In this podcast, Jacob and Adrienne are joined by Rupal Shah to discuss work that comes from cultural contexts other than the dominant mainstream. iTunes | RSS
NOTE: the really boring topic that we try to avoid talking about off the top makes an appearance around 3:30. We appreciate your patience as we work on our technical difficulties. In the meantime, if you or someone you know has experience fix those kind of sounds (full description) let us know. Thank you.
Jacob and Adrienne talk about advice. iTunes | RSS
How to teach toddlers about healthy sexuality. What would we tell young artists at the beginning of their careers. The differences between radio and podcasting. The difference between ‘form’ and ‘format’ and ‘structure’. What is the social function of sadnessWe apologize for the quality of Jacob’s mic. He forgot his good mic at home. It won’t happen again.
I was in the unheated-until-mid-January, sometimes infested, crowded, old Theatre Centre office working on The Freefall Festival when news arrived that key public funding had been secured for a new home in The Carnegie Library down the street.
It was the moment things became incredibly real. Years of smoke and mirrors were going to turn into steel and concrete. The Theatre Centre, which in its various homes seemed defined by impermanence, was about to become a permanent, integral institution in Toronto‘s cultural landscape.
It’s impossible to separate that the development of Praxis Theatre with this place – or more accurately: this idea, which has been housed in many places. It was home to our first show, our first professionally-produced show, and was where we premiered our most produced show. Freefall 2012 was the first time an artistic director asked me to curate performance, and my article for The Source was the first time someone paid me to write about theatre. It’s difficult for me to imagine what my life as a theatre artist in Toronto would have been like without it.
This is less about access to resources, than perspective and understanding about why I was making the work I was making. When Praxis began, we mostly adapted works of literature for the stage. It seemed a worthy goal, and was how I learned to direct plays. Slowly though, it didn’t seem compelling enough of a reason to live the precarious life of a theatre artist in Toronto. I think Theatre Centre saved me from putting my energies into something other than theatre, by giving me the tools to understand how to keep creating work that was meaningful to myself.
Franco Boni accepting George Luscombe Award for Mentorship
I’m pretty sure no one associates us primarily with literary adaptations anymore. Slowly, under the indirect, never prescriptive, non-linear influence of AD Franco Boni (as well as GMs Cathy Gordon and Roxanne Duncan), Praxis has turned into a company that has a vocal political perspective and willingness to experiment with new forms. This confidence that it is not just okay, but necessary, for artists to speak up for social justice and risk failure in their practice, is what we have gained over the last decade of our various associations with The Theatre Centre.
This is why although it is mind-blowing that Theatre Centre finally has a permanent home, it will remain at its essential core an idea. It is up to the artistic leadership of a company to define that idea precisely at any given time, but I will venture that part of this idea is that politically challenging and artistically compelling works are not mutually exclusive.
This is probably not a newsflash to fans of Brecht, Soyinka, Churchill – heck most of our best dramatists. But to consider how Franco Boni has embodied this notion as an Artistic Director now that this building is a reality is a bit mind-bending. Consider two core elements of the given circumstances of being an Artistic Director in Toronto for the past decade:
1
It has been a terrible time for public and private investment in the arts. Recession and a slew of regressive governments have meant major cuts and basically no new money for local artists. Think for a moment about Harper and ‘Ordinary Canadians’, Don Cherry after Ford was elected, SummerWorks, Rhubarb, Canadian Conference for the Arts. It’s been a dangerous, complicated time to be running an arts institution. People are watching and there are consequences for those that fall out of line.
2
Is there a performance venue more associated with dissent and social justice than Theatre Centre? Not only has it produced work by ATSA, Cape Farewell, Volcano, Bluemouth, and Liza Balkan’s shocking piece on police brutality Out The Window, to name a few; it has also been home to numerous Wrecking Balls, each of the Civil Debates, and amongst other organizing meetings was where Department of Culture began with a packed event led by Naomi Klein.
That 1 + 2 = Multimillion dollar state-of-the-art heritage building and permanent home – it almost doesn’t compute. How is this even possible? Am I dreaming as I write this? It contradicts everything I understand about this era. It is why this article has been in my head for two years, because I have been fascinated with what this means: Success is possible without compromising values.
