PuSh Festival: 5 things to know about Kismet, Things Have Changed
Credit to Author: Stuart Derdeyn| Date: Tue, 28 Jan 2020 19:09:28 +0000
When: Feb. 4 to 8
Where: Historic Theatre, The Cultch, 1895 Venables
Tickets and info: From $26 at thecultch.com
The Chop (Canada) is a Vancouver-based performance company dedicated to making innovative and experimental theatre. Founded in 2006 by current artistic directors Emelia Symington Fedy and Anita Rochon, the company mandate includes “striving to explore the landscape of personal connection in theatre.”
With over a dozen original works to its credit, the Chop revisits one of its most acclaimed pieces this year at the 2020 PuSh International Performing Arts Festival.
Ten years ago, the theatrical documentary Kismet: One to One Hundred combined video, field recordings, direct re-enactments and original music and design to present the findings of a cross-country trip taken by Symington Fedy, Rochon, Daryl King and Hazel Venzon. During that trip, the four set out to interview 100 people, aged 1 to 100, asking a series of 10 questions revolving around a central theme: “What do you believe?”
Now the quartet has gone back to re-interview the surviving participants to ask them: “How do you cope?”
The portrait of changing views and values makes up the content of the latest instalment of the show, which may or may not be back in another decade to further inquire into the passage of time and its profound effect on us all. Symington Fedy took some time to discuss some points of the new performance.
1: Revisiting the Kismet concept. “Anita and I first looked seriously at doing this again about five years ago and it took three years of hard work and grant writing to get it to happen, as there were a lot of changes to consider,” said Emelia Symington Fedy. “A decade back, Hazel and I had my little dog along and often camped in the car by the roadside in the snow, and Daryl hitchhiked and took the Greyhound across the prairies. Now we had to at least have a hotel room, while Daryl lives in the prairies and was taking his three kids along in the minivan. We were still able to do things creatively.”
2: Magic, hope and mystery in life. “In our late 20s, without children or partners, we were looking for those moments that determine how your life will turn out and how what you believe in determines that. Perhaps, through the interviews, we would actually discover some things to help guide our own decisions. Initially, the way we sourced people was as simple as someone meeting a 70 year-old in a barbershop and checking that age off the list until we had people ages 1 to 100. Later in the process, we reached out to different people across the Canada to find subjects, sometimes recommended by others we know.”
3: Coming back a decade later. “In the first round, I went up North to the very remote place that I had lived when I was really young with this desire for family connection and to learn personal history. Ten years later, it was an altogether darker experience because my mom had died, my sister’s grave was gone, the house my parents had built was falling down and the place had become one of great grief and it wasn’t enjoyable or fun. That was the general feeling of all of the interviews that we did; things were harder and nothing got easier.”
4: The show. “We’ve followed the same model that we used in the first show where we video and audio taped every interview and then transcribed them. What we were looking for was commonalities and themes that came out of what this group of people said. So the play is about sharing and honouring their wisdom, the pearls, that this random group of Canadians has given us then and now.”
5: The changes. “What they said and what they say now, and how that has changed, is sometimes paired with the earlier recordings or visual images to show how they have visibly altered. We also have moments where we act out roles, such as Daryl playing his deceased uncle. The passage of time and the preciousness around it are really driven home. Sometimes, it’s scary to see and hear, such as when we revisit a couple who were so playful ten years ago and now one of them is gone and the other can’t really even remember their lost loved one anymore.”