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February 20, 2009
A quirkier side to Chutzpah!
Smaller acts are what give the festival its cutting edge.
DANA SCHLANGER
When a festival's offerings are as impressive and eclectic as the line-up of Chutzpah! this year, there's a chance one may overlook the quirkier side in favor of the mainstream one. And if Pastrami on Rye ... With Mayo is the opening act of the festival, think of the Wosk Cabaret shows as the pickle that couldn't possibly be missing from the sandwich, lest it loses its punch....
The smaller, intimate venue of the Wosk Cabaret makes it ideal for the shows that engage the audience directly and personally, even if the story they're experiencing may be completely foreign to them. Take, for example, Laura Harris' Pitch Blond, a snapshot of a crucial moment in the life of Judy Holliday, Oscar winner for 1950's Born Yesterday, who was a 170-IQ genius who specialized in playing dumb blonds. Her dumb blond act held her in good stead when she was hauled before Sen. McCarthy's inquisitors in 1952 on suspicion of having communist sympathies. "What piqued my interest," recalled Harris, "was when I found out that she pretended to be dumb in her testimony: you can see this in the FBI transcripts. As I was reading them, I thought that her answers were very funny and entertaining and really poignant. And they asked her questions about her upbringing and her relationships with her friends and I thought that would be a good way to go in and out of her personal life within the testimony." Harris' play was chosen as Best Fringe Production in the Victoria Fringe Festival in 2007 and Harris, who admits to having herself been pegged as a "dumb blond" at times, feels that the stereotype is definitely alive and explains her personal connection to the character. "I think we share a similar humor and I admire her strength and courage," said Harris. "She kind of flipped the stereotype of the dumb blond around and made the interrogators look dumb."
Harris is taking the show on the road this summer to the Orlando Fringe Festival, among others, and is really curious to see how American audiences will react to this American story.
If Pitch Blond deals with a real historical character that becomes a symbol for a bigger truth, one may think that The Sputniks will be Russian-born Elison Zasko's personal story. However, it's not. It's the story of a Jewish family of the Soviet intelligentsia who escape the Iron Curtain, leaving behind endless Russian lineups, homemade pickles and a certain attitude. Bound to homeless travel, they bravely play chess, eat soup and carry their tragedies deep inside. On the phone, Zasko said, "It is, in fact, a completely fictional story, but I created it based on many historical materials and also on the personal experience of people who surrounded me when I was living back in Russia. When I toured the show this summer, people would come up to me and tell me that I just told their story, or that of their grandmother or grandfather. So I do believe that I hit the truth there." Having arrived in Canada eight years ago on a dance scholarship, Zasko is pursuing a performing career where The Sputniks features prominently at present. "I feel this play deserves a longer life and wider audiences," said Zasko. "The subject of displacement, immigration and wandering needs to be told over and over. I'm trying to present the show as much as I can."
Zasko credited her director, Jonna Katz, a well-known physical theatre performer originally from Australia, with being heavily involved in the development of the play. "We basically improvised several of the scenes together and then I wrote them down," she said. A Montreal critic wrote about The Sputniks: "Elison Zasko deftly laid and set the trap. We all became better people for falling into it. Checkmate."
Rounding up the theatrical offerings of the Wosk Cabaret is The Devil and Billy Markham, subtitled "a raunchy rock 'n' roll rhapsody" by Shel Silverstein. Performed by Matthew Kowalchuk with live musical accompaniment by Daniel Deorksen, this is not your typical personal experience-style solo show, but an epic, six-part poem told in rhyme. Don't be afraid of verse, though – between shouting, singing and moving, expect a tale of love and lust, greed and grime, trickery and foolery, suspense and nonsense. Expect some beautiful words and more than a little rock and roll. As the action unfolds, you will take a trip from hell to heaven and back again. Watch Billy and the Devil as they square off for lost souls. Witness a pool match with God and a wedding in hell where everyone is invited. Basically a retelling of the Faust legend set in country music, The Devil and Billy Markham is as non-typical as it gets.
A great festival is as great as its smaller shows. They are the bloodline that connects between the bigger events, the laboratory where sometimes younger, newer artists put their hearts and skills on the line in front of an audience that becomes involved by their stories. They are the pulse of a festival ... and the pickle in the sandwich.
Dana Schlanger is a Vancouver freelance writer and the director of the Dena Wosk School of Performing Arts at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver.
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