The undercurrents festival goes above and beyond with its theatre from below the mainstream. From Feb. 7 through 17, the festival showed the benefits of creativity, collaboration, and conversation.
This year’s line-up featured nine shows, each performing at interspersed time-slots over the two weekends. Performances ranged from one-person shows to the collaborative efforts of over a hundred people.
All but one of the shows took place at Arts Court theatre, a small venue tucked in downtown Ottawa, just beside the Rideau Centre. Since 2015, their studio space transforms every February into a trendy festival lobby.
The space was also used for talk-backs and panels that often followed performances. This provides the audience with an opportunity to directly engage with the content at the festival.
A common theme in many shows was mixed-media theatre. undercurrents used six projectors this year, which is the most the festival’s ever seen.
The projectors complemented the technical demands of The Pipeline Project to a tee. Later in the show, through a single transition, the audience was taken from a music festival to a lakeside walk through the forest.
The show had it all: archived newsreel footage, puppetry, a live on-stage webcam stream—and the creators of The Pipeline Project combined them all seamlessly. They even skinned a real salmon on stage. Each skinned salmon was taken by the director, deliciously prepared, and given to the following audience after the performance.
All the creators at undercurrents had unique formats and techniques that emphasized their message. Itai Erdal uses lighting design in How to Disappear Completely to retell the story of his mother’s death after she was diagnosed with lung cancer.
He combines the art of lighting design with documentary footage he collected of his mother, providing live translations on stage. However, Erdal’s most persuasive tool was his storytelling. With ease, he had the audience laughing at his anecdotes and moved them to tears when he revealed his mother asked him to help her take her own life.
Performances also tackle the complexity of interpersonal relationships. Adam Lazarus demonstrated that in his standout performance of Daughter. From the front row, the audience could see Lazarus’ character sweat and struggle through the performance that pins parenting against the patriarchy.
Daughter only had one sold-out performance at the National Art Centre on Feb. 10, but it was still part of the undercurrents festival. Event organizers coordinated to have groups commute between the two theatres to make it back to Arts Court for the 9 p.m. performance of Little Boxes.
While Daughter was a standout performance, the festival was a success overall, too. Most of the performances were virtually sold-out, including many of the matinees. On the final day of the festival, a few latecomers quietly searched for seats near the back for the 3 p.m. performance of Forstner & Fillister.
By the end of the festival, there was a sense of community at undercurrents. Between shows, festival goers conversed in the lobby over a beer (or coffee and a complementary cookie after a matinee performance). Familiar faces came out night after night for the line-up of shows.
While performances change from year to year, undercurrents always produces a quality lineup of shows, keeping you on the edge of your seat, and the 2018 festival was no exception.
Photo provided
