I hope I don't shock or offend anyone when I say that I wasn't entirely sure why a Toronto-based production company would choose to produce the ever-too American period musical "Hair". We were invited to go and we of course went hoping to be blown away. We were. Upon reflection, I realized why Hair would be a candidate for First Act Productions. Their company is dedicated to producing musical theatre in Toronto. Unfortunately, there isn't a ton of new musical works being written by Canadian playwrights. The musical is an unmistakably American art form. Of course, there are Canadian musicals (this year, in Toronto we have Robin Hood and Deadmaus the Musical premiering) but the musical theatre canon is, in general, very American. Therefore, it makes sense that a company with a young cast would brave the subject matter to present a smashing production. For those of you who aren't familiar with this musical, it might help you to picture Rent minus thirty years, plus a few orgies and some nudity. To me, the script has always seemed out of focus. Of course that's probably because it's about the 1960s American "hippy" anti-war movement which was largely inspired by psychedelic drugs. So was this musical. James Rado and Gerome Ragni, the original writers, were two actors excited by the hippy movement who decided it would be "wonderful" to transmit the movement onto stage. In 1967, when it premiered, it was wonderful. Wonderfully relevant, wonderfully received. The wonderful audience was full of young and wonderful teenagers wondering why they hadn't discovered LSD earlier. I, on the other hand, am not so sure I relate to the show. Last night, however, I think I saw the light. Other than it's drug-laden context, it's known for many other things: Its nudity, its opening Off-Broadway in a park, it being the first "Rock Musical" and songs by Galt MacDermot including Good Morning Starshine and Let the Sunshine In. It's a brave show and it takes brevity to pull it off. Last night, the cast committed to their purpose and all of a sudden the narrative of the show shone through. Partner the commitment of the cast with their insane musical talent and, really, this performance becomes a brilliant assertion of an era long before our time. With Colin Asuncion, Bruce Scavuzzo and Sam Moffatt belting their way through the score and the entire company moving across the stage with energy that could kill, the show flies at the perfect pace. Emma Bartolomucci's choreography and Oscar Moreno's stage direction made use of every inch of the stage plus moments in the audience and suspensions from the brilliantly constructed set pieces. I should say, that the production was very literal. I am not sure whether a lot of the humour, or maybe I should say the political messages, had to have mirrored the original production as much as I thought it did last night. Since the show harps on a lot of racial boundaries that date back to the sixties, I feel as though I should warn audience members...but that being said, the whole point of the show is to make a statement and that's certainly what this production does.
All in all I had a great time. I even got up and danced like an idiot during the reprise and the curtain call (Standing ovation). If you'd like to really enjoy yourself and really witness an outstanding performance and outstanding company, let down your hair this weekend and see this show. Hair plays at The Papermill Theatre until January 26. For more information visit www.firstactproductions.ca
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I have been in The Tarragon Extra Space Theatre enough times to be very familiar with it but, when I walked into Hannah Moscovitch’s This is War last night, I was transported into a completely unrecognizable place. I’m tempted to gush over the design details but I don’t really want to spoil it for anyone. To sum up, let’s just say, I felt like I was at war.
