Tag: Canadian Stage Company

Matthew Jocelyn: Interpretation Over Illustration

On November 25, 2019

In classical, Europe, interviews, libretto, opera, production, writing

Oper Köln Hamlet Brett Dean Matthew Jocelyn Germany stage Shakespeare opera music live performance culture

Scene from the 2019 Oper Köln production of Hamlet. Photo: Paul Leclaire

Many people have mixed memories about studying Shakespeare. One of my strongest is coming to the famous tale of the gloomy Dane in high school, and an English teacher expressing shock at being able to spout lengthy scenes from memory. That awe quickly morphed into annoyance when my impatience with what I perceived to be a reductive approach made itself known in a typically boisterous teenaged way. “Would you like to explain this passage then?” my teacher asked testily. I took her up on that offer. Passion for the play would subsequently manifest in numerous essays, reviews, poems, and theatre experiences, including playing the lead myself in an abridged university production that seemed key to my calling as a theatre artist at the time.

Owing to an equal love of opera, it has always been a source of disappointment that I’d never heard a version that satisfied, or, to my mind (and heart), fully expressed Hamlet‘s beautiful, potent mystery – not until, that is, I experienced the work of composer Brett Dean and librettist Matthew Jocelyn. Their Hamlet, with its nods to works like Berg’s Wozzeck and Strauss’s Elektra, is as much about the journey of the artist as it is about a gloomy Prince, and captures human connection (familial, romantic, inner) with every ounce of fraught complexity; the awful, awesome beauty of Hamlet‘s humanistic psychology pairing is very much a quiet, palpable force that creates momentum every ounce as much as it inspires contemplation. The theme of vulnerability – Hamlet’s, Ophelia’s Gertrude’s, even that of Claudius –runs through this 2017 work like a trickle of blood on stone. I was (and remain) as much in awe of Jocelyn’s libretto as of Dean’s score; it’s a rare if precious experience to find both exerting such equal power, in such memorable and affecting ways.

Matthew Jocelyn theatre Hamlet director writer artist

Photo: Tony Hauser

Canada-born Jocelyn is a well-known theatre figure in Europe. He’s directed numerous works, including the French-language premieres of Dancing at Lughnasa by Brian Friel (Théâtre de l’Ecrou, Fribourg), The Love of the Nightingale and Our Country’s Good by Timberlake Wertenbaker (both Atelier du Rhin, Colmar), The Liar by Corneille (Stratford Festival), Shakespeare’s Macbeth (Atelier du Rhin) Fernando Krapp Wrote Me This Letter by Tankred Dorst from his own translation, and Heisenberg by Simon Stephens (both Canadian Stage Company), as well as opera productions including Martinù’s Larmes de couteau and Alexandre Bis, Piccinni’s La Cecchina ossia la buona figliola, Boesmans’s Reigen, Gluck’s La Clemenza di Tito, Chabrier’s l’Étoile (all for Opéra National du Rhin), Chausson’s Le Roi Arthus and Strauss’s Die Frau ohne Schatten (for Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Bruxelles), and Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor (for Oper Frankfurt). He wrote the libretto for La bal by composer Oscar Strasnoy, based on a story by Russian writer Irène Némirovsky; the opera was part of Die Trilogie der Frauen for Staatsoper Hamburg in 2010, which he directed and which also featured Schönberg’s Erwartung and Rihm’s Das Gehege. Jocelyn also wrote the libretto for Requiem, again with Strasnoy, and based on William Faulkner’s 1951 novel Requiem for a Nun; that work was presented in 2014 at Teatro Colón in Strasnoy’s native Argentina.

As well as being known for his directing and writing work, Jocelyn has also worked extensively behind the scenes. In 1995, he joined the Centre de Formation Lyrique of the Opéra National de Paris, where he developed and presented programming of semi-staged operas in the amphitheatre of the Opéra Bastille. In 1998, he became Artistic and General Director of the Atelier du Rhin (Centre Dramatique) in Colmar, a position he would hold for a decade until being named as head of the Canadian Stage Company (2009-2018). In a 2017 interview with theatre writer Robert Cushman, Jocelyn was asked him about the style of theatre he’d hoped to encourage; one which “gives preponderance to the human body as a holder of expression“, he responded, adding that “(d)espite appearances, I’m a classicist.”

