FFWD Weekly
Copyright © 1998 All Rights Reserved.
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| THEATRE Martian We've seen photos of a face on Mars, heard about government cover-ups and watched a steady stream of gloriously campy B-movies. Heck, we've even seen some high-budget Hollywood spoofs. But now in a new jazz-play, the Shiny Beast Collective is blasting off to that distant red planet to see for themselves. For six years now, Shiny Beast's Michael Green has been collecting books, magazines and almost anything about Mars that he can get his hands on. Even the play's most bizarre notions have some basis in the annals of fact or fiction. We don't know much about Mars. Aside from details about the surface conditions and basic geology, we simply know that the planet is a vast red desert. It's enough, says co-director Ken Cameron, to spark a torrent of speculation. "We've been looking at Mars for centuries," he says. "It's always been in the sky.... It's always glowed red and stood out amongst all the stars. Every civilization has its own name for and conception of Mars." According to Cameron, among the play's influences is last year's discovery of a meteorite from the Martian surface. Estimated to be three-and-a-half to four billion years old, it contains evidence of microbes. "Life from Mars traveled to earth on a rock sent by a meteorite impact. Basically a meteorite hit Mars and blasted chunks of rock into space. One of those chunks landed on Earth, coincidentally, about the same time as scientists estimate that life on earth began." Martian is also rife with pop culture references. Allusions to The X-Files TV sensation are felt in the play's decidedly creepy atmosphere and its proliferation of conspiracy theories. Again, the notion of conspiracy sprang from history itself. "We know that there's a photograph of a face on the surface of Mars," explains Cameron. "The same photograph shows a couple of pyramids. But NASA's not interested in investigating those particular landforms, and we find that bizarre." In the play, a consortium of private corporations gets together to go to Mars on the cheap. The nine "Martianauts" are joined onstage by ground crew and mission control. But the play focuses on the stories of these nine travelers. "Everyone onboard expects to find something different," says Cameron. "For instance, we have an Egyptologist who's in residence on the ship and that character is going specifically to look at the pyramidical forms on the Sodonian plain." What began as Michael Green's pet obsession quickly became a group fascination for the makers of Martian. Working collaboratively, Shiny Beast's group of interdisciplinary performers wrote the script in three weeks. "Everyone in the show has a particular fascination," says Cameron, explaining the play's many points of view. "Some people's response was text-oriented, while other people responded with music or poetry." In this weird multimedia jazz-play, expect to see video and film, and to experience the music of Dave Clarke and Danny Meichel. Familiar faces among the cast include Michael Green, Doug Curtis and Elizabeth Stepkowski. |
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