Alanna Mitchell in Sea Sick rehearsal photo by Ravi Jain
The conclusion I reach from this is ‘Community Organizer’ is also a part of the job description of an Artistic Director. The building to house the idea that is The Theatre Centre was powered in large part by a community that was determined the transformation on Queen West-West led to positive change for everyone who lived there. The community activist group Active 18 was the main focus of these efforts, and this has led to support from local politicians, which was leveraged into more support and so on. This happened because the theatre had an Artistic Director who had an inspiring vision about how the theatre could benefit the community and empower advocates for it.
Tomorrow, The Theatre Centre will open with the World Premiere of Sea Sick by Alanna Mitchell. The play came out of the keynote speech Mitchell made about the crisis caused by the desalination of our oceans when Franco and I co-curated FreeFall in 2012 after he met her through the Cape Farewell initiative to bring together climate change experts and artists. It speaks to the crazy logic of that place that the one non-piece of ‘performance’ we brought to that festival would go on to have the biggest theatrical production.
But it is significant for an even bigger reason: Sea Sick will be the first piece of theatre directed by Franco (with longtime mentee Ravi Jain) as Artistic Director of The Theatre Centre. After a decade of figuring out how to create space for other artists, a play Franco directed will be the first thing to happen on this new stage. It wasn’t planned that way, but construction deadlines have made it that way. To write he has earned it seems neither a bit trite, so I will just write what I think many of my colleagues think when they consider what has been accomplished here:
Flaming BBQ in PL1422 parking lot – tech process for Rumble Theatre’s Penelope.
Like many cities in Canada, Vancouver’s over-inflated real estate market has left the cultural sector with fewer and fewer options for administrative, rehearsal and studio spaces. Many of the spaces that are available are unsanitary, poorly heated, insufficiently lit, or have sound bleed issues that make it next to impossible to get anything accomplished. As a freelancer I find myself working in all sorts of spaces, but my favourite place to rehearse is Progress Lab 1422.
Progress Lab 1422 is home to four Vancouver companies – Electric Company, Boca Del Lupo, Neworld Theatre & Rumble Theatre. It used to be a garment factory, but five years ago these four companies pooled their resources and now it has a new life as a rehearsal, administration and development hub. The building was clearly renovated for the purpose of making theatre and building community: the four offices share a kitchen and meeting room with the rehearsal studio.
PL1422 (as it is affectionately known) is an integral part of the Vancouver theatre ecosystem, both as a rehearsal studio and as a community hub.
As a rehearsal venue, it is a step above everything else in town: 1500 square feet of fully sprung floors, a fitting room, 20’ ceilings with box truss in half the space, and technical gear including a sound system, lights, rigging points and a mounted projector. It’s the only rehearsal studio I’ve ever seen someone fly in and I look forward to each project that I know I’m going to be rehearsing there because I know that not only will I be rehearsing in a well equipped and secure space but also because every single day I will run into other artists and creators.
As a community hub, it is unparalleled. PL1422 is not my space in the sense that I do not work for one of the four companies that share the building. However, I feel a sense of ownership towards it despite my rather loose affiliation and I know that others do as well. My first visit to the space was for a wake and my most recent visit was for a surprise birthday party. It is a place where the community gathers for special events – both to celebrate and to grieve together.
HomeGrown Booth View by Lois
When SummerWorks in Toronto was facing funding issues that were suspected to be as a result of Catherine Frid’s Homegrown, PL1422 hosted a staged reading. During the last civic election PL1422 hosted the Wrecking Ball and played host to many of the city counselors as well as artists for the evening. New Year’s Eve PL1422 welcomed a plethora of partygoers to ring in the year together and fundraise for some young companies. Even company AGM’s have become a communal event with a performance element. The sense of community in that space is palpable and it has pushed the companies involved and those outside to further their artistic rigor.
The best example of this is the very popular and nearly completed Obstructions series where eleven companies who know each other’s strengths & weaknesses as well as each other’s tendencies & crutches challenge each other to work outside of their comfort zone. These one-night-only presentations are always packed, but more excitingly they always end with a discussion about the pieces and whether or not they successfully embraced the challenges they were presented with. I had the opportunity to stage manage one of these pieces and as we created it, we spoke about the obstructions we had been given, what the root of them was, and then the decision was made to disregard one of the obstructions and make the choice to willingly fail that challenge.
