Here’s the trailer for Never Rarely Sometime Always. It’s about a teenager who travels from Pennsylvania to New York to terminate an unintended pregnancy, the type of journey too many girls and women may soon face. Sidney Flanigan’s performance is like reality itself.
2. THE SHOW — AND LEGAL, ACCESSIBLE ABORTION — MUST GO ON
In the US, where the leak of a draft decision from the Supreme Court makes it look likely that the Trump-stacked court will overturn Roe v. Wade, a decision that would eliminate the constitutional right to abortion in the United States, artists and presenters are fighting for abortion rights.
Comedian Alison Leiby, who co-produces The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, had just finished performing a preview of her 70-minute stand-up piece, Oh God, a Show About Abortion, at New York’s Cherry Lane Theatre when she heard about the leak. The New York Times tells us that, as the implications for girls and woman all over the States began to sink in, Leiby also realized that she was going to have to think about how the court's likely decision might reshape her show, which is about terminating her own unwanted pregnancy.
She started her next performance by inviting the audience to react authentically given the shifting circumstances. “I’m not changing anything in response to the news,” she began, “but I understand that your feelings toward it might be different. If something is funny, not funny, cathartic — feel that. That is valid. I’m not up here dancing for applause. We’re in this together.”
Here’s where to get tickets to Leiby’s show if you’re going to be in New York on or before June 4.
In Atlanta, Horizon Theatre Company is presenting Lisa Loomer’s Roe until June 12. The New Yorker calls Roe “a parable of an exclusionary women’s movement.” And until May 21,The Times tells us, New York’s Metrograph Theatre, which is a cinema, is running “a series devoted to films that touch on or explore abortion, including Josef von Sternberg’s 1931 drama An American Tragedy [which is also available on the Criterion Channel] and the 1987 romantic comedy Dirty Dancing.” This July, Artemisia, a small, non-profit theatre in Chicago, will present Roe v. US.
You can watch plenty of relevant content on standard streaming services, of course. In Canada, the US, and the UK, you can get Dirty Dancing on Netflix. I also recommend the startling comedy Citizen Ruth and the remarkably subtle Never Rarely Sometimes Always. Check justwatch.com for streaming availability in your country.
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I’ve posted this video before, and it still moves me like mad every time I watch it. I'm reacting to a combination of the artistry involved in bringing the puppet Little Amal to life and the importance of the project that Little Amal is involved in.
3. A GIRL NAMED HOPE
If you’ve been reading FRESH SHEET for a while, you’ll remember Little Amal, the 12-foot-tall puppet of a nine-year-old Syrian girl who’s a migrant, an unaccompanied minor, who went on an 8,000-kilometer journey from Turkey to England, looking for her mother. Amal means hope in Arabic.
Now Amal has arrived in Poland where she will meet with displaced Ukrainian children in the cities of Lublin and Kraków, at the invitation of their mayors, as well as the town of Przemyśl, which is close to the Ukrainian border. Amal is there to draw attention to the plight of these kids and to deliver aid and supplies aimed at their needs. (The Guardian)
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In this clip from England’s Royal Ballet, Giselle, a peasant girl, dances at a harvest festival. As well as being an extraordinary dancer, ballerina Natalia Osipova is a persuasive actor. (Here's Osipova in the most moving interpretation of “The Dying Swan” I’ve seen.)
4. MISSION STATEMENT
Although the Lviv National Opera was forced to close on February 24, shortly after Russian launched its war of aggression against Ukraine, the company’s ballet dancers performed Giselle on April 29.
One of the most popular romantic ballets, Giselle tells the story of a young woman who dies of heartbreak when she is betrayed by the man she loves, but it ends on a note of heroic selflessness. In this CNN article, the Opera’s artistic director Vasyl Vovkun says, “We understand that light must defeat darkness, that life must defeat death, and the mission of the theatre is to assert this.”
In the video embedded in the article, which was filmed on the night of the performance, patron Julia Dimitrieva, who has been displaced from Kyiv, describes the relief of attending the ballet. “For us,” she says, “returning to the theatre means returning to a small part of our life which was there before the war.”
And twenty-one-year-old Daryna Kirik, who is dancing the lead role, has another reason to be grateful. “My mom and my grandmother and her sister survived occupation in Bucha,” she explains. “My mother managed to evacuate herself and the pets. Now she is in safety in Poland restoring her nerves." Playing Giselle, Kirik appreciates the “opportunity to express emotions in the madness scene.”
Although the opera house is large, the company could only sell 300 tickets, because that’s the capacity of its bomb shelter. Those 300 tickets sold quickly.
