuis, Kevin Jaszek, Stacie Morgain-Lewis, Daniel Pettrow, Kevin Rees, Robert Tremblay. Core Artists: Sabrina Reeves, Lucy Simic, Stephen O’Connell, and Richard Windeyer.
A children’s tale can often be deceptive in its simplicity and heavy in its moral dispensations. The aim, usually, is to instruct the child: to communicate lessons about where one should seek to satisfy one’s appetite for porridge; why the gift of a comb or apple is not always a signal of generosity; and why garden gates should be shut before journeying into the woods. In How Soon is Now? the company bluemouth inc., an interdisciplinary, site-specific ensemble (New York City and Toronto-based), takes the genre of the children’s tale and transforms its role so that the tale rather than seek to caution and instruct becomes a vehicle that unsettles and critiques the very story it stages.
The story that bluemouth stages is that of Peter and the Wolf by Soviet composer Sergei Prokofiev. However, the ensemble’s rendering bears little resemblance to the modern folk tale and children’s opera that Prokofiev found himself composing in Stalinist Russia. What bluemouth seizes upon is precisely the fraught context that Prokofiev was forced to smooth over through his elegant composition. His was not a commission but an obligation bound by propaganda and trucked as entertainment for “the people.” The independent collectively-created production by bluemouth is not (thank God!) a top-down command imposed by the state but an interrogation of xenophobic state control.
The ensemble’s interrogation draws upon German filmmaker, Fritz Lang's 1931 thriller M. As audiences, we are treated to an adaptation of these two works in a manner that combines characters from both the film and opera and adapts scenes (such as the trial scene) from Lang’s M. The absorption of these texts into a single telling results in the conflation of two characters, the Wolf from Prokofiev’s opera, and the child murderer, Hans Beckert, who occupies the centre of the hysteria in M. (Wolf and Beckert and conflated into a single role performed by Stephen O’Connell.) The lamination of these two characters and artworks onto one another sets the stage for a meditation on the threatening Other. The very presence of the Wolf becomes a moral question for his community who spends much of the play deliberating whether to accept and rehabilitate him or disavow and destroy him. The caption that follows the title How Soon is Now? on both the play programme and company website—“Get the Wolf!”—suggests that the verdict leans toward retribution.
How Soon is Now? is performed in a formerly vacant building adjoining a local Presbyterian church. The high ceiling, stain glass windows, peeling walls, and gothic revival art contributes to an atmosphere in which the distinction between crime and sin is nearly indistinguishable. In How Soon Is Now? the criminal body has a penal soul. This stark metaphysical condition is theatricalized by the Wolf who hangs upside down, Christ-like, in the centre of the site, which has been gutted of stage and seats. Peter (cross-cast as Lucy Simic) holds up a microphone that modulates and distorts his voice and thus denies us access to his story. Previous to this aerial crucifixion, the audience enters the site and witnesses an animated film on the balcony that circles around the main space. The animation, which is projected on a small screen, resembles a child's undisciplined scrawl, and is accompanied by a scratchy recording of a young girl singing in a high register. Following this animation, we witness a grieving mother (Stacie Morgain-Lewis) who looks and sounds as if she has stepped out of M. Standing amidst the audience Morgain-Lewis performs the entirety of her monologue in German as she recounts the atrocity committed by the Wolf. Later, in the role of (song) Bird, she advocates for the destruction of the Wolf. The Bird moralizes in the same high pitch as the young girl that accompanied the animated recording. A pregnant belly visible under her peasant dress, Morgain-Lewis sings, “You’ve never had children…until you’ve lost one.”
When the audience makes its way down to the stripped space below, wood benches and a make-shift jury box comprise the seating as spectators find themselves implicated as witnesses and jurors in a mock trial scene. Like the stripped site, How Soon is Now? is composed of five characters who are themselves stripped of “characterization.” Duck (Cass Buggé), Bird, Wolf, Cat (Daniel Pettrow), and Peter display no scrupulous psychological details about themselves, rather, we come to know them through their blunt ideological positions and where they choose to align themselves within the divisions “us” and “them.” These divisions are not only expressed through the rhetoric of accusation and wordplay but also through film, music, textured soundscapes, and choreography.
The dance piece that greets the audience in the main performance hall is an energetic call-to-arms that bookends the beginning and end of the trial scene. The choreography makes no room for abstraction as each gesture devotes itself to an authoritarian display. High kicks, arms taking the shape of Kalashnikov rifles, and a controlled three-hundred and sixty degree sweep that follows the trace of an unseen target, ends in the ensemble splitting apart—giddily tumbling onto the ground, falling onto their sides—like a monument that can not hold. The melody that accompanies this ode to militarism is a mix of recorded music (which includes a trumpet solo) and a rhythmic drumbeat performed by Omar Zubair (composed by Richard Windeyer). The drumming, which invades the space with the force of a marching band, is as uncompromising as the movement it accompanies. Through its unceasing beat, it reveals that the characters are closer to a cavalry than a community.
