Review: (Montreal / Theatre) Blind

(photo : Mitindo Primary Tanzania) 

Lush, imaginative exploration of harsh reality and cultural differences
Blind raises myriad questions surrounding treatment of people with albinism in Africa
by Sarah Deshaies

The audience is seated, and the house lights are up, but so are the lights trained on the stage. The sounds of birds and other animals cooing and clicking echoes through the venue (Montreal arts interculturels). Meanwhile, actors walk the stage, warming up in the way that they do: traipsing through the set, stretching, mumbling, making playful sounds to limber up their mouths and lungs. 

This was the first 10 minutes or so of Blind’s first Saturday showing, and it was a slow and methodical build to the enterprising story about to unfold. 

Sunday Feature: First-Person - Lindsay Wilson on Blind

Beyond Documentary
by Lindsay Wilson

Lindsay Wilson is a graduate of the Ryerson Theatre School in Toronto, Ontario and recently completed her M.A. in Creative Writing at Concordia University. She works as an actor, writer and director. Past projects include directing Final Girl at The Freestanding Room in 2012 and co-directing and re-mounting Jesus Jell-O: The Miraculous Confection - winner of the Montreal Fringe 2010 Mainline Award - at Mainline Theatre in Montreal in early December 2010. Her play Puck Bunny, presented during the 2009 Montreal and Toronto Fringe Festivals, was selected for the Long-Distance Dramaturgy Project with She Said Yes! Theatre in Newfoundland for its 2009 – 2010 season. She worked for two years as an invited artist with The Witchcraft Project, an interdisciplinary project at Concordia University. Ms Wilson was awarded a Conseils des arts et lettres du Québec grant for research and development, as well as a grant from the Cole Foundation’s Intercultural Conversations programme,  for her show Blind,  about witchcraft-related albino killings in Tanzania. 

“Retaining their role of storyteller, figurehead at the prow of memory. The legacy will otherwise be lost - night after night, wave upon wave, the whispers take up the tale, even before the child can understand, even before she finds her words of light, before she speaks in her turn and so that she will not speak alone...” - Assia Djebar (Trans. Dorothy S. Blair.)

There are so many factors that go into offering aid to another country; almost as many as go into telling stories. Especially when the stories are from a culture not your own. In ‘Blind’ I chose to write about the murders of people with albinism in East Africa. I am born-and-raised Canadian. In getting to know more about the context behind the attacks, I came to better understand the politics in the region, the culture, and the many stories that exist about witchcraft and people with albinism. Myths abound: albinos are not human; they disappear when they die; they are born this way because they have been cursed by their ancestors - these are a few, and there are many more. They are targeted because it is believed by some that albino body parts hold magical powers. These myths differ depending on the area of the country you are in but they have existed for a very long time. 

‘Blind’ began when Alison Darcy and I were asked to create a short piece based on the subject of witchcraft. Alison brought in some photos to share; one of which caught my attention. It was a photo with a blind child at the centre of the photograph surrounded by other students, most of whom were children with albinism. I was curious about the blind child. I was curious about his voice, and how he might make sense of the stories of the students around him. After some research I came to understand that the children I saw in the photograph were targets for corrupt traditional healers who wanted to cull their body parts and sell them for money. The children were at this school in an effort on the part of the Tanzanian government to make sure they were safe and accounted for. The reason for this? There are over 100,000 people with albinism in Tanzania. There has been an increase of attacks on people with albinism since 2000. Many attacks still go unreported. Children are among the most vulnerable.

Review: (Montreal) Othello

Andrew Moodie, Amanda Lisman (photo by Andrée Lanthier)

Stabbing at the Air
by Caitlin Murphy

I’ve always loved Othello. It’s always struck me as Shakespeare’s most accessible play somehow. I like the scale of its plot (essentially a disgruntled employee’s sick ploy to get back at his boss) and the depth of its interest in human psychology (essentially how the mind is able to cannibalize itself). 

In the Artistic Producer’s notes for the Segal Centre/Scapegoat Carnivale’s co-production of Othello, we learn that this is only the third time the Segal has done Shakespeare. And though that is indeed surprising, given this is the Segal’s 47th year, perhaps it’s because the quick rehearsal process imposed by main stage productions can only serve Shakespeare ‘too little, not too well’.

Sunday Feature: Interview with Alison Darcy on Scapegoat Carnivale's Othello

(photo by Sabrina Reeves)

Creating her path, one step at a time.  

by David Sklar

Alison Darcy is a  National Theatre School of Canada graduate and the Co- Founder and Co-Artistic Director of Scapegoat Carnivale Theatre. As well as directing, producing, teaching theatre, Ms Darcy has been acting professionally since childhood. Some of her directorial works include Faust and The Heretics of Bohemia (Segal/ Scapegoat), Hyena Subpoena (Catkidd/scapegoat), Medea and Life is a Dream (Centaur/Scapegoat), Things are bad-Ijumpile Lendaba (South Africa's Mopo Productions/Scapegoat), Last Call (scapegoat/NCTF/Uno festival), Real Estate (Centaur), Bash: Latterday plays (Muttertung), The Unknown Citizen (Project Porte Parole), and Burning Cage (Woman Alone). Selected acting credits include roles in Age of Arousal (Centaur), A Doll House (Saidye), Bye Bye Baby (Imago/Centaur), Brahm and the Angel (Geordie), Speak Easy (Sabooge), Bash: Latterday plays (Muttertung), Small Returns (Infinitheatre/November), girls!girls!girls! (Theatro Commanici/FTA), Taking Sides (Centaur), and various film and television productions. She has worked closely with Clyde Henry Productions, the Festival TransAmériques, Blue Metropolis, and South Africa's Mopo Productions. She is a multiple MECCA award winner, as well as recipient of awards from Montreal, Vancouver, and Seattle fringes.

