>>PREVIEW
THE ALAN PARKINSON’S PROJECT
Ghost River Theatre
Runs until June 24
Easterbrook Theatre
Community Arts Centre (Currie Barracks)
Two and a half years ago, Ghost River Theatre’s artistic director, Doug Curtis, was diagnosed with early-onset Parkinson’s. Characterized by tremors, rigidity and other motor and non-motor symptoms, the disease essentially traps its victim in their own body, removing the basic control that we take for granted.
"It’s a cruel thief," says Curtis. "It steals your voice, it steals your handwriting, it steals your walk, it steals your centre of gravity and balance."
Less than eight months ago, the idea for The Alan Parkinson’s Project was still an unfinished idea, albeit one that was announced in Ghost River’s 2005-06 season lineup. Since then, the work has formed into 60 short scenes about Parkinson’s disease, focusing on a young artist named Alan Parkinson (Doug McKeag) who, like Curtis, is diagnosed with early-onset Parkinson’s. Written and directed by Curtis, the work is an attempt to translate a unique, physical experience into a narrative that is accessible not only to the actors called on to imitate the symptoms, but for an audience called to confront this image.
"Humour deflects and heals. It’s tragedy plus time," says Curtis, alluding to the play’s use of humour, even when confronting what might otherwise seem to be a tragic scene. "Say you’re sitting in a restaurant and you see someone twitching, and it’s kind of funny. It’s not ‘ha ha’ funny, it’s sort of secret laughter. He’s not bleeding."
But as much as the play calls on its audience to see the humour and humanity in the disease, its challenge is also extremely pronounced for its performers – McKeag, Onalea Gilbertson, Adrienne Smook, Brian Smith and Danny Dorosh – each playing multiple roles in the production. After all, while Curtis can describe his symptoms, dealing with the disease is itself a highly personal experience.
"(Experiences are) very important in creating a sort of theatrical vocabulary that is on one level unbelievable, and at the same time amazingly theatrical," he says. "Because you’re looking at the given circumstances that this illness produces, and you’re giving a direction to an actor of an experience that you had three months earlier – stuck in your office, writhing on the floor like a large tuna fighting its way out of the boat, where you keep moving and twisting."
Even during this attack, Curtis was able to draw something from the experience that would serve as a concrete example for the collaborative work.
"At one point, I just thought I was losing my mind, it had been happening for three hours. And I reached over for a piece of paper and a felt pen, grabbed them, and I wrote, ‘This is what the hardest ones are like.’ It was like an automatic writing.
"I grabbed that piece of paper and that felt pen because I wanted to find out what it was like to write in the midst of an attack. It was wild. And then to see an actor do that…."
Less than two weeks before the production’s première, the collaboration involved in The Alan Parkinson’s Project’s creation is still underway. Curtis even alludes to the possibility of at least five endings, potentially varying depending on the performers’ inclinations – from a successful brain surgery to a disaster. It’s an uncertainty he feels is essential to the story he intends to tell, one based so intimately on his own experiences with the disease. Even as the opening night of the play looms large, he points out that the end is still not in sight.
"That’s the thing about stories, they always have to be finished," says Curtis. "I don’t know where my story is going to lead." |
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