What adds to the compelling character of the choreography is that it is performed inches away from its audience. bluemouth is known for its fearless choreography which makes full use of both its sites and its spectators. The duets that take place during the trial scene, for instance, occur in front of, alongside, and behind seated audience members. This movement immerses spectators in the one-on-one combat between the characters—combat, that once again draws upon recognizable movement vocabularies. The duet between the Wolf and the Cat (which ends in his murder) mimics the gestures of a bull fight; and the face-off between Peter and the Wolf occurs through the physical language of the tango. Throughout the duet, Lucy Simic, as Peter, knocks the Wolf to the floor, walks over him, face-down, and sticks her foot in his throat. In both dance numbers there is a desire to master and do damage to the threatening Other through movement. The proximity of these choreographic numbers to the audience is more than simply a novelty of site-specific performance. The physical aggression demonstrated in both duets shows how the hostile treatment of the outsider is not a historically remote circumstance—an experience unique to either Prokofiev’s Russia or Fritz Lang’s inter-war Berlin.
The spectators’ proximity to the stylized display of violence highlights the fact that unless we act upon what we witness then we are complicit in its violence. bluemouth productions strive to highlight the presence of the audience as agents in a performance event. (Their most recent show in Toronto, Dance Marathon, places its audiences at the centre of the event as dance competitors!) While New York audiences were treated to How Soon is Now? for the first time at the Irondale arts facility in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, Toronto audiences have had the opportunity to catch two incarnations of the show. The first, originally titled Memory of Bombs, was produced in a boiler room as part of the 2004 Summerworks Festival. The company returned to the show, in co-production with the Theatre Centre in 2007, and performed in a disused sound stage in the west end (the show was later nominated for three Dora awards).
In its American debut, How Soon Is Now? shows itself to be a timely piece in the aftermath of the treatment of 9/11 “enemy combatants” in prisons such as Guantanamo Bay and Abu Gharib. After 9/11, we heard accounts of citizens being wrongly imprisoned because of their ethnicity; witnessed images of men in pointed hoods holding “stress positions” and we continued about our daily lives, largely unchanged. State control was framed as “security” and xenophobia as patriotism. By staging and adapting the works of artists who laboured under the glare of fascism, bluemouth shows that the extremity of their circumstances is not as remote as we think. Far from a simple moral dispensation, How Soon Is Now? communicates that, in gouging out the eye of the threatening Other (destroying him) there is no guarantee that we will not, in the process, destroy ourselves.
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Cautionary Tales and Blood-Thirsty Mobs: Bluemouth Inc. remounts How Soon is Now? by Keren Zaiontz
Claire Calnan and Adam Lazarus are Talking to Chris Dupuis
The Exchange Rate Collective's Show Appetite was one of my favourite pieces at Summerworks two years ago, so I was happy to see the company was remounting the show this week. I got in touch with creator/performers Claire Calnan and Adam Lazarus to talk about the show.
Appetite plays April 16 through April 26, 2009 at Theatre Passe Muraille
Created by The Exchange Rate Collective and presented by Volcano and Theatre Passe Muraille.
Box Office 416-504-7529
Tickets PWYC - $35 :: Students/Seniors/Arts Workers $20
Theatre Passe Muraille, 16 Ryerson Avenue, Toronto
passemuraille.on.ca
volcano.ca
Directed by Sarah Sanford, starring Claire Calnan, Adam Lazarus, Linnea Swan. Associate Director: Kate Alton. Designers: Gillian Gallow, Rebecca Picherack, Robert Perrault. SM: Sherry Roher.
Appetite explores human desire as it pertains to food and sex. If you had to choose between the two which one would you pick and why?
CC - Sex seems like the obvious choice, right? But food is really compelling because our relationship to it can contain so many other human desires and emotions (repressed or otherwise). The way we treat it often says a lot about our state: we eat for comfort, substitute chocolate for sex, exercise control by restricting what we consume (fasting, dieting, vegetarian-ing...this is not a word...), we have cravings, stuff ourselves, try to be healthy, treat ourselves, obsess, we are sensitive about our cooking, take joy in feeding our lovers and loved ones, eat to battle depression or anxiety, don't eat because we are depressed or anxious, we find people's eating habits repulsive, we are insatiable...and occasionally we are satisfied. We (in this time and place) have an embarrassing overabundance of food. But most of us don't know where it comes from or how it got here. And there is still hunger. Also, of course, we depend on it to live. So, I guess I would have to say food.
