Preview
THE LEISURE SOCIETY
Alberta Theatre Projects
playRites Festival of New Canadian Plays
Starring John Kirkpatrick, Karen Johnson-Diamond, Trevor Leigh and Brieanna Moench
Written by François Archambault
Directed by Bob White
Runs January 29 to March 4
Martha Cohen Theatre (Epcor Centre)
When a script describes two of its four characters as "fuck friends," you know this isn’t going to be your run-of-the-mill playRites play.
And that’s only the first page of François Archambault’s The Leisure Society, a viciously funny black comedy that turns yuppie scum into shish kebab. It skewers their shallow values, their materialism and hedonism; it roasts their sexual inadequacies, emotional immaturity and dubious parenting skills. Expect kinky sex, a lot of wine-fuelled dumb-ass talk and even a little baby shaking.
The thing is, the affluent young couples being made mock of here are also the people who patronize Alberta Theatre Projects and its festival of new Canadian plays. How are they going to react at seeing their acid-etched likenesses in Archambault’s mirror?
"I’ve conditioned our cast to the sound of seats slamming up in the Martha Cohen Theatre," says ATP artistic director Bob White, who is directing the play’s première English-language production as part of this year’s playRites. "Everyone’s trying to predict at what point in the play people are likely to walk out."
He’s only half-kidding. This is a show that has the potential to offend the kind of people who think assets are sexy and children are a must-have acquisition, like a home theatre.
Archambault’s principal yuppies are Mary and Peter, a well-heeled working couple in their mid-30s with an infant son, who seem to have everything they could possibly want. Of course, Mary could use more sex and Peter would like to try a threesome. And, despite being scarcely able to cope with one baby, they’re both hoping to adopt a little Chinese girl, because then, they happily explain, they’d have someone who could play their grand piano.
Most of the play’s action unfolds during a dinner party at Peter and Mary’s, where they plan to kiss off their hard-partying old friend Mark, who is recently divorced and making up for lost time in the casual-sex department. For this occasion, he’s brought along a case of wine and his new "fuck friend," 21-year-old Paula. But as the wine flows and the baby monitor gets switched off, the farewell to Mark takes an erotic turn, moving from the living room to the bedroom and the swimming pool.
The Leisure Society, or La société des loisirs, made its debut in its original French version at Montreal’s little Théâtre La Licorne (which is about the size of One Yellow Rabbit’s Big Secret Theatre) in the winter of 2003 and was a smash hit with critics and audiences, winning several of Quebec’s Masque awards, including one for best new play. The theatre recently remounted it this season for another sold-out Montreal run, to be followed by a tour of Quebec.
Still, how will it go down in a bigger, more mainstream theatre in conservative Calgary? White doesn’t know, but from the moment he read the original French script, he was sure he had to produce it.
"I was just shocked at the boldness and bravery of the playwright in taking a very conventional situation and pushing it to the boundaries," he says. "I never second-guessed whether we should do it in the festival, I just thought that it was so right for our audience."
PERFECT PLAY FOR CALGARY
ATP commissioned the English translation, by past Archambault collaborator Bobby Theodore, which was well received when it was given an initial staged reading before a small audience at last year’s playRites.
The play is especially relevant for Calgary, says White. "Although François is talking about a particular class of people in Montreal, there’s a parallel here, too. We have people who have more money than they know what to do with, quite frankly, and they think that accumulating things – the biggest SUV possible, the most fantastic vacation to the most exotic spot – somehow constitutes happiness. I think it’s very resonant for our crowd, especially folks in their 30s and early 40s who are trying to have it all – the family, the careers, the expensive lifestyle."
Archambault and Theodore were well aware that their egregious yuppies weren’t just a local phenomenon and that’s reflected in the translation. Unlike some previous English versions of French-Canadian plays at playRites – 24 Exposures, for example – there is no attempt to preserve a Québécois flavour.
