FFWD Weekly
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On Stage by Lori Montgomery As the small audience exited the Big Secret Theatre last January after taking in The Unlikely Birth of Istvan at the High Performance Rodeo, the question on many minds was, "That was fantastic, but what was it about?" Ask the creators the same thing and the six collected members of the Old Trout Puppet Workshop greet you with protracted silence. It’s a tricky question, they insist. You don’t want to give too much away, but you don’t want to sound "flaky." Finally, puppeteer Judd Palmer throws caution to the wind, and offers an explanation. "This show is actually, I think it’s fair to say, it’s about everything," he says, mostly seriously. "Everything you conceivably need to know about the cosmos is actually contained in this show’s depths. Broad strokes, but essentially, it’s all there. I’m tired of theatre that only tells me a little tiny detail about life. I want to know it all." For those of us whose minds can’t encompass everything at once, puppeteer Shannon Anderson offers some structure to help audiences approach the show, returning as part of One Yellow Rabbit’s regular season. "The main characters are This and That..." she starts out, "... who are mind and matter, spirit and viscera," Palmer finishes. "In other words, pretty much any duality that you need to throw in there. In other words, you can take what you learn from this show and apply it to any problem you have in life." "It can come across as a very simple story," says Anderson, "Or you can get very metaphysical about it." The entirely wordless play revolves around a pair of puppet characters in constant conflict. One is an intellectual observer, trying in vain to preserve the beauty of the world around him in art. The other is a creator of hedonistic mayhem. A birth sequence near the beginning offers some clues, but there’s a lot of room for interpretation. "You get some people who come out of it and they say, ‘Oh yeah, that’s a sperm,’ or ‘Those are two elements of a body developing in a womb that need to reconcile themselves before they can be born,’" says Peter Balkwill. "But it also provides the sort of puppetry shenanigans that somebody who doesn’t necessarily want to think too hard can watch and really enjoy, and then just sort of wonder why that naked guy came rolling out at the end of the play." The activity on stage is usually accompanied by an eclectic score of mid-century folk/Cuban/Polish music that creates a surreal sense of suspended time. For this run, though, each Wednesday night will be an opportunity for some extra insanity. "In the spirit of experimentation and general ridiculosity," says Palmer, local artists will provide improvised music for the show. Steve Pearce says there are certainly few precedents for a show like this in Canada, but the puppets bring to mind a host of associations that range from Ronnie Burkett to The Muppets. "There seems to be this sort of attempt at trying to be new, to do things that haven’t been done before, when really, so much has been done before," Pearce says. "When can you let go of that fear of being compared? Sometimes you just have to have the courage to say, ‘Fuck it.’ There will be comparisons... so let’s just do this because it’s good and it fits in this moment." On the topic of Burkett’s puppet theatre, showcased often at One Yellow Rabbit, the Old Trouts realize that he laid the groundwork for puppets to be taken seriously in Canada as a form of entertainment for adults. But they have visions of going beyond that. "Now we’re in the next phase," Palmer says. "What we can do is feel free to allow the audience to feel like they’re kids. Or to blur that distinction entirely, and just not really care whether this is for kids or for adults. Because with the ideal show, the adults feel like kids and the kids feel like adults, when they stumble out of there, blinking in the sunlight." The Unlikely Birth of Istvan runs at One Yellow Rabbit’s Big Secret Theatre from November 7 to 25 with pay-what-you-can performances from November 7 to 12. *** Rogues Theatre, an offshoot of Company of Rogues Actors Studio, is presenting their fall production beginning this week. The Darling Family is a character study by award-winning Canadian playwright Linda Griffiths and directed by Dawn Ford, who directed last season’s short run of Daniel MacIvor’s House. The 1991 play revolves around He and She, a couple who are confronted with an unplanned pregnancy and have to decide what to do about it. She wants to talk about it, and he wants it all to just go away, but they struggle toward a resolution that works for both of them. The play runs at the Pumphouse Theatre until November 11.

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