ODYSSEY by Homer, adapted by performer George Mann and director Nir Paldi (Theatre Ad Infinitum/Why Not Theatre). At Tarragon Extra Space (30 Bridgman). January 27-29 at 8 pm, January 30 at 2:30 pm. $20, some $10 matinee rush. 416-531-1827. See listing.
Homer’s epic Odyssey is one of the West’s earliest and best pieces of storytelling. Ranging across two decades and encompassing dozens and dozens of characters, it has a breathtaking richness.
Solo actor George Mann presents it to an audience in about an hour.
Working with fellow adaptor and director Nir Paldi, Mann premiered the show at the 2009 Edinburgh Fringe, where it sold out and won a Best of Edinburgh Fringe Award. The Theatre Ad Infinitum production then toured internationally and comes to Toronto with the help of Why Not Theatre.
“The piece began when I was teaching a workshop on finding gestural language,” recalls the British Mann, a graduate of the Jacques Lecoq School in Paris, as are the Israeli Paldi and the company’s Canadian artistic director, Amy Nostbakken.
“Watching the students inspired me, and I decided to use Lecoq techniques to explore the medium of storytelling for one person.”
Finding a vehicle wasn’t easy. Mann and Paldi wanted to investigate the poetic side of creation, working with Mann’s facility for creating comic characters.
“Fairy tales weren’t rich enough or right for what we wanted to do. But then I found a children’s version of the Odyssey, which inspired me to read the proper 500-page poem, filled with dramatic incidents and strong characters.”
When he told people about his intention, Mann often got a skeptical response. Announcing it at a family Christmas dinner, he remembers facing “the overwhelming silence of doubt.”
It took the creators three months to make a first draft.
“The trick was to marry classic oral storytelling with the gestural language I learned at Lecoq, communicating with the body as well as with words.
“Our hope was to engage the audience, have people sit on the edge of their seats. In so much text-based performance, they sit back and don’t feel as involved. But we didn’t want to overegg the pudding the gestures had to enrich the story, not take away from it. “Happily, we realized that the text could have a physical life, too, since it comes from the mouth, the voice and the breath.” Following Odysseus as he returns from the Trojan War to his faithful wife Penelope, Homer’s story involves giants, sorcerers, demigods, gods, a trip to the underworld and finishes with a terrific archery competition. “We wanted, in an hour, to tell the story in an organic fashion and not have it feel like we’d glued scenic moments together. Over the course of the show, I become dozens of characters.”
His favourite?
“The nymph Calypso, I think. Demigods are more flexible than gods, since they’re more human in their emotions and therefore are flawed. Calypso, who kept Odysseus captive for seven years, is sexual, naughty and possessive. It’s great playing characters with blemishes.”
We can look forward to more work from Ad Infinitum Theatre, since Nostbakken’s set up a Toronto branch of the company.
The company’s other works include The Big Smoke, an a cappella piece with its roots in Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath and Ann Sexton, and Translunar Paradise, inspired by Yeats’s The Tower.
Why Not Theatre’s Ravi Jain, a fellow student of the three at Lecoq, will also be promoting a return visit.
“We’re excited about the exchange between the two companies across the Atlantic,” says Mann. “It’s a chance to help and inspire each other.”
