Review: Grain(s)

Guy Thauvette (photo credit: Maxime Coté)

Grain(s) is Verbatim (through filters)
by Nanette Soucy

As no one can live without it, everybody gets to be an expert about food. Whether you’re choosing all kale and brown rice all the time, or larding up your trucker’s breakfast three times a day, with the variety available to the average North-American, the media obsession with dieting and obesity - by sheer necessity we have to form an opinion about what we put in our mouths.

The environment of Porte Parole’s Grain(s) is unusual. There are cameras and cables and shelving and neon lights and things growing. Upon entry, there are smiling people in lab coats mingling around, alternately engaging in deep discussion with the audience and reassuring its terrified looking members. As the show begins, members of the audience are interviewed and projected on a screen above. The polled audience has well thought-out opinions on GMOs, which is, by some cultural osmosis, actually informed by the story of Percy Schmeiser and Monsanto that they’re about to hear verbatim. Not from the mouths of those involved directly, but through filter upon filter of translation, accents, and interpretations.