What makes these conversations unique is that every person in the room is encouraged to be a part of it: the creators, the companies who challenged them, and the audience all enter into a conversation together with the knowledge that increased artistic rigor is the goal. The air is electric on these nights as ideas and inspirations bounce through the room and artists from both emerging and established companies mingle and new collaborations are sparked.
Collaboration is one of the strengths of the Vancouver theatre ecosystem and spaces like Progress Lab make it easy to see why. The Obstructions series will be completed at the end of April, but I have no doubt that the companies who reside at Progress Lab 1422 as well as the other companies and artists who consider Progress Lab their artistic home will continue to challenge each other, collaborate and celebrate together.
Matthew’s Desk: “a clean desk is a sign of a sick mind”
Matthew: How are you?
Laakkuluk: It’s been a tough week, but we’re managing. A teacher that has worked at our daycare since the day it opened died the other day.
Matthew: I am so sorry.
Amy: So sorry Laakkuluk. Was it sudden?
Laakkuluk: Thanks guys. We’re holding up for the kids’ sakes. She likely took her own life.
Amy: We had the suicide of a young man here in St. John’s too.
Laakkuluk: Oh no.
Amy: Andy Jones’ son. He was very sick. The entire community was in shock and grieving.
Matthew: How tragic.
Amy: Andy and Mary-Lynn are very public about it. We all need to speak about mental illness.
Laakkuluk: Yes we do, or it will never get better.
Matthew: This may seem like a poor segue, I was thinking about the creative space of the mind. We know a lot more about the mind now, but there is still mystery. Mental illness is part of that mystery.
Laakkuluk: You are absolutely right: the mind as a creative space that needs to be nurtured and respected.
Amy: Whatever that space has to offer the rest of the room, it has to be respected.
Matthew: And how do we engage with our minds?
Laakkuluk: It’s the ultimate creative space…and maybe really the only one…
Amy: We have no creativity if we deny that space – our own mind, our own ideas. So, like any space, we must look at what we have in that space and use it in the creative process. We must entertain what is in the space and incorporate our assets into the piece. And our asses too, I spose! 🙂
Laakkuluk: The art is in stitching all these spaces together into a coherent and potent piece for everyone.
Amy making space in her mind for creativity at Nova Yoga
Amy: It’s called a collective. From everyone, for everyone, everyone in the piece and the audience. So, if we start with our mind being the ultimate space, we use our mind to look at the physical space and use that in our creation. We use the physical space depending on what we are creating. We can very seldom, almost never create in the space that we perform. We create, and rehearse and then get 1.5 weeks in the space we are going to perform it, if we are lucky. We usually perform at the LSPU Hall, but we seldom get to just create there. It is expensive. If you are just creating, the box office makes no money.
Laakkuluk: It’s the same at the Greenland national playhouse Amy. It doesn’t have rehearsal or creation space and so when performers are in there, time is money.
Matthew: Laakkuluk we know from past columns you are working towards a regional space there. Right now you have no practical physical space?
Laakkuluk: That’s right. Just after the last chat, we had Nunavut’s first spoken word gathering. We cleared out the nursing students classroom for the workshops. Then we packed up again and cleared out the mezzanine at the high school for the performance.
Amy: How was it?
Laakkuluk: It was sublime.
Matthew: What made it sublime?
Laakkuluk: We had about 20 writers with us, of all different ages, genders, voices. We had 83-year-old elders collaborating with 14-year-old rappers in Inuktitut.
Amy: What was the performance aspect? Was it a reading?
Laakkuluk: It was a combination of readings, music and live performance. The styles of spoken word were quite different from elders’ oral history and storytelling to poetry reading to rap.
Matthew: Sounds like the performers made the creative space important.
Laakkuluk: Yes, here it is all about the performers’ perspectives and experience and never about the space. When we have a performance space, however, the performer’s own mind space will be exponentially expanded.
Amy: Was there any technical aspect? Sound? Lights?
Laakkuluk: We have really great sound engineers that live here; they can make good sound in substandard space. And we have good lighting guys too. The high school has some basic lights and sound that we plug into.
