| Judith Mendelsohn is a clown, but she doesn’t do birthdays.
"I do find that when people talk to me, their first assumption is that I’m a birthday clown," she admits. "It does take some explanation of my background and the type of clowning I do, which is specific to Canada, developed by Richard Pachenko."
Though she has already played in Calgary, Edmonton and Saskatoon, Mendelsohn is still relatively new to clowning, attending her first workshop in 2005. It was during her master’s studies at the University of Calgary that Mendelsohn first joined Green Fools Theatre as a stilt walker, eventually studying clowning with John Turner of Mump and Smoot, a grotesque clown duo no more appropriate for birthday parties than Mendelsohn’s own unique style.
With its endearingly naive sense of macabre humour, Mendelsohn‘s last show would have driven any protective parents running for the hills with their hands clamped over their children’s eyes. Following Mendelsohn’s clown persona, Murky, in her adventure as the proud parent of a bouncing baby tomato, Hothouse saw Murky run the gamut from womb to tomb – first feeding her titular tomato its own placenta and then later accidentally murdering it.
Even with its dash of shadow puppetry, it’s difficult to imagine bringing out a birthday cake for a group of kids after they’ve just watched infanticide.
There’s no small irony, then, in Mendelsohn’s upcoming show Bonne Fete, a 45-minute production with a birthday cake of its very own with Murky determined to throw her audience the best birthday party that they’ve ever seen. Even if the intensive, self-evaluative process of Canadian clowning isn’t exactly the face-painted foolishness of the birthday clown, Mendelsohn can’t help but be drawn back to the flame of the birthday cake’s candles.
"Frankly, birthdays have so much material to play with," she concedes. "And yeah, there’s going to be a cake baked during the show, and party games."
Originally, Mendelsohn had been given her time in the Joyce Doolittle Theatre by Sage Theatre, who had the space booked before their upcoming run of Morwyn Brebner’s Music for Contortionist. While it was Hothouse that first drew Sage’s attention, it was Mendelsohn’s director, Peter Balkwill, who suggested that the time might be a chance for a new show, rather than a remount of one which had already enjoyed runs at The Calgary Region One-Act Play Festival, Theatre Junction’s Random Acts, Sage Theatre’s Ignite! Festival and the Saskatoon Fringe Festival. From there, Mendelsohn began writing a show about a birthday, rather than one unnatural birth.
With a longer running time, a tail-end film presentation on Super-8 and the appearance of Murky’s hunky love interest, Mendelsohn is looking forward to tackling the ignoble birthday clown. Though she promises that no placentas will be consumed at any point in Bonne Fete, Mendelsohn does offer one hint: "Definitely lots of water."
Bonne Fete runs from March 14 to 17 at the Joyce Doolittle Theatre. For tickets or information, call 263-0079.
FAITHFUL SERVANT
Where Old Testament suffering is concerned, it’s hard to top the sheer boil-sprouting pain of God’s good and faithful servant Job. Adding a fresh coat of theatrical lacquer, playwright Neil Simon’s God’s Favourite is a comic play of schadenfreude, with the tent-dwelling tribesman relocated into a Long Island mansion and the Devil replaced by a heavenly messenger with a God-branded T-shirt.
Sometimes being the favourite is a pretty raw deal.
God’s Favourite runs from March 14 to 17 at the Engineered Air Theatre. For tickets or information, call 284-5100, extension 228.
ONE FOR ALL, ALL FOR ONE
Bid bonjour to D'Artangan, Athos, Porthos and Aramis: the three Musketeers – wait, isn’t that four? Ah well, local playwright Ben Blue is almost certainly able to count better than any local theatre critic. And with swashbuckling action and the swagger of self-assured Frenchmen, who has time for middling addition? En garde! It also features Fast Forward’s own Video Vulture, John Tebbutt, as King Louis XIII.
The Three Musketeers runs from March 15 to 31 at Dancers' Studio West. For tickets or information call 999-2024 or visit www.scorpio.ca.
BLOODY SUNDAY
On January 30, 1972 in Derry, Northern Ireland, 26 civil rights protestors were shot by members of the British Army during a Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association demonstration. The day would become known as Bloody Sunday, a major flashpoint in the tensions between Britain and Irish nationalists. More than two decades after a subsequent inquiry by Lord Widgery cleared all British troops involved, remaining public anger prompted a second inquiry in 1998, headed by Lord Arthur Saville.
Written by journalist Richard Norton-Taylor, Bloody Sunday: Scenes from the Saville Enquiry is a dramatization of the Saville inquiry, appropriately produced by local theatre company The Liffey Players, who perform "plays by and about the Irish."
Bloody Sunday: Scenes from the Saville Enquiry runs from March 15 to 17 and March 20 to 24 at the Victor Mitchell Theatre. For tickets or information, call 263-0079 or visit www.liffeyplayers.com. |
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