>>PREVIEW
SHOW NO.2: THE ATLANTIS PROJECT
Runs until March 31
Theatre Junction’s Resident Company of Artists
The GRAND (Theatre Junction)
When it comes to the arts, it never hurts to have a few drinks under your belt.
In Theatre Junction’s studio rehearsal space, surrounded by a few tantalizing but disappointingly empty beer bottles, artistic director Mark Lawes and company member Kris Demeanor outline a heady variety of themes for the second show created by TJ’s Resident Company of Artists: The Atlantis Project. The parallels between the mythical affluent city-state and Calgary’s own increasing wealth, the final cataclysm that destroyed it, and even the illusion of utopia have all been on the minds of the company’s ensemble, but in practical terms TJ’s exploration of Atlantis will be a free-floating cabaret with actors, dancers and musicians in a functioning bar.
"The idea of a bar is that world of expectation, promise and illusion," says Demeanor. "And with those things, that mixture, this could be a place where you make a business deal or find love, but it’ll more likely be a place where you get drunk and fall asleep on the toilet."
With its risers removed, replaced by cabaret-style seating and a playing area that will literally weave between its audience, The Grand will be transformed into the Bar Atlantis, a space for three wandering actors (Shawna Burnett, Sadie Evans and Mike Tan), two dancers (Anna Maria Krysiak and Wojciech Mochniej) and the live musical stylings of Kris Demeanor and the Crack Band (Demeanor, Chantal Vitalis, Diane Kooch and Peter Moller). In 60 minutes, the company’s ensemble will trace the journeys of its wandering characters, all while the audience is free to rise and grab drinks from the theatre’s bar.
In TJ’s first season in its new venue, cabarets have already formed an important part of the company’s repertoire. From the extravagant, $250-a-ticket Die Wilde Nacht to the more informal Random Acts and FettFilm cabarets and even the informal style of Show NO.1, TJ has tended towards fragmentary showcases for its resident company over productions with linear throughlines.
"We didn’t want to write a play," says Lawes, adding that the cabaret style is not necessarily intended to be a permanent TJ hallmark. "I doubt that all our shows will have drinks in them from now on."
Though the company was formed in 1991, the last two years have been a period of profound change for TJ. The stairwell leading to The Grand’s rehearsal space provides a record of the company’s recent and significant shift in its artistic direction, with rows of posters advertising past TJ productions (such as David Mamet’s Glengarry, Glenross and Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House ), the kind of mainstream fare that first brought audiences to the company’s original home in the basement of the Jubilee Auditorium.
Promising and unquestionably delivering a new style of theatre with its multidisciplinary resident company of artists, the ensemble’s first creation, Show NO.1: Archeology, was far and away the most controversial show of Calgary’s current theatre season. Maligned by critics, lambasted by local artists and even satirized on-stage during One Yellow Rabbit’s High Performance Rodeo, the first ensemble piece by TJ’s resident company of artists was a polarizing show whose "fragments" left a few feeling that nothing added up.
"It was hard going to the Auburn for a month afterward," says Demeanor, referring to the popular theatre bar. "My ears were burning."
In framing the ensemble’s second production expressly as a cabaret, the company hopes to address any preconceived perceptions about TJ in advance. With its bar, wandering performers and explicit cabaret allusions, there is no mistaking the boozing aura of The Atlantis Project for any of the posters lining The GRAND’s stairwell.
"People do come with an expectation of seeing those texts," says Lawes of the company’s past focus.
"Whereas," adds Demenour, "if you said come and enjoy an evening of music and dance and light and video, people go ‘OK,’ and they do. But if you say this a play and we’re putting it on in a theatre, they’re expecting a bloody throughline. If they don’t find it they’re like, ‘what the hell?’"
"Expectation plays such a huge role," concedes Lawes.
In addition to the external reaction to their first show, a few of the company’s own artists found themselves at an impasse with TJ’s artistic direction. Between Show NO.1 and The Atlantis Project, three members of the resident company of artists (Jessica Carmichael, Allison Lynch and Suzette Mayr) left TJ before their original June contract expiration dates.
"We brought 12 people together and I think it’s a part of the process, a bunch of people coming together that have never worked together before – some people are going to like it and some people aren’t," says Lawes. "I think that happens in any kind of job."
"The sheer size of the ensemble means there are a lot of people with very specific skills, and it’s understandable if they don’t feel their skills or energy are needed as much as they’d like them to be," adds Demeanor.
Over the phone, Mayr’s responses are measured and diplomatic, noting that despite her departure, she has tried to maintain a professional relationship with the company’s members. Among other things, she says, her departure has freed up time for her full-time job as an instructor at the University of Calgary and for her work as a novelist. Leaving in January, Mayr’s difficulty came early in the process of developing The Atlantis Project, where she and Lawes worked as the "writer-director unit."
"Mark and I had different ideas," she says, "which was fine."
Though hers was the first departure, Mayr doesn’t believe her leaving influenced the subsequent departures of Lynch and Carmichael, saying, "I don’t think I opened the floodgates or anything."
Carmichael, who left the company early in February, says that while she has signed an agreement with TJ agreeing not to share the details of her contract’s dissolution, she will say "that it has not been a favourite theatre experience, and that I am very happy now that I have left."
Mirroring Mayr’s own impasse with Lawes, she adds, "I think the material I was working on for Show NO.2: The Atlantis Project could have been radically different had I been working in a collective environment."
For Lawes, the company’s rocky first show and internal troubles are all part of a larger context he feels is currently not understood. Show NO.1 was, he points out, exactly that: the first production of a brand new ensemble in a brand new space.
"I guess the other thing to remember is that we weren’t even open a year," says Lawes. "We were very ambitious to open a theatre and have a new company and make new work. So I think maybe what people don’t realize is just how difficult it is to step out sometimes and just get a breath of air. To say, ‘OK, where are we at one year later?’"
Now, with the company’s second creation ready to open, the question is certainly valid. Calgary audiences will get the chance to decide, drink in hand. |
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