Advertisement

Culture Stage

Inside an outsider

THE ART OF BUILDING A BUNKER by Adam Lazarus and Guillermo Verdecchia, directed by Verdecchia, with Lazarus. Presented by QuipTake and Factory Theatre (125 Bathurst). Opens Thursday (October 16) and runs to November 2, Tuesday-Saturday 8 pm, matinee Sunday 2 pm. $23-$45, some discounts and Sunday pwyc. 416-504-9971,


Even if we don’t think about it consciously, we spend every day deciding how to interact with others: choosing what’s permissible to say or do, avoiding what we consider wrong.

That’s a huge challenge for Elvis, the central character in Adam Lazarus and Guillermo Verdecchia’s The Art Of Building A Bunker, which opens the Factory Theatre season. A hit in its workshop production at SummerWorks 2013, the show gives solo performer Lazarus a chance to portray the various members of a sensitivity-training group and its not always sensitive leader.

Having committed some unnamed act of stepping over the line at work, Elvis is forced to do a week’s mandatory training, at the end of which he and the others must each present a speech in which they confront and exorcise their worst demons.

“He’s a low-ranking civil servant, a guy with a wife and child he feels he must protect,” says Lazarus. “I think he works in zoning permits, and while he’s quiet most of the time, he’s irritated, stuck, afraid and angry. He might seem to fall in line, but internally he’s steaming, brewing and awkward.”

Lazarus and co-writer/director Verdecchia have drawn a man who’s darkly funny, prone to think and sometimes say the most inappropriate things. Yet he’s also someone with whom we can identify. Lazarus’s background in bouffon suggested the direction he’s taken with Elvis.

“The bouffon figure is the outsider, the fool, who speaks the truth and says things that we don’t dare say or are socialized into not saying,” notes Verdecchia. “He might speak lots of nonsense, but there are certain truths and realities that he blurts out in everybody’s face.”

Elvis longs for connection with others but doesn’t know how to reach out to them. The world is headed for disaster as he sees it, and he can’t understand the importance of sensitivity training in light of what’s to come.

“He raises the basic political questions that are central to everyone,” nods the director. “How do we live together, how do we get along and manage our encounters and differences? These aren’t abstract questions but personal ones for both Adam and me. We’re trying in someway to address a feeling in the air about fear and the lack of civility.”

Download associated audio clip.

While raising thorny ideas, the show is often driven by humour.

“But like the material, the laughs are often difficult and suggest questions without necessarily answering them,” says Lazarus, whose work includes Wonderland, in which he played the legless, foul-mouthed Eff. “If a viewer starts to laugh and then wonders whether it’s okay to do so or finds it shocking, we’ve touched the right button.”

“The same ideas came up in a show I worked on with Marcus Youssef and Camyar Chai, The Adventures Of Ali & Ali And The Axes Of Evil,” adds Verdecchia. “This is the kind of comedy we must create today. Drama in general reconciles us to our profound feelings about things. Unsettling laughs always ask us to re-examine what we think about ourselves and the world in which we live.”

Additional Interview Clips

How Lazarus and Verdecchia started collaborating on Bunker:

Download associated audio clip.

Why uncomfortable laughter is an important part of theatre:

Download associated audio clip.

jonkap@nowtoronto.com

Advertisement

Exclusive content and events straight to your inbox

Subscribe to our Newsletter

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

By signing up, I agree to receive emails from Now Toronto and to the Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions.

Recently Posted