Their latest play, SEEDS, a marriage of documentary with drama, generates a theatrical hybrid that defies classification...a new strain, highly resistant to boredom, to trivia, to irrelevance.
<MARQUEE>
Theatre Review by Christina Manolescu</MARQUEE>
As a starting point, in 1998, a microcosmic spotlight is trained upon one previously obscure farmer from Saskatchewan, Percy Schmeiser, who dares to confront and defy his powerful corporate adversary, Monsanto.
Think David. Think Goliath. Think Right versus Might - WRONG.
The evidence, opinions, hearsay and half-truths of this judicial case are dramatized with great passion and exactitude by a versatile cast of actors; however, this is no clear-cut, simplified and polarized account of the story, where Good and Evil 'face off' on the level terrain of a canola field.
The play revisits, instead, the natural complexities and nuances of this Canadian "cause celebre" which, to this day, remains fundamentally insoluble.
Six fabulous actors, CHIP CHUIPKA, JOEL MILLER, ALEX IVANOVICI, JENNIFER MOREHOUSE, JULIE TAMIKO MANNING, and ANDREAS ASPERGIS succeed in representing over forty significant voices, ranging from taped interviews to Court records, from witness statements to media reports. During a swift-paced fluid choreography - a judicial Tower of Babel - opposing opinions are tossed back and forth, challenged, refuted and abandoned, only to be later reasserted, retracted, confirmed or denied.
This intimate theatre space at the Monument National is transformed into a Public Forum for TRUTH. And despite theatrical artifice, there is a refreshing naturalness to the performance: Jennifer Morehouse, with her mesmerizing facial transformations, accented language, and charismatic presence; Alex Ivanovici and Andreas Aspergis, who, like everyone else, are called upon to "play the devil's advocate," slipping in and out of their conflicting roles, without missing a beat or losing their grip on character, plot-line or resolution
Speaking of which, at the finale, the BIG ISSUE remains unresolved. Who owns life? Who can presume the right to preserve, safeguard, convert, pervert or subvert the very stuff of life in its essence, its sub-molecular form? Or is this question far too great and too profound to be settled in a court of law, no matter how 'wise,' 'informed' and 'evolved' its human jurists. Perhaps the whole issue must forever remain a moral and ethical "no-go" zone, like a designated heritage site or nature reserve. Perhaps, indeed, the question and its non-answer lie quite properly outside our human realm and must be surrendered to the eternal, the universal Court of the Cosmos.
Photos from left to right:: ALEX IVANOVICI, JOEL MILLER, CHIP CHUIPKA, Publicity Photos, Credit: Maxime Côté.