That classicist side was given wonderful expression with Hamlet, which had its premiere at the Glyndebourne Festival in 2017, in a production directed by Neil Armfield and conducted by former Glyndebourne head honcho Vladimir Jurowski. At the time, I wrote in my review for the national Canadian newspaper The Star that Jocelyn’s reordering the narrative added a dramatic immediacy; there’s a psychological closeness that was achieved within and through his smart, insightful writing, one that blended seamlessly with Dean’s varied, beautifully complex score.

Scene from the Oper Köln production of Hamlet, 2019. Photo: Paul Leclaire

It’s an integration I suspect has deepened with Jocelyn’s own production of the opera, currently on in Cologne. Together with conductor (and composer) Duncan Ward and the Gurzenich-Orchester Köln , Oper Köln’s production (which opened on November 24th) marks Hamlet‘s German premiere. The cast includes bass Joshua Bloom in the duel role of the Ghost of Hamlet’s father and the Gravedigger, baritone Andrew Schroeder as Claudius, mezzo-soprano Dalia Schaechter as Gertrude, soprano Gloria Rehm as Ophelia, and, in the title role, tenor David Butt Philip, who sang the role of Laertes at the work’s 2017 premiere and has since performed Hamlet as well. Jocelyn and I chatted as he was in the midst of rehearsals just before opening.

How is your production of Hamlet going?

It’s going well! It’s a big opera, a huge piece in terms of its concept and in terms of its requirements. It really stretches to the limit the resources of any moderately large opera house that takes it on. So we’re stretching to the limit the resources of Oper Köln, but it’s going for the most part really well. It’s been special to see it all come together.

How much are you thinking back to the production at Glyndebourne, not just stylistically but overall? How much has that influenced what you’re doing now?

From a stylistic point of view, not at all; it was a really beautiful production and a wonderful way to discover the work in the context of opera — it went on to Australia, and it’ll be at a few more places in the coming years too, but this is a very different reading. There’s a very different series of priorities of things to bring to the fore in this production. It’s funny, I sent a note to (original director) Neil (Armfield) the day before rehearsals began here, thanking him for having created such a beautiful narrative production, because it enabled and forced me to not do that. That’s not what I wanted to do. I wanted to test the resilience of the work to a more metaphorical reading, to a parable of some kind.

So this will be more abstract?

Yes, more abstract.

Scene from the Oper Köln production of Hamlet, 2019. Photo: Paul Leclaire

You’ve written libretti for other things but this feels different on a few levels; what’s it been like to direct Hamlet, and in Germany?

It’s interesting, I’ve always separated the works — the ones I did, La Paz, or Requiem for Cologne – when I wrote those, I wasn’t saying how I’m going to stage it; I was really trying to write a text that was going to inspire the composer and give the material needed for them, but this time even more so. Because it was Shakespeare and because it was Hamlet, and because I was not going to be directing it, I had a different kind of liberty in thinking things through and then offering them to Brett as material in which to work.

Doing it in Germany now… what’s marvelous about Germany is that they do, insofar as possible… there are resources that are made available. And there is a deep understanding of conceptual – more conceptual and more abstract – work. The audiences are looking for interpretation rather than illustration. And they’re looking for a clear perspective and a clear take, rather than a kind of more illustrative thing. So one feels a liberty working in Germany, in that it is perhaps more elastic than working for audiences that have a lesser habit of experiencing conceptual work.

And a famous play like Hamlet doesn’t have the same cultural baggage in Germany as it might for English-language audiences.

Definitely, the play is well-known, and for an English audience, it’s very different than for a German audience because a German audience will know a half dozen lines or so, but an English audience will know, for the most part, a hundred different lines from Hamlet – even if you don’t realize they come from Hamlet! The story will be known more or less clearly, so the way in which the libretto twists the story and rethinks things at times, that’s going to be much clearer for an Anglo-Saxon audience than for a German audience, but the objective of the libretto is not to have the audience say, “Oh look! He took that line here and put it there!” or “Oh what a funny twist there!” It’s very much its own thing as a story.

So in a way, working for a German audience is wonderful because either they get it or they don’t, whereas an Anglo-Saxon audience is often thinking, “Oh, isn’t that funny, that scene goes here in opera whereas it goes there in the play!” It can become a bit of a treasure hunt for English audiences, which is not the goal, but it can have that effect on audience members who know the text extremely well.

