The Secret Project

by Adrienne Wong

Firehall Arts Centre  http://www.firehallartscentre.ca/

reviewed November19, 2004

The Secret Project is an amazing small production that breaks down the barriers of the traditional proscenium arch between the audience and performers.  It engages the audience, literally and physically transporting them through the show and the building, it seduces and pleads with them to choose sides in a revolution.

Director Adrienne Wong has created an interactive theatre production in which the audience first witness Dacia, the King Queen of Amnera, played by Nneka K. Croal, giving a political speech while assisted by her personal assistant Frances, played by Toni Rozylo.

It is apparent from the onset that this is not an ordinary theatre piece.  The performers use stylistic physical gestures while they speak.  This is the mark of  Tangled Tongues Performance, a company that sets out to create physical theatre that “slices through the skin of social and political relationships to see what really makes the heart beat.”  This affected physicality both emphasizes the performers words while distracting the eyes of the audiences.  In short, it adds a whole new dimension to watching the performance.  While it can be confusing, it puts the audience on edge, not knowing what to expect next.

And what happens next is an adventure.  The audience is split up into two groups, following the ushers into the hallways and stairways of the physical space of the Firehall Arts Centre which itself becomes the kingdom of Amnera.  Doors are renamed “Water Purification Plant” or “Hot Springs,” that aids in creating the suspension of disbelief that helps transport the audience into another time and space.

In our group on Friday night, we were approached by Frances, the King Queen's personal assistant, who revealed herself to be the underground leader of the Radio Zero Collective, revolutionaries of the people of Carvuun, now occupied by King Queen Dacia who creates a wonderful sensual sexually ambiguous character.  And we, members of the audience are suddenly drawn into something we weren't prepared to be… unwitting participants in a revolution.

The audience is moved next down a hallway to the the Firehall Arts Centre rehearsal space now transformed into a antechamber or reception parlour for the King Queen.  We witness an exchange between Frances and the King Queen over tea, that is both conversation and dance before it escalates to a peak and we are ordered to leave the room. “Now!” implores Frances.

Frances then takes us into another stairway hall to reveal more background information about the politics of Anmara and her role in it.  We are next led to an area at the rear of the stage floor.  The rest of the audience joins us, and we look each other suspectly, wondering what they have been told, and by whom.

The final climatic scene approaches as Frances scales a dam with the assignment to blow it up with explosives.  The two characters face off and by now, half of the audience is secretly cheering for the revolutionary Francis.  The other half is silently supporting the King Queen.  The ensuing fight scene is set underwater.  Lights and choreography produce good effect and the slow motion movements are wonderful to watch.

The Secret Project is an engaging piece that keeps the audience on its toes while moving them literally from set to set.  The audience is kept wondering what will happen next and thus is forced from the role of passive observer.  But to learn the whole story, the audience must come back to find out the rest of the story from the other performer.  It is sort of like a children's adventure story, where you choose the story line options and jump to the corresponding pages, allowing you to re-read the book many times with different outcomes.  This may ultimately be both a blessing and a curse.  Because, at the play's conclusion, my companions and I wanted more.  We wanted to know more about the ending and what was happening.  Not used to experimental theatre, maybe we have become too complacent in pat endings for our movies and tv shows.

Created collaboratively from a series of workshops, Adrienne Wong, Toni Rozylo and Nneka K. Croal, have produced a work that challenges the audience to re-think not only the issues of the play happening them but also what happens in our own lives.  After the play, my friends and I discussed how our society has evolved into a cocooned environment, where people spend much of their time on personal computers, internet games, dvd home theatre movies.  The very idea of of inaction whether political or social recreational, is what Tangled Tongues Performance aimed to address with The Secret Project.  Mission accomplished!

To find secrets, background information and audience feedback + director's notes check out:

http://www.thesecretproject.blogspot.com/

http://www.vancouverplays.com/theatre/reviews_theatre/review_secret_project_2004.htm

http://www.vancouverplays.com/theatre/previews_theatre/preview_secret_project_2004.htm

Fred Wah will be the featured poet at Gung Haggis Fat Choy poetry night at the Vancouver Public Library, January 17, 2005.  And hopefully for the January 30, Gung Haggis Fat Choy dinner in Vancouver.

Fred Wah has an extensive writing catalogue and recieved the Governor General's Award for Poetry for his collection Waiting for Sasketchewan (1985).  He also wrote Diamond Grill (1996), about growing up in a small-town Chinese-Canadian cafe in a “hybrid” family, which won the Howard O'Hagan Award for Short Fiction.  In 2000, Wah recieved the Gabrielle Roy Prize for writing on Canadian literature for Faking It: Poetics and Hybridity, Critical Writing 1984-1999.

