Author: Alvina Ruprecht

Alvina Ruprecht is professor emerita from Carleton University. She is currently adjunct professor in the Theatre Department of the University of Ottawa.She has published extensively on francophone theatres in the Caribbean and elsewhere. She was the regular theatre critic for CBC Ottawa for 30 years. She contributes regularly to www.capitalcriticscircle.com, www.scenechanges.com, www.criticalstages.org, theatredublog.unblog.fr and www.madinin-art.net.
The Toronto Theatre Laboratory: highly challenging linguistic landscape presented at the University of Ottawa symposium

The Toronto Theatre Laboratory: highly challenging linguistic landscape presented at the University of Ottawa symposium

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Photo from the Toronto Theatre Laboratory      Ahmed Moneka

Art Babayants, of Armenian origin, has a doctorate in theatre performance, he taught acting in the theatre department  of the University  of Regina, is a pianist and the artistic director of the Toronto Laboratory Theatre. But those are only a few of his many talents. He was invited by professor Meerzon to bring in his cast who all speak several languages and who are interested in normalizing a linguistic landscape that presents a special form of diversity in the theatre. His work fits in perfectly with a research symposium entitled ‘Mediating Performance experiences: cultures and technologies in conversation’ which took place at the University of Ottawa organized by Dr Yana Meerzon, specialist in questions of theatre and immigration in Canada, as well as migration and multilingualism in European Theatre. …

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Pied de poule au Théâtre de l’Ile. cette reprise annonce un avenir marqué par des comédiens communautaires doués.

Pied de poule au Théâtre de l’Ile. cette reprise annonce un avenir marqué par des comédiens communautaires doués.

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Pied de poule, Photo Le Droit, 6 mai 2019

. J’ai eu l’occasion de voir cette production au Théâtre de l’île  où je n’avais pas mis les pieds depuis des mois et quel choc de me trouver dans cette  merveilleuse  salle de réception, sous une belle  toiture en verre et des fenêtres ouvertes à  toute la verdure qui  entoure la maison. On pouvait respirer les pelouses exquises, et observer les castors au bord du Ruisseau de la Brasserie en train de grignoter des troncs d‘arbres  en préparant la construction de leurs  barrages. Une ambiance unique dans toute la région, dont le public  devrait profiter.

Mais revenons au spectacle en question après ce premier choc si agréable!  Le  théâtre musical  est sans aucune doute une des formes spectaculaires que les anglophones identifient  le plus  à la francophonie canadienne. L’incontournable Notre Dame de Paris, Starmania, Les  Belles-soeurs et tant d’autres de grande qualité ont marqué les scènes du Centre national des Arts (Ottawa).   Pied de poule, une reprise communautaire de la comédie musicale  créée en 1982 par le comédien et metteur en scène Mark Drouin, est une parodie du monde artistique peuplé par  tous ceux qui cherchent un avenir au cinéma  hollywoodien. Il s’agit d’une adaptation de sa propre pièce  intitulée François Perdu, Hollywood PQ et le  résultat est une forme de mise en abyme, un spectacle dans un spectacle qui nous entraine loin dans ce monde de jaloux et d’ ambitieux.  Les neuf comédiens de cette reprise, se livrent avec une frénésie sans limite  aux chants, aux  numéros de danse à partir de  tous les rythmes possibles, et des moments de jeux dramatiques qui exigent  un sens d’auto-dérision et de talent comique exceptionnel. Les costumes et le maquillage correspondent à cet esprit de Kitsch qui dominent l’esthétique de la scène. …

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The Fiddle and the Drum: the return of Joni Mitchell in this “portrait ballet” will bring joy to Mitchell fans.

The Fiddle and the Drum: the return of Joni Mitchell in this “portrait ballet” will bring joy to Mitchell fans.

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The Fiddle and the Drum   Photo courtesy of Alberta Ballet 2019

 The Fiddle and the Drum, the title of an  anti-war poem written by Canadian singer Joni Mitchell in 1969  is also  the title given to this remount of the first of Alberta ballet’s  “Portrait Ballets” created  by choreographer Jean  Grand-Maître in 2007.  The poem, composed the same year as Woodstock,  that ‘ Aquarian Exposition: 3 Days of Peace & Music” that had international consequences on the neo-romantic anti-war movement of that time and Mitchell was rooted deeply with that period.  There is no doubt that this production will fill Joni Mitchell fans with great joy and  much nostalgia hearing her voice and her music, all heightened by the excellent dancers, the  anti-war themes , the universal messages of saving the planet and visual dream-like additions to the staging. …

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Lysistrata : Theatre Kraken’s lower body ’50’s carnivalesque culture strikes the right note with this one!

