Blood Show @ Battersea Arts Centre

The audience are warned before going in of potential splatter, and offered ponchos. This obviously sets an expectation, which is immediately subverted when we walk into a room where the playing space is pristine and white, the performers wearing clean white outfits, while one performer lounges in a chair, covered in fake blood. As we wait for the show to begin, La Roux’s The Kill plays on loop, and I wonder about how the actor managed to get into the white jumpsuit and not get it covered in blood, which drips from the toe that dangles over the edge of the white chair, onto the white floor. 

The early movements of the performance are set to silence; there is a ghost (which turns to highly comedic effect later on) and two performers, dressed in white. One covered in blood, one face made up like a ghost in a pantomime. The choreographed movements of a fight ensue, the fight becoming more graphic but also more performative in each repeat of the cyclical choreography. The actors vocalise at first, and in later “rounds” are accompanied by music. As they move through the space the pristine white is tarnished, with the mess expanding and getting increasingly absurd as they go on. 

There is an element of duration at play, as we witness nothing explicitly happening, while it is clear that the meaning of the fighting and the ensuing mess is evolving and expanding before our eyes. Without narrative the audience fill the gaps, imbuing meaning to the marks in the floor, the lengths of the pause between fights as the actors prepare again. Were the songs different or the same? Did the cycle of the choreography change intentionally? 

The cycle reaches a pinnacle of absurdity with literal buckets of fake blood dumped on the floor; this is where the production lost me. Earlier moments caused thoughts of our willingness to watch violence on TV and in films so casually, whereas in a live environment it was quite jarring. These final absurd moments while funny, did (for me) take away from the overall feeling of the production. 

Notwithstanding, this was a feat of production; the actors were exceptional in their physical commitment, and the design was clever and inventive, continually surprising the audience with where the blood would come from next. 

CONGREGATION - Es Devlin @ St Mary Le Strand

50 individuals. 50 stories of coming to London under duress, forced to leave their homes. 50 portraits.

Es Devlin’s latest installation THE CONGREGATION at St Mary Le Strand showcases humanity in its purest form. Working with UNHCR and a team of co-writers, she met, drew, and interviewed 50 refugees living in London. Some who came decades ago, some only a few months — but regardless of when they came, each carries a story of creating a new home.

As you enter the church, the portraits are arranged like a choir, each drawn person holding an empty box. From here, a story unfolds, showcasing the uniqueness of each story while also drawing a thread of commonality, highlighting the humanity of these individuals, and their connection with the audience. Using mapped projections, music, and spoken word, we are transported. Despite the stories of strife, each individual shares a story of hope. The overall effect is surprisingly uplifting and hopeful.

Viola's Room - Punchdrunk

For me, there is nothing more exciting than an immersive performance that is simultaneously intimate. Many of Punchdrunk’s previous shows have functioned on a monstrous scale, however their latest offering, Viola’s Room, takes groups of no more than 6 through an audio guided journey, which magically unfolds before your eyes. The scale of the production is no smaller (in fact, i couldn’t help but wonder at the technical prowess necessary to create this event) however it feels tiny, miniscule, like you are just happening upon it.

Each audience member is given a headset, and invited to journey the exploration barefoot, creating a sensorial exploration full of touch and smell. You’re instructed to follow the lights, which is thrilling, but at times also nerve wracking as you think you see lights, or second guess the ones you do. The combination of narration, light, and space creates the most exciting suspense throughout.

My only quibble was pacing; I think it could have benefitted from even more slow moments, even the slow ones felt quick as you take in the immense detail of the space and story.

Definitely recommend seeing this!

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.

Bacchanalia - Sleepwalk Immersive @ St Peter's Crypt

An exciting performance space, Bacchanalia uses the basement crypt of an old church in Bethnal Green to create an immersive performance telling the story of Dionysus’ return. Using a strong physical performance vocabulary, the performers move between multiple areas while the audience, clad in black capes, are allowed reign to roam and watch where they like. There are scenes which overlap that serve one another, however there are also times where the sound bleed from one room to another is more distraction than support. Despite strong work by all performers, I found it hard to find space to watch, or to hold attention outside the the group scenes. There also seemed to be a few red herring scenes, objects or plot lines introduced that went nowhere.

