The second installment in Theatre Junction’s trilogy of meditations on death, desire and the Canadian west packs a powerful visual punch and employs a language of visual poetry that evokes the North: ice, a bare white landscape, and a pile of deer antlers whose strange beauty highlight nature’s sublime architectural and sculptural lines. These forms sit in sharp contrast to the minimalist almost acidic modernity of mylar balloons and a shimmering sliver backdrop that throw slivers of low sidelight about the stage in a manner evoking both water and ice.
On The Side of the Road, like Little Red River, was generated through a process of collective creation. This process aims to democratize the process of play making by involving the actor in the process of creation. Although theatre, perhaps more than any other literary art, has always been collaborative in nature, this process evolved in the 1960’s in response to the centrality that the theatre director had taken in preceding decades as the primary interpreter of the text. Collective creation is noted for the authentic performance that it can call up from its performers who feel more invested in text that they have had a hand in creating. Collective creation in Canada has a rich history with shows such as Theatre Passe Muraille’s The Farm Show influenced by the collaborative work of the Living Theatre in the U.S., Roger Planchon in France and Peter Brook in England.
Whereas many of the preceding experiments in collective creation had a documentary focus, allowing actors to interview members of a given community and develop a play from their stories, Theatre Junction’s RCA starts with a different focus. The company takes as their points of departure a piece of visual art by Winnipeg artist Marcel Dzama, and fictionalized autobiographical material they call “autofictions.” The company’s dramaturges have shaped the material generated through improvisation around a central plot. Boy travels to Europe, meets girl falls in love, nearly loses girl then transports her to the remotest area of what (in the popular European imaginary) is a land composed entirely of bucolic wilderness, lakes and cabin country after which she takes off, has an accident and falls into a coma.
The status of Canada as untouched and pristine is thrown into question by the provocations of the scientist, played by Mike Tan, who notes that the lake that Samuel’s father’s cabin sits on is dying. Is this a natural process, or one “aided” by human interference? The question is never answered but the seed of doubt is planted in the audience’s mind and throughout the piece the images of creeping decay that emanate from the lake seep into the minds of the personages and the audience alike.
The performance style is relaxed and char/acters relate to one another from a place of comfort and trust. The opening in which Uncle Bill and Lola(Diane Busuttil) greet the audience gives a nod to Brechtian gestus as we are continually reminded that we are watching a performance and the narrative style keeps us from getting caught up in the action to the extent that we experience catharsis. Unlike Brechtian gestus this style does not seem to have a political aim, other than the positivist desire (given a substantial workout over the past few decades in literary theory) to deconstruct or abandon one’s identity, and hence to avoid the traps of identity politics.
Moments of prairie humour include having the entire cast attacked in a choreographed dance routine by electronic versions of the ubiquitous swarms of mosquito that will be familiar to anyone who has visited a prairie lake. There are also tongue in cheek full cast country tunes such as “I got you in the cab of my heart” which tread a fine line between homage and satire. A wave of knowing laughter swells from the crowd when Uncle Bill (Stephen Turner) continually insists that there is nothing is out of the ordinary at Lac La Biche since “ALL THE NORTHERN LAKES HAVE ALGAE!”
These plot questions (Will Alice Ever Awake from a coma? Will Samuel ever come in from the middle of the lake?) are less important than eerie appeal of the dream/nightmare logic of accident and coma, however. The most intriguing moments of the piece are only tangentially related to the plot. A masked woman in sparkly underwear stalks across a dream landscape splitting the air inches from our heads with double whips that echo the lightening of a summer storm. Alice (Raphaele Thiriet) replaces the conventional narrative of the coma with her uncommon and surreal description of a coma as a state of restful bliss. A dancer (Virginie Thomas) who has been flitting, agile and deer-like through the set for the entirety of the piece suddenly breaks the dancer’s sound barrier and accosts the audience with song that insists she is a deer, and follows with a diverting and poetic ode to the animal and its thematic place in the play.
Dr. Natalie Meisner
Department of English
Mount Royal College
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