Defamiliarizing daily

>> Writer, editor, radio producer and
performance artist Anna Leventhal keeps busy

GRASSROOTS GAL: Leventhal

by VINCENT TINGUELY

Whether it’s writing, organizing workshops and events, producing radio programs for Venus on CKUT and Outfront on CBC, or performing a bit of off-the-wall experimental theatre, Anna Leventhal approaches everything she does with an inspiringly fearless engagedness. “I went to a Montessori for kindergarten, and I was always encouraged to do whatever I wanted,” says Leventhal. “Maybe a bit too much, as it often resulted in epic theatre pieces, all of which were titled ‘Bye Bye Butterfly,’ because my grandmother had this big rubber butterfly in her basement that we would incorporate into everything.”

While Leventhal describes herself as a writer first and foremost, she’s got a high profile in Montreal’s grassroots art and culture scene. She’s been part of the Bookmobile project, and was a co-founder of the Bibliograph/e Zine Library. She’s performed thought-provoking, collectively conceived experimental theatre pieces in New York, San Francisco, at Toronto’s Hysteria festival and Montreal’s own Edgy Women. “Lots of my performances have dealt with explicitly feminist themes,” Leventhal explains, “but it’s less about trying to get people to think ‘Yeah, that’s how it should be!’ than throwing up some kind of textural thoughts of how certain ideas about gender work, and how they get put in place and what they mean to people.”

Lately, her focus has been on writing. A piece recently published in Geist arose from the decision to write every day. “I ended up writing about high school because these stories write themselves,” says Leventhal. “Junior high was basically this litany of violence.” Her approach is to defamiliarize the everyday. “You know that feeling when you say a word over and over until it becomes totally alien and meaningless, and you can’t understand how it ever came to mean something to you in the first place, and the whole world kind of caves in a little?” says Leventhal. “I really love that feeling.”

She’s also currently editing a fiction anthology for Invisible Publishing on the theme of infrastructure. “I have to find a sexier title,” she admits. “It’s inspired by Michel de Certeau’s The Practice of Everyday Life. The anthology will look at the systems that exist and what people do in navigating their way through these channels and structures,” says Leventhal. “You’re negotiating a space for yourself within structures you didn’t build, and you probably wouldn’t have built them that way if you did, but you have to find a way to live with it.”