Cate Simpson » Theatre

Out of the Box

Cate — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 20:28:00 +0000

Hysterical artistic power on stage at Hysteria

his month sees the return of Hysteria, Buddies in Bad Times’ biennial celebration of female artists. The 10-day festival, now in its fifth outing, features dance, film, music, theatre, spoken word and visual art. Named by festival director Moynan King after what was once considered a peculiarly female affliction, Hysteria reclaims female artistic power.

“In a way the hysterics were performers,” says King, referring to a 19th-century series of photographs taken by doctors at a hospital in Paris of women in the throes of hysteria. Women posed for the photos in an attempt to buy their way out of the institution. “There’s no way these photographs could be authentic, because photography was a long, painstaking process,” says King, “so the hysterics of all of our ideas are performance artists.”

This year’s festival features an international lineup of performers, including two queer artists based in New York — poet and novelist Staceyann Chin and drag performer milDred. Other highlights include: a retrospective by queer comedian Shawna Dempsey of her collaborations with Lorri Millan; Spin, an evening of bicycle-themed entertainment written by Evalyn Parry; and Mass Hysteria, a cabaret of five-minute performances opened by singer Sharron Matthews.

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Closer

Cate — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 21:42:00 +0000

Patrick Marber’s Closer follows four people through various dating configurations, affairs and dramatic breakups, conveyed through a series of short scenes several months apart. The star-studded 2004 film adaptation was nominated for two Oscars; now Alumnae Theatre have brought it back to its stage roots.

Alumnae’s production is slick and entertaining, but it suffers slightly from miscasting. Steven Burley as Larry is too physically slight to be as imposing as many of his scenes require, and often when Larry’s true bullying nastiness should be most apparent, we see him only as a victim. His softness of manner and of accent also mask the class tension we are meant to perceive between him and Anna, and oblique references to this are never fully explored.

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Walking The Tightrope

Cate — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 18:01:00 +0000

Walking The Tightrope, the most recent production by British playwright Mike Kenny, is ambitious children’s theatre. The story follows a young girl, Esme, who visits her grandfather soon after her grandmother has died. At a loss to explain why Nana Queenie won’t be joining them this year, Grandad Stan tells Esme that Queenie has gone to join the circus. The lie becomes gradually more elaborate, until the real circus comes to town and forces him to reveal the truth.

The play walks its own tightrope between being lighthearted and energetic enough to keep the kids interested, and giving its subject matter the emotional weight it requires. Employing a popular device in children’s entertainment, the actors double as storytellers and keep things moving by narrating their actions. Repetition also keeps us tuned in to the central theme — that change is inevitable and part of life — which emerges as the take-home message for younger audiences.

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Dog Sees God

Cate — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 18:04:00 +0000

Dog Sees God, which re-imagines the characters of Charles Schulz’ Peanuts as teenagers based on the dispositions of their childhood incarnations, is part comedy, part meditation on the end of innocence.

Faithfully following the comic’s main characters to their logical adolescent conclusions, writer Bert V. Royal and director Lezlie Wade bring us the earnest and lovable CB (Charlie Brown), searching for meaning after the death of his beloved beagle; Stiffleresque school bully Matt (Pigpen); and stoner Van (Linus) who has replaced his blanket with a pot habit.

The cast, all stars of Degrassi: The Next Generation, play their teenage roles as well as you would hope. Alex Saslove and Siobhan Murphy do a particularly convincing job of capturing bitchy codependent best friends Marcy and Trisha (Peppermint Patty), who mix White Russians in their lunchtime milk cartons. The first half hour, as we discover what time has done to those tiny cartoon friends, contains some of the play’s best dialogue and all of its comedy. Lindsey Clark, understudy for Paula Brancati, is both funny and terrifying in the role of Van’s sister (Lucy), whose pyromaniacal tendencies have landed her in an asylum.

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Binti’s Journey

Cate — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 18:05:00 +0000

Binti’s Journey is a play about many things. It gives faces and names to the AIDS epidemic in Africa — sometimes numbingly anonymous in its scale — while also managing to be about the end of innocence. Degrassi: The Next Generation actor Jajube Mandiela brings a touching naivety to Binti, the work’s teen narrator, that gives her story both pathos and humour.

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Agokwe

Cate — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 20:29:00 +0000

Love on the Rez (COVER STORY)

"My ancestors are storytellers. They’ve been storytellers for centuries, and that’s what I call myself too," says 23-year-old Waawaate Fobister, whose first play, Agokwe, opens Buddies in Bad Times Theatre’s 30th season. "I want to bring back stories from my traditions, my people."

Agokwe means "two spirited" and Fobister’s piece is an exploration of homophobia in a small native community that would once have celebrated two-spirited people as an important part of society. Fobister himself grew up on an Ojibwe reservation in northwestern Ontario, and the story is based on events from his own life.

Agokwe is primarily a coming-out story, following two young men from neighbouring reserves as they take their first steps toward expressing the attraction they share. But it is also a commentary on how native communities have been changed by white intervention and the residential school system, and those communities’ struggle to recapture what has been taken from them.

"There wasn’t any homophobia before we arrived," says Ed Roy, the production’s director, with whom Fobister has been working on the piece for more than a year. "The two-spirited person was acknowledged as a person of spiritual power and authority in the community. But when they were returned to the reservations after the schools they weren’t connected to the land, to their traditions.

"In Agokwe, Nanabush [a trickster spirit popular in Ojibwe stories] explains how we’re all trying to get back to this state of equilibrium within nature and ourselves," says Roy, "and we journey with these characters, Jake and Mike, star-crossed lovers who try to meet."

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