AL - This question is three days in the answering. I just can't pick one and not the other, so I thought I'd share with you some of the thoughts that entered my head over the past days. I kept thinking about this question in terms of my future - where I will be in 30 years. So, at first I picked food. I said to myself that by the time I'm 70 my equipment won't work so good. Therefore, I'll naturally enjoy food more. I'll eat out a lot at delicious restaurants and reminisce about the days my tools filled their sheaths and stood at attention. Yes, I thought. It shall be food!
The next day I saw someone give a lecture on ageism and realized my ideas pertaining to sex and seniors are completely self-fashioned, unfounded and totally ageist.
So then I switched to sex. I thought to myself that I will have great sex all the time and food won't be as important. The more I went down this road, the more I thought about my aging body, disease, allergies, the loss of bone density. I mused that the only food I would be able to consume at 70 would be porridge, prune juice and creamed spinach. My anxiety will have increased the size of my ulcers, ruining my ability to digest solids. I'll become allergic to everything wheat, dairy, and sesame. What's more, my teeth will be gone and my artist wages will not allow me a good pair of dentures.
Oh dear. Ageist again.
I learnt a lot the past three days: I learnt that I can't separate food and sex. I also learnt that ageism is the 3rd most predominant ism after racism and sexism.
How do you see the desire for food and sex being connected?
CC - In the best of times, they can co-exist delightfully. They both can sustain and delight us. They both involve 'ingesting' to a degree. We desire to consume food, people. And if the 'appetite' for one or the other grows too big, each of them has the power to act as a destructive force in our lives.
AL - On any given night, for stallions such as myself, one leads to the other to the other and back to the other. Seriously, each has a quality of the other. The desire for sex is a hunger - I salivate, my body tightens, I swell, I shrink, I get moody, I propel forward to attain. The desire to eat is the same. Both fulfill a basic human need. We tangibly and audibly connect with both. On a good night you look at the aforementioned desire, be it a piece of lamb or a piece of person, and before you touch it you ask "How shall I consume you this evening my little one?" After your desire answers, the dialogue should continue: "How shall we proceed? Good, bad, ugly, funny, surprising, dangerous, necessarily so or necessarily no?" I love this dialogue.
Both of you have worked in several collective/collaborative processes. It seems like more and more of the interesting work being produced these days is coming out of this model. Why do you think that is?
CC - I think it is interesting that you use the word 'interesting'. I often find that I use this word when I feel conflicted about something. But maybe that is just me... Personally, I'm not exclusive about theatre. I like all kinds as long as it has the power to move or inspire or delight me. One of my favourite shows this past year was A Raisin in the Sun, a scripted piece written 50 years ago. There we go. And my experience in what one might call "conventional" theatre continues to teach me a great deal about my creation work. The different processes "feed" each other, one might say (especially if the one was in a play called Appetite...). For some reason, I felt the need for this preface. Of course, I do believe that there is incredibly vibrant and relevant work being produced through collaborative models. There are also a million ways to work within these forms.
So let me talk about a particular show or two that I have worked on. And when I talk about these I will say that perhaps one of the influences on their success or relevancy has something to do with the immediacy of our access to arts, news, information and "entertainment" in the current day. In certain devised processes, when one is lucky, the work is able to address something that lies in the subconscious of the collective. Something that the group is struggling with that has not yet quite risen to the surface, has not yet been fully deconstructed or intellectualized. It can make the work very immediate. I find that exciting.
My experience working in Columbia this past fall helped to illuminate this approach to collaborative work and allowed me to articulate it in a way I had not previously been able to do. The director, Patricia Ariza, who is an influential force in that country and in the international community, has tremendous faith in an improvisational process that encourages work from the guts, churning up ideas that are still being processed, uncovering what the group wants to talk about before they are sure what it is they want to talk about. I did not have the language for this when we began working on Appetite but in retrospect, it is clear to me that this piece, too, was able to access some of that goodness. I think the work is tremendously pertinent given the current state of things. And also very funny. However these two things came to be, I am happy for them.
AL - I love the artist as creator. Three people I have worked with in my life have hardwired this thinking into my creative vernacular - Stephen Johnson, Paul Thompson and Philippe Gaulier are all interested in the artist and how they see the world.
When we put different minds/creators into one room together, what's going to happen? This is where we find new stories, hear new voices and really uncover something exciting. In a collective environment the artist's creativity/creation really gets to be the focus. Under good direction, as with Sarah Sanford, the artists are allowed to offer every part of themselves - mover, singer, tragic actor, comic actor. Not every one of these sides makes it into the final product, but the results will have an energy and ownership unparalleled because every word, gesture, direction and design has been built by one particular group of artists at one particular time in their collective lives.
