The Dominion - performance art

Acting It Out

Moira Peters — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 05:00:00 +0000

Youth overcome adversity at the Children's Peace Theatre

Sixteen-year-old Drew Stewart was stabbed to death at a bar in Toronto’s east end in December 2003, trying to protect a pregnant friend from a group of attacking teens. His friends were shocked, devastated, and angry, and with scant family lives of their own, many of them continued to hang out at his house, grieving alongside Stewart’s mother and struggling with their loss.

Community safety meetings were organized in response to Stewart’s murder and the ensuing bouts of violence between his group of friends and his attackers. At one of these meetings, someone suggested that Stewart’s friends get involved with the Children’s Peace Theatre, a small organization offering school workshops and a children’s summer camp within the community. In a large heritage house once owned by the Massey family, the Children’s Peace Theatre uses theatre to teach kids how to deal with conflict using “the three Cs”: courage, compassion, and creativity. Though older youth had never participated before, co-founder Robert Morgan contacted Stewart’s friends and offered to help them put together a memorial performance to honour their friend. They jumped at the chance.

About a dozen of Stewart’s friends started coming to the theatre once or twice a week to have dinner, talk about their struggles and work on the performance. “It was very difficult and emotional,” says 26-year-old Mandy Arsenault, who was close with Stewart. “We had a few blowups. We would just get so tense and frustrated.”

Artistic director Karen Emerson saw first-hand how hard it was for the kids to embrace the concept of peace and forgiveness. “These were kids who were really struggling, who had really difficult lives.” In the end, Arsenault says, “We all stuck together and supported each other.”

Drew’s Group, as they came to be known, put on their memorial performance for an audience of 300 people, and eventually took it to City Hall and various community events. Afterward, the theatre offered to continue working with the group. “They had really formed a bond with us,” says Emerson, 44. “It had kind of become a real home to them and they had found a safe place that they had never found before.” Together they started what would become an annual program that runs throughout the school year and culminates in a springtime performance dealing with whatever issues the youth are facing. Arsenault continues to participate in the program when she can – she has a four-year-old son to look after – but she knows the people at the theatre are there for her. “They’ve been a big part of my life,” she says. “They have given me tremendous support and love and confidence.”

Arsenault is just one of nearly 1,000 children and youth the Children’s Peace Theatre will work with this year. In addition to its after-school program, the theatre offers three-day “Peace Leader” workshops to students at local schools. Once a week for three weeks, classes in Grades 4-12 come to the theatre to play games, explore the meaning of peace and talk about what conflicts they face. Jason Johnston, the educational program coordinator and one of only three full-time staff at the theatre, works with a team of volunteers to deliver the workshops. While a big part of the program is about having fun, there are plenty of serious discussions about bullying, racism, gun violence – whatever issues the kids are dealing with. “The program is just the skeleton; it’s the kids who put the meat on it,” says Johnston, 28. The theatre hopes to expand its offerings, though with an annual budget of $200,000 that relies almost exclusively on grants, funding remains a challenge.

Even on that modest budget, the theatre’s summer peace camp remains a highlight. For three weeks in July, several dozen children from the community work with artists to put together a performance they create themselves using music, visual arts and theatre. “Everything that we did was all based on their input and whatever they wanted to do,” says visual artist Anand Rajaram, 35. He worked on last summer’s show, which included a haunting ballad for the fallen trees in the forest surrounding the theatre, a tongue-in-cheek musical number about climate change set to the tune of That’s Amore and titled Just Ignore It, and a powerful scene about the alienation of the economically disadvantaged.

“I hope they learn that there’s no idea too small and that every idea has its worth,” says Rajaram. One of the ideas that camper Malan Macz has taken away from the peace camp is that there are better ways for dealing with bullying than lashing out. The 13-year-old, who, last summer, attended the camp for the fifth time last summer, is often teased by his classmates. “The first year I came, I had some anger management problems. But this has helped me a whole lot,” he says. “I try to deal with things as non-violently as possible, like giving an intelligent argument. Otherwise, I just ignore it.”

It’s that kind of change that energizes the staff, says Emerson. “It can be really challenging. But when you work for a whole year and you see the struggles that those kids – like the kids in Drew’s Group – go through, and then at the end of the year one of them says to you, ‘You’ve really changed my life. I just don’t know who I’d be without you guys,’ then you just can’t give up.”

