Credit: Jay White
At The Warehouse (3681 Victoria Drive) until May 22 (2PM matinees on May 21 and 22) and May 25-29 (matinees on May 28 and 29)
fightwithastick.ca
Posted May 20, 2016
There is almost nothing you can say or write about Revolutions without ruining it for future audiences. So, steering clear of the work’s mysteries, let’s see what can be said: Fight With A Stick, the producing company, grew out of Leaky Heaven Circus in 1999 and is co-artistically directed by the visionary, innovative team of Steven Hill and Alex Lazaridis Ferguson. Their first collaboration was the puzzling, but super-innovative der Wink in the Russian Hall back in August 2013. The critics all had different ideas about what it all meant (and we had to be told that it was over when it was over) but it certainly was compelling to watch.
The first of the company’s four-point mandate reads: 1. To create hybrid performances for a hybrid audience (audience members that are as curious about the visual arts, sound arts, film, video, and digital arts as they are about conventional theatre art). Don’t see Revolutions if you’re looking for something traditional. Do see this show if you want to experience something totally unexpected and unusual.
Revolutions takes place in an empty 7,000 square foot concrete warehouse. It’s vast and empty and feels a little like a crypt. Traffic on Victoria Drive roars by. Despite the size of the venue, the audience is limited to about 20 or 21. Reservations are highly recommended but, if there’s space, tickets can be purchased with cash or credit card at the door.
Zoe Grams, ZG Communications, has an excellent article and interview with Ferguson that, once again, doesn’t ruin any surprises but informs the work that Fight With A Stick is doing: https://vancouver.24hrs.ca/2016/05/19/vancouver-revolutions-maintains-air-of-mystery. Expect, as Grams writes, “A visual, physical, and acoustic experience.”
What is Revolutions about? One colleague said he saw “id and ego” in it; I saw disorientation, alienation and the apocalypse. And another couldn’t wait to get on her bicycle to get home to write about it. One thing is certain: you will be surprised.
Revolutions blows apart the definition of innovation. The company – Steven Hill and Alex Lazaridis Ferguson (co-direction), Jay White (set design), Josh Hite (video artist), Nancy Tam (sound design), Sean Marshall Jr. (performer-deviser), Kyla Gardiner (lighting design), Delia Brett (performer-devisor), Lara Abadir (performer-deviser), Paul Viitanen (stage management) and Carmine Santavenere (performer-deviser) – are onto something really exciting. Enigmatic and one-of-a-kind, Revolutions only asks that you put your expectations aside, open your mind and let it be blown away.