Theatre Preview
X-RAY
Ghost River Theatre
Starring Kira Bradley, Doug McKeag, David Rhymer and David van Belle
Music by David Rhymer
Directed by Eric Rose
Runs September 8 to 26
Vertigo Studio (Tower Centre)
"We live in a political world." – Bob Dylan
Ever since the terrorist attacks on America of September 11, 2001, we have watched with shock and awe – and anger and disgust – as the U.S. government has waged its "war on terror," first pummeling poor, wretched Afghanistan to drive out al-Qaida and the Taliban, then taking prisoners and locking them up without trial in Guantánamo Bay, and then mounting a bloody, tenuously reasoned invasion of Iraq in the teeth of worldwide opposition. For artists wanting to craft a response to such a string of outrages, the first question is simply – what do you start with?
Do you begin with President George W. Bush’s dubious election in 2000, as filmmaker Michael Moore does in his much-flawed but hugely important Fahrenheit 9/11? Do you go back further, to the years leading up to September 11, as author Douglas Coupland plans to do in his new monologue September 10, 2001, previewing at One Yellow Rabbit next month? (See story on the next page.)
It’s a question Ghost River Theatre has been wrestling with for some time. In 2002, artistic director Doug Curtis felt the answer lay in Camp X-Ray, the Bush administration’s beyond-the-law Guantánamo prison, and he and his ensemble set out to create and workshop a show of that name. But a lot has happened since then, leading the company to completely overhaul the piece for its first full-scale production, which, like Coupland’s work, promises to give the opening of the new Calgary theatre season a political edge.
Now, Ghost River’s musical thriller X-Ray – "We’ve lost the ‘camp,’" jokes actor Kira Bradley – has widened its focus to take in the panorama of events of the last three years, while giving them a distinctively Canadian perspective.
Eric Rose, who is directing the show, says that in the end Camp X-Ray itself "wasn’t a large enough canister to hold all the ideas that we wanted to express."
Besides, adds Bradley, in the interim the docudrama Guantánamo has opened in London. "There’s a full-blown play about it now, with Middle Eastern actors, so they can probably address Camp X-Ray itself properly."
Instead, Ghost River’s X-Ray gives us a different kind of prisoner — a neurotic young woman shut up in her apartment, frightened and confused by world affairs, and seeking refuge and answers in a computer chatroom, where she is known by the handle "Freakygirl." But even as she meets an online friend who challenges her mass media-fed notions about the war on terror, a violent altercation outside her apartment door presents her with an immediate moral dilemma that reflects the larger geo-political one faced by Canada.
"Something horrible happens in her hallway," says Bradley, who plays Freakygirl. "She doesn’t know exactly what it is, she doesn’t know how far to ask, or to question, or to care. There’s a whole part of her that just wants to go with wilful ignorance, sweep it under the carpet and say ‘Everything is going to be fine.’"
"Very Canadian," interjects Rose with a laugh.
"It’s easier to put the blinders on," admits Bradley. "I understand it – because the truth is so freakin’ ugly and you feel so helpless and so small in this world. But it doesn’t matter how small you are – you should ask the questions anyway."
So far, the play sounds like a straightforward allegorical drama, but Ghost River is giving it the same collectively created, cabaret-style treatment as An Eye for an Eye, its popular, controversial musical about oilpatch vigilante Wiebo Ludwig. In other words, expect some wry comedy and more than a little surreal fantasy. As she dithers in her flat, Freakygirl is assailed by a pair of "heralds" from her subconscious, described by Bradley as "two blond, blue-eyed men in orange jumpsuits with a penchant for show tunes" and played by Doug McKeag and David van Belle. The duo transports her everywhere from bomb-shattered Baghdad to Abu Ghraib prison to the World Trade Center in an attempt to shake her out of her terrified inaction.
Along the way there are songs by David Rhymer, co-composer of the legendary Ilsa, Queen of the Nazi Love Camp and, like Bradley, part of the team that wrote and performed An Eye for an Eye.
"Using the form of a musical helps us go for something larger than life, a heightened sensibility," says Rose. "And I also think it’s very funny. There’s a sardonic humour woven within the show. There’s a song called ‘Everybody Needs a Good Spanking’ which is a laugh riot."
Rose himself is a newcomer to Ghost River and Calgary, having moved here from Toronto last winter to take up a post as artistic associate at Theatre Calgary. His role at TC has been to oversee its new play-development program for smaller theatre companies, where X-Ray received workshops this spring. That led Curtis to ask him to direct this production. He brings to the show some past experience with this style of theatre, having worked in Toronto with Paul Thompson, Canada’s father of collective creation, and here with One Yellow Rabbit and Rhymer as a directing intern on the musical Dream Machine.
X-Ray joins a tidal wave of artistic protest against the Bush administration that has been gathering force as the U.S. approaches the November presidential election. But while big American efforts such as Moore’s film and the Rock Against Bush albums are aimed at galvanizing and influencing voters, what does one little theatre company in Calgary hope to achieve?
"Hopefully, this show will open up people’s minds to questioning the geo-political situation," says Rose. "We seem so far away (from Iraq), but we’re not. We’re so tied to the Middle East because of the oil industry, so what happens there directly impacts us here in Calgary. What is firmly rooted within the show is the Canadian response: how do we react against such violence and war in our time? Where do we stand?"
"We also address the fact that we’re friends and neighbours with the U.S., and we want to do right by that," adds Bradley. "But just how far do you go for your neighbours?" |
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