Review. Lexi & the Flying b's by Joan Jamieson @ Toronto Fringe

Bird Brain Productions bring Joan Jamieson’s sweet young audiences script to sparkling life at the George Ignatieff Kids' Fringe Venue. Focused on a young girl, Lexi, and her struggle with dyslexia, it weaves a warm story of overcoming adversity and helping others. The three actors are delightful in their work, striking just the right energy level to keep the young audiences engaged. When the big reveal of Lexi’s success approaches, one young audience member said aloud “this is going to be awesome”. And it was.

The production integrated images and video in an interesting (if slightly inconsistent) way, and I didn’t always feel the shifts in time/place were sufficiently clear. That said, the actors shone through.

Absolutely perfect for the 5-10 year old audience.

Preview - In Waking Life @ Toronto Fringe

Looking forward to catching the work of Ottawa-based Lauren Welchner and Monica Bradford-Lea during this fringe, although my schedule prevents me from getting there early in the festival.

Their intriguing production is a partially improvised comedy, following two psychic sisters as they welcome you into their business and their lives. The show premiered in 2016 and has travelled a few Fringes so far, but this is their Toronto debut.

Really loving all the interactive work going on this year at Toronto Fringe!!

You can catch them tonight (Jul 6) and throughout the festival - full details and ticket info here.

I, Malvolio @ Toronto Fringe

“It’s all too easy isn’t it. . . To destroy the thing you’re too lazy to understand. To take joy in someone else’s downfall.”

We all do it. Schadenfreüde. We laugh at someone’s misfortune. We express our dominance over others, through joy at their misfortune. We know we shouldn’t.

But do we?

This play has captivated my imagination since I first heard Tim speak about it whilst studying in London. When we re-interrogate an existing play from the perspective of a single character, a character who is beat up on for our enjoyment…and turn that interrogation on the audience, what happens? What further happens when you aren’t just doing this with an adult audience, but to teens?

I have wanted to direct this project for awhile. But this spring, in the context of the cuts to education, reverting the Healthy Living curriculum to something that was relevant when I was still in high school. . . I decided now was the time. We are doing an extreme disservice to our young people by not teaching them about bullying, about different sexual orientations, by not teaching them consent. Not to mention avoiding the subject of how much easier and simultaneously more difficult puberty must be when everything you do lives online, and can be there for the rest of your life. One indiscretion, one step across a line, one mistake, and your future can be lost. Or it can be explained away by wealthy or powerful parents. A world, today, where even the most put-together person, may have been bullied. We all wear the scars of these memories, these aggressions, on our skin.

So; we present I, Malvolio. A play which interrogates our relationships to one another, how we the audience are positioned as middle schoolers, encouraged to interact, to question what they’re watching, to be on their phones. . . literally. The play itself, the production, and hopefully your experience, are chaos. Pure chaos, through which we examine relationships, performance, audience, and failure.

The play is performed by the brilliant Justin Otto, who, through his work on this play will help you question the act of watching, the act of laughing….and ultimately the act of judgment on another’s actions.

Come join us at Artscape Youngplace, Fringe venue #24, for a site-specific and interactive production of Tim Crouch’s I, Malvolio, making its Toronto debut. And, if you’d like, add us on snapchat (impel-theatre) to see Justin perform.

Want to know a little more? Check out our interview with Donna G on The More The Merrier for CIUT Radio.

Tickets are available now! 7:30pm nightly from July 3-13 (no Sunday shows).

Review. The Brothers Size by Tarell Alvin McCraney @ Soulpepper

There is nothing more satisfying than watching a production that so perfectly understands the text, that just lets the words be in the space, and uses smart and simple choices to elevate that language to a powerful experience for the audience. Mumbi Tindyebwa Otu is masterful in her direction of Mazin Elsadig, Daren A. Herbert, and Marcel Stewart in The Brothers Size at Soulpepper. The play is filled with oppositions; strength and vulnerability, loudness and extreme quiet, public and private…all of which contribute to this deep interrogation of what masculinity means, and more specifically, what black masculinity is. Every aspect of this production, from the gorgeous choreography to the near-perfect use of music (performed live by the amazing Kobèna Aquaa-Harrison) and sound manipulation that seamlessly moves us from the real into the hyper-real dreams of the characters, to the simplicity with which each actor approaches their most heightened moments, builds into this interrogation.

