Talk About Push: Claire Calnan in Vancouver

Earlier this year I decided to travel out west to the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival in Vancouver. I was suffering from a serious case of burnout and the PuSh program promised me inspiration, rejuvenation and conversation.

Perfect.

I saw five shows at PuSh. I will talk about the two shows that most moved me…in very different directions.

But first, I do think it is important to contextualize the climate in Vancouver when I arrived there in mid-January (and I don’t mean the mild temperatures and the lack of snow…)

At the time in question the entire city was going about its business rather frantically as it prepared for the influx of several hundred thousand visitors from around the world. The looming shadow of the approaching Winter Games was growing ever closer.

It is interesting to note that several of the events at PuSh were presented as a part of the Cultural Olympiad, which has a contract stipulation prohibiting artists from criticizing the Games or any of its sponsors. Artists have chosen to deal with what has been coined the “muzzle” clause in a variety of ways- from ignoring the provision to renegotiating the wording of the contracts to opting out of participating in the cultural events surrounding the Games all together. And though the BC government has not directly funded VANOC (and therefore criticizing the government is not breaking the rules) the inclusion of this authoritarian clause seems to have added to the hostile environment BC artists have found themselves in of late.  Battered by drastic cuts to funding from their provincial government (upwards of 90%) the local arts community could not be faulted if they found the glitzy celebration of culture tied to the Olympic Games to be a wee bit disingenuous.

Perhaps it is fitting that The Show Must Go On was the first production I attended.  And it began, as most work at the festival, with a PuSh staff member addressing the issue of the BC funding cuts and encouraging the audience to contact their local MPP if they thought the arts were important, which their presence in a theatre seemed to suggest that they might. 

In The Show Must Go On French choreographer Jérôme Bel tosses us into a tangible exploration of the relationship between performer and audience and a playful examination of the nature of performance itself. 

The set-up is quite simple. A technician sits at the downstage edge of the playing space, always in full sight of the audience, with a stack of CDs. He plays them one by one until the stack is gone. 20 performers, with still-faced expressions throughout, play with what we expect to see when we hear these aural cues.

The show was clever, very funny and occasionally genuinely moving. Of course, the next moment the choice of music or staging seemed to make fun of the fact that I had been moved…but I didn’t mind. It winked at me and smiled.

Cast locally, the “choreography” (I put it in quotes as most would not recognize the movements in this piece as anything related to dance) was orchestrated not by Bel himself, but by two performers who had appeared in the original production. Apparently, he has moved on. The piece is nearly a decade old which is evident in the selection of music played throughout. Though some of the pieces would have already been nostalgic in 2001, listening to ‘The Real Slim Shady’, ‘the Macarena’, and Celine’s ‘My Heart Will Go On’ in 2010 can feel like tired jokes worthy of a good eye-roll.

Nevertheless, I was charmed by the show.

A few days after I saw it I met one of the performers who told me that the Bel was extremely adamant that the piece was not an ‘audience participation show’.  I found this surprising as one of the production’s strengths was how gently and skillfully it seemed to ease one towards taking part. Though I attended the show alone and am generally a reserved audience member, I found myself casually joining those around me in singing along to a few of the songs. And there was a moment when the whole cast stood downstage in a line facing out while Sting’s ‘I’ll be Watching You’played. This encouraged many audience members to get up and dance and their ‘participation’ allowed me to consider, in a new way, performance and how and when we decide to perform. It’s hard to think this was unintentional.

[Funny that all the theatre folk I recognized in the audience stayed in their seats. I ran into Jonathan Young and Kim Collier of the Electric Company after the show and they said an older couple in front of them kept turning around to chat. When the cast was ‘watching us’ the couple turned to say “I think we should dance- don’t you think they want us to dance?” To which Jonathan replied- “We’re scared”. They stayed seated while the older couple busted out some moves]

I need reassurance sometimes, in my choice of career so I remind myself that theatre has the power to catalyze a kind of communion in an audience. This ancient ritual is important and sacred to me. I was startlingly aware of the community around me while watching this show, even when I was irritated by someone’s volume or timing, that was a part of it too. We were in it together.  And I found that notion to be challenging…and also encouraging.

The audience clapped enthusiastically at the end of the show.  And I couldn’t help but think that they were clapping as much for themselves as for the performers on the stage.

Then there was Jerk.

(notably, NOT produced as a part of the Cultural Olympiad)

Ok. First of all, I feel like I was tricked by the media into seeing this show. I became aware of it at the Under the Radar fest in New York a week earlier but could not fit it into my schedule. I arrived in Vancouver and there it was again- this time on the cover of the promotional material for the fest. Ok. Clearly I had to go. Clearly.