How do you define the difference between physical theatre, dance, and clown?
CC - I don't. Not because I am not interested or because I have not thought a great deal about these things. But because there are people who know so much more than me who could provide you with incredibly elegant definitions where I would offer you possibly offensively over-simplified statements that tomorrow I might disagree with. I approach the work I do from an instinctual place as a creator, actor, storyteller, mover, human being. I have some training in different forms. And I'm sure that this must come onto the stage with me. I'm sure it can't be helped. Most times I wish I had more training (like when Kate Alton gives me a note five times to change the position of my feet and they-my feet-refuse to listen to her). I am hoping to keep training in all kinds of things until I am so full of it.
AL - These terms are all comprehension and marketing tools. When I started doing
clown work in the city I never actually wore the nose yet everyone said I was a clown. I asked why and they said "You're just so clonwy!" I guess you gotta give the people what they want. So I started calling my work Clown with a capital 'C' and only clowns came to see me work. I thought something fishy was up, so I changed the title of my work to Physical Theatre. Suddenly, far more people were interested in working with me and studying with me. Now I'm in a Dance/Physical Theatre/Clown piece and Robert Lepage is knocking at my door. Just kidding of course. But don't box me in, you know? I'm an artist who works to make interesting pieces of art. Example - Appetite is one really interesting piece of art - one painting that draws from a few different disciplines. Artist first, clown, physical theatre practitioner, dancer later. Save the words for the adverts.
Speaking of clown, there's a huge clown scene in Toronto. What's up with that? Why are you drawn to this form of performance?
CC - When there is so much content out there, so much stimulation that we can find in our own home and often for free we might start to think "Why theatre?" And we might look to the audience, because they are with us in this question and this struggle. They have to be or we don't exist. And we might want to connect with them in this place that we are together. I think that clowns can do this very well. We see their eyes and they know we are there. They acknowledge us. We, the audience, know we are essential. It's good to know that I think. It feels nice. If I watch CSI or don't watch CSI, David Caruso will still churn out the most delightfully terrible one-liners. He will still accent his lines with the placement of his sunglasses on his face. But in clown, my being there might change the tone, might make the show funnier or sadder or, just, well...different. There is something powerful about that in a city where we keep getting closer and closer to each other in a literal sense, but seem to have a harder time actually connecting. Anyhow, I am just an outside observer mostly. I like the clowns. I hang out with them. I like to think I am their kin... like, a distant cousin who they enjoy chatting with at family weddings and funerals. Adam could probably tell you more about the "scene". Adam?
AL - My guess is that clown is so big in Toronto because we have quite a developed tradition of great teachers that have studied it, were affected by it, and then had a desire to pass it on to students. Dean Gilmour, Leah Cherniak, Mike Kennard, John Turner, Karen Hines, Sue Morrison, Ian Wallace and the late Richard Pochinko are some of the masters who worked a lot in the city. These folks introduced a slew of Torontonians to the form and I think that if a student taps into clown, they really tap in. The energy of the good clown is too beautiful for words and we have some beauty in this city for sure.
I'm drawn to clown because I love an audience. I respect their presence in the room with me. I love making them laugh, having them make me laugh, surprising, being surprised, failing and getting back up. With or without nose, the clown's energy to play and discover is such a good tool for a creator to have. Even if you never wear the nose again after your training, you will herein decree the words: "Bad clowns give clown a bad name. Good clowns are alive and connected and beautiful - a miracle!"
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Jacob Zimmer is Talking to Chris Dupuis
I caught up with Small Wooden Shoe Artist Director Jacob Zimmer to chat about Dedicated to the Revolutions, a show he's been working on for over three years which opens at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre this week.
Dedicated to the Revolutions plays March 31st through April 12, 2009 at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre
Produced by Small Wooden Shoe with the assistance of One Yellow Rabbit's High Performance Rodeo and in association with Buddies in Bad Times Theatre.
Box Office 416-975-8555
Tickets PWYC - $25 :: Youth / Student tickets $15
Buddies In Bad Times Theatre, 12 Alexander Street, Toronto
artsexy.ca
smallwoodenshoe.org
Dedicated to the Revolutions is created by: Frank Cox-O'Connell, Chad Dembski, Ame Henderson, Erika Hennebury, Gillian Lewis, Aimée Dawn Robinson, Trevor Schwellnus, Erin Shields, Evan Webber and Jacob Zimmer
You've been working on this project for over three years now and it's finally coming to fruition. What does this feel like?
