The Toronto Theatre Review: BuddiesTO’s Genrefuck: Julie Phan’s Never Walk Alone & Augusto Bitter’s Reina
By Ross
Welcome to Genrefuck, we are told. This is “art on the edge of gender and genre.” And as the two-part meal is served up at Buddies In Bad Times Theatre, Toronto, inside two movement-driven solo pieces from two very audacious and captivating artists, an adventure of culture and sexual dynamics blends and spins about a central core that is both fascinating and engaging. It spins and reaches upward, trying to find understanding and inspection on many layers and in many dimensions. This double bill of creativity and genre bending navigates the Buddies space with ease and enlightenment, bridging gaps of perception while elevating and unmasking souls deep with meaning and artistry.
The first to take hold is Augusto Bitter’s thoughtful unwrapping, focusing its keen eye on the anonymous woman depicted on a bag of Harina P.A.N. corn flour, the main ingredient of a cultural food staple that dates back generations. In the world premiere of Reina, the elongated circle made up of kitchen tools and bottled ingredients becomes the mixing bowl edge where Bitter (“Chicho“), the creator and co-director/designer alongside co-director/designer Claren Grosz (“Cat Sitters“), sets out through theatre, dance, and performance art to try to understand culture and gender through depiction, of everything and almost anything that this simple symbolic creation invokes, particularly in regards to femininity and the metaphoric understanding of colonialism and oppression.
It’s a lot of complex ingredients that are stirred, then manually rolled and formed within this fascinating celebration and inspection. As presented and performed by the engaging charmer that is Jaime Lujan (Buddies’ White Muscle Daddy), Reina walks big and wild into the hypnotic space, dressed in a flowing white costume reminiscent of another cultural caricature; Quaker Oats’s breakfast brand “Aunt Jemima“, a complex consumer symbol that holds some of the same oppressive forces of enslavement and colonization that seems to live easy within the consumer market of North America until the company discontinued its use due to the “Mammy” stereotype’s historical ties to the Jim Crow era.
The symbolic creation embodied most delicately by the impressive Lujan reaches high for the single banana that hangs teasingly overhead, waiting to be consumed and indulged with. With hands held out to roll with the formulated dough and smooth out the edges as perfectly as possible, the musical rhythm of the catchy and captivating music by composer Y Josephine (Sofi Gudino’s Taura), enlivens the space with celebratory indulgence that sometimes feels innocently vague and could use a more pointed approach.
Brought forth thanks to the solid sound design by Miquelon Rodriguez (Buddies’ Pass Over), Lujan somehow charismatically pulls us through, infusing and enriching the mixture with just the right pinch and pat of flavor to keep us fully tuned in. “In one lifetime,” this bodyless revolution that lives below the neck is a myriad of women, discovered and undiscovered, displayed, invited in, and unpacked through a collection of poems, corn flour sculptures, and dynamically choreographed creations. Reina elevates itself to reach for the fruit on the trees, eating, kissing, climbing, grunting, and gyrating towards an unbinding that seems to be needed from the crawling hose that threatens to tie the whole thing down and squash it.
Reina dances and flows with meaning, sometimes too vaguely, shaped within structural spotlights, courtesy of lighting designer, Shawn Henry (Nightwood’s Shedding a Skin), in a solid attempt to understand all that could possibly live and breathe from the neck down of this headpiece and symbol, whose creation changed an ancient recipe and all the significance that was wrapped in its familial origin story. The piece celebrates personal femininity and cultural connections, and even though the piece sometimes swings back and forth a bit too abstractly and casually, getting lost in some of its emotional, physical, and symbolic transitions which stall the symbolic reenactments, the emotional core of Bitter’s Reina remains solidly crafted, with smooth round edges, perfectly cooked for consumption.
After a break, the next solo unpacking, Julie Phan’s unwavering and fascinatingly engaging Never Walk Alone, saunters in and bewitches us all with its high-heeled, secret depth of emotional truth that surprises and hangs upside down true. Backed up by the twinkling Christmas lights hanging on the edges of this captivating sphere, we enter into her capsulated world in an instant. It’s the night before Christmas, and this singular creation hangs on the precipice, distant and protective, reading, in black high-heeled boots that almost make us feel vertigo just looking at them, let alone when she stands tall and walks casually with a disinterested and resigned purpose. She has been called to the stage with her middle finger raised in a sassy salute to the unseen, annoying emcee, and we can’t take our eyes off her from that point onward. It’s a sharply defined beginning that only swings higher and higher with each turn around the pole and the space, diligently crafted together by set and props designer Jawon Kang (Tarragon’s Redbone Coonhound) with distinct lighting designed once again by Shawn Henry.
Written, produced, costumed, and performed with a dry, yet smartly sly protective force by the thrilling Julie Phan (Fine China), Never Walk Alone, as directed with clarity by Tawiah M’Carthy (Factory’s Here Lies Henry) and choreographed cleverly by Nate Gerber, bends and blends in a whole different kind of pole dancing, genre-blender with theatre and personall storytelling splitting together high above the floor, that powerfully connects and pays out big in hundred dollar bills. It’s compelling and deliberate, from the moment this Honey-dipped stripper receives a shocking call from her long-estranged mother at the beginning of her Christmas Eve shift, through her breaks and her final shedding of one type of sparkly skin for another more feathered one. It’s a fascinatingly abstract metamorphosis, that plays with our heads as strongly as the way she spins into our soul. And even though, the physical transitions slow down the exploration and stall our personal investment in the piece like they did with Reina, Phan has a compelling way of both projecting her “alive” state and pulling us in close to her introverted “fuck you” framing that comes from years of juggling and defending her self and her body against the acts of oppressive men and their grabbing, gropping hands.
Flatly, but fascinatingly delivered, Phan’s stripper, ex-girlfriend persona expertly navigates all the stirred-up alienation and stunted inertia that hang in the air waiting for the right moment to wave us inward. This solo performance piece intensely vibrates in a subtle, introverted manner that could only be understood and unwrapped in a dingy strip club on Christmas Eve. And thanks to the fine work delivered by sound designer/composer (and assistant director) Miquelon Rodriguez and the detailed work by dramaturg Matt McGreachy (Punctuate’s First Métis Man of Odesa), Never Walk Alone unpacks memories and history alongside gyrating emotional scenarios that feel wildly disturbing, blandly erotic, and uncomfortably authentic. While simultaneously opening the window to a true, emotional connection and a cold, snowy Montreal winter’s night, beautifully delivered by the work of VideoCompany [George Allister + Patrick Boivin].
Phan is ever so precise in her Buddhist hustle, asking with a dry, perfectly-formed force to let her just do her job, and for you to be a “good boy“, while also honestly trying to help, if they want and/or let her. “How was your day at work, Mr. Manager?” she asks as she moves with determination around the chair, playing with our truth and emotional connection to this woman, while indulging in a version of her that intersects stripping with live, unabashedly authentic theater. The storytelling is as well choreographed and precise as her meticulously crafted spinning and baring of her body, soul, personal pain, and resilience. She endures the questioning and the drunkenness of those who speak to her inside and out of the club with a formulated delivery that is both sharply dry and boldly real, picking at an ingrown feathered authenticity that transforms the impressive Never Walk Alone into something bigger than one could ever imagine, simply from digging and picking at a bleeding wound with casual determination. It’s an engagement that is brilliantly hard to forget, even if it is the last place on earth you’d want to be on a cold Christmas Eve. Yet, it’s exactly where I want to be, with these two souls digging into the meaning of all that is above and below the neck.
