By Liz Nicholls, .ca
There is nothing predictable, run-of-the-mill (or run-of-deMille for that matter) about the Theatre Yes production that opens a short run Wednesday.
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Just for starters, An Oak Tree happens in a venue where you’ve probably never seen theatre before (The Aviary, 9314 111 Ave.). And that’s just the start of its surprises.
Then there’s this: the co-artistic directors of Theatre Yes have switched roles for the occasion. Actor/ musician/ playwright Ruth Alexander is the director — “my directing debut in Canada,” as she says over coffee one Saturday morning not long ago. Director Max Rubin, Alexander’s husband, who “hasn’t been onstage in 15 years,” is one of the two actors in the show.
Ruth Alexander, Theatre Yes. Photo supplied.
And then there’s the play itself, by the insurrectionist English playwright Tim Crouch whose body of work, says Rubin, is “a full-frontal assault on everything about the conventions of going to the theatre. He never allows the audience to settle into a routine they’re familiar with.”
Max Rubin, Theatre Yes. Photo supplied.,
The play gets its title from a painting, in the National Gallery of Australia, of a glass of water. The title of the painting? “An Oak Tree.” An art-life confrontation that’s a bit like 180-degree reverse Magritte, and the Belgian artist’s painting of a pipe entitled Ceci n’est pas une pipe.
There’s no set, no costumes, no sound or light cues. So the lights don’t go down in the time-honoured signal that a play is about to begin. And Rubin is onstage with an actor, a different one every performance, who has never seen or read the play, much less rehearsed it.
An Oak Tree has its own disturbing premise. A stage hypnotist has accidentally killed a child with his car. And months after that, the child’s father volunteers for the act. Rubin plays the hypnotist. “But as the play goes on,” he says, “it becomes less and less clear whether I’m that character or the actor, or the ‘stage manager’ instructing the other actor…. And then the roles reverse, and the other actor instructs me.”
Adds Alexander, “sometimes the hypnotist will play the wife of the father, sometimes the father…. A lot of devices in it to disconcert the audience on purpose. And remind you you’re looking at a play…. And you’re still emotionally involved!”
“Fascinating,” she says. “It’s ‘look at how the magic works’. And it’s still magic, and amazing. And that’s theatre!”
It’s not improv, though; every word the second actor says is scripted, but after that, “there’s huge leeway in how they do it.” The play is created on the spot, discovered by the audience and the second actor at the same time, and “I imagine each show is going to be quite different,” as Rubin says.
Says Alexander, “the second actor can’t prepare, can’t ‘act. All they can do is to be open and to listen. They can make decisions but they can’t plan anything; they have to be in the moment…. It’s what everyone at drama school always tells you.”
“They can’t make friends with the audience, or clown. They have to be vulnerable.”
Alexander and Rubin, experimenters par excellence, re-located from England to Edmonton in 2017. And they announced their arrival at Theatre Yes with The Play’s The Thing, a two-night collective production of Hamlet, with each scene randomly assigned to a different Edmonton performing arts company, to be presented in their own signature style. For An Oak Tree they’ve assembled a starry roster of game and experienced actors of varying ages who might — who will — come with very different affiliations to parenting and grief. Belinda Cornish, Mark Meer, Luc Tellier, Patricia Zentilli, Patricia Darbasie, Dayna Lea Hoffmann, Oscar Derkx, Nikki Hulowski.
“You need experience from the second actor,” Alexander thinks. “They’re literally creating a character cold, in the moment.”
Directing An Oak Tree “isn’t really a directing job,” she says. Which is why she agreed to do it. “This is making sure the story is clear for the audience, and also fully supporting the second actor.” As for Rubin, “well, my wife made me do it,” he jokes. The hypnotist “isn’t really an acting part; he’s more of a a facilitator.…” It’s not a ‘go into character and stay there’ situation.
“There are different versions of the hypnotist character, and they bleed into each other,” says Rubin, who was last onstage in 2011 as Satan in a Lodestar Theatre production of The Master and Margarita in England. “I’m just not remotely interested in acting any more. But this is an entirely new challenge!”
“It really says ‘what’s the theatre?’,” says Rubin of the play. “What makes the theatre magical?” Alexander thinks of it as “philosophy in action. A statement, a manifesto. It’s about transformation, and the power of suggestion.” One of the first lines of the play, as Rubin says, is “ask me what I’m being. I’m being a hypnotist.”.
You wonder what Theatre Yes rehearsals can possibly be like, since half the cast won’t, can’t, be present. “We rehearse in our living room, and move the dogs,” Alexander laughs. “I read all the father’s lines…. We have four ‘stooges’, rehearsal actors (to be the second actor), so Max has four cracks at it, to see what works.”
As Rubin reports, in honing the script for 18 years, Crouch has compared that process to kintsugi, the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold, so it’s more beautiful than ever. “I love that!” Rubin says.
“This is the ultimate non-theatre theatre show.”
PREVIEW
An Oak Tree
Theatre: Theatre Yes
Written by: Tim Crouch
Directed by: Ruth Alexander
Starring: Max Rubin, with (in successive performances) Belinda Cornish, Mark Meer, Luc Tellier, Patricia Zentilli, Patricia Darbasie, Dayna Lea Hoffmann, Oscar Derkx, Nikki Hulowski
Where: The Aviary, 9314 111 Ave.
Running: Feb. 5 to 12
Tickets: theatreyes.com
