Vancouver Fringe

Theatre Terrific’s “BEING Animal” is a profoundly human experience

/ Lauren / Leave a comment

Theatre Terrific’s BEING Animal is currently running at the Vancouver Fringe. The final three performances are this Friday (6:00 p.m.), Saturday (2:00 p.m.) and Sunday (2:00 p.m.).

beinganimal_fringeimage

“Humans are tuned for relationship. The eyes, the skin, the tongue, ears and nostril–all are gates where our body receives the nourishment of otherness.”

David Abrams

Inspired by the work of author David Abrams and created by Theatre Terrific’s ensemble (under the directorship of Susanna Uchatius and James Coomber), BEING Animal uses music, mask work, puppetry, and physical stage choreography to explore and help forge our connections to our natural world, and each other.

Theatre Terrific’s inclusive casting and creation practices provide professional theatre opportunities for performers with drive and talent, regardless of physical or cognitive (dis)ability; their resulting productions dissolve prejudices about ability and art, while reaffirming the inherent dignity of the human spirit. But BEING Animal is so much more than a great mandate. It’s a beautiful and immersive theatrical experience. The audience sits along the boardwalk behind Performance Works, the stage is a grove of trees, and the backdrop is a peekaboo view of the sea and the city. The matinee performance I attended was quite windy, but that only added to the other-worldliness of the show, allowing me to feel both a part of the city and outside of it at the same time, both immersed in nature and participating in the distinctly urban experience that is an afternoon at the theatre. With its sparse use of text and reliance on stage picture, physical choreography, and musical cues to move the show forward, watching Being ANIMAL is akin to watching contemporary dance–lulled by James Coomber’s ethereal score, I simply allowed the event to unfold before my eyes, startled from my reverie now and then as a new image or moment settled into recognition.

One of my favourite aspects of this show is its use of masks–I’ve always loved mask work and I find that masks both remove barriers to an audience’s relation with a character, but also accentuate what is particular or idiosyncratic about a performer’s body, turning what some may see as a performance liabilities into unique physical gifts. In masks, individuality is erased, but humanity is accentuated.

As much as BEING Animal uses ideas of “the natural world” thematically, at its core it is startlingly human. It’s not about having an open mind, but about having an open heart–recognizing our shared frailty, our longing for communion (whether with nature or with each other), and our strength.

Photo: Chantele Fry

Photo: Chantele Fry

[I don’t want to give too much of the show away but during one specific section both my companion and I were moved to tears–not because the play was sad but simply because the moment we were watching was so beautiful. That’s something I don’t get to say a lot.]

BEING Animal plays at the Vancouver Fringe, in the Sculpture Grove behind Performance Works, from Friday to Sunday (see Fringe website or top of post for performance times). Tickets are $14 (must be accompanied by $5 Fringe membership or valid pass) and can be purchased online at VancouverFringe.com.

Disclosure: I attended last Sunday’s performance of BEING Animal courtesy of Theatre Terrific.

The Troika Collective presents “Olya the Child”

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Olya the Child presented by the Troika Collective as a site-specific production in the Emily Carr Parkade as part of the 2015 Vancouver International Fringe Festival, now until September 20.

Poster design: Sonja Kresowaty

Poster design and illustration: Sonja Kresowaty

Shameless plug alert: obviously my promotion of this play is a little biased as I wrote the script and my friends are in the company. But you should see it!

From the press release (which I also wrote):

The company that created and performed Chernobyl: The Opera for sold-out audiences and brought Torsten Buchsteiner’s Nordost to Vancouver for its North American premiere presents Olya the Child, an original play that explores the meaning of family through the eyes of a Russian orphan.

Performed as a site-specific work in the Emily Carr parkade on Granville Island, Olya the Child draws parallels between tales of feral children (children raised without human contact) and the unique challenges of international adoption. Ten-year-old Russian orphan Olya Kadnikova (Jessica Hood) has been taught all her life to wish for a family, and for a home outside her state orphanage. She is surprised to be adopted by Canadian housewife Deborah Johnson (Jalen Saip), who hopes that a daughter will bring love into her failing marriage. When adjusting to their new relationship proves more difficult than expected, both child and adoptive parent must examine their illusions, motives, and emotional capacities to decide if the beauty of their old dreams can overcome the challenges of their current realities.

Featuring collaborative physical storytelling by an ensemble cast, by turns both whimsical and bleak, Olya the Child takes its audience from the concrete jungle of a state orphanage in Moscow, through the efficient metropolis of the Frankfurt Airport, to the sometimes claustrophobic comfort of suburban Vancouver as it questions the nature of love, family, and the fairy tales we tell about them.

