PuSh 2018: Inside/Out at Performance Works

I've seen and admired Patrick Keating's work as an actor about town (including as a memorable Fitz in Rumble's 2013 production of Enda Walsh's Penelope) for many years. He's also had a long and successful career in television and film. His current starring role is in a work--his first--for which he is also the playwright. Inside/Out had its PuSh premiere last night at Performance Works, in a co-presentation by Touchstone Theatre, and produced by Neworld Theatre, Main Street Theatre, and Urban Crawl.

The play is an autobiographical solo reflection on Keating's ten years in and out of prison, starting when he was sixteen and continuing off and on until his mid-30s. Most of that time was spent in the Quebec penitentiary system (Keating grew up in Montreal), but during his last sentence--which coincided with the first Quebec referendum--Keating requested a transfer to Matsqui prison in BC. (Keating's account of his hand-off at the Vancouver airport--a Kafkaesque whirl of paper-signing and briefcase-opening and closing--is hilarious.) It was while at Matsqui that Keating enrolled in his first theatre class, which focused on clown, and the end of which happened to come after his scheduled release. He requested a five-week delay in his release so that he could complete the course.

Preceding that climactic revelation, and following a brief opening set-up recounting his teenage problems with authority and drug use, we are essentially treated to a series of anecdotes about life on the inside. In the richness of their documentary detail, these stories offer fascinating insight into the different ethnic and cultural rivalries between inmates, as well as the surprisingly tender affective relationships that can sometimes form. Keating's affectionate relating of a trans prisoner's love affair with her body-building boyfriend, her heartbreak at his release, and then her anger at him when he reoffends and they are reunited put me in mind of the wonderful Queenie in John Herbert's Fortune and Men's Eyes.

On their own, these episodes are frequently compelling and build to satisfying narrative payoffs. Collectively, however, they do not combine into a dramatic structure that has a parallel overarching emotional reward at the end. Stephen Malloy's direction is also surprisingly static, with Keating essentially moving back and forth from downstage to upstage, and from sitting to standing, to tell each successive story. Noah Drew's sound design and Jaylene Pratt's lighting design occasionally add additional sensory texture. But for the most part Inside/Out relies for its theatricality on the instrument of Keating's voice--which, to be sure, is what he eventually found by doing time.

The piece is bookended by Keating's reference to a box of files that he carries with him onto the stage at the outset--his life history as it has been documented and recorded by a series of officials. For most of the play it remains stage right, unreferenced. At the very end, Keating opens it and sifts through the colour-coded files, reading off their titles. They can't possibly explain, let alone compete, with what we have just heard. As a framing device, it feels a bit contrived. But as that which helped to unlock Keating's playwriting voice, I can understand why it's necessary.

P

PuSh Review #5: City of Dreams at the Roundhouse

City of Dreams opened last night at the Roundhouse Community Arts and Recreation Centre. It's a collaboration between Londoners Peter Reder (a theatre artist) and Tom Wallace (a sound designer) and several local artists brought together by Urban Crawl, a local company led by urban geographer and artistic director Caleb Johnston that works across disciplines to produce art that prompts "physical and social dialogue."

The piece is a performative installation that the audience watches being built from the ground up. Six performers draw a map of the city of Vancouver on the stage floor using hundreds of found objects (twigs, bricks, sand, shells, etc.). This is accompanied by a soundscape made up of various sounds (wind, rain, First Nations drumming and song, construction, steam engines, car horns, etc) and excerpts of oral testimony from different periods of the region's history (referencing, among other events, the fire at Hastings Mill in 1886, the riots in Chinatown in 1907, and the interurban railway that used to run from downtown all the way to Steveston). The work progresses slowly and at first the piece can seem quite static, but once you realize what's happening (Oh, that's False Creek! Hey, there's Stanley Park!), and you start to recognize various landmarks and locate yourself in relation to the map, there is a steady accretion of meaning, and the installation becomes incredibly compelling.

As we move forward in time, objects get added or removed, boundaries shift, and the map starts to change: a colonial settlement rises on a First Nations burial ground, two fingers traced through sand signify the building of the CPR, a dotted line to the east signifies the Trans-Canada highway, False Creek gets filled in, and so on. Most evocatively for me, the transformation of downtown is signified by first flipping horizontally-placed bricks to a vertical position, and then by replacing many of these with square glass vases. With each significant addition and transformation to the map, a small tea light candle is lit to mark the site, if only as trace or outline or memory. And, in this regard, an equally riveting aspect of the show is the delicacy and solemnity and grace with which the six performers silently go about their work building the map.

As with 100% Vancouver, the result is a stunning new way of looking at Vancouver, and, fittingly, the audience is invited to tour the stage at the conclusion of the piece.

City of Dreams continues through this Saturday, and is accompanied by a free exhibition called "Counter Mapping" curated by Johnston, in which several local artists rewrite, disrupt, and experiment with new ways of being in and moving through our local urban landscape.

P.