War and Peace at the Fringe
The Face of Jizo and Lysistrata’s War offer two takes on war
If you missed it at the Metro in March, there is also a re-staging of The Face of Jizo (Venue 1), a modern Japanese play about a young woman who survived the Hiroshima bombing and is haunted by the ghost of her father.
“I first read this play in a textbook in high school [in Japan] and it was so interesting,” says Futarikko Theatre’s Ayumi Hamada, who is playing the lead role. “When I came here and had to do a play, this one was on my mind.”
Futarikko’s Aya Walraven says the play portrays the bombing of Hiroshima and its aftermath in a way Canadian audiences might not be familiar with. “It is presented [in Canada] in a very textbook way: cities were destroyed, people died,” she says. “But the emotional damage can’t be shown in a textbook.”
For director Judith McDowell (Pitch Blond), the most important thing was communicating that message in a way Canadians would understand. “I wanted to bring the play to Canadian audiences in a way they could respond to. It’s a different culture, a different perspective and a different view of history,” she says. “That was one of the very fascinating challenges of doing this play.”
This will actually be the fourth mounting of the play; in addition to the show at the Metro earlier this year, Walraven and Hamada have done the play twice in Japan—in English with Japanese subtitles, no less. “I wanted to show what I learned here and I thought it would be neat to see an English play for people who don’t know English.”
For Walraven, seeing the show’s several incarnations has been an interesting experience. “We’ve done this play with different directors and cast members and it has been different every time,” she says. “The motives of the characters change.”
War, what is it good for?
When leafing through this year’s Fringe lineup, there were many shows that caught our eye. One of them was Lysistrata’s War (Venue 2), a rock opera version of the classic Greek play done by the Lake Tahoe Community College. Set during the Peloponnesian war, Lysistrata leads the women of Athens in withholding sex from the city’s men until the war is over.
“Dave Hamilton, who wrote the lyrics and did the adaptation of the story, he and I were both big fans of Jesus Christ Superstar,” Mark D.Williams, who wrote the play’s music, says of the idea to adapt the classic. “It’s something I was interested in doing just for the musical challenge of writing a theatrical piece that would be music all the way through. Every once in a while there’s a couple lines of spoken dialogue, but basically it’s all music.”
It’s an odd duck on the Fringe circuit not only due to the size of its cast—25 in all—but also because of the background of its performers: a mixture of college students and community members.
“It kind of gives them an opportunity to travel to these places as opposed to just doing it some place in the United States,” says Williams of touring the show. “Several of the actors are of professional quality, but they’re mainly students and community people.”
The play received a four-star review at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2005, proving that this show is no slouch.
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http://mondaymag.com/articles/entry/war-and-peace-at-the-fringe/
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