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Beau Coleman’s Gertrude Stein Project
This isn’t a review, so much as a recommendation: if you care at all about theatre, poetry, spoken word, or dance, you should do everything you can to catch “The Gertrude Stein Project” at the University of Alberta’s Studio Theatre before it closes on April 9th.
This production had me from its opening minutes, in which Peter Fernandes speaks part of Gertrude Stein’s meditation on the nature of theatre. Fernandes brings such oratorical power to the opening monologue — not to mention the gorgeous timbre of his voice — that when it ended I thought, if the rest of the production is even half this good, I’ll be happy.
And, boy, was I happy! The production is a love story, really, presented in a gentle, fragmentary way, to which every small element, including the figures of the poet Gertrude Stein and her lover Alice B. Tolkas simply strolling across the stage, contributes to create an atmosphere of such tenderness that even though we don’t get all of the details of Gertrude and Alice’s life together — or conventional dramatic representation of all of the key events of that life — I walked away feeling as if I had not only experienced their love, but felt it to the core. Spenser Payne’s delivery of some of Stein’s poetry about love — “I am loving just now every kind of loving” — is the most touching rendition of any love poem that I have ever heard.
But for me to speak about that is to speak about only one aspect of the production. Not much in to love stories? Well, go for something else entirely: the experience of the fun of Stein’s poetry. I haven’t thought about Stein all that much since I took an undergraduate course on modern American poetry years ago, but, boy, do I wish I’d got to experience then what I got to experience last night because then I would have understood something vital about Stein that my professor was unable to communicate to me: Stein’s immense playfulness. Stein loved language, and all of the actors in the production get to get in on the fun of her language play, as Stein’s writing is cleverly shared out between them, with a troupe of actors dressed in white getting to perform some of it as a postmodern chorus-in-motion.
The troupe also provides delight in the form of some simple but powerful choreographed movement in which its members enhance the emotional tone of the production. Director Beau Coleman builds in, early, a visual reminder that bodies are a kind of alphabet so that a later dance number, without any words, has as much impact as anything that’s uttered across the hour-and-half of the performance. That’s quite the accomplishment, given that Stein’s language play is so rich. You can count upon the troupe for a good deal of humour too, humour that seems to arise from the fact that the work was collectively or collaboratively shaped. Listen for the meta-theatrical jokes from Ben Dextraze and Gianna Vacirca.
Stein memorabilia in the lobby of the University of Alberta's Studio Theatre (memorabilia courtesy of Hans R. Gallas)
I save for last one of the most moving aspects of the production. The simple but stylish set for this production involves a couple of moving screens, one of which drops down several times so that we can hear from Leon Katz, a professor at Yale, and Coleman’s mentor, who was the first to work with the fifteen hundred notebooks of Stein’s scribblings that were left to the Beinecke Library at Yale University. Katz speaks to us primarily about Alice, with whom he spent a year going through the notebooks with her to see what she could offer by way of illumination on its contents. He speaks of Alice so tenderly that the love story of the play unfolds as a complex one that encompasses not just one of the most famous relationships between women in literary history, but also the love of a scholar for his work. The production is so moving because it pulls material out of the archives — out of pristine, cardboard boxes from the library vaults at Yale — to give audiences an experience of poetry and love so unique that to me it’s a great shame that this effervescent work of art will have such a brief life on the University of Alberta’s stage, and then disappear again, like the Weird Sisters in Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Don’t miss your chance to participate in this bit of theatrical magic. And if you need something more to whet your appetite, watch this brief video from the Edmonton Journal’s Ed Kaiser:
http://www.edmontonjournal.com/news/Gertrude+Stein+Project/4529002/story.html?cid=megadrop_story
Edmonton Theatre Scene: Haslam-Yeo Growing Pains
All right, let’s be honest: we all occasionally lose it, and if you’re one of the very few people on this planet who somehow manage never to, then you’re a better (wo)man than I am, Gunga Din. There is really no excuse, however, for the particular way in which Edmonton actor Jeff Haslam lost it a few days ago, when he left a comment on Edmonton blogger Sharon Yeo’s blog, raging at her for her recent review of a play that he’d appeared in at Edmonton’s Varscona Theatre. His response is inexcusable not because of its irrationality (not only does Ms. Yeo’s review have nothing critical in it, she writes that she adores Haslam) or its incivility (Haslam is rude in cheap and vulgar ways), but because it shows how little understanding and respect Haslam has for the art form from which he makes his living.
