We had lots of opportunity to study the space, especially those of us who were a little bit uncomfortable about engaging with the unpredictable character scuttling around.  The draped sheets made a football-shaped space, with openings at either end and at a few other places in the perimeter.  After a while I became aware of a looming bearded presence watching us from the various rents in the draping, but again I kind of averted my attention so as not to engage.  (As I’ve probably already said here, I love weird theatre – but I’m still awkward about being dragged in to participate.)

The main character turned out to be named Ori, and this was his home.  He also introduced us to a Wolf (Steve Pirot), as a friend that he played with and fought with.  The wolf stalked on his hands and feet, hair covering his face, and snarled convincingly enough that my neck got shivers.  The character felt dangerous in that form.  Later, he walked upright and delivered a monologue about possessions, theft, and exchanging valuables, while returning to people various objects of theirs that he had somehow pilfered earlier – in my case, a book about improv theatre that I’d borrowed from one of my teachers.  I was probably easy to steal from because of having tried so hard to ignore him!

The other two characters in the play were an ordinary couple, (Ainsley Hilliard and Mat Simpson), who had been together long enough to remember happier more romantic times, but unsure how and whether to try recapturing those feelings.

And the rest of the performance (I was going to say “story”, but that would suggest something more linear and less lyrical and cryptic) was just those characters interacting with each other and rebounding off each other and hurting each other.  I probably missed a lot – the box-office flyer suggested some resonance with an Isis and Osiris myth, for one thing – but I didn’t mind, because I liked it.

The tight white sparkly prom dress, the high heels, the light breeze from  the winking of major eyelashes,  the liberal application of lipstick and irony – together, they are the engine, the chief sight gag, and the raison d’etre of All The Devils,  currently premiering in the Rabid Marmot Productions season at Azimuth’s Living Room Playhouse. This is the inspiration of  Zachary Parsons-Lozinsky, for whose fetching drag alter-ego Lilith Fair All The Devils is a vehicle. Which is a bit like giving a party girl the keys to a Red River Cart, in truth.

Anyhow, this set-up brings Lilith Fair to a spooky secluded farmhouse a long long way from L.A. where this socialite/ “actress” is supposed to be studying her comeback script, after a Hollywood disaster. The latter was occasioned by is Lilith’s star turn  in a bio-pic: “who knew a white woman playing Billie Holiday would be so controversial?”  By the kind of coincidence on which the B-horror industry was founded, Lilith is ensconced on the very site where Lovecraft’s famously weird The Dunwich Horror takes place. When she opens her script, she is horrified to discover she’s playing Lavinia Whateley, of Dunwich fame. And there’s worse: Lavinia is described in the dramatis personae as not only “somewhat crippled” and “albino,” but 35 years old!” Lavinia tosses the script aside like something sticky and dead she found in her purse.

The show unfolds in a series of exasperated phone calls to Lilith’s Jewish agent in L.A., self-revealing direct addresses to us, and (long and lip-synched) numbers at moments of high, or medium, drama. Parsons-Lozinski shows just how much physical bravado a girl can have dancing in a tight skirt.  If the phone has antecedents in horror, this is Dial M For Marty. You don’t need to be wondering why Lilith directs her litany of complaints at us, out loud. Luckily, drag queens don’t have to have unspoken thoughts. With its cheerful air of flamboyant exhibitionism, drag doesn’t need a reason to be talking or singing. After all, there’s an audience. And that’s enough.

The H.P. Lovecraft estate doesn’t need to worry about the legacy. Mainly, All The Devils turns out to be a spoof of a very familiar, well nigh flattened, target, the shallowness and dim-witted self-importance of celebrities. And it works that turf over and over.  Lilith, who instinctively fixes her hair every time before answering the farmhouse door (she’s convinced it’s the Mormons),  is very huffy about her research. “I’ve read the synopsis of the original novel on Wikipedia. Twice!” Later she laments, “being dedicated is hard.”

Lozinski-Parsons’s script is a veritable repository of  the kind of retro-funny lines about the celebrity culture that are actually lame but take on a showbiz life if they’re delivered as if they’re not. With its scrambly, Fringe-y quality, All The Devils, directed by co-creator Jenna Greig, is diverting enough. Is it sustainable? Well, for an hour or so, if approached  in the right spirit (probably Southern Comfort). And the statuesque performer is a glamourous sight to behold up close, out of a club and in your living room (well, Azimuth’s Living Room).

