Text:
“Art is an attempt to integrate evil.”
Sound:
Image:
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MJ Shaw (left), with The Red Queen Effect co-creators Monica Dottor and Dylan Scott Smith
Melissa Jane Shaw is an actor, choreographer, producer and Artistic Producer of Seventh Stage Theatre Productions. She is currently performing in The Red Queen Effect, running at The Next Stage Festival.
To Justin: As a British person with a French name, do you find that Canadians have expectations of you? Do you meet those expectations?
Here in Canada people often expect me to be able to speak french because of my name – an expectation i never maintain past “Bonjour. Je m’appelle Justin Sage-Passant……parlez vous anglais?”
In England the expectation is that I’m really posh and went to a private school. An expectation i’ve never met. The whole reason I have the name I have is all due to the murky past of my Grandmother and the stubbornness of my Father to not get along with his step dad.
To Chris: As a British person with a British name, do you find that Canadians have expectations of you? Do you meet those expectations?
People assume that I will care about football, or “soccer”, as I believe it’s called, that I will be pro-royal family, and that I will not be able to light a fire or do any kind of practical work. They also assume that I know about theatre, grammar and history.
To Justin: ‘Quite Frankly’ is the story of a man whose life is a constant struggle to overcome people’s low opinions about him. I have a high opinion of you. Am I wrong?
My ego is so in need of positive affirmation that i would never say that someone is wrong when they tell me they have a high opinion of me. However struggling to overcome others low opinion of me is an experience i have lived and breathed for many years. Perhaps it is my relentless efforts in the face of the cold hard truth that you have a high opinion of?
To Chris: In a fight who would win – Chris Gibbs the street performer or Chris Gibbs the one man stage show performer?
Chris Gibbs the street performer was fitter, but Chris Gibbs the one man stage show performer is older and wilier. Plus Chris Gibbs the one man stage performer could use technical tricks to disorientate his opponent, like turning the lights off or locking the theatre doors. However, Chris Gibbs the street performer is more likely to have a sock full of coins, so he’d win.
To Justin: You worked in a four man group, then a three-man – then two, and now you do one-man shows. What’s next?
We (the original four founders of Screwed & Clued) always said that we would reform to tour our first fringe show from 1998 (Shooting Up Shakespeare) across the Canadian fringe circuit again – but this time on motorbikes with sidecars. However, four young, single lads are now four thirty somethings with, collectively, four small children, 3 partners, one dog and two cats. Perhaps we should do a stage version of the Adams Family?
To Chris: I’ve heard someone comment that your show at Next Stage is your most personal one. Does this mean we get to see the real Chris Gibbs on stage?
It’s as close to it as any show I’ve ever done, except when I was playing David Suzuki in An Inconvenient Musical. That was the real me.
To Justin: What advice would you give to a British actor wanting to get work in Toronto; someone who has a history of performing one-man shows in the fringe festivals but is as yet not constantly employed in high-paying work that he doesn’t have to write himself. If there was anyone like that?
This sounds like an incredibly unlikely scenario. Should such a person exist my advice would be to create moments in their self written shows that showcase all their abilities to the Toronto-theatre-community – like being able to do back flips……or doing a convincing Canadian accent.
To Chris: As a British born comedian who now resides in Canada I would value your opinion on…Who’s funnier – Shakespeare or Shatner?
Aaaaah, the eternal question. But based on the mistaken assumption that they are two different people. Let’s be honest, TJ Hooker was obviously based on Richard the Third. He just put the hump on the front.
To Both: Is one actually the loneliest number?
J: Yes – although I’ve heard it said that in theatre less is often more.
C: Yes. Especially if that one is in the audience.
To Both: I say Fringe Festival. You say…
J: Try it…you might like it. I did.
C: More!
Chris Gibbs is the writer and director of Like Father Like Son? Sorry.
Justin Sage-Passant is the writer and performer of Quite Frankly.
Both shows are currently playing at The Next Stage Festival, currently running at The Factory Theatre. Click the picture below to learn all about the festival, showtimes, and all other relevant info.
by Aislinn Rose
Welcome to Praxis Theatre’s “Open Source Theatre Project”, that will lead you through our development process for Section 98 from January, through to our workshop presentation at HATCH in March, and onto the next phase of development after that. True to the spirit of all things “Open Source”, we want to show you our material as it is created, and we want to hear back from you. What are we missing? What haven’t we thought of? Is there a youtube video or a CBC archive that you think would be really helpful? Here, you will find the “source code” of Section 98.
I have been charged with the responsibility of preparing and maintaining these posts, and I’m hoping that you’ll use this site to engage and interact with us in our exploration of some very complicated and layered issues. I started working with Praxis in 2009 during the development of the first iteration of this project for the Toronto Fringe Festival, called Tim Buck 2 and it has been incredible working with a group of peers to create theatrical materials out of court transcripts, newspaper articles, history textbooks, and thin air. I want to share that process with you.
The HATCH development stage of Praxis Theatre’s Section 98 addresses the complex history of civil rights in Canada by exploring unionists and socialists in the 1930s, the FLQ and the October Crisis in the 1970s, as well reserving a portion of the production to consider contemporary events that relate to civil rights in Canada.
To aid in this creation process, our dramaturg Alex Fallis has been leading us through a process that began with a mapping exercise. For each major topic we began to plot out the related subtopics that would require further research, and that were of particular interest to us. Laying out the individual eras visually made it immediately apparent, what we didn’t know.
Starting with the era of the Progressive Arts Club in the 1930s, we established the various issues that we felt were important to consider:
Then item by item we asked ourselves, “what don’t we know?”
The topic of aesthetics brought up the question, “why, in 2009, do we hate Agitprop?”. Politics raised questions of the public perception of government tactics of the time, and so on.
From there we moved on to our 2nd era, the FLQ in the 1970s. We were interested in looking at:
The general consensus amongst our anglo and bilingual creative team was that we were widely ignorant of anything more that the bare facts and events surrounding this era.. Luckily Alex has been encouraging us to warmly embrace the concept of “how ignorant are we?” when tackling these big topics. So here are some of the things we decided we need to know more about:
From there, we set the two maps side by side to look for the issues and/or questions that connected them… similar questions/character types/the role of the Prime Minister, etc. Then it was a matter of picking out the elements that interested us to research and present at the next research session in a presentation that was interactive and/or performative in some way.
As a bit of group research, we also got together recently for a movie night. Pizza, beer, brownies, and a copy of Les Ordres, a 1974 Cinema Verite piece that won Michel Brault a Best Director prize at Cannes, and tells the story of the incarcerated civilians while the War Measures Act was in place during the October Crisis.
Near the end of the film as prisoners are being released, one of them shouts out “next time there’ll be a trial in the streets!”. So I’ve been thinking, given this situation, and people like Omar Khadr sitting in Guantanamo Bay for 7 years from the age of 15, at what point do systems or Governments create the very movements they are trying to suppress?
CLICK HERE FOR FULL OVERVIEW OF SECTION 98 AND THE OPEN SOURCE PROCESS
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