The tension builds and releases so beautifully, that when we reach the final moments, you can collectively feel the audience leaning in, terrified to know the choice that will be made, the fate that we know is inevitable (like Anouilh’s spring, it is wound up tight, and the results of that release are beyond anyone’s control).

Please, please, see this production. It is beautifully constructed and utterly crushing in all the best ways.

Review. Inner Elder by Michelle Thrush @ Nightwood & Native Earth

My cheeks hurt. Michelle Thrush shares her beautiful, sad, funny, wonderful personal story in a lovely, winding way. While there are moments of tension, and beats of the story that hearken back to one another, it would be challenging to describe it as “dramatic” in the usual sense of the word…and that’s all for the better. Thrush shows us women of many ages and experiences, from the plucky young girl who “raises” her parents, to the hilarious elder who leads a dance party. Each character is unique physically and it is pure delight to watch Thrush transform from one character to the next. The script was filled with pop culture references spanning a lifetime, with a distinct commentary on the bodies we see and hear from, and whose stories are typically told.

The staging used the space beautifully, similarly transforming seamlessly to create multiple spaces.

Honestly, I don’t even know what else to say. It was just wonderful. Go see it.

review. Blood + Soil by Rouvan Silogix - Theatre ARTaud @ TPM Backspace

Theatre ARTaud present an ambitious new work, straddling political commentary and surrealism (which, if we’re honest, is that political commentary nowadays?). The new play, Blood + Soil, begins with the chorus as the audience enter, interacting and tempting the audience, while a devil-like character lurks. As we move in to the play, we’re presented with a parable about a small city in Canada who choose to secede, only to repeat the mistakes of the past in their own implementation and exertion of power and ownership.

I had mixed reactions to the piece. On one hand, I adored the clever playfulness of the chorus, and the intelligent commentary on current affairs as told through the parable. There were some very enjoyable performances, notably the riveting Amaka Umeh who plays Snowball, one of the lead revolutionaries. Additionally, the ongoing live accompaniment from Ivana Popovic served to create wonderful tension in the live performance.

On the other hand, I found the overall style of the production to be abrasive; there were a lot of scenes shouted, and although alienation is one of the basic tenets of Artaud’s work and much surrealist theatre, in a story-based performance such as this, I don’t think this was the specific alienation they were looking to achieve.

On the whole, I think the script could have used some tightening; there were a number of interesting and insightful observations created through the physical and verbal language of the performance, including some really stunning (and at times, shocking) imagery. Yet It left me with the feeling that it didn’t quite achieve its own goals.

Definitely a production that will challenge you intellectually in ways unlike what you will find from a lot of other performance in the city, so worth checking out if you’re looking for that stimulation.

review. The Chemical Valley Project - Broadleaf Theatre @ Theatre Passe Muraille

This is a late-arriving blog post, with my regrets. I caught a Saturday matinee of The Chemical Valley Project the other week; I was immediately intrigued by the welcoming nature of the space, with the lead actor speaking to each audience member as they entered, and inviting them on to the performance space to look at additional photos from the research on the project. If one had come to the show without a lot of context (as my two friends had) this would have been a touch confusing, but also intriguing. Certainly, though, it set a really great tone for the afternoon and the information and experience we were about to share.

The play focuses on the research journey of one actor/creator as he explored information relating to The Chemical Valley in the Sarnia region, and particularly in reference to two first nations people who supported and guided his journey. The script held a lot of information, which could very well have been overwhelming, however on the whole it was not. The staging and use of video to hear the actual voices of the indigenous guides was unique, and useful in terms of ensuring that it wasn’t someone else appropriating their story and experience. All of that said, for me the script & production felt a bit disjointed; almost like there were too many topics, as the manner in which they were organized left me feeling like there were a lot of starting points that weren’t always clearly connected to one another. What was the story this was ultimately trying to tell?

That isn’t to say I didn’t enjoy it; the visual aspects were really beautiful and the use of the space was inventive. My bigger qualm was with the style of the performance - after setting up a beautiful, relaxed, non-performative style in the pre-show, the performance itself felt forced and ultimately did a disservice to the material, for me. I simply wanted the actor to exist in the space, with the aid of some clever staging (seriously, the use of scale was magnificent), to share this journey with me. It didn’t need anything else.

