>>PREVIEW
RANDOM ACTS
Friday, December 15 and Saturday, December 16
Theatre Junction
The GRAND (Theatre Junction)
When Theatre Junction’s Peter Moller talks about exposing the company’s Resident Company of Artists to improvisational music, he doesn’t mince words.
"I wanted to expose them to (improvisational music)," he says, "to pop their cherries."
Though the company may yet produce a series of short works from local companies, as it has in the past, Theatre Junction’s Random Acts has taken a different turn this year as Moller’s musical brainchild. After three days of workshops, the company’s artists and invited guest artists will come together for two Random Acts Arts cabarets, jamming in the Grand’s studio space with a variety of traditional and homemade instruments. On the potential creation of a homemade instrument, Moller offers an example of a friend throwing a vibrating dildo into a china cabinet, rattling both flatware and cabinet.
"When you’re in an improvisational mode, everything’s an instrument," he says. "The world is your oyster when you’re in that vein."
Unlike the company’s mainstage shows, the Random Acts Arts Cabaret will be a relatively low-key affair. Falling in the relaxed zone just before the company takes its Christmas break, the cabaret will take place in front of a crowd whose size will be limited by the intimacy of the studio space.
"This is more like having it in your living room rather than having to go out to the stadium to see a rock show," says Moller. "It’s a little more intimate."
Among others, Moller hopes to use the unique skills of Dave Clark, a visiting artist who Moller first met when he produced a show for One Yellow Rabbit’s High Performance Rodeo called The Shrine of Impossible Love. After seeing Clark conduct a later performance incorporating over 30 performers, four drumkits and an entire audience, Moller hit on an experience from which he wanted participation from his fellow artists. With other guest artists including Chris Dadge, Brigitte Dajczer and Moller’s Crack Band bandmate, Chantal Vitalis, the evening will also include works by some of TJ’s own artists.
It’s a process that Moller concedes may not be for most audiences, catering instead to those who already have an interest in experimental music. However, because of the company’s artistic structure, which allows its artists to continue to develop multidisciplinary skills, he points out that the cabarets will offer interested audiences a glimpse into the future of the company.
"I would hope that people would be interested to check this out to get a sense of where this might be going in the future," he says. "They will get a taste of it for sure."
Theatre Junction’s first collaborative effort as a company, Show No. 1, was greeted with considerable critical hostility, even receiving an uncharacteristic backlash from the artistic community itself. The prospect of a collaboration so soon after Show No. 1’s November premiere raises an important question: Just how much pressure does this new collaboration bring to the company, especially with Moller hoping to cull material from the cabarets for the company’s next show?
"I don’t feel any pressure on any of this," he replies. "A bunch of us know we’re here for a long tenure to create things, and nothing happens right away. You learn from process, and part of the process is figuring out how that process works.
"We’ve been getting tighter, learning each other’s pluses and minuses, because we had this time," he adds. "Everybody’s coalescing."
Though The Random Acts Arts Cabaret, which comes after TJ’s first cabaret, Die Wilde Nacht, will be the first performance under the Random Acts aegis to change directions for the Random Acts series, other cabarets will also be used to prepare material for subsequent shows. Where Moller’s current project has taken the company towards music, in January, video artists Torge Moller and Momme Hinrichs will lead workshops for video on stage. The following two cabarets will then be run by the company’s younger members.
"They’ll get to push us around," notes Moller with a smile. |
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