Experimental work wrestles with grief
Is it possible to get ahead of grief?
The wisdom I received when facing the death of a parent last year was that there’s no way to prepare for it: just let it happen, ride the waves, live it out.
Jordan Tannahill’s world premiere production (as well as his novel Liminal, also released this month) is his attempt to respond to his mother’s experience of terminal cancer. In the forward to the script of Declarations, just published by Coach House, he calls it “an archive, fated to be woefully incomplete, of a life lived” — his own.
In documenting his life, he reckons with his mother’s place in it and what it will be like for her to no longer be there.
As the title suggests, the text starts out as a series of declarative statements: “This is the thing / this is not the thing / this is my mother / this is her eyelash.”
Tannahill directs the multi-disciplinary production, performed within a painted white square on the floor of the otherwise stripped-back Berkeley Street Theatre, with Kimberly Purtell’s lighting about the only technical feature.
Five performers appear not in character but as themselves, and respond physically to the statements as they speak them. While the distribution of lines and basic choreography are set, the physical responses to the phrases are improvised, so every performance will be different.
One of the performers, Philip Nozuka, comes out before the show to introduce this concept and says the script is projected on teleprompter screens hung on the front of the balcony. This forestalls the potentially distracting question that might run through spectators’ minds: How do the performers keep track of where they are in the text and improvise at the same time?
Thus far, I have purposely avoided emotive or judgmental terms when writing this review, in an instinctual response of emulating the production itself, in all its devastating, joyous sparseness. For most of its duration, this show is not about tears and sadness; it’s about taking stock in the absolute present, and this is expressed by the performers really reacting, not acting.
Some of the declarations are eccentric observations: “This is a latenight karaoke regret . . . This is a raccoon named Debbie . . . This is the stingray that killed Steve Irwin.”
Some are acid comments on contemporary urban life: “This is a condo gym / This is fascism.”
We get a fleeting account of Tannahill’s queer coming of age: “This is an erection / This is a secret / This is a weapon / This is me, coming apart at the seams / This is my first sexual encounter.” Characteristic of his work, candid statements about sexual activity as part of a life fully lived feature throughout.
And throughout there is his mother, looking at van Goghs, being afraid of elevators, crying, coughing, losing her hair. The ensemble is superb. Some — Robert Abubo, Danielle Baskerville, Jennifer Dahl — have dance backgrounds. Nozuka is a National Theatre School-trained actor who also created, with the other performers, the vocal compositions they break into at a perfect point, when spoken words are starting to feel exhausting and exhausted.
Performance maker and actor Liz Peterson is the first to take the stage, and her extraordinary imaginative and expressive capacities anchor the production. It is fun and amazing to see her, and eventually the rest of the cast, interpret the phrases. As Debbie the raccoon, Peterson slumps into that characteristic legs-out, drunken-smile pose that a thousand internet memes have taught us to recognize as raccoonish.
Her approach to “This is Ikea” is more abstract (but I could totally relate): leaning on an elbow and the side of a leg, the other leg out in the air at an angle, with a pained, resigned grimace.
The performance is 70 minutes long and has three parts, moving from the “this is” statements into something more like dialogue — in which the performers alternate choppy phrases — and finally into a dance-party climax. Despite its brevity, it’s a taxing viewing experience and audience members who expect a more recognizable structure may find themselves struggling to take it all in.
This approach to interdisciplinary performance, emphasizing spontaneity, process and risk, is more familiar in London and New York than in Toronto, though it has its champions here in venues such as the Theatre Centre. That it has pride of place in a Canadian Stage season is great news for those who advocate opening up the theatrical canon to contemporary experiment.
At the end of the performance, Tannahill attempts to bring the performers through the keyhole and directly into the experience of grief. Not everyone may be ready for this. For me, it was like looking directly at the sun.
Tannahill’s mother is still with us and attended the opening night performance with him. This is a gift.