Amy: How many people attended?
Laakkuluk: There were about 150 people there for the performance, which was great for our small city on Oscar’s night Sunday.
Amy: Magical. What did you do?
Laakkuluk: I helped coordinate the whole thing, collaborated with the music makers and read my piece about how “the seal becomes the boy”
Matthew: Congrats on a great event.
Laakkuluk: Thank you! We’re proud of it! I’ll tell you about the finale – I think you’ll like it. After our last song, we broke into a “throat-boxing” session – a mixture of throat singing and beat boxing and in the middle of it all, an elder got up and started calling out his dogsledding commands. All the kids went mad because it was rhythmic and it sounded like the elder was rapping…He was rapping!
Amy: That is amazing. How liberating.
Matthew: Joy! So, Amy, is LSPU Hall the major space in Newfoundland?
Amy: It is a 200-seat theatre. Intimate. It is where most new works are done.
Matthew: Can you articulate how you engage with it? Or how you should engage with it?
Amy: We collaborated on a project called Broken Accidents with Neighbourhood Dance Works. It was just when the hall was closing down for renos. We wanted to workshop in the space so we could use the tech, the stairs in the hall, audience, the back space: discovery in the space. Because of the hall closing down, the board allowed it, so we truly got to experiment, albeit for two weeks, but quite a gift. On the other hand, my friend and I created a play last year and rehearsed it in my office, in a heat wave, and directed it ourselves. Then we went to the Hall Second Space and did our dress rehearsal for staff and friends before hitting the road on tour. It’s all relative. Depends on what you are trying to achieve.
Laakkuluk: You’re pointing out there is a difference between performance space and creation space and you can’t do the performance without some kind of creation space first.
Amy: Yes, because our creation space in the latter was the page.
Matthew: Article about Broken Accidents on the LSPU blog.
Matthew: One advantage to site specific work is sometimes you can rehearse in the space. Victoria Spoken Word Festival ran March 4-9. I saw a piece that combined Puppets and Poets called “Poeteers.” The poets were taught basic puppeteering techniques.
Amy: Little puppets or life size?
Matthew: Mostly handheld. It was moderately successful. They really needed more time to master puppet skills. And the whole thing could have been better directed.
Amy: Sweet. What was the poetry like? Did the puppets make it funny or endearing?
Matthew: Mostly the puppets distracted from the poems, which were good.
Amy: that’s hilarious. Did you mean it to be?
Laakkuluk: It was good that the puppets were distracting, or the poems were good?
Matthew: Ha ha emoticon. The poems were good. The puppets were distracting. The next night the poets did pieces where they showed their best ten minutes: much better. So the chance for them to experiment was great.
Amy: Interesting concept. Why did they think the puppets were a good idea? What were they trying to achieve?
Laakkuluk and Leonard
Matthew: I think that they are trying to show emerging performers what is possible. They succeeded in showing them a glimpse of that. Missie Peters organizes this festival and does a bang up job. There’s an honorary poet every year and it’s well put together. I am a big fan of this festival. http://victoriaspokenwordfestival.com/
Amy: Michael Enright, Rewind was amazing today: a young poet from a long time ago. Leonard Cohen! Look it up. Love him.
Matthew: Leonard who?
Amy: Hee hee. Profound stuff. And so young. I feel very frivolous now
Matthew: I was watching a video of him the other day He is translating French in this video while sitting on his balcony. Un Canadien Errant.
Amy: He is the definition of romantic.
Laakkuluk: I like to read his poetry at night and have profound and…erhm…fantastic dreams
Amy: You are a devil Laakkuluk. Sweet though!
Matthew: There you go, back in the creative space of your mind with Leonard Cohen
Amy: How profound…
Laakkuluk: Nurturing that space, respecting it…
Amy: So, we think the creative space is ultimately the mind. Cuz we can’t afford a physical space with lights and sound and stairs. So, as we say in Newfoundland we makes it up as we goes along.
Matthew: I see it more like even if you can afford the ideal space, the one you need to nurture is the mind
Laakkuluk: Yes – without an investment in the mind, the space is just a room
Matthew: Well, thanks again for a very soothing part of my week
Welcome to the final Edition of Volume 2 of #CdnCult Times. It’s been a wild ride, and we are enthused by and grateful for all of the contributions from writers are readers alike. Stay tuned for a revamped approach to Volume 3 starting in late April.