"When we first sat down (to discuss the translation), we said if this play is going to have a life outside Quebec, we didn’t want to specifically root it in that culture," says Theodore. "We didn’t want people to distance themselves from it. We said, ‘Let’s approach this from a North American perspective.’" One of the simple changes they made was to Anglicize the characters’ names, which were originally Marie-Pierre, Pierre-Marc, Marc and Anne-Marie.
Theodore, a bilingual Montrealer, previously translated Archambault’s Governor General’s Award-winning comedy 15 Seconds, which also made its English debut at ATP, in 1999. That play about the rivalry between two brothers, one with cerebral palsy, is fairly typical of Archambault’s work, which tends to be uplifting. The Leisure Society is the very opposite, says Theodore, who was at the Montreal première.
"The audience reaction starts off with laughter, then it turns into nervous laughter, and then there’s a kind of hush by the end of the play. You’re left with a feeling of desperation. It’s a kind of cautionary tale," he says.
"The college- and university-student crowd seemed to really come out for it," he adds. "People are starting to question materialism and the point of working 60-hour weeks, and these are the questions François is asking, too."
White is hoping the ATP show will also attract a younger audience, the kind that was drawn to other audacious playRites plays in the past, such as Mad Boy Chronicle, Scary Stories and the legendary Unidentified Human Remains. As the festival approaches its 20th anniversary next year, he wants to bring back some of that edge and daring, as well as adapt its programming to the style of theatre being created by younger artists today.
FESTIVAL IN TRANSITION
This year’s edition of playRites has some new twists, notably presentations of works-in-progress by two emerging Calgary troupes: Le Gros Spectacle by The Wind-up Dames and The Generations Project, a pair of short plays involving THEATREboom. These artists are members of the Playwrights Unit, which has replaced ATP’s traditional playwright-in-residence position, and they’re also part of the festival’s efforts to embrace less traditional forms of play development.
"We have to go beyond text-based creation," says White. "Clearly, younger creators are working in collectives, in non-traditional ways, with much longer rehearsal periods. We have to learn how to accommodate that and incorporate it into the playRites festival. And I think it’s important that we also share in that process, that we collaborate cross-generationally as artists."
Another change: Le Gros Spectacle and The Generations Project will be seen on the new playRites second stage, dubbed the BD&P Stage 2, in the Epcor Centre’s Engineered Air Theatre. It will also house the Platform Play series – staged readings of plays earmarked for future mainstage production – as well as other festival events.
White says this is a test run for the 2006 playRites, when the festival will officially expand its production activity to include the Engineered Air. "The plan is that we’ll use it next year as a performance space and put two shows in there."
Also on the playRites mainstage
These are the other three Canadian plays set to première at the 2005 playRites festival. Note: descriptions are based on a preliminary reading of the working scripts. Watch Fast Forward for complete reviews of each show.
· The Myth of Summer by Conni Massing (runs January 28 to March 6) – Several offbeat characters, including a woman with anger management issues, a teenager with a Joan of Arc fixation and a melancholy German masseur, undergo life-changing experiences one summer. Edmonton playwright Massing is also the author of two previous playRites comedies, Sky Geezers (1992) and Gravel Run (1988), and the hit adaptation of The Aberhart Summer (1999).
· Mick Unplugged by Greg Nelson (runs February 1 to March 5) – A Toronto suburbanite in midlife-crisis mode tries to revive his youthful dreams of starting a record label, with the help of his cynical former girlfriend and a washed-up ex-punk rocker. Nelson’s play speak premièred at the 1998 playRites and he also helped adapt Dickens’s A Christmas Carol for the Theatre Calgary stage.
· Get Away by Greg MacArthur (runs February 2 to March 5) – The darkest and creepiest of the four mainstage plays this year. A middle-aged man suffering from a mysterious malaise rents a country cabin and becomes strangely attached to a pair of homeless teens that he takes under his wing. MacArthur, a Montreal-based playwright and former resident writer for Toronto’s Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, is making his playRites debut. |
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