All that said, I definitely recommend seeing it if it has a re-mount.

review. The Shimmering Verge by Molly Peacock

I always like the adventure of finding a show at a place I am not familiar with. You open the door, and immediately are immersed in a new world. Director Karthy Chin creates a warm and enveloping space, with interesting positioning and intrigue in the objects, where we first are greeted with a poetry reading. Each night features a reading from a different local poet, which made for a unique positioning of the play that follows. It may, in part, have been due to the skill and engagement of the reader (I saw the divine Anne Michaels) but the reading, with the words just falling through the air, without accoutrement was thrilling and emotional.

The play itself was performed with dexterity by Madeleine Brown, in that delightful set, and accompanied by sound design from electronic musician Laura Dickens. For me, although the script was interesting and the performance highly enjoyable, the production felt crowded. While I enjoyed the light elements and sound elements, at times it felt like there were too many things going on at once that it stifled the air for the poetry to breathe on its own. Heightened text is always a challenge, and for my taste, I prefer to give it more space. That said, it was an engaging production, and highly enjoyable to take in. I definitely recommend checking out this ambitious work by a young company for the quality of the work and performance. They have 4 more shows between April 11 and April 13.

Playwrights You Should Know

So….the other morning I read a list of “30 female playwrights you should know”. I was really excited to click the link. And while I really do appreciate the work of the women listed there, the list felt painfully incomplete. My first instinct was to tweet it, along with “Lets’ list 30 more”. So i’ve decided to create my own list. Look these fabulous playwrights up - links to their public info are included where applicable.

1. Tara Beagan - ntlakapamux and irish “canadian” theatre artist, author of (among others) Reckoning, free as injuns, and In Spirit

2. Hannah Moscovitch - Canadian playwright, author of (among others) Bunny, Old Stock: A Refugee Love Story, and Secret Life of a Mother

3. Falen Johnson - pissed off Mohawk playwright and writer (as per her twitter), author of Salt Baby, Ipperwash, and more…and co-host of the amazing Secret Life of Canada podcast.

4. Kate Hennig. Kate has been writing in one way or another for most of her life. Her writing includes plays, poetry, stories, articles for industry publications, a dissertation, two blogs, and a research paper. Writer of The Virgin Trial, The Last Wife, and more.

5. Yolanda Bonnell - Bisexual/Pansexual/Queer emerging performer and playwright of Anishinaabe/Ojibwe and South Asian descent, author of bug, White Girls in Moccasins, and more.

6. Debbie Patterson - Winnipeg playwright, director and actor, author of Candy from a Baby, Molotov Circus, Sargent & Victor & Me, and countless more, and creator of Sick + Twisted Theatre.

7. d’bi young - Jamaican-Canadian dub poet, monodramatist, and educator, as well as a 3 time Dora Award-winning actor and playwright, writer of The Orisha Trilogy, The Ibeyi Trilogy, and more.

8. Susanna Fournier - writer, actor, and the artistic producer of PARADIGM productions. Writer of Antigone Lives, Vincent, ALL THE WAYS YOU SCARE ME, and more.

9. Columpa Bobb - Canadian photographer, actress, playwright, poet and teacher of Coastal Salish descent, and writer of Singing Shards, Jumping Mouse, The Race, and more.

10. Trey Anthony - playwright, actor, and producer. Creator of Da Kink in My Hair, How Black Mothers Say I Love You, and more.

11. Yvette Nolan - Canadian playwright, director, actor, and educator. Writer of Annie Mae’s Movement, BLADE, The Unplugging, and more.

12. Alix Sobler - writer of theatre, television, and film, including The Glass Piano, The Secret Annex, Sheltered, and more.

13. Pamela Sinha - writer, actor. Writer of Happy Place, Crash, New, and more.

14. Djanet Sears - playwright, actor and director, nationally recognized for her work in African-Canadian Theatre. Afrika Solo, Harlem Duet…the list goes on.

15. Marjorie Chan - multi-disciplinary theatre artist working as playwright, librettist, director and dramaturge. Writer of Women of the Ward, Ocean Child, and more.

