Reviews 2009
Reviews 2009
✭✭✭✭✭
conceived by Stephen Lawson and Aaron Pollard
2boys.tv, Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, Toronto
January 9-24, 2009
“Twilight Zone”
It’s only January but “Zona Pellucida” is likely going to be one of the most unusual shows you’re likely to see in 2009. Created by the Montreal-based company 2boys.tv, otherwise known as Stephen Lawson and Aaron Pollard, is a fantastic piece of performance art that combines elements of opera, classic film, blue screen puppet theatre, music hall, drag and video design to fashion a brilliant multimedia examination of the relation between art and fear.
When we enter the Buddies in Bad Times Theatre we are confronted with a black thrust stage upon which sits an old-fashioned ornate gilt proscenium with closed curtains. The set itself should give a hint that what follows will be a self-conscious postmodern look at the theatre. The piece consists almost entirely of pre-existing, pre-recorded bits of dialogue and song to which Lawson and pollard have created theatrical visuals. Though classic films such as “Opening Night”, “Stage Fright and “All About Eve” are sampled, the film that really dominates the piece is Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s 1959 film of Tennessee Williams’ play “Suddenly, Last Summer” starring Katherine Hepburn and Elizabeth Taylor. Virtually the first words we hear are Hepburn’s as Violet Venable explaining how unbalanced Catherine Holly is which is why she has placed her in a mental institution and now seeks to have her lobotomized. Those familiar the play or film will know that Catherine has witnessed something so shocking that it has driven her to madness. She has witnessed the death of her cousin, Violet’s homosexual son Sebastian, an artist, being torn apart and eaten by young boys he had violated. Violet wants this knowledge obliterated by a lobotomy so she can preserve she her own inviolate vision of her son. Catherine’s doctor thinks that if she ceases to repress what she saw, she may be cured.
Next in silhouette on the proscenium curtains we see a baby placed in the care of a woman. When she exits for a moment a bear enter and kills the baby. The woman returns and in silent movie-type gestures bewails the baby’s death and her own guilt.
From this point on the show explores whether art should be an escape or a reflection of the horrible reality of the world where, as Violet says, “only the carnivores survive”. Then, Stephen Lawson in drag, dressed all in black looking like an international woman of mystery, seemingly the woman we saw in silhouette, escape from behind the proscenium to the thrust stage in front. There she tries several times to stage a fairy tale story for her collection of stuffed animals. Each time--whether it is on her miniature version of the proscenium stage behind her, or on the blank pages of a story book onto which images are projected--her idyllic scene is invaded by a naked, wolf-headed man who destroys her composure. Technically, the most elaborate of these variations occurs when the woman sets up a movie screen alongside her miniature theatre. Projected on the screen is the miniature theatre next to her. On that stage we see her dancing only to be interrupted yet again by the arrival of the wolf-headed man. This scene with its four stages--the black thrust stage, the proscenium stage on it, the miniature model of it and the projection of the miniature model--the high-point of self-referentiality and reflection about the “reality” of the theatre in the show.
All her ploys frustrated, the woman hurriedly exits only to reappear behind gauzy curtain within the proscenium stage dressed in what looks like a Victorian version of “qingyi” female roles in Beijing opera. Here Elizabeth Taylor’s climactic (and cathartic) scream as Catherine at witnessing Sebastian’s death is replayed several times, communicating both the horror of the moment and through gesture and repetition its artificiality. The show end when the woman re-enters in her previous black garb and lipsynchs “Cignus ustus cantat” (“The Song of the Roast Swan”) from Carl Orff’s “Carmina Burana” (1937). As the roasting swan contemplates the teeth about to eat it (“dentes frendentes video”), we see that the woman has moved from trying to repress her horrific vision of a cannibalistic world to identifying with its victim. The copious canned applause following this section and the diva’s enraptured curtsies only reinforces its theatricality.
“Zona Pellucida” is thus brilliant exploration of the power of the theatre and the tension that exists within it of portraying reality while aware of the artificiality of this portrayal. The title literally means “translucent zone” such as the gauzy curtains in the proscenium stage where projected images can layered on top of each other. In medical parlance, the “zona pellucida” is the plasma membrane surrounding the ovum that must be destroyed in order for the egg to be fertilized by the sperm. This image is clearly reflected in the plot both of “Suddenly, Last Summer” and the present performance piece wherein an innocent representation of the world is always threatened by a darker, destructive vision. Indeed, the only way Catherine and the woman in black can move forward is by allowing their fantasy world to be destroyed. The image thus links the sexual and artistic aspects of creativity.
So much is packed into the hour of “Zona Pellucida” it is hard to take it all in at one viewing. I look forward to further visits to Toronto by these brilliantly inventive artists.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photo: Stephen Lawson and Aaron Pollard. ©Andrea Hausman.
2009-01-28
Zona Pellucida