Creators aren’t afraid to go deeper
Now You See Her ★★★ 1/2 Created by Lisa Karen Cox, Maggie Huculak, Raha Javanfar, Amy Nostbakken, Norah Sadava and Cheyenne Scott. Directed by Amy Nostbakken and Norah Sadava. Until Nov. 4 at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, 12 Alexander St. BuddiesinBadTimes.com or 416-975-8555.
Six women slowly come into focus on an empty stage at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre as the stage lights rise on Now You
See Her. One sits on a piano playing strings on a ukulele (Raha Javanfar), as the others lie on their backs and lift their hips in a syncopated rhythm. It looks like a mass resuscitation — as if these bodies are coming back to life while the audience’s eyesight adjusts to see them in clear view. As a production that explores how women disappear, it’s a fitting opening.
Through its six co-creators — along with Javanfar, the cast includes Lisa Karen Cox, Maggie Huculak, Amy Nostbakken, Norah Sadava and Cheyenne Scott — Now You See Her touches upon the issues you might expect: women who physically make themselves disappear through eating disorders, women who are invisible to male colleagues except as sex objects, women who don’t see themselves reflected in society, women who don’t have the right to vote, women who don’t feel safe walking alone in the dark, Canada’s missing and murdered Indigenous girls and women.
It’s a sprawling amount of ground to cover, which it sometimes does explicitly through monologues, spoken-word poetry and short scenes, or more metaphorically in the physical language that’s now signature to Quote Unquote Collective and its co-founders Nostbakken and Sadava, known for their debut hit Mouthpiece. In this new production, co-produced by Nightwood Theatre and Why Not Theatre, the disappearing women’s stories are reinforced by choreography by Orian Michaeli that makes visible the aspects of femininity that are often kept under wraps — masturbation, menstruation cramps, period blood, learning to walk in heels like baby deers, new mothers silently exiting to take care of a whine — along with Quote Unquote’s mastery of the voice, primarily an angry, primal scream into the void (a repeating motif from Mouthpiece).
Huculak has one of the funniest moments, playing a journalist receiving a Lifetime Achievement Award — industry-speak for an excuse to fade away from the business. The oldest in the cast, Huculak adds an irreverent edge to a professional who uses her final moment in the spotlight to verbally give the finger to her former colleagues. The way her head falls back in laughter has such a pure ring, it’s undoubtable that there’s some personal truth to it (theatre is not known as a bastion for older female actors).
That’s where the real strength of Now You See Her lies. While Mouthpiece was acclaimed for representing a female experience in a revelatory way — Nostbakken and Sadava played the same woman grieving her mother, and the conflicting ideals of feminism she experienced — Now You See Her layers perspectives on top of one another, especially by making the actor and the character visible at the same time.
A scene written by Cox, the only Black performer in the cast, is a moving example. Her character, a pop star, strives to find a multitude of Black role models for her children. She joyously disrobes in the ecstasy of finding a Black dentist, after which the other non-Black actors dress her in a new costume (Nostbakken is also naked to add another element of vulnerability).
Cox morphs from the pop star into herself, in a monologue that examines her own disappearance over the course of making this show. Her lines transition from “As a Black woman” to “As the Black woman” to “As this Black woman,” and Cox puts herself front and centre, adding an immense weight to the scene we’ve just watched, and avoiding the trap of the “token” Black actor having to represent her entire race.
General stories of sexual harassment, glass ceilings, the intensity of motherhood, and body image risk coming off with an after-school-special level of depth. But Now You See Her knows that making these stories personal takes it deeper, and its creators aren’t afraid to let those details show. Do them a favour and look at them.