>>PREVIEW
LE GROS SPECTACLE
The Wind-up Dames
Alberta Theatre Projects
playRites Festival
Runs February 24 to March 5
Engineered Air Theatre
(Epcor Centre)
Renée Amber stops the moment she takes a sip from her tea. "This is really hot tea!" she exclaims, and laughs. "I think I burned my tongue!"
"You did?" says Brieanna Moench.
"Yes! I burned my tongue! Wow." She looks at me and laughs. "It’s just a reminder that you’re alive, you know?"
Amber and Moench laugh again as it becomes clear why these two actors click. Consider their chronology as the duo better known as The Wind-up Dames:
· 1997 – Moench and Amber meet at the University of Calgary.
· 2000 – They take a creation-based theatre class together, where they create solo works.
· 2001 – They join forces to create their first show, Kaleidoscope, for the U of C drama department’s Nickle and Dime Theatre.
· 2002 – The gals tour the fringe theatre circuit with a show called PeeL, and call themselves The Wind-up Dames.
· 2003 — Ground Zero Theatre presents their third show, PARANOiA, directed by Abby Charcun.
· 2006 – Alberta Theatre Projects showcases Le Gros Spectacle, their latest creation, at its 20th annual playRites Festival, directed by ATP artistic director Bob White.
When they met at the U of C in that creation class, says Moench, they liked each other’s solo pieces so much that they began to wonder what would happen if they teamed up. "So we started meeting once a week for several months, just getting to know each other and talking about our lives, and what we might like to do for a show."
"(We wanted) to see what happens when two fairly different people with different styles put themselves together," adds Amber. "And for our first show, what we ended up doing was playing one person, but different aspects of that person."
That show, Kaleidoscope, would later be incarnated as the fringe show PeeL. "When we were taking PeeL on tour, we had to come up with a name, and so we came up with The Wind-up Dames," says Moench. "We didn’t want to be ‘chicks’ or ‘broads.’ We wanted to be dames."
And now the Dames are back with Le Gros Spectacle, featuring characters they’ve given permission to be, in the words of their program notes, "as ridiculous as we all secretly know ourselves to be." The show also finds them working with a third performer, as heroines Alice and Frances, played by Amber and Moench, respectively, are joined by Louis, portrayed by Frank Zotter.
Le Gros Spectacle is the story of two young women in 1950s Alberta who read an article that claims the most glamorous ladies live in Montreal, so they decide that’s where they need to go. "They draw their personalities from movie folklore – the blond starlet and the raven-haired femme fatale," says Amber.
When they meet Louis, a slightly embittered man living in the world of showbiz, the great spectacle – and shattering of myths – ensues.
"We’re sort of billing it as a fairy-tale cabaret," says Moench. "So it has a fairy-tale element, but it’s for adults. It’s about two girls trying to find their way through an experience in their life and become people."
"There’s a lot of caricature work in the show," adds Amber. "We slip in and out of caricatures at times, so it is a lot about finding the way through to yourself. And by putting on behaviours and then getting caught up in that, you start losing your sense of reality, and start to believe the reality you’re creating." |
Copyright ©2006 FFWD. All rights reserved.