THE DIETRICH GROUP PRESENTS

I am an animal...

A playful quality,  drawing one into the beginnings of D.A. Hoskin's I am an Animal, is a delightful and deceiving introduction to a powerful piece of dance theatre that dares to move from fancy free to furiously quirky and romantically challenged at the drop of a hat. Cabbage patches (romaine in fact, but cabbage sounds better) and sofas unite as a quintet of dancers take turns at mesmerizing spectators with a panoply of movement and vocalization that interrogates the naked body with precision, athletic endurance, and beautifully nuanced movement. Hoskins has created solos and duets for his ensemble that flow with such precision and sensitivity from each inidivdual body - it feels like the movement has been created as a unique, personalized gift for each performer to skillfully unwrap.

from L to R - Fabien Piche, Paul Charbonneau, Andrew Hartley, Mariana Medellin- Meinke, Emily Law

Fabien Piche commands the stage with a powerfully ambiguous gender presence, impeccable technical prowess, and disarmingly  beautiful vocals that allow him to inhabit a variety of complex choreographic roles. Paul Charbonneau possesses an athletically defined ethereal quality in one solo segment as his intensely, measured, introverted, and fluid movements travel delicately through a soft, formidably haunting sequence. Andrew Hartley initiates the many magical moments of nudity - moving in and out of clothing, with the help of the ensemble, with a kind of unassuming grace and exquisite, limber, subtlety that infuses his performance with an emotionally and physically engaged presence. Mariana Medellin-Meinke delights the eye and ear as she races, cavorts, and softly engages with Hartley in a sensual duet. Her comic timing and her amazing agility render her role a strong, unabashed study in a diverse form of corporeal dignity. Emily Law rounds out the ensemble as her hair and body are rendered mutable and irresistible bodily agents that she very skillfully manipulates through gorgeous movement and a piercing, enviable charm. When Fabien Piche delivers a series of frank, at times comic love quips to her, the stage becomes a kind of kinetic tableau vivant testament to the intricate nature of love, romance, feigned disenchantment, and the will to control one's frequently fickle romantic destiny.

The ensemble is aided by diverse musical selections ranging from Streisand to Roberta Flack, giving the overall piece a kind of nostalgic dance/slumber party feel (of the erogenous kind) that includes an onstage turntable beside a sofa large enough for all five performers to lounge and laze as they move toward an unexpectedly poignant and gorgeously written finale - a finale possesses a brief monologic segment that tugs at the heartstrings with a relentless and moving charm. Written by Hoskins himself, this   celebratory, requiem-like segment adds a rich, moving texture that acts as a beautiful counterpoint to the dominant playfulness of the choreography -

the beginning of one’s finality of desire

is when one dies.

not as easy as one thinks

It can be hard work to die... 

It is an exquisite death

It is an exquisite death

the recognition of this fleeting existence...

And so what do we do?

we graze

we graze

Ultimately, the piece is framed by a disarming joviality that impeccably cushions the full frontal eclecticism Hoskins is famous for. With wardrobe coordination by Mikey G. and 'mother nature' this is a sexy, exciting, funny, and poignant selection of explosive meditations from the Dietrich Group that embraces jovial interplay and beautifully reverent/elegiac moments addressing romance and mortality in a provocative, enlightening, and thoroughly entertaining way.  

running at the Citadel at 305 Parliament until Saturday Septemebr 29^th

NO GREAT MISCHIEF

“It is not exactly factually autobiographical. It is emotionally autobiographical.” 

David French

Alistair MacLeod's No Great Mischief, currently running at Tarragon Theatre, is a very moving and precariously joyful journey concerning the semi-fictional lives of the MacDonald clan. Through a series of scenes that move back and forth between past and present encounters, R.H. Thomson and David Fox lead a stellar cast of characters, against all odds, toward a strangely life-affirming end. Fox runs the gamut of emotions with superb vocal skill and physicalization. One scene has him seated beside Thomson during an explosive narrative moment that reads like a gorgeous example of modern dance theatre as two powerful masculine bodies  deliver impeccable emotion, then fall silent long enough to render a memorable and moving tableau.