The play centers around an incident experienced by four Canadian soldiers who are stationed in Panjwaii. Throughout the play, they each testify, using direct address, only to reveal the dirty details of what went on during their mission. Interwoven into this testimony is a number of scenes from camp which take place the night before as well as the day of the mission. The mix between direct address and active play is an interesting choice considering the dramatic tension that the piece tries to accomplish. I wonder if anyone else found the direct address halting. I found it a little hard to engage with the drama and the details of war that were being told to me in testimony. Instead, my focus became on the love-triangle that was revealed to the audience through active play. As a result, I couldn’t get a grip on the stakes that the characters were under. On top of that, at times Moscovitch does an absolutely incredible job instilling fear in the audience. This fear was robbed from me when the characters began testifying. The testimony made me feel like I was in control but, meanwhile, the action made me scared. I’m not sure if this contradiction was intended. It was absolutely a roller coaster, which was exciting. I wonder, however, if I would have been more engaged with the stakes of the characters if the direct address had been compromised and there was more action to watch. Of course, either way, Moscovitch is funny, intelligent and always engaging. The characters all had very clear trajectories that were complicated by their circumstances. I really enjoyed the intricacies of the script and the details that Moscovitch infused into the dialogue. I couldn’t believe the depth of her descriptions of war, the war stories she wrote, and the resulting emotional entanglements. It was fantastic, heartbreaking and a great script. On top of that, the production was perfectly tailored to the writing. I, again, don’t want to give anything away but the construction of that space blew me away. Every design detail made me feel like I was actually at war. Just to indulge, at one point, a character walked on stage in full army gear and I actually thought he had just come from a barrack. Really. Meanwhile, the performers were, not surprisingly, brilliant. This is War was experiential. I absolutely felt affected by the play. Three of Hanna’s plays will be featured at The Tarragon this year. If you don’t get out to see This is War try to experience one of her earlier works if you can. Photo courtesy of Washington University: http://news.wustl.edu/news/Pages/24829.aspx Yesterday, GoogleAlerts told me that Sarah Ruhl would be speaking at a fancy conference in Washington and, I'm afraid to admit my ease of process but, that's how she became our playwright of the day. Sarah Ruhl is one of America’s current sweethearts of contemporary theatre. You may know her for her award winning works Passion Play, Dead Man’s Cellphone and perhaps most famously, The Next Room or The Vibrator Play (2009). Though I’ve never seen her work live, I spent some time studying it yesterday. It didn’t take long for me to be charmed by her and I think I know why. For one thing, and to the pleasure of most modern American audiences, Ruhl often questions the line between fantasy and reality. She does this by exploring ways in which technology has restricted us from actual intimate human interaction. For example, Ruhl constantly questions our Promethean response to our bodies. In A Dead Man’s Cell Phone, a woman obtains the cell phone of a man she found dead in café and she uses the cell phone to become somewhat of a mediary between the man and his family. My absolute favorite character in the show is the man’s mother who continues to call the cellphone just so she can interact with the voicemail and then, when his voice is removed from the phone by his mistress, she stops calling it because her intimate bond with him is finally gone. Another great example of this theme is The Next Room or The Vibrator Play. In this piece, Ruhl has reimagined the 19th century wherein electricity was just invented. The play centers around a doctor who uses vibrators to induce orgasms in his patients in order to cure hysteria. A bold example is when the doctor’s main female patient stops reacting to the doctor inducing orgasm and begins to only react to his female nurses’s touch. The discovery that personal touch is better than mechanical or medical intervention clearly leads the audience to appreciate Ruhl’s conclusions. Other themes explored by Ruhl include the economy of the body and the construction of identities. However, despite these being large and heavy topics. Ruhl has a very graceful way of avoiding writing very heavy plays. She’s incredibly well informed but she doesn’t bother to throw all of her intelligence into the piece. Instead, she allows the characters to tell us the story and, through, story we receive information and understand themes. There is nothing prescriptive, nothing preachy, about her writing even though she’s tackling huge themes. Her characters, though in states of exploration are humble and uncertain making them a little clumsy, cute and overall funny. If you haven’t checked out Ruhl’s work yet, today’s your day. She has a number of works that have come on in the past short while. Notably, Eurydice will be produced by "A Noice Within Theatre" this coming May in Pasadena, CA. (http://www.anoisewithin.org/play/eurydice/) Watch clips here of Ruhl's work online
Picture Courtesy of Neptune Theatre (http://server3.immediac.com/neptune/default.asp?mn=1.181.248) In honour of the opening of his final performance of "This is What Happens Next", we've made Daniel MacIvor today's Playwright of the Day.
