Interviews

BUSY ACTOR ANSWERS CALL OF THE WILDERNESS

Sunday, 11 April 2004 00:00

BY GUNDRUN WILL

THE VANCOUVER COURIER, APRIL 11, 2004

Jonathon Young in Electric Company's PALACE GRAND

HIDDEN BEHIND BUSY whiskers, Jonathon Young looked like he might have just spent a rough three months tramping along the Chilkhoot Trail. And so he should, because the Electric Company member is about to stage a solo theatre piece, at the Cultch from April to 17, that takes him into a northern heart of darkness: the Yukon bush.

Set in 1898, The Palace Grand tells the bleakly comic take of Walker, a mysterious writer who plans to set down his magnum opus while trekking into the wilderness north of Dawson City. It's also about the Tracker sent to find out what happened to him. Both stories are told through a down-trodden engineer who operates the various components of a tiny theatre. This mute individual conveys the two misadventures by morphing into both characters, helped by projected snippets from Walker's manuscript and recorded dispatches from the Tracker's journey.

Sound complicated? Well, it would hardly be an Electric Company show if it didn't have bags of tricks. And given that several company actors have spent summers performing Gold Rush vaudeville-style theatre from Dawson City tourists at the real, restored Palace Grand, it was only a matter of time before the sub-arctic territory found its way into one of their productions. Young and fellow Electric Company member Kim Collier even chose to get married in the tundra last year, an environment that has become a sanctuary away from the urban theatre season.

"If you go north of the town, the tree line fades away and you get into these incredible vast areas of gorgeous wilderness," says Young, taking a rehearsal break over black coffee and two cigarettes outside the UBC Theatre warehouse space on the former Finning industrial site. "The idea started to come to me there, this notion of a remote town, and these characters who have left everything behind to make this journey, searching for something. So at the core of the play is the writer who, in the act of trying to turn himself into a story, ends up isolated, cut off, doomed."

All of Granville Island is a stage for the outdoor show The Wake

BY COLIN THOMAS

GEORGIA STRAIGHT, 1999.

Kevin Kerr, author of The Wake, the Electric Company’s new show, had no trouble identifying his greatest fear regarding the production. “Drowning actors,” he said, his laughter almost covering his anxiety. “I’m having nightmares about it. I really am.”

Electric Company's THE WAKE

Visiting the site of the company’s rehearsal, I found it easy to understand both Kerr’s joy and his nervousness. Posing for publicity shots, a half-dozen young performers mugged shamelessly as they sat – or shakily stood - in a little fleet of rowboats moored to the dock near the False Creek Community Centre. The Wake is a processional piece, which means that the audience will follow the play's action to a number of sites on Granville Island. Staging the whole play outdoors and some of it on the water has made for challenging – and wet – rehearsals. That cool, rainy day, the folks in and around the boats either were shivering in head-to-toe rubber or had become sodden sponges of wool and fleece. But every one of them was grinning ear to ear or seemed about to break into that kind of smile. The scene was a picture of the communal joy one can find working in the theatre; it was all about a bunch of talented friends attempting something ridiculous and loving every minute of it.