Lysistrata : Theatre Kraken’s lower body ’50’s carnivalesque culture strikes the right note with this one!

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Photo Andrew Alexander
Lysistrata

 

Which translation did you use I asked naively because I assumed that none of the team could read Greek.  ‘There are so many …they are all so different, so we used a bit from each of them’ was the response.

What was immediately notable was the magnificent orchestration by writer, director, designer  Don Fex who  kept the 15 talented cast members moving at a ferocious rate, constantly working at a high level of performance plus  the general quality of their acting along-side Steph Goodwin’s Athenian heroine  Lysistrata, all set to lead the women into an angry attempt to do a away with the absurdity of war.   Despite the 1950’s setting, and a lot of colourful contemporary vocabulary, the show never strayed from the essential meaning of Aristophanes work, or at least the way we have come understand it.  A feat of near brilliance on the part of this director who has a definite talent for comedy and who obviously did some very serious work adapting the available English language translations to the theatrical space at the Gladstone theatre.

Aristophanes’ erotic, playfully serious anti-war creation,  was  first produced in 411 BC, but the  universal theme of this work has allowed it to easily withstand the test of  time and certainly no serious theatre company would dare call itself professional if it did not try to produce this work at least once in its lifetime. The fact it still has such an impact on artists of the stage and their audiences, was very clear last night at the Gladstone.  The howls rose as the proud, self-assured bombshell style blond ,  this  1 950s Lysistrata came slinking in, calling her female troupe to assemble before her while batting her eyelashes, and giving all the men the most powerfully mixed messages of sex, anger and defiance. The poor males went into a state of shock.    …

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Indecent, a deeply moving, complex and exquisitely directed production that reveals the enormous talent of the Segal Centre for Performing Arts in Montreal

Indecent, a deeply moving, complex and exquisitely directed production that reveals the enormous talent of the Segal Centre for Performing Arts in Montreal

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Photo Andrée Lanthier   Indecent.  Klezmer Cabaret

Indecent , written by Paula Vogel, was first produced at the Yale repertory theatre in 2015. This present show is directed by Lisa  Rubin, artistic and executive Director of the Segal Centre in Montreal.  To be very clear, Indecent is not the staging of Sholem Asch’s play God of Vengeance written in 1906 and that  first appeared on Broadway in 1923.   This is the story of the difficult journey of a classic work of Yiddish theatre called God of Vengeance (Got fun Nekome) , and the process it went through from its creation pre World War I  to the present.  What Paula Vogel gives us is a play within a play, where 10 excellent actors, dancers and three musicians, all part of the  Segal Arts Centre,   perform   47 characters  including the ones from the original play plus  all the people involved in various stagings around the world as the actors grow older as well as the administrative population in Europe and America who influenced positively and negatively the difficult journey of Asch’s play. …

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LO (or Dear Mr. Wells). Rose Napoli and David Mamet clash in this fine production dealing with troubling ethical questions..

LO (or Dear Mr. Wells). Rose Napoli and David Mamet clash in this fine production dealing with troubling ethical questions..

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Photo Andrew Alexander
Geoff McBride and Erica Anderson

A two-hander by Rose Napoli that has been given a fine production  at  the GCTC thanks to director Eric Coates’ delicate work with  actors Erica Anderson and Geoff McBride.  There is also the beautiful scenography constructed by Seth Gerry’s lighting design that speaks to the text in many ways and the  clean lines of  Brian Smith’s sleek set.  Nevertheless the play is troubling  and even rather difficult to swallow because of the ethical questions it raises.