MacIvor is one of Canada's most charming and prolific contemporary playwrights. If you haven't begun your love affair with his work yet, today is a great day to pop your cherry. My love affair with MacIvor's work began when I was 17. A student production of "A Soldier Dreams" at The Sear's Festival blew me away and I haven't stopped loving him since. It might be safe to say that most, if not all, Canadian theatre artists have fallen in love with the charm and wit of MacIvor's works and each of us has wondered in woe why we hadn't been exposed to his work earlier. MacIvor writes with rhythm. He punctuates his pieces to perfection. As a result, one can't help reading them in a notable "MacIvor" way. Each show moves quickly and readily. When experiencing a MacIvor piece, I often feel like I'm watching the text, like it's words literally coming alive in front of me. There's nothing like it. Since hes performed a number of his works, he's become a shining example of his own prototypical performer. After graduating from George Brown College's theatre program, he co-founded Da Da Kamera with a number of other notable Canadian artists including Daniel Brooks. Soon MacIvor became known for moving audiences with his award winning solo works including Here Lies Henry, House/Humans and Monster.In 2006 , I traveled to Toronto from New York once a month to see him perform these works for, what he threatened to be, a final time. It was worth it even if it wasn't, in fact, his final solo performances. Now, he graces the stage one "final" time, for the "final time" at the Martha Cohen Theatre for This is What Happens Next from Jan. 23 to Feb. 4 as part of the 2013 High Performance Rodeo. We wish him luck and hope to heaven this isn't really his last. Watch an interview from when MacIvor performed the show 2 years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FzXiidFBP8 Today is Pullitzer Prize and Tony Award winning playwright Michael Cristofer's birthday (b. Jan 22, 1945) and we're celebrating by making him our playwright of the day. Cristofer is a writer, director, actor (I'm not sure which order he prefers) for film and theatre. You may know him for his recent recurring performance on the popular television series Smash. If you don't know him, however, please don't google "Smash" to find out. Please, instead, recognize him for his brilliant body of dramatic works. Cristofer is best known for the award winning piece "The Shadow Box" (1977). If you haven't heard of it, you could easily find a number of somewhat entertaining renditions of the fantastic monologues that he's crafted. Instead, I'd suggest reading the entire play. The scene study that could come out of act 2 is endless. I had a great time today reading and re-reading the act, studying the craftsmanship and wondering how the heck he did it. After reading some of his other works, I've decided upon what I think makes his writing so authentic: In Cristofer's works, the characters really speak to one another. The relationships that he's crafted are heavy and important to the point where no conversation is unaffected. He does this, however, without approaching melodrama. Cristofer's works are humorous. His characters are too intelligent to start yelling at one another so, instead, they have witty, cunning conversations. Even at the height of emotion, very authentic emotion, in Cristofer's works, nothing is redundant or predictable. All of his characters think. It makes for a really fulfilling script. I've noticed, thematically, that he might be a little too intrigued by death, if that's possible. It seems like a number of his characters are waiting for death. Certainly in "The Shadow Box" each character is terminally ill and dealing with their fatal prophesy. However, after looking through some of his other works it isn't unique that a protagonist be distracted by either retrospect or avoiding retrospect but always in the interest of life being too short. Cristofer's most recent play, "The Whore and Mr. Moore", Premiered at the Dorset Theatre Festival in Vermont last year. The show didn't get great reviews, from what I can tell, but in any case, I'm glad he returned to the theatre because we wouldn't want to lose the voice of a talent this touching. Here's to you on your birthday and to many more plays-- Interview with Playbill from his August 2012 show "The Whore and Mr. Moore": http://www.playbill.com/celebritybuzz/article/168902-PLAYBILL-BRIEF-ENCOUNTER-With-Michael-Cristofer-Smash-Star-and-Pulitzer-Winner/pg2 Rachel's weekly investigative column It's not easy to be a stand-up comedian. We all know that. Most of us would never do it for fear of being shamed off the stage. Even "funny people" can absolutely suck at stand-up. It can be heartbreaking to watch someone whose been acclaimed amongst friends and family for being "the funny one" strut onstage and humiliate his or herself for a full ten minutes with no escape.