Photo: Paul Leclaire

So there’s a freedom working in Germany…

Yes, it’s a huge freedom to work on it here – and also a good way of making sure that the story works on its own without being compared to anything.

It’s not like you’re presenting Goethe!

That’s right!

What’s been your process working with the cast?

This is a very actor-heavy – or acting-heavy – opera and production. It really is like acting Shakespeare. You have maybe a quarter or a fifth of the text, but every singer has the full text in their minds – they’ve obviously all read Hamlet before coming into rehearsal. It does require huge dexterity with text. It’s not a text from a Bellini opera, it’s Shakespeare, and every word in the libretto comes from Hamlet except for a couple of chorus passages, so there’s a need for total versatility with language, that tasting, that love of language – the French say “dégustation” – that absolute enjoyment of the language on the tongue and in the mouth.

And because we’re working on a very bare stage, relationships are key, because there’s nothing to hide behind, so the veracity of what the singers are experiencing and communicating to each other and receiving from each other is absolutely essential. We also don’t have huge amounts of time, but before hitting the set itself we had four weeks of time in the rehearsal room to really massage out the essential elements of the opera, the essentially elements of the text, and really explore the spatial relationships and dynamics between characters. And again, time is always the most precious ally one can have when trying to deepen the relationships which will work, whether musically or textually or dramatically.

Duncan Ward conductor music artist baton podium

Photo: Alan Kerr

I would imagine Duncan Ward has been key to that also.

Duncan is one of those conductors of his generation who is most adept at contemporary music. He’s extraordinarily well-read musically and extremely sophisticated and nuanced in his understanding of the score. He was in the rehearsal room from the second week onwards, and he’s been not only a terrific ally but partner and collaborator, and he is really going to be the one to bring the show to life every evening, because he’s got a wonderful relationship with the orchestra and a wonderful relationship with the singers. He is amazing at holding all these musical textures and musical fabrics together.

The libretto and the score are very intimately linked in this work; how has that intimacy changed in terms of your approach in directing?

I think that we were very blessed, Brett and I, to come together over a piece such as Hamlet, and to have such similar tastes and such similar desires with regards to this work. There were some quite radical decisions I made as a librettist. I’d say the more radical the decision, the more great the appetite with which Brett jumped on it; he could hear it. When you’re working with a composer, your chief goal is to write things that make him or her hear music and want to create a musical universe around it – so we were blessed in that sense.

In this production I’d say there are a few things that have changed: Brett has added a few bars of music – a few passages here and there, a little bit of chorus to a couple moments – and I added maybe two lines to the text. But I did this a year ago now so it’s in the new score, but there are things I felt had been missing in the original version, and I wanted to draw special attention to them in this version. I wouldn’t say things have changed; it’s more just the joy of rediscovering and taking full advantage of this marriage of text and music you were talking about.

Scene from the Oper Köln production of Hamlet, 2019. Photo: Paul Leclaire

So not change so much as evolution…

Yes, a good evolution. This piece is now out there, and hopefully what you’ve heard in terms of an integration of text and music is also heard by other opera houses and it gets produced around the world. Hopefully now it will be part of the 21st century repertory. We’ve been very lucky and very blessed; it went from Glyndebourne to Australia, and it will also be presented by a few organizations in the coming years. For a contemporary opera to have been done with so many houses within a few years of its creation is a pretty lucky thing! Obviously there is an appetite for cracking open this old chestnut and experiencing it in a new and hopefully pertinent way for the 21st century.

Sex, Power, Freedom (and still no happy endings)

By Catherine Kustanczy

On November 18, 2015

In opera

Lucia Cervoni as Julie. Photo by Cylla von Tiedemann

Happy endings are yearned for, but they are increasingly rare. Things don’t end well all the time; it’s this ugly fact Hollywood and the advertising industry don’t usually (if ever) acknowledge. And yet happy endings in culture are not, as some studios might have you believe, the perennial norm. Many of the best works in music and theatre have dire endings that, with the right production and handling, make one feel something by the closing of the curtain: sadness, wistfulness, a kind of quietude, an absolute tumult. Miss Julie, the 1888 play by August Strindberg, provoked shock at its premiere. At the closing of its operatic adaptation in Toronto lastnight, there was that same sense of shock, as well as confusion, sadness, disturbance. It’s that distinct mix that makes the chamber opera such a powerful work, and well worth seeing.