On the whole, a fun experience, but with its heavy reliance on the techniques of Punchdrunk who have made great strides in the immersive space, it is hard to see that this production brought anything new to the discourse of immersive theatre.

Katharsis by Yvette Nolan @ Prairie Theatre Exchange (limited recording)

I viewed this via Prairie Theatre Exchange on Vimeo, during their limited free availability of the piece on demand.

Yvette Nolan has written a love letter to the theatre. It is gentle and kind, acknowledging the uncanny situation we find ourselves in — desperate for connection and stories, but unable to serve them in our preferred in-person manner. A time when theatre is more necessary than ever, and yet impossible in its old form.

The use of the enormous and empty PTE mainstage space is delightful. Tracey Nepinak guides us with comfort and reassurance, reminding us that we’ve been paused before, but will come back. She is charming and engaging (as always), and I honestly couldn’t imagine a better actor for this role.

A delightful treat of a piece in response to these pandemic times.

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.

Endless - A meditation on isolation, commissioned by Convergence Theatre

A meditation on isolation

By Kendra Jones, commissioned by Convergence Theatre

---

She sits on her sofa. Resisting the temptation to open her laptop again, to scroll again, to get sucked in to the endless sea of images. News clips, photos of someone’s kid. Memes. So many fucking memes. 

  /Facebook ding. 

Ignore it.                                          Ignore it. 

Her mind drifts. . . she catches her reflection in the window.
She smiles.
She wonders, is that weird? 
Smiling at yourself?
At your reflection?                                                                   The vanity. 

  /Skype sound.

With the alarming digital noise now looping, far too loud into her living room, she realizes she hasn’t spoken to another person in three days. Like actually spoken words aloud. Her cat doesn’t count. Should she answer? 

She pauses. 

On the one hand, it would be lovely to see someone, even digitally. 

To hear someone breathe. 

To see them smile. 

On the other hand, she acknowledges quietly, in her mind, that she hasn’t showered in those three days either. Her voice will probably be raspy from non-use, then she’ll have to explain that she isn’t sick. 

Might just be easier to. . . 

  /Skype sound stops. 

There was this time. . .  back, before. . . whatever this is. . . she was on her way to work. She took an unusual route that morning. As she transferred from the streetcar to the subway, she walked past a few homeless people sitting on the ground. She smiled if they caught her eye, feeling sheepish for never carrying change or a granola bar in her bag to offer, suddenly self conscious of her privilege. As she turned the corner, a woman looked at her with eyes that pierced into her soul, immediately seeing this self consciousness, and said aloud, “she knows what it means to dress herself in black”. That sentence rang through her head the rest of that day. 

It wasn’t upsetting. It was nice. 

Almost comforting, really.

To be seen so clearly, so quickly. 

It is hard for her not to wonder whether that will ever happen again. . .
Will we ever go back to real interactions? 

Will it ever be comfortable to look someone in the eye again? 

To brush up against them by accident, or sit back to back in a crowded cafe?

Will we ever sit in theatres or on transit, near to one another, to strangers again? 

She wants to believe we will; that this forced only-online time will make us value real interaction more. Value closeness to those we love. To strangers. That if this ever ends, she won’t see couples on dates in restaurants looking at their phones, but instead looking at each other. Really seeing one another, deeply, honestly. 

The weight of unproductivity sits on her shoulders as she realizes she is scrolling again. 

                  She scrolls and scrolls. 

How are there people thriving in this time?

Class - Scottee & Friends @ Progress Festival

There is something really special about this show. Living in a grey area between standup comedy, theatre, and performance art, Scottee’s Class lays bare the truths of growing up working class, and making a living as an artist. Armed with a microphone and red Adidas tracksuit, on white carpet (shoes OFF), Scottee confronts his largely middle class audience with the assumptions they have about the working class. At first playful and comedic, he brings the audience in and flatters them with comedy before turning the knife sharply, and reminding the audience that these stories are true. That they are his memories.