Great. Scary.
It’s interesting how things have changed over the three years, both in terms of our taste and interests and the exposure and profile of the work.
But the long development time seems mostly right – there were some gaps that were a bit long and some that were too short – but I think it’s important for me to have a lot of time and a lot of breaks for thinking. Most rehearsal processes don’t have much time for reflection and I think that might be a problem - or at least it would be for me.
There have been a fairly large number of collaborators on this project through its different stages. How do you decide on who to collaborate with and what makes a good collaborator in your mind?
Everyone in this process were people I first saw in other work and then met with and talked. They are all people who make their own work, which is very important for me. And then it’s a matter of creating an interesting and productive rehearsal hall that I believe will lead to an interesting and productive performance.
In terms of what makes a good collaborator - I think generosity and curiosity are vital. It’s a generosity to listen and follow as well as lead and propose - to be able to understand what’s happening and how to contribute to that. Patience and understanding are also very important.
I’ve been absolutely blessed on this project to work with many of my favorite artists in the city who have brought so much to the work.
I'm curious to know in particular about your relationship with your collaborator Trevor Schwellnus; specifically because designers are often the ones who have the least collaborative relationship to a traditional process. Can you talk about how you work together and what your particular process of design is?
The shows take a huge jump once we’re in the world that Trevor creates. They a beautiful and idiosyncratic and perfect for the work.
I trust Trev so much, and he makes proposals for the work in such a great way that we’ve ended up with a pretty unique process. It’s one I’m having a hard time describing. He’s in the room pretty early and has been involved in every show so we can get to the heart of things pretty quickly. We talk about big ideas and overall aesthetic values early and then once we’re in the theatre things just come to life under his eye.
He also brings a lot of thought and contribution to what we do on stage and is often our go to for a “bullshit meter” in terms of science and tech.
And he does amazing things with rope. Other people like tape, he goes with rope.
Some critics (who shall remain nameless) have described your work as "Post Modern". Do you see what you do as part of the Post Modern Period? Why or why not?
I get it, even if I disagree a bit and quibble about the typesetting (“postmodern” v. “post-modern” v. “post modern”.)
The postmodern turn in artistic and intellectual pursuits was vital. Deconstruction, poststructuralism, Critical Theory, and relational theories have been very important to me (and I think the to world.) So I am certainly a child of it.
That being said, I think this work in particular is an attempt to get past some of my issues with the hard lines and to generate proposals and engagement instead of only critique and pulling apart.
Aesthetically I get it too - though again, I think we want to move past some of the trappings (traps.) We avoid irony (we mean what we say, we also mean other things) and think about clarity, humour and pleasure for the audience a bit more then comes to mind with “postmodern theatre.” But again, I have a history with and deep influence from that tradition.
While were on the subject of critics, I've read some writings about your work that, while positive make me feel like the critic "just doesn't get it". What guidelines would you give people writing about your work to understand and talk about it?
I don’t think I can give guidelines. Part of what is nice about Dedicated to the Revolutions is that there are many levels to take the show, different ways to “get it”.
It’s true that some reviews (which are often so short and written so quickly after the show) focus on the humour and songs, and I’m ok with that - or at least I’d rather that then the “you won’t enjoy it, but it’s good for you” reviews. Reviews in this day and age are pointers rather than deep commentary. I’m happy if people show up and have to make up their own minds.
And I think there certainly is a role and a desire for deep commentary - but that requires space and reflection that I don’t feel the print reviewers have - and may mean that that kind of work happens after the show closes.
Maybe the only guideline is to think “What if they meant all of that?”
Song are a very important part of your performances, which is also a commonality in other artists working in a similar style like STO Union. What do you think song brings to the work?
They hold some of the emotional content and some of the humour. They are a different way of thinking through and talking about the issues of the show. And we like singing them and people respond to them – music is nice.
What do you think the 8th Revolution will be? Any sense when it's on the horizon? Is it already happening?
Maybe? Quantum and Nano and Bio tech all seem like “next things” - but I think it’s really hard to predict what will effect our lives and when. These revolutions often took decades to be noticed on a everyday scale.
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Blind Date at Harbourfront Centre by Chris Dupuis
By all accounts it shouldn't work. Mimi a Parisian clown (AKA actor/improviser Rebecca Northan) has been stood up for a blind date and so she turns to the audience to find a guy who can fill the second chair at her cafe table. For the next ninety minutes Mimi and her man play out a series of scenes that follow the course of their first evening together. The potential for something like this to go wrong is huge, but it doesn't. Not even for a second.
