Rainbow on Mars, by creator-performer Devon Healey, follows protagonist Iris (Healey) through a journey between worlds as she processes and explores her blindness. Touching interpersonal relationships couple with imaginative stagecraft to draw audiences in and keep them there. A co-production between Outside the March and the National Ballet of Canada, co-directed by Mitchell Cushman and Nate Bitton, Rainbow on Mars is a multisensory experience that goes beyond visual spectacle to create an all-encompassing narrative world from the moment your ticket is scanned.
Designed to ignite your senses, speakers play a soft-voiced audio track that guides you toward the playing space through a velvet corridor, encouraging you to reach up and feel the texture of items used to create the performance. Dangling from the ceiling are rows of sparkling crystal chains, bumpy beaded velvet, and hard jagged plastic. Our first taste of the show.
“Turn left.”
With seating on all four sides, set and props designer Nick Blais uses a giant suspended chandelier to create the focal point of the Ada Slaight Hall. In the shape of an iris, a circle of shimmering chains with a centre pupil refracts tiny rainbows even in the lowest lighting — another appetizer before the upcoming feast.
Iris’ relationship to her eyes is the basis for one of Rainbow on Mars’ most unique components: Immersive Descriptive Audio (IDA), in its official debut. Healey’s brainchild, IDA is a way of weaving accessibility through the narrative core of a performance. The show introduces IDA via the character of The Voice (Vanessa Smythe), who functions as an auditory manifestation of Iris’ blindness. Both describer and performer, The Voice breathes thought, imagery, wonder, and life into a central element of the play. The Voice feels so integral to the show’s world that in moments where Iris chooses to shut it out, a deep sense of emptiness floods the theatre.
The play begins with slugs in a cave: In darkness, the intangible Voice relays their squirming, cocooned movements. Made of only eyeballs and thumbs, they scroll images using glowing devices. We see Iris break free and shatter her device, triggering alarms as guards corral her to an examination room. The chorus (Amy Keating, Sofía Rodríguez, and Danté Prince), emerging for their first appearance, embody pretentious physicians, poking and prodding with clinical coldness. They label her a tragic case, flagrantly ignoring her questions as they lament that “there’s simply nothing to be done” about the flecks obscuring the back of her eyes.
Cast out from all she knows, Iris navigates the world of the blind determined to find a functioning device. With it she believes she will fit in with the scrolling masses of her previous home, vowing this time to stay in her cocoon. But it is in this world that she encounters wonder, possibility, and community unlike anything before. In time Iris deepens her relationship with her unique visual experience, accepting the rainbow flashes everpresent through her field of vision.
The grace and dynamism of the National Ballet’s RBC Apprenticeship Program dancers amplify the wonder of this world. Choreographer Robert Binet has dancers take on two distinct characterizations: The Sads, entities who try to swallow Iris up, and an unnamed group representing the beauty of her rainbow. The Sads execute athletic, powerful leaps in direct contrast to the elegant gliding and poised pirouettes of Iris’ dancers as she moves through experiences of both frustration and appreciation.
In fact, each character Iris encounters offers a different perspective on sightedness. The techies (Keating, Rodríguez, and Prince) tout tools and gadgetry. Arlo (Elliot Gibson), creator of The Sads, is withdrawn and slightly bitter. There’s also Lynk (Nate Bitton), who, blind in one eye, guides those in transition, serving as a literal link between the realms of vision.
Rainbow on Mars challenges the idea of vision difference as deficiency. It prompts sighted audiences to engage in different ways of knowing and collective meaning-making: Things are more than the sum of their characteristics — IDA helps bridge the gap in that equation. It reframes the concept of accommodating blindness by shifting focus away from one-to-one translation, and demonstrating the warmth of live storytelling. Smythe’s vocal overlay poetically describes dancing by blending the intent of each movement with its physical description — turns become hurricanes, lunges evoke the strain of lengthening muscles. With almost no music, Smythe’s voice and the clack of hard-toed pointe shoes create a soundscape that echoes in the intimacy of the black box theatre.
The show boasts profoundly funny moments, most notably an eye exam sequence. The chorus’ sharp, dismissive, and overlapping dialogue perfectly encapsulates the absurdity of medicalization. How are you supposed to react when others frame your everyday life as tragedy without your consent?
Rainbow on Mars is a heartwarming adventure reminiscent of a Greek epic. The central hero’s journey takes Iris across realms and within herself, exploring the beauty and possibilities of accessible art.
Rainbow on Mars runs at the Ada Slaight Hall until August 20. Tickets are available here.
Intermission reviews are independent and unrelated to Intermission’s partnered content. Learn more about Intermission’s partnership model here.
WRITTEN BY
Columbia Roy
Columbia Roy is an interdisciplinary theatre artist and arts worker raised in Taiwan, now discovering life in Toronto. She’s passionate about arts philosophy, examining culture, and public transit. Columbia is drawn to work that confronts humanity with itself, warts and all, while still embracing the silliness of living. You can always find her knitting, talking to strangers, or waiting for the TTC.
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