For more information about Children's Peace Theatre, visit their website

Acting It Out

Growing Up Backstage

hillarybain — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 01:41:13 +0000

An unconventional upbringing

I recently interviewed my 22-year-old son, Gibraltar, about what it was like for him to grow up with -- in essence -- the circus. My son was raised in the magical world of summer fairs; complete with fire-eaters, sword-swallowers, stilt-walkers, clowns, magicians, campfires with Klezmer music and forest paths lined with booths lit by candle and lantern light. He witnessed little worlds in the woods that would come to life and then disappear each summer. He knew the back paths to the secret doors that led backstage. He grew up, in sum, amid the rituals of a performer family and I would like to think that this lifestyle, in which thousands of us travelled and performed together for decades, provided an interesting backdrop for the life of a child. When my son was growing up, my main performances were on the street at the Pike Place Market in Seattle, on the Mall in Santa Cruz, California, and at open-air festivals and markets.

Back in 1986, I was interviewed as a local performer for Seattle’s renowned alternative weekly newspaper The Rocket. Gibraltar, then two, was on my back during the interview and the story included a line about him getting “one heck of an upbringing.” When I began street performing at age 18 in 1978, the double-standards in society about childcare played out on the street. A mother and child were not to be seen or heard on public streets, but locked up at home. Men with children immediately found girlfriends to take care of them while they performed; I had live-in boyfriends, yet was still forced to watch my child on street corners and at festivals like all the other single-mother performers I knew.

When I asked Gibraltar how growing up in our performer family had affected him, he compared his upbringing to that of a friend who was raised in the middle-class suburbs of Eugene, Oregon, and who had access only to mainstream art and media. As he grew up, Gibraltar became aware of the fact that he was different from other kids. He began to understand that the amusements he was used to had an avant-garde and political tone lacking in the mass-media entertainment environments his friends grew up in. He finds that he does not appreciate sloppy, poorly written vaudeville after seeing how intelligent and clever that genre can be in the works of performers like Reverend Chumleigh and the Flying Karamazov Brothers.

One of the things that stuck with Gibraltar about growing up backstage was being able to see the performers right next to him, rather than above him onstage. Our family campfires were peopled with these entertainers and seeing these exceptionally talented artists perform right in front of him at ground level, at his level, left an indelible impression on him. Growing up backstage also allowed him to see the performers getting ready, which gave him a more holistic picture of what performing actually entails. Gibraltar does not see art and artists separate from him. He explained that many people look at artists as "other people over there," but that in our family everyone is an artist of some kind, so he lives within a culture of art and music. His friends who grew up in the middle-class suburbs saw artists primarily on TV, whereas the kids in our family witnessed the process of creating art, not just the product.

He furthermore feels that performer families like ours “groom” their children for future artistic endeavours and that growing up in the environment he did gave him an apprentice-like exposure to the performing arts. Now 22, my son is very comical and threatens to become a professional comedy writer. Most recently, he's been saying he's going to ‘strike a pose’ when Mount Rainier blows, covering Seattle in lava like Pompeii… When the lava hits, he is going to strike the pose of ‘The Thinking Man,’ for the entertainment value for future generations. Currently, he is a manager at a national drugstore chain and enjoys playing music with me and others in our family. He calls his straight job in the straight world a ‘wild glimpse into the exotic lifestyles of the middle class.’ Growing up in the underground made the straight world absolutely fascinating to him; the same way alternative lifestyles could appeal to someone growing up in a straight suburban world.

Growing up around such accomplished performers gave him a reality check that very talented performers we know have straight jobs just to survive. Part of why he has a straight job is that he is sick and tired of poverty. He is not interested in the mistreatment and the constant free-speech issues that go along with a busking career. He does not want to end up like I am at age 46, begging for survival at the hands of my art and politics. He is also considering going to law school, since he attended law school with me as a nine-year-old child and is familiar with that environment. We are both considering returning to law school, actually. But for now, he just wants a job he can count on.

Gibraltar was with me almost 24/7 throughout his whole childhood and he accompanied me to all my gigs and shows. He lived backstage with me and hung out with other performers' kids. Although at times it was difficult, when he and I look back, we both remember sharing great times -- in the woods, with talented performers, for decades -- and I am thankful to have shared that with my son.

This article is a result of a mixture of an article of the same name, whose original can be found here and interviews with the author. Kirsten Anderberg currently makes her living as a street performer and journalist.

Hot Politics

Mon, 27 Feb 2006 21:45:37 +0000

Women are leading Burlesque's international revivial

photo: Vancouver International Burlesque Festival

"Ladies and Gentlemen, Guys and Dolls, Chicks with Dicks…. Welcome to the show!"