Jerk describes itself as “a story told from the vantage point of David Brooks, the real life accomplice to Texas serial killer Dean Corll who was responsible for the deaths of more than 25 teenage boys in the early 1970s.”

It is performed by one man, with puppets. As the audience, we take the role of a visiting psychology class come to the prison where Brooks is serving a life sentence. We are here to study him as he tells the story of the murders of these young men.

Jerk is gruesome. It is awful.

I went to see it with rising local theatre director Anita Rochon and despite the skills of the performer, we could barely clap at the end. As we left I said, “I would never tell anyone to see that show” Anita turned back to me, “Would you tell anyone NOT to?”

I paused.

Then, “No. But I would warn them that they should be ready to experience trauma.”

I had a visceral reaction to the piece. As days passed I was revisited by images and sounds that I experienced like flashbacks. It was unsettling, upsetting. I didn’t understand the impulse behind the work. Why would anyone choose to create this? Why would a woman? (Gisèle Vienneis the director/co-creator)Why should I listen to this man’s story when instead I wanted to hear about the lives of the victims, to honour them in some way? Was this glorifying the murderer and his young accomplices? Giving them a spotlight? It made me angry.

Then…more time passed.

And I could not stop thinking about the show.

I was thinking about art and what role it plays. And about my own capacity for empathy and where I needed, or decided to draw lines. I wondered at the darkness that lurked at the edges of my own psyche and whether if I was raised under different circumstances or had the occasion of some great misfortune, how I might have followed a different path. I wondered at the normalization of horror that is evident during times of war- when heinous, inhuman acts begin to lose their impact, become common. I wondered about how this might happen in a small town to a group of young men. I wondered at the word ‘evil’.

Some might call Jerk pornography. But the use of the puppets in the first part of the show and the ventriloquism the actor employs in the second section help to create a distance. We are not voyeurs watching the recreation of torture and murder but students watching a guilty man work through his own relationship to deplorable acts for which he seems to feel some sense of responsibility or guilt… he is, after all, traveling back to these events of his own free will.

I did some research and found out that great liberties had been taken with the facts of the events- the truth had not simply been stretched but a great number of details had been invented entirely. Now even more questions…about an artist’s responsibility to historical accuracy, or the possibility of achieving any kind of accuracy when one was not present at the time. I wondered at the artists’ motivation as they blurred the lines between fiction and reality, especially since there was no hint in the piece itself to suggest that they had done this. 

Jerk is not pretty theatre. And it is not polite. One might say that programming the shows is a decidedly un-Canadian act.

You will not leave the show feeling immediately inspired or rejuvenated.  But, perhaps after some time has passed, you will.

The show is an act of violence that, for me, catalyzed a great deal of thought on a wide variety of ethical and artistic questions. More so than any other show I can remember having seen. If it had been less violent, less awful, if the sound effects had been less graphic or the performer had produced less drool…I feel fairly certain that I would not have gone on the same journey.

So. That’s good art, isn’t it?

The shows I saw at PuSh this year were not tentative and I think this is what I appreciated most. It was bold programming. And to me- that is most welcome. I didn’t love everything but I think that this is also evidence of the strength of choices made by curators Norman Armour and Sherrie Johnson. It wasn’t all meant for me.

The bravery of the work was apparent in both the cheeky humour and extended inaction of some moments in The Show Must Go On as well as in the contrasting shock theatre of Jerk.  Rejuvenating and inspiring, just as promised. And worthy of great conversation.

So. As a result, for me the Fest had one major flaw: there was no common place for dialogue or exchange.

Citing federal budget cuts as their reason to cancel their performing arts industry event called the PuSh Assembly, the Fest also failed to designate any public gathering house as a community hub…or at least none of the artists I spoke to seemed to be aware of one’s existence.

As an out-of-towner not directly linked to the activities in the festival, I was essentially cut-off from the opportunity to engage local performers or visiting artists in any meaningful conversation about the work- unless I knew them personally.  I have good friends who are great artists working in the city (from my school-days at Studio 58)…so I was lucky to be able to find some occasions for exchange.

But Vancouver is nationally renowned for its innovative use of space and also the healthy dialogue it has fostered between its members through efforts like the Progress Lab. It seems strange that a fest in this city couldn’t find a place for folk to come together, especially when there is so much to talk about and conversation, at this point, could be beneficial for all of us.

They have published announcements that the Assembly and ‘Club PuSh’ will make a return in 2011.  So next year- plan to attend!

Calire is a Toronto-based performer and playwright, and the co-director of the AMY (Artists Mentoring Youth) Project

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