At the start, he asks the audience to identify as working class, or as middle class. Like the polite Canadians we are, most of the audience were shy to hold up their hands to identify as middle class, which I’m sure is not unique. For those of us who grew up working class, he reminds us this show is for them, but asks us to check in with one another afterward. I did not expect to be affected by this in the way I was. That permission to identify, the clear and honest stories of his youth, which in many real ways mirrored my own, punched me in the gut. When he warned us to check in with one another after the show, I didn’t expect to need it. I did. I had to leave the theatre quickly following the show due to other obligations, but found myself crying and grasping for breath on the phone when trying to give my husband a quick couple sentences about what I had just seen.

Scottee’s work is meaningful and powerful, and so important for people to see.

Out of Order by Forced Entertainment @ Southbank Centre

As a follower of Forced Entertainment’s work through video streams and available online recordings, I was thrilled to learn that my time in London would overlap their short run of Out of Order at Southbank Centre. 

Chairs begin downstage in a line, appearing orderly, while a table sits upstage. The performance space is elevated several feet above the actual stage, with caverns around on all sides. This lasts approximately 30 seconds, before the 6 performers (3 men, 3 women, all wearing identical plaid suits, white shirts, and clown face) enter, and move them. From here, there is incessant movement; while the movement peaks and valleys, even the moments of rest and stillness are filled with the memory of movement. 

What follows is an ongoing, highly choreographed yet impulsive and appearing improvised set of games; the actors fight and chase, they play with balloons, and chairs. They lead and follow, repeat and repeat, even when they are visibly questioning the action. At times certain characters have the strength to resist - to sit outside and comment. But this is fleeting, and they are shortly again sucked into following. 

There are many layers, and none. Forced regularly do not impose a specific feeling or intention for how a piece should affect, but rather work in layered ideas, providing thoughts into the space, but no real answers, demanding the audience engage and fill in the blanks. At times we are overwhelmed with where to look, or at others pulled into the individual actions of one actor or another, and at yet others sitting, in silence, with our own thoughts. The simultaneous danger and inevitability of following along loomed loud for me in watching this work. 

This is Forced’s first piece without words. It is not silent, however; two songs underscore various aspects (again, in repetition), and the rhythm of the balloons, or horns, or boots, or chairs, or even actors breathing, make a compelling score. 

As a lovely bonus, the artistic director (Tim Etchells) and the 6 members of the company, shared their thoughts and answered questions in a 30+ minute Q&A following the show. It was exciting to hear some of my own interpretations of their work and ideas for how to engage audiences echoed in their approaches and intent. I’ve said this for years, but again…if you have the chance to see Forced Entertainment’s work in any capacity, do. 

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).

review. Salt by Selina Thompson @ Progress Festival (Theatre Centre)

Selina Thompson’s Salt strikes you (and some Salt) from the first moment of the piece. It is a play, yes, and a performance — simultaneously highly theatrical through its representative nature, and anti-theatrical in its lack of performative qualities (don’t worry — this is a good thing). Thompson speaks to the audience as if there were only two people in the room, but also fills the space with her power and thoughts, with enough energy to pack an arena.

The piece is a re-telling of her journey by sea to re-claim the routes and places associated with the transatlantic slave trade; the colonial power exertion that built and maintains the structures of power in place today. This sounds heavy, and at times it was, but there was an overwhelming sense of lightness, too. Thompson is an expert storyteller, weaving the dark and rightfully angry with the light; some of my favourite moments were the contrasts between her painful struggle with history and her often funny, completely relatable struggle with explaining her present journey to her father, and ensuring he knows she is safe (when at times she really is not).