It's the final evening of the first Vancouver International Burlesque Festival (Feb. 9-11, 2006), and two young men in suits and straw boaters are opening the night with a catchy, cheesy, antiquated song about loving scores of girls.

The theatre is filled with couples and friend groups of all varieties. Slender, spangled young women catcall each other, sip cocktails through straws between red-painted lips, and eat brownies. Tattoos are peeking out from under those frilly panties and camisoles. One woman has lollipops sticking out of – not pin curls, but a fantastic set of dreads. Tonight is a nexus of the neo-burlesque and proof of the accelerating comeback of this metamorphic genre.

The newer style of burlesque, situated in the 21st century and hence exhibiting a different set of concerns about the body – including feminism, AIDS, body types, transgender and queer community politics, and plain old desire – self-consciously uses sexualized play and the act of witnessing as the basis of empowerment for messages about sexual or sexualized issues. Some of these issues are progressive, and some are less so. Progressive politics are mixed with old-fashioned heterosexist versions of desire. The two have ample space to feed off of and reform one another.

A hundred and sixty years ago, the burlesque form took root in the low-class variety show culture of Great Britain and America. "Burlesquing" meant lampooning the operas and affectations of the upper classes. Audience attention was held by ribald parody and shapely underdressed dancers in an era when all proper women (not to mention tables) kept their legs well covered. By the 1960s though, shock value was redefined as full-nudity stripping. Performers joined the trend, by choice or just to survive professionally. Bump 'n' grind overtook campy comedy.

photo: Vancouver International Burlesque Festival

Over the last decade, an international, women-led revival has taken place. There's a whole variety of variety shows out there, with wide-ranging ratios of strip to tease. Styles are as divergent as the women who participate. Some set out to recreate, others to wholly reinvent, vintage aesthetics of glamour. Using a retro aesthetic in costumes, props, or music automatically puts the performers in dialogue with that era. They may be teasing its values or meshing it with contemporary concerns (exemplified by a performer peeling off satin evening gloves and clumsily putting on latex ones instead).

The performer who goes by Your Little Pony, 29, says that burlesque performers share, "the experience of pushing the boundaries of self-presentation," with the added thrill of being watched while doing so. In comparing onstage and offstage sexualities, she explains, "The biggest thing is the witnessing. Both can be messy, erotic, personal. But on stage you're witnessed without a lot of touch. Offstage you're witnessed mostly by touch. Then there's how you witness yourself: offstage is slower and less influenced by adrenalin; onstage is a whirlwind and often more planned."

Witnessing oneself is central to burlesque yoga, an inventive practice that its creator and instructor, Little Woo, describes as "low-brow art meets sacred spirituality." Moves expressing archetypes such as mermaids, belly dancers, and kung fu fighters are taught as yoga postures, with emphasis on meditative breathing, inner connection, and refreshing hilarity.

Not everyone agrees with the powerful intentions behind some performers' playfulness. One producer declared that the variety skits are just work for theatre people who can't get into real theatre or for women doing it "just for the strip." Another scornful dancer commented, "Burlesque is stripping for fat people – you can quote me – and that's why I've moved on from it." (California's Big Bottom troupe, on the other hand, revels in reviving burlesque's historical preference for shapely dancers.)

photo: Vancouver International Burlesque Festival

"Oh, some people want to see slick polished girls. But some just want to laugh," says Maz, 29, a member of BYO (Bring Your Own) troupe. The troupe formed after Maz's roommate walked out of a burlesque performance one night, tired of repetitive body types and hetero plots, determined to bring a more gender-transformative, DIY-attitude to their own productions. Maz adds, "What I learned from burlesque class is you don't need to take a class. You can just do it."

"I always say amateurs are the new professionals," laughs fellow performer Coral, 33. "We're empowered as amateurs, more hot, edgy, raw. Everyone's got a repertoire. Just get those moves together!"

"It's not even about nakedness. If you have humour, you don't need nakedness," Coral continues. "Not that we'd want to impose limits or rule out full nudity!" Verotica143, Seattle's erotic mime, comes to mind as someone who can pretend to take her clothes off more sexily and more wittily than most people would imagine possible.

Your Little Pony explains a key point: "Dancers choose how they are portrayed, so you have the power over the dialogue, and the audience meets you in the middle with feedback." Burlesque gives women (and the less-numerous men and intergender folks who also participate) a chance to laugh, redefine gender archetypes and body type ideals, to form communities of sexual solidarity through interaction, and to just plain be sexy within a wider horizon of repercussions and contexts.

