The artistic director of Barrie’s Talk is Free Theatre has carved out a reputation for pushing the edge of the envelope artistically.
Of late, that has included productions in which the cast uses a bus while conveying the story – transporting the audience figuratively and literally.
And now, Talk is Free Theatre is featuring a work that Spivak and his cast have grown organically, and offering the public starting Thursday, March 2, entitled Offline, at Park Place Theatre at Mady Centre downtown.
Offline began as a blank page, which seven talented actors/writers filled, using “themselves as material,” to borrow a phrase from Spivak.
Under the guidance of director Jakob Ehman and the songwriting team of Colleen Dauncey and Akiva Romer-Segal, the creators workshopped through various ideas and methods of story-telling to formulate a heartbreaking but ultimately uplifting and triumphant story about a woman's journey from Toronto to the coast of B.C. to retrace the final steps of a young man she had proposed to a month before he drowned.
“In my view,” says Spivak, “artists' own lives and experiences are always more interesting than what a playwright could possibly invent for them. What the show was going to be about was totally up to the assembled company of artists to decide.”
The genesis of the play and initial absence of a script suggests a fair bit of improvisation, but, once the script took shape and the production began to find itself, “the text had to be obeyed to in the same fashion as if one was performing Shakespeare. There, of course, continue to be some re-writes, but not unlike a typical rehearsal process for a new play.”
Dauncey and Romer-Segal, who created the electronic musical score, are also vital members of the cast, combining their talents with those of Alessandro Constantini, Sarah English, Izad Etemadi, Rose Napoli, Nicholas Porteous, Vanessa Smythe and Andy Trithardt.
And the more Spivak thinks of his cast, well, the more he thinks about them.
“Daring, talented, gorgeous people,” Spivak exults. “Every one is an individual, but all (are) working towards a common purpose.”
Nor does he stint on extolling his director.
“Jakob Ehman is an all-purpose chunk of greatness. This is one show that will stun and uplift, but has serious things to say.”
The show runs March 2 to 11, at the Mady, located at 1 Dunlop St. West. For more information on the Talk is Free Theatre website.