This week, we explore the importance of space and creativity, but it might as well be called ‘The Good News Edition’. It focuses on incredible triumphs in the theatrical landscape: Stage Manager Lois Dawson reflects on everything that has been made possible by the creation of Progress Lab 1422 in Vancouver, I celebrate the opening of The Theatre Centre in Toronto, and the final conversation from our Geographic Corespondents considers creative space across the country.
Theatre in Canada has a lot of challenges, but this edition suggests we have the skill and passion to overcome them.
Muriel Miguel in The Unnatural and Accidental Women, Native Earth Performing Arts, 2004. photo: Nir Bareket
I was lucky enough to spend some time with Muriel Miguel this past week in Vancouver. Over the course of four days, I saw her perform excerpts from her one-woman show Red Mother as part of the Raven Spirit Dance gala, participated in a two-hour workshop with her on storyweaving at the Dance Centre, and heard her speak about her life’s work in a retrospective at SFU.
Muriel is one of my artistic elders. Her work with Spiderwoman Theater, North America’s oldest feminist Native theatre, has informed my work over the years. I have learned storyweaving from Muriel’s artistic descendents, Turtle Gals Performance Ensemble and students from Centre for Indigenous Theatre who benefit from Muriel’s teaching every year, but her workshop at the Dance Centre was the first time I have had the opportunity to learn directly from Muriel herself.
But as Muriel said in her retrospective, “I’m old”. Listening to her recounting of her journey is full of names like Joseph Chaikin, Uta Hagen, La MaMa. When Muriel talks about teaching, about modeling, she uses words like generous, and humility.
I have had great difficulty in my life, personal and professional, finding elders. For many reasons, we have had a hard time healing, and that retardation has kept us from “eldering up”. In my experience, very often those who identify most loudly and proudly as elders are the very ones I avoid. As Darrell Dennis’ hero Simon Douglas says in Tales of an Urban Indian, there’s a “difference between being an elder, and just being old.”
This lacuna prompted me to begin early in my life to strive to be the elder I would like to become. Therapists used to encourage us to nurture our inner child; me, I am working to cultivate my inner elder, and I have in the past few years been encouraging my colleagues and peers to do the same. Many of us almost young, but many of us are also only the second generation of what is a fairly young contemporary practice, and our elders are starting to pass on.
What is an elder but a keeper of knowledge for a community? What is an elder but someone who has experienced much, and over time examined her experience, tempering it with contemplation and reason, someone who has the patience to listen, the generosity to advise without rancour, to eschew judgment in favour of useful, astute observation, someone who can recognize the potential of another, and put her knowledge into the service of helping that other achieve.
We do all this work in theatre to make sense of the world, to ask the big questions: To be or not to be? Has god really abandoned the world, as the Angel in Perestroika suggests? What is the real cost of the Montreal Massacre? Should Tommy Taylor really Have Stayed Home? Is it possible after the environmental disasters, after the genocides, after our own rapacity, to make a new creation story, together, the way Toad and Lily do in A History of Breathing? [1]
We do all this work in the theatre to unearth the connections, illuminate them. We do this work to make sense of where we have been, and where we are going, not just for ourselves, but for all our communities. Does it not make sense then that all that making sense should extend outwards?
And yes, I know that some will make the argument of art for art’s sake, others the argument for art as entertainment, but as I age, I feel the pressure of time, and I have not got the time to just make art, or to merely entertain. I agree with the Coeur d’Alene writer Sherman Alexie who has said that Native folk do not have the luxury of just making art, because of our responsibility to the ancestors. Too many stories to tell that have been invisible or buried or twisted beyond recognition, too many lessons to be learned and passed on.
But I don’t think that this is only Indigenous artists’ bailiwick. I look around me and see many of my colleagues making work that asks the same questions I am asking, trying to make sense of the world in which we find ourselves together.
We must all of us “elder up”, recognize how we are connected to those who came before and those who are yet to come, and our responsibility to the knowledge we have been gifted.
