Theatre company brings twisted take on Greek tragedy to small screen

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This article was published 28/03/2024 (555 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Nearly two years after a successful run of its modern, groundbreaking retelling of Antigone, Winnipeg’s Sick+Twisted Theatre is bringing its version of the Greek classic to a small screen near you for its first full-fledged cinematic creation.

Shot across two performances of the show’s original run at Théâtre Cercle Molière in November 2022, Sick+Twisted chose to film Antigone in order to fulfil its mandate of accessibility, making the show — communicated in English and American Sign Language by a cast of deaf, blind, disabled and non-disabled artists — available to audiences who didn’t catch the show live.

“We would have loved to tour our production, but touring with a bunch of disabled people is really difficult,” says artistic director and company founder Debbie Patterson. “We’re also aware of the climate impact of touring productions, so we wanted to find a way to share our work with a broader audience while mitigating those two factors.

“It’s much like when a play shows at a movie theatre. That’s the model we were looking at to recreate this production.”

The original work took the classicist Anne Carson’s translation of the original Greek tale of justice and bodily autonomy and reimagined it as a disco-rock opera, soundtracked by members of the Mariachi Ghost, a local group known for its synthy, modern takes on traditional Mexican songcraft.

Directed by Arne MacPherson, Antigone featured several inventive approaches to storytelling, including the use of hearing actors voicing the words signed by deaf performers. Joanna Hawkins and Christopher de Guzman, who appeared as Kreon and a guard, were voiced offstage by Matthew Fletcher and Andrea del Campo.

The cast also featured blind performers, including Vivi Dabee. Sarah Luby, a local actor with Type 1 diabetes who has served as an ambassador to the Invisible Disabilities Association, appeared in the titular role.

Because the film was produced during the show’s staged run, the original cast is back, with Mariachi Ghost bandleader Jorge Requena Ramos shifting to the director’s chair. Filmmaker Deco Dawson (Diaspora) edited, while the band worked to perfect the music during post-production. Landon Lake was the director of photography.

The result was exactly what the company hoped for when it first received funding from the Canada Council for the Arts, the National Arts Centre’s creation fund, and the Manitoba Council for the Arts to make the film possible, says Patterson.

“It’s just so intimate. You’re right up close to the actors, and it’s kind of amazing how the performances hold up. Often, theatre can look overwrought on film, and I think (this doesn’t) because the staging was so austere — we chose to be very still, with no extraneous movements — and static. That was a deliberate choice we made,” she says.

Co-produced with AA Battery, an ad-hoc company formed by MacPherson and Del Campo that collaborated with Sick+Twisted on its version of Brecht’s Threepenny Opera, the film is streaming online to April 7, with tickets (a scale from $0 to $40) available at buytickets.at/sicktwistedtheatreinc. Once a ticket is purchased, the video is accessible until April 7. Captions and described audio options are available.

Other programming in the works from Sick+Twisted includes a new play called The Tiresias Project, a devised theatre piece exploring a fortune-telling character from Antigone.

“(It explores) the intersection of non-binary, trans and blind identities, and how gender is visibly represented,” says Patterson.

The production will feature Dabee, Tyler Sneesby (a.k.a. DJ Hunnicut), Toronto performer Alex Bulmer, and three trans performers: Lara Rae, Dasha Plett and Gislina Patterson.

That production will run in June in the Output Studio at the Video Pool Media Arts Centre.

ben.waldman@winnipegfreepress.com