Video of the Week, January 8, 2014

L'Arsenal celebrates 35 years with a terrific video which is also an object lesson on what can be done with just photos and good music.

After Dark, January 7, 2014

The Pull of Pulitzer

Why do we insist on dragging the same goddam plays onto our stages

by Gaëtan L. Charlebois

@gcharlebois

When I was a youngster just starting in the theatre, the idea that a company was about to do a Pulitzer Prize-winning play thrilled me to my teenager's core and when I went to see the show I was all aquiver with excitement. 

That was then.

What I very quickly discovered were that PP plays were often insanely over-rated. Or, perhaps, the excitement of their newness wears off very quickly. Maybe, I now think, that on the opening night (who knows when the PP juries see these things) the febrility of the event just took over. 

But you might note, among PP plays, is the incredible lack of revivals of most of them. Wit, Heidi Chronicles, Lost in Yonkers, How I Learned to Drive, Dinner With Friends, Night Mother, A Soldier's Play, The Gin Game...and the list goes on and on. But each of these plays, when they won the PP, were done obsessively not just across the US but all over Canada too. We got a steady diet of them. 

Now a lot of these, arguably, are not awful though I have seen a lot of awful productions of many of them. I have yet to see a decent production of The Shadow Box (it may not be possible - a pretty turgid thing, as I remember it). I can't stand Doubt. A colleague of mine quails when anyone mentions mounting a production of Proof. Seascape and The Subject Was Roses are both just bloody awful. 

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.

Review: (Montreal) Talk, Mackerel (WildSide)

The Most Bizarre Children's Birthday
by Chad Dembski

Talk, Mackerel playing at the Centaur Theatre’s WildSide festival is a completely unique, bizarre and absurd piece created by Sarah Segal-Lazar.  From the first awkward moments entering Centaur’s Studio space an instant decision is needed to be made; to sit at the table on the stage or sit in the centre part of the audience.  I chose to sit close but in the audience due to a recent bout of stomach flu but many audience members joined the table before the start. The invitation on the cover of the program is to Leslie Moira Duncanaine’s birthday party and the design of it all prepared me for something in the genre of childrens theatre possibly.

Review: (Montreal) A Quiet Sip of Coffee (WildSide)

Photo by Lily Jamali

When the water is coffee and the prank is the Play
by Chad Dembski

“Hi everybody, remember this is a play”.  This is one the first sentences from the start of AnimalParts creation A Quiet Sip of Coffee. The two writer/performers present themselves to the audience, introduce the premise of the piece but most of all want to remind everyone of what is real and what is not.

  

The story revolves around a letter written in the summer of 2004 to a fundamentalist 'ex-gay' organization they saw advertised in a weekly newspaper.  As a self-proclaimed 'gay-straight' duo they decided to prank the organization and ask for funds to produce a play.  The letter was answered, a meeting was set up and before they knew it they were not only there to work on their play but also agreed to participate in their camp.  This was a two week intensive Gay conversion therapy camp with boys and men from all over BC, Alberta and Washington State. 

The Question... Playwright Joel Bernbaum on Home Is a Beautiful Word

Talk to Me About "Home"
by Estelle Rosen

Joel Bernbaum is an actor, playwright, journalist and the co-artistic director of Sum Theatre. He is a graduate of Carleton University, where he did his Master's Thesis on Verbatim Theatre's Relationship to Journalism. Later this year Dancing Sky Theatre will produce his play Operation Big Rock and Sum Theatre will tour My Rabbi (co-written with Kayvon Kelly) to the Edinburgh Festival. Both of these plays have also received workshops at the Belfry Theatre.

CHARPO: Clearly verbatim theatre has long been of interest considering it was an element in your thesis. What was the process for this play particularly the follow-up interviews asking participants to pose questions as well as answer, and your holistic look at homelessness.

BERNBAUM: Verbatim theatre is thriving. When I was writing my thesis on verbatim theatre's relationship to journalism, there were several examples on the Canadian theatre scene alone of powerful and popular verbatim theatre productions. Oonagh Duncan's Talk Thirty To Me - about aging. Annabel Soutar's Seeds - about a Saskatchewan farmer's fight against big business. Andew Kushnir and Project:Humanity's The Middle Place - about shelter youth. Among others, these examples show the appeal of the real. The theatre is a place where we come to imagine, and to believe in lies. But it can also be a place where we come together to hear real people speak their truths.