Motivated by fear

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This article was published 28/04/2023 (1242 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

He’d rather not experience it, but failure excites the experimental theatre artist David Gagnon Walker.

“I think a lot of the most interesting artists are interested in reframing failure, fear and quote-unquote negative experiences as opportunities for magic to happen,” says Gagnon Walker, the performer and writer behind This Is the Story of a Child Ruled by Fear, a Theatre Projects Manitoba show running this weekend at Théâtre Cercle Molière.

In 2017, Gagnon Walker confronted the fear of failure head-on when he conducted an experiment in a stranger’s apartment in Edmonton: for 72 hours, the writer was live on camera while going through the motions of his creative process, with a promise to perform whichever work he came up with once his time ran out.

Three days after sequestering himself into a self-imposed creative hermitage, he opened the door to an audience to share his experimental findings: a monologue that eventually turned into a communal piece of performance art.

“About 10 minutes of that piece was a section where I printed out scripts for members of the audience, and that was my favourite part of the project. You could see everybody in the room’s eyes light up,” he says.

Those 10 minutes stuck with him, and led him to create his latest show, which leans on consensual participation from seven audience members in telling a comical story touching on anxiety, depression and the private worries that are likely more common than we think.

During the show, Gagnon Walker performs with his head inside an anonymizing bucket.

“It’ll be on my head for most of the show,” he says. “Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on how you feel about my face.”

He doesn’t share details about why the bucket is being worn, but one could wager a few guesses. When asked about the show’s origins, the playwright is quick to mention his youth was spend beneath the shroud of shyness.

“If you met me when I was 10 years old, you would never have guessed I would end up on stages for a living doing this kind of performance work,” he says.

Instead of being outgoing, Gagnon Walker spent most of his time reading fantasy books, as well as lists of which books to read.

“As I got older, I started doing what precocious pre-teens do on Wikipedia, which was tearing through lists like ‘the top-100 novels that every smart person needs to read,’ and burning through all of them,” he says.

A family friend introduced Gagnon Walker to improv comedy, and he started eating his sandwiches with other improv nerds who would perform sketches over the lunch hour. It unlocked his creativity and unblocked some of his performance anxiety: if you fail once, it doesn’t mean you will fail forever, and if a lesson is learned, can it even be called failure at all?

Within that context, Gagnon Walker says he had a “lightbulb moment” that now guides his personal creative practice. “It’s the potential for surprise and for spontaneity and for something collective to happen,” he says.

That’s what appealed to Theatre Projects Manitoba artistic director Suzie Martin about This Is the Story of the Child Ruled by Fear, produced by Gagnon Walker and Tori Morrison, the two co-founders of the Strange Victory theatre company. Each performance becomes a self-contained experience shared only by the people in the room.

“I think our audience is an adventurous bunch,” Martin says. “They’ve proven that they’re willing to go with us into strange places and they’re also community-focused.

“(A show like this) seemed to be a great way to bring people back,” Martin adds. “One of the things people said during the great pause was how much they missed being together, live. This is not just live theatre that you’re passively watching. It’s a live experience that we’re all actively contributing to together.”

The show will be directed by Christian Barry, who helmed this season’s Winnipeg Jewish Theatre production of Old Stock: A Refugee Love Story, and Judy Wensel, a graduate of the National Theatre School’s directing program and an artistic associate with Regina’s Curtain Razors Theatre.

“I’ve experienced a snippet of David’s other work,” Martin says. “His writing is funny, poetic, strange and sometimes dark, but there’s a core of humanity and love that felt like what we needed right now.”

Each performance will be followed by a live set from a local band.

During performances in other cities, Gagnon Walker says the show ran without a hitch. But the little bit of fear and potential for surprises has thankfully not dwindled.

“In a way, I have a moment 30 seconds before each show starts (when I worry it won’t work),” he says. “But that’s what I love about the way this play works. Myself and seven audience volunteers read the play for the rest of the audience, so there’s this element of total, exciting, terrifying newness every single time.

“I’m really inspired by live performance work that wouldn’t really make sense in any other context.”

ben.waldman@winnipegfreepress.com