Hey. Hi! How are you? You look fantastic. Have you lost some weight? Really? Well, you look great. Seriously.

THAT'S ENOUGH SMALL TALK! It's time to update you crazy kids about recent and upcoming rumblings within the world of UnSpun Theatre.

Our weird little online experiment in global creation continues. The WikiPlay Project is advancing slowly but surely - it currently contains 3 separate story threads, a "streams of consciousness" page for random jottings, and the "WikiPlay Challenge" page where writers can use 3 random elements as a creative catalyst to create an entry. It's nowhere near cohesive yet, but it sure is interesting. And awfully weird. If you haven't swung by yet, check it out here: http://unspun.wikispaces.com

Keep checking back - we're planning some exciting changes to the WikiPlay format in the near future. And get writing!

There's some terrific news about our 2006 production of Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump. Last month, Co-Artistic Director Christopher Stanton was nominated for a 2007 Dora Mavor Moore Award. His turn as the strange and surly pawnshop owner Dusan Koupil got him a nod for Outstanding Performance By A Male (Independent Theatre Division). We couldn't be more thrilled that our latest production was honoured in this way.

UnSpun Theatre might be having an uncharacteristically quiet summer - but don't let that fool you. We've got a lot of great stuff in the pipeline. It won't be too long before a spring 2008 remount of minotaur gives you the chills. Here's what the reviewer for CBC Radio's Here & Now had to say of our 2005 production: "I was chilled. A really compelling drama. It's a play within a play, a social experiment, a ghost story. There's some very wry humour in it as well. And it's provocative on all those levels. It's a play I walked out of really delighted by, because I felt like I'd been shown something new and different..."

You should also keep your eyes open for a 2008 remount of a re-imagined version of our 2006 SummerWorks hit DON'T WAKE ME. At the time, NOW Magazine said: "This deliciously strange, surreal play looks at a man tragically blinded, his fantastic reconstruction of how it happened and the collision of what may be imagination with his actual life. No detail is wasted: the rumpled bed, the shabby floor lamp and a small web of guide wires entrap the man in his surroundings, making his decent into fantasy frightening and inevitable. Inventive storytelling from a company who push their audience to wrestle with complex, challenging ideas."

And then there's The Red Room - an ambitious new project exploring the anatomy of the human brain. The remarkable list of creators currently lined up for the project includes Tara Beagan, Brendan Gall, Chris Hanratty, Geoffrey Pounsett, Michael Rubenfeld, Erin Shields, and Christopher Stanton. Still in an embryonic state of development, we'll keep you up to date as this innovative theatrical work unfolds...

If you're interested in adding a little something to the WikiPlay Project - but don't feel like scrolling and reading through all that text - we have some good news for you.

We've just added the STREAMSOFCONCIOUSNESS page to the WikiPlay. Now you can scribble out whatever weird, wonderful, unrelated insanities you'd like - without being concerned about how it "fits in."

Here's the link:

http://unspun.wikispaces.com/WikiPlaySOC

(Once you're there, just click the Edit This Page button, and start writing!)

Sometimes lazy is good...

This idea occurred to me as I was unpacking a new book at work called Wikinomics (www.wikinomics.com) - an examination of the brave new world of global collaboration.

Well, UnSpun Theatre is all about collaboration and, to date, has collectively created the theatrical experiences, Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, minotaur, and DON'T WAKE ME - largely from scratch, and largely by sitting (or standing) in rooms together and all fighting for different ideas and scenes and moments that we think deserve inclusion in the project at hand. This is an exciting and frustrating and highly uneven and rewarding way to make theatre, and at times feels impossible with 5 or 6 individuals all wrestling to make something that feels like a cohesive whole. So obviously something that is difficult with a handful of people should be a whole lot easier with hundreds or thousands, right?

Right?