Last night, Nicole and I ventured out to a free comedy event in the city and, after sitting through a series of uncomfortable sets (topics ranging from Alzheimers to dead grandmothers to "emotional pornography"), I began to wonder... This is an investigative column. Week after week, I think I'll attempt to uncover the clues to comedic magic. My first little discovery comes from Max Schiller who teaches us in his farce "The Arsonists" that the best way to manipulate anyone is to just tell them truth because the truth is so laughable that nobody ever believes it. I noticed last night that comedians who had based their jokes on fiction were absolutely the least successful. One guy kept referencing women who had hit on him but we it was questionable whether or not he had ever been hit on at all. Once we started doubting his sincerity, we really stiffened and became uncomfortable. The truth is comical. If we subvert reality and infuse it with ridicule it all of a sudden becomes humorous. Honesty and integrity lead to humour. Sketch comedy is a great example: the closer the source of the sketch is to reality, the more we laugh. We laugh at The Daily Show, Colbert, Newsroom, Nancy Grace (even though she's super serious but it's the funniest thing I've ever seen). Material that "is grounded in a commitment to the facts", as Chris Bliss puts it, gives comedy integrity with still the brilliance of an unexpected twist to make the audience laugh. American stand-up comedian, Chris Bliss lectures on using the truth to write comedy here: http://www.standupcomedyclinic.com/2419/comedy-is-truth/ Bliss has a whole bunch of formulaic suggestions for why truth is integral to comedy but, I think the main point is that "funny people" shouldn't have to invent comedy, they should be able to see comedy in every day life. In their book "Truth in Comedy" Charna Halpern and Del Close have written that “When we’re relaxing, we don’t have to entertain each other with jokes. And when we’re simply being ourselves up to each other and being honest, we’re usually funniest.” To prove their point, the funniest comedian in the room last night was some guy, I purposely didn't take anyone's name, but I think this guy was on MTV, he came without material. His entire set was just him having a conversation or mostly a monologue about what he was he thinking in that moment. He was just a "funny guy" and it came through because he was grounding everything in reality. It seems then, the moral is, if you're funny, just be funny. Don't worry about making things funny, they already are and you already know it because you have a funny point of view. Relax, share your perspective and people will laugh. The other moral: beware free comedy nights. I'm not sure how I heard about Theatre Smash's "Script Smash". I think something popped up on our Twitter feed or maybe I was browsing Facebook for events that I wasn't invited to. Either way, I'm so glad that I found the event and ventured to Lower Ossington Theatre for a PWYC reading of "Bluebeard".
Bluebeard is originally a French Folktale scribed by Perault. The story tells of a man who has adopted the practice of slaughtering his wives, one after the other, and displaying them in his home. The German adaptation that was read last night, written by Dea Loher and translated by Daniel Brunet, reinvented Bluebeard's character to the point of him being a lovable, endearing young man played in the most adorable way by Steven McCarthy. In last night's version, women couldn't help but fall in love with Bluebeard and the more of them whom he accidentally killed, the less he wanted to be loved. Throughout the piece, Julia, a blind woman, played by Krista Colosimo and the only female character who doesn't immediately fall in love with Bluebeard, confronts his oddities. The absurd nature of the other women's love for Bluebeard and the unassuming craft of that absurdity made for a really enjoyable, intelligent script. Script Smash is an annual event run by Theatre Smash. Each year, Theatre Smash translates a number of international scripts and workshops those scripts for possible production. This year's Script Smash presents two German plays which have been newly translated to fulfill Theatre Smash's mission to premiere international works in Toronto. Next week, another "unmistakably German" show entitled "The Thing" by Philipp Lohle and translated by Birgit Schreyer Buarte will be read at The Lower Ossington Theatre, Studio A for another PWYC reading. We'll be there. Don't miss it! Today is the 110th anniversary of the Broadway premiere of The Wizard of Oz. In honor of the occasion, we've made Frank L. Baum (May 15, 1856 – May 6, 1919), author of the original story and musical, our playwright of the day. Baum was a lifelong thespian. After reading about him, I've discovered that he was one of the original "indie" theatre artists. His practice mirrored that of many young artists today in that he worked full-time at a different trade, he allowed his love of theatre to lead him into debt without it bothering him very much and he wore every hat he needed to when producing one of his own works. While recovering from financial shock, Baum would write short stories and children's works but he couldn't stay away from the theatre for too long. It's a good thing his father was a supportive and wealthy businessman because eventually, when Baum was 24 years-old, his father built him a theatre, thereby igniting Baum on the path to becoming a musical theatre legend.