16. Audrey Dwyer - multi-disciplinary artist with over twenty years of experience working as an Actor, Director, Playwright, Teacher, Facilitator and Mentor…writer of Calpurnia & more.

17. Anusree Roy - Playwright, actor, librettist. Writer of Pyaasa, Brothel #9, and more (including operas!)

I’ve put together 17. All from this Northern land, mostly off the top of my head or with a quick google search refresher. Who would you add?

EDIT: Adding a few more.

18. Carolyn Gray - Canadian Playwright. My favourite of Carolyn’s plays is The Elmwood Visitation, and her North End Gothic is a delightful script you should all read.

19. Kat Sandler - Canadian playwright, dramaturg & actor. Kat has an array of plays including Mustard and Bang Bang.

review. Unsafe by Sook-Yin Lee @ Canadian Stage

The funny thing is, I never felt unsafe. I felt that this discussion, this demand for interrogation of censorship, of what censorship even means, was and is so urgently necessary. Who gets the commissions? Whose voice is heard? Whose perspective is excluded.

Sook-Yin Lee’s Unsafe is an exploration of these topics, using her skills and notoriety as a journalist and provocateur to delve into a series of interviews. The interviews are clearly edited; we see the cuts, the fast forwards in the video. She speaks of things that happen that she can’t share the details of, because permission was taken away, or never granted in the first place. The meta-journey through the creation of the piece, through the relationship of these two artists to the work and to each other, is familiar. Initially set up as a quiz show or ted talk, the play worked best, when it veered from that format of a staged discussion and into a representative world, one where theatricality was the most important, and if drama happened, so be it.

The ingenious staging from Sarah Garton Stanley served to amplify the right moments, and to highlight for us that the performance was self-aware. The images and movement about the stage were delightful, using the space in the Berkeley Street Theatre to its utmost potential to shape-shift into different worlds that were all a part of Lee’s intellect.

The conversation about censorship has moved underground, so to speak; it isn’t overt, in shutting down shows, but rather in the very funding models and commissioning models and support models that exist in this country for making new work. Lee’s interrogation really underscored (for me, anyway) the frustration that the topic, although a worthy one, was first offered to one White Guy, and then to Another. I’m grateful that the second one accepted, and brought in a new perspective…and then stepped back at just the right moment to let this work shine in the way it needed to. No offence to Zack Russell, but this isn’t a topic for a traditional play.

It was certainly interesting to watch this highly theatrical interpretation, right on the heels of watching the Forced Entertainment “Speak Bitterness” livestream, which was on the very opposite end of the theatricality spectrum, vehemently and insistently un-theatrical.

Again, I didn’t feel unsafe, perhaps because I’m the very generation of artist who grew up watching Sook-Yin Lee on Much Music. Exploring, provoking, experimenting…and just existing as a wonderfully quirky and unapologetic artist in space, with a lot of questions. Who, at least in some part, was inspired (or provoked) by Lee’s edgy and demanding nature, to make the work I do. Unsafe just reminded me that the teen in someone’s basement in suburban Winnipeg, watching Much Music with her friends, isn’t too far away. And she hopes that the people who needed to see this, and needed to think about these things, did. And will continue to do so.

review. A Blow in the Face - Bald Ego & Nightwood @ Theatre Centre

Postpartum depression is a challenging topic to talk about in a truly theatrical manner. How do you represent an experience that most women experience in some manner, but which differs for each experience of it, in a manner that will be sufficiently specific while simultaneously relatable? Lisa Ryder’s script is one of the best efforts at this I have seen. It begins in a fairly normal-looking home; a couple are dealing with a new baby, husband needs to leave for a couple weeks for work, there are household things to do on top of the all-consuming baby care. Quickly we spin into a weird and zany world where two aliens are representative of the weird, sometimes funny, sometimes dangerous ideas that creep around in a new mother’s brain.

Monica Dottor’s direction is beautifully choreographed; the three lead performers are deft in their physicalization, so deeply rooted in their bodies that the strange and highly stylized movements seem completely natural, allowing the audience to slip into the mind and world of Alice, the new mother. It is weird. It is funny. It is wonderful. At a snappy 70 minutes, it leaves you satisfied, rarely with a moment to stop and breathe with its frenetic pace. Rather like motherhood itself…

A Blow In The Face runs to April 14, do catch it if you can.