Well I say, let's find out. Let's write a play, Everybody. Or, if you're not comfortable writing (yet), try your hand at editing or RE-writing. Or writing a song, or creating a slideshow. Or throw an idea or image or link onto the discussion page for someone else to run with. And let's not worry about how the hell to stage this monstrosity just now - let's burn that bridge when we come to it, and just create for the joy of making something that we all think we'd like to see in our wildest imaginings of what theatre can be. Include something strange and unexpected. Surprise and challenge each other. Let's overreach and see where the limits of possibilities lead us. And then let's go a little bit further.

And if, some day in the future, you come across this strange unwieldy thing and think maybe there's something in it that you and your friends would like to stage, why don't you go ahead and do that, continuing to make any changes that you feel are necessary or interesting as you go along. All we ask is that you tell them where it came from.

This is a child's experiment - a sugarcube in a petri dish that UnSpun is leaving in the woods. We'll come by and check on it from time to time, and likely forget about it occasionally and then remember again and come by and add our two cents along with the rest. And after a while, well... we'll just see what we've got.

Happy building. Pass it on...

Brendan Gall
Associate Artist, UnSpun Theatre

(Contribute to the WikiPlay Project here: http://unspun.wikispaces.com/WikiPlay)

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On Stage
HEAD-SMASHED-IN BUFFALO JUMP
Co-created and performed by Chris Hanratty, Tricia Lahde, Christopher Stanton and Shira Leuchter. Directed by Brendan Gall. Presented by UnSpun Theatre. To Dec 16. Thu-Sat 8pm; Sat 2pm. $10-$20. Young Centre for the Performing Arts, 55 Mill. 416-866-8666.

Are you an aspiring dramatic actor? Do you feel that your line readings lack clarity and/or drive? Do you yearn to take your performances that little extra mile? Then here's a newfangled idea for you: why not try shouting a lot? It's just like acting - only better. And louder. And audiences love it! Especially if it goes on forever and ever and ever and ever. We really can't get enough of it, yes sir.

There's a great deal of shouting in Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump. This is a shame, because if the show hadn't been quite so loud, it would have been the perfect length (one hour and 45 minutes) for a lovely little nap. The performance centres around several Parkdale destitutes: Michelle (Tricia Lahde), an agoraphobic fantasist; Dennis (Chris Hanratty), her mildly brain-damaged landlord; and Dusan (Christopher Stanton), an Eastern European shopkeeper, who is in habit of talk without proper the sentence structuring, like Chekov in Star Trek.

The UnSpun Theatre company, who created Head-Smashed-In from scratch in workshops and rehearsals, are clearly smart, creative and talented folk - Stanton's performance is especially interesting, when he lays off the Borat-isms - but this is wildly indulgent work. The faux-poetic script is frequently risible, the storyline is over-milked for melodrama, and the moments of interpretive dance are just plain embarrassing. A little editing (and a lot less yelling) would have gone a long way. - Paul Isaacs, Eye Weekly

(December 14, 2006 - Volume 16, Issue 10)

GOTTA LOVE THOSE ROCKETTES

Robert Cushman, National Post

Published: Saturday, December 9th, 2006

The Rockettes, the pride of Radio City Music Hall in New York, have apparently been performing their Parade of the Wooden Soldiers routine for decades. It is indeed some kind of classic. The long line of massed high-kickers in their confectionery uniforms -- white pants slashed with red, black and yellow busbies topped by white feathers, scarlet tunics and with cheeks rouged to match -- give a good new name to military discipline as they wheel, form squares, subdivide and reunite, and at the number's climax face what seems to be their first experience of actual fire. They faint dead away, each one into the waiting arms of the next, toppling over like a brigade of dancing dominoes. It's entrancing.

