Thrice is right

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This article was published 27/11/2021 (1793 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The name of a new Winnipeg theatre group — the End of the West Collective — sounds a little apocalyptic.

But be assured, it is a positive and hopeful trio. The name came about because all three members happen to be neighbours in Winnipeg’s West End.

Still, as they prepare to première their new work under the auspices of Theatre Projects Manitoba, the group members acknowledge they did come together owing to the semi-apocalyptic nature of the COVID-19 crisis.

In the fall of 2020, they formed around the nucleus of seasoned theatre artist Jacquie Loewen, once a performer in the popular sketch-comedy troupe Hot Thespian Action, a fight choreographer, and more recently a director for Manitoba Opera productions (The Telephone and La voix humaine).

Loewen, over the course of a Zoom call alongside cast member Avinash Muralidharan Pillai Saralakumari — Nash for short — recalls discovering herself living in close proximity to neighbours she didn’t know were artists. She came to that realization in the depths of the COVID-19 lockdown, when the only safe way to enjoy people’s company was in outside spaces.

“It felt like an absence from theatre, but in a way, it also felt like I’ve just got a really long break,” Loewen recalls.

“In that time, I really doubled down on doing yardwork and hanging out in my backyard,” she says of her Toronto Street abode. “And then Nash moved in across my back lane; he was doing work on his place I was doing work on my place and we were talking. The only thing that I knew at that point about Nash was that he worked in insurance from his house.

“But during conversation, he would move his hands, he would do body movements in a way that was like: ‘What? Are you a dancer?’ And then we started talking about his actual background, which existed before I met him, how his dance training comes from a place of storytelling that I was super-jazzed about.”

Bharatanatyam is a form of Indian classical dance originating in the region of Tamil Nadu. Nash admits to being shy about his talent.

“As a person who is trained in dance, I’ve always run away from performance opportunities,” he says. “As a male dancer, I was always shunned and called names. Male dancers have that bullying going on because they have a fluidity to their body that is perceived as not masculine enough for normal people.”

Loewen next encountered David Thomas, an Anishinaabe artist and architectural designer living across the street, via his eight-year-old son, who had taken to playing in Loewen’s fort-friendly yard.

One day, while Loewen was enjoying an outdoor firepit, she overheard Thomas mentioning that he had represented Canada in the 2018 Venice Biennale in the show Unceded: Voices of the Land as one of 18 Indigenous architects and designers.

“And I’m like: Who is my neighbour?” Loewen says with a laugh.

“I said, ‘I think we need to talk.’

“So then they started coming over and we were telling stories around the fire,” she says. “Between Dave and Nash and myself, we come from three different artistic disciplines which really jazzed me up because I had this crazy idea from the ‘before times’ of: What would it be like to make it experiential piece of theatre for one person at a time?”

That is the origin of the TPM show In Time, in which members of the audience can expect to go to Prairie Theatre Exchange and be called into three different spaces within the building for one-on-one encounters with the performers. Each performance is centred around an interpretation of Janus, the two-faced Roman god of transitions and doorways, beginnings and endings.

It was created expressly to be performed under COVID-19 protocols, allowing for social distancing.

“Janus has one face looking to the past and one looking to the future, so I figured that seems like a cool enough place to start,” Loewen says.

In Time marks the final production of outgoing artistic director Ardith Boxall after 16 seasons. Since the show can only be seen by a maximum of 18 audience members per performance, it will stand as an example of the company’s penchant for risk-taking productions.

“I’m really aware of how intentionally and completely anti-capitalist this is, because there is no way that any one audience member could or should pay enough money to cover the cost of how much is being put into (the show), which I love,” Loewen says.

“I just love that it can be so generous to one person.”

randall.king.arts@gmail.com

Twitter: @FreepKing