Upcoming: Workshop Reading - Sweet Mama and the Salty Muffins @ Red Sandcastle Theatre

I am completely filled with gratitude over this project. I first encountered Sweet Mama and the Salty Muffins through the “director-playwright speed dating” that the producers at Alumnae Theatre’s New Ideas Festival put their teams through to match up directors and playwrights. I read a lot of plays. I talked to a lot of playwrights. But something clicked when I read this play, and then when I spoke with playwright Ciaran Myers. It was like we had been collaborators for years already, despite literally a 10 minute phone call. Sometimes you just know.

We put up the first monologue of the play, Mama’s monologue, in the 2018 festival. It got some great feedback. And so often, that’s where new work ends. But again…sometimes you just know. We revived it at the D’Arcy Symposium in that form. Got more amazing feedback. Kept talking. Kept thinking. Then Ciaran approached me about a new collective launching a New Works Festival, Whiskey Ginger Collective. Did we think Sweet Mama could continue to develop?

We were going to do one more monologue for this Spring. An actor was lined up, a plan was in place. And then, suddenly, after a late night of writing… he had a whole play. 60 minutes, four characters, five songs, beautiful snapshots of our relationship to parenthood and loss. So, we found three more (amazing) actors who could workshop a script while also helping to write the songs for this play with music. We dramaturged. We cut. We debated. We wrote songs. . and here we are.

The current version has existed for about a week. We shared it with a preview audience Tuesday night, and invite audiences tonight (Wednesday March 20) through Sunday March 24th. It is a reading of the script in development, and it might even keep changing as the week goes on. We’ll see. You can get tickets here. There are PWYC shows, and artist rate shows, etc etc. We’re joined by two other works that are further along in their development, and hope that you’ll join us to see something new and fresh, and help give new writing the room to breathe in the ether. These four magnificent women represent some of the most versatile, generous, and talented performers you’ll encounter, which is worth the price of admission in itself. And, I think, there is something really special about this script.

Massive thanks go out to my collaborators:
Ara Glenn-Johanson - Mama
Liz Whitbread - Singer
Michelle Jedrzejewski - Bassist
Renee Strasfeld - Caroline

And to those who have supported the creation of this music: Liz, Ara, and Renee, along with John Norman and Sierra Noble, as well as to Lisa Lenihan and Emma Miziolek, who worked so diligently on the first production that helped make this all possible.

review. Hamlet - Theatre WhyNot @ Canadian Stage Company

Ravi Jain’s re-imagined production of Hamlet was most recently in Toronto at Canadian Stage Company as part of the 2019 remount that is touring Canada,. I missed the 2018 production, so am not certain how the move to the high ceiling, raw space of the Berkeley Street Theatre informed the show, however I did find that for the most part, the production seemed “at home” in this space, making use of unconventional entrances and highlighting the gorgeous exposed brick.

For me, the production was strongest in the moments when it employed ASL, with Horatio speaking entirely in ASL, and characters, notably Hamlet, communicating at times using ASL as well. The dramaturgical choices of when to have sound, and when to have silent language only were highly informed — they highlighted Hamlet’s struggle to be understood, and that Horatio was the only person truly listening and engaging with Hamlet, while everyone else writes Hamlet off as childish.

I have thought for some time about the value of swapping gender roles in this script. Given the role mental illness plays in the relationships to the characters, and the difference in the way Hamlet is managed (“buck up” and “get over it” so to speak) versus Ophelia, who is pitied and mourned, there is much to learn from swapping the genders. That said, this production opted to make Hamlet played by a female, but otherwise quite androgynous, while Ophelia’s movements and gestures were quite stereotypically feminine. I wonder whether different choices may have opened up more about these two characters.

Other parts of the production felt uneven in the performance; everything to look at was beautiful, including the detailed choreography and pictures on the stage, however the spoken text was not uniform…some actors shouted too much while others mumbled too much. In a production where the language (verbal or otherwise) is the main focal point, this was challenging for me. I struggled to reconcile how it may have been a specific choice, but have been unable to do so.

That said, Karen Robinson (Gertrude) and Barbara Gordon (Polonius) in particular were SUBLIME. There was a moment where I had managed to forget Polonius dies so early in the play, and then was deeply saddened that Gordon’s time on the stage was going to be cut short. Such was the strength of her performance!