Mike Ross (composer) and Todd Charlton (sound designer) have orchestrated a series of wonderful musical interludes and tumultuous sound effects that punctuate the closeness of a family and a community struggling to survive. Playing multiple roles, the ensemble sings, dances, and acts their way in and out of a variety of familial dysfunctions that reveal the tight knit, topsy turvy world of a clan the playwright considers to be "the Celtics football team of their time...the big team [who] really affected history, because if they would go, or wouldn't go, or would support you or not support you, it would change things."

J.D. Nicholsen and John Dolan as the grandfathers are diverse studies in paternal order. Their presence in the ensemble moves seamlessly in and out of minor roles, always veering skillfully back toward the strong, distinct symbols of grandfatherly grace and love that holds the family together. 

Ben Irvine's California cousin brings an energy to the second act that raises the stakes and moves spectators toward a powerful, double-edged realization that our American cohorts have played multi-faceted and wildly entertaining parts in our collective Canadian lives. Irvine's rendition of The Times they are a Changin', with the aid of the entire ensemble, exemplifies the immaculately directed, choreographed sequences that bring a powerful musical subtext to the overall piece. Director Richard Rose, with the aid of Charlotte Dean's beautifully evocative set and costumes, has created a truly inventive and powerful collection of scenes that rely upon a form of performance oriented theatrical strategies that utilize the stage as a kind of studio/workshop for the exploration of complex familial interaction.

Stephen Guy-McGrath and Daniel Giverin provide further diversity through music, dance and secondary characterization that rounds out the troupe with physical and vocal diversity and flair. 

Nicola Lipman, as the lone feminine presence, is strong throughout, and has a powerful and moving scene with R.H. Thomson so skillfully written and performed that it becomes one of those bittersweet life affirming moments that teaches spectators so much about memory, love, and aging.

In an upstairs room at Tarragon, until the end of this month, a tribute to David French speaks multitudes on the heritage so many Canadian playwrights have crafted from their lives and the lives around them. One quote rings true for so much great drama. As French has said about his own dramaturgy chronicling the lives of The Mercer family - “It is not exactly factually autobiographical. It is emotionally autobiographical.” Both French and MacLeod have mastered the art of storytelling in the theatre in a multi-facted way that embraces a kind of universalized heritage that bears the marks of a distinctly 'Canadian' experience - as that experience draws from a variety of cultural truths and semi-fictions.  

No Great Mischief runs until October 21st

Julie Sits Waiting

It's all sweat and flesh...
 It's violence and death...
 It's love at first sight.

In a house under renovation, Julie and Mick discover extraordinary intimacy - and colossal disaster.

Julie Sits Waiting is dirty opera: the tape gritty and raw, the voices both cracked and lyrical, offering a rare and intimate experience in Theatre Passe Muraille's Backspace.

Good Hair Day’s current production of Julie Sits Waiting is an intimate, expressionistic tour de force performed by seasoned performers in full command of their finely honed vocal and physical skills. Fides Krucker as Julie and Richard Armstrong as her moody paramour deliver intricate performances that range from bold, lyrical operatic strokes of great beauty to corporeal contortions and powerful stylized vocalizations that move spectators far beyond the boundaries of traditional opera and into a panoply of sight and sound, gradually building toward a powerful climax. Composer Louis Dufort has created a complex, penetrating score that challenges performer and spectator alike as a non-stop panorama of mixed emotion emerges throughout.

Tom Walmsley’s spare, poetic libretto, combining forms of conversational naturalism with poetic disjuncture, is well suited to the impact of Heidi Strauss’s and Alex Fallis’s tightly blocked, intricately conceived direction. Projection design by Jeremy Mimnagh, lighting design by Rebecca Picherak, with sets and costumes by Teresa Przybylski are in perfect sync with the overall sense of an expressionistic mise en scene that moves brilliantly toward a moving and explosive finale. 

Coming in at sixty-seven minutes and confined by the dark, rough rectangle of Theatre Passe Muraille’s backspace, Julie Sits Waiting is a small gem of complex proportions, bursting at the seams at every moment, giving the audience prolonged moments of spectacular sound and projection as the actors leave the stage, only to return to the fully engaged, and darkly invigorating story they tell through an incredibly diverse storehouse of physical and vocal brilliance. 