Sharleen Joynt (Christine, L) Lucia Cervoni (Julie, R)
Photo by Cylla von Tiedemann

Director and Canstage General Director Matthew Jocelyn has brought Philippe Boesmans’ Julie to North America in collaboration with Soundstreams (an organization dedicated to programming new music), following a highly successful tour of the piece through Europe in 2009. As well as offering a night of dark laughs and deep thoughts, the work is a meditation on the nature of power between the sexes, and a fascinating portrayal of desire that, when mixed within the toxic boundaries of history and class structure, can be deeply destructive. The titular heroine (or perhaps anti-heroine is more appropriate), passionately performed by Canadian mezzo-soprano Lucia Cervoni, is celebrating St. Johan’s night (also called St. John’s Eve, or Midsummer) by dancing and flirting with her servants, specifically the valet Jean (Clarence Frazer), who is engaged to the maid Christine (Sharleen Joynt). Julie and Jean eventually consummate their flirtations, and later plan to run away together, but don’t; the psychological machinations and manipulations between the two escalate, and the work ends with Julie committing suicide.

The work, which uses elements of naturalism, was influenced by elements of social Darwinism, though it has been interpreted in various ways onstage, through the lens of the American South (at CanStage in 2009) as well as the indigenous experience. The play lends itself well to explorations of power, both overt and subtle, and it’s here that composer Boesmans and director Jocelyn find their most compelling expression onstage. The scenes between Julie and Jean, in Christine’s shabby kitchen, are shot through with a heat that isn’t coming off any stovetop; the two alternate between seducing and slapping, insinuating and insulting, coercing and commanding. Performers Frazer and Cervoni play off these contrasts nicely, seamlessly blending singing and acting into one satisfying whole. Boesmans’ jagged, icy score offers a beautiful contrast to the sexual heat, one that heightens the drama without sacrificing momentum, and utilizing a rhythmic interplay that propels the action forwards. As Music Director Leslie Dala notes in the program notes, Boesmans “creates a remarkable amount of contrast with only 18 instruments.” These instruments blend perfectly with the sparse, almost Baroque-like score (which was complemented by Alain Lagarde’s spare set and Michael Walton’s plaintive lighting), and more than once, the conversational nature of Boesmans’ work brought to mind Monteverdi’s Lamento d’Arianna, recently performed at the far larger Four Seasons Centre as part of the Canadian Opera Company’s Pyramus and Thisbe production.

Sharleen Joynt (Christine) & Clarence Frazer (Jean). Photo by Cylla von Tiedemann

There’s a power in conversation, whether it’s with one’s own self or with another; putting that conversation to music in a way that clearly, concisely conveys situation and emotion, and indeed, marries the two in a dramatic embrace, is an art, one Boesmans has mastered, whether in his 1993 opera Reigen (based on Arthur Schnitzler’s play La Ronde) or 1999’s Wintermarchen (based on Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale), another work concerned with power that lends itself to various onstage interpretations. So much of Boesmans’ work is powered by a sense of intimacy coupled with the dramatic, and here, Julie‘s three performers rise to the challenge, combining a strong sense of timing, compelling physicality, and very good singing to create a powerful and intimate operatic experience.

This sense of intimacy was aided in no small way by the venue. With its cozy design and seating for roughly 800 or so, Toronto’s Bluma Appel Theatre offered an immersive and immediate experience of Boesmans’ work, making the evening’s final image (a hanging staged in silhouette) all the more disturbing. Certainly, some unfamiliar with the Strindberg weren’t expecting it, especially in light of the dark laughs the piece had enjoyed just moments before. Others, possibly, were so taken with Cervoni’s passionate portrayal of the character, in all her dazzling contrasts — sexual power, timid girlishness, haughty snobbery, begging desperation, loudmouth demands, soft admissions — that it seemed a pity to lose her.

