Fringe News
Fringe News
This August, Acky-Made Productions will bring Yarn – a unique solo performance combining true stories, puppetry, music and live-created sound design – to the SummerWorks Performance Festival. While this marks his SummerWorks debut, writer/performer Alex Eddington is a Fringe Festival veteran with six shows and 25 festivals under his belt. Toronto audiences have seen him in The Fugue Code (a “musicological comedy- thriller”), Old Growth (ritual-drama with live music), and Tired Clichés (a comic monologue by TJ Dawe).
Equal parts funny, wistful and probing, Yarn traces the effects of isolation on Eddington's younger self during one remarkable summer. After taking a hotel job on Scotland's Isle of Mull to find the solitude he needs to compose a musical masterpiece, he is increasingly plagued by his inner monologue. A friendship with an elderly neighbour leads to an obsession with the mystical energy of standing stones. The narrative traces Eddington's gradual descent into superstition and magical thinking, convinced that the power of the stones had triggered a cause-and-effect cycle of Good and Bad Luck. Looking back playfully, he views this as his mind's way of coping with loneliness by spinning tales. This core story is framed by a traditional Scottish yarn – about a young man who is blown across the sea and into a new life – to draw a parallel between the storytelling of the human mind and the storytelling that helps bind human societies together, especially in the harsh landscape of the Hebrides.
★★★★ “Encourages all of us to consider our own stories, and why we tell them.” – CBC
An award-winning professional composer with two music degrees, Alex Eddington always looks for ways to incorporate his background in avant-garde composition into his theatre projects. He was the 2008-09 Urjo Kareda Resident Artist at Tarragon Theatre, focusing on sound design. His 2011 piece Fuzzy Logic was a predecessor for Yarn: an instrumental score (premiered by Toronto's Continuum ensemble) accompanying his own narration of sheep anecdotes that he wrote on the Isle of Mull.
At its Fringe premiere last summer, Yarn incorporated folk-influenced acoustic music on tenor ukulele, baritone horn, and percussion instruments.The show is now 20 minutes longer, with more music, more instruments, and live sound design on a battery of unexpected objects – including animal bells, tuning forks and Scotch bottles. Incorporating loop and effects pedals has allowed Eddington to build live sonic textures that underscore his stories. Fragments of familiar songs are looped and distorted like the earworms that get stuck in your head: the music of the inner monologue. Before each show, Eddington will play a set of songs and improvisations that flows seamlessly into the evening of stories.
The casual music in Yarn is paired with a casual storytelling style, created by getting the stories up on the rehearsal floor early in the process. Working with up-and-coming indie theatre director Tyler Seguin (The Memo), Eddington has created an intimate theatre experience where some stories seem to be told off-the- cuff, as though shared around a campfire. This intimacy between performer and audience is strengthened by the venue. Majlis Art Garden (SummerWorks venue L) has a unique indoor/outdoor setup: the stage and audience are sheltered from wind and rain, and yet the audience has the pleasure of sitting in a rose garden in a quiet corner of the city. The space is decorated by long strands of yarn that suspend instruments and props. Inevitably, the show will be accompanied by ambient sounds (birds, breeze...and city sounds) that constantly connect the audience to their surroundings. Yarn is timed so that the sun will set over the course of the performance, gradually replaced by lanterns, candles and bike lights.
YARN at the SummerWorks Performance Festival
Thursday, August 7 – 7:30pm
Friday, August 8 – 7:30pm
Saturday, August 9 – 7:30pm
Sunday, August 10 – 7:30pm
Tuesday, August 12 – 7:30pm
Wednesday, August 13 – 7:30pm
Thursday, August 14 – 7:30pm
Friday, August 15 – 7:30pm
Saturday, August 16 – 7:30pm
Sunday, August 17 – 7:30pm
YARN is an 80-minute show. Latecomers will be admitted up to 15 minutes into the performance. Warnings: Mature Language. Age 14+ suggested
Tickets only $15 at the DOOR or in ADVANCE (+ service fee): PHONE 416-907-0468 ONLINE at summerworks.ca
IN PERSON at the SummerWorks Hub (at The Theatre Centre: 1115 Queen St. W.)
VENUE L: Majlis Art Garden
163 Walnut Ave. (west of Bathurst St., south of Queen St.)
www.AlexEddington.com www.facebook.com/AlexEddingtonsStuff
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Photo: Alex Eddington. ©2014 Tyler Séguin.
2014-08-11
SummerWorks: Yarn