Month: January 2010

He Likes Us

On January 8, 2010

I love this montage of press junkets put together by filmmaker Jason Reitman during his Up In The Air interview rounds. The fun, punchy style of the piece is in stark contrast to the dreary, true nature of junkets.

Having interviewed a few people during TIFF, you do feel as though you’re one in a long assembly-line of reporters armed with microphones, recorders, and the standard line of questioning. More than once, I’ve actually felt bad for the interview subject -if only because they spend their days answering the same, inane questions. Time must surely stop at such moments. I can only imagine how many times Reitman was asked “what was it like to work with George Clooney?” It’s easy to forget, amidst the hype, that there is a real human being sitting in front of you. That person has real thoughts, feelings, ideas and perceptions.

It’s nice to see Reitman thinks the same of journalists; there’s a curiosity about these people, inherent in the fast edits of this clip, that they have lives, too, and those lives aren’t always strictly defined by livelihood. The Joe Strummer soundtrack also hints at a punk ethos that doesn’t quite gel with the promotional duties outlined by Hollywood, that leaving the human out of such marketing-based interaction robs one of experiencing the true joy of the moment. It’s also neat to see Reitman using social media with such flair and creativity; maybe it’s a sign of his (our) generation that we understand its deep ability to share and connect in ways that weren’t possible years ago. I wonder what directors like Frank Capra or Alfred Hitchcock would do, would that they had today’s technological tools at their disposal. It’s too easy to forget the humans amidst machines -that there’s a real person on the other side of the microphone, the tweet, the status update. Reitman’s junket montage, with its myriad of faces and smiles, is a wonderful reminder of the power of connection in today’s techno-obsessed world.

The Outsider

By Catherine Kustanczy

On January 6, 2010

In opera

Next month will mark ten years since I’ve moved back to Canada.

Prior to that, I’d been living abroad, first in Ireland, then England, for close to two years. I learned so much during my time away, though in the midst of it, I couldn’t shake the feeling of being an outsider. In my youth, I truly fit the role of a misfit; I was the girl who’d skip class to go to the art gallery or, in elementary school, intentionally forget gym clothes to read Kerouac. But being in a completely new environment presented a new, much more frightening challenge. It was uppermost in my mind to fit in as much as possible with my new chosen countries and their inhabitants, while at the same time maintaining my individuality and identity (which was a very shifting, transforming thing). Keeping balanced amidst those cataclysmic changes was a high wire act I didn’t always perform successfully. Never has Dickens’ “best of times / worst of times” dialectic been more obviously manifest in my life than it was when I lived abroad.

So it was with a lot of fascination that I read about Canadian theatre artist Maja Ardal‘s work You Fancy Yourself, a classic fish-out-of-water tale. In the one-woman show, award-winning Ardal uses pieces from her own background as a transplanted Icelandic native growing up in 1950s Edinburgh to tell the tale of friends new and old, memories made and forgotten. I had the opportunity to exchange some ideas around the ‘outsider’ label with her, and to glean her thoughts around an aspect of theatre that’s always fascinated me: the solo show.

Where did the idea for You Fancy Yourself originate? How much of it is personal?
I loved to dress up when I was a kid. My Mum had a trunk full of fabulous forties gowns and blouses. When I put those clothes on, I imagined myself to be completely transformed-as if I was the most glamorous film star in Hollywood. One day, I wore an amazing puffy frilly “off the shoulder” blouse to school, thinking that all the girls in the playground would worship and adore me. Instead, I was ridiculed, and pushed around by a mob of girls who all shouted “Who do you think you are!? YOU FANCY YOURSELF!!”

About six years ago I started to think about those awful childhood moments that throw the cold light of day onto our dreams. I began to write story/poems about other children I remembered from my childhood, and the public humiliations they went through at the hands of bullies. I decided to try turning those poems into a play. The world of the play came alive around Elsa, a little Icelandic girl who has to learn how to fit into the rough world of the Edinburgh playground. As I wrote the play I compressed it all into fictional scenes. When I performed all the characters, I knew I’d made the right choice, as it is truly a joy to perform them all.

What are the best and worst things about doing a one-woman show?
The best things about doing a one person show are that I don’t have to compromise to other cast members when we have a gig or a tour, I am free to invent new things on the spur of the moment and I get really fit because the show is so physical! Also, I have an intimate relationship with the audience. I can’t hide from them and they can’t hide from me, and they start to realise how much I need them to play with me, and frankly their surprise and delight feeds me with joy and energy.

The worst things are that it’s lonely in the dressing room -it’s lonely when I’m on tour, like in Prince Edward Island and Salt Spring, or Edinburgh, and have no one to share the sights with when I have the flu, and have to pretend to myself that I don’t, and just do the show because there’s no understudy. I did a run of the show in Hamilton starting with the flu. The bizarre thing is that I would always start to feel better when the adrenaline kicked in, then the next day it would all have to begin gain.

What do you hope audiences come away with?
Having done so many shows and received so many written and verbal responses, I think I can safely say that people come away feeling rewarded, that they were at a play that spoke to them so personally while at the same time making them laugh wildly-and shed the odd tear. The play seems to remind us that when we try too hard to belong we must be careful not to betray those we love.