Lucia Cervoni (Julie) & Clarence Frazer (Jean). Photo by Cylla von Tiedemann

But that unease is, I suspect, rooted in an audience desire for happy endings, something Strindberg has violently denied. Rather, one is never allowed to get too comfortable with the characters, the situation, or the work’s swirling sub-themes of erotic submission and sadomasochistic power plays. Jocelyn effectively uses this discomfort by consistently underlining sharp contrasts (between characters, reactions, even visual textures) and utilizing effective blocking that highlights the character’s relationships to both each other and their surroundings. With a drum consistently beating, the quiet staging of the ending — certainly unhappy but also entirely inevitable — offers a final statement that is at once disturbing, poetic, profound. Justice, or just a waste? Unlike Armide (who has her own unhappy ending of sorts), Julie isn’t changed by love, or the experience of it, but rather, seems destroyed by the awareness of its harrowing absence. Her choice at the end is driven by an outside force, a symbolically male one she’s always looked to and given her power over to, for validation, acceptance, a strange sense of what she thinks of as freedom. Julie may be powerful in play, but she’s not power-full in life. This, perhaps, is Julie’s greatest tragedy, though the opera suggests that making peace with the sharp and contrasting desires of life and our human desires is not the easy, blissful path we may believe, much less actually want. Happy endings? No, merci. Harrowing drama? Oui, encore!

See The World Up Close

By Catherine Kustanczy

On November 26, 2010

In art, history, movies, popular culture, theatre

“iPhone gloves… really?!”

That was my exact reaction reading a friend’s tweet recently. Technology is everywhere; so go the accessories. Life without a cellphone (and the ubiquitous apps) seems unreal; twenty years ago, life without a Walkman was unthinkable. Technology has been so ubiquitous now that it’s turned into a simple matter of choosing what we want, and when, and being absolutely confident it’ll be there at our convenience.

It’s hard to imagine the shock waves English photographer Eadweard Muybridge created with his early experiments in photography -experiments that lead to the creation of cinema. Can any of us imagine life without movies or still images? It’s easy to take them for granted, especially since they’re everywhere: TVs, movie screens, the internet, computer monitors. A work colleague of mine has a lovely photo of her daughter set as her desktop; in Muybridge’s time (the mid/late 1800s), the only image of the girl that could’ve existed would have been a painting. Beautiful, but hardly the same thing.

The conveniences of technology, and its role in our lives -scientifically, artistically, socially -ran through my mind watching Studies In Motion: The Hauntings of Eadweard Muybridge, produced by Vancouver’s Electric Company Theatre and presented by The Canadian Stage Company, currently on in Toronto at the Bluma Appel Theatre. The lauded work opens with a naked man carefully manoeuvring his way across the stage; I write “manoeuvring” because there is a real sense of trying to capture the basic -or seemingly-basic movements Muybridge did in his own experiments. The English-born, American-living/working photographer worked at the University of Pennsylvania between 1884 and 1887, and invented new techniques and technologies that significantly furthered the art of photography and lead directly to the world of cinema. The opening scene of Studies In Motion is exactly what its title suggests: studies (that is, people) in motion, across a grid-like space, forcing us to look at muscles, bones, structure and form, and the various shadows they cast across the bare expanse of stage -this mortal coil, perhaps or the new terrain someone might embark on whenever they try anything new.

Within the context of societal mores depicted within the play, the nudity is a source of shock, of course. One not-so-amused woman looks on pie-eyed and mouth gaping as the models demonstrate their daily business in the lab. Yet Muybridge (Andrew Wheeler) tells the shocked visitor this isn’t about titillation; if he could, he’d rip the flesh off to see the bone, and then take away the bone to see pure movement itself. Models cover and uncover according to the readiness of the equipment, but they are also comfortable around their technician cohorts. Thus the straight-laced Victorian world falls away, and we are taken somewhere considerably more modern; this modern sense is reflected, meta-theatrically at least in a sense, via Crystal Pite’s dance interludes, where the actors become the motion their theatrical counterparts set out to study. With a pulsating soundtrack (courtesy of composer Patrick Pennefather), the ensemble reaches, runs, stretches, and sashays through all variance of human-doings.

