First-Person: Ann-Marie Kerr on The Debacle

(Photo credit: Scott Munn)

Musical Chairs – moving from director to actor in a solo show

The jarring jars

by Ann-Marie Kerr

Sue Leblanc-Crawford of Zuppa Theatre in Halifax approached me a few years ago to direct her in a solo show. We would co-create it and with any luck it would tour the world.  When we started, we waded into intimate territory immediately. We found that we had 100 things in common including coming from families of 7. We realized a mutual obsession with death and dying, our own and others, how it would happen and when. Like with lots of theatre made from scratch, the process had us soaring and falling daily. We’d try ideas for days and weeks at a time only to cut the heart of them knowing they didn’t work or they weren’t taking us to the centre of the piece. We scraped away at the surface for a long time and then finally began to see what might be the core of the show.  It was our abject terror of being the only one left, being the end of our family line.  The show became about a woman finding the courage to crash through the immobilizing fear of losing everyone but needing to go on.  

The Upstage Interview: Ann-Marie Kerr on The Debacle

(photo credit: Scott Munn)

There’s a ringing phone on the floor which she can’t reach.

Upstage and Charlebois Post Contributor Sarah Deshaies spoke with Director/Actor Ann-Marie Kerr.  Below is an abridged version edited by Estelle Rosen, CharPo Editor-in-Chief.

UPSTAGE: On the line with me is Ann-Marie  Kerr. She’s both performing and directing The Debacle being presented as part of Festival TransAmérique (FTA). The story revolves around Margaret who has to uncover secrets of her past and try to recreate memories. How did it come about that you’re performing and directing?

KERR: I was the Director and Co-Creator,with Susan Leblanc Crawford, of the project. When we were invited to perform at the FTA, Susan became pregnant. So we switched roles.

As we were creating this show, we had talked about the possibility of having two productions of it; one in which I would perform and one in which she would perform. And suddenly it came true. She’s on the outside and I’m on the inside. It’s been a thrilling experience to collaborate in this way. 

Review: El Desarollo de la civiliacion venidera (FTA, 2011)

(Photo credit: Sergio Chiossone)

BARE BONES DOLL’S HOUSE WORTH THE WAIT

Beg, steal and bribe whoever you need to. Just go see this show.

joel fishbane

Not even a volcano can keep a good theatre company down. After having their first performance delayed due to the recent volcanic eruption in Chile, the artists behind El Desarrollo de la civiliacion venidera (The Development of the Coming Civilization) finally made their appearance at the FTA Thursday night – and God, was it worth the wait. A stark and bare bones update / adaptation of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, the ensemble directed by Daniel Veronese has produced the sort of theatre you should ignore the Fringe to see.

Review: Neutral Hero

Photo credit: Michael Schmelling

The Hero In Maxwell

Acclaimed NYC director Richard Maxwell Brings Us This Year's Anti-Musical

David King

One by one actors appear, on a bare stage with a dozen chairs and a few musical instruments, all framed by a flat, white proscenium. One by one, each artist picks up where the other left off in telling us about a mid-west U.S. journey, tossing out redundant, small town snapshots that are about as interesting as the GPS in our car if it were to start having a conversation with us. Moving through the streets and into the suburbs, their voices take us towards a more intimate locale, a "home", if that even exists outside our heads. And in his quest to find out about his past, our hero will soon take a fall, while those around him remind him of his identity.

Review: Hot Pepper (FTA 2011)

(Photo: Toru Yokota)

Can We Add Some Salt To That, Too?

Japan's HOT PEPPER… needs a bit more spice

By David King

To fully understand Japanese creator Toshiki Okadia's theatre triptych HOT PEPPER, AIR CONDITIONER, AND THE FAREWELL SPEECH, one has to not only be open to a lesson in Japanese language and culture, but to keep in mind that each work in this theatre trilogy originated with one successful, much-shorter creation HOT PEPPER. In this production, it's definitely important to read the programme notes from the writer / director before the piece opens. As a little experiment for myself, I intentionally didn't, just to see how much this theatrical painting could stand alone without explanation.

Review: PHOTOG (FTA)

(Photo Credit: Farah Nosh)

PHOTOG Needs More Time In the Darkroom
the company wanted to create a character with..."total absence of sentimentality or idealism"
by David King

If a picture is worth a thousand words, a wartime photograph should be worth ten thousand. 

