Looking for Helen’s Necklace

Urban Curvz winds through the Middle East in new show

A trip to Lebanon in 2000 inspired Carole Fréchette’s play Helen’s Necklace up next at Urban Curvz Theatre. While in Lebanon the Québécois playwright met a group of Palestinian refugee women. They told her “’We can’t keep living like this. Will you say that?’” says Fréchette.

“It’s like a message in a bottle passed from that culture to our own” says director Vanessa Porteous. Alberta’s John Murrell translated the play from the French.

Helen (Elinor Holt) is attending a conference in an unnamed city in the Middle East. While there she loses her necklace. It’s only a simple plastic pearl strand but it holds sentimental value so she embarks upon a journey through a maze of dusty crowded streets to find it. Along the way she meets several of the city’s locals including a mother a vagrant and a taxi driver who have also experienced loss — some on a far greater scale than she. (Edmonton actor Shomee Chakrabartty portrays these characters.) In the quest for her necklace Helen makes some discoveries about herself. “It goes quite deeply into what it feels like to lose something” says Porteous who is just coming off a run of The Syringa Tree at Alberta Theatre Projects which she also directed. “It’s about the pain you feel when you lose something and the freedom you experience when you get used to not having it.”

Fréchette whom Porteous describes as a “magician with words” has received a long list of awards including a Governor General’s Award a Siminovitch Prize for theatre and the Prix de la Francophonie.

Fréchette is careful to never name the city the story is set in. “She keeps a poetic remove so we can fill in the gaps with our imagination” says Porteous. “I’ve been to Iran Israel and Africa so my imagery comes from there. The play invites the audience to imagine the heat noise traffic and crowds. When people imagine it that’s when theatre comes alive and it makes it personal.”

Amir Amiri’s original score adds atmosphere and mood to the play. Amiri originally from Iran brings his mastery of classical Persian music to Helen’s Necklace with cymbals an udo drum and a classical eastern instrument called the santur. He says he will not be playing the 72-stringed instrument in a traditional fashion instead using it to create certain sound effects. “I wanted to create a sonic palette with various themes and stay true to the scenes” he says.

Amiri carries the play’s theme of barriers even to the placement of his instruments. “Everything that has to do with the West is on one side and everything to do with the East is on the other” he explains. “It’s amazing what creating physical boundaries can do and then have them come together in the final melody.”

Amiri philosophizes a bit on what differentiates the music of the East and West. “It’s all about the musical intervals” he explains. “In the West you have a lot of space but in the East in places like Iran and India there is no space. That’s reflected in the music.”

Porteous says the play also confronts the “shame of the tourist.” “This idea of ‘I’m so privileged. I don’t know what to say to these people.’ People have to get over that attitude. It’s so condescending to think that privilege makes us different somehow” she says. “The play also asks questions about war and peace and what we should be doing with our lives.

“But don’t think while watching the play…. just go for the ride” she adds with a smile.