The team behind Studies In Motion are a talented bunch; director Kim Collier is a Siminovitch Prize-winner, and the impressive set, lighting, and video design is by Canada Council award winner Robert Gardiner. Crystal Pite is celebrated across Canada and has won a Dora Mavor Moore Award (a Toronto version of a Tony). Writer Kevin Kerr’s other works include Unity (1918) and Skydive, and the show itself was previously produced at Montreal’s impressive Festival TransAmériques in 2009. While there’s a true sense of exploration and curiosity and even wonder, I was left cold emotionally -but then, that’s probably the point. Kerr’s work eerily echoes the cold efficiency with which Muybridge approached his work, and even the inclusion of the famous murder he trial he was involved with (he shot his wife’s l0ver) fails to touch; it’s at its most compelling when in the lab, showing movement you take for granted -human technology at work -across a massive, sprawling grid.

Gardiner’s contribution was, I admit, my favorite part of the show. His eye-poppingly gorgeous grid-like design was complemented by various projections of Muybridge’s original works flashed across the long screen running the length of the stage. The natural tendencies of the eye (moving left to right, small to large) were challenged, gently, skillfully, with a notion of continually widening, then narrowing Kerr’s narrative focus. The design was a dramatic dance companion to the occasionally-maudlin script, though it should be noted that Kerr is incredibly good at knowing when his characters should shut up and let the images do the talking. Here Collier’s incredible eye for integrating the piece’s various elements -dance, video, images, movement -comes forward as truly impressive, and truly remarkable. There was a nice future-looking play of words and sounds and images I experienced in watching Studies In Motion too; artists like the Lumiere brothers, Fritz Lang, F.W. Murnau, and in a more contemporary sense, Daft Punk, Jenny Holzer, the early 90s videos of U2 (Mark Neale’s direction of “Lemon”, above, was directly influenced by Muybridge’s work), and the entire Krautrock and industrial movements are all here, in various guises, occasionally naked, occasionally still, probing and pulsating and prowling.

Muybridge, and by extension, Collier’s work attempts to look at the mystery of humanity and existence by taking mall slices of movement and analyzing them to bits; thing is, there’s an art in those small moments, in and of themselves, that doesn’t require analysis so much as acceptance. We may marvel at the technical and scientific feat Muybridge achieve, but it brings us no closer to the mystery of the human heart, or indeed, the mysterious ways we’re moved by art itself.

So this, then, is the final question Studies In Motion left me with, one I’m still wrestling with: does a person make better art through isolation? isolated movement, position, placement -consciously created -good or bad for art? I don’t expect easy answer -and in fact, I’d rather enjoy the questions anyway. There’s poetry in the motion, and in stillness, and having both at my disposal through this little life feels like the best kind of technology I could want, iPhone gloves be damned.

A New Vision

By Catherine Kustanczy

On October 24, 2010

In interviews, theatre

When Matthew Jocelyn and I sat down recently to talk about the new Canadian Stage season and how to make the Canadian theatre scene better, I never could have foreseen the amazing insights that would emerge from that short conversation.

I already covered the company’s 2010-2011 announcement several month ago, and was properly impressed, but I was eager to know the whys and wherefores, and just how Jocelyn, who is the company’s Artistic and General Director, planned to make this season appealing to a city where the great majority of theatre-goers (the ones not in the luvvie camp) far prefer the safe and familiar (and frequently cutesy) instead of the new and strange (and frequently ugly -if fascinating). How to integrate the instinct of elevation with the necessity of sales? It’s a tough riddle to work out, especially within the harsh conditions many Canadian artists live and work (or try to work) under.

There are many untrue cultural stereotypes of Canadians: that we all like hockey, that we love winter, that we say “eh” after everything, and we worship Tim Horton’s coffee. (Cue my extreme eyerolling.) The one stereotype I’d argue holds a kernel of truth is that, by and large, we don’t like experimentation when it comes to the arts, and we’re leery about artists who push the envelope. (As an aside, dear Lady Gaga fans: a Canadian did it first.) Jocelyn, by virtue of living abroad for so long, wants to change the Canadian tendency toward caution in the arts -gently, yes, and with much patience too, but with an equally clear vision of his company’s 21st century mandate and its relationship with Toronto. A theatre company should do more than put on safe, middle-of-the-road stuff, but at the same time, shouldn’t isolate either its core supporters or potential newcomers with art-with-a-capital-A material.

What’s notable (and heartening) is our too-brief discussion of how the internet has really rendered thee companies more able to communicate between and amongst one another -so whether you’re in Dublin or London or New York (or even Toronto!), sharing and exchange ideas has never been more prevalent -or more important. No company is an island, or in this age, can afford to be. It’s a lesson well worth heeding.