I think I knew my life as a performer was never going to materialize the first time I saw a script I wrote onstage. Don’t get me wrong–performing was intoxicating, and every so often my heart longs for the feeling of being onstage, for the camaraderie of waiting in the wings, mouthing the words of the scenes as my fellow actors performed them, listening for the audience response. In the intensity of that kind of focus and stillness, one show could feel like a whole week of living. But when I saw this event from the other side, when I sat in the house and listened to the actors instead of the audience, speaking words I wrote, reacting to the situations I created, interpreting a story of my imagining, I knew there was no help for me. I didn’t want to be this character or that one every night for a couple of weeks–I wanted to be every character, and their circumstances, and their language, and their rhythms, and their world, always. So I pulled myself away from performing, gently but painfully, and I kept writing.

Luckily for me, when I was studying performance in my bachelors degree I managed to establish relationships with wonderful theatre artists that I am still happy to have as collaborators and friends and who, for whatever reason, are willing to stage my plays. Friends like Aliya Griffin, founder and Artistic Director of the Troika Collective and director of Olya the Child. It was Aliya who said to me one night over drinks, “I want to stage a play about feral children, but also about Eastern European orphans. Do you think you’d be interested in writing it?” and I said yeah. We discussed the issues with one another, watched the same documentary (as well as conducting our own research), and knew the piece would be staged in a parkade, but apart from that I had complete freedom to create the story as the cast of characters grew and shrank depending on the draft I was working on, and the amount of Russian I would require the cast to speak shrank considerably from the first draft to the current one (I don’t speak Russian myself, and it’s not an easy language).

Knowing that everything you write needs to be performed in a real physical space is a major restriction for a playwright, but I’m very familiar with Aliya’s work as a director and I know what she is capable of when she has the right cast, that is, a cast that is willing to play and explore and help create physically what the lines I wrote can only say verbally. I don’t usually get too involved in rehearsals for the pieces I write, but I had the opportunity to participate in the auditions this time and to catch a sneak peek at some of the orphanage and airport scenes in rehearsal and I am very excited, and very grateful.  I think it takes a certain leap of faith to write a script, and assume that other artists (directors, actors, even graphic designers) are going to be interested in putting as much of their energy and their talent into as you did, and it is the most humbling and gratifying experience to watch it happen.

Though I’m listed as the playwright on this piece, I don’t feel that I wrote it alone; Aliya was reading drafts and providing feedback every step of the way. One of the interesting things about writing plays as opposed to other kinds of creative texts is that the collaborative process (which occurs in almost all creative writing no matter who is listed as the actual author) becomes visible onstage–the words may be mine but the work of art is collective. And if I do say so myself, I think my collaborators and I have examined a complicated and sometimes thorny subject with gentleness and care, opening a conversation rather than closing a door, and I hope, of course, that you will come and see it.

Olya the Child runs at the Emily Carr parkade on Granville Island September 10 – 20. Tickets are $14 (plus a $5 Fringe membership) and can be purchased online through the Vancouver Fringe website (ignore the note that says “Coarse Language”; the play is, in fact, family friendly).

P.S. Check it out! Olya the Child was recently featured in local paper The Source: Forum for Diversity [“Complicating the FairyTale: Play casts a spotlight on international adoption” by Simon Yee]

(Metaphorical) Masks, Monsters, and Music: Take Your Pick at the Fringe

/ Lauren / Leave a comment

The Vancouver Fringe Festival is upon us again and this year I have been fortunate not to see my usual one show (or none), but to have seen three! Which is pretty big for me. Each show offered something completely different and depending on what you are looking for I am certain at least one of the following three is worth getting up off your couch for. (Remember, art is something that makes our community special, and the intimate, innovative art that you find at the Fringe can’t exist without your patronage.)

And so, in the order in which I saw them, I would like to tell you about the three Fringe shows I saw this year:

Show #1: The Masks of Oscar Wilde, by Shaul Ezer with C.E. Gatchalian

Company: MatchMaker Productions in association with the frank theatre company, Vancouver

In this experiment with what the playwright calls a “lecture-in-play”, two performers (characters A and B, played by Sean Harris Oliver and Tamara McCarthy respectively) tell the story of the celebrated career and devastating fall from grace of the renowned Irish playwright, Oscar Wilde. While Harris Oliver and McCarthy each have several parts to play, the “masks” in the title are metaphorical, referring to the different facets of this extraordinary man, including those parts of himself he stove to keep hidden. (Though Oscar Wilde was married with two children, he sought the company of young men, fell in love with the young Lord Alfred Douglas, and was subsequently convicted of homosexuality and sentenced to two years hard labour. After having once been the toast of the London theatre scene, he died destitute in France at age 46.)

MoOW puppet bannerI quite enjoy lectures about interesting things and so I am predisposed to enjoying a play like this. That said, more captivating than the lecture pieces absolutely are the tellings of Wilde’s children’s story “The Happy Prince”, and the actors’ merciless performance of a scene from one of Wilde’s three infamous trials.