CHARPO: How did your acting career begin?  

DARCY: I started when I was eight. I did a show at the Centaur because my dad (Maurice Podbrey) needed kids in a play and so a bunch of my friends and I took part. Some casting agents saw the show just by chance and wanted me to be in the movie, “The Hotel New Hampshire”. My brother got an actual part and I was a glorified extra. But that started me off and one day I was at school and another casting agent was looking for kids for this movie called, “The Peanut Butter Solution” and they just picked me based on my look, I think, to audition. I got the third lead: they didn’t know I had had any previous experience. They were doing a hunt across Canada. 

I did a few plays but mostly film until about CEGEP when I started getting more interested in theatre and then decided to apply and I got in to NTS (National Theatre School) in 1992. After graduating I took four years off to travel and ended up living in Europe, in London, and finally came back home to start directing. In 2003, I met Joseph Shragge (co-artistic and co-founder) and later Melanie St-Jacques and by 2006 we started Scapegoat Carnivale. In 2007, David Oppenheim and Andreas Apergis came on board and we became the company. Since graduating, I’ve also been teaching classes. I work with various organizations such as Blue Metropolis, Festival TransAmérique and NTS, while all the while promoting anglo-theatre in this city.  

In a Word... Alison Darcy, co-artistic director of Scapegoat Carnivale, on Faust

It contains EVERYTHING

Alison Darcy is co-artistic director of Scapegoat Carnivale in Montreal, as well as an actor who has appeared at most of the city's main and secondary houses.

CHARPO:  Why Faust, especially this Faust which is a monster (and you're doing bits of both volumes!!) when you could do Marlowe?

DARCY: Why Faust? 

That’s another one of those questions, like why Greek mythology. 

And the same answer applies, because it contains EVERYTHING.

Marlowe’s Faust is a great story about a man who sells his soul to the devil. 

Goethe’s Faust is an epic work that took him 57 years to complete; it contains mythical characters from throughout time and space, it envelops one man’s entire imagination and touches on every major theme that life offers us. It is akin to doing all of Shakespeare’s sonnets, or the bible, or Gulliver’s travels, the odyssey and Don Quixote all in one. 

The Sunday Read: Alison Darcy on Scapegoat Carnivale's Bacchae

intense, dramatic, harsh and notoriously hard to stage

Alison Darcy is a living legacy. She has gone far beyond being the daughter of directors Maurice Podbrey (Centaur founder) and Elsa Bolam (Geordie founder) to becoming one of the finest director/artistic director/actors in the country. Her company, Scapegoat Carnivale, scored huge with their production of Medea, and is once again tackling the Greeks with The Bacchae.

CHARPO: What is your role for this production?

DARCY: My role this time around is solely as producer. It is my first time stepping out of a Scapegoat production creatively. It's a super odd feeling for me. I haven't even been to the rehearsals yet.

CHARPO: The Greeks again...why?

DARCY: We're not done with them. There's too much good stuff there. Andreas and Joe [Shragge, co-translator and co-director for the production] felt compelled to do the script and eager to do another translation of Euripides because he was such a master of pure theatre. Also I think their idea to set it during the Great Awakening is inspired. And we had such a great reception to Medea, I think Montreal audiences are excited to see new interpretations of classics, especially ones not often done. The Greeks are the originators of Western theatre, these are our fairy tales, the founding of the Judeo-Christian theology and our society. What better well to pull from? Maybe a trilogy could be in the making.

First-Person: Joseph Shragge on The Heretics of Bohemia

Dramaturgy of Disappointment

Failure in the Face of Comic Expectations

by Joseph Shragge

"Humor, I suppose, consecrates nonexistence." Lionel Abel, Metatheatre: 

a new view of dramatic form

The moment genre is invoked, expectations emerge. The process of dramaturgy for our upcoming play The Heretics of Bohemia consistently raised the question, “what is this?” Knowing the piece was a comedy didn’t help specify what kind of comedy it was. For a period I thought of it as a turn on festive or Saturnalian comedy, outlined by the critic C.L. Barber as, “Release expressed by making the whole experience of the play that of a revel.” This genre raises the expectations that social hierarchies will invert, and that all the energy put into maintaining inhibitions will be released into misrule, play, and a flight from the self. Trying to achieve the glorious freedom of this idyllic vision of life, I buckled. Trying to revise the text with the comic expectation of enjoyment met with unhappy results. When a character experienced a loss of self, it was unsettling; excesses and intemperance, produced guilt and dread. Instead of liberation, more energy was needed to maintain the exact inhibitions that the genre promised to allay.