Fringe 2011: Dying Hard
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 These forms of "theatre" are actually historical documents of a very precious sort.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.
Elliot Leyton and actress Mikaela Dyke have compiled a series of interviews with miners and miner’s families to get first-hand accounts of the Industrial diseases contracted while working in the fluorspar mines in Newfoundland. Leyton is a professor of Anthropology at Memorial University and Mikaela Dyke is an actress who has done improv and scripted theatre.
This production by the Vagrant theatre features Mikaela alone on stage, donning a shirt, or boots or untying her hair just to add to the feeling of each character. She sits on a chair, or folds laundry or just stands there , or becomes a character drinking beer..The stage elements are minimal but the performance and the text take us into the depths of tragedy and most disturbing realms of the human mind.
She becomes these men who are waiting to die. She becomes the women who are telling us about the day their husbands died, or how they feel waiting for them to die, and what runs through their minds in their new state of widowhood. What makes this ever more astonishing is the fact that none of this is fiction. The texts are all the result of interviews conducted with real people who tell their stories .
No one seems to cry or over react. There is a sobriety and dignity in these human beings who have accepted the inevitable and the actress captures all that as the story of this tragic destiny unfolds in these poignant monologues often laced with comedy because the individuals speaking them behind the actress’ voice are natural actors and have no trouble putting their feelings into words. .
Michaela Dyke is an exceptional actress. There is something larger than life about this performance, something that strikes a chord of classical tragedy as these human beings become both individuals and types, mining workers forced to go their death knowing that they have no choice because they love their work. Her remarkable performance captured the depth of human feelings without overplaying the emotions . In the first place she is s an excellent mime . Her body transformed itself, her face used all its muscles to become, with each character, a mask of looming death. She produced all the various accents so well that sometimes I had trouble understanding what these Newfoundlanders were saying but even so, the power of her stage presence gave us the feeling we actually knew these characters and shared the emotions that went beyond words.
The first two monologues might be shortened. Given the fact that we have difficulty understanding them and given the fact that they seem to ramble a bit, at least that is what I sensed, a few cuts would only leave a more powerful impression. I found the women characters easier to understand and because they seemed to enunciate more carefully. But they were also the ones who seemed to suffer the most and the way the actress revealed the extent of the emptiness in their lives as they carefully folded those sheets, was a magnificent touch of staging that showed how simple gestures can communicate such powerful feelings.
For good acting…this is a must.
Dying hard plays at the SAW GALERY