Sophomore soloFest

Drama series captivates County audiences

Festival Players’ second annual series of solo performances opened last Wednesday with the internationally acclaimed White Rabbit, Red Rabbit, performed by Sonja Smits to a sold-out audience at the Regent Theatre in Picton. Four other shows—Paddle Song, Assassinating Thomson, Getting to Room Temperature and Inside/Out—have since been performed at the Mount Tabor Playhouse. There are three shows left in the series, which runs until July 30.

The eight shows in this series offer a wide variety of performance styles, content and artistic background of the actors. “There is a culture of the solo show as an art form,” said Sarah Phillips, artistic director of the Festival Players. “It is a whole other thing than a play with multiple actors. It’s also very economical. You can bring a whole bunch of shows through to give people different experiences, for not as much as it would cost you to produce them all yourself.”

Cheri Maracle recites the poetry of Pauline Johnson in Paddle Song.

Last Saturday’s matinee at Mt. Tabor offered two different windows into Canadian culture. In Assassinating Thomson, Bruce Horak interweaves the story of his own life with the life of Tom Thomson, a painter and catalyst of the Group of Seven who died under (perhaps) suspicious circumstances in 1917. Horak was diagnosed with cancer of the eye at age eighteen months. His right eye was removed and his left eye was saved only at the insistence of his father, although the radiation treatment and subsequent cataract operation left him with extreme tunnel vision. Now in his early 40s, Horak has embraced his unique way of seeing things and uses wit and wry humour to illuminate his journey. “We come to a point where we don’t grieve for what is lost, but celebrate what remains,” he said.

In Paddle Song, Native actor Cheri Maracle takes on the character of poet E. Pauline Johnson, also known as Tekahionwake—a Native word meaning two-spirited woman—to acknowledge her Aboriginal and European ancestry. Maracle’s performance is spellbinding. She tells the story as snippets of Johnson’s life, from her breathless meeting of Sir Alexander Graham Bell in her girlhood, to the butterflies-in-the-stomach waiting in the wings before her first public recital, to the pain of being jilted by her true love, and finally, to the moments before her death. Maracle plays these parts with the right amount of naiveté, nervousness, despair and fatalism to sweep up the audience into her moods. Johnson’s life is presented as a richly woven tapestry of courage and determination, and has become a vital part of Canadian cultural history. “It is important to have a Native perspective because people in Canada need to see us as human beings,” said Maracle. “Theatre is the best way, through culture, to reach people. It’s really about bridging that gap and I think that, as Native artists, we have a huge responsibility to portray ourselves in a positive way.”

For details on the remaining shows, visit the Festival Players website: festivalplayers.ca/solofest.