Armstrong’s deep rich operatic tones, at times moving into a kind of elegantly high pitched cry, are matched by Krucker’s ability to skillfully move across the stage and deliver a variety of sounds simultaneously lyrical, crackling, and sublime. Julie Sits Waiting suggests a kind of introverted inertia as the opera begins with a lone, seated woman. From thereon in, sitting is the antithesis to what happens in this finely crafted, smoldering operatic drama.

Libretto by Tom Walmsley, Music composed by Louis Dufort

Starring Richard Armstrong and Fides Krucker

presented by Good Hair Day Productions, in association with The Theatre Centre

Directed by Alex Fallis and Heidi Strauss

Set and costume design by Teresa Przybylski

Video design by Jeremy Mimnagh

Lighting design by Rebecca Picherack

Sound diffusion by Darren Copeland

Stage Manager: Sandy Plunkett

Co-Producer: Aislinn Rose

September 14-23, 2012 at Theatre Passe Muraille's BackSpace, 16 Ryerson Ave.

Wednesday-Saturday at 7:30pm & Sunday at 2pm

Tickets: Wednesday & Thursday at 7:30pm: $30; Sunday at 2pm: $30 in advance or Pay-What-You-Can at the door;

Friday & Saturday at 7:30pm: $40

For tickets, call the Arts Box Office at 416-504-7529 or visit www.artsboxoffice.ca

Visit www.fideskrucker.com for further information.

the unbearable lightness of being queer

As I’m leaving the bleachers I overhear a well-coifed elegant older woman in impeccable summer attire say to her friend “tasteful.” She liked the show, because it was, tasteful? I’m perplexed. I’ve just spent two hours out doors, something I try not to do unless I have a very good reason and a lot of mosquito repellent on hand. The show in question has made me laugh, cry, and shrink in bewilderment upon realizing, yet again, this late in the day, that yes, we really do still need plays like this in order to help people understand that being different doesn’t mean we should be punished. The Trillium foundation certainly agrees, having given the theatre one hundred and four thousand dollars to explore diversity themes ranging from queer identity to disability issues. We’ve come a long way, but we have miles to go before we sleep.

Go girls!! Trilliums (AS IN FOUNDATIONS) 

have always been my favorite flower. 

But I'm often torn between the pristine 

white ones and the rather ‘queer’ looking 

pale purple genre.

The current 4^th Line Theatre production of acclaimed enfant terrible playwright Sky Gilbert’s St. Francis of Millbrook, opened last week and it is a wildly entertaining cultural phenomenon to behold. Under the superb layered direction of Kim Blackwell, a succession of heavily populated scenes, inhabited by professional and skilled amateur thespians, reveals Gilbert’s knack for immaculate structure in the midst of narrative mayhem. Admittedly,[1] Gilbert has constructed this commissioned piece for a very particular audience. And yet, the myth of cottage country small town spectatorship[2] runs rampant as one watches onlookers from a variety of predominantly white middle class, and beyond, experience respond favorably to this lush panoply of very queer consciousness as it makes its way through a forest of heteronormative desire.

Ellen Ray Hennessey in a lead role superbly guides a wonderful ensemble through a fabulous and familiar story of growing up gay in a rural community.  Gilbert’s script has combined the perfect cultural elements, both past and present - and future. The nineteen sixties, the truly memorable iconic music of that era, Madonna’s presence in a growing nineteen nineties post modern environment where sex symbols begin to acquire religious status, commingle in this musically adept ménage. Class, gender, and sexuality blend discursively as aging hippies make multi-cultural pleas for acceptance, culminating in a significant nod to race with a moment of Yoko Ono celebration as the icing on the multi-faceted cake. All of the critical socially conscious parts are there to create the whole, and even though Gilbert has tailored the piece for audience members who may very well need tasteful theatre in order to placate them into the shady naturalism of queer identity, there are still all the trademark bad boy elements and the kitsch campiness he is famous for. Gilbert pushes the envelope perhaps as far as he can in a culturally savvy production replete with pickup trucks, white horses, endearing pig narratives, and the odd barn swallow (what do I know from barn swallows!) gracing the stage here and there in non equity unscripted roles. The natural beauty of Fourth Line continues to reside in the unexpected quality of nature that graces any given performance. And the overt queerness of this particular script makes the whole idea of nature sing sweet with contrast and coming home/coming out warm-heartedness.

