Review: (Montreal) V-Cards (WildSide)

Fake it till you make it or Like a Virgin?
by Aleksandra Koplik

Any show that starts with a Leonard Cohen-esque cover of Madonna’s “Like a Virgin” can have and keep my attention. This clever and extremely funny play is written by Step Taylor and Jesse Stong, directed by Dean Patrick Fleming. [ED: Jesse Stong is a contributor to The Charlebois Post.] It opens and closes with 14 chairs placed on stage, forming the letter V. Each chair holds a Roman mask of emotion that helps give life to over 20 characters (aged 13-70) on stage. They are played by four talented and energetic actors:  Marcel Jeanin , Amanda Kellock, Mike Payette and Anana Rydvald , that have absolutely no trouble transitioning from one story to the next. Actually, they glide through it. The audience quickly realizes from the very beginning that this is in fact an exposé of different people’s stories of their sexuality, self-awareness and, of course, losing their virginity. The names of the characters and their age is projected onto a chalkboard at the beginning of each segment and transitions to the next with song that ranges from the vocal stylings of the Spice Girls, to Sting, to Bruno Mars – keeping an upbeat vibe in the room.

Review: (Montreal) Big Shot (WildSide)

Here’s your Big Shot: a cinematic snapshot of a tragedy
Jon Lachlan Stewart is an elegant whirligig of energy 
by Sarah Deshaies
@sarahdeshaies

A shot rings out in a cabin of the SkyTrain.

Over the course of just over an hour, the bullet’s story will be revealed by those touched by it: who shot it, who provoked it, who witnessed it, who it struck.

Big Shot, which has toured in several festivals, including the Toronto and Winnipeg Fringes, is an intricate story woven by performer, playwright and Edmonton native Jon Lachlan Stewart. 

Review: (Montreal) Little Orange Man (WildSide)

(photo by Al Smith)

Remembering When...
by Aleksandra Koplik

Remember when you were a kid? How sense of coordination and controlling your walking speed never really came to mind? How every little question or curious thought was processed through your imagination, and came out in what at the time seemed like the perfectly logical conclusion? What glorious and forgotten days: when any uneaten vegetable or food could be used as a prop for play time and every toy could tell a story. Kathleen Greenfield and Ingrid Hansen 's Little Orange Man is an escape to childhood through the eyes of Kitt (played by Hansen), a little Danish girl who is directing a dream experiment with the help of volunteers from Craigslist (the audience). As a child diagnosed with ADD, this smart handful is having trouble making friends and she really misses her grandfather, who recently fell into a coma. This story is about Kitt trying to communicate with him through her dreams.

Sunday Feature: Carmen Aguirre on Theatre in the Time of Danger (Blue Box, WildSide)

“Come if you dare”
by Carmen Aguirre

Carmen Aguirre is a Vancouver-based theatre artist who has written and co-written 20 plays including Chile Con Carne, The Trigger, Blue Box, and The Refugee Hotel. Her plays have been nominated for a Dora Mavor Moore Award (Toronto), four Jessie Richardson Theatre Awards (Vancouver), and The Siminovitch Prize (national). Her first book, Something Fierce: Memoirs of a Revolutionary Daughter won CBC Canada Reads 2012 and is a national bestseller. Carmen has over 60 film, television and stage acting credits. She is the recipient of the 2002 New Play Centre's Best New Play Award, the 2011 Union of B.C. Performers' Lorena Gale Woman of Distinction Award, and Langara College's 2012 Outstanding Alumni Award. Ms Aguirre presented the keynote address below on the theme "Speaking Of Change" for the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas Annual Conference on June 27, 2013 at Simon Fraser University.

When I was 18 years old I had the most searing theatrical experience of my life. It happened in Lima, Peru, during the civil war there. It was May, 1986, and I had just joined the Chilean resistance that was fighting Pinochet's right-wing dictatorship. 

Now if you joined the underground outside of Chile, like I did, you did so in Lima, where you would get your orders. But first you had to take the oath. 

The oath said that I would give my life to the resistance, that I agreed to be executed by the resistance if I broke under torture and gave my comrades away, and that I would always follow orders no matter what. Security was of the utmost importance; people fell all the time: Pinochet's dictatorship was considered one of the most “secure” in the world (in other words, the secret police were everywhere), and the Peruvian secret police worked with Pinochet as well. So one must never ever do anything stupid. 

The Question... Ingrid Hansen on Little Orange Man (WildSide)

The High-Octane Danish Girl

by Estelle Rosen

Raised by Danish immigrants in Kelowna, BC and fuelled by a love for talking with strangers, Ingrid Hansen is fascinated with ways of creating temporary communities out of groups of strangers. She has toured Little Orange Man across Canada, designed for the Dora-Award Winning musical Ride the Cyclone, and was a lead puppeteer for the children’s television series Tiga Talk! on APTN. Ms Hansen also does ongoing work with the inmate-run prison theatre company William Head on Stage in Victoria, BC. She loves to teach students of all backgrounds, especially beginners, and has taught theatre workshops for children, adults, actors, dancers, puppeteers, and prison inmates.

