Dark and In-Yer-Face
by Gaëtan L. Charlebois
Chelsea Haberlin is Co-Artistic Director of ITSAZOO Productions as well as a professional producer, director and dramaturge. Favourite ITSAZOO directing credits include The Flick (Presented by Blue Bridge), Mojo (for which she received a Jessie nomination for Outstanding Direction), Chairs: A Parable, Robin Hood, Grimm Tales and Death of a Clown. Other directing projects include Glendale (Co-op), Rhinoceros (UBC Masters Thesis project), Featuring Loretta & Criminal Genius (Vancouver Fringe Festival) and Faust is Dead (UBC). Assistant directing projects include My Turquoise Years (Arts Club Theatre), Elizabeth Rex (Bard on the Beach), The Idiot (PuSh Festival), Burnt By the Sun and London Assurance (United Players). Ms Haberlin has an MFA in directing from UBC, a BFA with a specialization in Applied Theatre from UVic and is a graduate of the National Voice Intensive. She is the recipient of the Sydney J Risk award in directing and the Ray Michal award for outstanding body of work by an emerging director. She is currently Resident Producer with Neworld Theatre.
CHARPO: We’re told Killer Joe is a grisly, pitch-black comedy. This is my cup of tea but I often ask myself - and am asking you - when does black comedy simply become an unpleasant night of theatre and how do you find that exquisite balance?
HABERLIN: For me it's all about humour. We've always tackled heavy topics in our plays and the way we do that is through comedy. If we can keep you laughing you'll enjoy everything that comes at you. Killer Joe is hard hitting, dark and in-yer-face while at the same time being very funny. Tarantino films are really enjoyable and he's one of the greatest filmmakers of our time but if I described the plots to you it would be impossible to see where the humour could be found. It's found in the real human interactions that occur that we all relate to, in the clearly defined and exquisite characterizations and in the stuff that is so harsh that all you can do is laugh. That is the same with Killer Joe. It's a huge challenge but one I'm entirely up for.
The Horror of Inevitability
In order to be subversive and challenging, you've got to scare a few people away.
by Mack Gordon
With pupils so wide you can't identify its iris, Rosemary descends the stairs to an unknown sub-basement in “Rosemary's Baby.” Danny Torrance rides his big wheel down the hall in the Overlook Hotel while Stanley Kubrick's steady cam follows. Nosferatu's shadow approaches while the mirror gazing backwards sees nothing. This is horror to me: slow, threatening inevitability.
In 2009, Vancouver theatre company ITSAZOO Productions approached me to talk about their next project. They wanted to do a site-specific play at Halloween that blended the tales of Edgar Allan Poe with the aesthetic of 1980's slasher flicks.
I knew them well and I knew their company well. I'd seen most of their shows and understood their formats. In “Grimm Tales,” Hansel and Gretel lead the audience around to several different vignettes reenacting the famous stories of the Brothers Grimm. In “Robin Hood”, Alan of Dale is our host. “The Road to Canterbury” features a bumbling tour guide/historian. One host presents several tales in their entirety, wrapped together by a common thread.
