Double Bill - Playbill

double bill: (re) birth: e.e. cummings in song & window on toronto artist note: Jason patrick Rothery Here’s what I dig most about theatre: even at its most hierarchical – from playwright to director to actor(s) and designers to you, our audience (no less a participant) – this is an inherently collaborative craft.

If a script is a blueprint for a building-to-be, then collaborative creation (which is how this double bill came about) forgoes the plans. Having defined the field or framework with an impulse or point of inspiration – the poetry of Edward Estlin Cummings, the perspective of a hotdog vendor – the task is this: assemble a puzzle with no picture on the box. Oh, and make your own pieces. Any given piece might connect to any other, so keep fitting (mashing) them together (all the while making more) until… something… just… kind of… … clicks.

Having worked within several ensembles, I can attest that though there are parallels, each process is tailored by and to the talent and skill-sets present in the room. Furthermore, every ensemble develops their own unique vocabulary. We – the second Soulpepper Academy – would say kernelling (a concept is a kernel and we add the heat until it pops), or a coded phrase meaning “this might be the worst idea ever…” that cannot be repeated in polite society but includes the word taco or – here’s some Mr. Dressup generation nomenclature for you – tickle-trunk, as in the toys we fill our space with: balloons, paper hats, puppets…

The hope and potential payoff is that the resulting whatever-it-is transcends what any individual could have created alone; could only have arisen through negotiation and compromise, through a gradual (sometimes painstakingly so) accumulation, aggregation, and coalescing of myriad (seemingly disparate) ideas; the bizarre combination of this given group of minds contorting into a single shape.

The risk lies in a glorious leap of faith, a communal trust that at some point, eventually, any day/hour/minute/second now, you’ll stumble over that something – that nexus or nucleus or organizing principle (every pearl starts with a single grain of sand, right?). Once you’ve found it – heard that elusive click – more pieces snap into place, the picture comes into focus and the kernels pop fast and furious.

Jason Patrick Rothery, Soulpepper Academy Member

photos: cylla von tiedmann

Double Bill: (re)birth: e.e. cummings in song

& window on toronto

gregory prest, tatjana cornij & karen rae

(re)birth: e.e. cummings in song Production

ensemble

Mike Ross Music director

Ins Choi Tatjana Cornij Trish Lindström Ken MacKenzie Abena Malika Gregory Prest Karen Rae Jason Patrick Rothery Mike Ross Brendan Wall

Ken MacKenzie set, costume & lighting designer Andrew Dollar production stage manager Kat Chin assistant stage manager Kelly McEvenue alexander coach

window on toronto Production

ensemble

László Marton director

Ins Choi Tatjana Cornij Trish Lindström Ken MacKenzie Gregory Prest Karen Rae Jason Patrick Rothery Andre Sills Brendan Wall

Ken MacKenzie set, costume & lighting designer Lyon Smith sound designer Andrew Dollar production stage manager Kat Chin assistant stage manager Kelly McEvenue alexander coach

Special thanks to Raquel Duffy and Matthew Kabwe for their creative contributions to (re)Birth: E.E. Cummings in Song and Window on Toronto There will be one 20-minute intermission. Approximate running time 2 hours and 10 minutes.

background notes (re)Birth: E.E. Cummings in Song was created by the members of Soulpepper’s second Academy two years ago and performed as part of the Global Cabaret Festival. Its original blend of poetry, song, movement, and staging so delighted audiences that it has been brought back and paired with the hyperkinetic, collectively created Window on Toronto, a kind of skewed valentine to our city and its inhabitants, which was part of Soulpepper’s Lab Series last year. Together they represent two kinds of creation that we’re exploring at Soulpepper: the reimagination of so-called classic works, and original works that respond to our time and place.

E.E. Cummings certainly fits our definition of classic. He was widely read and admired in his day amongst American poets, considered second only to Robert Frost in popularity. His poetry was a fascinating mix of iconoclasm and tradition. He sang the innocence of childhood, playing freely with punctuation and syntax. Yet many poems contain a sinister element: the looming presence of the adult world, full – in Cummings’ view – of corruption and antagonism. Cummings’ best poems are animated by a muscular, palpable curiosity, a delight in the natural world and a child’s sense of mischief. Many of his “greatest hits” are revisited and reinvented in (re)Birth.

To create the show, the Academy dove into the poems. Dispensing with traditional analysis – and surely this would have pleased Cummings – they simply responded, putting poems on their feet, taking individual musical ideas and riffing on them as a group. Company member Jason Rothery defines it this way: “It’s more like being in a band than being in a play.” In keeping with this spirit, the show has no director. It was facilitated and managed by Mike Ross, who served as musical director, outside eye and sometimes master of mayhem. It’s a hard show to define and more difficult still to describe the spell it casts. Rothery says, “It’s something you feel, not something you think. More like dance. Less like theatre.” If we take a leaf from Cummings himself maybe we can just say it’s untheatre.

Window on Toronto, on the other hand, grew organically out of a simple observation exercise.

While rehearsing Tales from the Vienna Woods, director László Marton drew on his long experience as a drama educator and instructed the group to think about documenting the city around them through improvisation. Armed with the task of identifying places they considered most representative of Toronto, the Academy set out to document their surroundings, and after an extensive process of sifting through photographs, video, and personal observations, decided on a hot dog truck parked in the centrally-located Nathan Phillips Square as their iconic spot. Using a new and experimental means of theatre creation, Marton combined ‘documentary’ theatre with improvisation to build the world that swirled around outside the hot dog truck, through characters based on real figures observed around the city and recreated as they were. The many personalities of the hot dog vendor's world were replicated as realistically as possible in rapid-fire succession, always observed through a small window which places the audience inside the truck. Eight of the nine cast members play dozens of characters, with lightning-fast costume and character changes behind the exterior walls of the truck, before entering to interact with the hot dog vendor. As the world was created, Marton would regulate the tempo and content, calling out, “Yes, yes, next,” often before the actor could complete their scene. This feverish creation process resulted in a 45-minute piece with a life of its own that emerged from the progressive, experimental Soulpepper Lab Series work that marks part of the company’s progression.

The two shows are linked in their approach and style and perhaps especially through the musicality and inventiveness of the cast – including three new ensemble members, Trish Lindström, Abena Malika and Andre Sills. Both shows are driven by a manic, delicious sense of possibility, playfulness, risk-taking. There’s plenty of food for thought and a banquet of feeling. As Jason Rothery jokes: it’s like cummings home.

Background Notes by Associate Artists Paula Wing & Toby Malone.

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: Shawnte Clow (wardrobe co-op student), JD International, Technically Yours, Inc., Dan Baker and Ryerson Theatre 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. Diana Bentley is appearing with the special permission of Canadian Actors' Equity Association.

YOUNG CENTRE FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS DISTILLERY HISTORIC DISTRICT