Preview
MONKEY BUSINESS
Lunchbox Theatre
Starring Barbara Gates Wilson and Ryan Luhning
Written by Nicole Zylstra
Directed by Ian Prinsloo
Runs March 8 to 27
Bow Valley Square
Two research scientists find romance while catching wild monkeys with a net in the Costa Rican jungle – man, where do playwrights come up with these crazy story ideas?
If you’re asking Nicole Zylstra, the answer is: real life.
The inspiration for Monkey Business, the Calgary playwright’s brainy new romantic comedy at Lunchbox Theatre, came from the experiences of her older sister Myriam, who really was in the "monkey business."
"She is actually a paleoanthropologist," says Zylstra. "While she was doing her post-doc, she went down to Costa Rica on a project to catch howler monkeys in these big nets, tranquilize them and (study them) to collect data… to help try to determine what early man might have been like 10,000 years ago."
In Zylstra’s play, paleoanthropologist Myriam (Barbara Gates Wilson) and her young research assistant Horace (Ryan Luhning) find themselves alone in the rainforest, catching monkeys and clashing over their views on evolution, their philosophies of life and their seemingly unbridgeable age gap. Apparently, big sis inspired that last bit as well.
"Even though we’re nine years apart, we kind of lead these parallel lives," says Zylstra of her sibling. "For a while, there was this theme running through both of our lives about older women being involved with younger men."
In fact, when it comes right down to it, if the title hadn’t already been taken, Zylstra could’ve called her play It’s All True.
"Everything in this play is true, in one way or another," she says. "There are conversations I’ve had, or my sister has had, or that I’ve heard other people have. It’s a weird sort of combination. The story is something that never happened and yet all of it is true. That’s what I find interesting as a writer – to restructure facts and make something new."
Zylstra was born, aptly enough, in the Chinese Year of the Monkey, which may explain her mischievous approach to creating plays. "I like to monkey around with ideas, take things apart and see what makes them tick, and then put them back together in new and surprising ways," she says.
An improv comedian and director as well as a playwright, Zylstra’s past monkeyshines have included putting a romantic tragedy on roller skates (Camille on Wheels), setting Christ’s passion to ’80s pop-rock (Oh, Jesus!) and moving Wuthering Heights into the ’burbs (The Heights).
This season, she’s up to more tricks. On March 5, three days before Monkey Business opens, she’s performing her one-woman show Firebird: 220 Horses of the Apocalypse, a – believe it or not – comic take on Medea set in Brooks, Alberta, at Theatre Junction’s Random Acts festival. And in May, Vertigo Mystery Theatre will unveil Innocent Blood, her new adaptation of J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s 19th-century female vampire novel Carmilla, which she has also tinkered with. "Carmilla is a fantastic story, but the ending is peculiarly unsatisfying," she says. "So I’ve tried to resolve that."
Although Zylstra took her master’s degree in directing from the University of Calgary and has been better known to date as a comedian – both locally, in the Dirty Laundry soap spoof, and nationally, as part of the Life Network’s Sketch Troop reality-TV series – she got her start in theatre as a teenage playwright. At 16, she made a splash with a play called The Bath, which was presented at the Sears Ontario student drama festival and later published in an anthology.
"It was the hit of the festival," she says, laughing. "It took place entirely in a bathroom. I’ve always liked unusual settings for plays."
Which brings us back to Monkey Business, a play about two people in a rainforest with a net, catching monkeys.
"And there are monkeys actually falling out of the trees," Zylstra promises. "I don’t know if that’s supposed to be a surprise but, no, maybe it’ll bring ’em in. Come watch monkeys drop from the sky at Lunchbox Theatre!" |
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