CITY PLAYWRIGHT PUTS A NEW SPIN ON SHERWOOD FOREST
Silver Arrow features a female lead with a disability
Author Malcolm Gladwell says it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become a master in a given field. So what does practising at least three times that much make you?
Possibly Mieko Ouchi. The local playwright, actor, translator, teacher, director and Concrete Theatre co-artistic director produced her first play in Edmonton in 2000 — a Governor General award finalist called The Red Priest (Eight Ways to Say Goodbye).
Now, 18 years later, as her biggest production yet launches — The Silver Arrow: The Untold Story of Robin Hood — Ouchi can’t help but marvel at the time in between. (By my calculation, that time includes more than 34,000 of practice, allowing for statutory holidays.)
“It’s been an incredible journey,” says Ouchi. “I hope I have developed the skills, not only over a number of other plays, but also as a director and an actor. I try to bring all that, wearing all those different hats, to this experience.”
The Silver Arrow is an ambitious, all-ages musical romp running at the Citadel and featuring an original score by Canadian rocker Hawksley Workman. The play is set in a steampunk-reimagined Sherwood Forest in 1193, and sees the lively maid Bina Fitzooth break free of her restrictive life when her brother is declared an outlaw by Prince John, even as his beloved, Maid Marian, is doomed to marry The Sheriff of Nottingham.
Stealing from the rich has never been so fun, nor as physically demanding. There are 16 cast members, many of whom fight and flip across the stage during the show. Annie Dugan, from Edmonton’s Firefly Theatre and Circus, spun the aerial acrobatics for the show, with award-winning Canadian fight director Jonathan Hawley Purvis (who did Shakespeare in Love) orchestrating fight choreography.
Not only did Ouchi (in collaboration with Citadel artistic director Daryl Cloran) come up with the concept for this Robin Hood reboot (this time featuring a woman missing part of a leg in the heroic lead role), she created a cast of clever characters and, along the way, learned archery, medieval crusade etiquette and aerial gymnastics.
“For me, learning new skills has been an incredibly vital part of my practice. Every time I start at the bottom of a new medium, I don’t know what I’m doing and that’s incredibly exciting,” says Ouchi.
“That has prompted me to make films, and I’m now working on my first novel. It’s that desire to become a beginner again.”
In service of perpetual learning, Ouchi has created many diverse works of art. Her second play, The Blue Light, profiled the German filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl, who directed Triumph of the Will and Olympia for Hitler’s Third Reich. The 2006 production play has been translated into Japanese, French and Russian and read at Moscow’s Chekhov International Festival.
Ouchi, who is of Japanese-Canadian descent, does not shy from controversy. Her plays Nisei Blue and By This Parting examine the treatment of Japanese-Canadians during the Second World War. Ouchi’s work for young people through Concrete Theatre has touched difficult topics such as sexual consent, drug abuse and dating violence.
But joy, also, remains a theme for Ouchi. That can be seen in numerous award-winning films such as Minor Key (A Nature of Things documentary about child musical prodigies) and Shepherd’s Pie and Sushi (the story of her parents’ relationship). Ouchi’s films have played in 30 international festivals, plus aired on CBC and Bravo.
One of the upsides of working in many different mediums, says Ouchi, is meeting many different artists. Nowhere on Ouchi’s resume is that more apparent than for Silver Arrow, a true collaboration of parts and performers.
It was Cloran, keen to get local works and diverse voices on the stage at the Citadel, who approached Ouchi with the idea for a commission for an all-ages show. The two decided to play with something legendary, but from a modern perspective.
While traditional characters such as Friar Tuck or Will Scarlett will be recognizable, various tropes have been tossed in the air, with new forms landing.
Ouchi fleshed the play out during a three-week stint in 2017 at the Banff Centre’s Playwright’s Lab.
“They put me in one of the writing studios, which is a moored boat from Vancouver, in the middle of the woods. So I started in a boat in the forest. It was whimsical and a great metaphor for what I was doing in the play.”
Working with Cloran, who is directing Silver Arrow, a threedimensional creation began to emerge, one that utilized the full height of the Maclab, with all its entrances and the balconies, too. Ouchi wanted to create a central character with the same fire as Robin Hood of old, but with a twist. Longtime Edmonton actor Kristi Hansen, an athletic and wellrounded actor who lost part of her leg to cancer as a child, seemed perfect for Bina, who yearns for adventure even as she tries to hide her disability.
“The opportunity to normalize (disability) for kids and adults and let them see a different kind of hero, and see what she is capable of,” says Ouchi of casting Hansen in the role. “She’s like a superwoman at everything; she’s doing aerial and stage fighting and archery. I think it will be fun for the whole family to see that. And she’s a great actor, as well.”
Also new to Ouchi with the Silver Arrow was the ability to work directly with a musician to develop a script. She admits that collaborating with Workman was a thrill.
“We are almost the same age and have the same references, those family movies and adventure shows like Star Wars, The Never Ending Story and The Princess Bride,” says Ouchi. “I think audiences are in for so much fun. His music is appealing to adults and I thinks it’s really appealing to kids.”
Though it’s Ouchi’s name on the script, she acknowledges it takes a village of artists to create a work such as The Silver Arrow. Indeed, audience members may find themselves inspired by the play ’s inclusive definition of a hero.
“It’s part of the story of The Silver Arrow, that a group can accomplish so much more than an individual. And that’s true of the show, too. Hats off to Daryl for steering us through this, and we’ve just had fun. There’s been so much joy.”
The Silver Arrow runs at The Citadel until May 13. Call 780425-1820 for tickets, or visit citadel.com.
It’s part of the story of The Silver Arrow, that a group can accomplish so much more than an individual.