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Culture Stage

River of no return

NOHAYQUIENSEPA (NO ONE KNOWS): A REQUIEM FOR THE FORCIBLY DISPLACED directed and designed by Trevor Schwellnus, choreographed by Olga Barrios, with Carlos Gonzalez-Vio, Lilia Leon, Victoria Mata, Beatriz Pizano, Chris Stanton and Mayahuel Tecozautla (Aluna Theatre). At the Theatre Centre (1087 Queen West). Previews Sunday (March 13), opens Tuesday (March 15) and runs to March 27, Tuesday-Saturday 8 pm matinee Sunday 2:30 pm. $15-$30. 416-538-0988. See listing.


What began for designer Trevor Schwellnus as an experiment in live video has evolved into an intricate full production, one that examines a Colombian town on the outskirts of violence and the activity of Canadian mining conglomerates in the region.

Nohayquiensepa (No One Knows) started life as a SummerWorks show in which the talented Schwellnus explored the effectiveness of video images superimposed on live actors.

It’s grown into a multimedia dance-theatre work, performed in English and Spanish and inspired by events in the Colombian town of Puerto Berrio, whose residents found bodies floating in the local river. They set up a mausoleum for these unknown people – dubbed No Names, or NNs – providing a sense of ritualistic close to the extinguished lives of the displaced people, sufferers of human rights violations.

“That triggered something in us,” says Schwellnus, who directs as well as designs the show for Aluna Theatre, where he is artistic producer. “And it also suggested something universal how do we, at a distance from those events, react to the death of strangers?”

He and partner Beatriz Pizano gathered a team of artists from Canada and several Latin American countries to develop the show, taking it last November to a festival in Bogota, Colombia.

“The audiences weren’t afraid to tell us what they thought of the material. Several of the women watching the show had family members killed in the false positives scandal, where the military murdered people and then dressed them in rebel clothes. It was thrilling to perform for them, because, knowing personally what we were dealing with, they responded to the show’s imagery.”

Imagery is central to the production, with movement by choreographer Olga Barrios and Schellnus’s design. The visuals from earlier workshops, at SummerWorks and Hatch, still haunt me.

As the company worked, they found connections in the various vignettes and discovered a through-line to the material.

“That often happens in a devised theatrical environment,” notes Schwellnus of a process where everyone is encouraged to contribute ideas during the creative process. “It’s the performers who start finding a narrative in the various bits of action.”

The production includes shadowplay, which relies on two-dimensional movement that’s so different from dance, in which the audience can see the performers’ bodies in three dimensions.

“That also launched us on a discovery of what this hybrid medium can do for us. The integration of dance and theatre is significant, because dance is created in the rehearsal room in a way that script-based theatre isn’t. We’ve been lucky to have a group of movers, people who have no hesitation in improvisation, especially when they’re unburdened from words.

“It’s been a lovely way into creating some moving tapestries, and that’s the best way to describe the show: as a sequence of tapestries that move and segue from one episode to another.”

New to the current show is an interest in the Canadian mining conglomerates and a suggestion of complicity in the river tragedy.

But the focus still remains on the tale’s emotional aspect.

“We discovered that kinetic movement onstage was like taking a photo of an arresting moment in time. Just as a series of photos can turn into a photo-essay, a series of movements here creates a through-line, characters’ stories, a sense of where they came from and what their actions are now.

“At one level, the production is about maintaining memory, establishing a memorial for those who died.”

Aluna Theatre holds a benefit evening on Friday (March 18), which includes a performance as well as a Colombian pre-show drink and post-show snacks and dancing. Funds raised go toward future productions and the company’s youth programming. Tickets are $75 call 416-538-0988.

On March 24, a post-show panel and discussion with guest speakers will examine some of the issues of Canadian mining in Latin America.

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