CHALK: Same Same but Different
CHALK - Photo by Pamela Bethel
Presented by William Head On Stage and SNAFU Dance Theatre
Ingrid Hansen of SNAFU Dance Theatre is queen of the weird /good camp in my books. And CHALK lives in that realm, for sure.
First of all, going out to a prison to see a show? That’s weird/good in itself. The grounds of William Head Institution are amazing, and surprisingly serene. We had the luxury of being early and being able to sit and look out at the water from the parking lot for a little while. With no cell coverage. Nice.
This feeling of tranquility continued with the opening of the show: the cast came out dressed completely in white and white-face, staying silent for a solid 5-7 minutes, walking around each other, coming close but not touching… tracing out some invisible barrier between them. It was like watching some kind of slow motion ceremony, like a bizarro-funeral maybe. It was mesmerizing.
The verbal silence of the opening act persisted throughout the play. Although there was a soundtrack, it was nearly 100% dialogue free – which created a kind of mental horizon… do you know this feeling? Imagine being smack-dab in the middle of a prairie field in August – the yellow of canola and the blue of sky… or, in the middle of the Sahara – sand and sun as your only inputs. It allowed my mind to play with the metaphor of chalk itself. I appreciate it when an artist values the audiences’ interpretation enough to grant us space to really let our grey matter work. That sense of space was echoed in the musical choice: Arvo Part – who, I’ve learned since, is a minimalist composer. I don’t think I knew such a thing existed before. But it does. And I like it.
It was fantastic to see mob mentality unfold without words right before our eyes… to witness game becoming gang. One minute the actors are laughing and playing, then getting louder and more physical, their energy building, then at the crescendo, someone takes that energy and flips it from good to evil. What was pure fun turned – in an instant – to group bullying. And the freaky thing was – you could see how easily that could happen.
During the play I kept thinking, aren’t bone and chalk made of the same thing? And that we’re all built of the same basic material. But while we are made up of the same “chalk”, what gets written on the board is very different for each of us. Our messages (what comes out) are shaped by the people and the experiences we surround ourselves with (what goes in).
In my mind the strength of this show was the writing. The choice to leave out words pares life down to an emotional improv. This play shows us that life, like chalk, is not indelible. It shows us how much people are part of each other’s stories, and how those stories can change, for good or bad, and how quickly.
CHALK plays November18th, 19th, 20th at the William Head Institute. See our events calendar for more information.
-L
Hi,
I was just wondering if “Chalk” was done for the year. Do you know when it will be showing again?
Thanks
Neil
Hi Neil, sorry… you missed it this time around. Hopefully we’ll see a return engagement and you’ll be able to catch it then. It was a great show. -PP
Hi Neil,
William Head on Stage is gearing up for another prison theatre experience this fall – Gormenghast, directed by Intrepid Theatre’s Ian Case – and it should be a wild ride.
It’s slated to open in October.
If you email gigglingiguanaprods@shaw.ca – and ask to be put on their mailout list – they will send you a note getting closer to October. They also send out info about all the arts events listings in town.
- Ingrid