[1]Hamlet, William Shakespeare; Angels in America, Part Two: Perestroika, Tony Kushner; The December Man, Colleen Murphy; You Should Have Stayed Home, Tommy Taylor; A History of Breathing, Daniel Macdonald.
Simon Fraser University’s production of The Cold War. Deneh Thompson (Pierre Sevigny) & Kiki Al Rahmani (John Diefenbaker)
As a teenager, I always hated Canadian history. When I got to university, I enrolled in a Canadian history class and realized that, yup – still hated it. To me, Canada’s history was a long, boring tale of mosquitoes, beavers and old men. This all changed when I started studying theatre at Simon Fraser University’s School for the Contemporary Arts. Up until this point I had never realized just how young Canada’s theatre scene is.
While reading plays for a class on Canadian theatre, I began realizing that almost all of the Canadian playwrights we were studying were not only still alive, but still actively creating art. These superstars of Canadian theatre (can you be a superstar in Canada?) who were responsible for creating Canada’s theatrical traditions were all around me. I was no longer studying historical Canadian figures who only lived on in my history books, but could walk right up to my theatrical elders and shake their hands. Or at least get tickets to their shows. We would study instrumental artists such as Michel Lepage, Ronnie Burkett, Marie Clements, etc, and then I would open the newspaper the next day and see their latest show coming to town.
One such experience of working with my theatrical elders was working on our Spring 2014 Mainstage production of Michael Hollingsworth’s the Cold War. A group of us spent the fall preparing for the show by studying Hollingsworth and VideoCabaret’s jaw-dropping 21 play cycle on the history of Canada, the History of the Village of Small Huts. To help understand the history and politics in Hollingsworth’s plays, we also studied some of the work of Canada’s first poet laureate, George Bowering, including Stone Country: An Unauthorized History of Canada and Egotists and Autocrats.
It was incredibly exciting to be working on this project and using the work of these two legendary Canadian figures. But I have to say it – at first, I was terrified. I was asked to dramaturg the production by the director, DD Kugler. Kugler, who has google search results that include a video titled “On Teaching Excellence” and an Encyclopedia of Canadian Theatre entry that lists major theatre companies in over half of Canada’s provinces and territories. Dramaturging for one of the most accomplished dramaturgs in Canada? Of course I’ll do it! I’ll just be over in the corner in the fetal position…
Sarah Berenstein (Associate Director), Steffi Munshaw (Dramaturg
What I learned in this show, and what I should have known already, is that the elders of Canadian theatre are some of the most loving and supportive people around. They are incredibly passionate about art and much of that passion manifests itself in encouraging the next generation, my generation, to join them. Throughout the process of working on the Cold War, we would receive updated script edits from Hollingsworth in Toronto (who was working on his own remount of one of the plays in his cycle, Trudeau and the FLQ). We also had a visit from Bowering who came to see our show.
I think what inspired me the most about this experience was working with Kugler, who valued everything I had to say as if I was (gasp!) a peer and not a student. Kugler often says “I may not have knowledge, but I have experience”. I find this a very important attitude to have; all we can ever do is bring our own experience to the table. It doesn’t matter if your experience is that of an elder with a resume long enough to fill a section in the Encyclopedia of Canadian Theatre, or that of a student just about to begin their career.
Recently, I overheard Kugler say to a student the other day, “my ignorance has never kept me from having an opinion!” While he meant it in jest, it’s another reminder that just because one might not be knowledgeable on a subject doesn’t mean that they can’t contribute to the conversation.
These thought are being jotted down while not playing “pet shop” with my 5-year-old daughter – so I apologize for the dashes – the rambling – the fragments – its hard to concentrate. I suggest if you are still reading this, to read it fast – let it skip along. If you do that I’ll try to hunt down the typos. Pet Shop. I can’t tell what pet shop is exactly, other than it involves hiding under a laundry basket and talking to oneself. Pet Shop makes me think of my own increasing tendency to talk to myself – a new and embarrassing habit I usually try to cover up by pretending I was singing.
I figure I speak my thoughts out loud when I can no longer sort them inside my own brain – when I have too much going on – when I can no longer compartmentalize or prioritize and the important thoughts are forced to crawl out and wave their arms around in front of me. My daughter is doing this under her laundry basket. The rules of pet shop seem pretty involved – too big for her skull – so she speaks them out loud. Makes them visible in the space around her. Creates a space so she can create perspective. Something adults reserve for conversations with other people… or typing.