You Fancy Yourself runs at Toronto’s Theatre Passe Muraille until January 23rd.

One Great Runaway

By Catherine Kustanczy

On January 5, 2010

In opera

I’m in the midst of putting together a piece about the National Film Board‘s animated selections at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, which opens January 21st in Park City, Utah. I always associate the wintery film festival with intellectual independent features but it’s warming to see a loopy animated short like Runaway be featured there as well. The Cordell Barker work is one of the three animated shorts being shown at this year’s festival, the other two being Vive La Rose
and Rains.

Runaway had its world premiere last May at the Cannes Film Festival, and was also shown at the Toronto International Film Festival this past September. Watching it, I was taken back to my youth, when I saw Barker’s first animated short, The Cat Came Back. With its zany animation and insanely catchy theme song, the short remains a personal favourite of mine. What’s so neat about Barker’s works is that he blends social commentary in with the crazy narratives and colourful characters. So Runaway is about much more than a train; it’s a not-so-subtle metaphor on class distinctions, consumerism, environmentalism, economics and social responsibility. It’s also fabulously entertaining, with a lively score by Ben Charest (the man behind the Oscar-nominated The Triplets of Belleville) and Barker’s kooky, charming animation.

One of my mantras for 2010 is “less head, more heart.” To borrow a line from Rumi, I’m attempting to stop the forward-pressure of the mind, at least sometimes, and blend it with Duchamp‘s idea that “the desire to understand everything fills me with horror” -so why try? It feels like such a ciphoning of energy to try to rationalize and square out the details of every little thing, all the time; it feels like an egotistical attempt at control that isn’t there in the first place. Head just can’t replace heart, and at its essence, this is what good animation (and all visual art, in fact) provides me: a portal into a world where logic doesn’t always rule, control is illusory, and possibility is endless. That doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be challenging or difficult, or contain social commentary and exploration, but I think it’s possible to marry the yin and yang together, through skill, and of course, passion. The best animation, for me, goes straight for child-like wonder, universal feeling, and a sparkling joy that is sometimes intertwined with social commentary. The NFB brings all of that wonder, feeling, and joy to Utah this year, in zany colours and deft pencil strokes. Looking at their works, it makes sense the word “art” is contained in “heart.” As it should be.

Gracias, Lhasa

By Catherine Kustanczy

On January 3, 2010

In music

It was with great sadness, and more than a little shock, that I learned of Lhasa de Sela ‘s recent passing. The gypsy-esque, European-influenced singer has become a favourite of mine, with her hauntingly sensual low voice, poetic, surreal lyrics, and open embrace of various cultural sounds, from Latin-influenced to Eastern European, and all genres – folk, rock, electronica, klezmer -in-between

I remember being excited and little nervous when I interviewed Lhasa last spring about her new album. After the rich, gleeful sounds of 1998’s La Llorona, and the world-folk sounds of 2003’s The Living Road, she wasn’t sure people would be prepared for the moody, stripped-down atmosphere of her newest, self-titled offering, recorded entirely live. Our conversation ran the gamut, from background to influences to singing styles. We tossed around the benefit and drawbacks of analog and digital technologies; we talked about soul music, and since visual art played a big part in her albums, we talked about the relationships between music and visuals. I’ll never forget what she said: “music is a conversation; art is just for yourself.”

Lhasa’s music defiantly (fabulously) rejects any easy categorization or definition, in the same manner that many of my favourite artists do, including, notably, Gavin Friday. In these days where pop, rock, dance, rap, hip-hop and country are both more loosely defined and yet more rigorously defined (and defining) than ever, Lhasa’s music was (and remains) a breath of fresh air. Curiosity, passion, and an indefatigable spirit to explore new-meets-old sonic territory in unusual, challenging ways is a hallmark of good artistry, and a demonstration of commitment to one’s craft (or muse, if you will). Lhasa was committed. Her music doesn’t always make you comfortable; it makes you think. It takes you to places where you’d rather not venture, but can’t say “no” to. Her voice was a call to stumble, trance-like, up a hill, in the dark, knees bleeding, hands scraping at dirt, and then stand at the edge of a windy cliff, not merely admiring the view but wondering at horrors you left lurking below, and distorting them into shapes you could at least live with -until the next siren song, anyway.

Losing her is upsetting for so many reasons: she was so young; she hadn’t found the kind of acclaim at home that she’d found overseas; there’s still so much she had to give the world. Lhasa had an uncanny ability to pull her own experiences through the intricate, beautiful webs of tone, timbre, syllables and symbols, rendering the intimate epic, and shrinking the absolute to lacy uncertainty. As she told me in the spring,

That’s one of the wonderful things about music: you can say very intimate things, and they become universal – other people can relate to them. If it was just me singing about me, then I would feel embarrassed. I feel like I’m searching for the grain of something other people can understand.

Ultimately, art is about connection. Getting the chance to connect with Lhasa for twenty minute was a treat I’ll always cherish. “Now that my heart is open / there is no way it can be closed or broken.”