Alvina Ruprecht

Ottawa Fringe 2011: Nancy Kenny on roller skates dreams of being a superhero!

By Alvina Ruprecht | June 20, 2011

The tandem Tanya Levy and Nancy Kenny obviously works well together . It took a rather good script and turns it into something that shows off Nancy Kenny’s excellent talents as a comic actress. Together, they gave the material a lot of comic and emotional depth and a show that certainly did speak to a lot of people. That is what caught my attention here.

There is our heroine, still single at 30, watching TV, munching on popocorn and wondering what she has been doing with her life? Nothing much really, except dreaming of strong female superheroes.

Then, because of her sports oriented sister, whom the actress mimics with great precision, our heroine has an epiphany. She discovers the roller derby sport and enters a world of real female superheroes on roller blades. And even though she has never skated in her life, the fantasy life becomes real, and she blossoms into a new person with the help of a super Hip Hop chroegrapher from Montreal apparently who did a great rhythmic number with her as she dons her "superwoman" Derby Uniform for the first time. Such precision and finely tuned work is perfect escapism and purely satisfying entertainment.

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Ottawa Fringe 2011: Life Presents a New Fictional Reality

By Alvina Ruprecht | June 19, 2011

First of all read this note from the Banff school web site:

Maureen LaBonté is a dramaturge, translator, teacher, and program coordinator. She was named head of the Banff Playwrights’ Colony in 2006, after working there as resident dramaturge since 2003. From 2002 to 2004, she was literary manager overseeing play development at The Shaw Festival. From 1993-2001, she worked at the National Theatre School of Canada where she developed and ran a two-year pilot Directing program and then coordinated the NTSC’s Playwriting program and Playwrights’ residency. She has translated more than 30 Québécois plays into English

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Ottawa Fringe 2011. Old Legends

By Alvina Ruprecht | June 18, 2011

A sweet moment of storytelling and a play about “memory”, written and directed by James FitzGerald and featuring Emma Godmere. It takes place in one of the most awkward fringe venues (I hear that the basement of the Royal Oak is THE worst) because when the room is full you can’t see the acting area beyond the fourth row unless you happen to be over 6 feet tall. . Our colleague Patrick Langston has all the luck!

I made myself little in the first row where I always prefer not to be, because I don’t want to risk disturbing the actors with my scribbling.

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Ottawa Fringe 2011: When Harry Met Harry Is The Perfect Fringe Piece.

By Alvina Ruprecht | June 18, 2011

When Harry Met Harry has all the qualities of a perfect Fringe piece. With his long lanky legs, expressive arms and fingers no less, Allan Girod and his style of physical performance reminded me of the famous Monty Python character created by John Cleeves who used to do all kinds of funny things with his extremities…so does Girod. But that’s where the resemblance stops. His material is not as quirky or dislocated as Monty Python’s. It is much more psychologically oriented.

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Ottawa Fringe 2011. Walk. Why this Play?

By Alvina Ruprecht | June 17, 2011

A subject matter that has attracted social workers and social scientists of all disciplines from around the world: research into the world of the sex trade, the sexual slavery of women and the trafficking of women. The subject matter, which is not new, has been the object of plays, films and many studies. Yet, in spite of all the interest and the outrage, the practice continues.

Since that is the case, what is the aim of another play about the same subject? What does this team want to capture. What do they want us to feel or see or understand? That is the real question here. Why this play?

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Fringe 2011: Dying Hard

By Alvina Ruprecht | June 17, 2011

Dying Hard

Compiled by Elliot Leyton

Adapted for the stage by Mikaela Dyke

Directed by Dahlia Katz

Featuring Mikaela Dyke

A Vagrant Theatre production

Verbatim theatre is something akin to a current of Theatre of testimony that has developed in Latin America when victims of torture describe their experiences, first hand. These forms of "theatre" are actually historical documents of a very precious sort. One hears about Verbatim theatre in other countries where it can often be related to the Shoah or to the Truth and Reconciliation process of recounting real and traumatic events that affected an individual or a whole society.

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Fringe 2011: The Interview at the OLT

By Alvina Ruprecht | June 2, 2011

There is something immensely satisfying about this meticulous three hander where every character is clearly defined and they each feed off the other to produce a smooth running stage dynamic.