A note to my international readers: please don’t think you have to be in Toronto to enjoy this chat. The things Mr. Jocelyn discusses -marketing, outreach, planning a season, trying to balance populist choices with an embrace of new, multi-cultural programming -are issues every arts company faces, everywhere. Let me now what you think; if you’re an Artistic or General Director, I want to know how you’re tackling the challenges of attracting and cultivating audiences with making interesting, inspired programming choices. As my chat with Mr. Jocelyn taught me, cultural exchange is more than a few complimentary words left on a Facebook wall.

walk good, children

By Catherine Kustanczy

On March 27, 2010

In poetry

Director/Playwright ahdri zini mandiela‘s moving theatre work who knew grannie? a dub aria is currently on at Toronto’s Factory Theatre. I went to the show unsure of what to expect; I had seen mandiela’s other work (notably her inspired direction of A Midsummer Night’s Dream for the 25th anniversary of the Canadian Stage Company) and I was also aware she’d founded the ground-breaking b current Performing Arts Company.

Now, I’d been told grannie is “more of a song” than a formal play. Well, what a beautiful song -and what a delightful, wholly satisfying, of theatre it is! Exploring ideas around family, community, loss, and black identity in the 21st century, the work carefully, masterfully incorporates musical elements into its rich, poetic dialogue; it reminded me of Beat poetry, of jazz, of Caribana, of church, of things intimate and epic and singularly, defiantly boundary-crossing -all elements that, to my mind, should be playing a part in humming the tune of contemporary Canadian theatre.

Characters like the bespecled likklebit (Miranda Edwards), the cellphone-addicted vilma (Andrea Scott), yuppie kris (Marcel Stewart), and rebel tyetye (Joseph Pierre), as well as grannie herself (Ordena) are all well-drawn and eagerly performed. Despite their different journeys, mandiela has created a vital thread of connection running between them, a thread that’s given physical manifestation in the form of multi-coloured lines of cord running across the Factory’s wide stage expanse. Used alternately as clothing lines, cages, lines of demarcation and nationality, Julia Tribe’s inspired design is a beautiful compliment to mandiela’s writing and direction, demonstrating the twin notions of separation and connection, distance and intimacy, past and present (and even future) all at once.

Combined with the live percusison of Amina Alfred, who knew grannie: a dub aria is masterful, moving theatre that salutes the past (be it conventions, generations, people or places) while moving boldly into new, exciting realms of performance possibility and the outer reaches of the human heart. I had the opportunity of interview ahdri zhina mandiela about the work; her answers are, unsurprisingly, every bit as poetic as her show.

What inspired who knew grannie: a dub aria? Was it a specific person, or situation?

the aria is inspired by my mother, who is the eldest daughter of her mother, the grannie on whom the central character is based. my mother is in her mid-80’s and may pass on soon; this is my way of facing that impending loss.

How did you decide on the show’s format? Was music always a major part of it?

as a performance poet, most, if not all, of my writing is poetry, and the musicality of language has always been present in my work. this piece demanded that the music be highlighted in the telling of who knew grannie; hence the coining of the term ‘dub aria’.

How does the language inform and shape the narrative and characters?

verbal language is just one of the communication principles in the narrative. emotional language, language of space & movement are others; each contribut(es) to shaping the characters’ personalities, journeys, and interactions.

Why did you include drums?

the ‘languages’ needed to have their music highlighted/enhanced/embellished.

plus, the drum is a primal musical instrument, and very much represents grannie’s voice: that’s the musical instrument she would play if she was a ‘musician’.

Who is this for?

everyone: we all have a grannie still living or on the other side. and we all have some memories of relating to a grannie or grandmother figure.

who knew grannie: a dub aria runs at the Factory Theatre in Toronto through April 4th.

Boldly Going…

By Catherine Kustanczy

On March 16, 2010

In opera

The Canadian Stage Company announced its 2010-2011 season this morning. Its Artistic and General Director, Matthew Jocelyn, is embracing a new approach for the company, one he hopes will help to re-define the company and its mandate over the 21t century; one might even suppose Jocelyn, Canadian-born but mainly French-employed, is trying to re-define the Canadian theatrical landscape with his bold, unique choices. In looking over the release , there’s something undeniably refreshing about this kind of vision: worldly, unapologetic, broad and arty. It remains to be seen whether Toronto audiences will embrace this vision, but it’s nonetheless heartening to see this kind of chutzpah within the cliquey world of Toronto theatre.

