The world’s stage

A silent Simon and Garfunkel, Rambo goes
solo, nano-narratives and more at this
year’s Festival TransAmériques

NO WORDS REQUIRED: The Sound of Silence

By NEIL BOYCE

Covering the arts for a weekly, we don’t really believe the press releases we get in this racket, over-hyped as they are. But scanning a recent arrival, the melodious phrase “an avalanche of theatre and dance” captures the feel of Festival TransAmériques remarkably well. Artists and directors from 12 countries will spill into town for 18 days this spring to showcase a sampling of the best productions being staged globally at the moment.

More than a magnet for the curious—what’s theatre like in Latvia, and where is that exactly, anyway?—the FTA each year keeps giving audiences a taste of what is possible. As founder and festival director Marie-Hélène Falcon remarked on the pieces featured in this third edition, “They pull us out of everyday life and encourage us to dream, to reinvent our lives. Their work is invaluable.”

It’s scattered throughout a dozen venues and at outdoor sites on Emery street and in the Old Port. Good theatre is rarely cheap, but most FTA shows are in the $28–$38 range (with a few outdoor freebies)—a great deal for works of this scale.

The Sound of Silence, performed without dialogue, opens the Festival as the flower power era in the former Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic is recreated with humour and tenderness by dynamic director Alvis Hermanis. Restless youth and a cancelled Simon and Garfunkel concert brings audiences back to 1968 and the heady days of peace and love.

L’opéra paysan invites the audience to a wedding that spins out of control to the tune of live Hungarian and Gypsy folk music. Director, actor, and playwright Béla Pintér hijacks baroque opera conventions in this look at Hungarian society, invoking Brecht and Kusturica in his free flowing productions.

New York troupe Nature Theatre of Oklahoma arrive from a well-received European tour with Rambo Solo, a quirky retelling of First Blood, (the book, not the film). With iPod in hand, actor Zachary Oberzan rewrites the story (“as universal as Hamlet”) with fantastic detours. YouTube him for a preview.

Spectators get a closer-than-front-row seat in Bioboxes, by Vancouver company Theatre Replacement. In a miniscule “cabinet of curiosities,” a tiny audience (seating capacity: six) get to see nano-narratives from a single actor.

The characters in Questo Buio Feroce, from phenomenal Italian director Pippo Delbono, are “casualties of existence”: a schizophrenic beggar, a man afflicted with Down Syndrome—broken men whose gestures offer a reflection on death without loss or sorrow through bizarrely beautiful tableaux.

London dance-theatre company Sadler’s Wells, classical ballet rebel Sylvie Guillem, stage wizard Robert Lepage, and renowned British choreographer Russell Maliphant put their large brains together for the North American première of Éonnagata, a Kabuki-flavoured tale of the Chevalier d’Éon, the cross-dressing spy.

A new, multidisciplinary Short Art Forms event is unveiled this year, called Microclimats. Twelve teams of artists lead spectators on a three-hour meandering stroll—from cellar to attic—in the mythic Monument National. Dancers, musicians, and actors of all stripes occupy every nook and cranny of the building in an evolving series of performances.

Eating, drinking, and schmoozing are a big part of the FTA: get-togethers with artists after the performance; film screenings at the Cinémathèque québécoise and the Goethe Institute; and staged readings are all on the menu, with Quartier Général (175 President-Kennedy) the main meeting place for all things FTA.

FESTIVAL TRANSAMÉRIQUES, TO JUNE
6, (514) 844-3822, WWW.FTA.QC.CA