First Person: David di Giovanni on Play it Again Phaedra...again

Playing “Play it Again” Again

by David di Giovanni


What is the point of sharing a play one has rehearsed?  

If art or theatre are thought of as services for cultural entertainment, then the point is to share the play, to have an event for people to attend, and to continue sustaining your own livelihood (pay the bills, be an active member of society).  People pay to receive the commodity they deem worthwhile.  

I’ve often heard myself say, theatre doesn’t exist without an audience.  I don’t wholly agree with this right now.  

I had the pleasure this week to go back into rehearsal on the first play of our current season- Play it Again, Phaedra.   We had decided, in an effort to sustain our independent theatre-making, to focus this season on making two shoppable plays.  By May, we intended to have two commodities (repeatable plays) to begin offering.  This decision comes off the momentum of our last season, where we produced monthly transient one-nighter episodes for eight months.  Quality, not Quantity! is our motto.  

First-Person: Iris Lapid on the return of MAP

Pencil Shavings and the Fat Vogue...then Phaedra
by Iris Lapid

Although I have been out of school for two and a half years now, I think I will always associate September with new Beginnings. Something about the smell of pencil shavings and the extra big edition of Vogue always fills me with anticipation. Well, It's officially autumn, I've turned the heat on in my apartment, and MAP is back in rehearsal! 

Last season The MAP Project fused Theatre with Reality TV to bring a monthly episodic serial to MainLine Theatre's Mini-Main. Throughout the eight episode arc, Season One followed the lives of three Montreal actors and their crass alter ego personas. MAP, however,  has long been known more for its form than its content. The project began several years ago when we decided to introduce a camera into our social gatherings; the genesis of the project was taking verbatim scripts from our lives and finding ways to stage them. 

Blog: MAP Project, Part IX

Part IX

Finale

by Rio Mitchell (director)

Jake, Amy and Iris are aspiring actors and good friends. Over the past three years, their lives have been recorded on behalf of the MAP Project. Since September 2011, each month Jake, Amy and Iris have been bringing their stories and interactions to the stage.

As the group’s director and the editor of MAP Project’s video projections, I have the very distinct pleasure to be the keeper of some 600+ hours of video footage of Jake, Amy and Iris; hours and hours of hanging out with friends, and talking candidly to the camera about their experiences and thoughts. Every Monday I cull the weekly footage searching for storylines for the next episode, and as I sit in my dark editing studio watching and re-watching these three individual’s faces, I fall in love with them more and more. There is a spectacular intimacy to the process, and I have come to believe that it lies in the reciprocal generosity of watching, and giving oneself to be watched.

First-Person: David di Giovanni on MAP

Part VIII

Toward the end

By David di Giovanni

You know, we’ve been involved in putting on a show a month at the Mainline since September, and never once did any joke involving ‘that time of the month’ come to my head.  

Remarkable, eh?

MAP started Season One, at least for me, from the desire to search for theatrical forms which would attract a younger demographic to the theatre.  So what exactly does that mean?  Well, here’s how it went for me.  

Blog: MAP Project 2011-12

Part VII: Marathon

Performance suicide?

by Matt Zabusky

The Mainline staff approached MAP with the intriguing and terrifying idea of doing a marathon of our current year long episodic theatre series MAP Season One, on May 30th. When I first heard this idea proposed it felt to me like performance suicide, reminiscent of my feelings of hearing about a 48 hour run of Waiting for Godot in the Toronto fringe. Why would someone do that to themselves? But the more and more I thought about it I realized this is going to be the most challenging performance of my life.

Blog: The MAP Project - 2011 (Part IV)

The Impression Question 

by Amy Kitz

Step into my time machine folks. I would like to invite you back to a moment many Sunday nights ago, back when it was sunny at 8pm and backyard barbeques were still a dinner option. Welcome to Sunday, Sept 4th, 2011.

Blog: The MAP Project - 2011 (Part III)

Three

We got a real weird thing going on.

By David di Giovanni

When I tell people I work for a theatre troupe, The MAP Project, I am then asked, do you do comedy or drama? I always feel stuck at this question - what was passing small talk must now become a bit more than that.  An explanation is needed.

Sunday Feature - Deeper into FOUR Yourself

(Photo credit: Richard Muller)

Reconsidering FOUR Yourself

Thinking longer about a play which strikes you

by Valerie Cardinal

A few years ago when I was still interested in becoming an actress, I was asked a very interesting question in a theatre school interview; what is the purpose of theatre?

At the time, I stumbled through an awkward answer about social relevance or something. After thinking deeply about last month’s performance of the MAP Collective’s FOUR Yourself, I feel like I’m a little closer to uncovering what the meaning of theatre is, at least to me. 

The piece of verbatim-style theatre has stayed with me even a month after its run, which is definitely saying something. FOUR Yourself combined filmed interviews with its three actors with references to books, movies, television shows and more. It’s a concept that was confusing, odd, a little infuriating and ultimately enlightening. 

Review: FOUR: Yourself

Colour Me Intrigued

There is so much to think about that I want to see FOUR: Yourself again.

by Valerie Cardinal

My experience with verbatim-style theatre was very limited until I saw the MAP Project’s FOUR: Yourself. Now, colour me very intrigued. FOUR: Yourself combines interviews with its three performers and endless pop culture references to make a narrative. In essence, it’s an epic journey made up of a collection of moments that don’t make sense until it ends. But when it does get there, it generated enough discussion between my play-going companion and I that I could write a nice philosophical essay about the purpose of nostalgia and video if I really wanted to. The shot of vodka that came free with entry really helped with that as well. 

EVENT: The MAP Project