Playwright Stewart Lemoine, leaping to Haslam’s defense in an interview with the Globe and Mail, has claimed, in effect, that Yeo deserves what she has gotten, by way of bilious public response from Haslam, because she has dared to “write dismissively” about the productions of the company for which Lemoine writes and Haslam acts, Teatro La Quindicina. But as there isn’t anything dismissive in Yeo’s post, the problem, from what I can tell, is that she has dared to write about their productions at all, without what they consider to be suitable qualifications. You need to be on the payroll of a newspaper, it seems, to qualify. “I absolutely despise,” Haslam has written to Yeo, “your pretension that you are ‘a reviewer’ in any professional way.” (You can read Haslam’s remarks to Yeo in full at http://www.onlyhereforthefood.ca/2010/08/17/cutting-ties-with-teatro-la-quindicina/.)
At his most vicious Haslam denigrates not only Yeo, but her very act of buying tickets to his shows – she is, he informs her, to spend elsewhere the “crappy 19″ dollars that she would otherwise spend on a ticket for a performance by Teatro La Quindicina. His attitude to what is expected of Yeo as an audience member, and by extension, what is expected of anyone who takes a seat in the Varscona Theatre, is, to put it bluntly, ‘put up and shut up’: that is, put up your money, shut up your mouth, and check your mind at the door. That shows me that he has no understanding of the theatre, which is a communal art form in relation to which a culture defines what matters to it, and what it values, by bringing its members together in a shared time and space to experience one representation or another of how humans behave, and in which the audience’s role should be as active as that of the players on stage. To denigrate an audience member in the way that he has done – and for what? for not raving about every aspect of the production? – is to show that he has no respect for one half of the partnership that comes together to make what we call the theatre.
The storm that Haslam’s remarks have set off in Edmonton is very interesting indeed, for it’s showing how eager Edmontonians are to assert their right and the right of other audience members to express their views about the theatre they see, whether or not they are professional reviewers. (See the responses to Mack D. Male’s 17 August 2010 blog on the issue for a sampling of this.)
Haslam may not get that theatre is a communal art form to which the audience is not simply important, but vital, but any city that wants to have a vital theatre community should look forward to having a long list of bloggers who care enough about the theatre happening in it to spend some of their time — their leisure time, that is! — passing on to others their experience of plays around town. As one of the UK’s most important professional theatre reviewers, Lyn Gardner, noted a couple of years ago, “the blogosphere has breathed new life into the dying art of reviewing.” And it has done so because it has let the art of reviewing be reclaimed from the mainstream media where it has, unfortunately, been so greatly reduced that many mainstream reviews read like marketing blurbs that the theatre companies being reviewed might have written for themselves. (Occasionally these get labelled, appropriately, as “previews,” such as the piece Liz Nicholls wrote on Teatro’s “The Ambassador’s Wives” for the Edmonton Journal on July 8th.) Such reviews certainly don’t contribute anything to cultivating an appreciation for new writing for the theatre, especially when that writing is not simply the lightweight entertainment in which Teatro La Quindicina specializes.
Perhaps the point, really, is this: if Haslam were happy with the artistic choices that he was making, proud of his work, and truly interested in seeing theatre reviewing in this town conducted in a different way, he wouldn’t have indulged in such a diatribe. He’d have taken the time, instead, to state clearly and calmly what he thinks he brings to the theatre, and what he hopes audiences and prospective reviewers will in turn bring to it, especially when they take a seat at the Varscona. Given that he’s the current artistic director of Teatro La Quindicina, this was in fact his duty, if he wished to engage in a public exchange with a reviewer, as he was not speaking only for himself.
