BeatRoute Magazine BC Edition January 2019

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PANCHO VILLA Photo by Gema Galiana Bringing a Mexican legend to life By Luke Bailey How do you tell the story of a man who some consider to be a legendary hero, while others revile as a murderous bandit? Pancho Villa From a Safe Distance is an experimental chamber opera led by composer Graham Reynolds and librettist Lagartijas Tiradas al Sol that tries to make sense of the life and legacy of the famous Mexican revolutionary general. “Even in his lifetime, the line between truth and fiction for Pancho Villa was very blurry,” says Reynolds. “People romanticize him now, and there are a lot of commendable things that he did. But it was also a confusing, complicated war. He killed an awful lot of people and many of them were innocents. So here we are… spectating from a safe distance.” The show blends multiple musical genres, formats, and languages to tell the story of Pancho Villa’s influence on the Mexico-United States border. Reynolds leads the show on keyboards, and is accompanied by another six musicians and two singers, as well as pre-recorded and live videos. These disparate pieces all come together in a way that feels especially relevant given the current tensions at the border. “It’s super topical right now,” says Reynolds. “But the border has always been a source of both controversy and cultural enrichment. It’s a place where ideas and cultures exchange and meet. And in some ways, you also feel the randomness of these areas. Why this place? Why this river? Why does a kid on the north side get a great education and health care while a kid on the south side does not?” And because the United States government has started to tighten control around their Canadian borders as well, Reynolds thinks that Vancouver audiences will be able to appreciate the story on a whole different level. “We’ve taken for granted the ease with which we can travel between Canada, Mexico and the United States,” says Reynolds. “And we’ve taken for granted how friendly the countries are. But [Donald] Trump has thrown all of that away and turned it into this complex thing. Suddenly, these random lines between the countries have a lot more weight and meaning than they ever did before.” Pancho Villa From a Safe Distance takes place on January 31 at the Vogue Theatre as part of the PuSh Festival. The show begins with two musicians and eight dancers on stage. Indonesian metalcore duo Senyawa incorporates traditional motifs into an experimental brand of operatic metal in the hour-long ritual. The dancers oscillate with more abandon as the instrumentation surges in magnitude. The climax of the show is marked by primeval hysteria. The musical component comprises of Rully Shabara and Wukir Suryadi, in conjunction with choreographers Lucy Guerin and Gideon Obarzanek alongside Dancenorth Australia. A sonic/kinetic powerhouse, Attractor was a beast to tame. “Trying to sync the energy of the music with the dancers was the most challenging part, because while they speak with movements, we speak with music. The communication is entirely dependent on the sync of energy,” says Shabara. Attractor was conceived on a trip that Obarzanek took to Indonesia in 2014, where he witnessed a number of traditional rituals. This transforming experience coincided with the performer’s own past – ritual dances on a kibbutz in Israel. “After two nights of prayers and offerings to the dead, dancers entered a state of trance through a series of vigorous performances,” says Obarzanek. “Now possessed, they were considered vessels for immortal spirits who had come to visit the living. To prove this extraordinary transition from human to non-human, they performed shocking acts of pain and strength before being exorcised by Shamans.” It was with the immense potency of its inspirations and unlikely collaborations that Attractor came to fruition. The show is driven by an ancient, erratic force that is harvested on stage and released into the audience. Attractor is a convergence of cultures and peoples; a gift of life. “It is a coming together of energy, a force, a moment in time – a ritual for non-believers,” adds Kyle Page, artistic director of Dancenorth Australia. Attractor runs from January 18-29 at the Vancouver Playhouse as part of the PuSh Festival. By Maryam Azizli ATTRACTOR A Transcendental Purge Through Organized Chaos Photo by Gregory Lorenzutti 12 January 2019
PRINCE HAMLET Adding a New Poetry to Shakespearean Classic with Sign Language By Leah Siegel If you were to ask 1000 questions about anything, what would it be? In her art installation titled Race Cards, multi-disciplinary artist Selina Thompson asks 1000 questions about race and racism. What started as performance art in which Thompson invited strangers to watch her as she sat in a room writing question after question has now become a travelling exhibit showcasing a subject everyone should be questioning every chance they get. To dive deep into herself and pull these questions from her experience wasn’t easy and was, at times, detrimental to Thompson’s mental and physical wellbeing. The installation began as a 12-hour performance, writing 800 questions as people entered the room one at a time to watch her write and watch the installation grow. “[The experience] made me very ill, so I said I never wanted to do that again,” says Thompson of the