All the Devils runs through April 28 at the Living Room Playhouse, 11315-106 Ave. Tickets: TIX on the Square (780-420-1757, tixonthesquare.ca) or at the door.

Photo credit: Jenna Greig

Presents

We Don’t Look Back

Presents

Scars Are Healing Wrong 

By Julie Ferguson

Presents the installation

As a Matter of Box

Presents

dances to music

Choreography by Alida Nyquist-Schultz

(Un)static: Motions in Electricity

Featuring Gerry Morita, Richard Lee, Patrick Arés-Pilon, and Viktoria Reiswich-Dapp

Premieres at the Expanse Festival on March 07 at the Westbury Theatre, TransAlta Arts Barns, Edmonton

I saw a preview show, with the theatre not very full, so I sat in the second row with nobody in the first row.  When I realised at the start that the narrator was ignoring the fourth wall and other conventions of theatre, I suddenly wondered if I would regret being so visible – and of course they called on me, but I think I responded well (all this improv training is coming in handy!)

I’ve read a bit about the Free-man on the Land movement and some of its proponents.  This Edmonton Journal article is one of the more entertaining bits.  I have a lot of sympathy for many people who call themselves anarchists whom I might describe as grassroots activists, but the FOTL thing has me sort of scratching my head and backing away, in general.

In the play, there’s enough story shown and hinted to make the main character (the man commonly known as Richard Svoboda, played by Des Parenteau) interesting and to suggest how he developed his views.  His attitudes bring him into conflict with his partner, played by Dale Ladouceur, who also sings several original songs during the show while accompanying herself on a Chapman Stick.  Her character isn’t quite as interesting as Richard, but more than a foil.  Other parts (a narrator and his chorus or counterfoil, a taxman, a court-appointed defence lawyer, a former employer, etc) were played by director Murray Utas and playwright Steve Pirot.

The Azimuth Theatre production of Free-man on the Land is playing at the Roxy until Sunday January 27^th.  If you like weird theatre, you should go see it.

“Good times!” sighs Murray Utas, who starts his new gig as Fringe program director today. “Holding on to that, and being so proud of how the festival has grown…. It’s HUGE. A little intimidating, but so awesome.” The co-artistic producer of Azimuth Theatre, who’s also the founding manager of Nextfest, is full of plans for Edmonton’s biggest summer festival, and the country’s biggest Fringe, as well as the Arts Barns. Incidentally, he’ll retain the Azimuth job (“I have such a tender spot for that little company”) and give up Nextfest  (“I’m said about that one; I love it too, I was there for the first year of the first Nextfest ever”).

The actor/ director/ playwright/ producer/ theatre administrator – a highly unusual skill set he summarizes as “champion for the artists” – is all about “professional development,” he says with his usual vigor and good humour, “bringing artists back into that building, the smaller indie slate of the arts field.” He wants to finally “develop that 130-seat cabaret space” at the north end of the building, which is a usuable venue only for the Fringe. “Trevor (Schmidt, of Northern Light Theatre) or Workshop West – they’d be all over that”). He wants to grow the Expanse (movement theatre) Festival he founded so it could blossom into a High Performance Rodeo. “It’d be a great gift for our community.”

Utas is a riot to talk to. He can’t help it. For one thing, he talks in a breezy, expansive way that isn’t like any other administrator-type. Like “an aging surfer dude,” as he puts it, amused.  “TOTALLY, man!”

The Bradshaw, AB. farm kid was “basically an actor who fell into doing administrative stuff,” arranging tours for Fringe shows he was in, for example. At Azimuth, where he was originally recruited as an actor, Utas was in the widely toured The Day Billy Lived, then in Wrecked, a show about teen drug use. “We hit a home run with that,” he says. “The kids all fell for me, man. I was the superhero bartender.”

Then he found himself helping to build Azimuth its Living Room Play House home out of an old print shop. “My farmer background, building stuff with my dad.” He worked as a technician between acting gigs. “Hey, man, people thought this artist guy had skills!” Then he became the tour co-ordinator for Wrecked. “I was excited talking to schools and community groups!” says Utas, whose lingo has built-in exclamation points. “It was fun! FUN! I’m a little bit charming, Liz, sometimes when I have to be!” He laughs.

In school he remembers that his accounting teacher praised his dexterity for math. Utas wasn’t buying. “OK, I’m good with numbers. But hey man, I don’t have a passion for them.”

