A Spectacle of Herself @ Battersea Arts Centre

Sometimes you get the evening of angry feminist performance art you need. Laura Murphy’s solo show blends spectacular design with a brilliant and challenging script, pressing into moments of tension or discomfort to create recognition of the anger boiling in our bellies here in the 21st century. The piece is at times circus performance, at times expressionist art, at times standup comedy, and also a lecture, a movement driven academic argument.

In particular the overlay of relationships to space exploration with relationships to gender and sexual expression which in parallel to one another as the overarching thematic movement of the piece is an emphatic expression of our current world. The truths Murphy speaks through voice and movement choices are incredibly resonant.

Watch for this to be re-mounted, and GO.

Book of Mormon @ Prince of Wales Theatre (West End)

Why are there so many plays where mormons feature prominently? It seems almost bizarre that a religion making up less than 2% of the US population (even less worldwide), which is openly anti gay and until not as long ago as you’d hope, was openly anti-anyone who wasn’t white, holds such a sway on the imagination. Perhaps it is the inherent theatricality of its origin story. Don’t get me wrong, when you dig a little A LOT of origin stories about A LOT of things we believe get theatrical - so this isn’t a slight at mormonism or any religion. Just an observation.

Anyway, we went to see this as a 19th birthday gift to my daughter at her insistence. The parallel that the mormon youth head out on their pilgrimages at 19 was not a coincidence. The current West End cast are all exceptional performers, and the production is all the slick shiny perfection you’d expect for that ticket price. What was uncanny was that it felt less funny than when you hear the recording; certainly the first act got fewer laughs from the crowd than I’d have expected. Perhaps because the songs from that act are quite widely known? The jokes are certainly more broad than those we get in the second act, and land a lot more uncomfortably. They don’t quite punch down, but laterally perhaps? Either way, it is an uncomfortable 2.5 hours at times, despite the performers efforts and comic timing. Do they feel the discomfort, too?

It all just feels so shiny. Being me, I allowed my mind to wander to what a Theatre of Failure interpretation of this show might be. I’ll leave you with that.

End Meeting For All - Forced Entertainment

I watched this in recording. You can watch Part 1 here. You can watch Part 2 here. Both are available until June, and Part 3 airs May 12.

Disjointed. Unfocused. Overwhelming.

Forced Entertainment’s End Meeting For All series are improvised public group calls between company members isolated in their homes. Each begins abruptly, and ends abruptly, yet despite the improvisational nature, a structure appears. People ignore others in the call. People get distracted and wander away. People remain deeply focused on a single object or question to the point of irritation. Technology fails (or does it?).

This reflection of our time, when interaction with our closest friends, colleagues, and family members is largely through the blue-white glare of a computer monitor, is stunning. Forced create a piece of performance that is at once anti-performance, and high-performance. We are all living in this recognizable yet utterly foreign version of our world. It is funny, it is sad, it is at times bleak.

This is theatre for isolated times.

I, Malvolio @ Toronto Fringe

“It’s all too easy isn’t it. . . To destroy the thing you’re too lazy to understand. To take joy in someone else’s downfall.”

We all do it. Schadenfreüde. We laugh at someone’s misfortune. We express our dominance over others, through joy at their misfortune. We know we shouldn’t.

But do we?

This play has captivated my imagination since I first heard Tim speak about it whilst studying in London. When we re-interrogate an existing play from the perspective of a single character, a character who is beat up on for our enjoyment…and turn that interrogation on the audience, what happens? What further happens when you aren’t just doing this with an adult audience, but to teens?

I have wanted to direct this project for awhile. But this spring, in the context of the cuts to education, reverting the Healthy Living curriculum to something that was relevant when I was still in high school. . . I decided now was the time. We are doing an extreme disservice to our young people by not teaching them about bullying, about different sexual orientations, by not teaching them consent. Not to mention avoiding the subject of how much easier and simultaneously more difficult puberty must be when everything you do lives online, and can be there for the rest of your life. One indiscretion, one step across a line, one mistake, and your future can be lost. Or it can be explained away by wealthy or powerful parents. A world, today, where even the most put-together person, may have been bullied. We all wear the scars of these memories, these aggressions, on our skin.

So; we present I, Malvolio. A play which interrogates our relationships to one another, how we the audience are positioned as middle schoolers, encouraged to interact, to question what they’re watching, to be on their phones. . . literally. The play itself, the production, and hopefully your experience, are chaos. Pure chaos, through which we examine relationships, performance, audience, and failure.

The play is performed by the brilliant Justin Otto, who, through his work on this play will help you question the act of watching, the act of laughing….and ultimately the act of judgment on another’s actions.

Come join us at Artscape Youngplace, Fringe venue #24, for a site-specific and interactive production of Tim Crouch’s I, Malvolio, making its Toronto debut. And, if you’d like, add us on snapchat (impel-theatre) to see Justin perform.

Want to know a little more? Check out our interview with Donna G on The More The Merrier for CIUT Radio.

Tickets are available now! 7:30pm nightly from July 3-13 (no Sunday shows).