What i found really interesting was the similarity of images to other productions of Hamlet I’ve seen, notably Ostermeier’s Schaubühne production from a few years back — from the piles of mud, to the audience reflection (mirrors here, video screens for Ostermeier), to the graphic depiction of sexual acts and the relationship between Gertrude and Claudius. It was a stunning reminder of the images and questions that exist deep within the play, and our larger cultural relationship to these characters and this story...and a humbling reminder to me that as a director, any new idea you think of is probably not new.

This is, in many ways, some of the most exciting Shakespeare I’ve seen in Canada. While I have some quibbles, this is of course in reference to the work I’ve seen and the (rather absurd) amount of time I spend thinking about these things. In no way does that detract from the overall excellent quality of the interpretation and production as a whole.

review. Salt by Selina Thompson @ Progress Festival (Theatre Centre)

Selina Thompson’s Salt strikes you (and some Salt) from the first moment of the piece. It is a play, yes, and a performance — simultaneously highly theatrical through its representative nature, and anti-theatrical in its lack of performative qualities (don’t worry — this is a good thing). Thompson speaks to the audience as if there were only two people in the room, but also fills the space with her power and thoughts, with enough energy to pack an arena.

The piece is a re-telling of her journey by sea to re-claim the routes and places associated with the transatlantic slave trade; the colonial power exertion that built and maintains the structures of power in place today. This sounds heavy, and at times it was, but there was an overwhelming sense of lightness, too. Thompson is an expert storyteller, weaving the dark and rightfully angry with the light; some of my favourite moments were the contrasts between her painful struggle with history and her often funny, completely relatable struggle with explaining her present journey to her father, and ensuring he knows she is safe (when at times she really is not).

The direction (Dawn Walton) and sound design (Sleepdogs) were superb, and complimented Thompson’s script & performance perfectly. She has been touring this show for a couple years now, and I strongly recommend you see it if you can. It has now been over 2 weeks since I saw it, and certain images and moments continue to creep into my memory day to day. That’s evidence of a truly remarkable piece of art.

review. Top Girls by Caryl Churchill @ Alumnae Theatre

Full disclosure, I was offered a comp to this show by the luminescent Lisa Lenihan who played Isabella Bird / Mrs Kidd.

I remember the first time I read Top Girls. Admittedly, at that point I had not read many plays that weren’t Shakespeare or a musical, so something that played with form and reality and lucidity so actively was a shock to my system. In fact, if I am totally honest, I seem to recall not really liking it. Mostly because on the surface, I just didn’t GET it. University being what it is, I had to keep reading and thinking and working on it and as I dove into unearthing just what the heck was going on in this play, the more it grew on me and I came to recognize the images in the play as manifestations of things I had felt or experienced.

The Alumnae production began with some interesting directorial choices. Doors that had cut outs of powerful female shapes in the design, which were re-built into various set pieces; showing women as the literal building blocks of this world, but passively so. A young female dancer moving through the space off the top, and also between scenes provided lovely imagery, but it did feel peripheral to the storytelling for me.

The performances were at times strong, but at times it felt uneven…one of the challenging aspects of Churchill’s text is the overlap of talking. How does one achieve this feeling of natural female conversation, but without having the actors competing and shouty at one another? For a director this is a huge challenge, and one that only at times was conquered in this production.

The overall interpretation of the play felt quite literal, which is likely the source of the challenges I felt the production faced. Each actor did well enough with the work, it just failed to come together as a cohesive whole for me.

review. Iphigenia and the Furies (on Taurian Land) by Ho Ka Hei @ Saga Collectif

I’m always here for a great adaptation or re-think of the ancient Greeks; the plays deal with such fundamental questions of family and legacy, and our relationship to a place, that it is impossible not to see the relevance to current times. Saga Collectif present the World Premiere of this new adaptation by Ho Ka Hei (Jeff Ho), which slims the myth down to 4 actors, including a chorus represented by one actor.