Before even seeing the show, I thought immediately of David Mamet’s Oleanna, where the playwright creates a complex relationship between a student and her professor that has dire consequences for the professor. Questions of sexual harassment, involving what appear to be  vengeance and anger and much misunderstanding , clearly motivated or not, make Mamet’s  work a lot more  ambiguous and sophisticated than Napoli’s writing  because we are never sure about the motives of the young lady.  Has  she been manipulated by a group of her peers  has the profs  apparent lack of sympathy encouraged her anger?. She does not feel attracted to her professor in a sexual way, quite the contrary , so the story is very different, but we are still not sure where Mamet is leading us in spite of all the manipulation- or highly aggressive reactions that escalate to a great degree on the part of the female lead. The play still leaves us with many ethical questions as does Napoli’s play yet Laura’s  feelings  and her involvement with Alan makes this  highly charged drama  a lot clearer  but difficult to swallow.   …

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Canada’s National Arts Centre unveils its inaugural season of the world’s first national indigenous theatre

Canada’s National Arts Centre unveils its inaugural season of the world’s first national indigenous theatre

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Photo Barb Gray. Mazinikijik Singers – Kevin Chief & Amber Asp-Chief

The season will celebrate  indigenous  women’s  resilience, strength and beauty ,with nine productions out of eleven  written  and created by  women.  In addition to English  and French, more than  ten indigenous languages will be spoken in the works presented  next  year, including Anishinaabermowin , Coast Salish, Cree, Gitxsan, Inuktitut,  Kalaallisut , Nlkaka’pamux’stn.and many other languages,

The artistic director of the new indigenous theatre is  Kevin Loring  , award winning playwrite, director  and actor  from  the Nlaka ‘pamux Nation in British Columbia  and by  Managing Director Lori Marchand from the Syilx First Nation and former executive director of Western Canada Theatre.

Photo Barb Gray\
Christopher Deacon and Kevin Loring

Kevin Loring speaks of an indigenous renaissance  as the work that has been done over the past decade was part of the Centre”s response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s calls to action. This new department  of Indigenous theatre, (which will share the NAC with French Theatre and English theatre) is an “ historic  and significant milestone in our history “  says Cristopher Deacon , president and CEO  of the NAC.  This significant initiative builds on the relationship that theNAC  has been fostering  for decades with exceptional indigenous artists.

…

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AmericanDream.ca: une vaste fresque en première mondiale, renouvelle la vision traditionnelle de la famille francophone

AmericanDream.ca: une vaste fresque en première mondiale, renouvelle la vision traditionnelle de la famille francophone

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Photo  Marianne Duval

AmericanDream.ca  est la première mondiale d’une trilogie qui dure trois heures 40 minutes.   En passant par des moments d’ennui jusqu’à la fascination la plus totale, le spectateur rencontre quatre générations de la famille Cardinal, un récit à la fois biographique et imaginaire qui accumule des fragments analogiques d’un narratif parfois difficile à suivre mais plein de rebondissements et des situations qui divertissent et qui émeuvent.     …

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Giselle – A world premiere reveals Ivan Cavallari’s contemporary vision of a 19th century ballet through the prism of ‘total art’.

Giselle – A world premiere reveals Ivan Cavallari’s contemporary vision of a 19th century ballet through the prism of ‘total art’.

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The Willis featuring Yui Segawara. Photo, courtesy of the NAC.

The NAC  dance programme emphasized the fact that  this version of Giselle, the first for the Grands Ballets Canadiens  in 20 years, respects the original choreography by Petipa based on the original narrative by French writer Théophile Gauthier who was himself an exceptional dance critic.

The opening night performance in Ottawa  emphasized the narrative by foregrounding the stylish  encounter of delicate and impeccably trained balletic bodies  open  to unexpected influences of  light, and sound, of spatial transformations, of technical innovations as well as the sensuality of soft material, , swishing skirts transformed into feathery weightless objects that seemed to remove themselves from apparent romanticism bringing them closer to  an exacerbated form of nightmarish symbolism. Giselle fits perfectly into this model!   …

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Love and Information : an excellent young director extracts order from Churchill’s contemporary chaos

Love and Information : an excellent young director extracts order from Churchill’s contemporary chaos

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Love and Information by Caryl  Churchill.   A production of the MFA directing programme in the The theate  Department at  the U of Ottawa

A talented young director brings order to Caryl Churchill’s purposely chaotic  vision of the nature of contemporary communication in this world of digital reality. Vivi  SØrensen whose work  we have already seen in the new Lab O at the Ottawa Art Galery,  (http://capitalcriticscircle.com/in-the-unseen-world-performing-storytelling-in-the-world-of-indigenous-peoples/)  has created an ethereal setting with nine actors, constantly rearranging themselves over rounded forms that take the shape of seats and sofas and places to spread out as the individuals listen to their cell phones, or watch wrinkled and twisted images from tablets and other I- pads or technological means of communication that are projected on floating surfaces that appear to be violet, or red, or green or whatever emotional lighting sources appear in front of them.  …

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