But here’s what I’m hoping: that Haslam will find a few gracious words by which he may redeem himself, and that theatre blogging in Edmonton will become such an energetic and competitive art that we’ll not only have a whole host of bloggers blogging up a storm about theatre in this town, but eventually one as entertaining as that written by the London duo who go under the name “The West End Whingers.” (See their witty commentary on the London theatre scene at http://westendwhingers.wordpress.com/.)
Let’s hope, in short, that what we’re witnessing here, in the controversy between Haslam and Yeo, is an instance of growing pains as this city starts to have a real conversation in which theatre practitioners and audiences jointly shape an idea of what theatre in this town could be. If they listen to bloggers rather than stick out their tongues at them the way Haslam has figuratively done, theatre practitioners in Edmonton will gain a far better sense of something that really ought to matter to them, who their audiences are. They will thus play an important role in nurturing a theatre scene in this city that matters so much that the furore of the last few days will seem, as it would, say, in a great theatre city like London, England, plain absurd.
Edmonton Fringe 2010: “Raunch: The Rise of ‘Female Chauvinist Pigs’”
The premise of this show is one I endorse. Want to change ways of thinking and acting that you abhor? Then give others perspective on those attitudes and that behaviour by making them laugh. Alice Nelson and Jacqueline Russell set out to make us wince at the ways, small and large, in which we, actively or not, endorse or permit a “Raunch” culture that encourages — or, more properly speaking demands — that young women sexualize and objectify themselves to ever more horrific degrees.
You all know what I’m talking about. “Raunch” culture thrives in Edmonton. I’ve seen girls out on Whyte Avenue in January — no joke, when it’s 20 below — wearing nothing more than a strapless sundress, stockings, and high heels because that’s what they think the boys who travel down from Fort McMurray for their Friday night beers expect of them. Or, to put it more bluntly, this is how they think they must present themselves if they want to get fucked and sooner or later married.
The show takes on “Raunch” culture in a way that’s a little too didactic for my taste — it’s a little too much like a theatrical essay for which a progressive professor was willing to give them course credit — but Nelson and Russell have a lot of charm, and pack a lot in. You will laugh, and you can’t help do exactly what they want you to do at the end when they air some footage from Youtube to bring things to a close: cringe.
The high point in terms of physical humour: a skit that might be called “Wanna MILF,” though I think it is actually called “Sexy Strippers.” I am not sure which of the performers is which (no press kits come my way, and the program does not enlighten me!), but whoever’s playing the mother desperately trying to keep up with her “Sexy Stripper” leader at an exercise class is damn funny as she winds herself round and topples off her “Sexy Stripper” chair, and it’s a nice touch that a photo montage built into the show includes an image of the great dead comedienne who’s obviously the inspiration here, Gilda Radner.
The writing is strongest with “Ditch the Priss, Embrace the Snatch,” which acutely parodies the likes of one Jenna Jameson, characterized by Wikipedia as “an American entrepreneur” who has made herself “The Queen of Porn.” I am pleased to say I had never heard of Jameson (note to self: keep better tabs on porn culture), but I enjoyed the way Nelson and Russell use her to poke fun at the very idea that women across North America can empower themselves by reclaiming a relationship with their “snatches,” and proving their newfound love by “bedazzling” it.