The update to the text is delightfully wry, with brilliant steps in and out of an ancient sounding heightened language, cut with a more modern contemporary heightened language of our own, as if sub-tweeting the text. Ho’s adaptation underscores the challenges of our relationship to and feelings of ownership of a place. We are invited (encouraged even!) to empathize with Iphigenia and Orestes in their re-unification, to the point where we forget that in order for them to succeed, those whose land they are on (and property they attempt to steal) will be victims, and the ritual neglected in favour of self interest. I could go on for quite awhile on the symbolic role of the pharmakos and the elimination (or displacement) of this scapegoat in contemporary thought…

I thought the script was brilliant and insightful, and best captured by Virgillia Griffith’s Iphigenia, who embodied the perfect blend of regal ancient Princess/Priestess and Instagram celebrity. The production was well served by the live sound design provided by Heidi Chan, creating a hyper-real world for the characters to inhabit. While I enjoyed each of the performances individually, I did feel as though there was a disjointedness from a style perspective; as if each character was representing their own style of performance. It is tough to say whether this was intentional, but for me, it didn’t quite feel overt enough to really work as an addition to the production (so much to say that if it is intended….REALLY underscore it — like in the moments where Orestes re-tells his instructions from Apollo).

That quibble aside, I found the production to be thought provoking and intelligent. We could do with far more of this kind of theatre around here.

review. What I Call Her by Ellie Moon @ Crow's Theatre

Full Disclosure: I saw this show in the first preview, so aspects of the performances and staging may have changed since I saw it.

Ellie Moon follows up her verbatim play from 2017 Asking For It stepping out of the #metoo and Ghomeshi moment, and into a complex story of a family dealing with their history. The play centres on two sisters and their dying mother who we never see, navigating their relationships with one another, with her, and with the men in their lives. The only man we see is Kate (the older sister’s) boyfriend, though we also hear about their father, and their mom’s new husband.

I felt as though the first part of the play, setting up the relationship between Kate and Kyle, was sluggish and lacking in urgency. It lasted an extraordinarily long time and felt like it was trying to fit too many ideas in (I won’t give spoilers here…). It is when Kate’s sister, Ruby, arrives uninvited, that the play begins to sing. In my opinion, it could do with dramaturgical work that helps it cut to the chase sooner, because the complex tension between the sisters is what gets really interesting to watch, how their behaviour to one another and in the presence of one another is so clearly different than it is with others. Ellie Elwand sparkles with fiery intensity, and Michael Ayres is extremely likeable as the boyfriend stuck in the middle of the sibling hellstorm.

Director Sarah Kitz does well helping the actors navigate the density of the material and creating some nice relationships. The choice to use a thrust setup didn’t quite work for me; I could sense what she was going for…a voyeuristic sense that the walls have just fallen off this apartment, but with audience on 3 sides (though predominantly on 2) the actors had to serve too many angles, causing the blocking to come off as stilted. I think it could have benefitted instead from an alley, perhaps, giving the actors more freedom.

Overall I think there is a seed of an extremely interesting play in here, and I hope it will be uncovered through further development of the script.

review. Secret Life of a Mother by Hannah Moscovitch @ Theatre Centre

Hannah Moscovitch has teamed up with Maev Beatty and Ann-Marie Kerr to share an immensely personal, highly theatrical and yet viscerally real story of motherhood. The trials of becoming a mother, and then the intense, challenging, terrifying world of being a mother.

While the story is intriguing, it does not, of course, reflect everyone’s personal experiences. It couldn’t. Motherhood is a myriad of experiences, all slightly different than the other. But a good story doesn’t necessarily reflect one’s own experiences exactly; rather it triggers memories and thoughts about your own experiences. Things you had forgotten, or pushed away. Recognition of a sentiment. In this, Moscovitch is immensely successful.

Maev Beatty is a force. Her performances are known to be filled with emotional truth, and this is no different. What is truly fantastic here is the sheer range she displays in matters of minutes; jumping in and out of the character of Hannah to the character of Maev, performing performance, rehearsal, the reality of shifting focus in motherhood beautifully mirrored in the shape of the play and its performance.

Director Ann-Marie Kerr creates beautiful images; dangerous and vulnerable, while also incredibly strong. The inventive use of water and projection and audio/video recording, coupled with stunning lighting design by Leigh Ann Vardy created spaces out of nothing, evocative images and pictures in every moment. It created tension without being tense, and a specific feeling of community, amplified by the plexiglass reflection where the audience could somewhat, at times, see themselves on the stage, too.

