>>PREVIEW
WHY FREUD FAINTED
Runs until February 17
Written by David Rhymer in collaboration with Vanessa Porteous
Alberta Theatre Projects
playRites Festival
Big Secret Theatre (Epcor Centre)
Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to a meeting of the minds. Here, at a meeting of the Heterodoxy Club for Unusual Women, witness a decompression, not a head shrinking. Why, in 1909, did the father of psychoanalysis faint into the arms of his former pupil, the equally esteemed Carl Jung? Can it have been anything but a subconscious impulse? A reaction to a long history heretofore ignored? Can this faint (which can surely not just be a faint) actually be a Freudian swoon?
Created by David Rhymer and Vanessa Porteous, Why Freud Fainted explores the dramatic interplay between two of the 20th century’s most influential figures through the lens of a fateful faint. Performed by the Heterodoxy Club for Unusual Women, a historical collective of radical liberal-minded women, the club’s account of the two men’s relationship traces their original infatuation from their original correspondence through their diverging paths and clashing egos, all told in dialogue, dance and music.
Love, of course, factors heavily into the lives of both men, with each confronting a patient’s attachment early in the play. Importantly, this focus on the nature of love is also essential to the relationship between the two men, one in which both Rhymer and Porteous see the traditional arc of a love affair.
"Their letters – they’re passionate and you would think it was between a man and a woman," says Rhymer. "And then their breakup is so heartbreaking. I don’t think they had a homosexual relationship – perhaps a homosensual relationship – but their breakup affected them radically. Jung had a schizophrenic break two years after and Freud was never the same."
"They’re in their heads, but they’re driven by their emotions," adds Porteous. "And it was when we figured that about them, very early on, that we knew we had a show. People who were blind to their own ambitions, their own desire – that’s what destroys their relationship."
Calgary audiences first saw Why Freud Fainted as a Platform Play at last year’s playRites, then a staged reading of a series of interconnected ideas still searching for an overarching structure. After receiving compliments on the reading as a fine example of an "ideas" play, both collaborators revisited its core, eventually creating a pastiche of theatrical styles. Freud’s endurance may owe everything to the strength of his ideas, but Porteous was adamant that the play bring more to the stage than academic theory.
"I said to David, it might be an ‘ideas’ play, but artistically speaking, I’m uninterested in scene after scene of people talking about their ideas," she says. "I’d had it with talky plays, and we felt strongly that the ideas were better expressed in multidisciplinary forms. Having someone tell you their dream would take a monologue, but doing a dream ballet with vamping inspired by the 1920s is way more fun and gets to the heart of the matter."
The result was an intensive collaboration between Rhymer and Porteous at the Banff playRites colony, built on Rhymer’s own extensive funded research into the lives of both psychological giants and the simple appointments of a mountain cabin. Freud’s development also included the production’s actors from an early stage, with the play’s four Heterodoxy Club members (Miss O, Mr. T, Miss J, and Mr. D) named for the play’s original ensemble: Onalea Gilbertson, Tim Koetting (who, after having to bow out, has been replaced by Duval Lang), Jamie Konchak and David Van Belle.
In addition to its involved cast and placement in a festival of new play development, Freud boasts an enviable collaborative pedigree. Porteous herself brings years of experience in new play development as ATP’s former dramaturg, and though he is better known to Calgary audiences as a composer, Rhymer’s first love was playwriting. Before providing the scores for scores of One Yellow Rabbit productions, Rhymer arrived in Calgary in 1989 to work on the Rabbits’ Isla: Queen of the Nazi Love Camp without any prior musical experience.
Together, the two have created a metatheatrical pastiche they hope will maintain its solid ideas with the panache of a musical, the kind of reconciliation that Freud and Jung never enjoyed. But if there is a final subconscious nod to the quasi-romance that ultimately failed between the two men, it may be in this year’s playRites emblem: a Rorschach inkblot test. In it, both Rhymer and Porteous see the same image: two men kissing. |
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