A couple years ago, Theatre Replacement, a company I run with Maiko Yamamoto, set up a weekly project called Movie Group, where we met with people over the age of 65 to watch a bunch of movies made between 1965 and 1975. A time when the participants would have been 18-30 years old and made up the primary movie going demographic according to consumer stats site we found.
The intention of Movie Group was to spend time watching the films with these people and then have conversations – to see how a time-based medium could generate a larger space for thought inside a group. We recorded the conversations with the intention of creating a performance from the verbatim texts but the desire for a finished product disappeared fast. What developed over our 16 or so weeks together was too intimate – too personal. Repeating it would have been crass and disrespectful to we had found together – a magical pressureless space. What we did in the end was show bits of the movies and talk for about an hour – enough to be evidence of what we had been up to, but not so long as to assume that what we found in our little room was designed for anyone other than us.
The filmmaking from that era is pretty spectacular – massive performances wound into small stories. Turns out this leads to good conversation. The Graduate (watch it just for the last scene… and Anne Bancroft) drew out our various experiences in childrearing – and of being children. Midnight Cowboy sparked confessions about “our own personal Miami’s” or – dream situations to live. If that doesn’t make any sense to you, watch the film and while you’re there fall in love with Jon Voight – so young, so innocent and so much more badass than his daughter Angelina Jolie could ever be. Robert Altman’s McCabe and Mrs. Miller led us to thoughts around place – about belonging – about decisions to leave the town you were born which for this group included small town BC, Ottawa, Burnaby, Saskatoon, Northern England and Hong Kong.
photo: Maiko Bae Yamamoto
The Graduate drove us deep into fashion. At one point we all brought in photographs of ourselves from that period. Maiko and I were only babies but still we were all so well framed and posed. In the case of Sylvia who had grown up in Hong Kong, her photos were studio shots, and this led to a long conversation about how the act of photography has become so flippant, a throw-away as opposed to an archiving of a something significant. I argued for quantity. They insisted on quality. We brought in more photos to illustrate the point. But this was not a debate over which era was the better. Rarely did the point of age ever come up in conversation. We were cross-referencing perspective across generations.
Our Englishman in residence Michael was keen on us watching A Man for All Seasons, the story of Thomas More refusing to annul the marriage of Henry the VIII. This, our only non-American film, sparked a days long conversation on the idea of the hero. Pretty much all the US films we had watched depicted unreliable protagonists. We determined, correctly or incorrectly, and without a touch of Wikipedia, that this era of American film-making marked the rise of the anti-hero, usually depicted by shortish men (glorious Mr. Voight excluded) working deep inside the Method. The reasons seemed pretty clear – Charles Manson and his family had effectively killed the hippie dream, Kent State had shaken the country, Viet Nam was raging, civil rights kept stumbling and filmmakers were subsequently making films that reflected an embarrassed nation. Kind of like the mumble core, multiple losers and troubled superheroes of the 2000’s. Were these theories sound? Didn’t matter. They were collectively determined, they felt right, and that made them sound enough for the moment.
We entered the project hypothesizing that the experience of people re-watching something first watched 40 years ago might trigger a bunch of personal memories we would cherry pick and then structure on stage. That didn’t happen exactly – certainly not within our wavering scientific method. What Movie Group did create was a zone for cross-generational perspective – something I unfortunately never make time for unless, like this, it can be disguised as work.
So, Pet Shop. I gave my 5-year-old two dimes that I had in my pocket and she crawled out from under the basket wearing a cat suit complete with tail and ears. She rubbed against my leg and bit my foot, which was nice.
The role of elders in our theatrical ecosystem gets extensive exploration in this week’s edition.
”Elder Up” writes Yvette Nolan,who connects elders to arts who are asking hard questions; SFU theatre student Steffi Munshaw goes full-elder, dramaturging a play by Michael Hollingsworth for director DD Kugler; and Theatre Replacement Co-AD James Long has been watching movies with 65-year-olds and staging their conversations about them.
In all, it speaks to a relatively healthy discourse and relationship between generations. The revolution against the gerontocracy may be referred to committee for further study.
