SHEEPISH REVOLUTION
‘Guerrilla folk opera’ gets the audience involved in a fun and thoughtful political production,
Counting Sheep
(out of 4) By Mark and Marichka Marczyk. Until June 5 at Broadview Place, 296 Broadview Ave. brownpapertickets.com Where does the line between a play and real life dissolve? This is the central question that faces audiences at Counting Sheep.
Billed as “a guerrilla folk opera,” the piece, created by real-life couple Mark and Marichka Marczyk, details the events around the late-2013/early-2014 uprising in Kyiv’s Independence Square, when protests erupted over the government’s abuse of power and corruption.
Having been part of those protests, the couple created the theatre piece as both a response to their experiences and a way to viscerally share and explore the nature of revolution.
Counting Sheep was part of last year’s SummerWorks Theatre Festival, and is on now through June 5 at Broadview Place before heading to the Edinburgh Fringe this summer.
Recreating a series of scenes from the square, Counting Sheep uses polyphonic Ukrainian folk music as well as multimedia elements to tell a story of community, resistance and relationship.
The piece opens with audience members seated at a long table and treated to raucous music by the multi-talented Lemon Bucket Orkestra, described as “Canada’s only balkanklezmer-gypsy-party-punk-super band,” and features both performers and musicians.
Guests clap to music and eat bowls of borscht as footage from the protests and the political context is pre- sented on three screens. Only one of those screens was functional opening night, which made sight lines challenging, though the snafu did nothing to dampen the enthusiasm of the crowd, or the conviction with which the cast approached their roles.
Wearing stylized white sheep masks, the show’s dozen members sing, dance, act, chant, pray, weep and herd audience members to and fro, handing them “bricks” (square foam pieces) and hard hats. Plates of buckwheat porridge and perogies are distributed and a spontaneous dance ensues, complete with waltzing couples and a traditional kartoshka, linked arms and kicks intact.
Thus a recreation of the square it- self is made, the present community becoming one with the community of Ukrainian protesters.
Counting Sheep is a wondrous experiential work that is engaging, fun, alarming, joyous and thought-provoking. By being directly involved with the work’s unfolding narrative, audience members are forced to confront their own feelings around engagement, community and the nature of theatre itself.
There is no central character in Counting Sheep but, instead, a focus on the collective. In lieu of concentration on one figure and his/her journey, attention is spread out over a group.
Bring your curiosity and your appetite; this is a show to fully savour.