Northan is a veteran of Calgary's Loose Moose Theatre which has been spreading its unique brand of improvised performance across the country for the last thirty years. In the hands of an even slightly less deft improviser this show could fall flat on its red-nosed face, but Northan is an auteur of such incredible skill that the work not only sustains itself but exceeds expectations.
The content of the piece varies from night to night, so I can't say exactly what you can expect if you go. However the evening I attended Northan selected a guy who was particularly game--an unemployed recent university graduate named Graham, and during the show she managed to convince him to engage in a prolonged make-out session with her, strip to his underwear, and impregnate her onstage. Knowing how trained performers can be shy about doing this type of thing, it was especially refreshing to see someone with no professional experience throw themselves unsuspectingly into an experience like this.
The piece originally premiered as a ten-minute clown bit in 2007 during the Spiegel Show and Harbourfront Centre Director of Performing Arts Tina Rassmussen convinced Northan to develop the work into a full-length piece. Though it's billed as a clown show and Mimi sports a red nose, Northan's performance is not of the clown variety, at least not in the classic sense. Never once are we asked to laugh at her, but instead we're always laughing along with her, as she pulls trick after trick on her guest. If anyone onstage is a clown, it's her man of the evening, as most of our fun comes from watching him trying to adapt to what is in actuality a pretty strange and nerve-wracking situation. And perhaps the fact that we are not watching a performance, as much as a real person having a real experience in front of us, is what makes Blind Date one of the most engaging evenings I've had in the theatre in a long time.
Blind Date runs at Harbourfront Centre through Saturday March 7th, 2009
Tickets available at 416-973-4000 or through www.harbourfrontcentre.com/worldstage.
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Double Double Land Land, Allison, Sarah and I By Aurora Stewart de Peña
I had a really high fever when I saw Double Double Land Land at Gallery TPW. I almost didn't go, even though the venue is a pebble's throw from my front door. I was going to stay home and watch Dynasty, which I have been watching in such a marathon style that I had a dream about Krystle Carrington (Beautiful, extraordinary hair, and a good person deep down inside) last night.
However, I'm pleased to report that I was able to leave the very exciting world of fictional Denver's fictional early 80s oil boom long enough to drag myself the required 1/2 block to the performance space, passing a conservative looking wedding reception at neighbouring X-Space on the way in.
The gallery was packed, and cast member Nika Mistruzzi had warned me not to sit in the front unless I wanted to be hit with set pieces. I didn't. I saw my friends Allison and Sarah, and they had a seat close to them. They were both wearing rainbow striped shirts. I had on a black dress and grey shoes.
I am really glad I saw this play. Really glad. Multi- disciplinary artist Jon McCurley's latest collaborative effort is a huge success; Laura McCoy's plush, kaleidoscope set, consisting of large, primary coloured geometric shapes, is kept on the move by the crew, who run it back and forth across the stage. Nikki Woolsey's cartoon costumes, which include a giant, soft ATM and a yellow traffic arrow, and McCurley's sharp writing, reminiscent of Norton Juster's The Phantom Tollbooth or Harry Nilsson's The Point, make this worthy of the very best fevered hallucination.
Double Double Land is a city where everything is terrible; its motto is "A Bad Place to Be, A nice Place to Leave". The citizens know it's terrible and so does the Town's mayor (played hopelessly well by Lauren Bride). A representative from the illustrious next town over Tuba City (Amy Lam, superior in a sweater onesie) comes to the town with suggestions of improvement. Double Double Land's Minister of Tourism builds an attraction based on the town's horrible reputation: a giant spring that launches you right out of town.
The cast was strong and confident. All gave grounded, shameless performances while happily yelling at/ tossing props and set pieces to an engaged and excitable audience.
McCurley does nothing to hide the artifice that is necessary in making a play. The costumes are obviously costumes, and not meant to represent a character's natural attire. This is exemplified by Nika Mistruzzi's giant fabric nose (Mistruzzi plays the role of Mrs. Nose), which occasionally falls off as she yells "My nose is so big! My nose is so big!" which, as is true as much of the play, would have seemed at home in McCurley's inky series of comics.
The soundscape, by musician Matt Smith (Nifty, Awesome) includes an occasional infant's squall or other uninvited sound. Rather than lulling me into the world of the play, it drew me out, and made me look for the cat I heard or the glass that broke. It was a bit uncomfortable, and it worked perfectly.
As Lauren Bride, the Mayor of Double Double Land, delivers her final impassioned monologue decreeing all kinds of amazing new things for Double Double Land, I heard a the sound of glass shattering (not in the soundscape), shouts and whoops coming from the front of the gallery. Franco from the Theatre Centre, who had warned us to expect noise from next door as there was a reception, got up to see what was wrong. The door guy got up and followed.