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Gavan Cheema and Munish Sharma in a publicity photo for Himmat (Photo: Wendy D Photography)
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5. SEEING THINGS
New Theatre
Emerging playwright Gavan Cheema’s Himmat, which is about the relationship between a young adult woman named Ajit and Banth, her recovering-alcoholic dad, is, first and foremost, compassionate. As The Georgia Straight’s interview with Cheema reveals, Himmat is a fictionalized autobiography. Like Banth, Cheema’s dad emigrated from the Punjab to the Lower Mainland and worked hard — in lumber mills, as a roofer, and as a truck driver. And, like Banth, he started telling the story of his life to his young adult daughter when he was in the hospital being treated for cancer. Cheema contextualizes Banth’s addiction as a response to the chronic physical pain that can be the toll of a life of labour and a reaction to the stresses of immigration. Cheema enlivens her story, which involves a lot of flashbacks, with quirky detail: Banth has an abiding affection for Alvin and the Chipmunks, for instance, because, watching those cartoons, he and his new wife Bachani got their first lessons in English. As Banth, Munish Sharma persuasively combines goofy charm with a palpable depth of pain. Cheema (Arjit) and Veenu Sandhu (Bachani) are both confidently naturalistic. Still, there’s room for Cheema to grow as a playwright. Because Himmat is so concerned with looking back, it almost forgets to deal with the evolving present. Lacking present-time tension, the storytelling goes flat. Still, the production values are high and it’s great to hear Punjabi being spoken in some passages. There are no surtitles, but I don’t speak any Punjabi and I got the gist: families are families.
This Theatre Conspiracy production is running in The Cultch’s Historic Theatre until May 15. Here’s my full review. You can get tickets here.
Lampedusa has a lot going for it. It’s about important things. Anders Lustgarten’s script consists of two narratively unrelated monologues. In Leeds, Denise collects debts for a predatory payday loan company. Sailing out from the Italian island of Lampedusa, Stefano collects drowned migrants from the Mediterranean. He says the corpses feel “like oiled, lumpy rubbish bags sliding through your fingers.” Essentially, Lampedusa is about the cruelty, the dehumanization, of capitalism. Actors Robert Garry Haacke and Melissa Oei deliver fine performances. Carolyn Rapanos’s crumbling pier of a set emphasizes the sensation of being at sea. And Lauchlin Johnston’s memorable lighting contributes enormously to a passage about a storm. But there’s a problem: Denise and Stefano each encounter a "magical" foreigner. Our two narrators tell us how their new friends Carolina and Modibo, with their sheer goodness, guilelessness, and joviality, calm their troubled souls. But the presentation of immigrants and migrants as angelic innocents is condescending. And why on earth would it fall to Carolina and Modibo to heal the supposedly more complex lives of their hosts?
This Pi Theatre production is running at The Cultch’s Vancity Culture Lab until May 21. Here’s my full review and here’s where to get tickets.
Ongoing Theatre
Trey Anthony’s musical ‘da Kink in my Hair is set in a Toronto hair salon run by a woman named Novelette. When Novelette touches a customer's hair, she magically knows the woman's secrets. In its exploration of the experiences of Black Canadian women, ‘da Kink covers a lot of ground: colourism, sexual abuse, sexual orientation … The show’s formula gets repetitive, however: in a series of monologues and/or songs, the women deliver stories of trauma, which are quickly resolved. There’s little depth: a woman named Patsy tells us about the shooting death of her son Jerome, for instance — but she gives us no context. We don’t even know who shot him, and surely that matters. Not that Jerome’s murder would ever be justified but, by keeping the circumstances generic, playwright Anthony reduces the death to a trope. This happens again and again. There’s a lot to be said for the importance of representation, of course. And there’s some significant talent on the stage. Ghislaine Doté plays a successful financier named Sherelle, who feels like she’s physically disappearing because of the pressure she’s under. Doté delivers the best-written monologue of the evening with a combination of depth and restraint that makes it moving. And Jenni Burke is charm — and confidence — personified as Miss Enid, an older woman with a tale of sexual adventure. Still — and I’m speaking as a white guy when I say all of this — ‘da Kink in My Hair feels dated. It first emerged as a Toronto Fringe play (without music) in 2001. I can understand that, in earlier incarnations of the piece, simply raising some of its issues might have been ground-breaking, but the public discussion about Black female experience has become so much more nuanced.
This Arts Club production is running at the Stanley Industrial Alliance Stage until May 15. Here’s my full review and here’s where to get tickets.
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Here’s the link to last week’s edition, “Going Dutch”. It includes items on bicycle safety (yep), theatrical superstitions, philosophical children, and a trans/queer playwriting opportunity.
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