As I left the theatre, an audience member behind me said, “Well that was a good little play”, and while he was right, I can’t help wishing it could have been a great little play. I believe that audiences can get on board with a form like a “lecture-in-play”, especially about a subject whose work and life almost speaks for itself. Granted, I was there on opening night when nerves and expectations run high, but I did feel there were moments in the performance, and in the text itself, that felt a little forced or pitched, as if the artists involved did not quite trust that their subject and his work were enough to enthrall us, without little embellishments like hamming up a scene from the already-hilarious The Importance of Being Earnest, or throwing in contemporary references now and again. Based on the reactions of the audience members seated around me, we were entertained, and the energy of the show could, I feel, be contained just a bit to leave the audience some space to meet the artists half way as they learn about this brilliant and tragic figure.

One thing I thought was new and different about this production was the presence of an ASL interpreter, and the ways in which the actors acknowledged her imbedded presence on the stage. If you are hearing impaired or would like to visit the theatre with a companion who has a hearing impairment and uses sign language, you may wish to inquire with the companies to see which nights this interpretation will be available.

You may like this show if: you like to learn, you are interested in Oscar Wilde or Victorian attitudes towards homosexuality, you want to see a relentless Victorian-era lawyer corner and skewer his witness, or you want to see enacted the sad and beautiful story of love and sacrifice that is “The Happy Prince” (it really is very sweet).

You may not like this show if: you have difficulty keeping up with a lot of text/information coming at you very quickly, or if you are looking for something a little more active.

Tickets for the remaining performances of The Masks of Oscar Wilde can be purchased online here.

Disclosure: I was invited by one of my friends to review this show courtesy of the frank theatre company. The content is my reviews is my own.

Show #2: Aiden Flynn Lost His Brother So He Makes Another, created by Morgan Murray and Nathan Howe, score by Derek Desroches and Nathan Howe

Company: Theatre Howl, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan

10087746When lonely Prairie boy Aiden Flynn’s little brother is stillborn, he decides to make a new playmate for himself. His creation is a kind of Frankenstein’s Monster, loving, loyal, and surprisingly cute while at the same time disturbing and grotesque. This sparse but beautiful story is told entirely without speech.

The bleak colourlessness of the set and of the shadow puppet scenes immediately places the audience somewhere recognizable (if you’ve ever been on the Prairies when the sky is grey), somewhere that looks like home but feels empty. The loneliness of the young Aiden is palpable, and his ingenuity admirable. We understand his good intentions, but from the first breath his “little brother” takes we are sad, because we know that what Aiden has done is monstrous, and we start to recognize, perhaps, the selfishness involved in creating a being that cannot be included in your family or community. Given this conflict, the conclusion is as beautiful as it possibly could have been.

You may like this show if: You like physical theatre, innovative storytelling, simple stories, or are interested in the slightly creepy.

You may not like this show if: You really prefer spoken text, or dialogue, and are not the kind of person who is comfortable watching silence.

Tickets for the remaining performances of Aiden Flynn Lost His Brother So He Makes Another can be purchased online here.

Disclosure: Nothing this time, I chose this show based on its description on the Fringe website and just really liked it.

Show #3: The Chariot Cities by Harrison Mooney, music by Bryan Binnema

Company: The Chariot Collective (ad-hoc group of artists, based in Vancouver)

Screen Shot 2014-07-27 at 7.44.04 PMAfter folk-musician Wendy Brownlee meets the irreverent but charismatic musician Jack Stackhouse backstage at a late-night talk show, she is warned by the host not to marry him. She falls in love anyways and the family the couple create with their two children (who grow up to be musicians in their own right) is a family deeply scarred by Jack’s infidelity, drug use, and selfishness, and by their mother’s baffling and painful capacity to forgive him. Told over a period of 22 years, The Chariot Cities is a story of the ties that bind families together–not only ties of love and blood but also ties of hurts and resentments and of course, of music.

The story itself is painful enough in its ways, but it is through the songs that we get a sense of how keenly these hurts are felt, and how impossible they are to escape. Bryan Binnema’s music is excellent throughout but the piece that really stands out for me is the one belonging to the family’s daughter, Beata. Performed by actress Shantini Klaasen (vocals and piano), the song “You Let Me Down” is a suffering young woman’s heartbreaking cry for her father, exquisitely performed (I also felt the lyrics in this piece were the most sophisticated of the play).

I do wish this play was a little longer, a little more fleshed out to bring to the surface more vividly some of the undercurrents of messed-up relationships that run throughout the show, but one can always hope for a remount. Besides, there is something to be said for not sharing everything, and perhaps the play is better for it.

You may like this show if: You like music, and are interested in the dynamics of musical families such as the Wainwrights.

You may not like this show if: You don’t like folk music, or the interspersion of song and scene onstage. This is also not a play for children.

Tickets for the remaining performances of The Chariot Cities can be purchased online here.

Disclosure: A friend of mine is involved in the show and I was able to see this performance through her comp. I was not asked for a review.

I hope I have encouraged you to attend at least one performance at the Fringe Festival this year. There is really so much more that I didn’t see so haven’t mentioned but it is worth exploring. Remember that you will need to buy a $5 Fringe Membership in addition to the tickets for the shows you are seeing (you only need to buy the membership once and then you present it with your tickets when you attend each show). Happy Fringing!