My only dislike, would be the final few moments. While the images were beautiful, evocative of a womb, and then of reflection of the self, I felt that it lacked the same energy and purpose as the earlier moments…the urgency faded too quickly.

On the whole, I appreciated the informality of the structure, the work that felt inherently female. This work has a momentum, an urgency, and an intensity. As the artists say in their notes, and in the script itself; there isn’t real work about motherhood. People don’t talk about miscarriage, or the reality of childbirth and its many permutations enough. They don’t talk about the anxiety of carrying first in the womb, and then in your arms. The struggle to continue to be a person and not just a mom, but at the same time, being shaped by motherhood every day. And if we consider how many audience members and theatre makers are women, that just doesn’t make sense. I applaud the artists for their courage in making and sharing this intensely personal and vulnerable story. It encourages me to share mine.

review. The Assembly: Episode 1 @ Crow's Theatre & Porte Parole

The Crow’s Theatre and Porte Parole have come together again for a new piece of politically charged verbatim theatre, The Assembly. The premise is to take 4 people with opposing viewpoints and experiences, who on the internet would rage at one another, bring them into a room and have them discuss some of the most polarizing subjects of our day. Being verbatim theatre, this is then edited, spliced, and sewn together into a narrative. I’m speaking vaguely in the below, to avoid spoilers for anyone who might see it in the coming days (it runs to Nov 3)

Among verbatim pieces, I feel this works quite well; the premise and the conversations themselves facilitate the editing, which I often find so problematic in this sort of writing. The style, snapping through different times, rewinding at times, is like a live on stage manifestation of scrolling through your Facebook news feed.

The actors shared polished performances, and director Chris Abraham’s choices to juxtapose the hyper-real with the non-naturalistic (at times) movement helped amplify this feeling of a disjointed digital world. The use of cameras to zoom in or out underlined, at times, the responses (or lack thereof) of the other 3 participants. One touch I really enjoyed was that the curtains were open to the street on some windows, so when we heard a bus or truck drive by (impossible to avoid in this space), we could also see them not only in the changing light, but also in the camera picking them up behind actors….an ever-present reminder of the real world that this play is situated in.

All of that said, I couldn’t help but wonder about what was missing; there was only one person of colour represented (the character Hope), which meant that during in-depth discussions of “Muslim immigration”, the voice of Muslims in North America was starkly absent. Similarly, there was no reference to indigenous issues (notably, there was no land acknowledgement in advance of the show) and although positioned with Canadians, the discussion was highly US-Centric (perhaps a bit tellingly truthful of our own lives and thoughts). But most importantly, I worry that despite efforts to remind us that theatre does not exist in a vaccuum (through the open window, etc) the play, at least in the audience I saw it with, did actually; the audience felt inherently against the Alt-Right character Valerie, laughing at her responses in a manner that they did not laugh at other characters. I think that efforts to show Valerie and Shayne (the self-identifying queer, Jewish, anarchist) as foils to one another fell down in the presence of an audience who (based on their responses at least) seemed quite liberal. I would love to see this play amongst an audience who wouldn’t normally see this kind of play; people like Valerie, or even James, who as the other conservative character gets lots in the scuffle between Valerie and Shayne.

A lot to keep thinking about here, for sure, and in many ways some of the most effective use of verbatim theatre I have seen…however if we keep telling these stories into an echo chamber, are we really changing anything?

review. Ghostbusters! The Movie Experience

The Secret Sessions have put together a fun evening for Ghostbusters enthusiasts, merging fandom, live performance, and the movie into an experience that enables visitors to interact and enjoy. Using the great brick-walled open space of The Redwood Theatre, they create a world that goes beyond simply watching the movie. In the pre-show interaction time, audience members can fill out their own paranormal activity reports, or interact with the performers, or just relax back and have a drink or snack. I would have liked to see a stronger device to make the interactions and navigation of the space a bit more clear for the un-initiated. . . attending on my own I observed some actors just talking (in character) amongst themselves while I lingered looking on.

For the performance itself, director Mandy Roveda did an excellent job with the cast, blending scenes from the film and live action perfectly, with just the right amount of adventurous theatricality. My only complaint was that in the cavernous space, sometimes actors’ diction was lost.

This is a super fun way to enjoy your annual Ghostbusters viewing!