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by Jay Dodge, directed by Sherry J. Yoon

Boca del Lupo, Enwave Theatre, Toronto

November 17-20, 2010

"Worth 1000 Words and Not Requiring Any"

PHOTOG: an imaginary look at the uncompromising life of Thomas Smith, now receiving its world premiere as part of World Stage 2010:11 at Harbourfront, takes a promising subject and renders it dull.  The subject is the external dangers and internal struggles that conflict photographers experience.  The Vancouver-based multidisciplinary theatre company Boca del Lupo based the show on interviews with top conflict photographers Tim Heatherington, Michael Kamber and Farah Nosh, whose verbatim accounts   make up the text of the show and combine to form the fictional character, Thomas Smith.  These often disturbing accounts play out against a background of video projections of some of the conflict photographers’ work.    

The show sounds, on spec, as if it should be fascinating, but many factors combine to prevent the show from engaging an audience.  One factor is the performance of Jay Dodge as Thomas Smith.  While it is clear he is excellent at physical performance as in the fine recreation of skydiving, his delivery of the text is flat, he doesn’t project his voice sufficiently for the given space and he fails to make Thomas Smith into a character.  Smith refers constantly to his sense of anxiety and difficulty in adjusting turning off the hypervigilance needed in war zones to normal perceptions sufficient for everyday life in a Western city.  Unfortunately, none of this comes across in Dodge’s performance.  If he attempting to create the feeling of someone shellshocked by his experience, the text works against that because it is far too rational and minutely analytical.  The verbatim texts Boca del Lupo have collected are ones recollected in tranquility whereas Dodge and co-creator Sherry J. Yoon try to force them into an inappropriate context of paranoia. 

How Yoon and Dodge have ordered the texts is a mystery.  Smith interleaves stories from Liberia, Iraq, Afghanistan and Haiti with personal reminiscences that don’t go together in either a chronological or a thematic fashion.  They attempt to give the play unity by through the recurrent attempts of Smith’s landlord and then the police to evict Smith from his apartment, but this device appears as just what it is--an artificial attempt to give Smith’s story a sense of urgency. 

Instead of telling an engaging much less compelling story, Yoon and Dodge seem much more focussed on the technical aspects of their presentation.  Often live video of Dodge is projected over video projections of still and movies to make Dodge seem to be interacting with them.  The main difficulty here is that the setups for each of these scenes is so deliberate that it destroys any sense of surprise.  Every time Dodge clips on various cords to his harness we know he will soon be hoisted one way or another over the stage.  In order for the live-on-recorded video projections to work, Dodge has to place himself in certain precise locations on the set, most of which make no sense in the supposed story of a man alone in his apartment.  Many of the video effects are pointless.  Whooshing sounds accompany every time Smith moves furniture in his apartment as the video gives is a new perspective on the space.  Not only does this underscoring feel self-congratulatory, but what relevance is a 360º view of Smith apartment to the story?  Episodes of Smith’s childhood may be fun but  are tied into the main point of the show.  The scene of Smith riding a horse across a cartoon-like video of Egypt is totally out of place in a show that uses real photography and videos of foreign countries.  Smith mentions that he hate horror movies whereupon the show becomes an imitation horror movie with Smith as the slasher.  If he hates these movies why include a parody of them in the show?            

The show is at its best when Smith simply narrates experiences and slides related to them appear on the screen behind him.  Without the excess explanation from Smith the juxtaposition alone is enough to bring out the moral difficulty in conflict photographers about whether passively to film disturbing scenes whether to act to try to prevent or ameliorate them.  On a technical level, many of the video-on-video sequences do work well.  Especially good is one scene where Smith sweeps his floor covering and uncovering unsettling images he has taken.

The topic of conflict photographers is one that should be brought to the attention of a public that often fails to question the moral dilemmas such photos pose.  In its present state, PHOTOG is too scattershot in its approach and too artificial in its framework to present these dilemmas fully or effectively.  Let’s hope Boca del Lupo is self-critical enough to reassess the show and determine a means to better present the valuable material it has gathered.             

©Christopher Hoile

Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.

Photo: Jay Dodge. ©Sherry J. Yoon.