"As if they didn't lock the door, that's so stupid…" I thought, watching Bride try to retain her concentration through the last bit of her speech. Suddenly I was looking at the entire wedding party from next door. On the stage. Bride, groom, mom, dad and several well wishers throwing confetti and drinking champagne, and they were looking at me, and we, the entire audience, were looking at them in stunned silence. Bride (Lauren), shocked, turned to stare. Dave Clarke, still in costume came from backstage, looking angry and confrontational, Glen Macaulay, also still in costume, came from backstage looking alarmed.
I tapped Allison on the shoulder. "Is this really happening?"
"I think so." She said.
The wedding party, who must have felt as though they were in a fish tank, seemed surprised that nobody in the audience wanted to share in their celebration of love. They were unceremoniously usherered out by the Door Guy. The cast, looking a bit defeated, shuffled off. Set Designer Laura McCoy and Crew member Wes Allen came out with large brooms and swept away the broken glass, confetti and other debris left by the invading wedding party. The show was over.
"What just happened?" Allison asked me.
"I'm not really sure." I said.
"I think it was a set up." Said Sarah.
"Nooooooooo!" I said.
"Seriously?" Asked Allison.
"Yeah, I mean, who has their wedding a X-Space on a Tuesday night in January?"
That hadn't even occurred to me.
"Yeah, look," Sarah continued. "There they are." And she pointed to the wedding party, laughing and talking with Jon and the rest of the cast. It was part of the show. I couldn't believe that guy! The most believable part of the whole show had been staged.
"I've gotta go," I said, remembering that I was still sick. "I'm going to watch Dynasty."
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D.A. Hoskins is Talking to Chris Dupuis
I sat down with Toronto-based choreographer and visual D.A. Hoskins to talk about his new work Portrait opening at the Theatre Centre this week. Go see it!
PORTRAIT
Presented by the Dietrich Group
Choreography by D. A. Hoskins
Featuring Danielle Baskerville and Robert Kingsbury
Video by Nico Stagias
Sound/Music by Gilles Goyette
Lighting by Simon Rossiter
Presented at the Theatre Centre
January 8-11, Thursday though Saturday 7 and 9pm, Sunday 2:30pm
Tickets $18-22, Sun PWYC
Call the Arts Box Office 416-504-7529 or visit www.artsboxoffice.ca
I understand that the project has evolved fairly substantially from its inception to what it now is. Can you talk about where you started, where you ended up, and how you got there?
Initially the piece was to be an investigation of the individual personalities of the two dancers (Danielle Baskerville and Robert Kingsbury). I brought Nico Stagias (Video Artist) and Gilles Goyette (Composer) as collaborators to the process intending to explore them in the same way. That whole idea just basically died. We started in that direction and I found it wasn't working to my liking. It was all sitting in a place that was too directed, too specific, and too heavy handed. At the same time, the perspective was very vague, which is something I find typical of Contemporary Dance and something that I try to avoid in my own work.
I find a lot of choreographers create work that's very open ended and they want to leave things up to the audience to interpret. This work eludes to a certain intellectualism that I feel like just isn't there. To me the idiom has to be very personal in order to reach people.
This piece has reached a point where it's still heavy in the subject matter, but I also feel like there's a great clarity to it as well and a specific point of view. Essentially it's a self portrait of me.
The idea of self portrait is something that artists often explore at the very start of their practice. I'm curious to know how and why at this point in your career you've decided to take that on.
The self portrait element has always been an integral part of my work. I have always used the idiom as a way to search for meaning for me. In some ways I'm still a young Roman Catholic boy and my work is often liturgical in a manner. It has a lot of symbolism that ends up being reiterated to me as a means of reeducating myself.
The way that you talk about contemporary dance hints that you feel like you're working outside the form.
I've become very discouraged in the idiom. When I first stepped into dance as a young gay guy I saw a dance show that had a play and sensuality to it that was the true opposite of my personal history and how I grew up. But then when I was studying it I started to feel like the entire education in the arts was about conformity. In that way I've been very discouraged by the idiom. I feel like it's pretty repressed.
Do you think that's contemporary dance in Toronto or do you feel like that's contemporary dance in the world?
I think unfortunately Toronto is a bit behind the times and lives in that sort of Sally Anne School of Dance world. I feel like my generation of artists is kind of stuck. I look at companies with great spaces, lots of rehearsal time, and huge budgets and I feel like the work they're producing is just unacceptable.
Are there any artists in Toronto who you think are doing interesting work?
I think Sasha Ivonochko is really interesting. I think Kate Alton is extremely interesting. Claudia Moore too.
What about artists outside Toronto?
