TEEN ANGST REVISITED
Stakes are high in dynamic play about 15-year-old who is orphaned
The future is a lot to cram into seven years that are screamingly present.
But that's exactly what teenagers are expected to do from ages 13 to 19. This is why Calgary-based playwright Geoffrey Simon Brown has spent a great deal of his literary energy writing about this specific time of life.
“Everything feels more high stakes, like life or death,” muses Brown. “And there is the capacity at that point, more than at any point before or after, where it feels like the potential for anything to happen is there.”
Brown's play, Michael Mysterious, runs Oct. 13 to 24 at La Cité Francophone (8627 Rue Marie-anne Gaboury). The play stars five characters — three of which are teenagers. One of them, the titular Michael Mysterious, is left on his own at 15 after his parents and grandmother die. He needs both a place to live, and a place to just be.
Brown, 31, wrote the play in bits and pieces when he was between 23 and 25. Several years out of teenage-hood, he still felt close enough to that period to remember what it was like: a stage of life that feels both finite, and unending, and is also infused with certainty as well as indecision.
Young people often feel the teenage years are a make-or-break period, when careers, relationships and other priorities must be decided upon. Only later does it become clear that time is not of the essence when you're a teenager. Life is long.
“When I was 17, I was sure who I was at that moment was exactly who I would be later in life,” recalls Brown. “But when I read my journals of who I was at that age, I see there was a lot of me who I didn't know yet.”
As the play opens, Michael is discovered living alone by an estranged friend's mother (played by Amber Borotsik). She takes him in, throwing Michael (Gavin Dyer) into a shifting, sometimes frightening, world that consists of that mother, her teenage son (Thomas Tunski)), as well as her boyfriend (Jesse Gervais) and his teenage daughter (Christina Nguyen).
Michael finds himself in a disorienting dance among the characters.
“A big dynamic in the play is how each character uses this person as a shield or a friend or an ally or a confidante or a punching bag — whatever they need in that moment,” says Brown.
The stakes are high for Michael, who has nothing and nobody to fall back on if this new arrangement doesn't work out.
“He feels he might disappear completely,” says Brown, co-founder of Calgary's Major Matt Mason Collective.
Director Patrick Lundeen approached Brown to bring the play to Edmonton for its world premiere. Lundeen is part of Pyretic Productions, a Sterling-nominated Edmonton indie company devoted to raising political and social issues that affect Canadians and international communities. Other shows in its canon include Bears, The Particulars, and Barvinok.
As co-founder of the Common Ground Society (which produces Edmonton's Found Festival — a festival emphasizing unusual locations for shows), Lundeen was already familiar with one of Brown's plays. His show, Air, was part of the 2015 Found Festival and was set in Lundeen's house, throwing him and his wife/pyretic partner Lianna Makuch out of their bed for a week.
Air focused on teenagers, and Lundeen fell in love with it.
“I asked if I could read all of his work, every single play, and from that stack, Michael Mysterious was the one that spoke to me most, because it gave voice to teenagers on their journeys to becoming adults in a dark world,” says Lundeen, 33.
The director has a personal take on Michael Mysterious. His teens were a troubled time punctuated by a lot of couch surfing. He relied on the “kindness of other families to make sure I was getting up and going to school.”
When Lundeen read Brown's play, he recognized himself.
“I knew what it was like to be floating and not in control of your own destiny. I saw aspects of myself in all three of the teenager characters, and other people I knew from lives past…when I was reading it, it was like `holy hell, I love this play' and I was only on page 10.”
Lundeen, a Victoria School of the Arts alumni, not only survived his teenage period — he thrived, making his way to the National Theatre School of Canada, where he graduated from the acting program in 2009. He's also worked in outreach and education at the Citadel, and has taught at the Foote Theatre School.
It was a struggle (this is theatre, after all) for Pyretic Productions to get Michael Mysterious to the stage. Lundeen spent three years fundraising for the 95-minute oneact, which was postponed for a year by the pandemic. But now, it's here.
“There are a couple of plays I've written that feel like hearts plays, they are coming from my heart and the characters I love as much as dear friends in my life,” says Brown. “It means a great deal to me that it's finally going to be shared with other people.”
For tickets, visit Tix on the Square. All audience members must present proof of vaccination to attend the show, which offers 96 physically distanced seats (roughly half the theatre's usual capacity). Each show has 10 pay-what-youcan seats, available at the door on a first-come, first-served basis.