Jill of all trades

Dulcinea Langfelder brings the stylish sensory
overload of Dulcinea’s Lamentto Montreal

WRITING HER OWN RULES: Langfelder

By NEIL BOYCE

Multidisciplinary. It’s that catchword we use to describe work that won’t fit into a neat category—it might be just a theatre piece with a slideshow.

But in the long career of the exotically-named Dulcinea Langfelder, it fits. An American who moved to Canada in 1978 and now spends months touring her shows internationally, Langfelder’s works are wild, playful creations with more than a bit of autobiography in them. A performance might encompass theatre, music, dance, puppetry, mannequins, claymation and every kind of video-projected shenanigan available. Her previous work, Victoria, has already toured the world (including three trips to Japan) and her newest, Dulcinea’s Lament, is set for a brief run at Concordia’s D.B. Clarke Theatre before changing languages and heading off to parts unknown.

Langfelder is an animated and funny talker who takes the conversation in wide, digressive loops before coming back to the point. We spoke the day after the U.S. election, and the sense of newness that seems to now affect every aspect of life also seeped into the conversation: “I have to start by telling you I’m in quite a state today,” she says. “I’m a New Yorker. The election yesterday has really affected me. Overnight, my country has changed. It’s really something.”

Alice Ronfard directs the story of Don Quixote’s muse, Dulcinea del Toboso, as Langfelder takes on her namesake, Cervantes’ heroine, in a show about individuality, love and the history of religions around the world. For Langfelder, part of exploring the Quixote mythology was looking at the Middle Ages, and what separates the pre-modern from the modern world: “If you look into it in depth, you find reasons why we’ve come to where we are today,” she says.

“It’s been a very long time since I’ve presented a new work in Montreal, because I tour a lot,” she continues. “I take a very long time to create a piece, but once it’s created, I can tour for 10 years, easily.”

It’s a movement-based, sensory spectacle kind of theatre that we do very well in Quebec (Robert Lepage and Gille Maheu’s Carbone 14 group are its two most famous exponents) and one that shows the influence of mime at an early stage in the artists’ career. “I create my own rules,” says Langfelder, “and it’s very difficult to categorize what I do. It’s not theatre, it’s not dance, it’s not variety, it’s not circus. It really is multidisciplinary.”

The apparent ease with which Langfelder and crew manipulate these elements hides an obsessive streak: “I’m a notorious perfectionist,” she says. “I show my work little by little—I can’t just do it in a vacuum. The audience really helps me create the piece.”

But what gave the work a push was TV network newspeak, where tired clichés about how we now live in a “post-9/11” world led Langfelder to think about what that really meant, if anything. “And all of a sudden,” she says, “overnight, we’ve embarked on what could be called the “post-post-9/11” world—a cycle has been completed. Something very important has just happened.”

“I always want to give people something very tangible to take away from the show,” Langfelder says. “In this case, my wish is that people feel much stronger their inner convictions, and less vulnerable to groupthink.”

DULCINEA’S LAMENT, TO NOV. 19
AT D.B. CLARKE THEATRE
(1455 DE MAISONNEUVE W.)