From Night at the Grand Guignol
Alice Nelson gets gloriously gory with Grand Guignol
If you can imagine a horror film onstage then you have a good idea what A Night at the Grand Guignol is all about.
Calgary clown actor and Loose Moose company member Alice Nelson along with Loose Moose Theatre is producing this "theatre of laughter and terror." The history of Grand Guignol is as fascinating as the plays themselves. The genre began life as an actual performance venue in Paris Le Théâtre du Grand Guignol. Playwright and author Oscar Méténier opened the theatre in the late 1890s. Méténier wanted to stage naturalistic works that dealt with contemporary society and he managed to upset the censors with his portrayals of prostitutes and criminals onstage. The theatre took its name from a popular puppet character in France Guignol who served as a commentator on French society.
An evening out at the Grand Guignol consisted of a series of short macabre plays that used special effects and props to portray explicit violence onstage. Interspersing the violent melodramas were short comedies. "A horror play would be followed by a light comedy often a sex farce. The audience would be terrified and then could laugh" says Nelson. The genre started to die out with the rise of the horror film in the mid-20th century.
Nelson who trained at the Dell’Arte International School of Physical Theatre says that after taking a course in Grand Guignol she was inspired to put on her own show. "The effects really attracted me to the genre" she says" and the reaction of the audience is so huge. You can’t compare the effects in a film to seeing them onstage."
In the production opening February 14 the audience can look forward to seeing plenty of violence. "You can expect people coughing up blood people foaming at the mouth and a guy getting drilled in the head" says Nelson. Thanks to help from her dad she also built all the props.
Two original Grand Guignol plays The Final Kiss by Maurice Level and Laboratory of Hallucinations by Andre de Lorde along with two short puppet shows make up the evening’s entertainment. "Both are love and revenge plays hence [the opening on] Valentine’s Day" says Nelson. One tells the story of a woman who has burned her lover’s face with acid while the other deals with a scientist who performs experiments on his patients’ brains causing them to endure terrible hallucinations. "It’s a great way to spend the evening if you’re bitter if you’re single or are really secure in your relationship" Nelson laughs. "Andre de Lorde is the Shakespeare of Grand Guignol theatre" she adds noting that he wrote upwards of 100 plays in the genre.
The 75-minute show features an 11-member cast all Loose Moose regulars. "It’s certainly been an adventurous journey" Nelson says.
So can Calgary audiences expect to see an encore of Theatre Guignol at Loose Moose down the road? "I think it all depends on how much ‘blood’ splashes on the curtains" she laughs.
