Electric Company Theatre

"When Studies in Motion is galloping...it leaves the ground entirely"               

EXCERPT from "Rambo, a photo riddle..." 

At the Festival TransAmeriques, Montreal has been enjoying a spring fling with Vancouver.  You can see why the independent theatre scenes of these two cities are attracted to each other: They share an interest in vibrant visuals and a passion for toying with technology.  Only one likes long walks on the beach, but I think they can get past that.

The Vancouverite presence at the FTA included two small shows from Theatre Replacement - the clever WeeTube and the brilliant BioBoxes - and a big one from the Electric Company Theatre.

The latter, Studies in Motion: The Hauntings of Eadweard Muybridge, being seen for the first time on this side of the Prairies, is a flashy bioplay about the English-American photogrpher sometimes called "the father of cinema."

In the 1870's, Muybridge developed a technique that used multiple cameras to capture motion on order to solve whether a horse's hooves all left the ground at once when it galloped (they do).

Written by Kevin Kerr, author of Unity (1918) and Skydive,   Studies in Motion pans back and forth between two significant slices of Muybridges life: the years he worked at the University of Pennsylvania obsessively documenting animal and human locomotion, and the years he spent prior to that in a tumultuous marriage - a marriage that ended when he shot his wife's lover, who, incidentally, was the San Francisco Post's theatre critic (the excellent Jonathon Young).

Given that twist, it's a marvel playwrights have resisted this dramatic real-life material for so long.  (Although Philip Glass did compose an opera about Muybridge's murder trial - which ended in acquittal - in 1982.)  Andrew Wheeler is fascinating, if somewhat impenetrable as the antisocial photographer.  With his long white beard and unkempt heair, he looks like an aged Charles Manson.  Muybridge certainly fosters a cult-like atmosphere among his scientific/artistic research team, demanding absolute loyalty, exploding in frequent rages and insisting that all the human subjects - men and women - be photographed in the nude. (He'd prefer to photograph his models with their skin off too, if he could.)

Though the supporting characters aren't particularly fleshed out (despite appearing in the buff) and Kerr's script has a scatterbrained structure, Studies in Motion's central figure and subject is so curious your attention is kept throughout.  "It's like a memory!" Blanch, Muybridge's assistant, gasps as she watches moving images for the first time, projected by "zoopraxiscope."

Director Kim Collier and choreographer Crystal Pite - it's difficult to tell where one's work ends and the other's begins - have fed on the play's themes for their stunning staging.

They've broken down movements into their constituent parts and divvied them up between actors, as well as made innovative use of stroboscopic effects that sync up with Patrick Pennefather's pulsing soundtrack.  The effect is of motion sped up, split apart and stopped.  When Studies in Motion is galloping ahead at full speed, it leaves the ground entirely.

Muybridge's photographs changed the way we view the world. 

Copyright (c) Globe and Mail, June 1, 2009.