Thursday January 27 & Saturday January 29
February 2-5 Wednesday to Saturday
February 9-12 Wednesday to Saturday
8 pm
At the D.B. Clark Studio Theatre
1455 de Maisonneuve Blvd. West, Montreal, QuebecTickets $16.00 - $20.00
During a lull in hostilities following the recent outbreak of ethnic troubles, Odon Juan, a Canadian war photographer, has come to realize that he must for his own part mend his ways, and redeem himself for past transgressions. He then — in trying to reconcile his understanding of the madness of war around him to an understanding of his own actions — resolves himself to making amends to a woman that he had "abandoned at the altar" before the war. He is to find her, to be pardoned. But he is held up along the way, falls ill, is robbed of his papers, and deported.
Back in Canada, while waiting for a visa in order to return to the Balkans, he encounters money troubles and there are questions that arise from the past. And his financial insecurity and self-doubt get the better of him, which leads him back to a Don Juan method of survival, seduction.
In the end he does return to the Balkans and finds his once-intended, but the reunion takes an unexpected twist…
Inspired by Odon von Horváth's Don Juan kommt aus dem Krieg, Here & There is a post-war epic of the third millennium, that asks: how does our current world climate play itself out in male/female relationships? And who are the real seducers and the seduced and who are the exploiters and the exploited? And how does seduction differ when you seduce to survive as opposed to seduce for the sheer pleasure of it? And is pleasure the only true absolute?
Odon would, by his own admission, like to turn over a new leaf and make amends. But is change possible when cynicism is the norm and to be expected? Can one remain true to any ideals in our world?
Here & There is a collection of scenes of seduction, played out in a war-torn country — where seduction is often a question of life and death — and in our own privileged Canada where seduction can often be just for sport. So it happens that in some scenes love is the objective, while in others, it's sheer physical pleasure that is coveted. And more often than not, money is the issue, that is needed, and hotly desired.
The play is written for a "Don Juan" and over thirty female characters — each playing several different roles — switching from comedy to tragedy, from seduced to seducer… Some of the female roles are "full characters" while others (in one-scene sketches) are characters, who in passing, are to be represented in brief exchanges of dialogue.
The play calls for quick scenographic shifts, moving, for example, from a destroyed Balkan farm, to a contagious hospital, to a Christmas decorated front porch in Canada… The concept scenographically will represent a clearing away of the remains of the war-torn country of the play's first section (the Balkans), leaving a clean stage for visual projections to begin as the play progresses in Canada — images being the perspective of war that is the most familiar to those living in safety. In the final section, Don returns to the Balkans where the country has begun rebuilding. Here, real structures and projected images will be melded together, the old and new world, the past and the future visually are to fuse.