CHARPO: The last time we were in touch was about SNAFU Dance Theatre production of Fractured Fables, a play written and performed by prison inmates. At first glance, Little Orange Man (LOM) seems a departure. Yet perhaps not. LOM involves an outcast fighting dark battles, both incorporate fables and puppets. Are there any connections or is this coincidence?

HANSEN: I suppose the main similarity between the two projects is that when we started, we really had no idea what the end result would be. When working on Little Orange Man, at times we threw out huge chunks of material -- entire show’s worth of material -- or evolved the story into something completely different. It’s now the story of Kitt, a high-octane Danish girl whose greatest delight comes from re-enacting her grandfather’s grisly folk tales to young neighbourhood children. Kitt fires up homemade technology to extract and re-enact the audience’s dreams. Through the weird songs, fast-paced humour and shadow puppetry we have the story of an outcast child who entrusts a group of strangers to help fight her darkest battle. 

The Question... Jon Lachlan Stewart on Big Shot (WildSide)

The Gun. The Bullet. The Target. The Eyes.
by Estelle Rosen

Jon Lachlan Stewart is a playwright, performer and director originally from Edmonton Alberta, a graduate of Studio 58 in Vancouver, and an upcoming graduate of the National Theatre School of Canada. He seeks to address dark contemporary issues that continue to wound society through history: issues of race, sex politics, urban violence, violence among youth. Mr. Stewart is committed as a bilingual artist in Canada, and creates physical work in the Lecoq tradition of mime. Selected playwriting credits include The Genius Code (Catalyst Theatre creator-in residence), Big Shot (four municipal theatre awards, still on tour), Dog: a 1950’s Homelife Nightmare (best independent production award), Le Portrait Gooble (French tour, four Vancouver Jessie awards), and Little Room (two Edmonton Sterling nominations). He is currently developing two projects: a textless mix of breakdance and clown addressing gun violence in youth called Kids With Guns, and an examination of post-war PTSD from a child’s perspective, in the Greek structure, called Edith Rex, commissioned by Shadow Theatre.

CHARPO: When bystanders are asked to describe the perpetrator witnessed in a violent occurrence, there are often wild variations in descriptions.  In Big Shot, you're taking this a step further by six different perspectives on a split second of time between the bullet leaving a gun and hitting the target. What was your motivation to write this play; what are the challenges of being both writer and performer and combining dramatic text with dance? And just what is meant by 'slow motion theatre to pry the wide eyes open'?

LACHLAN-STEWART: After touring Big Shot to over 11 cities, one thing that audiences are really enjoying is how the show imitates the motions and sequences in famous Hollywood action movies (a la John Woo / Quentin Tarantino) in a theatrical way. We're like a live action movie on stage. It just so happens that all of these sequences move the story forward, all culminating towards a shocking finish. From our experiences, we decided to coin the phrase "slow motion theatre".

Review: (Montreal) Poutine Masala (Wildside)

Bollywood, Qc

by Rebecca Ugolini

If the grey winter landscape has you yearning for a little heat, the Bollywood-inspired dance numbers and light romantic comedy in Poutine Masala might be just the spice you need.

Choreographed by Deepali Lindblom, founder of the Deepali Indian dance company, Poutine Masala uses all the drama and comedy of Bollywood dance to tell the story of the cross-cultural love story between a free-thinking young Québecois man and a flirty but reluctant young dancer whose flight from an arranged marriage in India brought her to Montreal.

Review: (Montreal) Placebo (Wildside)

Clown in the Drug House

by Caitlin Murphy

Joe De Paul’s many years touring with Cirque du Soleil, honing his clowning skills, are on delightful display in his self-written one-man show. Directed by Aline Muheim, Placebo features De Paul as a non-plussed lab technician, mysteriously forced to wait (in front of us, the audience) before he is allowed to commence his daily intakes (as it turns out, of us, the audience).  In his desperate attempt to fill the awkward absence, he kills time by proudly showing off his karate moves, anthropomorphizing his potted fern, fumbling around with office supplies, calling himself from cell phone to land line, obsessively adjusting the furniture, and playing basketball with the garbage pail. 

First-Person: Yanomi Shoshinz on A Day in The Life of Miss Hiccup

In a World Without Limits

by Yanomi Shoshinz

I am not religious but after reading The Never Ending Story by Michael Ende when I was 12 years old, I swore, “I will never forget to believe in the fantasy world for my entire life! So don’t worry!”  In this book most adults don’t care about the fantasy world, putting it in danger of extinction. I was an enthusiastic dreamer girl, and have been fool enough to keep the vow since then.  

My mother loved music and I learned to play the piano when I was a child. She often recorded the songs that I and my little brother sang. We loved to sing and play the piano together. I was the girl who was easily elated and loved to make people laugh. My mother had a serious difficult disease, spent most of her life in the hospital, and passed away in her 40’s. She gave me books, music and the sense of humour to love my own life as well as other’s lives.