Elsewhere in the Radio City Christmas Spectacular, now visiting Toronto for the first time in its 74-year existence, the Rockettes show off their tapping prowess in a treatment of the Twelve Days of Christmas that seems to change rhythm and tempo with each new chorus. Have you noticed that in most musicals, a simple kick-line invariably brings down the house? Nobody, though, cheers the Rockettes for doing it; we simply take their prowess for granted, which is one of the best things about them. They are also on hand for Carol of the Bells, a sleigh-ride sequence in which they are somewhat upstaged by the scenery, as glistening a piece of Hallmark art as you are likely to see blown up for the stage, and for Christmas in New York, a first-act finale to which their presence lends, barring the odd hint of skyscraper on the backcloth, the only element of authenticity. The program synopsis rightly insists that Christmas in Manhattan is different from Christmas anywhere else, but in this show it might as well be anywhere else. A big tree doesn't cut it. They have those all over.

This Spectacular, for those of us who have never caught it in its native habitat, is simultaneously like nothing, and like everything, you've ever seen. It is lavish, and if it doesn't seem imaginative now, you can tell that it must have been so once. It is, apart from the Rockettes, utterly generic. (All right, they're generic, too, but they define their genre.) Its spirit is that of every middle-of-the-road seasonal special you remember from your youth or have caught in reruns on PBS. It has, rather surprisingly, a sliver of continuity. This concerns Santa Claus, and how hard-worked he is at this time of year, and how much he loves it, and us, and being here.

Santa, it seems, loves Toronto like Barbra Streisand loved Toronto for the couple of days that she was among us. She, as you may have heard, sent her scouts out to learn thenames of local eateries so that she might charm us by dropping them. Santa's bonhomie is, as befits his vocational ubiquity, rather less specific. I still wonder why Santa, Barbra and most other entertainers feel they have to ingratiate themselves with us like that. Do they really think we're so starved for recognition? Why don't they just do what they do, and trust us to love them for that?

Anyway, John Paul Almon, the guy in this show's red suit, probably does the ho-hoing as well as anyone could, and it isn't his fault that I kept yearning for him to get stuck in some faraway chimney for the evening's duration. I felt even less indulgent toward Mrs. Claus (Bethe Austin), who always seems on the verge of really laying into her old man about his never being home for the holidays, but never quite gets around to it. (For a more acidulous approach to the same topic, see the Surabaya Santa number in Songs for a New World.) Still, when Santa serenades his Subordinate Claus with What Are You Doing New Year's Eve, the lyric does seem to have been made for them. I've always liked that song anyway. The show also makes a foredoomed attempt to be up-to-date -- up to what date I'm not quite sure -- with something called Santa's Gonna Rock and Roll, which I would describe, if this were not so charitable a season, as an abomination.

All gestures toward modernity are abandoned in the final scene, The Living Nativity, which has been on the bill since 1933 and which is, I imagine, much like the new movie on the subject, only shorter. It's also like every high-school Christmas pageant there ever was, except for its livestock. It features three real camels and as many sheep, the camels having considerably more personality. It's simple and presumably sincere, hewing to the received story with no revisionist doubts permitted. It has of course no place for the Rockettes (though the mind does start mulling the possibilities) or indeed for Santa, so all but the devout and the very traditionally minded are likely to find it an anticlimax. In tone it has nothing to do with the rest of the show; in attitude it has everything, proving that you can have your plum pudding and eat it, too.

There can be few shows further removed from Radio City than Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, a collaboratively written piece by Un Spun Theatre. Four members are credited with co-creating and performing it; a fifth, Brendan Gall, with co-creating and directing. And there are two "additional" co-creators, a distinction that suggests all creators are created equal, but some are more equal than others.

In fact this show, too, is liable to break into the non-verbal. It starts with the four actors prowling the stage doubled up as if in the throes of severe stomach ache: the kind of prelude that has long given experimental theatre a bad name. It improves when it starts talking, but not enough. The opening must be meant to suggest alienation, and the action, which varies between the very simple and the maddeningly obscure, throws the feeling at us in handfuls. We are in Parkdale. There is Michelle (Tricia Lahde), an agoraphobic young woman whom we meet hammering on the door of her superintendent, Dennis (Chris Hanratty). He takes her into his apartment and as far as I could tell -- it isn't always clear whose room we're in -- she takes possession of his bed, though without allowing him to share it with her. Dennis, lonely, is OK with this, though frustrated, and obtains a walkie-talkie set through which they can converse, or through which she can give him orders. She renames him Bear and herself Thea.