NATHANIEL BACON

Nathaniel Bacon as Luke brings a fresh and physically adept vitality to the role that blends youthfulness, naivete and a sincere love of nature that renders the meadows and the barnyards somewhat more camp than one might have expected. (see my own poetic rural drag narrative written when I was a stage manager and a walk-on farmer's wife in drag at Fourth Line Theatre several decades ago at http://batemanpoetry.blogspot.com/)

William Foley and Sherri McFarlane as Luke's parents shine as they battle the timeworn dilemma regarding how they can manage to love a gay son and stay together. McFarlane possesses a serene power as the stalwart subtly courageous matriarch while Foley delivers a skillful study in reactive disgrace and thwarted tender paternalism due to the iconic presence of hockey woven into the script.

SHERRI MCFARLANE & NATHANIEL BACON

WILLIAM FOLEY

But is any of this tasteful? Well, no, any interrogation of queer identity worth its salt leaves tasteful at the doorstep when it includes the violence too often inherent to growing up gay in a small town, or any metropolis, big or little, where so called loved ones become so conflicted by the emerging identity of their offspring that they revert to physical aggression. There is nothing tasteful about homophobia, on stage or off, and that’s the way it should be. I would have liked to have seen the mythic affects of tastefulness pushed a little further, but that’s just my own take on bad boy consciousness. Fourth Line, Kim Blackwell, Robert Winslow (Artistic Director), and Sky Gilbert must be commended for bringing together a seminal production in the growing history of queer theatrical enterprise. In the same audience where I overheard the “tasteful” remark I also heard someone express their surprise that this kind of social issue still needs to be put out there for audiences to 'learn' from.

Drive on out to the country and see this saintly little gem. It will make you feel good about feeling bad. It takes queer and freshens it up with a whiff of country air, and there’s even a bit of skin to behold, not too much though. One wouldn’t want to exceed the limits of tastefulness now, would one?

 ROBERT WINSLOW & KIM BLACKWELL

SKY GILBERT

Spencer Harrison’s gorgeous Circus Tent, as part of his PhD thesis examining homophobia and queer identity, was set up for the media opening and queered the event even further as Harrison’s own experience as a country boy growing up gay continues to manifest itself within his practice as a visual artist. More on that in an upcoming blog post!

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[1] In a panel discussion before the media opening of the play Gilbert described his early meetings with Robert Winslow (Artistic Director) and Kim Blackwell (Director & Associate Artistic Producer) that included ways in which queer subject matter might be represented within the company mandate  focusing upon community stories 

[2] the whole notion of spectatorship has been interrogated and called into question in a variety of texts that examine demographic and the assumptions made about audience appeal and accessibility - briefly, for the purposes of this ‘review’ and this production, it can be argued that the people any given script is tailored to, ‘despite’ their location within a rural area, frequently come from very sophisticated, affluent backgrounds, and even when they don’t, it can be a very subjective and diverse experience for ‘them’ to view ‘us’ whether they are watching a play in the country or the city 

FADO PERFORMANCE ART CENTRE

PRESENT

TRACE

by Tristan R. Whiston & Moynan King

Voice is a system equal to sexuality —as punishing, as pleasure-giving: 

as elective, as ineluctable 

—Koestenbaum 

Performance Installation August 24, 7-9pm August 25, 11am-1pm // 7-9pm August 26, 2-4pm Artist talk August 25, 1pm The Christie Studio Artscape Wychwood Barns 601 Christie Street, #170 TorontoTristan R. Whiston and Moynan King are no strangers to performance art that interrogates the voice as a heavily gendered vocal instrument that profoundly governs the ways in which we perceive the body. In an issue of the Canadian Theatre Review (CTR - winter 2011) Whiston's and King's past work with the The Boychoir of Lesbos was featured in an essay by, uh, well, me...

                    TRISTAN R. WHISTON

During an interview conducted for the essay Whiston shed light upon the ways in which voice has played a significant part in his journey from 'female' to 'male' through the use of diverse performance modes.

