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The quintessence of Fringe Danespotting prepares to suffer the slings and arrows of underground theatre
by DAVID GOBEIL TAYLOR
Welcome to the Fringe... and to the opening sentence of the press release for Danespotting, Ribbon in the Sky Productions' offering in the seventh annual Montreal Fringe Festival. With over 50 shows participating in the fest, it's the companies with the catchiest sound bites and the snazziest graphics who receive the most attention. Oh, and a clever title doesn't hurt, either. Not that Danespotting is all packaging and no substance. If the advance buzz is to be believed, and if the short excerpt performed at the Fringe-for-all media event is any indication, this brainchild of Matthew MacFadzean and Amy Price-Francis is shaping up to be be one of the hits of the festival. MacFadzean and Price-Francis, who are entering their third and final year of the National Theatre School acting program, are collaborating for the first time in this take on a classic love story. Well, okay, more of a boy-meets-girl, girl-drowns-herself, boy-ends-up-on-a-huge-pile-of-bodies story. "It's sort of a Hamlet meets Trainspotting love story, remaining true to Shakespeare but with a modern spin," says MacFadzean. "We started out wanting to write a story about Hamlet and Ophelia because these are characters who are very true and dear to us. Then we made the connection between them and more modern lovers like Sid and Nancy." Bringing in elements of popular culture is a common approach in Fringe theatre--not surprising when you consider that the festival is largely made up of young artists trying to reach a young audience more familiar with Tarantino than Shakespeare. MacFadzean and Price-Francis, however, believe that Shakespeare has a lot to say to the youth of today. "Hamlet was a trainspotter," says MacFadzean, "searching for some kind of identity, doing nothing with his life, lost in a society that had no role for him. "Trainspotting, Natural Born Killers, Sid and Nancy... these movies are popular because they're brutally honest about the extremes of modern life and about how people can be in love--true love--in these situations. They're not trite or cheesy love stories--they're true to the conditions in which we're brought up." MacFadzean handled most of the writing of Danespotting while Price-Francis, who has extensive training in ballet and modern dance, concentrated on the movement. "We tried lots of different ways to work together before we found the right one," says Price-Francis. "We'd talk about a scene, split up and develop our ideas, then get back together and assemble them." Price-Francis also chose much of the music for the play, which ranges from German techno band Cygnus X to classical music to songs taken directly from the Trainspotting soundtrack. "It was interesting to be able to choose music to fit my choreography, instead of the other way around. There are parts of the play which are designed to look just like music videos." A play with a soundtrack instead of a soundscape? MacFadzean doesn't see anything surprising or ground-breaking about this. "You go to the cinema and half of the films shown were once plays," he says. "I think that says something about where theatre is going. People like Robert Lepage have been testing the boundaries of theatre, showing that in this day and age you have to take some elements from film to find and keep an MTV audience. You have to keep it fast-paced and sensorally interesting." If there's one thing these two young artists want to achieve, it's to address the question Shakespeare himself left unanswered in Hamlet: Were Hamlet and Ophelia mad? Definitely not, say the Danespotting duo. "Everyone is mad to a certain extent," says MacFadzean. "To us, Hamlet and Ophelia were victims of societal influences who just weren't allowed to breathe." "We're trying to provoke other people's theories, their ideas about madness," continues Price-Francis. "We're trying to get people to look at their definitions of madness under a microscope. If people completely disagree with us, that's fine, as long as they think about it." Danespotting caused quite a stir at the Fringe-for-all, as MacFadzean played his modern Hamlet, transforming the famous "To be or not to be" soliloquy into a litany of Gen-X angst. Trading in his tights for a leather jacket and his bare bodkin for a switchblade and sporting spiky bleach-blond hair, he bore more than a passing resemblance to none other than Billy Idol. When asked if he deliberately chose to evoke Idol and the inevitable connection to his band Generation X, he laughs. "Well, I would have preferred to remind people of Branagh. But Billy's okay, too." Has the advance buzz caused any pressure for the pair? Aye, there's the rub. "We're not complaining," says Price-Francis. "Hopefully there's something in our ideas that people find interesting. It's encouraging, but also a bit stressful--I hope we can deliver. All we can do is stay true to our ideas and hopefully people will be satisfied and receive something from it." |