Thea conceives a plan for saving the world, or at least for doing something to it, and gets Bear to enlist the help of Andrea (Shira Leuchter), known to the media as "the Parkdale Angel" for having once stopped an old man from jumping out of his window. In fact, Andrea is not that angelic, is indeed one tough and maybe criminal cookie, and she certainly isn't as docile as poor old Bear. Nevertheless, she plays along.

The remaining character is Dusan (Christopher Stanton), proprietor of the pawn shop on the corner -- do you remember that old song? -- and who indeed does business with Andrea until she hasn't a thing left to hock. He is Czech and, as often seems to be the case with Central European men in Canadian plays, has a show-business past about which he utters reminiscent soliloquies. His accomplishments include playing the accordion ("is hard," he says reasonably, "to practise squeezebox in secret"), but his main talent, as so often in such cases, is for magic. He also talks about Canada, and about the images he had of our various cities before coming here. The last place on his list is the small Alberta town that had buffalo like other places are popularly supposed to have lemmings, and whose picturesque name gives the play its picturesque title. The implication, I guess, is that the characters also are so many doomed mammals. Or maybe not.

Anyway, having presented these people with varying levels of compellingness (Bear and Thea are the best conceived, though all the performances are OK), the show can't think of much to do with them. The story is attenuated, long-drawn-out and, especially at the end, confusing. It hardly makes a statement about Parkdale, let alone Toronto, let alone, in spite of Dusan's travelogue monologues, Canada.

The piece was a success on the fringe; blowing it up even to the size of the Young Centre's smallest space hasn't helped. "Co-creation" can produce good, even very good, work, but the odds are usually heavier than when you start with a script by a single playwright. When the actors write it themselves, they are likely to concentrate on what they feel good about performing, while letting context go by the board. And it's a sad fact, in theatre as in life, that group ideas are usually received ideas.

Radio City Christmas Spectacular runs through Dec. 31 at the Hummingbird Centre, 416-872- 2262; Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump runs at the Young Centre through Dec. 16, 416-866-8666.

The car ride home was full of talk of the play.  It gripped our imaginations and kept hold of them for the entire 2 hour drive (the weather was terrible, and we were crawling).  Everyone was impressed with the physicality of the style, the characters, the look of the play, the intention of you all, as artists, to create and present a play that relied on more than language to tell the story.

The thing that woke me up this morning was the play's use of language. At first, there was a part of me that felt it was too wordy, too many adjectives, too many times a character came out and told me exactly how they were feeling or why they thought/said something, but then it dawned on me that this may be the point.  In our world, we are so dependent on language to communicate and to make connections to each other but we also hide behind it.  We think if we come out and tell someone straight how we feel, that we have connected with them.  We believe that telling our fears to each other, or our desires, is the path to community and will lead to an end of our loneliness.  But does it really?  What are we hiding behind our pretty words?  And why are we telling these personal "bits of truth" anyway?  Is it to make a connection or is it to wield a power, gain some status? Language used this way will only beget more loneliness.

You had 4 lonely, lonely people on that stage, and the character who was the least lonely was the one who said the least about how she was feeling, the one who questioned the language and actions of others and refused to speak about her own intentions.  The Parkdale Angel put everything into perspective.   And the parts of the play that told me the most about the characters were the parts where there was no language at all:  The little moments of play between Thea and Bear (That battlefield scene rocked!), the aggressive watching-from-the-window scenes, the elongated instants of characters stopped for a moment in thought, Dusan amusing himself with his
cigarette-pack-car.  I wish I was able to have said this to you last night, but I needed process time.

