Bad taste on the bill

>> Travesty Theatre's Dead Dolls Cabaret aims to offend

by RUPERT BOTTENBERG

The archaic forms of entertainment called Vaudeville, cabaret and burlesque have been revived countless times within the last few decades--revived, as a doctor would pass smelling salts under the nose of someone who's momentarily unconscious.

With their first project, Dead Dolls Cabaret, local company Travesty Theatre apply an approach that's closer to digging up the rotting corpses of the genres, subjecting them to all manner of sordid disgrace and leaving the violated cadavers, arranged in the most embarrassing positions, out for public inspection.

A puerile, disgusting metaphor, sure, but one that's damn close to what actually goes down on the Jailhouse stage every three weeks or so. The dignity of the deceased has no more place in their productions than the sanctity of sexuality or the nobility of religion, while racial slurs and retard jokes are tossed around as freely as the vegetables they conveniently leave on patron's tables.

Sacrilege, sleaze and ethnic denigration become hysterically funny in their hands. But what's really funny, in a quiet, only-hits-you-as-an-afterthought kinda way, is how remarkably ethical and morally upright these young performers really are.

Do what the voices say

It was about a year and a half ago that Alison Rockbrand got the ball rolling. A Dawson theatre-program dropout (and legitimate theatre coach in her own right), her definition of the parameters of quality stage performance flew in the face of most everything she would have been taught had she hung around. Ditching the notion of auditions and traditional standards of merit among actors, she announced her wish to establish an "independent, improv-based horror cabaret" which would accept anyone who could dial seven digits and find a street address. Furthermore, the Cabaret has a residency in a raunchy rock club, a space in which most respectable theatre buffs wouldn't be caught dead (though if they were, the troupe could probably squeeze some comedy mileage out of their remains). The best part is, admission costs a fraction of what most stuffy, heavily subsidized companies charge for shows best suited to insomniacs.

"The whole thing about this group," explains member Jason McLean, "is that it's filled with people who aren't in it for the money or attention. We're in it because we enjoy it. You know how you get those voices in your head?"

Uh, no, actually.

"No, I mean the little voices that most people ignore. Not destructive voices, just weird ideas that you can't see becoming anything. I tell those ideas to Alison and they end up in the show. That's why I like doing this--there's no real limits. If it's funny and it works, it goes in."

"As long as it's funny to us," qualifies Natalie Gural, another Travesty trooper. "Not necessarily to the audience, but to us. We have a rather dark sense of humour."

Everyday horror

The responsibility of justifying the deliberate, almost confrontational obnoxiousness of Dead Dolls Cabaret ultimately lies with founder Rockbrand--something she handles with care and forethought. "It's our own personal issues that we're purging through the act of performing. So whatever issues we have, with religion or anything else, we perform. If it offends us, it'll probably offend the audience as well. So through performing, it becomes inoffensive to us, cleansed out, something that can to the audience as well. Their own concepts of what's right or wrong begin to shift a little. They're confronted with what they think they know, and what they don't know."

Rockbrand points to garish horror films as a primary source of inspiration, something that comes through, on an obvious level, in the ghoulish getups and frequent outbursts of cartoon violence of the Cabaret. McLean, however, sees it on a more subtle level. "The whole show, in a way, can be seen as horror. Even the offensive, controversial stuff which isn't outright horror-slasher-killer can still be horrific. We're showing people the horrific things in everyday life."

"Like the Thompson Family," says Gural of one recurrent set of Dead Doll characters. "A mentally challenged family jumping through circus hoops--I mean, on the one hand, how dare we do that? At the same time, it's completely funny."

"I remember conceiving of that sketch," says Rockbrand, "and falling off my chair laughing at this image of retarded people jumping through hoops. The whole thing about the retard--people in the audience throwing things at a freak, exploring the side of themselves that wants to hate something. They take it out on the actors. It's not real, it's all fake, so they're allowed to do it."

Airborne celery

Actually, audience participation, especially when hostile, is an essential part of the Dead Doll experience. The market-fresh produce and plastic fruits on the tables are there for a reason--as are the plastic cups Jailhouse haul out for the evening's libations.

"We don't want a dead crowd," says McLean. "We want them to enjoy it as much as we do. If not, what's the point?"

"It's interesting," muses Gural, "we've actually managed to offend people with the vegetable issue. There's some people who get angry that we're using real vegetables, saying it's a waste of food. So we also offer the plastic kind."

Which is all in good fun. Understandably, though, things have taken a turn for the uglier on certain nights. Someone got nailed with a flying boot once, and Kai Sun, the troupe's most enigmatic member, was roughed up in the bathroom one night. "That was over one of our acts where we did puppet snuff porn," recalls Rockbrand. "An eight-year-old girl puppet gets kidnapped, raped and killed. Because it's a puppet show, it's funny, right? But someone was really offended."

"Ironically," says McLean, "Kai Sun wasn't even in the skit."

McLean himself had a pitcher of beer poured over his head by a rather zesty audience member. "An entire pitcher--now that's a waste! But it worked! It worked with the skit."

"It made it even funnier," says Gural.

"It was an intentionally annoying character," shrugs McLean, who also remembers people walking out before the show even began, due to a deliberately gay-baiting PSA. "A lot of people walk out on the bit with the mother beating the retard," says Rockbrand. "It's a little too much for them."

No-limits soldiers

One impressive thing about the Cabaret is that they manage to generate a new show, with changing themes and rotating MCs, every three weeks, and on a budget that rarely hits the double-digit range (the Dollarama across from Jailhouse is their primary source of props and materials). This coming Wednesday, they're focusing on religion. "We'll try to poke fun at as many religions as possible," says Rockbrand. "Let's see--we've got Christians, of course, Jews, uh, we've got Gandhi in there, Muslims, Buddhists..." Further down the road, we'll be seeing a Cabareich evening, which outta be a real hit with the B'Nai Brith types.

So where, if anywhere, do the Dead Dolls draw the line? Would it even be ethical for them, now that they've cracked this Pandora's box, to do so? Asked if there's any lines they wouldn't cross, Rockbrand says, "Not yet. We did have some concerns about the retard family, so we finally just openly discussed it. Jason said he didn't like it. I said he didn't have to in that skit, but he said, 'No, no, I want to be in it--I just don't like it!"

"It's a good skit, funny as hell," says McLean. "I think the reason nothing is taboo is that we're poking fun at life--so nothing in life can't be poked fun at. Like the puppet show. Snuff movies aren't a funny thing. It's a disgusting subject, and we know it. We're not justifying or glorifying snuff films, we're poking fun at the ugly side of it. It would be wrong of us, against our beliefs, to refuse to do something because it's too racy. Because it sucks, or it's not enjoyable, that's a different matter. I get offended at things in our show, and that's good--if I'm offended, imagine how the audience takes it."

At Jailhouse Rock on Wednesday, March 21, 9pm, $5 ($3 with costume)