It's well-known that Baum grappled with the form the musical took, eventually losing control to commercial interests. The story has taken many forms over the years. It was a long journey to Andrew Lloyd Webber's current Broadway version (2011). The liberties that others have taken over Baum's work teaches contemporary playwrights a valuable lesson: our writing is always unfinished and therefore vulnerable to the influence of other artists. I prefer to believe that the malleability of our work, as playwrights, is what makes being a playwright so fantastic. Baum's writing, though re-interpreted many times over, proves that magic can come from reinvention.
To Baum and The Wizard---May there be many more. See a silent version of The Wizard of Oz: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWQ5-UBU22M George Burns (January 20, 1896-1996) made a lot of people laugh. Now, 17 years after he passed away at age 100, we honor him at Newborn Theatre for the comedic genius he contributed in his lifetime. As one of the original American Vaudeville acts, Burns had a knack for narrative based comedy and music. If you aren't familiar with Vaudeville, you can probably better admire Burns for being a pioneer of the "situational comedy", better known as the sitcom. Vaudevillian comedy is episodic and narrative. (If you don't know what I mean, watch the late George Burns tell his favourite joke: http://bit.ly/WPihLo) Vaudeville therefore proved that American audiences craved and appreciated short, deliberate comedic entertainment that existed only for the purposes of making people laugh. Hence: the birth of the sitcom. His work moved from stage to radio to film to television. Burn's writing will forever be immortalized by "The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show" (Burns and Allen were married, both famed performers: http://bit.ly/13RTWvf). As well as an entire repertoire of Vaudevillian films including "The Big Broadcast" (http://bit.ly/XoZ1Fh) and "College Swing" (http://bit.ly/UYVnBu). Here's to George on his birthday. May we all laugh as hard and live as long as he did. If you're looking for an intelligent, exciting and gorgeous piece of theatre in Toronto, you should absolutely make sure you see MT Space's "Body 13" this weekend at Theatre Passes Muraille.
Majdi Bou-Matar has directed the show to perfection. The instant I saw the opening tableau I was captivated and, through the use of intense, extraordinary movement executed by a cast that had the strength and unity of a steel chain, my captivation was kept throughout the piece. The script managed to present the age old "be true to yourself" message in a new, modern way without sacrificing clarity. Despite approaching old thematic territory, the show absolutely escapes cliche. First of all, physical movement is an integral and fascinating part of the piece. The sequences performed onstage were so pronounced, so defined that I had visceral reactions to them on more than one occasion. On top of that, the show interweaves multiple plots. I found that each character shared just enough information about their story to intrigue me without telling me too much to the point of it sounding like something I had heard before. The focus on physicality rather than rhetoric instigated a complete recreation of timeless interracial, intersexual conflicts. Partner intelligent writing and performance with the impeccable design work that has gone into this show (I can't let myself get away with leaving the live music and sound effects unmentioned. Moreover, if you notice lighting in a show, you won't be able to help but notice the work done here) and I'm excited to insist that it is one of the top pieces of theatre in Toronto this weekend. Full details on MT Space's website: http://www.mtspace.ca/productions/body-13-toronto-ontario |
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