You may have all created a play that requires process time.  I hope you understand that.  I wasn't capable of standing up to cheer at the end, or even articulate how much I liked about it because what you've created is different from what I'm used to seeing.  I liked it, but I didn't know why.  It bothered me, and I didn't know why.  The intention is to bother, though, isn't it?  To make me wonder "what right do I have to impose my desires, need for clarity and cut-and-dry connections on this play", just as the Parkdale Angel wonders what right does Thea have to control Bear this way, and she wonders what right she has to judge Thea, even as she's judging her, and Thea wonders why the world needs to be so judgmental, so violently awful that there's no place for her.

You have created complicated characters that do not fit into the mold I'm used to seeing.  Their intentions change, and not always for the better.  They rely on stories to ease their alienation, and end up only feeling more alienated by the stories they've created because at the end, like Dusan said, "Everything is real."  The opposite is also true...  In their lives, and in ours. We construct our realities, we make our own meaning to answer our own questions. Some do this by clinging to horoscopes, some through having babies and raising them, some through careers, the pursuit of wealth, and some through story. Maybe all through story.  We write our stories, edit them, revise drafts according to the people we befriend, and write some more.  Just because there's no pen or paper, no physical evidence, doesn't mean we don't all do it.  We do.

So. I wanted the story of your play to connect all the characters more strongly.  I wanted an answer to the riddle.  I commend you all for NOT providing me with the things I so blithely wished for.  It would have been too easy, phoney, and too pat.

Congratulations on an incredible piece of theatre.

With much love and admiration,

Alison

Okay. I take full responsibility. It was my probably-ill-considered idea in the first place. Like so many well-intended blogs in this great blogosphere we call "life," we let this one wilt a bit after an initial flurry of entries. We were supposed to keep a record of the creative process. Problem is, we got so damn BUSY. Creating and stuff. You know.

B. has said something repeatedly in the last few days - that this is the show we set out to create. It's true. I think we have something truly dark and lovely. It's a show I would love to see - which is not always the case for a performer. I hope we get to share it with lots of people.

Opening night was (sorry - can't resist) a smashing success. Thanks.

3 things:

1. If you see Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, and have some thoughts/questions/comments for us - SEND THEM ALONG. We would love to hear from you. Either email us through MySpace or at unspun@unspuntheatre.com

2. If you saw the show and liked it, TELL SOMEONE. Everyone. Your friends, your mom, your old crappy math teacher from grade 8. As you may well know, theatre in Toronto is in need of, er... regeneration (I'm putting it politely). I suspect that you and me and the emerging community of theatre-goers and artists and enthusiasts are the key to real grassroots growth. Word of mouth is king in the indie scene.

3. If you get a chance, SEE THE SHOW. It's really f*&^ing good. And we're keeping tix cheap so that we can all afford it.

Awesome. Will blather again soon.

c.

(from Eye Weekly)

Arts Week

A Smashing Return

How's this for virtual recycling

Christopher Stanton's UnSpun Theatre company uses spam email as a source of found poetry. It helps to inspire their collective creations - Stanton says the random, chaotic collections of words that spammers use to fool junk filters can be "accidentally highly poetic."

With UnSpun remounting its 2005 Fringe hit, Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, Stanton is happy to defend collective creations. He knows the very idea can be cringe-making: images of overly earnest theatre grads developing scenes around a theme like "compassion."

"We're just as terrified of collectives as anybody," laughs Stanton, explaining that the UnSpun company follows techniques used by theatre giant Robert LePage. Instead of being inspired by a theme, the company works off found images or poetry.

Take, for example, the name of the play, borrowed from a place in Alberta, where Aboriginal hunters used to run buffalo off a cliff. "The image of being sort of herded to inescapable doom really appealed to us," says Stanton. He and company members Chris Hanratty and Tara Beagan are all ex-Albertans, and it became the central metaphor of their story about four desperate characters living in Parkdale.

When director Brendan Gall heard the Alberta name, says Stanton, "He was like, 'Why isn't that the name of a play? Why isn't that the name of our play?'

