Courtesy of Mat Busby
Drama unites people and transforms them in unexpected ways.
Such is the hope of every theatre company for its audiences. But for Sage Theatre’s upcoming production of Circle Mirror Transformation it’s the characters in the play who are changed by theatre.
“It does what Sage Theatre wants to do which is to… take the audience where they can connect with different kinds of people” says artistic director Jason Mehmel.
Co-produced with Edmonton’s Shadow Theatre and directed by John Hudson the play is just wrapping up a two-week run in Edmonton before opening in Calgary on February 6.
The story is about four people taking a six-week creative drama class at a community centre in New England. Marty (Coralie Cairns) is the instructor who leads the unlikely quartet through a series of dramatic exercises many of which will be familiar to anyone who’s studied acting. (For example getting a troupe of actors to count to 10 one person at a time without looking at or otherwise interacting with each other.) So in one way the show is “theatre people showing an audience what some of our exercises are like while at the same time acknowledging how wacky they are” according to Mehmel.
But the characters themselves aren’t necessarily theatre people. “The lens of the play — the way the audience sees these exercises — is through people who don’t understand them or who don’t inherently understand them” says Mehmel adding that it’s also an interesting experience for the cast and crew. “It’s fun to observe the exercises in the way we did the first time we took them or the way that our friends and family might think about them if they were to watch a rehearsal at some point.”
As a plot structure the dramatic exercises are fertile ground for the transformation in the play’s title. As silly as some of the games might seem at first blush their underlying value is in getting people to open up and connect with one another. “These very naturalistic characters are being taken through some situations which by their nature lower barriers or force you to learn more about that character but it all feels very natural” says Mehmel.
Theatre-goers (and theatre artists) might enjoy the glimpse behind the curtain but Mehmel characterizes the play’s use of these dramatic exercises as icing on the cake. “It’s completely about those characters and to be unsubtle the transformation they’re going through as they go through the story.”
Besides the instructor Marty whom Mehmel describes as an aging hippy there’s James (Dave Brindle) Marty’s professorial and more straitlaced husband; Theresa (Lora Brovold) a former actress; Schultz (Declan O’Reilly) a recently divorced socially awkward carpenter; and Lauren (Mikaela Cochrane) a teen who hopes to become a professional actress someday.
This rather motley crew of people is at the heart of the play and is what Mehmel hopes will connect with audiences — not to mention providing some humour. “It’s full of the awkward pauses that the audience laughs their way into” he says.
He adds that the comedy is never cruel; instead you’re rooting for the characters. “When things go well for them you’re really happy. When things go badly you’re really wincing because these actors have done such a good job in breathing these characters [to life] and making them real.”
In fact after seeing the Edmonton run of this production Mehmel says that despite already knowing the story and script he was utterly charmed by the characters — and he hopes you will be too.
Circle Mirror Transformation runs February 6 to 14 at Vertigo Theatre.