People love a little saucy sass, after all. Turns out that with the right music, female empowerment can look like pulling green onions out of a sequined corset. Or dressing up like a skunk. Or twirling pasties on your bum while, as Your Little Pony wrote, "a crowd of people FREAK OUT!"

At Vancouver's International Burlesque Festival Jane Henderson and Edie Jackson find both progressive politics and old-fashioned desire.

Paul Martin, Meet Shakespeare

Sat, 27 Sep 2003 20:15:24 +0000

Janet McTeer as Petruchio in an all-female Globe Theatre production of The Taming of the Shrew. photo: John Tramper

Recently a friend suggested I check out Paul Martin's online opinion survey about the Canadian definition of marriage. Also recently I saw an all-female production of The Taming of the Shrew performed in that Shakespearian Mecca, London's Globe Theatre. And perhaps oddly, these two things have quite a lot to say to each other.

The Taming of the Shrew marked the first performance season of the theatre's new women's company, and the latest in a trend of single-sex Shakespearian productions. The play is an interesting option in this phenomenon because the story is actually about the do's and don'ts of gender behaviour (The "shrew" to be "tamed" is Katherina, a woman so irritable as to be "unmarriageable" until the swashbuckling Petruchio arrives to humiliate her into submission.) Gender-bending is hardly new to Shakespeare; many of his plots depend on it, and most audience members know that his original casts were all-male. So what happens when this notoriously chauvinist script is performed without any men on stage?

First, its machismo becomes immediately, inevitably satirized. Probably this is something of a relief to a contemporary audience, uneasily watching such a politically incorrect spectacle. Director Phyllida Lloyd took full advantage of this potential: Kathryn Hunter as Katherina, for example, made her final speech of submission gleefully over-the-top; the women cajoled into extending their palms for their husbands to tread upon did so, but sank to the ground due to laughter more than anything else.

But nowadays such "subversive" staging of the show has really become the norm. It was a surprise, then, that the Globe's same-sex production actually undermined any simple gender-equality message that might have been expected.

The actresses (particularly Janet McTeer, as Petruchio), offered a seriously sexy portrayal of swaggering machismo, to some surprise. The show's mixed messages built a more complex reality of desire than just plain political correctness might allow. Katherina really was smitten with the domineering Petruchio. On top of that, the audience got an additional erotic layer, as it seems two women kissing can still raise a bit of a buzz, even with one in male character.

Seeing women play out the contest for 'domination' or 'submission' made the story much more about power than gender, without any clear judgment on what power roles each gender "should" want. The same-sex casting also allowed another interpretation, in which gender disappeared completely; suddenly the deprivation of fine foods and clothing meant that Katherina might be learning not decorous womanly behaviour, but a little class consciousness instead.

And the relation to www.paulmartin.ca? Well, both art and politics are putting out ideas about the same thing; namely, they are imagining how people could identify and organize their experiences of attraction and devotion. Shakespeare's text is an inherited institution, as is the Canadian federal definition of terms of marriage. Director Phyllida Lloyd has made a centuries-old romantic comedy an articulate participant in any current debate about "defining" roles in marriage. Thankfully, the theatrical space is designed for just such imaginative representations. Creative interpretations of Canada's legal marriage scripts, such as bann-calling or commitment exchange ceremonies by same-sex couples, for example, have been a little less legal, but still enacted, to fit a more complex reality than our legal texts acknowledge. Both acts invite their witnesses to recognize or realize a not-so-straight reality. Which, if enough politicians (not to mention online survey respondents) go to the theatre... they too may be emboldened to produce.

Caution: Extreme Shakespeare in Halifax

Sun, 27 Jul 2003 03:32:32 +0000

Generally I am not a person who plans elaborate activities of merriment on calendar holidays. But, once and a while, an opportunity to celebrate gives me that tingling feeling and I am compelled to go out and join the party. It was that kind of crazed motivation that got me out of bed at 3:15 a.m. on July 1 to watch A Midsummer Night's Dream on the wharf of Casino Nova Scotia in Halifax.

A sellout crowd braved the Halifax harbourfront at 4 am to see a Canada Day performance of Midsummer Night's Dream. photo: Sylvia Nickerson

How romantic, I thought, and what a great way to begin Canada Day. Other folks must have agreed, for tickets had been long sold out. A fair-sized crowd of couples, families and theatre fans of all ages gathered in the early hour clutching travel mugs full of coffee, that great stuff Canadians couldn't live without. If June had made them so giddy as to forget that Halifax is under snow six months of the year, being ocean-side at night was a brisk reminder. A place to bare skin by day, the casino's "Seawalk Stage" was covered in a blanket of cold, clammy fog. Seated in lawn chairs on the concrete, audience members huddled together under coats and wool blankets. As a backdrop to the event, the harbour lights of Dartmouth were dimly visible, and large ships loomed in the indefinite moonlight. Under the influence of this stunning scene, I felt more like I was in Reykjavik, Iceland, than Nova Scotia.