Last year the Asian Canadian Writers' Workshop honoured Fred at the annual ACCWW Community Builder's Dinner, along with fellow poet professor Roy Miki, the Japanese Canadian Bulletin, and radio pioneer and yo yo champion Harvey Lowe.

Every time I have talked with Fred Wah about Gung Haggis Fat Choy, he smiles broadly and laughs.  Fred should know about the combination of Scots and Chinese Canadianisms… His father was Scots-Irish-Chinese Canadian and his mother was Swedish.

The retired University of Calgary English professor moved to Vancouver last year.  For more about Fred check out:  http://www.library.utoronto.ca/canpoetry/wah/index.htm

Check out this show at the Firehall Arts Centre by my friend Adrienne Wong!

The Secret Project
By Adrienne Wong
November 17 – 21 Firehall Arts Centre http://www.firehallartscentre.ca/

The Maid plots revenge. The Queen can’t sleep. Secrets entangle them. They seep into the women’s dreams… and nightmares.

The Secret Project is a collaborative creation project set in an irreverent world of revenge, upheaval and redemption. It examines voicelessness and survival inside the tangled intimacy of servitude.

The Secret Project integrates physical theatre and radio drama. It leads the audience on a journey in, around and throughout the Firehall Arts Centre. Viewers peek under the skirts of convention for a glimpse at the passionate underbelly hidden beneath. As an attempt at a new form of storytelling, the project invites those with a sense of adventure onto the puzzling and shifting territory of secrets, gossip and lies.

Developed out of a series of workshops conducted by director Adrienne Wong (The Plum Tree) during her residency at the Firehall Arts Centre, the project is a collective creation featuring performers Nneka Croal and Toni Rozylo. Tangled Tongues Performance creates physical theatre that slices through the skin of social and political relationships to see what really makes the heart beat.

Wednesday through Saturday at 8pm, with matinees Wednesday at 1pm (pay what you can), Saturday and Sunday at 2pm

Tickets $15 / $12

Gung Haggis Fat Choy: Toddish McWong's Robbie Burns Chinese New Year Dinner will be held January 30, 2005 at the Floata Restaurant in Vancouver Chinatown, #400, 180 Keefer St.

I am excited by the move to Floata Restaurant, which provides a great stage, lighting, sound and video equipment that will allow us to improve performance presentation while seating 600 to 700 patrons in one evening.  

Shelagh Rogers, host of CBC Radio's Sounds Like Canada, will be co-host with me, along with Tom Chin from Vancouver Asian Canadian Theatre.  Both are excited to be part of the show and will bring great chemistry to our presentation.

Returning performers include: Bagpiper Joe McDonald and Brave Waves, his world fusion band; Opera soprano Heather Pawsey; Scottish dancing brothers Cameron and Vincent Collins.

New for 2005 are: Chinese musicians and storytellers Karen Wong and Zhongxi Yu from Dragon River Shadow Puppet Theatre;  Governor General's Award winning poet Fred Wah. Contemporary songstress La La, who sang Auld Lang Syne in the CBC tv special “Gung Haggis Fat Choy.”

More performers to be named and details to be released… stay tuned!

Gung Haggis Fat Choy at Simon Fraser University.  The whimical spirit of Toddish McWong returns to his conception of inspiration at the invitation of the SFU Recreation Department to help create a unique multicultural event.

What could possibly happen when the concepts of Gung Haggis Fat Choy are applied to the centuries sacred traditons of the Highland Games?

Stay tuned…

Scottish Poets, Chinese Poetry, bagpipes and accordion, plus a Governor General's Award winning poet?  Add them together and what do you get? The return of Gung Haggis Fat Choy Poetry night at the Vancouver Public Library.

Hosted by Alejandro Mujica and Ariadne Sawyer for World Poetry, and Todd Wong for Gung Haggis Productions.  This event brings together their two unique visions of world and multicultural poetry.

“Tribe of One” http://www.nfb.ca/atribeofone/ was awarded Best Documentary at American Indian Film Festival in San Francisco on Sunday Nov 14th.  http://www.aifisf.com/ The NFB film is directed by Eunhee Cha and concerns the story of Rhonda Larabee (my mom's cousin), as she grew up in Vancouver's Chinatown/Strathcona neighborhood thinking she was Chinese/French, but as a young adult learned that her mother was actually First Nations.  And thus began Rhonda's journey of First Nations self-discovery that saw her resurrect an “extinguished” indian tribe, and become chief of the Qayayt Band.

The following is an excerpt from Chief Rhonda Larrabee's e-mail to me about the experience!

First, they showed our film on Tues night (9th) and introduced Eunhee and me.   After the film, they called us up to the front and had a q & a period.   There were so many questions that after 30-40 mins. they had to stop it as there was another film to be shown.