Jocelyn aims to “redefine Canadian Stage as a home not only for great Canadian and international plays, but also for trans-disciplinary theatre that pushes the boundaries of convention and reflects a resolutely 21st century aesthetic.” That aesthetic includes featuring the work of Quebec native -and theatre visionary – Robert LePage in the 2010-2011 season. LePage’s The Andersen Project will be making its Toronto debut in October; according to the release, it’s “a modern-day multimedia fairytale” that is based on the work of Hans Christian Andersen. LePage? Andersen? Sounds like all kinds of mad, manic magic. I was bowled over by the artistry LePage brought to The Nightingale at the Canadian Opera Company last October, and though The Andersen Project isn’t new (it was commissioned by Denmark in 2005 to mark the 200th anniversary of the famous writer’s birth), there’s always something so inspiring and fresh about seeing LePage’s work in Toronto. It feels as if he’s bringing a European sensibility that Toronto, for all its talk of being a “world-class city”, is still deathly afraid of truly embracing.

Come November is the multimedia production Studies in Motion: The Hauntings of Eadweard Muybridge by the Electric Company Theatre, featuring the poetic choreography of accomplished Canadian dancer Crystal Pite. Quebecois dancer Edouard Locke will also be part of the Canadian Stage season with his grond-breaking La La La Human Steps company in as-yet-untitled work set to premiere in May 2011. (You might recall La La La worked with David Bowie in the 1980s.) I love the fearless combination of dance and drama here; again, it’s a European approach to theatre (and its integration of other artforms) that is indicative of the kind of worldly thinking Jocelyn’s experience (mainly with Atelier du Rhin) entails.

That experience also lends itself to reaching out to Canada’s national arts organization. Thus, the National Arts Centre‘s English Theatre head honcho Peter Hinton arrives in 2011 to direct Saint Carmen of the Main by Michel Tremblay; the work is a co-production with the NAC and runs February 7th to March 5th. Canadian dynamo Jennifer Tarver will also be directing for Canadian Stage. She might be best-known outside of Canadian theatre circles for her celebrated production of Beckett’s craggily moving work Krapp’s Last Tape featuring Brian Dennehy that ran in Stratford and then Chicago. Come April 2011, she’ll be helming the Canadian premiere of The cosmonaut’s last message to the woman he once loved in the former Soviet Union, by David Greig. The work was first produced at the Edinburgh Festival in 1999 and went on to run at the La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego and the Donmar Warehouse in London. Now there’s a play with passport cred to burn.

Along with smaller productions at the Berkeley Street Theatre (the smaller stage used by the Canadian Stage Company) involving local companies like Nightwood and Studio 180, the Berkeley will also host a Spotlight On Italy series March 15th through 26th, 2011. Programming is totally intriguing, and includes many works that won’t be familiar to Canadian theatre audiences. Nunzio and La Festa, two award-winning plays from Sicily’s Compagnia Scimone Sframeli will see productions, along with the dance theatre of la natura delle cose by Florence’s Compagnia Virgilio Sieni, whose Artistic Director, Virgilio Sieni, has twice received the UBU prize, Italy’s top theatre award.

“The Spotlight Festival,” notes Jocelyn, “demonstrates (the Canadian Stage Company’s) commitment to showcasing some of the most extraordinary international companies that challenge the classical notions of theatre.” I can hear some Canadian arts types moaning that we already have companies that do that -but how much more can they -and we -learn by including the works of others within our own diaspora? Culturally, they inform our “Canadian-ness” every bit as much as works by Michel Tremblay, David French, Judith Thompson, Florence Gibson, George F. Walker, and the myriad of other playwrights who are studied and produced across this country. If the 1960s and 70s were all about establishing a distinctly Canadian voice, the 21st century is about seeing how much that voice can sing with other voices -in harmony, or not. Will audiences go for it? That remains to be seen. But it’s surely good to see Jocelyn’s vision of the Canadian Stage Company going above and beyond the predictable, the safe, and the well-worn. It’s time for something new. Welcome to the world, Toronto. I think you’re going to like it.