At Massey Theatre until March 22, 2019. 7:30PM
Tickets from $15 at ticketsnw.ca or at the door
Posted March 22, 2019
A Vista (Part 1) was pure Zen: quiet, slow moving and contemplative. Over a couple of hours, fifteen different hand-painted canvas ‘drops’ were carried onstage, unrolled, one by one, and ‘flown’ into place on fifteen parallel steel rods. The drops, mostly created by Jean Claude Olivier for Royal City Musical Theatre over the years, represented shows from Peter Pan to Hello Dolly, Sound of Music and many more; a desert scene, a lakeside cottage, old London town, Grand Central Station, etcetera. After all the drops were in place, they were raised and lowered in sequence, sometimes with just a meter or two showing. And eventually they were, in turn, taken down, rolled up and carted off stage. All this was done in silence with occasional barely audible voices of the crew, clicks and sounds of rigging and the “whoosh” of painted canvas unfurling. Several viewing platforms were available and the audience was encouraged to move around – especially to observe the activity in the wings as the drops were manipulated. There was no obvious rationale for the sequencing and no drop was given priority over the others.
‘A vista’ is a theatre term to describe changing scenes in front of an audience – something not so frequently done in the past when scene changes were generally done behind a closed curtain. Now, with computer sequenced video projections, scenery changes without even a click of a switch.
This Fight With a Stick production not only celebrated these amazing forty-foot wide painted drops and old musicals but also old technology: drops raised and lowered manually with the use of hemp ropes and lead weights. Massey Theatre, now in its 70th year, is one of the last few remaining ‘hemp houses’ in Canada.
Under the artistic direction of Alex Lazaridis Ferguson and Steven Hill, Fight With a Stick is a “transdisciplinary company with an interest in space, perception and working in collaboration with other-than-human-materialities.”
Part 1 featured full drops; Part 2, portals; and Part 3 (March 22) legs. Forget meditating today; consider going to New Westminster’s Massey Theatre for some inner calm.