The play began well, as the actors exuded the energy befitting the first performance of a season. Their antics and melodrama were appreciated with enthusiastic smiles and laughs from the audience. Occasionally, the faint clinking of slot machines (from inside the casino) could be heard over the lines delivered on stage. The players freely adjusted their lines, as well as their costumes and props, for humorous effect.

After a wholly entertaining first act, the length and difficulty of the play began to show, as the actors increasingly needed assistance to remember their lines (it was a one time "unrehearsed" performance). Former New Democratic Party leader Alexa McDonough held the script and assumed the role of prompter. As the play drew to a close, the timing and energy lagged. The humour culminated in a slap-sticky ending which involved the exposure of much nubile young skin, some radical cross dressing, and men impersonating squeaky female character-types. The play A Midsummer Night's Dream is itself an absurd story of hopelessly frustrated lovers, the vehicle for much biting satire and sexual innuendo. The performance was long -- about three hours long, actually. But, at 7 a.m. on Canada-Day morning, no one had anywhere else to go anyway. The giddiness brought on by the early hour seemed to allow for this long and mischievous ending.

So why did a sold out crowd come to a casino at 4 a.m. on a cold July night to watch actors proclaim sixteenth-century English? It is truly baffling behaviour. In the spirit of recent television entertainment, I would have to qualify this particular experience as "extreme" Shakespeare. The perilous trials observed by all involved in order to organize this event constitute another testament to the enduring appeal of the bard. In the morning, at night, before dinner, in the fog: any time is a good time for Shakespeare. Even when performed ad-hoc to a sleep-deprived crowd, the wisdom, humour and irrepressible spirit of what it is to be human reliably shines through. No one can capture the ironies, foibles and superficialities of love and loss like this playwright.

Shakespeare by the Sea continues performances through July and August in Point Pleasant Park, Halifax, Nova Scotia. For more information call (902) 422-0295 or check out the web site at www.shakespearebythesea.ca.

What Makes Magic in the Park?

Sun, 27 Jul 2003 03:30:26 +0000

It's not Shakespeare's view of the world, it's something which actually resembles reality. A sign of this is that any single word, line, character or event has not only a large number of interpretations, but an unlimited number. Which is the characteristic of reality.

-- Peter Brook, The Shifting Point, 1987

Every year, Toronto's High Park hosts the Canadian Stage's Dream in High Park. This year, they presented Twelfth Night or What You Will. This is one of my favourite plays (Shakespeare or other), so it was with extra enthusiasm that I joined all of the glowing friends, lovers and families this Canada Day before dusk. But while the actors spoke their speeches Otrippingly on the tongue', and while the production was both colourful and visually captivating, I did not gain one new "interpretation", as Brook puts it, of any character or relationship, or of the play as a whole. In fact, I didn't believe that some of the actors always knew what they were saying.

I tried hard to like the actress playing Viola, as she spoke in an eloquent, pleasing way and was stunningly beautiful in that androgynous fashion perfect for the character. Unfortunately, she didn't make me feel anything. The woman who played Olivia was a favourite of mine as she knew exactly what she was communicating and in her role cleared up much confusion in the plot for audience members new to the play. Still, it seemed like she was over-compensating for something; perhaps a lack of passion in the production.

In spite of all this, there is something about Shakespeare and something about performance without walls; in combination, they make magic. So while I am often disappointed by Dream in High Park, I go back every year. The ambience never fails and even if I don't learn something about the play, I always learn something about audience.

A friend recently suggested to me that what makes a strong show is open-heartedness: when a cast is truly excited about the text and the characters and demonstrates having struggled with their interpretation. A cast of any Shakespeare in the Park has, thanks to that marvellous ambiance, the luxury of letting it all hang out. Certain polished production elements become profoundly secondary. The magic doesn't come from flawless deliveries or invisible wires, but from honest humanity and a shared love for a script and its characters. I watch in continual hope for that open-heartedness, which will make another play my favourite or another character my kindred spirit.

Twelfth Night runs until August 31 in High Park, Toronto. For more information, call (416) 368-3110 or visit the web site, www.canstage.com.