For [other Boychoir members it was] more game . . . 

playing with the character, and varying degrees of in 

between, as in, I am doing this character and it has noth- 

ing else to do with my life. For me it was a very safe way 

to open up the whole exploration of gender and of tran- 

sitioning, tasting what that would be like, did I really 

want that? Ultimately it was like, it was not enough, I 

want to grow up —I’m willing to let go of the voice that I 

loved, but that was very much a young boy’s voice or a 

woman’s voice . . . Holding on to my voice became some- 

thing about growing up so I let go of it. (Interview - CTR 2011)         

Trace, the upcoming collaboration between Whiston and King promises to be an exciting and thought provoking examination of Whiston's ongoing investigation of his identity as he begins to take experiences from the past, and the present, and morph them into a future that continues to utilize performance as an expression of bodily change, function, celebration, and wishful performative promise.* The CTR essay took on some of these areas and Whiston expressed his desire to create a vocal performance project rooted in a nostalgia for what has happened, what is happening, and what will continue to happen to his body and his voice as he moves through various periods of his life.

* 'WISHFUL PERFORMATIVE PROMISE' - a term used in order to express the possibilities that any given performance, in life and in art, can embody - the ways in which performance inspires the performer and the audience to examine their own identities, actions, etc. and evolve through a shared performative experience

Whiston also had concerns about how he would become 

‘‘for ty or fifty or sixty and [still be] clinging to this twelve 

year old self.’’ He feels that ultimately sacrificing his boyish 

soprano voice was part of his quest to ‘‘become a man.’’ The 

Boychoir was a revelation when [s]he came out as a lesbian in 

her twenties and looked around and saw that all her ‘‘friends 

kind of look[ed] like boys and sound[ed] like boys. We should 

be boy sopranos!’’ into the machinations of becoming, onstage, innocent boys singing choral songs and charming their audiences into dual states of enjoyment and gender curiosity. The experience became a form of conscious, satiric, tongue in cheek, comical bewilderment reflecting strict cultural coding around puberty and all of its traditional gender expectations. (CTR winter 2011)

INFORMATION BELOW FROM FADO PRESS RELEASE

trace: evidence or an indication of the former presence or existence of something

Can one man stand amidst his many voices and find herself there? Can a person sing harmony with different parts of theirselves? Can we trace the sound of ourselves as we change? If so, what remains of the original voice?

Through an exploration of voice, trace transforms a private story into a performative experience integrating sound, video, installation and live performance. Using archival recordings taken before and during Tristan R. Whiston’s gender transition from female to male, along with recent recordings and live vocals, trace explores the idea that change is constant and we are always becoming someone new.

                          MOYNAN KING

Throughout the installation are multiple speakers, each playing a single part or element in the immersive soundscape. Audience is invited to contribute to the performance by entering one of the installation’s beach inspired changing huts and, using old-fashioned technology, create their own vocal recording, eliciting an experience of auditory self-reflection.

Tristan R. Whiston and Moynan King are artists with distinct multi-disciplinary practices. Their shared interest in ideas of identity, gender, communication and the element of time (in both life and art) brought them together as artistic collaborators early their careers.

Video by Leslie Peters

Set elements by Trixie and Beever

Software design by Dafydd Hughes

Photo by David Hawe

Sound Travels Festival of Sound Art: August 4-31, 2012

New Adventures in Sound Art: www.naisa.ca

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MIDDLE C by TRISTAN R. WHISTON

Middle C was produced by Carma Jolly and Tristan R. Whiston for CBC Radio's Outfront in 2007. It won the Premios Ondas award for International Radio and a silver medal at the New York Festivals.

Tristan R. Whiston first performed as a solo soprano at the age of six. With that raw talent, years of hard work led to an accomplished singing career. But Tristan has decided to give up the most precious thing a singer has — the voice. You see, something was never quite right. Tristan always wanted to be a man. Now that dream is about to come true as Tristan embarks upon the process of gender reassignment. In a year’s worth of intimate audio diaries, we hear milestones like Tristan’s first shave. But the most striking thing is the transformation of Tristan’s singing voice. Tristan starts out as a soprano whose voice soars on the high notes. As the testosterone takes effect in Tristan’s body, that sublime voice is ripped to shreds and has to be completely recast - just like his identity.

Follow the link to listen to Middle C:

http://theunobserved.com/culture/middle_c/

          trace

http://www.performanceart.ca/index.php?m=program&id=234