Tara Thorne and Allison Saunders’ show Tingles brings the audience into a very specific world, that of online communities of ASMR (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response) YouTube Videos. These videos use soothing sounds to (hopefully) create positive vibrations in their listeners, which can then help them to relax or even fall asleep. Not everyone has the same response to these sounds, and if you’re unfamiliar with ASMR before this show, you might learn that you, in fact, do have a strong response to these “triggers,” or you may not experience any kind of response to the sounds at all. This short play centres on two hosts of an ASMR YouTube Channel who have recently had a bitter difference of opinion about the future of their channel and decided to go their separate ways. Thorne and Saunders have a lot of fun playing with the disparity between the channel’s soothing ability to transport folks to higher planes of relaxation and the petty, passive-aggressive drama playing out behind the scenes. It is a fun peak into a world that isn’t often explored in popular culture, and is well performed and written with humour and heart.
Tingles at Halifax Fringe has closed.
An Orchid and Other Such Lilies and Lies written by Daniel Halpern has a great hook: two senior citizens set off on a road trip in a car packed to the gills with drugs to end their lives on their own terms. Halpern and director David Woroner play the two friends and their strong sense of friendship and care for one another really shines through nicely. I really believed that these two characters were old friends who, despite their differences, wanted the best for one another. Some aspects of the play were less clear to me. First of all I wondered when this play was set. The characters are said to be in their eighties, but they don’t speak or navigate the world like people who were born in the 1930s. Perhaps the play is set sixty years in the future, but then I wondered what kind of phones, cars, and drugs would they have; how has the world outside of their car changed in this time? The men reminisce a lot about events that happened sixty years ago, but their memories are always crystal clear and identical to one another; I think there is some room to play with how memory works, especially over time, and how personal and subjective it can be. While the friendship between these men is clear, the past traumas in their lives and their resentments with one another feel more lacquered on. I think it might be effective to work on finding more ways to weave the subtext naturally throughout the scenes, so the build up to the characters’ final outbursts or confessions of truth feels more organic. Halpern and Woroner both give good performances, although they often seem to forget that they are in a car, with doors that need to be opened and closed, and a steering wheel that the driver needs to keep holding onto. These little details can really take the audience out of the reality of the play. I think there is a very interesting beginning of a play here, I hope Halpern and Woroner will continue to work on it!
An Orchid and Other Such Lilies and Lies at Halifax Fringe has closed.
Crypthand: the Workshop of a new play by Lily Falk and Franziska Glen is based on a true story of Anne Lister, also known as Gentleman Jack, who was kicked out of her boarding school when her diary (written in code) revealed to her teachers that she was a lesbian. There is so much to love about this play; it is a gem of a story, the acting by Falk, Glen and Maia Gilmour is very strong, and the way that Falk and Glen weave Lister’s narrative with the Greek myth of Iphis and Ianthe is powerful, thought-provoking, and reminds us that although Queer stories have been destroyed, concealed, and appropriated and changed by straight storytellers for millennia, they have always existed. I love how contemporary Anne and her girlfriend Eliza are portrayed in this play; they speak in a way that feels like they could be teenagers today, but with a timeless quality that doesn’t root them in any one particular vernacular. It might be interesting to find more ways to root some of the other characters more tangibly in 1805, especially the adults, so that we get a very clear sense of the restrictive, unimaginative and repressive world continually encroaching on Anne and Eliza. I think there is room for the play to get even darker in respect to the sorts of punishments the girls might receive and the teaching tactics of a religious school at the time. The play is well directed, the costume pieces do a great job of clearly switching between characters and centuries, and he production made want to go right home and read more about Anne Lister. This play has so much potential; I hope to see it staged again and soon!
Crypthand: The Workshop at Halifax Fringe has closed.
I ended my evening with something I had never experienced before with Mind Games: Hypnosis, Hallucinations & Hi-Jinx by Brandon Dean. I have never been Hypnotized and this was my first experience watching people be hypnotized, and, I have to admit, I went into the theatre with quite a bit of skepticism. Dean asks the crowd for a large number of volunteers; he doesn’t force anyone to participate who doesn’t want to, so it is a safe show to attend if you are curious and just want to watch. Dean takes the volunteers through a number of breathing and relaxation techniques and then begins to ask them to close their eyes and pretend they are doing a number of different actions: to act them out, while sitting down, with their eyes closed. Some people act out these scenes with enthusiasm, some hesitantly, some not at all, and Dean lets those who seem uncomfortable return to their seats. At first I thought, “Now he is left with the good sports, people who will go along with what he asks them to do because they want the show to go smoothly.” Honestly, if I was onstage I would want to do my best to help the performer have a good show. But then things started to get genuinely weird. He told the volunteers while they had their eyes closed what scenario he wanted them to play out when he awoke them… and the responses from every single volunteer was dramatic and had a level of genuine reality to the point that it made me wonder: would a random selection of audience members ALL be this proficient at performing these scenarios (or lying) with such consistency? I don’t know. One of the participants, especially, seemed more reticent and subdued at the beginning and she was the one who took the most risks at the end. As a performance to watch, the show is fascinating at the end, but slower as an audience member while the volunteers are being taken through the steps necessary to get to a deep enough place of relaxation for the hypnosis to work. I would recommend going to see Dean’s show and volunteering, I think that would be the most interesting way to experience it, and then you will know for yourself what I’m still wondering… can Brandon Dean really hypnotize people and what does it feel like when he does?
Mind Games: Hypnosis, Hallucinations & Hi-Jinx at Halifax Fringe has closed.
Halifax Fringe has closed.
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