beginnings of her provocative work. “So we turned it into an installation. I rewrite it every nine months or so – update questions that are out of date, or no longer relevant, put things in that are now essential. We make edits for different national contexts and when working with a different language, I translate in collaboration with a local artist of colour, so a lot changes there too. But it is one long stream of consciousness at its heart. It was very, very hard, emotionally. Part of why the work needs a boundary around it is to protect me from the residue of that experience.” Thompson’s inspirations for Race Cards lies within the name of the installation itself, something that’s been under the noses of those who can’t relate to the experience of the transgressions – macro and micro – that people of colour face on a daily basis. “I have to be upfront and confess immediately that I am not a particularly subtle person,” Thompson adds. “I don’t have that kind of smarts, so the inspiration is literally the term ‘playing the race card.’ I was sick of being told I was doing it, sick of hearing it used to silence people, irritated by the fact that this was a terminology that had been used to disempower and negate the experiences of people since I was small, and seemed to be the case. Initially, I wanted to turn it on its head, find a way of playing a race card that was empowering. I was also super interested in internet – particularly Twitter – discourse around race. The speed of it, the mix of autobiography and theory in a very specific way, the competition, the oneupmanship. I was also sick of being asked about race by people who were decades older than me. That’s enough. I’m going to ask the questions now. The person asking the questions is the person that holds the power, because they’re setting the discourse – and that’s part of why whiteness situates race as a problem that people of colour need to solve, to maintain that power dynamic. I wanted to try to outsmart it.” By turning the tables on the conversation and by having those who hold power over the source of racism through virtue of whiteness and the privilege that is inherent within it, Thompson aims to make people think, but what they take away from it is entirely up to them. “How people feel as they read them is not my business, nor my concern,” she says. “I know that sounds really harsh and standoffish, but it’s not a theatre work, where I’m kind of locking an audience into what is essentially a trigger chamber to stimulate specific feelings. An installation is much more open ended. You can walk away when it’s too much. I have less pressure to entertain. There is a clearer boundary and I like that boundary and the work it does, so it can stay in place. Feel what you want, take away what you want – the work of coming to terms with race is lifelong, and no one can do it for you.” Race Cards runs from January 23-February 2 at the Roundhouse Community Arts and Recreation Center as part of the PuSh Festival. A little over 10 years ago, Ravi Jain was trying to establish a theatre company in Toronto. He had just returned from a stint abroad and was still reacquainting himself with Canadian audiences. For his first production, he mounted a perennial favorite: William Shakespeare’s Hamlet. A decade later, he’s coming back to the Danish prince – but not because he’s in need of a crowd-pleaser. “Part of revisiting an old play like Hamlet is to show that there is more to be found in this play than we know,” Jain says. “It’s a great opportunity to challenge the status quo, and to show us that another world is possible when you change who gets to tell the story.” In Why Not Theatre’s production of Prince Hamlet, there are a number of changes made, but perhaps the most significant is who now relays the story to the audience: Horatio – Hamlet’s best friend and (spoiler alert!) the play’s sole survivor – played by deaf actress Dawn Jani Birley. For this shift in perspective, Birley and Jain had to translate from scratch Shakespeare’s poetic English into American Sign Language (ASL). “There are three styles of ASL that are happening throughout the show,” Jain explains, including a more expressive, imagebased type of ASL that Birley developed for the production. “The response to that has been amazing, because deaf audiences don’t normally get to experience that same level of poetry. An interpreter is often giving a neutral expression of what is happening, so it’s as if you’re reading the play for yourself. You just read it. There’s no emotion, there’s no context. What Dawn does so incredibly is embody and perform the emotion to communicate the expression of the text. There’s a lot of nuance to what she does that just brings it to life.” A signing Horatio isn’t just an artistic choice for Jain: it’s also political. “Dawn speaks a lot about deaf people being forgotten, being invisible, and not being given importance in society. In our version, the deaf person has the most important role: the storyteller,” he says. “The story is literally in her hands.” Prince Hamlet runs from January 23-27 at the Frederic Wood Theatre as part of the PuSh Festival. RACE CARDS Flipping the Deck on the Conversation around Racism by Joey Lopez Photo by Manuel Vason January 2019 13
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BeatRoute Magazine BC Edition January 2019

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