The direction (Dawn Walton) and sound design (Sleepdogs) were superb, and complimented Thompson’s script & performance perfectly. She has been touring this show for a couple years now, and I strongly recommend you see it if you can. It has now been over 2 weeks since I saw it, and certain images and moments continue to creep into my memory day to day. That’s evidence of a truly remarkable piece of art.

review. Secret Life of a Mother by Hannah Moscovitch @ Theatre Centre

Hannah Moscovitch has teamed up with Maev Beatty and Ann-Marie Kerr to share an immensely personal, highly theatrical and yet viscerally real story of motherhood. The trials of becoming a mother, and then the intense, challenging, terrifying world of being a mother.

While the story is intriguing, it does not, of course, reflect everyone’s personal experiences. It couldn’t. Motherhood is a myriad of experiences, all slightly different than the other. But a good story doesn’t necessarily reflect one’s own experiences exactly; rather it triggers memories and thoughts about your own experiences. Things you had forgotten, or pushed away. Recognition of a sentiment. In this, Moscovitch is immensely successful.

Maev Beatty is a force. Her performances are known to be filled with emotional truth, and this is no different. What is truly fantastic here is the sheer range she displays in matters of minutes; jumping in and out of the character of Hannah to the character of Maev, performing performance, rehearsal, the reality of shifting focus in motherhood beautifully mirrored in the shape of the play and its performance.

Director Ann-Marie Kerr creates beautiful images; dangerous and vulnerable, while also incredibly strong. The inventive use of water and projection and audio/video recording, coupled with stunning lighting design by Leigh Ann Vardy created spaces out of nothing, evocative images and pictures in every moment. It created tension without being tense, and a specific feeling of community, amplified by the plexiglass reflection where the audience could somewhat, at times, see themselves on the stage, too.

My only dislike, would be the final few moments. While the images were beautiful, evocative of a womb, and then of reflection of the self, I felt that it lacked the same energy and purpose as the earlier moments…the urgency faded too quickly.

On the whole, I appreciated the informality of the structure, the work that felt inherently female. This work has a momentum, an urgency, and an intensity. As the artists say in their notes, and in the script itself; there isn’t real work about motherhood. People don’t talk about miscarriage, or the reality of childbirth and its many permutations enough. They don’t talk about the anxiety of carrying first in the womb, and then in your arms. The struggle to continue to be a person and not just a mom, but at the same time, being shaped by motherhood every day. And if we consider how many audience members and theatre makers are women, that just doesn’t make sense. I applaud the artists for their courage in making and sharing this intensely personal and vulnerable story. It encourages me to share mine.

review. The Wolves by Sarah DeLappe @ Howland Company & Crow's Theatre

The Howland Company and Crow’s Theatre have put together an exciting young cast to share Sarah DeLappe’s Pulitzer shortlisted firecracker of a play, The Wolves, with Toronto audiences for the first time. Centred on a girls’ soccer team, DeLappe’s play gives us what pretty much no other play has; young girls, in their own element, speaking as they do, overlapping, multiple conversations at once, simultaneously ultra-serious and completely silly. This play is an important landmark in playwriting. Reading it the first time, the structure and language reminded me of first encounters with Caryl Churchill….fiery, searing, powerful, and undeniably female.

This production, directed by Courtney Ching-Lancaster, makes use of a thrust setup and minimalist turf setting, showcasing the all female cast and giving them nowhere to hide. Off the top the energy is a bit over-the-top, but within a few minutes, as the overlapping chatter begins, the actors settle in and we start to see the girls as they are. There are lots of reasons to be nervy as a performer, with a lot of ball manipulation required throughout, and extremely challenging dialogue. A standout is Amakah Umeh as 00, the perfectionist goalkeeper, who simply radiates, despite the fact that we hear very little from her.

The scenes are divided by movement scenes set to abstract electronic music; I hoped for a bit more in these sequences, ultimately they felt like filler rather than urgent and necessary….they detracted from the forward momentum of the script. On the whole, I craved more movement that was representative of soccer bodies in space. While the performers did move a lot, it somehow felt static, and not necessarily linked to the pace of the play. The most compelling moment was 00’s fierce repetition of man-makers, until you feel like she might vomit; an honest portrayal of the fierce determination of these young women to succeed. The overall pace was decent, however I felt it lacking a musicality in the build-up and release of tension as the voices and conversations move over one another, then disperse, from density to sparsity so easily. As a result, some of the tension building in final moments was, for me, a bit lacking.

