The aleph diego matamoros & daniel brooks artist note: diego matamoros “The mirror, where a subject sees an object which is both itself and not itself, is a central metaphor of knowledge, and such words as “speculation” and “reflection” point to its importance.” – Northrop Frye “The Double Vision” Perhaps it is too strong a statement to make (but I don’t really think so) that The Aleph began as a love affair between myself and two old (middle aged?) friends I’ve loved and worked with over many years. Michael Levine and I went to the same high school and though we never really knew each other that far back we certainly shared many similar memories. And since then I often feel very much as if we grew up together in the same neighborhood. It has been my great privilege to have worked with him on the Chekhov productions he’s designed for Soulpepper over the past ten years or so. Daniel Brooks and I also go back a good long way. He has been my main collaborator on this project and the reason this piece exists at all. There is no Aleph without Daniel and I’m not overstating the point. He has been with me through both the thick and the thin of the creation of this often difficult, challenging, but never less than magical journey. Michael suggested I go back to Buenos Aires as I was first embarking on this project in 2006 and the very next year I went. In retrospect this was also a deciding factor for me in committing to creating this piece. I call it a ‘piece’ and not a play because it is just that. A piece. A fragment. A fragment of Michael, Daniel and I, all borrowed and inspired, I should like to stress, from Jorge Luis Borges’ masterpiece.
Diego Matamoros, co-creator and performer of The Aleph
photo: cylla von tiedemann
The aleph diego matamoros & daniel brooks canada 2010
production
cast
Daniel Brooks director
Diego Matamoros
Michael Levine set & costume designer Kevin Lamotte lighting designer Jean-SĂŠbastien CĂ´tĂŠ original sound designer Camellia Koo assistant Set & costume designer Joseph Patrick assistant lighting designer Richard Feren Associate sound designer Adam Harendorf assistant sound designer Andrew Dollar production stage manager Kat Chin assistant stage manager Sarah Miller Rehearsal stage manager
Approximate running time 1 hours and 25 minutes.
background notes Daniel Brooks and Diego Matamoros first had the idea for The Aleph five years ago. They have worked on and off in this period, exploring, testing, and examining, sometimes together in a rehearsal hall and sometimes in front of an audience. During its short run last year in Soulpepper’s Lab Series, there was a talkback every night and the creators had time to sift the audience responses and questions before they returned this year to rehearsal. Part of the power of this piece – and a measure of its creators’ precision and thoughtfulness – is the economy and simplicity of their storytelling. They achieve a seamless compression of all of the ideas and roads they’ve traveled over the course of their collaboration. When Daniel Brooks is asked in a recent conversation if this production is an adaptation of the Jorge Luis Borges short story of the same name, he takes time to consider his response. “We used several of Borges’ ideas as a starting point,” he finally says. The author would approve – or at the very least he’d be intrigued. Borges’ stories are often more driven by a proposition or an idea than by character or plot. The Argentine master loved mixing, recreating, and inventing. For example, in his translations, he sometimes adjusted the original text, changed the meaning or added his own interpretations. He believed all these actions were perfectly justified as part of the journey a literary work made from one language to another. His own works mixed philosophy and fact, fantasy and mystery. Even his humour was based in ideas: he pioneered the art of writing dead-serious reviews of imaginary books, and “translating” “ancient” works he later admitted he himself had invented. He often appears as a character in his own work as well, most obviously in the short story Borges and I. These three artists – Matamoros, Brooks and Borges – are united by a fascination with questions. For them, an elegant riddle beats a detailed, every-nuance-nailed-down explanation every time. Over the course of a short conversation during a break in rehearsal, I ask Daniel Brooks many questions, some of which he answers and some of which he gracefully evades. He does speak with admiration of Borges’ way of taking a premise that is false and then proceeding, in the most logical and thorough way, to question everything about that premise, except the truth of the premise itself. So, do they use the eponymous story as a mirror for their own reflections? How did they land on the shape of the show? How much of the text itself is Borges and how much is Brooks and Matamoros? The director smiles. “All these questions are opportunities for play and meditation,” he says, as he returns to rehearsal. My questions remain unanswered but my interest is definitely piqued.
Background Notes by Associate Artist Paula Wing.
soulpepper production Jacqueline Robertson-Cull
Janet Pym Natalie Swiercz
head of hair & makeup
sewers/dressers
Greg Chambers
Duncan Johnstone Daniela Mazic
props builder
Phil Atfield
Mike Keays
cutter
carpenter
scenic artists
soulpepper thanks: Mar-Lyn Lumber Sales Ltd., PRG Toronto, JD International, Tarragon Theatre, Michael Freeman, Dual Audio Services, Technically Yours Inc., Gerrard Glass. Soulpepper Theatre Company is an active member of the Professional Association of Canadian Theatres (pact), the Toronto Alliance for the Performing Arts (tapa) and Theatre Ontario, and engages, under the terms of the Canadian Theatre Agreement, professional artists who are members of Canadian Actors’ Equity Association.
YOUNG CENTRE FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS DISTILLERY HISTORIC DISTRICT