There are lots of other good thing here too, including a skit that I assume must be called “The Boobs,” in which one breast expresses her envy for her mate, who has scored the one implant that their owner has funds for. And a brief dramatic skit rapidly juxtaposes the grotesquerie of surgery for “vaginal rejuvenation” with African practices of cliterectomy. We never get, though, all of the highlights of feminist history that we are promised at the outset, which is why (if this show is still being refined) I’d recommend either beefing up the history or cutting it. And while I couldn’t figure out what wasn’t quite working for me while I was watching the show — my criticisms aside, the show is good lighthearted fun, and I was too busy laughing — the review in the Edmonton Sun has (inadvertently) nailed it for me. Something has gone a little awry when any male reviewer can walk away to write a review that opens by declaring the show “Hawt — as in Paris Hilton’s ‘That’s Hawt.’” The source of “raunch” culture isn’t girls, grrrrls! It’s men! So how about skewering a man or two while you’re shaping the laughs? It may very well be a woman who’s shooting that Youtube footage with which you end, but behind that woman is a whole spectral host of men.
Edmonton Fringe 2010: The Zoo Story
I’ll keep this one short, as I hate writing negative reviews, and I’m not sure that anyone really enjoys reading them. Edward Albee’s 1958 play “The Zoo Story,” a two-hander, heavily weights the length of one of its parts in favour of its maniacal story-spinner, Jerry. That’s not to say that the other actor does not have an equally delicious part to work with, if he wants to rise to the challenge of creating a subtle psychological portrait of a man strangely open to the demonic energy of a stranger, but that the obvious glory should go to the actor playing Jerry. Unfortunately, the actor in the role hasn’t learned the basic lesson of all great acting: even if a character’s motivations are not clear to the audience, they must be crystal clear to the actor embodying him.
To make matters worse, this production’s Jerry has such little feeling for language that he goes so far as to mispronounce some of the words of Albee’s exquisitely nuanced script. For anyone who loves language, those gaffes are unforgivable. They are also plain painful. But as a great play survives a bad production, you may still manage to enjoy this production. The play is, after all, a powerful tale about the desire for connection, and the bizarre ways in which we sometimes secure it. That said, take heed: you are more likely to feel, along with a fellow audience member I overheard offering his view on the way out that the only thing to like is the ending. Let’s just say Jerry gets his.
Edmonton Fringe 2010: Fucking Stephen Harper
How can you not love the title of this show (unless, of course, you are Stephen Harper, his wife, or his mother)? What a relief that it delivers! I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face – except, that is, when compelled to laugh, which was, oh, about every three minutes. That’s a pretty good laugh-to-minute ratio. (A mere ten minutes in a friend declared – rightly! – that we’d already gotten our money’s worth.)
The show centers on the event that put Rob Salerno, writing, at the time, for Toronto’s gay rag Xtra, into the headlines as the “crazed journalist” who floored Stephen Harper at his high-school reunion and ended up with Harper’s — balls, testicles, call them what you will — in his hands. Really, though, the show is comic revenge for the notorious homophobia of various Conservative Party members. (Sure, Salerno also uses the show to promote his book of the same title, but he does so so charmingly — and with such a great political agenda — one hardly cares that he’s rolled stand-up comedy and self-promotion into a single package.)
The premise owes a great deal to the genre that Jon Stewart has so powerfully shaped — Salerno takes us through a series of fact-filled power-point slides as he delivers his barbs — but, hey, when political commentary comes in such entertaining form, I’ll plunk down my money to see it (and encourage others to do so) no matter who originated the genre.
This is the kind of show, frankly, that I wish ran longer! We could spend hours counting the ways in which Harper is figuratively fucking us all over, whether we’re queer or no, but there’s only so much skewering of him that Salerno can pack into an hour. Not everyone was savouring Salerno’s peppery matzah balls, but I was clearly not alone in finding them delicious: shout-outs from the audience prompted spontaneous remarks from Salerno that had front-of-house staff having to call out that he was five minutes over time. Consider the gauntlet thrown: if you join one of the audiences for the remaining shows, which will be almost certainly sold-out, do your bit to make Salerno deliver a few more quips than he’d planned on.
Anti-Tar Sands Protest, London, England (17 July 2010)
For this one, I’m going to let the pictures do all the work.
