Stage Door News
Stage Door News
In recent seasons, VideoCab's heroic time-warpers transported audiences to the distant past (The War of 1812) and to their grandmothers' past (Mackenzie King). This spring theatre-lovers are invited to visit the acid-tripping bomb-throwing '60s, as conjured up by a master storyteller and the magical stagecraft of the VideoCab ensemble.
The Play
Trudeau and the FLQ turns on the brutal confrontation between two irreconcilable visions of French Canada: one of Les Canadiens governing Canada from sea to sea; the other of Les Québecois governing la patrie, Quèbec. The play begins in 1963, when Lester Pearson is Prime Minister of Canada and Pierre Trudeau is a law professor and intellectual maverick in Montreal. A worldwide generation of post-colonial post-war babies is coming of age, dropping LSD and marching for peace, or blowing up police stations and killing for independence.
"I detest nationalism. But I have a special loathing for ethnic nationalism." -Pierre Trudeau
In Quebec, Francophone bosses are joining the ranks of Anglo bosses, the Birth Control Pill is challenging the power of the Church, the ‘Quiet Revolution’ is under way. As the Centenary of Canada's Confederation approaches, the FLQ turns up the volume, and Trudeau pirouettes to power on a stage lit by bombs.
"I want to kill all the bourgeoisie. Anyone who has more money than I do is the bourgeoisie." -Maurice, FLQ
Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and the Front de Liberation du Quebec hurtle toward the collision known as the 'October Crisis', when the most violent manifestation of Quebec nationalism in Canadian history was answered by the heaviest federal response, the War Measures Act.
"Bend over. We'll see if you have any manifestoes up there." -Montreal Policewoman
Wilfrid Laurier defined Canada as a multi-national state that believes in liberty, and ‘Canadian’ as a political nationality not based on ethnic origin or religious background. What Laurier dreamed of, Pierre Trudeau was determined to make a reality.
CANADA’S HISTORY PLAYS
The History of the Village of the Small Huts
NEW FRANCE Donnacona, Champlain, Brebeuf, Frontenac
THE BRITISH Plains of Abraham, Pontiac, The Loyalists, The War of 1812
MACKENZIE/PAPINEAU REBELLION • CONFEDERATION • RED RIVER REBELLION
CANADIAN PACIFIC SCANDAL • SASKATCHEWAN REBELLION • LAURIER • THE GREAT WAR
THE LIFE & TIMES OF MACKENZIE KING • WWII • THE COLD WAR • TRUDEAU & THE FLQ
TRUDEAU & THE PQ • THE LIFE & TIMES OF BRIAN MULRONEY
VideoCab’s new production of Trudeau and the FLQ is but one chapter in Michael Hollingsworth’s classic 21- part play-cycle, The History of the Village of the Small Huts, which dramatises the comedy and tragedy of Canada’s story from Chief Donnacona and Jacques Cartier to recent times. Michael's deeply researched and wildly imagined scripts are matched by the ensemble's staging technique and visual style.
In Trudeau and the FLQ historic and invented characters appear and disappear like hallucinations. Village virtuosoes Aurora Browne (Maggie Sinclair), Greg Campbell (Charles DeGaulle), Richard Alan Campbell (Rene Levesque), Mac Fyfe (Pierre Trudeau), Jacob James (Maurice of the FLQ), Linda Prystawska (Robert Bourassa) and Michaela Washburn (Pierre Laporte) play seventy-seven characters who embody the era of purple haze and political assassination.
Renowned designers Astrid Janson (Costumes) and Andrew Moro (Set, Lighting) use low-fi materials and exquisite craft to produce spectacular effects. Collaborating in the underpaid and priceless art are: Brad (Shadowland) Harley who makes the scene-setting props, Alice (House of Big Hair) Norton who concocts the unforgettable wigs, and Design Associate Adam Barrett who is putting the video back in VideoCab. Dora-winning designer-in-her-own-right Mel McNeill is stepping up as Associate Designer for her 7th History Play. The whole ball of searingly intelligent amusement is wrapped in the music of art-rock legends Andrew Paterson and Brent Snyder, in a sound design by second-gen' VideoCabbie Jake Blackwood.
The company's artists are recognized by dozens of Dora Awards and scores of Nominations. 2013 Dora Awards went to Michael for Direction, Astrid for Costumes, and the Acting Ensemble; Production, Lighting and Sound received Nominations. In 2011 the Silver Ticket Award for outstanding contribution to the development of Canadian theatre was given to Michael Hollingsworth by previous honourees.
VideoCabaret in assoc. with Soulpepper presents
TRUDEAU AND THE FLQ
The History of the Village of the Small Huts, 1963-1970
Written and Directed by Michael Hollingsworth
Starring Aurora Browne, Greg Campbell, Richard Alan Campbell, Mac Fyfe
Jacob James, Linda Prystawska and Michaela Washburn
Associate Director Deanne Taylor, Costumes Astrid Janson
Set & Lighting Andy Moro Music Andrew Paterson, Brent Snyder
Sound Jake Blackwood, Costume Associate Melanie McNeill
Props Brad Harley, Wigs Alice Norton, Stage Manager Andrew Dollar
ASM Joanne Rumstein-Ellis, Video Associate Adam Barrett
Producers Jim LeFrancois, Deanne Taylor
Praise For VideoCabaret & Canada’s History Plays
"VideoCabaret is a theatrical treasure." -Globe and Mail
“The most ambitious project in Canadian theatre.” -Toronto Life
"Cross between Spitting Image and Bertolt Brecht." -American Conservative
“VideoCabaret put the ‘story’ back into history, and the result is hilarious and irresistible.” –CBC
“Anyone who can make Canadian history this witty and amusing deserves a medal -- the Order of Canada perhaps?” –The Star
About VideoCabaret
"History is but a picture of crimes and misfortunes." Voltaire
VideoCabaret is Toronto’s premier independent theatre company, led by Michael Hollingsworth and Deanne Taylor. The company has created more than forty productions written and directed by Hollingsworth and Taylor, including plays, musicals, opera, and the multi-media cabarets that gave the company its name.
In the late 1970s, the company created the first plays integrating video cameras, piles of hot-wired TVs and live rock’n’roll. These genre-mashing spectacles were staged in art galleries and salons across Canada, in New York and London. After its world tour, VideoCabaret moved into the pre-legendary Cameron House, a music and art club on Queen Street West. Designer Chris Clifford wired the building for video, joining VideoCab’s second-floor studio and the Cameron stage in a half-real, half-virtual theatre space. In this environment, Michael Hollingsworth staged adaptations of Brave New World and 1984, while Deanne Taylor and collaborators helped define the local zeitgeist with the political cabaret and campaign Hummer for Mayor, involving hundreds of artists and performers.
Through the 1980s and ’90s, the core artists developed the hyper-theatrical style of Hollingsworth’s twenty-part cycle The History of the Village of the Small Huts and honed the “video-cabaret” stagings of Taylor’s plays and musicals about mass-media politics and other themes.
From 2000-2011, VideoCab performed in a refurbished theatre space within the Cameron House, where the company created new work, and re-invented their classic History Plays for a new
generation of theatregoers. In 2012, The War of 1812 was presented for eight sold-out weeks at the Stratford Festival. In the spring of 2013, a new partnership with Soulpepper was inaugurated with the award-winning War of 1812, before touring to the 2013 Magnetic North Theatre Festival.
Photo: Mac Fyfe as Pierre Trudeau. ©2014 Michael Cooper.
2014-02-26
Toronto: VideoCab presents "Trudeau and the FLQ" March 27-May 10