Todd Duckworth as Edward Curtis.  Photo, Andrew Alexandre

THE EDWARD CURTIS PROJECT, written and directed by Marie Clements, typifies a problem that’s becoming all too common in contemporary theatre. The technical production far outstrips the script, which I hesitate to even call a play. Rather, it’s more a disjointed sophomoric polemic on the plight of Aboriginals. When I end up with four pages of notes, all on the set, projections and music, it’s a sure sign that something’s out of kilter.

The story is centered on Angeline, a traumatized Aboriginal journalist. However we don’t get a full picture of her traumatic experience until near the end of the piece, so much of the earlier material is merely confusing. As for Edward Curtis, the controversy regarding him and his photographs isn’t mentioned. In order to get the point, one needs a deeper knowledge of his work than can be gleaned from the sketchy script.

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For just a few moments in the second act of Phoenix Players’ production of Murder at the Howard Johnson’s it seems that the show is finally coming to life. But the illusion of adequacy fades when the third character joins the two men on stage.

The problems are not entirely the fault of the director and performers although they must bear much of the blame for stilted delivery and constant shouting.

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Photo. Carole Rosegg.

Neva, Guillermo Calderón’s tribute to Anton Chekhov, takes place in a theatre in Saint Petersburg on January 22, 1905, known to Russian history as Bloody Sunday, the catalyst for the Revolution of 1905. On that day, striking workers marched to the Tsar’s palace to present a petition and were fired upon by armed guards. Thousands died. The title refers to the river which runs through Saint Petersburg, the site of numerous violent historical events, including Bloody Sunday. Theatre and revolution are the focus of the play.

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Métis playwright Marie Clements is a gifted storyteller who draws on the traditions of her Aboriginal roots as well as Western theatrical techniques to weave together highly visual stories that link the past and present; personal and collective. Although there are some kinks to be worked out, her latest effort, collaboration with photojournalist Rita Leistner The Edward Curtis Project, manages to situate the extremely complex issue of Aboriginal identity rooted in history, theory and representation into a contemporary sphere that is accessible and touching to watch.
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Photo: Andrew Alexandre. Todd Duckworth (Edmund Curtis) and Quelemia Sparrow (Angeline)

The first point to be made about The Edward Curtis Project is that the production itself is exquisite.

Playwright Marie Clements’s direction is assured and imaginative — in the seamlessness of its ever-changing visual imagery, in its crucial attentiveness to mood shifts, in its balancing of naturalism with a more elusive expressionism, in the ethereal beauty of its soundscape.

Furthermore, it’s rare for back projections to be used so well. And their presence is an essential component of Clements’s attempt to revisit the influential but unreliable world of Edward Curtis who once enjoyed international fame for his allegedly “authentic” photographs of First Nations people throughout North America. These blown-up relics from nearly a century ago often dominate the Greenberg Centre stage, providing an eerie visual counterpoint to the more unsettling truths about an obsessive white man who saw it as his mission to document ‘the vanishing Indian” through the medium of the photograph but whose manipulative, orchestrated images constituted an ongoing lie.

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Photo: Guillaume d. Cyr

The Changing Room (texte et mise en scène d’Alexandre Fecteau,) nous ramène vers une époque révolue du théâtre québécois, où les personnages troubles de Michel Tremblay dominaient la scène montréalaise.   Hosanna et La Duchesse de Langeais avaient quelque chose de comique et de pathétique . On retrouve une ambiance semblable ici sauf qu’Alexandre Fecteau a recours à des moyens scéniques plus contemporains. Les techniques de la  téléréalité, le docudrame, le spectacle interactif, l’improvisation et le théâtre Verbatim sont des moyens efficaces pour séduire la salle et lui donner une  expérience des plus inattendues.  Des scènes merveilleuses de « lip synch », de chorégraphie burlesque accompagnée d’une musique pop, des paillettes, des plumes, des talons aiguilles, des robes flamboyantes, le maquillage, les perruques de tous les styles et toutes les couleurs, éblouissent le spectateur.

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For the Ottawa Citizen

Photo Andrew Alexandre

“Arrogant white man!” you think to yourself when Edward Curtis makes his first appearance near the beginning of this richly imagined, multimedia play by Marie Clements.
Why wouldn’t you? There’s the early 20th century American photographer, played with a firm blend of empathy and objectivity by Todd Duckworth, delivering, in stentorian tones, a lecture in Carnegie Hall in which he deconstructs “the Indian” as if discussing an exotic specimen of flora or fauna.

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