I really like Deborah Dunn. David Ferguson is doing great things as well. A large majority of the work I see alludes to being what it's not. It acts like it has content but it doesn't.
What would you like to see happen to dance in Toronto?
I'd like to see a renaissance in the arts. The reason I started the Dietrich Group is because I wanted to interact with other artists and have an ongoing exchange. The dancers are included in the work and have as much of a voice as I do.
Can you talk a bit about the Dietrich Group and what you do?
The Dietrich Group is a collective that I started around the idea of bringing artists together to create interdisciplinary works. We feed off each other. Eventually I'm hoping that the dancers involved in the work will start taking on other positions in the process. I'm hoping it will be an ever evolving entity with new people coming in all the time.
In my research about you I noticed that you're always referred to as "choreographer and visual artist" as opposed to just "choreographer". Can you tell me a bit about your practice as a visual artist?
I self proclaim myself as a visual artist as a response to being in the dance idiom. With the way people assess and talk about visual art there's a serious critical discussion about the work that I feel is absent from dance. Even the people who are supposed to be critics don't take a very critical approach to the work.
I want to come back to this in a moment but let's take a sidetrack for a bit. When I started Time and Space part of the objective was to address the lack of critical writing about the performing arts. We talk about critics all the time, but we don't really have critics. We have reviewers, which is not the same thing.
Last year when we did Art Fag at Buddies, there was a critic who wrote a piece about me where I was referred to the "grumpy old man of modern dance". I find that kind of label really frustrating. I'm certainly vocal about the state of my medium. I question the choices that people are making and why certain work is getting funding that I feel is undeserving, but to call me that just sort of discounts everything I'm saying. When we sent out the original press releases for Portrait, we invited all the critics to write previews, but said we didn't want reviews. Eventually we caved and now all the critics coming. Someone said to me that it's my responsibility to be part of the arena and to have my work judged and written about like everyone else.
I didn't train as a journalist and I worked for a number of years as a professional artist before I started to do arts writing. I was really surprised when I got into the business to find the lack of responsibility that arts journalists are trained and encouraged to feel towards the people they are writing about. The artist isn't paying you. The editor is paying you. I straddle both worlds so I'm starting to get it more, but there's something that still feels so backward about that to me. I've had many occasions where I've been frustrated by editors pulling things from stories I've written about the artist's process and things that have been cut from the work because they feel like the public just wants to know what the work looks like.
I think it's a Canadian disease. When you go down to New York the way the work is talked about is so much more informative. How are we going to grow if we don't start educating people on a broader level?
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The Messiah, under the unconventional Conductorship of Ashiq Aziz by Aurora de Pena
The Knox College chapel is packed. There are actually no seats available 5 minutes before the start of Classical Music Consort’s Messiah. I have to sit in a single plush chair graciously dragged to the back of the church by the door man. People who arrived after I did seemed to have no problems standing.
This was the quietest place that I have ever been, from my solitary spot in the improvised back row, I could hear somebody in the front shift in their seat and take a Kleenex out of their purse.
The Knox College Chapel, built in 1858, is 100 and years younger than the music that echoed off its grey stone walls on Friday night. It is Classical Music Consort’s goal, under the direction of Ashiq Aziz, to give the listener an idea of what Handel’s original Messiah might have sounded like when it premiered in April of 1742. They employ era specific instruments and remain faithful to every Baroque vocal ornament, but there is something undeniably modern about the way these people approach the music that they love. The ensemble, though not entirely informal, is relaxed. Conductor Aziz is athletic and alert, the singers are confidently connected to the music’s text, and the members of the orchestra smile at each other throughout.
This is a simple, clean production. The soloists stand and deliver clear and fresh interpretations of the libretto. Particularly interesting is alto Susanne Hawkins, whose warm and expressive voice draws attention to the intensity of the text. The story, which we all know by heart, can’t help but be touched by the secular world we all live in today. It’s almost deleivered in the third person, which makes The Messiah a really interesting choice for this group.
This very human, very 21rst century atmosphere is prevalent throughout the chapel; people of all ages are completely engaged. The woman sitting directly in front of me (I wish she was my Grandma—seriously) is pushing a cool 80 in a primary coloured Christmas blazer. She knows every inch of the music, and conducts from the back. Beside her are a couple of 25 year olds with bangs who hold hands for the whole three hours. The simplicity of the production lets the composition shine. So many complications in the music, all of the vocal and instrumental gymnastics, become abstract when stripped of their showiness. This is what Classical Music Consort will become recognized for, this dedication to the actual value of the music. There is no attempt to explain why or justify the relevance of playing the music of 300 years ago, and that’s fine, in the hands of this ensemble, it stands on it’s own.
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