So,
I am excited to get rAiz'n's blog going. We have a lot to say and me being the Aries I am, I will be the first to post. My wish is for this blog to be the home of rAiz'n happenings, thoughts, commentary on shows and whatever we want to share. Fun times!
The first thing I want to blog about is a show I saw with fellow rAiz'n member Tanya at Tarragon called Ubuntu: The Cape Town Project. A co-pro between Neptune Theatre, Tarragon Theatre and Theatrefront, Ubuntu was a collectively created piece consisting of 3 Canadian actors and 2 South African actors.
It was a lovely piece and I am sad that more rAiz'n members didn't see it as I think the dates got mixed up...Anyway, this piece is exactly what we are doing, in terms of the collective creation and the exploration of identity. The story was very simple: a South African young man goes to Canada to find his absentee father. His quests takes him to entirely unsuspecting places and an entire family secret ends up being unraveled. Tanya described it as a simple story, well told and I am apt to agree.
Some beautiful moments and great incorporation of South African gumboots, traditional tribal beliefs and practises and contact improvisation. My favourite performers in the piece were Michelle Monteith and Mbulelo Grootboom who had some wicked contact improvisation sections. I also loved the set which was so simple, yet kept revealing surprises. All in all, a great show. It kind of lost me during the second part of it when there were several scenes back to back and I felt like the actors were losing steam. However, it was the dress rehearsal and I can see how this will be fixed. This type of theatre is exactly the direction that Canadian theatre should be (and is!) going, with multi cultural casting that encourages all the artists to use their cultural and artisic backgrounds (as opposed to some "colour blind" casting that puts everyone on the same level) and multi disciplinary, collectively created work. My hope for the ensemble is that we reach this level and we are well on our way.
