The Upstage Interview: Alex McCooeye on Pit and The Pendulum (Wildside)

Quoth the Raven...

Upstage and Charlebois Post contributor Sarah Deshaies spoke with Alex McCooeye  about his adaptation of The Pit and the Pendulum presented as part of WildSide Festival. Below is an abridged version edited by Estelle Rosen, CharPo editor-in-chief.

UPSTAGE

You’ve adapted one of Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories The Pit and the Pendulum. Are you a big fan of Poe?

McCOOEYE

I loved Poe as a kid, curled up under my blanket with my flashlight looking up words. I sort of think of him as the Shakespeare that never wrote plays or much about love.

The Pit and the Pendulum is one of his middle of the ground lesser known stories. It’s not The Raven, but was popular once. It’s been done a couple of times on film. Vincent Price did a lame version; there was a film in 2009. Sort of a teen horror sexy film that was awful so I want to do justice to the title.

Review: Neon Nightz

The Importance of Being Intimate
by David Allan King

I get pumped when shows from Toronto's Buddies In Bad Times visit Montreal. While they've only been imported more recently (i.e. Clean Irene and Dirty Maxine, The Silicone Diaries and this week's Neon Nightz at Centaur's WildSide Fest), Buddies has always been queer enough to give us sophisticated Montrealers a taste of theatre we haven't yet experienced. After decades of launching the careers of some of Canada's top artists, the company currently boasts more Montreal alumni in the Buddies "family"  than ever before, and run by Brendan Healey (who trained in Montreal) there's strong potential for a continued 401-connection that could truly benefit both cities.

Neon Nightz, making its Montreal debut this week at Wildside, is (ironically) inspired by Montreal life, as writer/performer Sasha Von Bon Von (syndicated sex columnist, sex trade advocate and established burlesque performer) recounts her experiences as a Montreal stripper back in the 1990s. Von Bon Bon and dancer/choreographer Kitty Neptune have a chemistry on stage that comes from years of working together in both Toronto and Montreal, and their company The Scandelles,  a hybrid borne from that chemistry, stems from a love of the classic burlesque form that they have already harnessed in the company's earlier works. While burlesque is nothing retro to us anymore (Von Bon Bon's been doing it for years in Montreal at Le Boudoir among other events), the Scandelles have really got it buzzing in Toronto as mainstage fun recently, thanks in part to Buddies' commitment to professionally workshopping and developing all that naughtiness when former A.D. (and Neon Nightz director) David Oiye was at the helm.

Ford's Focus: Holly Gauthier-Frankel

(photo credit: Andrea Hausmann)

Life Lesson from Holly Gauthier-Frankel

by Barbara Ford

I first met Holly Gauthier-Frankel in the fall of 2008 when I was the publicist for a small indie production in which she played the elusive moon. As I walked into the rehearsal between scenes, I heard an angelic voice singing show tunes.  Could this be the very same Queen of the Montreal Burlesque scene who seems to have been born in the wrong decade, her voluptuous figure and come-hither doe eyes reminiscent of the most deadly femme fatale from any 1950 film noir? As we spoke by phone on New Year’s Eve, I got a fascinating glimpse  of this very bright, insightful and articulate artist whose one-woman Fringe Fest hit, Miss Sugarpuss Must Die, will be remounted in the upcoming Wildside Festival at Centaur Theatre.

Growing up in a musical home, (Frankel’s mom is a singer and her step-dad, father and brother are all drummers) by the time she was 7 years old she was singing advertising jingles and dubbing movies.   At 10, she saw her first musical (Les Miserables) and knew she wanted to pursue a career in musical theatre.  She attended Roslyn Elementary and Westmount High School but had a hard time fitting in: at age 12 her peers were more likely to be artists in their 30’s and 40’s.  She wasn’t really into pop culture either, favouring Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire, and shamefully admits she had to dumb-down to get by.  Frankel’s own mom coined the pet name “my little anachronism”!

Frankel attended Marianopolis CEGEP, studying theatre with Victor Garaway, whose creativity and progressive approach (using Yoga, Butoh and percussion as theatre training techniques) appealed to her.  She continued her education at McGill, studying English Literature and Women’s Studies, leaving with a Bachelor of Arts Degree and a hefty dose of disdain for what she refers to as a “bastion of non-creativity” that had all but stomped out her originality.

Review: Hamlet (solo)

...I never knew Will, but...
by Amy Barratt

For me, the test of any Shakespeare performance is: would the Bard himself have liked this? ‘Course I never knew old Will personally but I like to think he would care less about elaborate costumes and rotating platforms than about whether the story comes across. I’m sure he wasn’t above cutting scenes from his own plays when he found the action dragging. A lot of people complain they just can’t get the Shakespearean language. It’s been my experience that if you’re watching actors who get it, then you get it. 

Which brings us to Raoul Bhaneja’s rapid-fire, two-hour delivery of Hamlet, in Hamlet (solo), playing at Centaur as part of the Wildside festival. Bhaneja does not linger, as some actors do, over clever turns of phrase, trying to make sure we get them. His is an enormous verbal task but it is possibly an even greater physical one. His performance is a study in playing the intention, and just saying the words. 

First Person: Towards a Rock & Roll Theatre: I AM I… Redux.

The Cast of I am I

By Mike Czuba

When Dancing Monkey Theatre produced I AM I in 2009 at the Players’ Theatre, we wanted to push the ideas of what independent, contemporary, new works could be. We also understood we weren’t attempting anything new. We were simply creating a new Mash-Up. We took some of the tastier bits of theory from Brecht, Artaud and Brook, the slickness of film and the sonic boom of a live concert. We didn’t turn our back on our old friend Aristotle and his elements of Tragedy (Story, Character, Thought, Diction, Music and Spectacle), but ignored his descending order of importance, flattened it all out and let them exist in the same time and space. So in the end, Spectacle becomes just as important as Story. We also gave ourselves an internal code of conduct which explicitly stated that ‘good-enough’ is not good enough and in fact is unacceptable.

Interview: Alexandre Marine

We are presenting this interview as part of CharPo's new partnership with Upstage—Theatre on Radio on CKUT.

By Estelle Rosen

Adapted and Directed by Alexandre Marine,  …the itsy bitsy spider.. is based on Fyodr Dostoevsky’s Demons. Intending to show that Russia was being destroyed by radicals, Dostoevsky was overcome by wanting to fictionalize personal experiences associated with a real-life political conspiracy murder.

In an interview with Alexandre Marine, conducted by CKUT Upstage contributor Alison Louder, Marine said.  “The play revolves around a missing controversial  chapter from Demons that had been censored for decades in Russia.”