Mr. Anderson (Dan Baran) finds himself in an “interview” room in a police station, sitting between the impatient, no nonsense , let’s get this thing wrapped up style of detective played by Michael Kennedy, and the more thoughtful, brooding, perceptive detective Smith played by Ken Godmere.

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New Work/Nouvelle Création Edouard Locke.

By Alvina Ruprecht | May 19, 2011

The opening of New Work/ Nouvelle création by Edouard Locke and his Montreal Company La La La Human Steps, offered a most beautiful corporeal landsacpe that showed us the space of memory in those invisible moments between the sudden blackouts and the emerging of shimmering bodies touched with shining highlights. The chiaroscuro effect came alive in a way I had never seen it before.

Memories of Louise Lecavalier ? whose blond mass illuminated his earlier works and whose gravity defying movement seemed to have left its permanent mark on Locke’s choreography. Perhaps. She was his creation but she also inspired his work. An interchange of energy that produced something memorable… This performance is triggered by two huge photographic portraits of women that unfurl from the top of the stage.

A younger woman…and an older woman: daughter and mother? The younger woman as she will be in the future? All form of relationship is possible but the essential thing is that they do not communicate openly. They do not speak, they barely look at each other. The have discrete gestures, adjusting the collar of a shirt, touching their own hair, placing their hands in a comfortable position.

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Lettres d’Amour à Staline de Juan Mayorga, à La Cartoucherie de Vincenne

By Alvina Ruprecht | April 12, 2011

Une scène remplie de mobilier lourd nous accueille : des tables, des chaises, des divans, un lit et des bibliothèques vides alignés comme des sentinelles. Ces objets enferment voir étouffent l’homme penché sur sa table d’écriture en train de rédiger à un rythme frénétique. Des miroirs encastrés dans des placards renvoient à l’écrivain l’image de sa propre déchéance, tout en nourrissant sa panique et son besoin de sortir de cette exclusion qui est en train de tuer son âme d’artiste. Déjà le dispositif scénique construit avec beaucoup d’efficacité un lieu clos sombre qui incarne le monde intérieur d’un créateur frappé par l’interdiction de l’état stalinien et annonce la nature obsessionnelle d’un texte qui fouille impitoyablement la psyché d’un homme que l’état condamne à l’inexistence. …

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Visiones de la Cubanosofia. le nouveau théâtre cubain.

By Alvina Ruprecht | March 29, 2011

La Reina de la Fritanga. Photo: Nelda Castillo, Teatro del ciervo encantada

Le spectacle, présenté au théâtre La Capilla dans le quartier El Vedado de la Havane, est réalisé par la troupe El ciervo encantada, sous la direction de Nelda Castillo. Sur une petite scène, on observe une série de tableaux–chocs qui représentent une vision extrêmement personnelle de l’histoire cubaine. Les figures métaphoriques, les unes plus grotesques que les autres émergent sur un échafaudage à deux niveaux, Cette incarnation scénique d’une hiérarchie sociale à la manière de Piscator, confirme la barbarie des colonisateurs dans une ambiance explicitement théâtrale.

Première image, une immense statue de la vièrge en poupée resplendissante placée au sommet de cette structure. Elle est enveloppée de velours, de dentelles et de couleurs brillantes. Encastré dans cette figure de poupée-vierge, un visage pâle presque humain, s’éveille et ouvre les yeux au moment où on entend le tintement des clochettes et la musique sacrée cubaine qui annoncent le début d’un nouveau rituel pervers. Voici la première étape de ce rituel désacralisé, la “Cubanosophie!”, dont la dynamique essentielle est le calvaire et le martyr d’une nouvelle figure christique, José Marti. La figure d’une vierge androgyne à la longue barbe noire, aux gros yeux noirs, à la bouche édentée circonscrite de lèvres rouges et au regard de plus en plus diabolique, se lance dans une diatribe violente et haineuse. Ses grognements, ses hurleme évoquent les derniers râles d’un vieux en train de mourir, alors qu’elle parle au nom d’une église méchante, raciste, et colonisatrice, avant de s’évaporer dans les coulisses.

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