Nextfest’s Steve Pirot (Utas’s co-artistic producer at Azimuth) made him the general manager of that inter-disciplinary festival, over dinner at the Cafe Mosaic. “I will accept this position,” said Utas, “until you find someone you really want.” When Chris Craddock left his official connections with Azimuth in 2002 (“he became his own independent superstar,” as Utas puts it enthusiastically) , Utas and Pirot split the duties of producing at the little theatre, which soon shared its home with small, strapped, indie companies.

Utas did his first Fringe show in the early ’90s, a Mike Hammer spoof called Mike Mallet: Private Eye. “Mr. Alan Kellogg (of the Journal) gave me the worst review in the world!” he laughs. “Hey, we always remember the worst ones, totally, right?” It was, he says, “fun and fluff, bad acting on purpose. And it sold out every night!”

“There was a time I did 14 Fringes in a row,” says Utas, who moved easily between acting, directing, and producing. “One Fringe I directed two shows and was in one: total insanity! I remember I had to run between one show at the old Club Malibu to King Eddie for a Theatre Yes production. I’d run outside taking my clothes off as I went, and the stage manager of the second show met me half way…. I felt like Mark Meer at that moment, y’know what I mean!?”

His enthusiasm for the Fringe is boundless. His roots run deep. “I’m not going to disappoint,” Utas declares. “I’ll lead with a gentle hand. Make sure we’re moving forward, and having fun doing it!”

At the back of his mind, always, is “the mentor thing…. I’ve always believed in that; now it’s on a larger scale…. I only look like an aging surfer.”

Hey, all post-secondary Drama Programs except Humber College. It’s me, Chris. I wanna ask you about something.

How come you don’t offer improv?

I know you have improv classes, but I’m talking about the real stuff. The way it’s done in the real world by us improv professionals? Because, and I mean no disrespect here, but it seems like any drama kid that wants to find out how to really improvise, they have to come to us.

They get all this Theatresports in high school, but then when they get to their university ‘improv’ course, it’s all silent tensions and rolling on the ground and no one mentions Keith Johnstone or Del Close, let alone The Crumbs or Jacob Banigan. In taught university drama course improv, its always some other thing.

And I’m not saying the other things are bad or have no place in your programs. I’m not saying that people don’t use those techniques to make wonderful theatre. I’m saying there’s a real absence of the one art form where being a Canadian is actually an advantage. What? Oh yes! In Europe, where most of our art forms come from, they think we’re pretty awesome at the art of improv comedy. And it is an art, University Drama Programs, even though it’s funny.

And we’re doing a fine job of your job, by the way. I’m not saying we need you, because the kids coming up are incredible. I’m saying you’re missing out. You should have courses in this stuff, because it’s a significant movement in how live performance happens, and Canada is on its cutting edge.

But if you can’t do that and want to go on as you are, it’s okay. Just do us this one favour. Keep telling your students not to join the local improv company. It helps us get the ones with the right attitudes.

There’s a new play opening tonight – a play that comes direct from the creative classes, young up-and-comer division. And it’s actually of,  and for,  this place. The corporate culture meets the arts culture in Edmonton – and in Jake Prins’s Horace Porridge Goes To Work. That clanging you can hear comes from the clash of ideologies that is the music of the West. It’s the soundscore, so to speak of this new satire. 

Do you sometimes feel that this theatre town is bobbing in a sea of conservativism (in a leaky tub)? Do you sometimes feel that artists are the last real entrepreneurs in a benighted province where the government doesn’t change for half-centuries at a time? Do artist-types, on the other hand, drive you mental with their sheer pretentiousness?  Hold all of these thoughts. Put them in your pocket. Go  to Azimuth’s Living Room Playhouse through Sunday where you’ll meet Horace Porridge, in all his corporate glory. 

In  a travel insurance company, where business is (naturally) brisk in February, we meet the boss. And Horace Porridge is an ideal one, apparently. He’s charismatic, he’s successful . “Money is good. Business is good. Life is good.”

Prins, who has a way with titles, has authored unclassifiably smart and funny pieces before now, like The Juvyline Cubangbang Show, which premiered at the U of A in 2009 and had a Nextfest production, too. Director Katie Hudson is back to take charge of Horace Porridge Goes To Work, which stars Will Mitchell as Horace. The cast is 11 actors strong — so I can’t wait to see the stage traffic at the teeny Living Room Playhouse.  

Photo credit: Jen Stacey. Will Mitchell as Horace Porridge.