Preview
LES GROS SPECTACLE
The Wind-Up Dames
Saturday, March 5
Engineered Air Theatre (Epcor Centre)
Before they raise the curtain on opening night, a production has already seen weeks of rehearsal and months, sometimes years, of development. But when the lights come up on the playRites festival’s free BD&P Stage 2, the main act is the process of play development itself, with works-in-progress by up-and-coming Calgary playwrights and dramatized readings of potential mainstage plays for next year’s festival.
For The Wind-Up Dames, alias Renée Amber and Brieanna Moench, the process of play development is a bit like a demonstrative pregnancy. An off-kilter metaphor, perhaps, but on par for a pair of young actors whose work has always relied on a touch of the bizarre.
"It’s sort of like when you have a baby and you go in for an ultrasound but you don’t show anyone the photos until it looks like a baby," says Amber of the Dames’ new work-in-progress, tentatively titled Le Gros Spectacle, the story of two small-town Alberta girls and their adventures in the heyday of Montreal’s cabaret scene.
"Babies kind of look like Skeletors in the ultrasound," adds a smiling Moench.
"But this one has a spine and a head and a heartbeat, and we’ve just started to feel it kicking," finishes Amber. "It’s like an ultrasound for the audience, only in colour."
Since graduating from the University of Calgary in 2002, the Dames have been seen in Calgary at the High Performance Rodeo’s 10-Minute Play Festival (twice), in their 2003 Ground Zero production of Paranoia and individually with the city’s major companies – Amber has just finished a run with Theatre Calgary’s Macbeth while Moench is currently in the playRites ensemble of actors. Their new show is being created in collaboration with Alberta Theatre Projects as part of the company’s new Playwrights Unit.
In many ways, Calgary has been good for the Dames, and so while the wide-eyed Alice and Francis of Les Gros Spectacle may see Montreal as the new mecca for would-be cabaret showstoppers, Moench and Amber are staying put.
"(Montreal’s) an exciting place to live and I do love it, but my opportunities exist here, not there," says Moench. "So it’s quite funny that we’re writing about a place that seems to hold the key to our success, but actually we have to be here in Calgary to be writing about it. It would take us years to get it (done) in Montreal or we’d do it on our own."
Amber agrees. "We never would have thought, ‘Here you go ATP, we had this little idea. Would you think about doing that?’ So when they asked us to do it, it was such a delightful surprise. And then they carried through on it." Le Gros Spectacle is slated for an ATP production in 2006.
In addition to the Dames’ staged reading, ATP’s other playRites activities on its new BD&P Stage this weekend (the festival’s final "Blitz") include The Generations Project, a co-operative effort that sees young playwrights and actors paired with industry mentors, and another instalment in the festival’s long-standing Platform Play series.
The Platform Play featured will be Mansel Robinson’s Picking Up Chekhov. The play follows a father, daughter and an impromptu hitchhiker on a road trip gone sour, with no fewer than 31 supporting bystanders springing from the production’s three principal actors. Often a testing ground for next year’s playRites mainstage shows, the Platform Play series is an opportunity to get an advance look at potential productions as well as an intimate perspective on the process of play development, complementing the work of young playwrights like the Dames.
"More and more we want to bring our audience as close to the process as we can," says ATP dramaturge Vanessa Porteous. "I think people are quite fascinated by how you make new work and want to know more about it."
With three of last year’s four Platform Plays on this year’s playRites mainstage, there’s a good chance that what you see on the BD&P Stage 2 this year will find its way to a full production in 2006.
"It’s intriguing to go and see a play and hear the words you heard a year ago spoken again in context; you remember them but now you see what they mean," says Porteous. "I have that experience when I read a script in my office and then I go see a production of it at another theatre company, and I haven’t made contact with it between those two moments. Suddenly I’m going, ‘Oh, that’s what that moment meant,’ and ‘Oh, now I understand what that character is all about.’
"It’s just a way of getting inside the process a little earlier, and it’s all free." |
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