A Campus Connoisseuse

A common phenomenon facing Theatre UBC subscribers is that of “oh shit, I have tickets to a play tonight.” Getting all our tickets at once, it can often be a shock to remember just in time that you’ll be attending a play later that night. And so when my Google calendar decided to tell me that the Jade in the Coal was in five hours, it had entirely snuck up on me. I came into this play expecting little. I knew nothing about it, and the most recent plays I’ve seen have been a string of failures.

So it was a shockingly pleasant surprise that the play was actually good. First off, it was more than a play. For the most part, it was Cantonese Opera. My first Cantonese Opera, too. I really liked it. The impressive acrobatics done in the performance left me wishing that Western Opera were so visually dramatic. There were a lot of shouts of praise along the way, entirely deserved.

What also took me surprise was the story. I expected something pretty basic since it was opera. I instead got a stimulating exploration of the immigrant experience, set around Chinese coal miners come to Vancouver Island in 1900. The protagonist, Sally, is a first-generation Chinese-Canadian: too loudmouthed and headstrong to be accepted as a Chinese woman, but not accepted by the white Canadians as one of their own. Stuck between both cultures, Sally’s interactions with the other characters paints an environment of hope and disappointment. Around her are Chinese immigrants who had come to buy into the Canadian dream, only to be segregated off and to be overrun with requests to send money home.

Sally’s story, particularly the romantic subplot, is reinforced by the opera. A Cantonese opera troupe comes to town to perform, and their performance is dispersed throughout the play. It was well done and highly enjoyable. Worth your time to check it out.

I’ve gone to The Vagina Monologues every year since I got to UBC — and this term, with the new play A Memory, A Monologue, A Rant and A Prayer I decided I’d change it up and go to that instead. With the deadline to WCCCE looming and my coauthors still sending me revisions, I figured only one of the two would be enough for this weekend.

And so this afternoon I was off to the play. I was told it had male actors, and would be about gendered violence. I got my hopes up — finally, we would see a more complete picture of gendered violence than the women-are-victims-of-men depiction of The Vagina Monologues. And naturally, I was disappointed. The male-led monologues didn’t deal with violence against men, nor did the women-led ones. The male-led monologues showed how violence against women hurts them. And it does. And I don’t want to demean the very brave message of protesting violence against women. But wasn’t it supposed to be about gendered violence?

If violence against women is swept under the rug, where is violence against men swep to? Bolted under the hardwood floors?

The play started off being fairly crappy, with an irritating duo about a single mother and her son. But it eventually did move to some powerful, meaningful stuff: the Maurice monologue about a date rape, the Blueberry Hill monologue about fighting back against a gang rape, and a monologue written by NY Times journalist Nicholas D Kristof about prostitutes in Cambodia. This was good theatre. It got you feeling, it got you thinking.

And then, after getting me engaged, getting me impressed — the ending sucked. It ended without a catharsis like Reclaiming Cunt from The Vagina Monologues. Worse, it ended with cliches: the actors standing in a line saying words in the most painfully stereotypically avant garde way possible. Instead of coming out of the play wanting to do better in the world, I came out feeling like I’d been subjected to Full Moon from Sex and the City.

And so, as I left, I couldn’t help but buy a ticket for The Vagina Monologues on my way out. My day won’t be done until Cunt is Reclaimed.

***

A better ending I saw recently was that in the opera Louis Riel last weekend. It was epically done and wonderfully foreshadowed by the death of Scott earlier in the performance.

I found the performance of John A. McDonald and his cronies to be quite engaging. The aria in Cree done by Marguerite was also impressive. I found the solo bits and the chorus parts to be both well done, but whenever a handful of people were singing as conversation, it was horribly cacophonic. It seemed not to be well synchronised, which was disappointing.

Also disappointing were the subtitles: the number of typos in them was embarrassing, as was the French translations during some parts. Nevertheless, the story was solid and the acting well-done. It was worth my time, if not only to learn the lesson to see operas at the Chan centre from the balcony rather than the lower parterre; I began the performance down below trapped in between fidgety people who clearly didn’t like opera. Moving to an empty seat in the balcony during intermission was probably the largest enhancement of my experience of the performance.