STRAY

At Progress Lab 1422. Two performances only; closes June 15, 2019
Tickets $22 at 604-872-1861, pitheatre.com/tickets or at the door

Posted June 15, 2019

Strays do not often fare well but writer, performer, memoirist Tanya Marquardt, a self-described stray, is one that does.

At sixteen, Marquardt fled a bad family situation in Port Alberni (abusive step-father, unsympathetic mother) and ended up, after a couple of years, in Vancouver in the early 90s. Eventually, she landed in New York, earning an MFA in creative writing from Hunter College. She now splits her time between Vancouver and Brooklyn, NY.

I was first aware of Marquardt when I was a mature student at SFU in the early 2000s and she was attending the School for the Contemporary Arts there. It was already apparent that she had a very unique talent and a mesmeric stage presence.  She was (still is) lanky with long, long fingers that hang down almost to her knees and a laugh that is more bark than chuckle.    My first review of Marquardt’s writing and performance was Nocturne: an incomplete and inaccurate account of the love affair between Georges Sand and Frederic Chopin, followed by Lounge in 2006 about which I (prophetically) wrote, “Tanya Marquardt. Remember that name. She’s going to be a star.”

Then there were performance gigs with Leaky Heaven Circus, an amusing little play called This Mortal Flesh (with Billy Marchenski) and the film noir-ish Sea of Sand.  Transmission, written and co-directed by Marquardt was produced in 2009. More acting jobs followed and, eventually, her first novel, Stray: Memoir of a Runaway, was published in 2018.

STRAY, co-created by Marquardt, Tim Carlson (artistic director of Theatre Conspiracy) and Mallory Catlett (artistic director of RESTLESS NYC) and loosely based on the novel, is a raw, raucous, defiant and exultant fusion of storytelling and punk rock in the style of Patti Smith. Carlson, on electric guitar, wrote most of the music and the “Are You Alone” lyrics; Marquardt wrote the rest of the lyrics which are less sung than spoken, occasionally shouted. The narrative, offered almost completely in songs, ricochets between runaway Tanya at 16 and Tanya in New York and is fractured; we get fragments of her story including BDSM, a lot of smoking, couch-surfing, falling in and out of love, being lost and finding herself in writing. One song refers repeatedly to “my thesis advisor” who continued to throw out names of others (Patti Smith included) who persevered in chasing their dream. It looks like Marquardt came close to throwing in the towel.

This performance piece, including musicians Jon Wood and Ed Goodine, is presented by Theatre Conspiracy as part of Pi Theatre’s Pi Provocateurs, “a presentation series that brings incendiary local and national artists to underutilized/unconventional spaces around Vancouver”. Progress Lab 1422 (at 1422 William Street, a block east of Clark Drive) is a large, black box theatre in an old warehouse. Folding chairs. Street parking. Beer and wine available.

STRAY is not my music (loud, punk rock) or my time but I’ll continue watching this writer/performer that I’ve had my critical eye on for almost 20 years. Marquardt’s reckless abandon and wild, unleashed approach to theatre promises exciting future developments.