THIS TIME choreography by Heidi Strauss, based on Ken Gass’s play Light, with Brendan Wyatt and Justine Chambers. Presented by Adelheid at the Factory Studio (125 Bathurst). Opens tonight (Thursday, April 1) and runs to April 11. $18-$25. 416-504-9971. See listing.
If you think only today’s artists are radically experimenting with theatre, consider this: 40 years ago, a young playwright named Ken Gass wrote a wordless, 20-minute one-act play called Light in which a man and a woman share the stage with nine beams of light.[rssbreak]
“It’s incredible to read today,” says Heidi Strauss, one of the most intuitive dance artists working today. Her intimate piece As It Is – performed inches away from audiences – premiered at last year’s Performance Spring Fest.
“There are these stage directions in Ken’s play that read, ‘Character somersaults across the stage,’ or ‘Character smells the space.'”
Strauss first heard about it two years ago at the Dora Awards, when Gass – now, of course, Factory Theatre’s artistic director – asked if she’d play the female character. She did that in a workshop. Then, as Factory’s dance artist in residence, she thought she’d develop it further. The result is a 50-minute work she’s called This Time.
The core of the original piece, she says, is the relationship between the woman (Justine Chambers) and man (Brendan Wyatt). The pooled lights elicit fears, bringing up misunderstandings or suspicions about their world.
Gass was totally open to Strauss’s suggestions about bringing in video projections and making the setting more three-dimensional. The audience sits on either side of the performing space.
“What I like is that because of the projections you won’t be seeing the same thing as the person sitting across from you,” says Strauss. “You’ll even see something different from the person next to you, too. It’s about perspective. Our perspectives, like those of the couple, are all subjective.”
Strauss is currently fascinated by Samuel Beckett’s play That Time, which features voices from a single character at different times in his life.
“I’ve been thinking about time a lot, how we get all these news flashes and updates from events like the Haiti earthquake, and how that becomes part of the past so quickly. It’s really important to be in the moment, to hold onto what we have right now.”
Right now, Strauss is seven and a half months pregnant – one of the reasons why she didn’t perform in this new version. She’s enjoying the moment, but is also looking ahead. She’s collaborating on several projects with vocal artist Fides Krucker and has commissioned a solo for herself from Montreal’s Ginette Laurin.
Plus, As It Is goes on tour in September.
“My mother asked me if I’d stop dancing,” she says. “I can’t stop. There are so many exciting things coming up.”
glenns@nowtoronto.com
