The BUZZ Festival
March 9-12 @ Theatre Passe Muraille
By Daina Valiulis
Kudos to Andy McKim, the artistic director of Theatre Passe Muraille for introducing BUZZ into the season! A week-long festival of plays at various stages of development, BUZZ contained 19 productions that presented work either in its entirety or in fragments for audience feedback. With its fun and supportive environment, BUZZ yielded some interesting work, some terrible work, and lots of productions that fell somewhere in the middle.
Brimful of Asha stood out. Ravi Jain and his mother Asha Jain sat on stage (after passing out samosas to the audience) and told the true story of how Ravi was almost tricked into an arranged marriage by his parents. Both Ravi and Asha were hilarious with their conflicting perspectives, Asha being a very traditional Indian woman who could not understand her crazy actor son, and Ravi being an aspiring performer with a lot of respect for his culture, but essentially a young Canadian with modern ideas. He presented a compelling story with interesting characters; it will be interesting to see those develop.
Another favorite was Purple Don’t Cry. Still in the writing stages, the first scene of the play was presented, telling the true story of a gangster named Purple seeking redemption. It began with a Muslim prayer being sung followed by a rap performed by the playwright (Boonaa Mohamed – also one of the characters in the show) that set the tone and brought the audience into the world of this character. It was creative, poetic, and in-your-face, with a clear focus. Purple’s objectives and challenges were set up immediately – it’s too bad the piece lasted only fifteen minutes. A fully realized production will showcase Mohamed’s unique new writing and acting talent.
Several shows lacked clarity and focus. The worst of these was the teen soap opera Kilt Pins, written by Catherine Hernandez. Shown in its entirety, it centred on Dee and her relationship with Chris. The piece was never clear as a complete project. Hernandez wrote this play to try to show that teenagers are capable of loving each other and dealing with sex responsibly. However, in contradiction, the character Anna gets pregnant and is presented as a tragic example of irresponsibility and naïveté. This was a bland, banal version of George F. Walker’s Tough! - it didn’t say anything original or compelling about being a teenager that hasn’t already been said with more focus and clarity by other artists.
Birnam Wood was another piece that lacked clarity and focus. Presented in its experimental stages by Hume Baugh, Ron Kennell, Viv Moore, Matthew Romantini, and Lucy Rupert, it was a movement piece in which the trees of the forest interpret the story of Macbeth. There was no story-it felt like a first-year movement class: fun for the people in the class, boring and alienating for the audience.
The rest of the pieces fell somewhere in the middle. A lot of them, such as Siddhartha and Canada 1986, were conceptual, focusing on the search for freedom and Canadian identity. Calgary theatre troupe One Yellow Rabbit presented Vignettes from Five Hole, which made as many comparisons between sex and hockey as possible in forty minutes. Perhaps it was more enjoyable for hockey-lovers, but to me it seemed mostly cheap and gimmicky.
Whether you sink or swim initially, the greatest thing about BUZZ is the feedback. Given some revision, a not-so-great production could evolve into something wonderful. Bravo to the artists who participated in this year’s event, and keep creating!