Exploring the rare perspective of conflict photojournalism in their newest multi-media piece PHOTOG: AN IMAGINARY LOOK AT THE UNCOMPROMISING LIFE OF THOMAS SMITH, Vancouver-based Boca del Lupo's Sherry J Yoon and Jay Dodge take on Place des Arts' Cinquième Salle and the FTA with a one-man show that's co-created and performed by Dodge. Dedicated to Tim Hetherington, who was killed this past April while covering the Libya conflict, PHOTOG is a documentary-theatre hybrid, basing much of its material on the testimonials of Hetherington and other embedded photographers who were interviewed by Yoon and Dodge in the early stages of their creation process.

Sunday Feature: Festival TransAmériques

Yume No Shiro (photo: Klaus Lefebvre)

And We're Off!
Festival Transamériques takes on today's youth with an unpredictable blend of new hybrids in the performing arts
David King

If there was a way to describe what to expect at this year's Festival Transamériques (FTA), it would first be to expect shows about our youth - and then expect the unexpected. Although the Festival makes some pretty clear delineation between its theatre and dance offerings, there's an increasingly fine line between the two each FTA as disciplines overlap.

Until June 11, CharPo will be reviewing more than a handful of the English-language related (spoken or subtitled) international theatre highlights at this year's FTA, including the Berlin / Amsterdam work Trust (read Joel Fishbane's review here), the always exciting Vancouver company Boca del Lupo with Photog, world renowned director Richard Maxwell's Neutral Hero, the much-anticipated Gardenia (see our preview by Bugs Burnett) and the contemporary Buenes Aires adaptation of Ibsen's A Doll's House entitled El Desarrollo de La Civilizacíon Venidera, by the brilliant Argentinian director Daniel Veronese.

Review: Trust (FTA)

(Photo Credit: Heiko Shafer)

MULTI-TALENTED ENSEMBLE DELIVERS A NIGHTMARISH REVUE

TRUST at the FTA

I suspect reaction to Trust will be mixed

by Joel Fishbane

It’s possible that a new theatrical language will be needed to discuss Trust, the multi-disciplinary hybrid that opened the Festival TransAmériques on Thursday night. Part dance, part theatre, part performance art, Trust is a show that borrows liberally from the theatrical pantheon – Brecht, Beckett, musicals – even as it discards the usual annoyances like plot, story, characters or a dramatic arc. Trust merrily flies in the face of all traditions, which makes for a fascinating artistic experiment. Whether it’s also an entertaining night at the theatre, though, will probably be a matter of taste.

The Sunday Feature: Gardenia (FTA, 2011)

(Gardenia, Photo credit: Luc Monsaert)

The Art of Drag

Gardenia is poignant meditation on beauty and age

By Richard Burnett (printed from Fugues with permission)

I have been to just about every major drag event in London, Sydney, Paris, New York, New Orleans, Vegas and Montreal, and as drag culture has morphed into a universal phenomenon, it is evident it has also become increasingly homogenous and mainstream. There are no longer any great differences between, for instance, French and English drag performers (if there ever were), except for perhaps in Quebec where audiences still really love their clown-like drag queens like Montreal icon Mado La Motte  – so-called when she started her career at Poodles nightclub on the Main back in 1987 because patrons there thought she looked like a mutt.

“She looks like a clown!” my six-year-old brother Skye told me as he pointed to Mado at his first Gay Pride parade in Montreal over a decade ago. When I told Mado about it afterwards, she replied, “He’s right, I am a clown!”

Invitation: FTA English conference

INVITATION – PLAYWRIGHT’S WORKSHOPS  

FESTIVAL TRANSAMÉRIQUES PRESENTATION

Video, FTA 2011, Press conference

Video by David King

News: Festival TransAmeriques 2011 Press Conference

(l-r) Karine Denault, Marie-Hélène Falcon, Martin Faucher

(photo: David King)

More Eclectic Than Ever

31 shows, including five world premieres

by David King

The fifth Festival Transamériques (FTA) of theatre, dance, and performance kicked off yesterday with a press conference conducted by Artistic Director Marie-Hélène Falcon alongside artistic associates Karine Denault and Martin Faucher.

At the busy press conference, the eclectic nature of this year's presentations was perhaps most evident as productions branch out from theatre and dance into new exploratory installation work and multi-media technology. That technology was made available to most of us journos at the conference via a DVD of promotional excerpts from the FTA's productions, broadcast in segments by Falcon and her entourage as the trio reviewed each of the festival's 31 shows, including five world premieres, four free performances around the city and the festival's always exciting "meet-the-artist" discussions and symposiums.

Videos: Festival TransAmeriques