by AMY BARRATT

"I always try to be fashionable, you know," says Gabor Zsigovics. "That's my goal in life."

He lets out a belly laugh, knowing that I've caught the dripping irony in his voice. This is a man who has seemingly gone out of his way to alienate the English theatre "establishment" in this city. The story of how he once harangued a Centaur audience for giving a standing O to a mediocre production will probably follow him to the grave. Opinion has been split in the community over whether he is a visionary or a madman. His inspired direction of the Portrait of Dorian Gray for Gravy Bath last year provided strong evidence for the visionary label.

With his own company, Q Art Theatre, Zsigovics is currently directing The Box Man, which he co-wrote with James R. Wallen, based on a Japanese novel. Blessed with a healthy suspicion of theatrical gimmicks, Zsigovics sounds not apologetic but, well, worried, as he describes the unquestionably avant-garde concept for the production, which opened last night. First of all, each audience member is seated in his own private box. Cardboard box the size of a closet, that is, with a peep hole to watch the performance through. The idea is inspired by a character in the play who takes candid photographs from inside a box. It's also a multimedia performance, featuring live video feeds, original music and puppetry. But, Zsigovics insists, all of this is necessary to convey the surrealistic feel of Kobo Abé's novel.

"It's a non-linear story. The characters are not named, and by the end of the book, they kind of mix up and become performers." Zsigovics first read the book in the 1970s back in his native Hungary. A chapter titled "Five Minutes to Curtain Call" inspired him to begin thinking of the material in performance terms.

"I should say I've been working on it since 1976," Zsigovics quips, pointing out that people are always impressed by projects that have been in the works for decades. Certainly, the idea must have been rattling around in the director's head all those years, but in concrete terms, the whole project has come together in less than six months. The script was written last spring, and rehearsals have been underway since early August.

The show is being performed in a versatile gallery space at Station C in the gay village. The 48 cardboard boxes, decorated with sketches on the inside and furnished with flashlights, surround the performance space on all four sides. The peep show set-up, Zsigovics suggests, is just an exaggeration of the usual audience role: sitting in the dark and watching. For him, Abé's novel predicted the pervasive voyeurism of 21st-century society evidenced by everything from surveillance cameras to reality TV.

Jesus returns

A hit last spring at the Monument-National, Jesus Hopped the A Train is spreading the word this week at the Centaur. This dark drama about the unhealthy relationship between religion and the penal system is a Tsultrum8 production starring Jay Cutler and Kwasi Songui and directed by Sid Zanforlin. It runs Sept. 16–19 at 8 p.m., $12–$17, 288-3161.

The Box Man, to Oct. 3 at Station C (1450 Ste-Catherine E.) Tue–Sat at 8 p.m., Sundays at 2 p.m., $15–$22, 523-1434

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