"Sometimes the things that give you the most toward the collective creation are things that come up when you're yapping instead of working," says Stanton, adding a laugh. "And we do a lot of talking when we should be working." GORD McLAUGHLIN

HEAD-SMASHED-IN BUFFALO JUMP RUNS NOV 30-DEC 16. MON-SAT 8PM; WED & SAT 2PM. $10-$20. YOUNG CENTRE FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS, 55 MILL. 416-866-8666.

***

Dora Award-winning Unspun Theatre revisit their Fringe hit Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump

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Two summers ago the collective troupe, which won a Dora for Thy Neighbour's Wife, had a Fringe hit with Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump. The company knew that the piece deserved a life beyond the festival.

But rather than do a simple remount, the company members went back to their computers and the rehearsal hall to come up with Version 2.0.

All the participants wrote scenes for the piece, which weaves together the tale of four troubled Parkdale residents: Michelle, an agoraphobe who withdraws from the world; her willing helper Dennis; Andrea, a caregiver with a secret; and Dusan, a new Canadian who runs a pawnshop.

"We saw the Fringe as a workshop experience," says UnSpun's co-artistic director Chris Hanratty, who plays Dennis. "One of the things we realized was that the Fringe show was too cerebral, didn't involve enough movement.

"So we set up a movement workshop with performer and teacher Ker Wells to create new stories through our bodies as well as our words."

One of the things the company learned was the importance of working on their feet, not simply writing and reading around a table.

Actor Tricia Lahde is new to the production but not to the company – she performed in UnSpun's minotaur in the 2006 Fringe. She admits to going into new territory with the show.

"The script was a given, but we had to tear it apart to see what succeeded as well as what we liked about it and then add new elements to improve it.

"Working with the company turned out to be incredibly supportive. This was my first stab at writing, which was terrifying and exhilarating. It's a great feeling to see my thoughts actually part of the structure of the play."

Now the narrative threads remain pretty much the same, but the way characters develop and interact is clearer than before.

"The show is about four people and how their lives intertwine, or maybe about how they could have connected but didn't," notes Lahde. "This time around the audience sees lots of missed moments and hints of what could have happened between the characters, whether it's friendship or something more passionate.

"They're all people who feel incomplete but don't get what they need from each other."

As in the earlier script, Michelle can't leave the cocoon of her apartment and starts calling herself Thea to create a different persona. At the same time, she renames Dennis, calling him Bear.

"Michelle can't function in the world, but in renaming herself she regains some control of herself and her surroundings for a while," says Lahde.

"And with the name change to Bear, the insecure Dennis moves to an instinctive level where he searches for a love that he misses in his life," adds Hanratty.

What about the title, which refers to an Alberta World Heritage Site where a prehistoric native tribe drove buffalo herds over a cliff and harvested their carcasses?

"Several buffalo tales are woven into the play," offers Hanratty, "but the title suggests that all four characters are rushing toward an emotional cliff they can't escape. Sometimes someone's a hunter pushing, sometimes an animal being pushed, but eventually everyone has to confront being at the edge and whether or not to jump."  

--> -->--> -->NOW | NOVEMBER 30 - DECEMBER 6, 2006 | VOL. 26 NO. 13 --> --> --> -->

So. Good. Listen. Here's what we've done. The last few rehearsals have been very much table work and story editing and very very very heady. And we actually, I believe, have a play. Which is a RIDICULOUS thing to say a month from opening night. But it's true, and it's exciting.

As a group, our moods are schitzophrenic lately - we'll be euphoric at the story/scene/moment we've discovered. The next day, it's all about "so where do we go now?" and an aimless restlessness.

It's amazing. Hanratty and i were talking about it on the streetcar. You'd think, by now, we would ALWAYS know what the next step is. I mean, how many times have we worked this way? What was the "next step" last time?

The answer is: zuh.

So. Tomorrow. Out of our heads, and up on our feet. The thing is, it is HARD to get this thing up when we've been doing so much table work. It will be good. But Christ. A buffalo has a LOT of inertia.

Having said that - once she's up and running...

(Aaaaaaaaaand: sleep.)

c.