Talk Is Free Theater presents 2 plays in Toronto before flying to Japan

For more than twenty years, the Barrie-based company Talk Is Free Theater has left its mark on the artistic landscape of southern Ontario. Through their experience, its members have built a solid reputation in the world of alternative theater. Their specialty? Immersive and in situ performances, outside traditional performance halls.

Last September, the organization created White Taffeta Silk in the laundry room of a Barrie hotel and, in 2022, Toronto audiences were able to experience Sweeney Todd : The Demon Barber of Fleet Streetpresented in an abandoned church. The show generated so much enthusiasm that it won five Doras awards.

Talk Is Free is also one of the few companies in the region to have integrated touring into its ADN. Thus, the two productions performed until the end of the month in Toronto will then move to Kyoto, Japan, during the second week of February.

Dreaming of the world before

The first piece presented, For Both Resting and Breedingtakes place in a house in the neighborhood Parkdalein the west of the Queen City. It can accommodate around fifteen spectators, seated in the kitchen of the house.

When the characters enter the scene, we are transported to 2150, in a society where humans have adopted neutral gender. Two historians want to set up a reconstruction of a home millennial for the 150th anniversary of the year 2000. The setting of their project is the last 1991 house still standing in M ​​City.

The science fiction universe, imagined by the Toronto author Adam Meisneris an invitation to gain perspective on our times. According to the play’s chief historian, it would be dangerous to forget the past.

But as the narrative progresses, the characters do not seek to learn the lessons of their ancestors. Maybe this time is too far back? Naivety and incomprehension prevail. In the public, we are more curious to see everything that could have disappeared in 150 years: the very notion of family, capitalism, television…

In this text, there is no gravity and the situations that follow are generally humorous, both in the acting of the characters and in the situations themselves. We will remember in particular Jamie McRoberts who discovers walking in high heels! The fun also comes from the limits of the reconstruction, as when a simulated couple begins to dance a sort of twerk to the rhythm of a languorous ballad.

The staging of Maja Ardal ends up putting this piece more on the side of the sitcom only moral satire and it is precisely the lightness of the characters that leaves the most lasting impression when the play ends. The future depicted in For Both Resting and Breeding is, despite some twists and turns, resolutely benevolent and peaceful.

Fight of love and desire

The other piece presented, Cocktakes place in an industrial building a stone’s throw from the theater Crow’sin the east of the city.

The atmosphere is very different from the first, much darker and more disturbing. The audience is seated in a dark warehouse around what appears to be a clandestine boxing ring, to witness a three-round fight that will mix passion, jealousy and questions about the inner self.

The story, imagined by the British author Mike Bartlettis that of Johna homosexual in a relationship for seven years who leaves his partner for a woman. A decision that pushes him to question his identity and what he expects from life.

The first part of the show shows the breakup and the announcement. The second illustrates the meeting between John and the woman, as for the last, she brings everyone together for a brutal epilogue which leaves little room for happiness.

The staging of Dylan Trowbridge gives pride of place to lighting effects, made up of a few bulbs manipulated by the characters. The contrasts between shadow and light reflect the bubbling interiority of the protagonists. We see their worries and their intimate questions: fear of suffering, fear of loneliness, fear of the future…

All these questions come and are launched in dialogues that are sometimes crude and often vulgar, but the characters mark us with their great sincerity in their emotions. The physical proximity established by the staging contributes to the conception of an intimacy common to all those who participate in the experience, both the actors and the audience, and thus makes the circulation of feelings all the more obvious.

We will continue to hear about Talk Is Free Theatre in Toronto this spring. From May 20, the company will present one of its emblematic shows for the first time in the metropolis: Tales of an Urban Indiana creation presented on board a bus which has already been performed more than 750 times. It is a dark comedy focusing on an indigenous character who grew up between his reserve and the city.