Here’s a round up of February shows not previously mentioned; mostly straight theatre.
Necessary Angel Theatre Company’s production of Sarah Ruhl’s Letters From Max, a ritual opened at The Theatre Centre on Wednesday night. It’s based on the correspondence and relationship between Sara Ruhl; a middle aged academic, mother of three, and Max Ritvo; her student and aspiring poet/playwright, 20s with a persistent and very nasty cancer. For almost two hours the characters exchange poems, thoughts, philosophy and more while Max tries to fulfil those dreams we all have when we are young against the backdrop of knowing he probably won’t live to, while Sara gets on with being a middle class mom.
work.txt by Nathan Ellis is an interactive, participatory theatre piece that explores work. art and the end of the world. There are no actors, except for the audience and whoever is pushing the buttons that move things along. There’s a computer screen. It instructs the audience what to do, what to say, what to sing. It asks for volunteers. But the volunteers don’t know whether they will be given a task that lasts seconds or whether they will play a major role in the unfolding drama. One volunteer becomes the principal protagonist of the show. They alone have a name. But I’m jumping ahead. First we must create the city where millions go to places called “workplaces” to do stuff called “work”. We do this with Jenga blocks. It’s fun and looks cool. But back to our protagonist.
Back to Summerworks on Wednesday night, this time at the Theatre Centre, to see a double bill of works derived (loosely) from Shakespeare plays. Both works were experimental but in utterly different ways. Lady M (Margaret) is 60 minutes of carefully crafted physical theatre intended for both Deaf and hearing audiences with great attention to detail and a minimalist aesthetic. i am your spaniel, or, A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare by Gislina Patterson is longer at around 90 minutes and is a mad cap series of vignettes exploring Shakespeare’s punctuation, patriarchy, capitalism, life as a trans person and yoghourt among other things.
“An absurdist erotic lesbian love letter to the ocean” is how the programme describes Sara Porter’s show which opened last night at The Theatre Centre. It sums it up pretty well. Geographically it takes from a cow pond in Albertas to the Bay of Fundy and temporally from the creation of the Earth and the Moon to the present. And there’s lots of water. Continue reading
Jani Lauzon’s new piece Prophecy Fog at the Theatre Centre is a fascinating and very personal piece. I write “very personal” because it’s obviously very personal to her but also because I experienced it in a way that I’m sure was not the same as any one else in the room and I suspect that will be true for many people, perhaps most, perhaps all.
operaramblings 