>HOMAGE by Anthony Black, directed by Christian Barry. Presented by Luminato and 2b theatre at the Joey and Toby Tanenbaum Opera Centre (227 Front East). Opens June 17 and runs to June 19, Thursday-Saturday 8 pm, matinee Saturday 1:30 pm. $35. 416-872-1111. See listing.
People usually go to the theatre to watch a work of art.[rssbreak]
In Anthony Black’s Homage, viewers actually sit inside one work of art to watch another.
Inspired by the life and work of public sculptor Haydn Davies, an ad exec who left his job to become an artist, Homage pays, er, homage to a large piece of sculpture commissioned from Davies in 1974, a work destroyed in 2005.
In addition to looking at the effect both acts had on Davies, the play raises questions about the ownership of art, the moral rights of the artist and the importance of an artist’s legacy.
“The poetic irony of the story is that Homage, Davies’s sculpture, was inspired by Stonehenge, a great, lasting human artifact,” says Black, artistic co-director of Halifax’s 2b theatre. “The 1974 work, though, was made of wood and bound to decay because of the material.”
Designed by Peter Blackie, the set – which surrounds the audience and doesn’t echo Davies’s sculpture – is literally theatre in the round, a quartet of 14-foot units that form a square on the outside and a circle in the centre.
“Peter talks about it as a core and timeless architectural idea, with the circle representative of natural perfection, divinity, a sacred space,” says Black. “The square, on the other hand is a human creation, an attempt to make sense of the world. The interaction of the two forms, with the audience sitting in a kind of Roman senate, gives the production some of its tension.”
The Halifax-based company is known for rethinking how to use performance space. Several years ago, in a production of Revisited, inspired by Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, viewers sat around a large dinner table.
“The forum image suggests a discussion about the nature of public art and who that public is, key themes in the play,” says Black.
It’s striking that Black, who has also written and performed Invisible Atom, uses theatre, itself arguably ephemeral, to talk about a lost piece of art. Once a live performance is over, it can’t be repeated in exactly the same fashion.
“The notion of impermanence in the world of art is something I deal with in my work all the time. But I start with the general premise that theatre actually happens in the mind of the audience.
“What we artists do is catalyze that imaginative process. What we create lasts in the memory, in the sensations, and people go away and consciously or unconsciously think it.”