All that, however, does not detract from the overall necessity and importance of this show. I saw the production with my 14 year old, who herself is among the elite soccer players her age in the province. She has seen a lot of theatre, so has some high expectations; it has been a long time since I have seen her as captivated and engaged in a story. It is such a telling demonstration of what representing experiences on stage can do for someone. Please, please; if you can take a young woman in your life to this play, do.

review. Women of the Fur Trade @ Toronto Fringe

I preface these thoughts with an apology for the extreme delay in getting them posted.....I had to bolt out of town the next morning and haven't really stopped since. 

Frances Koncan's new play, Women of the Fur Trade, was shared in an early-ish form as part of Toronto Fringe, ahead of what I understand to be a subsequent full length version coming to Native Earth. The simplicity of the fringe production was enjoyable; 3 rocking chairs, 3 action figures, and a simple bunting of envelopes clipped to a string created a space for the 3 women to interact, allowing their similarities to shine, while their differing circumstances became increasingly apparent. 

What I loved about the script was the anachronism, with contemporary pop culture references interwoven with historical fact and circumstance. By positioning the 3 women in between history, it served to illustrate their absence from recorded history and the decisions that affect their lives historically, and through to today. By objectifying the male characters both intellectually, and literally with the use of the 3 action figures, the women begin to regain some power. 

The 3 performers (Liz Whitbread, Haley Vincent, and Joelle Peters) were delightful in their performances, clearly distinguishing the hierarchical relationship amongst the women. The pacing could have been tighter and more dynamic to provide a sense of movement in the piece, which grew a bit stationary at times (both verbally and physically). 

I'm very intrigued to see the full production, and can't wait to bring my Louis Riel obsessed Manitoba-born daughter. It seems the perfect vehicle and context for young women to relate to and learn about a historical event which still affects us today. 

review. Everyone Wants a T-Shirt by Madeleine Brown @ Toronto Fringe

This smart, funny, and unpretentious comedy about the perils of chasing success is just what we need. The 4 performers deftly navigate a multitude of unique characters in space and time, aided by some smart choreography in the direction. This is a world sort of like our own, but stretched from reality, and all aspects of the production are smartly guided to this logical imperative by director Aaron Jan. 

The pace is spot on, and the play carries a message without being preachy. Kudos to this young team for fine work! The production is perfectly fringe-y. 

review. Wagon Play by Ben Hayward and Owen Fawcett @ Toronto Fringe

Toronto company Theatre By Committee bring us a delightfully fun piece about the celebrity and following along with their participatory piece, Wagon Play. From the second the gate opens, the audience are invited to engage with the performers, setting the tone for the remainder of the hours. The gentle setup serves well to help the performers gauge participation, and also to allow the audience their own pace to engage with the piece. Smart, silly, and irreverent, the performers are engaged 115%, with surprising staging choices, and a shocking attention to detail (kudos to the designer!!). The team don't fall victim to the pitfalls I see in a lot of immersive or participatory performance. 

I don't want to say too much, as Amber says it is best if you can experience a re-setting on your own, as you learn to live your truth.

Suffice it to say this is probably the most fun, and the most re-set you will feel after a Toronto Fringe performance!

review. Frame by Frame @ National Ballet of Canada

Robert Lepage's work with images is a part of what makes his theatrical performances so astounding; the way he understands perspective and illusion is like nothing else, so the idea of him working not just with actors, but with dancers who move in shapes and formations was obviously very exciting. 

Lepage pairs up with the National Ballet of Canada's Guillaime Cote to create Frame by Frame, a mildly biographic homage to the life of Norman McLaren, the renowned film maker and animator. The piece is best when it is tied to McLaren's work, providing Cote and Lepage the tools - light and movement - to create magical pictures inspired by or re-creating McLaren's images. These scenes, which often offer a glimpse into what McLaren's perspective on the creation might have been by positioning him in relationship to the images, play on ideas of perspective and control. The most poignant for me was where the dancer playing McLaren used a paint brush to shape the movements of the dancer we saw on the screen. 

