Faith and dreams

Tableau d’Hôte and Infinitheatre
explore poetry and religion with
Haunted House and Blessed Are They

PORTRAIT OF A POET: Hausknost does Klein

By NEIL BOYCE

“Busy day,” is a gross understatement as director Liz Valdez pauses to nurse her six-week-old newborn that arrived in the midst of a rescheduled play and accelerated rehearsal. Cast and crew are working hard, but time is tight.

Tableau d’Hôte theatre and poet/playwright Endre Farkas are preparing Haunted House, a journey into the soul and surroundings of A.M. Klein, one of the most creative Canadian poets of the 20th century.

A complex and conflicted man, Klein grew up as a “Jew boy” in the ethnic ghetto around St-Urbain and the Main, producing a rich body of work in the turbulent ’20s to ’40s.

Weaving together Klein’s poems, fiction, journals, and editorials, Farkas—who’s been working on this for over a decade—and frequent collaborator Valdez create a multi-layered portrait of Klein as poet, ghostwriter, lawyer and almost-politician.

“This was going to be the great play that never got written or produced,” says Farkas. “Then a friend—another poet—said, ‘You know, it’s his 100th birthday on Valentine’s Day, maybe this is the time to get it all together.’”

Eric Hausknost (familiar from previous Tableau d’Hôte productions) plays Klein, while five other actors play multiple figures in Klein’s life, forming a chorus to reflect his thoughts and the social climate of the time.

“I’m trying to get the sense behind the words,” says Valdez, “to build everyday life and everyday memory. It’s going to be imagery, movement and poetry on stage.”

Addicted to god

Infinitheatre caps a season dedicated to “Love, Hope and Faith” with Bruce M. Smith’s premiere, Blessed Are They, about the modern place and value of religion. In a remarkable move, the company heads downtown to the St. James United Church, with its 150-year old pulpit, transformed into the small rural church of the story.

But in the “green room”—a coffee-cup-strewn office in their rehearsal space—the mood is anything but church-like. Actors Eric Davis and Andreas Apergis, and Infinitheatre artistic director Guy Sprung, are in stitches as they fight over who wants to talk about the play the least. “It’s his story,” laughs Sprung, handing it off to Apergis, “he should tell it.”

Smith uses a weekly Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in a church basement as backdrop for the cast of seven characters of varying backgrounds. Set in Quebec, a minister, his faith in tatters, is confronted by a charismatic “saved” new member of the congregation. The two men (Davis and Apergis), one based upon Apostle Paul, the other on Apostle Peter, struggle to define “true” faith in an ideological battle for the hearts and minds—and souls—of their community.

“The way I like to think about it,” says Davis of his role, “is that he’s switched addictions. He first comes into the play through AA meetings. He’s done atrocious things in the past as an addict and has found a way, through salvation, to forgive himself—and, at least for the time being, to stave off those demons.”

Apergis, playing the minister of a dwindling congregation, is the other half of the coin. “The play puts out three basic ideas: certainty, doubt and faith,” says Apergis. “My guy is doubting—he’s a man trying to find his centre, to see where his faith lies. He has a magnetic repulsion to a guy like Paul, he’s beguiled by his certainty and his power.”

A self-described deist rather than religious, Smith responded with enthusiasm to Sprung’s request for this new work, reflecting that “no two people experience faith in the same way, yet it has a role in everybody’s life.”

BLESSED ARE THEY, TO MARCH 5 AT ST.
JAMES UNITED CHURCH (463 STECATHERINE
W.), (514) 987-1774, #104
HAUNTED HOUSE, TO MARCH 5 AT THE
SEGAL CENTRE STUDIO (5170
CÔTE-STE-CATHERINE), (514) 848-9696