The scenes that focused on McLaren's life and travel were less interesting; although the scenes about his travel to China created some beautiful imagery using a screen (which definitely foreshadowed the scene I spoke of earlier) they felt superfluous. Similarly, a couple of scenes about dance classes, which I don't doubt reflect historical accuracy of his relationship and inspiration from dancers, felt like unnecessary devices to just give the dancers in the company something to do. 

Surprisingly, the music of the piece really stood out as well, with jazz in contrast to Tchaikovsky, all starkly in relationship to the synth-based sounds of his more experimental animations. 

The most exciting part of the ballet, however, wasn't necessarily what I saw on stage, but the ideas that these images elicited in my own imagination, both while I was watching it and in the days since. I think it is a testament to an artist's craft that they can inspire new ideas while not detracting from those they are presenting. 

Coming May 6! DO YOU KNOW THIS PLACE? @ Theatre Passe Muraille

My new-in-development piece of site-specific promenade theatre called DO YOU KNOW THIS PLACE? is invited to be a part of Crapshoot, a performance art scavenger hunt in the neighbourhood around TPM. Crapshoot is produced by Art is Hard, currently in residency at Theatre Passe Muraille. For more on Art is Hard, Crapshoot, and the TPM Residency, check this out. 

DO YOU KNOW THIS PLACE? is conceived by Kendra Jones, and written/performed by Justin Otto, Liz Whitbread, and Kendra Jones

As of 2014, 51% of Toronto’s residents were born outside Canada. This means that the majority of people in the city have a first memory of the city itself, coming to the city to visit or live for the first time. In the time since these first visits, the city’s physical and social landscape has changed considerably. Neighbourhoods which were once edgy are commercial, areas which were once forlorn industrial parks are now vibrant neighbourhoods. The imprint of the history of each part of the city remains, as we rush forward in time, constantly developing, changing, and experiencing the city.

DO YOU KNOW THIS PLACE? is a one on one walking experience that uses the busy city street as a character.

More details on the May 6 performance to come soon. 

review. Musik für das Ende @ Soundstreams

I'm a pretty massive supporter of theatrical experiences that blur the lines between genre and play with audience expectations, so when I learned of Soundstreams' production, conceived by Chris Abraham and Zack Russell around the music of French Canadian composer Claude Vivier, I was intrigued. Vivier's compositions are chilling and unexpected. Any theatrical experience created surrounding these would definitely be unique and challenging. 

The production, staged in The Crow's Theatre main space, is in the round, with banks of audience along each of the 4 sides, with a cavernous space in the middle, reaching up to the heights of the flexible theatre space. The physical space is used to great effect, with many objects and lights descending from the heights of the room, and with superb lighting design to transform and bring the audience into the experience of the performance. It opens with a monologue in which Vivier returns home to find his door open; slowly the seemingly linear story blips out of line, and we realize that some of the references were outside of what we thought were the main story. The sound design throughout this first section is clever, amplifying certain everyday sounds and providing a glimpse into what the world might sound like to a composer, the rhythm and metre of every day sounds standing out in a chorus of relation to one another. 

From here, the piece moves into the performance and staging of Vivier's own compositions Glaubst du an die Unsterblichkeit der Seele, and Musik für das Ende. The vocal performances are outstanding, and initially the staging, with Vivier intervening, as if watching this in a dream, is very engaging. However, for me, the latter parts of the staging, with the singers moving around the space singing to one another, despite beautiful vocal performances and stunning lighting design, was lacklustre. Rather than showcasing the beautiful singing and hypnotic nature of the composition, it seemed to drag, and ultimately detract from the engagement the audience could have with the music. 

Definitely worth seeing and experiencing, but I think that the shape of the production could benefit from a re-think to ensure it does not lose the momentum of the first two section.